Just an FYI, you can input your registration codes in the game now. It's still about an hour before the beta opens up, but I'm sure they're getting a head start so it won't be quite as much of a traffic jam at that time.
Edit: Also, my character name is Dergan Venitor, so look me up when you get in.
Well, we finally did it. Late last night / early this morning, Leeloo and myself decided that we did not want to start with fresh characters in Ascalon City, even if we could start at level 15. We set out, determined to find to get our characters from the WPE over to the new (E3) content.
My first notion was to head over to the Tombs of the Primeval Kings and head North from there. Unfortunately, this didn't pan out. We quickly discovered that the Tombs do not have an exit to any explorable areas. Damn. So I checked my map to see what would be the next closest location. I saw that Lion's Arch was pretty close to the Snowy areas of the map, so I figured that'd be our best shot. We met up, grabbed a few henchmen and set out:
I wasn't too optimistic about our chances of finding a way there, but I figured it was worth a shot. As soon as we got into the Explorable area, we started heading East. There was a small path right outside of town that actually headed in the direction we needed to go, and that I had never noticed during the WPE. We followed it, and soon (much to my surprise) found that it led to another zone. "Hey", I thought. "This might actually go at least a little bit of the way there".
We found ourselves in a beach-like area, littered with broken ships and a healthy amount of undead. In fact, too many undead for the two of us to handle. The undead made short work of our Henchmen and quickly proceeded to start hacking away at Leeloo. Darn. So I did what any sensible Elementalist without any healing skills would do: I ran like heck. Lucky for us, there was a loading zone just a little ways past where we were, so we wound up (mostly) safe and sound... and in a new climate:
The snow was a wonderful thing, since I hadn't really seen any since the E3 event. Strangely, the two Snowy Ettins you can see in the screenshot were marked as friendly; They didn't attack us and we couldn't attack them. Bug, I suppose. We moved forward and were greeted by 3 paths. The first one we chose led us to the mouth of a cave... which was unfortunately on a slight slope, too steep for us to climb. Damn. Well, we went back and tried the next path. Again, we found a cave entrance that we couldn't really enter. It was here that my pessimism started to kick in again, as I was certain that the developers must have deliberately made the rest of this area off-limits. Still, we remembered the third path, so we went back to check it out. Score!
We continued exploring through the caves. I found them really atmospheric, as the lights dimmed and made it difficult to see too far ahead of us. When we finally emerged back into the snow-covered mountains, I actually had to shield my eyes for a moment. It wasn't long before we came across a Dwarven settlement, which made for a nice change of scenery:
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In fact, as I would learn along the way, there was a rather diverse set of locations and themes in store for us. Dark caves, snow covered hills, warmer areas where the snow was melting off the trees and dribbling water onto the bare ground below... even a dwarven mining colony:
And, of course, it wasn't long before we found the workers of said colony:
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While none of the monsters we encountered along the way were of a particularly high level, they always came in very large numbers. Even a bunch of level 10 monsters could easily overpower a handful of level 20 players. Thankfully, I didn't skimp when putting points into my fire magic attribute. Beware the wrath of a Pyromancer scorned.
Along the way, we came across several small little outposts populated by a handful of low level players. I was a bit confused, but I later learned that the majority of them were players who finished the Ascalon missions and were transported there. We did, however, come across 2 other people who were trying to make the same trek to Ascalon, and so we merged groups and continued on. I don't know how long we wandered, but I'm pretty sure we shouldn't have taken the word of our newest member when he said that he knew the way. We probably walked completely around the mountains and back again. Still, undaunted, we crossed a large metal bridge and finally found ourselves in the Northern Province of Ascalon. We had done it! But we were still a long ways away from the actual city.
The one and only Hydra I've ever seen in the game greeted us as we entered. We fought through familiar enemies such as Charr and Stone Elementals until we found ourselves at the Breach. This is where our pace became fervered, as I knew that, if we could make it to the other side of the Breach, we'd be only a minute's walk away from the entrance to the City. We scrambled through, ignoring enemies where we could until, at last, we exited the Breach and strolled calmly into Ascalon City. As far as I know, we were one of the first (if not the first) groups to succesfully make the trip.
Total Trip time: Roughly 3 hours.
As soon as we entered the first mission area, I was bombared by Party Join requests. In the end, it was worth it, if only because it made Prince Crackhead's missions so much easier.
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Agreed. When I arrived, everyone wanted to have my in their party, and when I did that mission you mentioned, I basically ran ahead of the Prince and killed everything before he got there.Originally posted by Gurney Devries
As soon as we entered the first mission area, I was bombared by Party Join requests. In the end, it was worth it, if only because it made Prince Crackhead's missions so much easier.
The only thing I really haven't done yet is kill Rotscale. Maybe I'll try that today. Other than that, there's one piece of armor I want to get yet, plus maybe a new weapon.
Figured I'd bump the topic, since the December Beta starts Saturday morning. AFAIK, our characters will still be intact from the previous betas. Not sure what is being added content-wise, although I'm guessing we'll see some new missions and new areas. I plan on playing some with my warrior/monk, but I think I'm going to create a new character and give some of the other character classes a try.
As you may have noticed from the change of the thread name, there is another GW open beta in January. Info here: http://www.fileplanet.com/betacenter/guildwars/
This weekend's beta is open already. They've made some major changes to the interface and inventory systems, neither of which I like much at all thus far. They also did the character wipe, so everyone has to recreate their characters and start fresh with either a Lvl 1 RP or Lvl 20 PvP character.
Supposedly now, all of the open explorable areas will now scale to your character lvl, so that a given area will be tougher the higher your character level is. Could prove interesting.
http://www.guildwars.com/downloads/m...b05-dvx-lg.zip - Video preview of the new area for this weekend's event. I'm floored.
Quick Screenshot:
Who is still interested in this game? It starts tomorrow: I'll be buying it first thing. Anyone else doing the same?
Im kinda interested, but wont buy at launch. Maybe at some later point. I far prefer WoW. The key thing for me is the absense of a monthly fee.
I'm too obsessed with WoW.
(it's a kixed emotion deally)
I may borrow someone's copy to check out the game, but the last few times I've played/seen it, it just didn't peeked my interest.
I've been playing it for two days now. I'm a level 10 Warrior/Monk called Calus Darkcloud. And I love it. Cancelled my subscription to SWG a week ago since it has gone dry and has been nerfed to hell and back with the combat upgrade. Guild Wars is free, gorgeous and awesome.
It's only £17.99, wow. I don't have the money at the minute, but when I get paid later this month I will definetly be tempted. Will have to check back in with you then, Dru. See if you're still playing and finding it as entertaining
I don't think I'll be picking it up.I just can't justify an additional $40 for about a dozen more missions.
Originally posted by AmazonBabe
I'm too obsessed with WoW.
Aye, this goes for me too. I never thought this game would pull me in so much. Playing the GW preview and weekend events was fun for a while, but I just didn't like the changes they made to the game along the way. Once Battlegrounds is implemented in WoW (next patch), it'll have all the PvP action that I would have gotten from GW.
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