They remind hubby of hamsters, they remind me of guinea pigs, Asura are a lot of fun to play. Can’t quite put my finger on why, maybe it’s the way they move or there single minded determinedness to be right, but I highly suspect it is their dance moves! He has a Mesmer Asura and I have an Engineer and he had way more fun that I did last night. Most likely because he didn’t spend as much time dying as I did. I have a feeling I wasn’t in the mood to play Engineer last night.
Combat is still engaging, connected, and incredibly fun and fast paced. The way skills are earned is very well done and leveling up all your professions possibly weapon choices is a great way to experiment to see what does and doesn’t work for your play style. This may be why Engineer felt so limited to me last night, they only start off with two weapon choices, not counting off hand, which hubby assures me isn’t the case as you spend points so time will tell. Underwater combat is so much fun! Completely cool that you have separate weapon(s) and skills for underwater combat. Future game designers should take note and be sure to include something similar.
As usual, there isn’t a male character in my party of five. Hubby has a couple but no screenshots of those yet. It’s a matter of personal preference for me. Maybe this game I’ll break out of my all female character rut and try a male necromancer or thief character. Time will tell how successful that transition will be! Between us we have two mesmers, a warrior, a thief, a ranger, a guardian, two elementalists, and two engineers. Seems that the only profession we are “missing” between us is necromancer. All professions are enjoyable to play and I’m not sure if either of us has picked a “favorite” profession yet.
There have been a couple of bumps along the launch pad this weekend, login servers being finicky and the trading post being even more so. But overall, it has been a very smooth and drama free head start launch of the game. We will see how the conditions hold up when the game releases officially on Tuesday. There are a couple of areas which need improvement: No trade transactions between players face-to-face and you cannot mail stuff to yourself (minor, minor annoyance). It is rather weird to not have a quest log, feels like there is something missing. The areas they have gotten incredibly right”
-
Your account is in a guild, not your character
-
Your friends list and by extension your ignore list, is by account and not character!
-
“collectibles”, which is usually crafting materials can be sent to shared bank space from your inventory without visiting a bank
-
Crafting, while raw material intensive, the system is immersive and discovering new recipes is brilliant
-
Underwater combat
-
Personalized stories that change as you interact with the world around you, so for once your actions really do impact the story you experience
-
Armor dyes: yes I know it’s a carry over from Guild Wars but it is truly one of those aspects which is game defining.
So overall, we are both vastly entertained and enjoying our game time in Tyria. Neither of us is rushing to the “end game” or max level, to be honest neither of us has a character that has reached level 10 yet. The community has been great and chat hasn’t made either of us want to turn it off or bang our head against a wall. Based on first day of play on various professions, combined we would rate the game a solid 8 out of 10.
