Put up a new PAX blog post. Part 3 now up!

Part 1: Commnunity and Designing Dynamic Events

Part 2: GW2 Random Q&A

Part 3: GW 2 PvP Thus Far

I had the privilege of going to PAX this last Sunday, got to see the sights and sounds, and went to two GW2 discussion panels.

Part 1 is about those panels. Part 2 is about questions players have sent me and the answers I found at PAX (or didn't find in the case of some).

Part 3 is now up! Enjoy.

» Edited on: 2011-09-02 14:45:45

Stop posting, your making me want GW2 lol

Great write-up so far Vamp, and looking forward to reading the rest. I've been starting to miss the old Warhammer RvR bad lately, and from everything I've read, seen and heard over the last couple of days, Guild Wars 2 just can't come soon enough - I'm a wee bit excited by the potential possibilities.

Great post. This made me laugh, and shed a little tear for WAR pre-1.4 days: Will there Guild Halls in Guild Wars 2? A: Yes, but not at release... you can hold a castle or keep in WvWvW in the meantime. BTW, wasn't Andy Belford a Mythic community guy for a little while?

Yes, andy came from mythic, he jumpped ship right before we did. James jumped right after. Andys a really great guy and still won't talk about why he left. All he's told me is that the restrictions at ncsoft are so much looser and he can be creative as a community manager. Sounded like everything was by the book at mythic.

This isn't good enough! I want the rest of your report on my desk by tomorrow morning or there'll be hell to pay! Just kidding, lol. Great job Vamp. I can't wait to read the rest.

Great job Vamp! Looking forward to the rest of your report from PAX!

Part 2 is up as well now.

Great questions, Vampiresbane. Thanks for the write-up. :)

Finished Part 3. It should give you guys something to chew on for 5 minutes at least.

Nice write up vamp! Incidentally i came across these videos of the pvp tournament at pax. The announcers are kinda annoying, but you can get some idea of how pvp was going down. There's a series of four of them chronicling the "tournament". The last link has the arena net devs vs the winners from the audience. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4

» Edited on: 2011-09-02 15:17:13

That last video of round 4 makes me a little worried. The necro on the trebuchet was on a 6 kill combo and was able to take out 3 players. Granted it was a dev vs 3 others, but definitely felt a sense of imbalance there. Plus there was a lot of elite skill use which I think Vamp commented on in his blog. Dunno though, what do you think?

» Edited on: 2011-09-03 07:22:12

I'm not too worried. If you watch closely, it looks like what actually happened is that the necro held them off till some team mates could arrive. There was at least two more red team members there by the end of the fight. Besides, if there is an imbalance, they have plenty of time to fix it before the game goes live. Balance is a tricky thing in mmo's, and perfect balance is never achieved. So long as the imbalance isn't so out of hand that the game isn't fun, its ok by me. That last video to me just shows more the advantage of experience. The devs were winning every fight regardless of class. That map seems to have some definite nuances that the devs knew to use, but the new players were just learning. It seems like the trebuchet is pivotal, and none of the regular teams really figured out how to best use it.

They also mentioned in the commentary that the 3 players weren't exactly united in purpose against the Necromancer in that situation, so it wasn't really a 3 vs 1 situation - supposedly they didn't take advantage of their superior numbers and their firepower was divided between attacking the Necromancer and the Trebuchet.

Oh geez, this game needs to come out so I can do something other than Halo weeeeee!

@Grolyn Play world of tanks. A few of us are playing there.

Great PVP writeup Vampire... wow! Loads of scintillating detail! :) Re collision-on-target: this is a pretty clever compromise. Have you figured out yet whether it's reciprocal in PVP? E.g., can a tank in the shield wall target a player trying to blow through and switch on collision for him?

Darn good question Lakshmi. I didn't get to actually play the pvp so I don't know for sure. I'd give it a 50/50 chance of being possible. It'd be nice if it did work.