Soooooo that Guild Wars 2 BWE...

[freakachu]

It's a waste only if they don't enjoy it. Better than five bucks on a coffee quickly gone.

I would not say it's better than five bucks spent on coffee. at least coffee is a tangible thing and you can drink it for nourishment, however minor.

however, your point about relative value is well taken.

[Niavmai]

Yeah but as long as they don't implement something as stupid as Wintergrasp or other confined pvp regions where hundreds of people spam their stuff it should be fine.

You... know how many people are included in a WvWvW, right?

[hoho]

I remember the makers of Lord of the Ring Online saying they quadruppled their revenues after going to F2P model and they also were selling pretty much only cosmetic stuff. Later on they added things for boosting reputation/XP farming and profession leveling.

And also I'd say 5$ spent on a game that you'll be playing for hours is unimaginably better investment than using it on pretty much any other form of entertainment. E.g I've spent around 15$ on MC and have played it at least around 500-ish hours and had tons of fun. Using the same money to e.g see a movie would have only provided me with a few hours of entertainment and considering how bad most movies are it probably would have been worse on fun/hour metric as well.

You... know how many people are included in a WvWvW' date=' right?[/quote']How often are those people closer than around 100-ish in-game meters from each other in groups of 50+ people? handling that many isn't too bad. Once you get 100+ things get bad to say the least.

Though assuming GW2 has special "battlegrounds" for those WvWvW instead of having those areas in the middle of the live server with no instancing a'la wow did it then handling the load will be MUCH easier.

[sct]

How often are those people closer than around 100-ish in-game meters from each other in groups of 50+ people? handling that many isn't too bad. Once you get 100+ things get bad to say the least.

Though assuming GW2 has special "battlegrounds" for those WvWvW instead of having those areas in the middle of the live server with no instancing a'la wow did it then handling the load will be MUCH easier.

I think you are overestimating the amount of data transfer going on even WITH all of them close by. MMO's use a lot less bandwidth than you might expect. They are also optimized to push lots of the same data together.

[hoho]

I think you are overestimating the amount of data transfer going on even WITH all of them close by.

It depends largely on how the game is built up of course. Wow basically sends everything to everyone in a certain distance so if my tiny little spriest did a tick of damage with vampiric touch it healed 5 people + all their pets and generated mana to 10 people in raid in addition to doing that damage. That information had to be registered on server and all the information also had to be sent to clients so they can update their UI and other stuff. It is possible to pack together some stuff (e.g if multiple people are healing one guy you add up the healing over a certain period) but it has it's limits.

I used to do some hardcore combatlog analysis when I raided and it was usual to get around 400MB of log files over an average 4h 25-man raid night with all the events individually listed and timestamped. To do that client MUST get all those events. You can pack several of them in a single packet but you can't add them together. You can't do something like boss taking x damage from 10 people -> send packet "boss took 10*x damage", there has to be 10 events with different sources, spell type, timestamp and damage values.

Obviously that 400MB was in somewhat human-readable format and network data was somewhere around maybe 10% of that but also consider it was just 25 people.

25 players, each do a single event, server receives 25 events, server sends out 24x25 = 600 events in total

100 players -> 99*100 = 9900 events sent out

250 players -> 249*250 = 62250 events

From the little I know GW2 is far less spammy compared to wow due to slower combat with less (aoe) healing and dots so it will scale somewhat better and somewhat bigger battles become possible. Having people spread out over big area so they don't affect each other also helps immensely.

MMO's use a lot less bandwidth than you might expect. They are also optimized to push lots of the same data together.

Have you ever played wow before last couple of content patches in WotLK? Giong into wintergrasp in a half-decent server meant server response time dropping to over a minute. Once they limited the are to 2x100 player instances and separated them entirely from the rest of the game world things got better but still once people reached the main gates you had all of them in some 50x50m area with lag going through the roof.

[Niavmai]

How often are those people closer than around 100-ish in-game meters from each other in groups of 50+ people? handling that many isn't too bad. Once you get 100+ things get bad to say the least.

There are giant keeps, with one entrance, that will be assaulted by one team, while being defended by the other. At peak hours, I could definitely see this exceeding 750 players within view distance, if not more.

[hoho]

There are giant keeps, with one entrance, that will be assaulted by one team, while being defended by the other.

Will that keep be the only target to be attacked during a battle or will there be side areas as well? E.g Blizz added towers you could destroy to make life easier for the attackers and spread people around to attack/defend them instead of bunching up behind the wall and it did help quite a bit. As long as there is something similar in GW I can't see that much of a problem in it.

At peak hours' date=' I could definitely see this exceeding 750 players within view distance, if not more.[/quote']So what kind of PC can render it at interactive FPS?

[Niavmai]

Will that keep be the only target to be attacked during a battle or will there be side areas as well? E.g Blizz added towers you could destroy to make life easier for the attackers and spread people around to attack/defend them instead of bunching up behind the wall and it did help quite a bit. As long as there is something similar in GW I can't see that much of a problem in it.

So what kind of PC can render it at interactive FPS?

There are multiple keeps per instance. And the zone is fuckhuge. Approximately 15x larger than wintergrasp was.

[hoho]

There are multiple keeps per instance. And the zone is fuckhuge. Approximately 15x larger than wintergrasp was.

So those 750 people are spread around that area (around the size of a couple of Northerend zones) fighting different targets? If so then I'd say there WILL be smaller groups of people in close vicinity than there were in Wintergrasp and the whole scaling/lag issue is moot.

[Niavmai]

So those 750 people are spread around that area (around the size of a couple of Northerend zones) fighting different targets? If so then I'd say there WILL be smaller groups of people in close vicinity than there were in Wintergrasp and the whole scaling/lag issue is moot.

Yes, but there will almost definitely be times when there is large groups coming together.

[hoho]

Yes, but there will almost definitely be times when there is large groups coming together.

We shall see. Blizzard learnt their lesson from WG and applied it quite well on the Cata open-world battleground (3 different equally-valuable targets), I'm sure GW2 has similar map mechanics to prevent people from bunching up too often.

If not then they are either waaaay better at network programming than Blizzard, having vastly superior HW or simply overconfident in both of those :)

[hoho]

So I finally got around to trying the beta some hours ago. I had preloaded it and logging in went nicely. I got to around L7 with my mesmer with a couple of disconnects and crashes and now it seems that servers have been down for quite a while.

As for the game I'd say it's nothing too special, at least not in the beginner-area. Sure, you have options for quests but basically it boils down to either killing N mobs or picking up N items. There were also the regular escort and "go there" quests. So far I've yet to see anything I've not seen done ad nauseam in other MMOs. Combat is still the regular buttonmashing, just that you can melee without being in range and thus miss everything.

For the 40€ I paid it's a nice thing to have but I highly doubt I'd pay a monthly fee for it unless end-game gets that much better. Then again considering they have been saying that entire game is "like end-game" I'm not holding my breath.

[SimpleGuy]

I'm surprised there was talk about server uptime and/or server lag and the relationship between the subbing model and the "buy only cosmetics" debate and no one brought up EvE online.

Rather expensive sub only (until Aurum for cosmetics... er, monocles) and shit servers for large scale PvP (though they are finally improving with time dilation) for the longest time.. aka years.

[sct]

Ive had events that have had me clean graffiti from the walls and kill vermin to clean up a town. Ive closed demonic portals and killed huge boss monsters. Ive had tons of random shit pop up and kill the shit out of me while exploring caves I probably shouldn't have been in.

Are we playing the same game?

Also servers come back up please :negative:

[hoho]

Clean graffiti is any different from picking up objets how, exactly? I think there wasn't even a different animation used.

Haven't seen any portals yet and only one big worm so far. Nothing spectacular that would make me go "wow, haven't seen this before/done so well"

Are we playing the same game?

I said I'm just at L7 and in starter area, probably not much interesting there but to be honest starter areas should be interesting so that people in the upcoming demo version could get good enough impression of the game and buy the full version. Hiding everything to later stages isn't a particularly good business idea.

According to the little I've seen so far I'd say I had more fun running through the goblin starter area in cataclysm than nord's in GW2.

[jakj]

Subscription fee? Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee.

[hoho]

Subscription fee? Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee.

I know it doesn't, I just meant that if it did have one I wouldn't play it.

[jakj]

completion tracking: it's amount explored, IIRC. there's also a tracking for skill point challenges which are static and always available as far as I know. the stuff that is changing is the dynamic events and such, which is not tracked

scaling: there are only a few events that have a minimum number of players, and these are large world bosses that only spawn after an event chain is pushed all the way down a given path. all the rest scale down to 1 player, and if no one is in a zone the bosses don't spawn. additionally, because of level scaling there will be incentive for high level players to come back to even low level zones when a big event or boss is up, because they still get high level loot from it.

Been watching footage from Jesse/Kiskae, and it looks like freakachu is right on all counts. Unless something drastic happens, I will most likely be buying this game on release.

From what I've been able to tell so far from watching them, the only things that would concern me about availability and inaccessibility for all playstyles, are things that are not tracked. That's even better than SW:TOR is managing (and I like SW:TOR).

[SimpleGuy]

Only complaint I've heard from a friend playing the beta as some kind of melee norn character is that the game does not favor whatever class he chose for soloing (he appears to be some kind of paladin).

He told me that in general ranged characters are better in PvE because of their ability to kite and their mobility, whereas his class is melee and has a bunch of spells that makes sense in groups but not when soloing events.

Thats a tiny balance issue for me that I'm sure they'll fix eventually. Still going to wind up buying the game.

[jakj]

Yeah, soloing is a big deal for me too; I'd rather all these MMOs were singleplayer actually. Dealing with other real human beings in video games never adds anything to me, not when AI has advanced to such a degree that I can't tell real people from computers apart unless I'm specifically looking for behavioural cues.

Here's to hoping they fix solo balance.

[sct]

Only complaint I've heard from a friend playing the beta as some kind of melee norn character is that the game does not favor whatever class he chose for soloing (he appears to be some kind of paladin).

He told me that in general ranged characters are better in PvE because of their ability to kite and their mobility, whereas his class is melee and has a bunch of spells that makes sense in groups but not when soloing events.

Thats a tiny balance issue for me that I'm sure they'll fix eventually. Still going to wind up buying the game.

Every class gets some form of range (including the Guardian, which has several forms of range and what I can only assume your friend was playing)

Not only that I have done just fine melee as a thief although some of the earlier levels were slightly challenging. It's all about timing your dodges for the big hits. Fights actually take some thought and it's not supposed to be super easy to solo.

[hoho]

Level 10 was the best I could push myself in the beta before I set it aside due to boredom. Guess I'm getting old or something. I do have it bought so I'll likely do all the content eventually but I highly doubt I'd be playing it all that much.

[sct]

Level 10 was the best I could push myself in the beta before I set it aside due to boredom. Guess I'm getting old or something. I do have it bought so I'll likely do all the content eventually but I highly doubt I'd be playing it all that much.

The good news is that there is no monthly fee! No obligations to play!

I had a blast this weekend and put in probably around 30+ hours. I have already gotten my moneys worth if you compare it to other games. (Skyrim took about 60 hours from me so it won't take long before GW2 surpasses that!)

[jakj]

Yeah, the f2p model leads to customer satisfaction. I haven't played ddo in almost a year, and I have almost $80 in points sitting there with no regrets. I know I can go back whenever the hell I please and the game will just say "sire may I show you these twenty awesome things we made for you while you were away". It's tge Right model.

[freakachu]

Level 10 was the best I could push myself in the beta before I set it aside due to boredom. Guess I'm getting old or something. I do have it bought so I'll likely do all the content eventually but I highly doubt I'd be playing it all that much.

this was I think the biggest failing of the beta weekend. the events and gameplay didn't really start getting good until you were in the teens. I have no idea who decided that the first 10-12 levels would be awesome if your character was impossibly weak and underpowered, but they were stupid. once you start getting trait points and buy access to spending them (huge gripe of mine, btw. 10 silver is still a lot at level 11) things get much better and the events at that level start getting far more interesting and involved. I really hope they fix the very early levels over the course of beta because I can totally see them losing plenty of people just like hoho here even though the rest of the game might be stellar.