This is kind of a continuation of my preview article
published on www.hbhud.com. Here, I will
talk mainly about my PvP experiences in Guild Wars 2. In the article I touched on the Dynamic
Leveling System that Guild Wars 2 will be implementing. The only way that allows you to level up past
your true level is by doing some PvP. By
entering into any PvP match you are automatically bumped up to level 80 and
your attributes follow suit. So you
immediately have the health and damage output of a level 80 as well as everyone
else, making the playing field very even.
With that said, you still get the experience and drops (you get drops in
PvP) appropriate to your true level.
There are two types of PvP at the moment, Structured PvP and World PvP (or WvW). Structured PvP is a mode that has different maps and the objective could change by the map. The only objective that will come out with the release is Conquest. Conquest is capture and hold game that is pretty intense because of the size of the map and the amount of players in them. Fighting is almost continuous as you try to capture areas that the other team is trying to hold while defending your own areas. When I played this I was very new to the game and wanted a taste of PvP early. I hadn't gotten all of the skills with my staff unlocked yet, so when I went in and had everything available to me I was inexperienced at what each skill could do. Needless to say, I died, a lot. But that didn't slow down the fun factor.
There is a mechanic in Guild Wars 2 that is called Downed which is a state that you go in before actual death. And what it does is it gives you a chance to "fight to stay alive." As soon as your health goes to zero, your character falls to the ground a little window pops up at the bottom of the screen that gives you different skills that you can use to try to finish off your attacker. A bar over this window starts to slowly regenerate, once it is full then your character stands back up with half health. Being in this state also gives other players to come by and heal your, getting you back on your feet quicker. In PvP I found this mechanic a little annoying however. The reason is because the only way to finish a character off is to walk up to them and press F. It is a slow process and with me being an Elementalist and often killing people from a distance, I wasn't able to get into the thick of things and finish people off. Now, I do believe there is a way for you to finish a player when they are downed with out walking up to them and performing a finishing move but I think this requires an area of effect skill because in PvP you can't target a downed player. I will be interested to test this theory in the next weekend beta event later this month.
Now, the second PvP mode is World PvP or WvW as it is called. For me, this is where the money is at. WvW is only one huge map of three waring servers. Servers are ranked at how well they do in this PvP mode. This match is a persistent match that lasts a month. You can enter and leave whenever you want to participate and help your server. For those of you who have played DAoC think RvR, it is very similar and probably inspired off the same idea. It is this mode only that you can actually get drops from both players and NPCs. In this mode you and your server try to take over the map and gain control of as much points as possible. There are different types of building, the most powerful being the castle in the center of the map. This castle is huge with an outer wall and an inner wall and guards that really tough to take down. Obviously the main tactic in this mode is to Zerg it up. What I mean by that is to run in large groups and swarm everything in your path. What is a large group in WvW? 5? 10? No, no, no, more along the lines of 85 to 100 players storming the castles. And that was in Beta. I can't wait to see the organized chaos that will happen once release is here. Now, to me, it seems that the server that can gather the most people for the longest will win in WvW. But that could mean a couple of different things. One, being that the tactics of the battle field haven't really had the chance to come to light yet. Or two, that could very well just be the best tactic. Regardless it was still fun to be an actual part of an army storming a castle while other players were shooting balistas trying to slow down our brutal intrusion.
I highly enjoyed my PvP experience and I like PvP in general I think it breaks up the grinding and monotonous "kill x amount of these" or "gather x amount of these." The question is, how much PvP will I be doing in a game that has little to none of these type of quests? The world may never know.
