Now that we have word that select press will be permitted to film what they experience over this Press Beta Event weekend, I am even more eagerly awaiting the footage coming down the line on Monday afternoon from the various outlets and may just make Youtube my browser’s homepage. I’m sure everyone has their own pet ideas about what they’d like to see updated or new footage of, from the wiki folks who need to make sure their skill icons and descriptions are up to date to the PvPers who are already planning out their strategies.
My own wish list that I hope to see come out of this beta event are probably predictable to anyone who’s familiar with my blog, and are as follows:
- Personal Story: I’m not at all spoiler-averse, and I still am dying to see someone get far enough in their personal story to make a decision that counts. I want to see how the game makes the player choose between the orphanage and the hospital, or equivalent turning point in other racial stories.
- Dungeons: I really want to see how ArenaNet’s non-holy-trinity trinity tackles a dungeon, how people work together, successes and failures of PUGs, etc.
- WvWvW: Now that we have the skinny on WvWvW mechanics, I think we’d all feel a little better if we could actually see footage of hundreds of people out in the Mists at the same time without the server melting or a slideshow resulting.
It might be a bit much to ask from a closed beta weekend, but I’m keeping the dream alive until the day betas open up and we can all see how things work for ourselves.
Casual Is As Casual Does 
Number 3 (WvW) tops my personal list, and aside from the non-subscription financial model for the game, it is the greatest of my concerns.
The only thing worse than “epic-scale combat” in a “slideshow format” would be out of control MTs selling “power” in game, and spamming me with annoying begging while I’m trying to immerse myself in the game’s setting and lore.
I’m rooting for the success of this developer like I have never done for any other in the past… I just hope they can somehow manage to avoid the same pitfalls that have tripped up so many game developers before.
Ok… after watching numerous videos from the Press beta weekend it’s now safe to say that the “epic-scale combat” looks… EPIC. (I feel silly even having worried about this after seeing how well things were running in just the beta test – with more optimization passes yet to be performed before the game is actually released. Glass smooth…)
I’d really like to see just how far up in the cities you can actually go. I’ve always been annoyed at games that have these great cities, huge buildings, and wondrous castles… that you can’t explore. I’m also curious just how many buildings players can actually enter… probably not very many, unfortunately, but we’ll see. I’m hopeful, but leery. Lack of scale is my other concern. While it does look like the character to building scale is spot on in most places, cities (I’ve yet to see anything even remotely the size of an actual city in any MMORPG) still seem to be more on the scale of a small keep up to a small town. Still, they look to be considerably larger than Ascalon City, which was little more than a tiny fort in GW1. When I first started playing GW1 I thought I must somehow missing the actual city part of Ascalon City. 🙂
I’m more intrigued by the personal story myself, mostly because other than the “orphans v. hospital” example I’ve heard nothing about it and personal story tends to be the first thing on the chopping block.
There must be some videos showing off the orphanage/hospital thing already, But for me wvw is definitely the most anticipated thing.
I’m still very new to MMOs and the whole personal story aspect sounds lovely, but after a few months in LOTRO (my only experience of the genre) I have to say I’m crossing everything I have, a feat in and of itself, that the whole notion of the dumb grind & content braking is absent from this game. I’m sick of killing orcs to get a page for a book when that whole exercise could be better handled in quest line format – I had a very sweary rant on my blog about it, suffice to say I don’t want GW2 to make me grind my game time away in the same way 🙂
if you want good story + mmo, you might try swtor. and that’s about it, imo.
personally, the story wasn’t enough to keep me playing though. i’ve had enough of wow and wow-type games. story is better in a single player game and if i want multiplayer, i just want to jump in and play, not grind 50,70 or 80+ levels just so i can play with friends. there are lots of players who love grinding/farming and apparently that includes mmo devs. so i’m leaving that to them. your experience in Lotro is standard AAA mmo fare.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I love the story in LOTRO as I’ve lived in that world since I was 13 (a very, very long time ago now :-D) I just wish the devs would let us feel like the heroes we want to be and less like the kill-counting, button-tapping lab rats we end up feeling like.
I hear lots of good things about SWTOR but I have never like SW so can’t see myself trying that. I hear good things about Star Trek though, and I’ve always liked that so I may end up giving that a spin for the episodes experience.
I feel you completely on LOTRO, trust me :). I have high hopes for GW2 and so far from the footage I won’t be disappointed!
Oh yes indeedy! Totalbiscuit should have his up soon, but Gamespot, Massively & Yogs all have some great stuff up that is making me drool. I’m going human. Or silvari if they are less ‘elfy’ and more Celtic fae… not sure which proff yet but I like the look of the Guardian 🙂
I’m still undecided on whether I really want to see GW2 in beta; I waited this long, not sue I want to spoil the excitement now. 🙂
I second all your points of the wishlist. the impact side of GW2 and its possibly high solo-ability are my biggest ‘worries’ at the moment.