Welcome to today’s Bookahneer’s Geekwatch! The place about miscellaneous interesting news related to gaming (will most likely include at least one piece about Guild Wars 2 ^^).
NCSoft has gotten a new German Community Manager. Please welcome Ramon Domke! I’ve only met him once so far where he was sent to say “Hello” to me from Al’Ellisande. ;) But maybe we get to meet again during GamesCom. Germans may know him from Wartower which is a pretty big German Guild Wars Fansite (I don’t know if it’s *the* biggest. I just know it’s big).
His first day of work will be on Monday (May 14) which is also the day ArenaNet is hosting their next Guild Wars 2 stress test. You can find the announcement here. Our task in this stress test is written down in more detail here. They’re asking us to “rush the servers and crowd Tyria”. In other words: Don’t expect to get to play much. ;)
On Tuesday, May 15, Diablo 3 will finally be released. Now while I haven’t bought the game and probably won’t do it for quite some time (read: until it’s much cheaper), we will get one copy that was bundled with the subscription for a gamer’s magazine I got bookahnerk for Christmas. So we will get to play the game. In order to get back to the setting and the story, we had a look at YouTube and found a few nice videos with the cut scenes from Diablo and Diable 2. You can start watching them here (for Diablo) or here (for Diablo 2). Those videos show the cut scenes and the most important conversations within the game. If you just want to see Diablo 2’s cut scenes, you can find them here.
Also, don’t forget that the Newbie Blogger Initiative is still running until the end of the month. If you’ve ever wanted to start your own gaming blog, now is the perfect time to do so!
Nerdy Bookahs 
Even if we can’t play much it will be nice to set foot into Guild Wars 2 during that stress test. If it can help the next beta weekend to run more smoothly even better! :)
I might take the opportunity to take some screenshots of my characters that I forgot to do during the previous beta weekend…. >_>
Now I just need to do some timezone conversion so I don’t miss it. @_@
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11am to 6pm PDT (west coast North America)
2pm to 9pm EDT (east coast North America)
7pm – 2am (United Kingdom GMT)
8pm – 3am (EU, France,Germany, Poland, etc)
I don’t think 7 hours will be enough time to focus on trying out another profession (especially if there are interruptions which should be anticipated for a stress test) so I will probably just try to explore some more with my necro… I do have a ele already to level 10, and I am curious if the mist form prevents falling damage – so I might need to check that out too. If you fall far enough, and the “gravity poisoning” is severe enough, the DS of a necro will not save you… *chuckle* It does significantly increase the distance you can go though. “Invulnerable” from the ele mist form could be a major selling point for the profession for me… it may not be “flying,” but I would accept “falling, with style.”
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I’ll only have about 3 hours before I need to go to bed. So I definitely won’t get to play much. But I want to take some screenshots and… hmm… maybe run through another capital. Or just hang out in the starting zone trying to crowd it with others. ;)
Tell us about your freefall experiences then! ^^
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So…….. the invulnerability conferred by Mist Form does NOT count against falling damage… lol…
I did a spectacular jump in Divinity’s Reach, aiming to land in the middle of a group of players, and thinking this is going to be awesome – one way, or the other… turned out other… and SPLAT !!!
Fortunately, instead of taking cover because it was raining idiots, the folks I landed near just came over and helped me back up to my feet.
In other news;
The warrior profession is fully AWESOME. So much control and manipulation of the opponent, and a LOT of damage in the bargain. Axe/axe, hammer, and longbow were my favorite weapons in the early going. I also really like the warhorn and the greatsword.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been essentially playing all of my characters as close range fighters, but I had absolutely no difficulty in switching to warrior, and in fact, I thought the class was amazing. The hammer in particular is simply going to be hours and hours of fun. It does make me wonder if maybe the gaurdian profession wouldn’t be a lot of fun too… I was very apprehensive about it’s seeming lack of long range options, but after playing warrior I’m not as concerned. Definitely need to test further into higher levels to be sure of course, but so far, so good.
I still finished up the stress test on my necro though… slaughtering undead and centaurs down in the southern areas of the human lands.
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I tried out ranger and while I didn’t like it that much during the BWE, it grew on me yesterday. Of course, she’s only level 2. But still. Fun!
All in all, I didn’t do much. The stress test started at 8 our time and I was already so tired! I did check out WvW finally and took a few more screenshots but that’s it. On the other hand, I was a bit disappointed. They promised us a stress test and nothing happened apart from being stuck at 95% for 10 minutes the first time I tried to log on. Boo to them! ;)
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*chuckle*
It really was mostly trouble free – which is why I felt comfortable creating a new character and experimenting with a new profession.
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Just the next beta event weekend? I demand a smooth launch! ;) But you’re right. I’m all for helping make it better.
I also want to take screenshots of several different things that I need for another blog post. So I hope I’ll get to do that. :)
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Haha. I guess I am wasn’t thinking that far (?) ahead. That or I am subconsciously more worried about the game box getting here. Ah, international orders woes~
The screenshots I want to take are more for personal memories than anything. Kinda just to remember those poor alts who sacrificed their lives so we could test things during the beta weekends. I will try to take some good screenshots for blog posts too since I’ve seem some amazing ones around the blogosphere (including here, of course. ;) ). That however is a secondary priority.
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