Well, well, well.

Just in the time to steal the thunder of GW's last Beta hype and ahead of LOTRO's hype of its new mounted combat reveals, Blizzard announces that Mists of Pandaria is releasing soon.  Real soon.

On September 25, stalwart WoW fans will be able to roll their favorite Panda class.  So the cancellation of their Blizzcon event did portend a nose to the grindstone release schedule as some hypothesized.  I believe this is the first time in many years that Blizzard has released before the Holiday season.

Interesting.  Competition is tight in MMORPGs today and Blizzard won't give up its crown easily.

Read all about it here at Blizzard's site.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Review

I have to admit the only reason why I was involved in the GW2 Beta events was due to a mistake. TERA was a game that I was not interested in but GW2 had garnered my interest due to the chatter about it around the WAR community.  Supposedly it was the game that would save the poor neglected PvP masses from the failing Warhammer Online.  Anyway TERA was released around the same time pre-ordering took place for Guild Wars 2.  I mixed up the grand opening date of Tera with GW2 and pre-ordered GW2 to my eventual dismay.  Because at the time of pre-order way back in April there was no opening date for GW2. ArenaNet placated the frothing fans by scheduling a number of Beta preview weekends every month.

The release date was finally announced and it will be August 28.  Grand opening for pre-orders will be August 25th.  Interestingly GW2 scheduled its release not long after Turbine's release announcement for its much awaited Riders of Rohan expansion.  Which caused quite a bit of comments since GW2 will be opening barely a week before ROR.  Many others wondered if Blizzard would counteract both and release the Mists of Pandaria expansion early to trounce all competition.  But so far they have remained silent on the Pandaria release date.  But they have canceled their beloved Blizzcon event this year.

In regards to Guild Wars 2.

It is a very good game.  I'm hesitant to pump it up anymore than it has been in the gaming press.  Because frankly it is at overkill even now.  There is also a problem of building false expectations in the community as a whole which was what happened to the Star Wars The Old Republic mmorpg.

Is it going to topple WoW?  No chance in purgatory.  But then again, no game ever will.  WoW is a phenomenom that could only happen in an exact place and time.  The time and the place have occurred and will not occur again.  So it would be best to put all thoughts of WoW collapsing in a failed heap out of mind.

Combat

The Combat mechanics were simple but interesting.  A character must use a weapon in order to learn its moves.  Hence if your character doesn't equip for example a two-hand sword, he/she will not know advanced moves special to two-hand weapons.  You will not be able to purchase knowledge of these weapons from a trainer.  That being said, training new weapons is not an overly time consuming undertaking.  Across all beta events, I thought the unlocking of new weapon skills occurred in a reasonably quick time.  If you take part in a combat event, you can unlock your weapon skills even faster.

What was nicely simplified is that there are not a great many moves to learn.  Most weapons only have about 5 to 6 skills.  The trickiness comes in on learning how to time these skills for great effect.  Some skills will stun monsters others will heal other players in the vicinity.  Also each weapon has a specialization.  A Guardian class character can wield a DPS two-hander or use a tank DPS/threat oriented shield and one hander.  Or a Guardian can choose a healing two hander and/or shield and one-hander.  Supposedly any character can switch between weapon specializations mid-fight.  However I personally noticed that I could not switch between a shield/one hander to a two-hander during a fight.  Whether this changes in the real game, I don't know.  But during Beta it was not allowed.

Combat is also subject to your proximity to the target and how well you can dodge the target's attacks.  A quick hit to the strafe buttons will move your character out of the way of a target and its attacks.  Some character's dodges are more fun than others.  A Norn will just roll out of the way but a little Asura will leap and somer sault through the air.  These special strafe/dodge moves are subject to cool downs and power supply.  So you cannot spend your time rolling or leaping out of the way in PVE or PVP.

PVE

There are no set questing objectives except for a character's main story quest.  The main bulk of experience building is taking part in group "heart" quests that help various NPC's in an area, exploration, crafting and PvP.  That being said, I didn't notice a terrible grind between story quests.  However I would reach points where I didn't know where to go next.  So I spent a lot of time studying my map and deciding where to go.  But it never got to the point where I felt as if I were on a treadmill ala an Asian mmo grinder.

Difficulty?  This is hard to say because the difficulty levels for the story quests, heart quests, and events varied wildly during each Beta.  During the last Beta some of the story quests were akin to impossible and required exact usage and timing of skills.  The last Beta relaxed the difficulty level considerably.  I'm not sure if it will stay this way or be somewhere in between.

Class Areas/Graphics

Every area for each race is beautifully designed.  The human area is a typical medieval type village complete with big city.  The Norn race has a wonderful wintery area with rivers and fjords.  The Charr and Asura areas are filled with rather steam punk designs since they are both technological races.  The Slyvari is a pretty little forest area with various levels and tree house like city.

The graphics are very well done and look good across all levels.

The Bad or Character Selection/Armor

So far everything has been great about the game.  But what GW2 does bad, they do very, very, very bad.

Character selection is lackluster with no opportunity to craft a unique look.  Body types are the same shape no matter what is chosen.  The worst of the worst being the Norn and Human characters.  The facial characteristics of both male and female characters skew towards young.  And I mean very young.  Human characters in particular look as if their average age is 13 years old.  There is one old bone thrown to the players with one face being about 25 to 35 in both male and female selection.  Some players claimed they could change the facial characteristics more with the minimal sliders provided but I could not.  A 13 year old face will stay a 13 year old face no matter how much you change the shape of the eyes or nose.

The armor.  Oh God the armor.

Someone on the development team thought this outfit was fantastic and that every Norn and Human female character of the magic class should wear it.

I can not describe the true nature of its hideousness.  Or how much it looks like a clown outfit when compared to the soberly dressed NPCs and other character classes.

And when it is paired with the too young female faces, the game descends into truly creepy, Humbert Humbert territory.  Some players claimed that this look was to pander to Asian audiences.  So apparently, in their quest for more money, ArenaNet will force Western fans to play as underage schoolgirl characters in pink tutus with plenty of upskirt shots because Asian audiences like young flesh.

This is something no game should pander to, no matter what the culture.

The forums were filled with complaints about this awful design each Beta since April.  But there was no response from ArenaNet. Which can only mean they are dead set about keeping the underage jailbait characters.  Frankly that is a deal breaker for me if this character design is not modified.  I can only write off the box price as a loss and just leave the game alone.  And since ArenaNet doesn't consider me or anyone who feels the same as a true target for its game, I don't think they will see it as a loss.

Conclusion

It remains to be seen if this game will be a success.  I can see stumbling points in their character design and perhaps over-emphasis on PvP.  Who knows how their cash shop will fare in this weakening economy.  Truthfully I can only seem them holding on to the PvP players who are desperate to leave WAR and filling a niche spot in mmorpgs.

The rest, the rest will go to the Mists of Pandaria.  Even though they claim they won't.

Shadow of the Argonath - Chance Thomas

Although I really liked the "Rise of Isengard" expansion last fall, one of the main disappointments I had with it was that it did not have a new music score.  I believe one of the main reasons why I fell in love with LOTRO so much was the beautiful score composed by Chance Thomas.  His music captured the spirit of Middle Earth wonderfully.

Since ROI, I noticed that I was not the only one who wanted a new score.  The forums had a few posts regarding the absence of new music.  It seems Turbine took this into account and commissioned Chance Thomas to write new music for Riders of Rohan.

ROR will be released on Sept 5 and Turbine is in the midst of drumming up excitement by releasing snippets of Thomas' new score.  It sounds as gorgeous as the original score for the game.  I can't wait to hear more of it.  Turbine has also dropped hints that they may rerelease the old soundtracks along with the new one for sale.