Hugbees

I haven't played Guild Wars 2 yet, but I really want to. I gotta say though, from what I've seen and heard from both the developers and other players the game seems very solid. Personally, nothing that I've seen so far I disliked and I didn't have too many concerns about how a certain game mechanic would work or anything, and any fears I had were quickly dismissed once I read how it would work. But I'm not going to talk about something I've never played, at least not in those aspects, I will talk about a few things that I've seen though, that I can safely say will be awesome just looking at it.

To begin, I love how there is no more "holy trinity". I miss it to an extent, but the way they're handling it will work so much better in the end. The fact that a group can consist of any class combination and do well means you spend less time looking for groups and more time going through dungeons.

It also helps that your level scales down to fit the area that you're in, and even a level 60 doing level 20 content can still benefit from gold and karma rewards. It's also great for both the down scaled player and the group because the group can do a challenging run of a dungeon without feeling like they getting run through while the down scaled player can revisit content or even explore lower level content for the first time and have it feel he's progressing and not just breezing through it all.

The fact that leveling up can be done anywhere with no penalty for leveling in lower level areas mean you can either visit all of the races starting areas, progress in only your own race's area, mix and match, or even pvp your way up to 80. The game allows you to not just complete all of the quests, but play the quests.

Though unrelated, this is still nice. All races can be all classes. I hate when MMOs don't allow for this because it may force me to play a race/class I otherwise wouldn't play to be a specific class/race I wanted to be. It helps you enjoy your experience that much more just because you can be what you want without being subject to needless limitations for one reason or another.

Now compare all of this to other MMOs, that require finding the right combination of classes, toiling away for the right gear, reading up on boss strategies, all things that slow you down or even take you outside of the game and onto google just to be able to run a dungeon. With Guild Wars 2, enemy attacks are choreographed (and recently, they made them more so than ever to help out melee characters, because ANet listens.) meaning you're more likely to learn by doing rather than learn by reading. In fact, the timing and animations for enemy attacks could be detailed enough that you might end up having watching a video on how to dodge it rather than just reading, and you might as well just watch it in game (and you know, dodge it yourself) since it's not any different!

So what we have, is a world where we can be what we want, play where we want, with who we want, when we want. This is not just a MMO, it's a sandbox MMO. A wonderful sandbox, with the sand castles all built for us allowing us more precious time to... say it with me, PLAY!