Day 1

There's one question that's been burning in my mind over the last couple of months: should I play a male or female Norn Ranger in Guild Wars 2? I polled my Twitter followers about it and took screenshots in the betas to help me make my decision, but the answer eluded me. Even when the moment came shortly after midnight on Friday, I still couldn't decide. Eventually the decision fell to my wife, who rather liked the idea of my exploring Tyria and bashing in heads with a Ranger modeled after herself. And thus Leifa Stormwood was born.

The orange circle signifies a dynamic event, which often overlaps with a nearby heart.

My reluctance to choose grew out of some mild personal dissatisfaction with the otherwise robust character generator. I always knew I wanted to play a Norn -- when your name's Leif, you feel naturally drawn to playing Viking-style heroes and settings -- but I couldn't ever settle on a Norn male that looked like something I'd enjoy playing for months or years. The females, however, are beauty incarnate, and their outfits and husky voices both scream a brand of badassery that more than makes up for any concerns I may have had about being a dude playing as a woman. So far, I haven't regretted my decision.

Few players actually seem to like Charr compared to Humans, Norns, Asura, and even the leafy Sylvari.
What does concern and amuse me is the utter lack of Charr players I've seen. ArenaNet bears so much love for the hulking cat-men that they used one for the massive figurine in the collector's editions (not to mention a digital "miniature" that came with a Digital Deluxe purchase, essentially a non-combat pet), but few of their players actually seem to like them compared to Humans, Norns, Asura, and even the leafy Sylvari. I hit level 22 last night, and only once did I see a Charr player in all that time.

Dynamite with a laser beam.

A Rough Start

World-versus-world and structured PvP were both down for a while on Friday night.
But I'm happy that I actually had all that time. Lately many high-profile MMO launches have been plagued with servers crashes and hours-long queues, but Guild Wars 2 has had a decent launch. That's not to say that there haven't been some considerable stumbles. I could only use the Black Lion Trading Company (Guild Wars 2's auction house) for about an hour after midnight early Saturday morning -- luckily enough time to buy a good bow for my Ranger, who didn't start off with one -- and that issue continued through Saturday until I finally stopped playing in order to write. It wasn't bad at first, but the situation grew increasingly annoying as I had no recourse but to farm for materials to level up my two professions of Leatherworking and Jewelry, even when I just need one piece to complete an item. Those bumps wormed their way to the both world-versus-world and structured PvP (the latter best understood as "battlegrounds"), which were both down for a while on Friday night. Around 2:00 a.m. Pacific on Saturday morning, there was even an "Error 37" style downtime in which many players couldn't log on.

There's even an NPC race of polar bear warriors. Better watch out, Pandaria.

ArenaNet's saving grace is that the world itself appeared to operate just fine while the secondary features were down. Gone were the lag and framerate issues I'd picked up on in beta events, even when grouped with dozens of players in one area. Bugs (aside from those plaguing the Trading Post) were almost non-existent from my experience, save for a few that found their way into a couple of dynamic escort quests. Since these involve carts or NPCs stopping periodically while hordes of centaurs or other creatures try to destroy them, it wasn't always clear until we'd sat there for 10 minutes that the cart wouldn't be going anywhere else until ArenaNet reset it. Considering the complexity of the dynamic events themselves, it's still amazing that bugs are this rare. To ArenaNet's credit, the support staff kept players aware of every known issue through their Twitter account as they learned about them and attempted to fix them.

You Have My Bow, My Sword, and My Axe

I've fallen in love with the versatility of Guild Wars 2's combat.
But If there's any one thing that stood out from my time yesterday, it's how much I've fallen in love with the versatility of Guild Wars 2's combat. As mentioned above, I started playing my Ranger with a predictable longbow, but it wasn't long before I realized that its damage was severely down from the last couple of beta weekend events, which (for me, at least) made combat somewhat boring. I even started wondering if I shouldn't have rolled an Engineer instead. And that's when I rediscovered the joys of playing a Ranger as melee.

The Trading Post looks sort of like the world economy, circa 2009.

Guild Wars 2's combat system is centered on creating entirely different playstyles depending on which types of weapons you have equipped, and you can eventually switch out between two of them in mid-combat and thus alter the entire appearance of your main combat bar. Not only is one weapon better for certain situations, but such options ease the inevitable monotony of combat when you get sick of playing one particular style. In almost any other MMORPG, I would have been stuck with the same gameplay regardless of what weapon I had equipped, with only the numbers, speed, and sound effects changing when I switched out the weapons. But with a greatsword, my Ranger became an unstoppable juggernaut who flew (literally, thanks to a spell) into the midst of combat and started dealing out pain with brutal area-of-effect attacks. Later, I switched to a one-handed sword and a warhorn combo, and my playstyle became more like that of a rogue, dodging attacks and injecting venom with the wounds I dealt, occasionally calling down a parliament of owls of my enemies' heads. A player who saw me solo a tough enemy as such (with the help of my pet bear) said it best: "Rangers are badass! I thought you only used bows."

Who needs a bow when you have spirit bears?

So Many Choices

There's none of the hours' worth of jogging or flightpaths that such dramatic locations changes for the sake of varied leveling would take in many other MMORPGs.
That freedom of choice extends to the very act of leveling itself thanks to Guild Wars 2's handy practice of letting you teleport to hundreds of points across Tyria within seconds, as long as you've already discovered them. By level 15 or so, I was already having a hard time finding new and different quests to complete that were precisely at my level (although I could have finished some lower level ones, too, because of Guild Wars 2's wonderful scaling system), so I simply took a portal to the human zone and started leveling there. At level 20, I did the same with the Asura and Sylvari zones, and now I flit between all of them whenever I want a change of scenery and different content. Again, this all takes place within seconds. There's none of the hours' worth of jogging or flightpaths that such dramatic location changes would take in many other MMORPGs, and most concerns about this practice wiping away immersion are swept away in the face of the endlessly entertaining dynamic events. (More on them tomorrow.)

Even Rangers get caught off guard by raptor packs from behind.

Hopefully ArenaNet can overcome the stumbles of the first day, because there's a truly amazing game waiting underneath, and one I can't wait to get back into. I'm especially excited about getting to try out the dungeons on live, and I still have eight levels to go before I can enter the first one at level 30. It's a good thing I've already experienced much of the content up until then in beta, for otherwise I'd regret passing over so much of Guild Wars 2's early content. See you in-game!

Sounds like Leif's falling head over heels for this one -- but will that love last until the review is done? After all, most MMOs start out strong, but fall short when it comes to staying power. Only time will tell if Guild Wars 2 has what it takes to endure. Are you playing? Share your thoughts!