Guild Wars 2 Beta 3

 This weekend, Lexibug, Demunfone and myself have but one goal – really dive into the ‘as-unyet-unplayable’ class of the Sylvari.

This race of plants (which don’t even remotely have to look like elves as seen in other screenshots about the web) all come from a central tree.  The interesting things about this race are twofold – first, they are only 20 years old as a race, but #2: their values and beliefs are formed from a tablet of human wisdom, from a man named Ventari, that was left near the ground of the ‘mother tree’ when she was planted.  This tablet is now held inside that tree that gives life to all Sylvari.

This is where things start to get intriguing.  There is an underlying ‘dream,’ almost like a shared conscience amongst these people.  And over the 20 years, a Nightmare Court has formed of Sylvari who believe that the race’s free will and choice has been tainted by the inclusion of this document into their makeup.

Currently the three of us are playing an engineer (Ah love mah sentry gun), a guardian and a mesmer, respectively.  Since this is Lexibug’s first MMO, the learning curve is obviously large, but she’s been doing wonderfully.  The interesting thing from a veteran player’s perspective is GW2 actually lets each player rank (at least in the beta) the overall quest chain in regards to fun, difficulty, memorability and the like.  So Demunfone and I get to watch from a person’s first foray into MMO’s.  And it’s obviously a very different perspective.

I have to say that the story is engaging, and the starting area is beautiful, if not a little confusing.  It is a multi-level city, which generally makes for confusing map/mini map directions.

After 3 betas, I’ve finally found where all the crafting materials go (you can right click them in your inventory and send them straight to your bank — no running to the bank required).  Another kickass item about crafting is that when you go to a crafting table, you have access to all of your bank inventory.  I’ve started tailoring, which has led to me making bags to hold stuff.  Yum.

More as the weekend progresses.