My demo experience | GW2Fans

Thursday I had the chance of going to GamesCom in Cologne to play the first public demo of Guild Wars 2. It was a wonderful experience and I am very pleased with what I saw and got to know of the game. Thanks to the lively atmosphere at the booth, no demo station was left unmanned. It taken quite some time before I was able to play, I had to stand in line for about 2h but for a demo lasting over 30 minutes it was well worth the wait. When it was my time to play, a presentation started which I did miss, but luckily it would take place again later that day.

The person playing before me only shown me things I did not want to see. It seemed he did not understand how to play an MMO as he only walked around the same small building for 30 minutes killing centaurs for ages. At the end of his game time he was close to dieing, showing the Necromancer's downed skills. This made me want to pick a Necromancer as a character as well.

Game time over, my turn! Darn I was excited, I told my friend to have his camera ready to take pictures of menus and to film certain parts of the game. First thing I had to do was choose a name and gender: Laida and female, next up a profession: Necromancer it is. After this, a screen showing some information on the character customization appeared, which unfortunately wasn't available in the demo. Next were a couple of questions which will influence my personal story throughout the game, it included questions like "your greatest regret, strongest personality trait, your upbring, ..." . A cool fact was, that depending on what you chosen here some personal story "events" will adapt to these choices, some NPC's will interact differently with you and you'll be seeing some specific scenarios unfold in your presence. Once done choosing your background, the introduction cinematic started, which I skipped to save time. First things first, I wanted to see Divinity's reach, though I could not enter until I had done my first quest which was completed quickly. So right away I went into the gates of Divinity's Reach, I was shown a short loading screen. Once inside, I opened my map and saw the borders of Divinity's reach unexplored, first I walked around in the town's center (The Upper City) and was pleased by how it looked, it felt quite alive, massive and the sound was great. On route I checked out some NPC vendor's inventory and interacted with some locals. After walking around for a few minutes (it is quite large!) I took a portal to take me to the places around Divinity's Reach. A fun note was that when you discovered a new place, you'll get a small amount of XP. I walked via "Melandru High Road" to "Plaza of Melandru" and onwards to a place with a fantastic view "The Great Collapse". Looking upwards will give you a great sense of the magnitude of the city. Yep, I was very pleased with the beauty of the game!

I felt I've walked around enough, I continued questing after buying some skillbooks from the Necromancer's profession trainer. I gave a few copper, I received a few books.

The quests were really easy to follow, there was a quest tracker at the top-right corner of your screen saying what you need to do. On the map we will also find the specific locations on where to advance in this quest, just like the original Guild Wars. The map was very clear, and very detailed to work with. While walking to a quest NPC, a message on my screen appeared "A new Event started nearby", so I looked around and found some nasty bandits attacking some poor farmers. Seeing as I was nearby I had lent them a hand and saved the farmers' fields. I had been given karma points for helping, which I found a NPC for to trade it for some goods, though nothing especially fancy could be bought at this NPC in this region. Besides karma I had been getting XP and trash loot from slaying the bandits, I did not notice (or just simply forgot) if there were other rewards besides this.

When I turned into a different direction another event was happening, I helped out saving a farmer's watermelons from rabbits. Once done, I was able to buy the watermelons and eat them for a small stat-buff. Helping out will surely enable a lot of these small game features, and what's even cooler is that one event can lead to a next one, other players can enter your event chain when they are near. Great stuff!

The rest of the demo I continued on the quest line, like most of you seen at a given point we had to defend a castle from centaurs and in due time giant hands were summoned from the ground up which we needed to defeat. It was a very short and easy fight though it looked amazing and "epic" for such an early quest in the game. The person playing next to me was on the same quest as me and we completed it together. There is no need for anyone to wait for the invasion to start over or mobs to respawn. If it is happening, you can help and complete your quest.

While fighting, the combat system became very clear to me. It is very action & positional-based, which I do like. Skills can even be casted while running! Many skills also use targeting, so you will need to use your aiming and positioning very well.

Some people told me that the outline/glow on targeted NPC's and monsters bothered them. I could relate to this when I only saw the videos online, after playing the game you understand it is needed to have, as at given points you will be overwhelmed by mobs and NPC's that it would be hard to notice who you are targeting. Even when fighting bigger monsters it did not bother me that much, you get used to it fast. I am unsure if this feature could be disabled in the options as I did not search for it and a part of the menu was not in the demo anyway.

Since my time was almost up, I rushed to a cliff to fall down from to see what would happen. Unfortunatly I did not dare to jump from a high place so I only received a little fall damage from jumping off a rock. I spotted water nearby so in my last few minutes I wanted to experience underwater combat. But once in the water, I was shown a message "Water combat is not in the demo, please return to the surface", though I fought a monster in the water and it felt well done apart from some glitchy monster animations. A breath-indicator was not included and I did not take damage from being underwater too long. But seeing as they put such a clear message on the screen about underwater gameplay, I am sure nothing I experienced there is to be taken as finished. Other than this I spent some time looking at the UI. To me, everything seems clear and well placed. To conclude this short review of my playtime, I'll add some screenshots of the UI below.