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Aestu, the most critical person in the world, and, according to our best testing, amongst the .001% most intelligent, offers impressions of GW2, first thirty minutes, for those too cowardly, cheap or French to play the game:
GW2 is definitely a revolutionary advance over WoW/EQ MMO paradigm. So far as I yet see, it definitely succeeds in capturing the open-ended feel of sandbox games, while also succeeding at the persistent MMO experience.
The game is as fluid as WoW. It is also very idiot-averse. Of course, I am playing as a Guardian. Even at level one, they are extremely skill dependent. People who are mentally retarded will not be able to play the game effectively because of the highly interactive environments, the need to read tooltips carefully and observe positioning, even from the first quests. The traditional, well-adjusted settings and generally conventional RPG-style game pacing (fast combat and slow character progression) will turn off dumb kids.
So it is likely the medium-term impact of GW2, from what I see, will be to neatly segregate retards into WoW and those who are not retards into GW2.
As everyone knows, I have perception issues with simulated 3D environments, and environments that aren't sufficiently vivid and fluid aren't compatible with my mental configuration. GW2 is compatible - it is vivid, with excellent palette, neither too vivid nor too dreary. In that sense it is comparable to Vanilla and does not fail where WotLK/Cata/Aion failed. I would definitely say it captures the detail of GW1 and intuitive appearance of Vanilla, with modern graphics that do not appear overdone.
The biggest downside to the game that I yet see is that it is very heavily engineered. Despite what I would consider a certain degree of over-engineering, the base UI is trim and the game world and interface are fluid and without obvious bugs. Considering the level of detail, this must have taken substantial internal testing. The spawn rate on quests and activities is high, and there are scaling performance rewards even in the early area, encouraging aggressive play.
So yes, the game does appear, so far, to be a "keeper".
I will let you people know if it heads downhill a few hours in.
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
Last edited by Aestu on Sat Aug 25, 2012 6:17 am, edited 3 times in total.
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