I just played the third and final Guild Wars 2 beta weekend (also played BWE1 and 2) so thought I'd post a full review in case anyone was thinking of leaping in with this one.
Client and UI
Overall the game is a total blast. Really fun gameplay, very innovative and visually stunning (at least to my eyes) yet runs smoothly on older machines like mine. Feels like a real breath of fresh air. The UI is very polished, very nice to use. I never found myself wondering where to find certain features in the GW2 interface, its all very logical. GW2 can genuinely claim to be a next generation MMO, it does raise the bar and it does do things radically differently to WoW. The style of gameplay won't be to everyones taste, especially for those who enjoy raiding and 'holy trinity' gameplay, and the theme is generic fantasy (albeit with some lovely twists and touches) so it doesn't have the attraction of a strong lore like some games do (eg SWTOR).
Races & Character Customisation
The races are very diverse and have their own very distinct personalities and start zones. There's Humans, Norn (norse themed large humans), Charr (large wolflike humanoids), Sylvari (nature / tree folk) and my favourite the diminutive Asura. Races arent just human models with different heads (like in SWTOR), every race has its own unique animations and personality. Character customisation is excellent, one of the best I've seen in any MMO. You have all the usual options, but also a height slider and most importantly a huge amount of choice in skin, hair and marking colour and sliders for just about everything. You can spend a lot of time fine tuning your character and creating quite unique looks, if thats your thing. Running around the game I was amazed at how much variety in appearance there was. Also, there's a full gear dye system. You get some basic starter dyes to choose from and then can unlock more exotic dyes as you progress in the game. Wonderful.
Classes and Combat
There's the usual range of melee, ranged and magic classes. But with a twist. There's no holy trinity, no dedicated tanks and healers, all classes have tools to assist with survivability and healing, some better than others in different situations of course, but everyone has something. Same with ranged / melee, all classes have access to both ranged and melee abilities depending on weapon choice. Weapon choice is what governs what abilities you can use. Each class has access to a number of choices. And where there is crossover, weapons do different things in the hands of different classes. So a sword in a Warriors hand gives a different set of abilities than it does in a Thief's hand and so on. At around level 7 you can equip a second weapon combination and hot swap easily during combat, so you can quickly switch from melee to ranged, or from dps to support and so on. Also, if you fight underwater you do this with special underwater weapon variants (harpoons, spears etc).
As the game progresses you earn skill and trait points to unlock extra abilities. However, you can only ever slot up to 9 abilities at once. Keys 1-5 are always your weapon specific abilities. Keys 6-9 are your general abilities you buy (self heals, special attacks etc). And F1 to F4 are special attacks you get access to as your power builds (adrenaline etc). There's no endless quickbars like in WoW, so those who love to have dozens of abilities at their fingertips all the time (as per WoW) won't like it. Personally I like it as too many abilities usually phases me. Combat itself is pretty manic, fast paced and twitchy, which might not be to everyones tastes. I've played a number of different classes in beta and all of them feel like you can (and will) die at any moment. Some classes are more resilient than others, but everyone feels on a knife edge. Maybe this changes later in the game. I actually rather like it though, feels exciting and combat never feels grindy because you can't just stand still and spam one ability.
PVE
Fun fun fun. There's a real and genuine departure from standard MMO questing. There's storyline quests and there's fixed quest givers dotted around the map who give out objectives. These behave as more standard MMO quests with some creative twists. But this isn't where the beauty of the game lies. Public events are where it all kicks off. These spring up around the map as you're adventuring. You get alerted to them in different ways, in some cases a NPC will run up to you, in others stuff kicks off nearby and its obvious what is going on. These events are hugely varied and many are multi stage and unfold with storylines and NPCs who you can follow. Follow up events will change depending on if you are successful or not and this impacts the game world for a period of time. Everyone is involved, this isn't instanced. It's a public thing and the difficulty automatically adapts to the number of players involved. In the starter zones these events can be a bit chaotic, but as the players spread out these events become more creative are really very well scripted and make the game world feel alive and dynamic. Events don't just instantly respawn like they do in other MMOs and some events chain off each other. Of course if you stand around in the same place for long enough the same event will eventually kick off again, but in normal gameplay it feels like the thing you just helped with has some permanence.
World Vs World (RvR)
Well finally here we have a possible successor to DAOC. 3 factions, huge persistant RvR zones with keeps, seige weapons, keep warfare, roaming warfare, zergs, small man, solo. You get the idea. But the factions aren't racial or sides, they are your whole server. Your server plays against two others for a week. Then everything changes around and you get matched against other servers who performed similar to yours, so its a server ladder. There's genuine realm pride because of this, and since server transfers are a paid service on a cooldown there will be very little FOTW server hopping (eg relic chasing in DAOC). I did about 6 hours of WvW over the beta weekend and was totally hooked by it. It has all the right ingredients, it feels epic, there's keep assaults and defences and the keeps themselves are multi-walled affairs with lots of options for where and how to break in. You can ram down doors, knock holes in the walls, balistas, oil, all that stuff. Plus supply lines are important, you can't just sit in a keep and defend forever, because if the enemy strangle your supply then you can't keep building cannons, trebs etc. Naturally keep warfare gets zergy, but you can move off to other objectives (such as escorting supply caravans) and get smaller scale skirmish fights. There's a bolstering system which actually seems to work nicely and you can earn good xps from WvW by getting various bonuses for objectives. Also, players drop loot when they die, so you can also gear up via WvW. Will it be as good as DAOC in its golden period? I doubt it. I don't see any game capturing that sense of realm pride again. Will it be better than Warhammer and other games which have attempted RvR since DAOC? I think yes.
Structuted PvP
This is hardcore ladder based PvP, I guess like WoW's arena. You play specific maps and tournaments and everyone has access to the same gear. I didn't try this during beta, its just too intimidating for me these days. In fact I'm unlikely to try this, RvR is more my thing, but it's good that it exists. This will be a magnet for the hardcore guilds and PvP'ers. Most casual players will probably choose WvW (RvR) unless there's a way to dabble in this without annoying the hardcore players. I suspect this is where most of the whining about class balance will come from, because it will be at its most apparent here.
Exploration
There's all manner of stuff to explore, lots of free roaming. This is not a 'corridor' game like SWTOR. There's also vista achievements, where you get a nice cinematic at certain locations. Many of these are in fiendish places where you need to figure out just how to get there. Also, the more you explore the more likely you are to trigger special events, some really nice ones are off the beaten path.
No Monthly Fee
The best thing of all is the subscription method. You buy the box and you play as much as you like. There will be a cash shop, but for cosmetic stuff, not for anything which gives a gaming advantage. Future content packs will of course be paid expansions, that's how they'll make their money. But the base game is huge already, going to be a long time before any extra content is needed.
Endgame
This is not going to be a raiding game. There are dungeons and I hear they are very good, very creatively handled, but they come later in the game and I didn't get to see any during beta. But there's no gear treadmill as such, it's just not that kind of a game. There are world bosses and world events too. Endgame is all going to be about WvW and structured PvP with some PVE events and dungeons sprinkled in. But it's not going to be an all-out raiding gear treadmill game, which suits me fine.
Potential Issues
The game as a whole is very polished. The main problem is that it is a little too generic fantasy. The content is very well written, very well designed and some great attention to detail. But the lore isn't going to be a strong point. Because realm loyalty is on a server-wide basis, the world itself is somewhat free of any sense of ongoing conflict beyond whatever PVE conflicts are going on you're expected to help out with. Everyone is your friend, no-one your rival. In some senses this is nice. But when you go into WvW (RvR) zones you see no names of your opponents, they are just marked "Invader" from a different server. Its somewhat faceless. And each week the server match ups change anyeay. So you won't build up the same rivalries between certain guilds and players like in DAOC's RvR. For that you will need to get involved in Structured PvP. But Structured PvP is like WoW's Arena, its a ladder based style of rivalry, it's not a realm wide rivalry.
The WvW zones are huge. This is a possible problem, because it can feel intimidating, confusing and hard to know where to go to find action (despite the conflict markers on the map). Also, you travel on foot and if you die and don't get revived you have to run back from a waypoint and most are a long way behind the lines. Sounds like vanilla DAOC? Yep, very much so. Is the modern instant gratification gamer likely to cope with this? Hmm, not sure.
GW2 is not going to be a "WoW killer" as it doesn't have a focus on raiding content. It's not going to be the "next DAOC" either, even if the WvW does really take off. It also won't tell a story as well as SWTOR or Secret World. So will it be too generic and be a jack of all trades and master of none? Possibly. But, at its heart it is a very enjoyable game to play and that may turn out to be more important than any lore or storyline.
Conclusion
Overall I'm feeling very positive about GW2. I don't think it's going to be the "perfect MMO" or anything like that. I don't even think that such a game can be made now, there's too much commercial pressure on developers to make a truly "for the gamers" game, they are always going to want to milk players finances somehow. But GW2 should at least be fun and the lack of a monthly fee means you can dip into it any time and not feel pressured to constantly play in order to get your moneys worth like in a subscription game.
Well, enough spam for now, I'll post some screenies later.