A good handful of Guild Wars 2 Beta Screenshots

[mostlyharmless]

Played in the Beta weekend events (1 and 2) as well as the stress test. Following are about 2 dozen images that were my favorite of the 150 or so I took during my game play. (BTW, the game itself? AMAZING!)




























































Can hardly wait to play more. Loved the world events, starting off against insurmountable odds on your own, and then joined by 2 people, 5, 7, then 12, then a map wide horde coming to your aid...Indescribable

[Gempulse]

Hey buddy, BWE3, add me as a friend. My name is Gempolt in game.

[menaceuk]

Nice pics. Really do love the art style of this game.

But a good game is in the gameplay and not the graphics/art style. How is it on the gameplay front ?

I know you said it amazing but that is extremely vague

Also what are your PC specs and how does it run ? If you have the low down from other BETA testers how would it run with a 6950 2GB Gpu and an Old (Q8300) CPU ?

Any whoo, Again, Nice pics

[mostlyharmless]

It's hard to explain the gameplay without delving into a LOT of different genres. To me it felt like much more of an action game than an RPG. Typically, in a game like WoW, (or the first Guild Wars for that matter). Combat is pretty static and moving doesn't really do much save for tanks which can occasionally kite or maneuver an enemys face in a direction away from the main group. In GW2, I am constantly moving. Circle strafing and dodging (bound to my side mouse key for one button ease!) while battling really takes you into it. The best way I can describe it is that it feels like a hack and slash set into a background MMORPG world, if that makes any sense?

Weapons- This is the cool part! Your first skills are determined by whatever weapon you happen to be using, if its a two handed weapon, the first 5 skills are preset, if its a main hand and offhand weapon, then the 3 first skills are the main hand weapon skills, and the last 2 are generally some sort of combo between the main hand and off hand. This allows you to pick and select your weapon sets based on whatever kind of game play you enjoy. Like getting up close and personal? Equip a couple of daggers and go head to head, like DPSing from a distance? Use a bow.

World exploration - Unlike GW1 where map scraping uncovered areas of the map, in this one, it shows you each time you enter an area how much of it you have completed in terms of hearts (basically quest areas), skill points (required for unlocking skills you can plug in to the last 5 non weapon skill slots), way points (where you can start over from if you die), and points of interest. Finding them all in a certain area gives you rewards in the form of crafting materials, 2 high level items, gold and XP. BTW, this is another area where the genres start to blend. Some of the skill points are simply 'kill the hard bad guy' but some are actually jumping puzzles. (IE platform puzzles). It's really quite cool, because you never know what you'll run into while exploring. I can't tell you how many times I ended up starting into a battle with something pretty big and bad assed that I wasn't going to take alone, only to find out that the appearance of the boss was announced to everyone in the area. All of the sudden it's me and 3 other people, then 7, then 20 or better, all taking down some big baddie. Nice thing is....if you help? You get XP and goodies more or less in proportion to your efforts.

Im running a very similar rig actually. I have an overclocked e8500 at 3.8 ghz, 4 gigs of ram and a new 7870 card and I have no problems with it maxed at 1080p, wifey has a e6600 dual core at 2.4 with an 8800gts and she had no problem running high settings at 1680x1050. My daughter is running an athlon 2x 245 regor @ 2.9 ghz on a gtx280 and had no problems maxed at 1680.

Hope that gives you a taste for the gameplay and what you can expect as far as gameplay resolution.