Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

Beta Weekend Level Up

June 5, 2012 at 2:44 pm | Posted in Guild Wars 2, mmorpg | 11 Comments
Tags: beta, Guild Wars 2, MMO, mmorpg

Arenanet dropped a blog post today detailed the many varied things they’ve changed since the first Beta Weekend Event. I’m sure we’ve all read the post or heard about some of the new features over the past week so I’ll just take note of a few things.

I guess I’m most curious of the Mystic Forge.

On a less dangerous note, the Mystic Forge has arrived in Lion’s Arch. This strange forge actually holds the imprisoned djinn Zommoros, who hails from distant Elona. If you offer the Mystic Forge gifts (like unneeded items and weapons), you will receive a gift in return. Got a pair of pistols that you don’t need? Drop them in the Mystic Forge and see what Zommoros gives you in exchange!

And here are a couple of screenshots of it.

I don’t know what this is, what you get out of it, or the price you need to pay (though “a pair of pistols” seems inaccurate since the very screenshot above suggests you need 4 things) but from a game design perspective the Mystic Forge appears to be a fun little gambling passtime and more specifically an item sink. I’m starting to see sinks everywhere I look.

What is more confusing is that some items seem lit up in the screenshot while others aren’t. So I guess you can’t throw in random items.

Access to the catacombs dungeon will be interesting. We’ll finally start getting a much better idea of just how different a story mode dungeon is from an explorable mode dungeon.

They’ve improved overflow servers as was expected. I’ll just be happy to shut up the loudest of those who called the system “terrible”. Short-sighted nonsense.

They even comment on the skill tier system.

“The tier system gives players both a sense of progression and accomplishment,” says Lead Designer Eric Flannum. “It encourages them to experiment with different skills as they increase in power, and it avoids overwhelming new players with a huge list of skills to choose from.”

“Plus,” Flannum adds, “the tier system is more scalable and expandable. We can more easily add new skills in the future with this system.”

Right, because a lot of choice is bad. I remember all the times I’ve said to myself “God this game is so complicated, I wish I had less choice”. As for it being scalable, expandable, and easier to add new skills, I disagree. I don’t see how the old system was any less useful. It was certainly more straight-forward.

And the only other thing I’m planning on getting into is the WvW jumping puzzles and new mini-dungeon. I want to check that out.

Aside from that I’ve commented on virtually everything else recently. New map, an explanation for the new gem store icon, Gendarran Fields, keeping our characters, blah blah blah, go read it yourself already.