Guild Wars 2

Perhaps you'll only be able to acquire certain rare mats through raids?

This is actually a really good discussion of GW2 PvE endgame. Sounds like your "power" never increases after you level cap through gear, but your access to different skills and other variables do.

http://blip.tv/play/AYLohzIC.html

Can a mod chop off the GW2 stuff from this thread and throw it here.

Sorry for the derail.

Guild Wars 2 has an August 28, 2012, release date. I would have preferred late November, but I guess this is still a day-one purchase.

August, huh? I'll be rolling an Engineer (or Mesmer) earlier than I thought.

I preordered my copy on the 27th so I'm ready to go.

That's like a week before classes start again. I was going to buy it before, now I'm not sure if it's a good idea for me.

My SWTOR guild has pretty much talked me into picking this up. Never played the original but this looks really good.

The original reminded me of a F2P game before there were good ones. I really wanted to like it because of the art style but never could, so I'd say you're not missing anything.

This one, however, looks pretty great and supposedly plays a lot better.

I know interest in GW2 has fallen because of its protracted development time, but I'm extremely excited for the full game after playing the beta. I think ArenaNet has nailed it.

This game doesn't so much remind me of GW as Warhammer Online. I was so psyched about that game's mix of PVP and PVE but it turned out to be a total piece of shit. While everything in GW2 seems great. The PVE content in GW2 is superb. I love the structure of it with the events (similar to WHO's PQ system, but good) and the way it customizes the quests for you. The structured PVP is a ton of fun (my elementalist was dominating). The game basically gives your character everything at level 80 and lets you go nuts. Of course, optimally you'd want to play other content to get to 80 so you develop your style, but it works. It's much better than, again, Warhammer Online's unbalanced tiering system.

The WvWvW is just jaw-dropping. The worlds are huge and the game runs at a good framerate even with tons of enemies on screen (unlike... Warhammer Online). I like that I can heal myself and keep myself in the fight. There's still tons to do even if you don't want to fight other guys. You can create a character and just live in WvWvW - and while it scales your character's stats to 80, your skills are at their real level so you will grow in that mode.

The graphics and world design are excellent. It even has these fun vistas that are basically "get to here" puzzles - there are great views in the game and the characters look great. And what bothered me about GW's graphics - the scale of the world to the players was off - is not a problem anymore.

It's way, way better than Guild Wars. The last time I was this impressed with a MMO was the World of Warcraft beta. There's no need to preorder it (because there are no more betas) but keep an eye out on it at release.