GW:EN Sneak Peak: Reflections, Observations, and Preliminary Judgements

After Sleeping on the events of yesterday, I have a few observations.

I was a bit disappointed with the Norn fighting but it's grown on me. Looking at this wikipage, I can see there are a lot of potential opponents. And judging from the inclusion of a 55 Monk and what I saw last night with the almighty Hamstorm Warrior and Norghu, they're all going to be running various crummy builds. But the challenge lays in setting up your character to be able to withstand all of them while still having enough offense to overcome them. It's like building for a completely solo Arena. An interesting challenge. I think, with my woefully equipped Monk, there's little I can do about it now, but it'll be worth exploring post release or with another character. Dwarven Brawling is more of a heady rush of fast paced action. More like the Snowball Arena. While the Norn Tourney is more cereberal, more like traditional forms of GW PvP. I like both, it's just the later takes a bit more effort and preparation.

Polymock looks like you need to travel to the Asura lands to start playing and those areas are closed off during the sneak peak, so I won't get to try them. Still, all in all, I'm rather pleased with the mini-games being offered, they look like a good diversion from playing along the plotline. At least moreso than the Challenge Missions of the last few games. They're a lot more like single player games of the holiday bonus formats, like Rollerbeetle Racing or Dodgeball. Twists on the rules - while still within the rules - and ones that teach you a lot about playing the game besides. Dwarven Boxing, for one, relies a lot on timing those blocks and interrupts and that's good practice for the PvP, if you ask me. The Norn-baiting is more about builds and strategery, but that's a good skill to learn, too. They're more for average or middling players to hone their skills but it's good to see that sort of thing as I've been worried about the paucity of PvP content.

Now, as for the master quest sub-mission, Defend the Eye of the North, which I tried and failed to close out the night, I think I was on the right track, I just didn't go far enough. For one, I kept getting crushed by the snowball. It rolls across the battlefield during at least one point in the fight and it slaughters anyone crushed under it. With the AI's tendancy to bunch up, that's a recipe for trouble. But the solution for that is obvious. I'd been fighting at the little patch of snow at the bottom of the island when there's a ramp, leading up to the Eye of the North, behind me. Plant a henchie flag there, and never venture out. Not only does it channel the enemies into a narrow corner where the AoE I think is critical will pound them, it should keep me safe from any instant death balls of ice.

The second change I'd make is to switch what I was doing. In starting the quest, I went defensive. Overloading on Monks and wards and the like to survive. But there's a bit of a truism that I was forgetting: Bad teams work on their defenses. Good teams work on their offenses. Your job isn't to keep from getting killed. It's to stay alive long enough to kill everything trying to kill you. And killing more efficiently helps you more than building the greatest defenses in the world. In theory, anyway. So, rather than go with a 3 Monk backline, I think I need to have more offense along with a bit more AoE hate. Blocking stuff like the wards are actually bad because they carry defenses against that, I need some active melee hate. Stuff like Spiteful Spirit, Blurred Vision, and the like. The Centaurs are all melee bangers with a few Monks scattered into the later waves, I can drop stuff like hex and even condition removal because they just don't use that - there's some Crippling going around but nothing I really care about getting rid of.

Overall, since this weekend has been about sampling the game to decide if I want to get it at release, for me, if I had to render a verdict on the game right this very minute, I'd say I'm not going to buy it. Not right away anyways. Oh, it's engaging and fun enough and people who purchase it will no doubt be pleased with it. But, for myself, I don't think there's enough here to really keep my interest going for the long term. I'll barnstorm the campaign with one or two characters. Build up some titles playing the various mini-games. Play around with the new skills, maybe get caught up in PvP again. But it won't be long before I've exhausted the available content. I'm not really one for grinding up max titles or max armor or farming. I don't really see the point of doing it all again with hard mode. And I don't really have the time or energy to find a guild, once more, and get back into the PvP scene at the moment. Once I hit UAX - which will take me roughly until tomorrow - and finish off the plot, there's not a whole lot to keep me sticking around. I'd say I'd give the game another month or so before I lost interest and started edging out the door again. Not exactly worth it. And although it's a nice enough game for what it is, it hasn't blown my socks off enough to make me want it so badly that I need it right now. I'll wait a few weeks or a month until I'm less busy or my hunger grows a bit more and then I'll pick it up. Maybe by then there'll be a few more tweaks and changes, like the promised fixes to the Arena, and I'll find more to hold my interest.

GW:EN is an expansion, a true expansion. People who've been playing Guild Wars all along will love it. The hardcore PvPers will need to pick it up because it does feature at least a few rock solid skills and a dozen more interesting ones - although those can be mined out of the game incredibly easily, so it's not going to take them long to get out of grinding for UAX and into playing with their new toys. As for PvErs, the expansion seems tailor made towards their wishes. Lots of new areas to explore. Plenty of armor and pets and greens and everything else. A new world's worth of new quests and missions. Plenty of titles to strive for. And the PvE only stuff, as much as I dislike it in concept, seems well done. Actually adding to the game rather than detracting from it.

But for people, like me, who are on the fence, or for new players it's just not worth the bother. New players would have to start in another campaign and get to lv20 before even starting. And, as I've seen with my uplifted Monk - who just barely got to lv20 days before the event, can't change secondaries, and didn't even have full level armor to begin with to say nothing of runes or weapons or heroes, and has a few good skills and a parcel of "it's only for the unlocks" fodder - it's really better to have a fully equipped character who's seen at least one campaign to its conclusion before stepping foot in the Far Shiverpeaks. Gw:EN takes all the polish of Nightfall and buffs it to a glossy sheen, and throws in a few new bells and whistles that, like the best ideas, feel like they should have been there all along, but it's not really friendly for the uninitiated. Or the unappreciative. It's really a game for people who love Guild Wars and want more out of it. And, sadly, that's just not me at this point in time.

So, should you buy it? Yes.

Am I going to buy it? Not right now.