So I caved and pre purchased Guild Wars 2 Normal Edition in order to take part in the beta event last weekend.
My first impression was that loads was happening. Gosh I didn't know where to look first (luckily a guy shouting and waving at me pointed me in the right direction). Here are my first few impressions I got in the first five or so hours I played (if you just want an overall impression scroll down to the bold bit):
Controls: You can jump! And swim! It was amazing being able to do such things and were quite intuitive. I did change the assigned button for Jump from space to page down, however as I didn't want to move my hand to much for such a handy movement (and I play left handed). The new dodge movement was useful and only required a double tap on the arrow keys - saved my life a couple of times. Swimming was good too with the respective buttons to make you go up or down quite easily.
Interface: The interface was confusing at first. I was an Elementalist and so was confused when I tried to equip my Glyph skill as well as my brand new healing spell and found out I could only have one. Hm. The energy bar disappeared, as far as I could tell so I was dishing out skills like there was no tomorrow.
Storyline: The story started officially with the cinematic, which was different for everyone depending on what race and background you chose. I looked at human for both 'grew up in the city as nobility' and 'grew up on the streets'. You were shown certain characters in the opening cinematic who looked like they were to become important characters to you (like Fable). I only managed to see one of the three I was shown who had a bit of an Elliot feel to him from Fable 3. The only thing I missed was the few characters I came across did seem to feel a little shallow, with not much personality to them. But this isn't a RPG I suppose.
Professions: I only tried out the Elementalist profession, my favourite and the Thief profession.
Elementalist: The energy bar seemed to have been ditched so instead of normal attacks with my staff/stave/whatever I just continuously barraged my foe with the first skills in my list. I couldn't use any other skills until I had gained enough EXP (I think that was what it was based upon) which unlocked the next one in the list, than the next and so forth. Some of the skills were awesome though.
Thief: I didn't get to play this one as much (damn university exams) but it was loads of fun. It almost replaced Elementalist as my favourite. When I attacked with my dagger (I only had one at first) a could keep clicking on my first skill to build up a combo that steadily made more damage or added a condition such as bleeding. When I wanted to gain some health a nifty stealth skill was available which enabled me to turn invisible for a little bit while I regenerated health.
Character creation: The choices this time were a lot larger. You were able to modify how your character looked quite carefully with lots more skin tone, hair and eye colours. The hairs were nice too and were animated well when you moved the model around. Some of the hairs, however did look a bit naff but hey - it's in beta still, right?
So all in all I absolutely adored playing the game. I died countless times and ended up just in my underwear at one point (your armour disappears, literally if it gets broken). It was incredibly laggy, but considering the popularity of the beta that was understandable. The controls were easy to understand and the story was intriguing.
So that's my first impression of Guild Wars 2. If you want to know any more feel free to ask in the comments below.
PS: The swimming! It was so fun (and pretty). Just watch out for the Barracudas.
