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Post by Edem on Mar 20, 2006 23:47:21 GMT
As you might know, tehre will be a Factions event this weekend. What you might not know, are: - Players will have the chance to play through 4 high-level missions available during the FPE -- 2 story missions and 2 competitive missions.
- Players will have 15 explorable quest areas to visit.
- Newly created canthan characters will be Level 20.
- You will start with 20 skills; add a second 20 by speaking to an NPC to get your secondary profession.
Will you be there? I would be glad if we could try to bunnyrun those missions together - I like to explore things with friends... |
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Elle
Paranoid Rabbit
Fack you too
Posts: 41
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Post by Elle on Mar 21, 2006 10:12:45 GMT
I'll be there unless sickness claims me first, that's for sure. ;D
(A bit off-topic: where do you get all this information from, Edem? XDD)
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Post by Edem on Mar 21, 2006 11:03:36 GMT
My sources: 1. www.guildwars.com2. guildwars.gameamp.com3. Gaile Gray, who's the PR manager in NCSoft, and she often visits the first international district of Lion's Arch to listen to player's opinions and words, to share some informations from upcoming events and things, and to drive a crazy conga around the city. |
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Post by Sir Smeg on Mar 22, 2006 19:26:57 GMT
Yeeeha! Deadlines are behind me! I honestly think there is no more important work for me this term. I couldn't have timed it better: factions even here I come  Anybody know if the stuff that we do during the event will still be present or unlocked when the final version rolls out on April 27th? |
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Post by Edem on Mar 22, 2006 20:35:33 GMT
They will remain, but let me quote the info from the official site: Factions Preview EventJoin us the weekend of March 24th for the Factions™ Preview Event! This will be your first chance to visit the breathtaking continent of Cantha, the newest world of the Guild Wars saga. During the event, you will get the chance to play roleplaying and player-versus-player characters, and to pursue a variety of gameplay options, including story missions, competitive missions, and a new form of PvP called alliance battles! Your FPE ExperienceThe Factions Preview Event could begin with your creation of a Factions roleplaying character in an area of Cantha called The Marketplace. There, a series of NPCs will provide you information about the factions of Cantha—The Luxons and the Kurzicks—and will assist you in getting to the capital city of the faction that you choose. Once you arrive in the capital city, you may explore the areas of the world that are opened for this event. You may also undertake the four Factions missions available in the FPE or engage in an exciting new form of PvP, the alliance battle. Here is a bit of information about the mission types that you can experience:
Story Missions: Experience two of the missions that let you participate in the quest to stop the traitor Shiro Tagachi. Visit the outposts for Eternal Grove and Gyala Hatchery to jump right into the storyline!
Competitive Missions: There are two teams within a competitive mission; one each representing the Kurzicks and the Luxons. Getting into the mission is quick and easy: You simply click "Enter Mission" and you automatically are partied with other members of your faction in either Ft. Aspenwood or The Jade Quarry.
Competitive mission objectives vary from mission to mission, but here is an example: The Kurzicks are nearing completion of a new sonic weapon, called the 'Vengeance of the Gods,' that will give them a significant advantage in the war. In the Ft. Aspenwood competitive mission, you will join the Luxons in an attempt to break into the Kurzick fortress and destroy the weapon before it can be completed, or you will join the Kurzicks and attempt to repel the Luxon invasion. Both sides will be competing for control of amber mines, as amber can be used to strengthen fortress defenses, increase the speed at which the Vengeance of the Gods is constructed, or increase the power of the massive siege turtles that the Luxons are using to break into the Kurzick fortress. During the mission, you will encounter members of the opposing faction, as they are trying to take control of the same amber mines.
As with any competitive mission, although you will encounter enemy players, completing these missions relies more heavily upon killing NPC’s or monsters rather than engaging members of the opposing faction in combat. Should you choose to engage the enemy faction, you will find that the gameplay mechanics are different than elsewhere: There is no penalty to those who are slain (no death penalty) and those who die are re-spawned quickly.
Try Alliance Battles!On the other hand, you might want to bring in your existing PvP characters, or create new ones, to take part in PvP on the Battle Isles. Or you can bring your roleplaying characters to join an alliance battle in Cantha. For alliance battles, naturally your guild will want to ally with others within your faction. By speaking to your faction ambassador in your capital city, either House zu Heltzer or Cavalon, you can join the battle to help your faction gain control of outposts. The combat is 12 versus 12 consisting of 3 groups of 4 players each playing against one another either collectively or as individual battle squads. The world map will visibly change as alliances conquer more of Cantha with their victories and the winners will be recognized within the game. A Few More Details:- For the Factions Preview Event, your newly-created characters will begin at Level 20.
- You will start out with 20 skills and will then speak to an NPC to select a secondary profession.
- Selecting a secondary profession will gain you an additional 20 skills.
- Your guild must choose a faction—Luxon or Kurzick.
- You can play four higher-level missions—two story missions and two competitive missions—appropriate for your Level-20 characters.
- You will be able to experience 15 quest areas.
- For all Factions roleplaying characters, certain game elements will be inaccessible. These include: guild halls, the Xunlai (storage) Agents, and Battles Isles. Ship travel to and from Cantha will also be disabled during the event. These game elements are locked down to help assure that unfinished or unbalanced items acquired during the event do not impact the game economy in the long term.
- Challenge missions and elite missions will not be available during the FPE.
- Item and skill unlocks earned by both your roleplaying and PvP characters during the FPE will remain on your account.
- After the event, all Factions roleplaying character inventories and levels will be reset in preparation for the launch of Factions.
Additional Info about the FPE AvailableIf you have questions about the Factions Preview Event, you can find quite a number of answers in our Factions Preview Event FAQ, on this link. Join Us!The event begins at 12:01 a.m. Pacific on March 24th and ends at 11:59 p.m. on March 26th. Those times in GMT or UTC translate to 08:01 on 24 March and 7:59 on 27 March. We look forward to seeing you in Cantha! |
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Post by Edem on Mar 24, 2006 19:24:09 GMT
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Post by Sir Smeg on Mar 26, 2006 23:59:16 GMT
Well then. What did everyone think? Have any of you decided not to purchase factions now that you've witnessed it firsthand, or have those of you who decided to abstain from the expansion changed your minds?
Personally I do not think that the Factions preview was an amazing success for me. The problem stemmed from having a level 20 PvE character with standard equpiment right from the start. This gave me no time to engage with my Ritualist, and I was constantly getting my skills wrong, as they were not tailored to suit me. Also there was the pressure of seeing as much as possible of the world before the short amount of time I managed to snatch for myself from this weekend expired. All in all I think Factions should be like the best meals - long, full of variety and passed in good company. With wine. So here's a toast to the REAL release date; soon may it arrive! Huzzah!
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Post by Edem on Mar 27, 2006 8:18:40 GMT
I think the whole preview thing was wrong. There should have been a low-level area too. ANet shared some preview keys for the preorder buyers - and there are people who'll buy factions but never bought Prophecies.
One of my friends also tried GW this weekend, and I had to tell her the basics and so. It took more than half an hour to get out of town. I also agree with that skills-that-not-suit thing: I repeatedly died with my ninja... I mean, assassin.
The other downpoint for me was the map. They said we'll get a map as big as Tyria, but as I saw, it's about 1/3 of its size. Maybe we'll get a bigger one in the full game.
Third con: graphics. Well, not the graphics itself, because it was okay, but... was I the only one who had heavier lag in the Jade sea than in the southern shiverpeaks? And it didn't even looked that special. I mean, I've seen more effects and larger areas in Serious Sam 1, and it never lagged on a 450MHz Celeron with 256MB ram...
So, I haven't really spent too much time in Cantha - it was a disappointment for me. I just hope that the real game (which I'll still buy as a preorder) will be better. If not - then my A/R and my Rt/Mo won't see Cantha, only Tyria.
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Post by Sir Smeg on Mar 27, 2006 12:41:36 GMT
Arenanet simply is not going to be able to release a game, expansion or not, at full retail price unless the content is able to rival that of teh previous title. If it turns out that Cantha is just a lazy cash-in then I will turn my back on any future releases by Arenanet, and I suspect that any other red-blooded Guildwars player will do the same. So far I have not been disappointed, so I suspect that the full release will have everything it needs to justify the pricetag. I only hope that Arenanet have not made a conscious decision to isolate any players with slower PCs... I did experience some slowdown in the Jade sea, but unlike Edem I thorougly enjoyed the view, no matter how unrealistic the frozen waves looked. Still, I don't believe the preview to have been a waste of time; in fact I think it's a very good idea... for Arenanet, not us. Put it this way: Here on our forum we (Well, me and Edem  ) are criticising aspects of the game... there are going to be others doing exactly the same on official forums everywhere around the globe. Arenanet are reading these and hopefully taking notes on what to change before they release. We have essentially been part of the largest group of Guinea Pigs ever assembled ;D |
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Post by Edem on Mar 27, 2006 13:26:55 GMT
So far I have not been disappointed, so I suspect that the full release will have everything it needs to justify the pricetag. Don't get me wrong: I liked the content, and the new skills I've seen. I'm just sad they opened an area where you can't really try things in yourself, because you'll need 4 other players (or 6 henchies) to survive, and sometimes that's just not enough. Correction again: I liked the view, I just said that it doesn't explain the lag. It wasn't that CPU or memory consuming, so I can't understand why had I such lag. You see, in the shiverpeaks, you get snowflakes all around, snowcovered trees, very large field of view (you can see very far from sopme places), and many monsters that even attack each other, and the maps are usually LAAARGE. In the sea, monsters attacked in small groups, there were very few scenery, only the frozen waves. And it sucked my computer's resources. When we walked from the sea to a grassy top, the lag almost fully disappeared. As a programmer, I just can't understand the cause of it. Sure, but I think a bit lower level area, where a team of 2-3 could easily survive would even be better. Think this way: lots of players, who never played before, had the chance to try the game now. What did they experience? Areas where they can't survive; teammates who act like noobs (let's face it: chances of getting a decent team for a newbie in a hardcore area is close to 0), and thus dying all the time. There's a bunch of skills, but you don't know which are worth to take. (e.g., basic Assassin skillset had an attack combo which was triggered on a hexed foe, but it didn't include any hexes... It's obvious for you to change a skill to a hex, but not for a newbie...) Would you buy a game if you experience these in the demo version, or would you buy a game that might not be easy, but appears possible to beat? I say, the content seemed good, but the event was a bit mistaken... ANet wanted to show the game for as much people as possible, but they made the content for hardcore GW players. |
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Post by Edem on Mar 27, 2006 13:28:14 GMT
BTW: what we missed... I've heard that one hour before the event's end, a dragon appeared in Cavalon and in the House zu Heltzer and attacked the players...  I'll look for screenshots... |
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Post by Sir Smeg on Mar 28, 2006 9:35:51 GMT
Yeah, totally in agreement with everything said by Edem: this preview was made for the hardcore. Especially proved by the fact that the dragon supposedly appeared at 7 in the feckin' morning!
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Post by Moo on Mar 28, 2006 12:25:44 GMT
Althougth i do agree with ron and edem that this is a Preview for (not exactly hardcore but advanced) I got quite positive attitude opinion towards this game. This is like a small teasers of the game where we sort of get a hang what will be featured in the game.
As there's some saying that ' Picture count as a thousand words' i believe this is what A-net prob want to show us...
They can offer trailers, cinematic and all the cool stuff they written on the site but with this we can have a feel of what's in factions first hand.
Yes i do believe this demo is a bit too hard for first time players, but i do believe on the actual game it will have better learning curve just as good as the original guildwars, concidering this expansions was meant for a stand alone game aswell.
However for my opinion towards this game, there's definitely a lot Interesting value that will make me stick towards guildwars even more. Such as the mission appearantly is more engaging and more interesting than the original, unfortunately i haven't manage to experience it ;D. And with factions have the feel of more of continous world where our victories of each mission felt more rewarding. ;D
I hope Bunnies will able to have a good run in cantha. ;D
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Post by Moo on Mar 28, 2006 12:35:25 GMT
I'm not sure about that because it worked prettyfine in my comp, prob wether u were just unlucky during that time (could it be the reflection of the frozen sea?), or there just a bug happened during the demo. Jade sea is pretty buggy, there's a few monster appeared out of no where.
Hehe But i'm sure that shouldn't be a prob for the real game. ;D
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Post by Moo on Mar 28, 2006 13:48:29 GMT
BTW: what we missed... I've heard that one hour before the event's end, a dragon appeared in Cavalon and in the House zu Heltzer and attacked the players... I'll look for screenshots... In case u guys still Wondering about that...  www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rBQwbXt1qY&search=guild%20wars Just like the matrix online... i heard.. for the end of the beta, they decided to make invasion of agent to the matrix. So codes falling apart... Agents raiding and Skies literallly falls. ;D |
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) are criticising aspects of the game... there are going to be others doing exactly the same on official forums everywhere around the globe. Arenanet are reading these and hopefully taking notes on what to change before they release. We have essentially been part of the largest group of Guinea Pigs ever assembled ;D
I'll look for screenshots...
