I’d intended to do a writeup on the headstart and launch of Guild Wars 2, but I’ve been busy either playing or working. The headstart weekend was wonderful; we’d done the traditional shopping trip for gaming junk food and energy drinks, and the alarm was set for 4:20am on Saturday. Gods, did that feel early when the time actually came! We both got our really important names (although I lost Kaylee for my engineer) and were able to log in and play pretty much non-stop through until Monday evening. It was a bank holiday in the UK, and we had a very well-timed three day weekend. Hurrah!
This was me during headstart (sorry, I forgot who’s blog I nicked this off):
There were occasional issues, the normal login server problems, lag and so on. Guild chat and functionality is still borked today, although ArenaNet has posted that they are working on that at this moment. I have a very odd problem with lag that I cannot figure out: the game runs at an unplayable 10-15fps with the harddrive churning away unless I start EVGA Precision, which seems to shut whatever process is affecting the game. With that running, I have a playable 25-30fps (I have an older machine which could use a new motherboard and chipset). Any ideas?
I love this game. My necromancer is only 26 right now, due to my preferences for exploring, vistas, taking screenshots and just dinking around. There are people who have reached level cap already, and I feel very sorry for them. In a game with admittedly no endgame aside from what you’ve been doing all along, why would you rush to endcap? Madness. The game is beautiful and immersive, and although I still hate the wooden cutscenes the story has depth. I am still torn between the different professions, which is a testament to how enjoyable and viable each one is.
I hate the queue system with a passion. I end up staying in the overflow servers just because it is such an irritation to be constantly bounced back and forth between them, with message windows filling the centre of the screen at inopportune moments (like in the middle of a tough fight). This is the one thing that I really wish would change (as unlikely as that is at this point). I can live with it, but it’s one of the single most irritating “features” of a game that I have ever experienced.
All in all, a great launch and a wonderful, immersive game. I’m going to be living here for quite some time to come.