GW:EN preview review

The Guild Wars Eye of the North Sneak Peek Weekend event ended yesterday. Fans will have to wait till August 31 for the expansion to go live.

Players didn’t get an opportunity to dig too deeply into the PvE storyline during the event as some quests and features were made inaccessible. I would guess we may have only seen about one-third of the first act of this three-act story. That said, there was a lot of gameplay to experience during the 72 hours of the preview event.

My overall impression of GW:EN is that it’s mostly … more of the same. This is hardly surprising since it’s an expansion and this is by no means a bad thing since I’m a big fan of Guild Wars so it’s simply more of what I already like.

Many familiar characters return. Some are older, some are no wiser (“I just need to yell LOUDER!”), some in major roles, some in amusing cameos.

The foes are mostly of a familiar nature as well being reskins of old foes. Remember those butthead Prophecies Minotaurs? Meet their cold weather counterparts, the Berserk Minotaurs. Desert Wurms annoyed you in Prophecies? Then Frost Wurms will most assuredly annoy you in GW:EN.

The Destroyers, the minions of the Ultimate Bad Guy of the expansion, are brand new creations encountered very early in GW:EN but they don’t seem all that interesting when compared to the Mursaat and their Spectral Agony, the Afflicted and their tendency to go boom in your face or the Torment creatures and their Call to the Torment.

M. Bison’s mortal kombat

There are some very cool additions to the game, though.

The tournaments look like they might be entertaining diversions between quests and missions. I didn’t try Dwarven boxing or Polymock (“Pokemon on steroids”) but I did spend a lot of time during the preview participating in the Norn Fighting Tournament.

The tournament seems to be an attempt to encourage PvE players to try PvP. Now I play PvE almost exclusively as I don’t really have the temperament for PvP being a little too excitable and prone to terrible judgment calls during battles. I did, however, manage to win the Norn Fighting Tournament five times. The reason I took part so many times was to earn the five tokens I needed for the Crown.

Hail to the King, baby.

Unfortunately, the Crown suffers from a strange graphical error that only affects male Mesmers.

Figures.

The danger runs deep

There are 18 dungeons in total in GW:EN. I think players could access 4 of them during the preview but I only explored one, Sepulchre of Dragrimmar, deeply. I can’t say I found it particularly entertaining.

Dungeon combat was easy for the most part as the mobs were small and unbalanced. Some of the bosses proved to be a real handful, though. There’s one on the second level of Sepulchre of Dragrimmar that should prove to be the death of an unprepared party.

There were puzzles to be solved but the ones I encountered were embarrassingly simple. For instance, there was a shut gate labelled “Gate of Strength”. To open it, you had to click on a circle conveniently located nearby labelled “Proof of Strength”. For this tremendous feat of analytical problem-solving, your party gains a 2 percent morale boost. It didn’t get much complicated than that as the “keys” to the other locked doors in the same dungeon were merely located further away.

“If we inconvenience intruders enough, mayhap they will turn away,” is what I imagine Dwarven security experts were thinking when they designed this dungeon.

The dungeon was irritating more than anything. There were invulnerable turrets which shot ice darts that slowed down characters. The effect is unremovable before it wears off. The damage from the darts is negligible so I’m assuming the turrets were placed there mainly because Dwarven security experts are resentful of being constantly mocked.

Overall, if the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to CRPG dungeons is the classic 16-bit game, Dungeon Master, then you need to tone down your expectations. GW:EN dungeons are simple affairs if Sepulchre of Dragrimmar is anything to go by.

Time sunk

There’s a staggering amount of grind early in the expansion. I hasten to add that it’s mostly optional; the mandatory grinding required for storyline progression is manageable.

You can optionally grind for faction points to ingratiate yourself with three different factions. Sucking up to the factions will confer titles which your character can display to all and sundry but more importantly, it will also provide gameplay benefits in the form of useful PvE skills. I found the Ebon Vanguard PvE skill, Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support, very useful during the Norn Fighting Tournament.

You also need to achieve a minimum title level before you can craft faction-specific armour. This has little appeal for me since these new faction-specific threads have no gameplay benefits.

Grindhouse

The Hall of Monuments, ostensibly a way to commemorate player achievements in Guild Wars and a device to help players transition to Guild Wars 2, is a major letdown.

Like many others, I’m deeply disappointed the Hall of Monuments is character-based rather than account-based. I have no intention whatsoever of grinding out achievement after achievement for my nine characters.

Hell, I have trouble summoning the enthusiasm to grind out commemorable achievements for one character.

Why should I even bother in the first place?

After all, ArenaNet has been rather vague about the specific benefits conferred to future GW2 characters by a GW character’s Hall of Monuments. I want to know specifics so I can decide if the grinding required is going to be worth the effort.

The clothes make the man, the armour make the Hero?

The more I think about the Hall of Monuments the more exasperated I get.

Take Heroes, for instance.

I’ve got a veritable army of these who’ve been faithfully at my side as I travelled to Tyria, Cantha and Elona, aiding me in my attempts to thwart evil in all its forms. Yet, incredibly, inexplicably, I can’t commemorate any of them in the Monument of Fellowship because my Heroes lack Hero Armor upgrades.

So, essentially, the designers are saying your Heroes are only worth remembering if they wear fancy pants.

Is it worth grinding for those Hero Armor upgrades? Again, I don’t know and no one else seems to know exactly what benefit the Monument of Fellowship gives to GW2 characters. I’m assuming GW2 characters might get access to GW2-equivalent Heroes but ArenaNet hasn’t said a word about this.

I suspect this is because things are still in flux as the developers work on GW2 but it would be nice get some hard data.

So that’s the suck.

Here’s the cool.

I love the fact we can replay previously seen cutscenes from the expansion in the Scrying Pool at any time. I only wish players could also replay cutscenes from the campaigns. There are some I’d like to view again without replaying an hour-long mission.

As for other cool things about the Hall of Monuments … well, you got me.

I’m stumped. I really am.

The Hall of Monuments was one of the things the designers took pains to highlight in all the build-up to GW:EN and I’m struggling to understand why.

This is less a monument to heroic achievement than a monument to timesinks and grinding.