Guild Wars 2 Preview

The latest to offer a piece on Guild Wars 2 is Games Radar with this heavy-on-the-screenshots preview, courtesy of some hands-on time spent with the game. Snippet ahead:

As far as classes are concerned, Guild Wars 2 is taking a very fluid approach. It’s not quite the no-classes system of The Secret World, but it’s less restrictive than World of Warcraft. There are no dedicated healers in GW2. Instead, everybody has some limited healing capabilities. There is also the ability to switch weapons instantly. So you can warp from a wand to a giant mace in moments.

All of that is just single-player content though. NCsoft is also putting a ton of focus on PvP as they’re aiming to be a major force in e-sports. To that end, in PvP they’re letting to automatically play as a fully-leveled character regardless of what level you are.

The game mode we saw was similar to Arathi Basin in World of Warcraft in which two teams vie to control 5-6 points on a map. Guild Wars 2 introduces so awesome new mechanics though. Chief among them: giant trebuchets. They’re not just for attacking though. You can also use them to collapse building and create new paths through the level for your team. There’s some other instances of destruction as well. You can knock out windows with attacks so you can leap directly into buildings.