Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Impressions

April 30, 2012 , , Comment

The first Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event was so much fun, much more than I dared imagine. I’m now even more excited than ever about this game coming out (I didn’t think that was even possible). After playing in this first of many beta events, I know the folks at ArenaNet will make sure they get it right! I got to play through most of the human campaign as a Guardian and delved into some PVP action as well. There are still many improvements that could be made, so I’m sort of glad that ANet hasn’t announced a release date for the game yet:

  • Many world events in the human starting areas don’t have very long chains of events. As a result, the chain of events would repeat more than once as I was exploring an area for completion.
  • The interface still needs refinement including a stack button to easily combine stacks to save space in your bank and inventory. I also noticed that the interface fonts didn’t look very good when you set the interface size to small.
  • The PVP arena was pretty fun, but needs plenty of rebalancing. The current matching algorithms still need to be refined and it was pretty annoying to be forced to change to the opposing team from your friends by the match rebalancing.

Those were the biggest nitpicky issues I’d like to see fixed in the upcoming betas. I filed plenty of bug reports with typos in addition to these issues, and I’m sure the team is working their butts off for all of us.

Thank you ArenaNet for letting us all get a glimpse of your game! You have a winner here and I can’t wait for the next beta weekend! Here are my screenshots from the beta. The landscape and character designs are absolutely stunning. Enjoy the high resolution screenshots. I hope you guys like them enough to post them on Pinterest!

Final Fantasy Distant Worlds Concert

July 31, 2010 , , Comment

This was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve always loved Final Fantasy music, especially all of the orchestral arrangements, but nothing had prepared me for the magnificence of experiencing a live performance of Nobuo Uematsu’s beloved music. I was so excited when the conductor, the renowned Arnie Roth, announced that, “yeah, actually we know a few more songs,” and conducted an encore performance of Terra’s theme, one of my favorite Nobuo Uematsu pieces, and then concluded the concert with One-Winged Angel.

After intermission, we were also treated to a special address from Uematsu to us the audience at Wolf Trap, recorded just days before the concert. He truly is passionate about his work and has a great sense of humor. Uematsu-san, I would definitely love a cookie!