I started as a elementalist, my first love of the Original Guild Wars. Marlith Galathil, was her name and she was a noble. It took a little to get my barrings, learning all the new controls trying to pay attention to the situation around me. I was so impressed of how little communication was going on, but everyone knew what to do. The theatrics and movements with the elementalist was amazing. (Sadly I didn't take a lot of pictures this weekend). You could change so quickly through the different elements it was scary, needed to slow someone hit f2, to change to water, real fast throw ice at the enemy then go back to f to burn them into the ground. Or alternatively shock them with electricity to death or throw rocks at them. Your choice.
After running around Shaemoor doing tasks to level up and see what the next skill did, I decided to break out from Shaemoor and head South to the garrison, The attack of the centuars still raged on as heroes tried to kill them and destroy their supplies. And when I say heroes I do mean heroes, what happened, especially to me, people would fly in spells casting, arrows shooting, grenades launching, swords swinging... okay you get the idea right?, and it was in the last minute of when you think to yourself, "Oh crap, oh crap need to run, run. Crap I'm down." True you may have been defeated but a nifty little thing in Guild Wars 2 people will come and revive you sometimes out of nowhere, when the enemy was gone but you laid dead in the field.
Oh, did I mention I never once had to type in 'help' in the chat for someone to rescue me?
Guild Wars 2 did it right by dynamic events, in the middle of the screen you'll see Event Happening, and unconciously I got pulled into the event, even though I was meaning to head Southeast not Northwest. By then my little Marlith had learned all the skills in all the elements and I was finally used to fighting with other people. There's a cool little bonus, forget the name of the skill, but I throw down my line of fire in front of a bunch of rangers or gunshooters, their bullets/arrows caught fire before hitting the enemy. Heck yes extra damage!
Hours of exploring I finally managed to go into the swamps, and what a nasty hole in the ground that was. I started doing the tasks of killing shades, helping tormented spirits, and closing the Underworld Portals. That's where the fun begins. Every time you close a portal a Aataxe comes out and tries to ram and destroy you. And they're not just little black minotaurs with a different name anymore. Oh no, they are nasty looking. Bodies covered in shadow standing tall, about 4 feet taller then my little elemental. I was trying to kill it, like everyone knows though elementalists do not go mano-y-Shadow-from-the-black-lagoon-o by themselves. They will get sent through time, to our time. Again people started to help me out, the skale were killing me too nasty fishies... Then I saw the notification to underworld activity in the middle of the swamp.
At first only a handful of us were there swatting at the portals to close and killing the shades and aataxes that flew out. Then everything went still, we picked up a lot more people curious on this World Event. The ground shook as a black form was starting to shake, before we knew it this HUGE shadow behemoth came at us. A few of us posted in chat what the rest were thinking, my favorite was a adventurer who put: "This is when the shit gets real people". Sadly I forgot to write down their names.
It was a long spent battle, gaining more and more people as the battle raged on for almost 10 minutes. Somehow we were killing the beast, I'm not sure I could barely figure out how to actually hit the stupid thing until the end. Real quick I turned my camera around to figure out why I wasn't dying, I should've. I should have been elemental pie with a bog weed up her butt. There was close to 40 people at this event! It was massive. Still after that initial shock of the behemoth there was not chatting of how to take this thing down, "no this group goes over here" "hey someone do this".
In the end, the battle was won everyone started to cheer and write "good job" "That was a blast". And a comment I couldn't agree more to, "This is why Guild Wars is the best!" We got our reward from the chest and scattered off in different directions. I did a bit more adventuring, trying to figure out where everything was for the next time.
My last few hours in the game I decided to run around Lion's Arch. Another spot that isn't the same, but you know it is. The original got destroyed and sunk to the ground when Orr surfaced. The place is massive, it was as big of a town as Queensdale was a explorable place. To give reference(if you played the original) it went from Lions Arch, that little beach in Gates of Kryta, over to Boreas Seaboard and down near Sanctum Kay. I saw, found the spot of old L.A. Found the place where the fountain sat. I also found this little treasure by some of the portals south of town:
I loved this game, even with it being a little buggy but I knew it was beta, that is the whole reason for beta is to find those bugs so they can go iron them out. The only thing that really did bother me is that all the name tags for what people were, the colors were all green to blueish. And hard to distinguish between the real players and NPCs. This was a very nice and addicting game, and can not wait for the next beta or even better get my hands on the real game.
