Tomorrow is the beginning of the first GW2 beta weekend event for pre-purchasers, and the first where we’ll be able to play and bring you all sorts of information without a NDA in the way. We have lots of plans for the weekend.
Back by popular demand, I will be recording extensive video over the weekend to deliver commentary on various aspects of the game. Several of you expressed interest in videos because that’s either how you found our blog in the first place, or you simply enjoy seeing a video while listening to me ramble on. I’ll post them throughout the weekend.
We’ll also be streaming over at our Keen and Graev Twitch.tv channel!  I’ll take requests for classes to see, abilities to use, places to go, food to eat, songs to sing, you name it. I’ll provide insights into the GW2 experience while I play. I’ll leave it on all weekend, so feel free to watch and chat with me if you haven’t procured yourself a spot in the beta.
The Keen and Graev Community will have a guild on the Sorrow’s Furnace server. We plan to reassess our server choice periodically during the events, and definitely make sure we choose the right server at launch. Our reason for choosing Sorrow’s Furnace was to get on-board with solid PvPers and find a world anxious to win lots of WvW — we hear that’s where a solid portion of the ex-DAOC community will play. We love the feature that allows players to belong to multiple guilds because it reduces the stress of choosing between your friends. We also love the lack of raid progression or reason to feel forced into guilds. It’s long past due for guilds to return as a social unit, rather than a necessity for progression.
We hope to see you here for lots of GW2 content, and playing with us on Sorrow’s Furnace.
Which are the other two servers you’re being paired up with for the weekend WvWvW action?
We need some user-submitted pics of random blog lurkers dancing over Keen’s ingame corpse for Keen to post up in his next blog. That’d be a funny post 😛
I’ve held off on buying into GW2 until I hear more trustworthy feedback on the game, and hearing impressions from you gents will be an excellent addition to the current heap of positivity. While I respect people like Total Biscuit and Ravious at KTR a lot, I also know my “ideal game” is very different than theirs – while being quite similar to what you and Graev seem to want in an MMO.
Looking forward especially to your impressions of the 3-faction warfare, the structured PvP, the trait/gear system, and the combat mechanics – which are, in reverse order of importance, my biggest current concerns for the game.
I.e. I’m convinced GW2 will be an amazing PvE adventuring game, and a very fun scripted world in which to form ad-hoc social bubbles with random players. But that’s just not enough for me right now. I need to know if GW2 will bring some seriously deep combat, customization, and PvP to the table before I sink a bunch of time and energy into it.
Crossing fingers it will be as great as everyone hopes.
@Gali: I have no idea. I’ve read that at launch your server goes against other servers based on a ladder system. At the start, maybe it’s random?
And yes, the first person to screenshot themselves standing on my corpse gets a prize. Maybe a DOTA 2 key, or a hug, or something.
Hey Keen I seen over on reddit they compiled a list of where numerous online gaming communities will be playing:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/srmfg/homeworlds_of_various_online_communities_for/
You have any idea where this DAoC Vets community have congregated to organize themselves? Would be awesome to try and re-establish some long lost kinships with former players of one of my favorite MMO’s.
@Zederok: On that list it says Sorrow’s Furnace. That’s the server we’re playing on.
Great to hear you’ll be on Sorrow’s Furnace. My small RL-friends guild will be rolling on the same server for the beta, and for the same reason: lots of PvP-oriented guilds rolling there, so we should be able to find some good groups for WvW.
I am a little concerned that more and more large guilds also seem to be picking the same server, so maybe we may face some WvW queues, but like you said, we’ll be re-evaluating this choice until release to make sure to find the right balance between having lots of good PvP’ers on our side, and too much people stopping us from even playing it properly.
So you guys have a game plan for races and classes at this point? I know that for release I intend on playing with the Charr… so I’m not touching that during the beta. If you see a human Mesmer with my name walking around, say Hi. 🙂
I want to be an Asura, but I hear they’re unavailable in the beta. I’ll probably try a Thief or Guardian first.
We’ll be seeing ya on Sorrow’s Furnace. Old School DAoCers gotta show everyone whats up in WvW!
@Zederok – Guild Wars 2 Guru forums…WvW section there is a thread for it.
Great, look forward to reading your thoughts. I held off on SWTOR and glad I did. Still not sold on gw2 yet so will see opinions on it and if it seems good then maybe late Summer i’ll jump on board. I’ve already go over d3 after its beta and Tera too, so only thing I’m thinking of playing right now is Dragons Dogma which may be only good for a month so need to find something soon lol
First thought: I’ll be seeing you on Sorrow’s Furnance.
Second thought: It’s server versus server. All DOAC peeps on one server with a LOT of previous RvR experience. Does that make it unfair? >:)
Found this site through a warhammer online fansite way back before it got released.
You made a topic about warhammer and I liked your site.
Been posting replies since this year I think.
I play in Europe so can not join your server. (do not want any latency issues at all in a pvp centric game.) And yes I will be playing GW2 this weekend.
Looking forward to you vids and comments.
Hey guys,
I’ve been reading this site since the Warhammer beta days, I was in since the alpha. I’ve largely lurked, played with the best, all that fancy shit. Been a member of FoH since 2002! So I’ve been around the genre a bit. This time I want to take a different approach. Like minded people who want to build a real community is something I think the genre as a whole has really strayed from. I had intended to roll on Sorrow’s Furnace anyway and when I saw you guys intended the same it just clicked.
It has always looked like your community guilds had a lot of fun in the past and I look forward to playing with you into the future. I’ll be in touch tomorrow! If you don’t mind I have 2-3 work buddies I dragged into wow a few years back as well who have always been super casual and just want to have fun when they play a game, which while I used to min/max is all I care about anymore.
On a darker note I consider this to be my last hurrah for the genre. I’ve played all the AAA titles since EverQuest in 1999 and I feel it has stagnated. If ArenaNet doesn’t legitimately shake things up.. I am done. I’m a huge Star Wars geek and I just could not stomach it past level 30 and while Tera has interesting combat the rest of it is tried and trued… and old.
Cheers to hoping we all have an interesting weekend!
We’d love to have you, Guzrog!
Keen would love to stand on your corpse, but enemies names won’t be shown in WVW wont even know if i kill you.
Only misstep i think GW2 has made. Not sure why we can’t see the enemies name. How will i know who i need to get revenge on? Guess every enemy i see.
@Icedern; Thanks for the info
Keen I am spoken for this weekends event, I am helping coordinate the MMORPG.com crowd but there after I plan on rolling where ever the most ex-DAoC vets go.
Towellie and all of his followers in addition to the Guildwarshub crew will all be on SF as well. That server is going to be PACKED.
You’ll know me because I’ll be the Asura (at launch) everyone runs away from in fear.
I’m gonna avoid that server, not only because I’m in Europe, but also because the retards from the ex-VN boards will play there. I definitely don’t want to be part of a community with those people.
I’ll visit you though since at retail, you’ll be able to visit servers at will 🙂
PS: by “retard”, I don’t mean people like Keen of course (who is also an ex-VN poster), but I think he knows who I’m talking about 😉
@ The Merovingian
LOL I know exactly what you mean about the VN boards. With any luck the people you are talking about won’t be playing on that server. A question for you too: Will it really matter if you play on a EU server or US server???
The reason I am asking is my guild has many players from the UK, Germany, and many other EU countries. We plan on using a US server this weekend and a EU server the next beta weekend. We are doing this just to see if the EU and US players will have any ping problems playing on an over seas server. Do you think there will be ping issues???
Well, I know they will be playing on that server massively from the new forum they set up after VN boards got closed recently. They already plan to for a guild there, and one of the worst troll of VN is actually in charge of that guild apparently.
I won’t post the forum link here because I definitely don’t want to make any advertisement for that pack of asshats.
Can anyone tag Guzrog? 🙂 Charr engineer.