We had a lot of fun in the final stress test last night. By fun, you have to understand that what I really mean is that I got a little taste of my drug of choice, just a bump to still my shaking hands and quell the addiction temporarily. :) Bring on Saturday morning!
Logging in was quite scary, as I encountered a brand-new problem after login: black screen and game music without the ability to tab out or do anything except close the program (which was “not responding”) via the Task Manager. Quite worrisome. I did a clean install of Nvidia drivers and was finally able to get to character selection, although my framerate was MUCH worse than in previous stress tests and the BWEs. 15-25 fps was the standard for the night; I didn’t try WvW or anything that would have caused me to finally lock up.
These are the system specs from my dxdiag file:
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Not a new PC, not a high-end one, but I’ve been able to play all other games with textures and so on on high settings. Why can’t I play GW2 adequately? (Note: buying a new PC is unfortunately not an option.)
Aside from the initial problems, I did a lot of running around on various characters. I still don’t know which to choose as a main! I’ve never played a game that had me so conflicted over initial choices. I will probably start a human necromancer, a human or Norn ranger, and an Asura elementalist and let them duke it out, winner to become my main.
There were dances! And I really hated them aside from Charr and Asura. I know that the human and Norn dances were funny (although Norn DEFINITELY should have been Techno Viking), but if I’m stuck with one single, main dance I’d prefer it to look a bit better – but perhaps I’m still scarred by being stuck with the Macarena all these years in Warcraft. :) Yes, it’s quite obvious that ArenaNet will be selling dances in the cash shop…but I don’t want to have to buy a decent dance. /cry
And then we get to professions, which I didn’t have a chance to play with during the BWEs (being too concerned with choosing a profession and building the perfect face for each one). Phil spent quite a lot of time playing with the discovery function of crafting, and it’s actually really nicely designed. I think I’m going to go with Tailoring and either Artificing or Cooking on the necro (yeah, I know that cooking is a pain in the ass). I’ll be making lots of bags for everyone, in any event, in the beginning.
Two days, twenty-something hours until headstart? I’ll never make it! :) See you there.