GW2 Stress-Free Test

Girl Power!
Dezi (as Shaldora), Drakin (as Myst) & Spiral
showing off our summoned shields courtesy of Pol. 

I know they call it Stress Testing cuz of the behind-the-scenes work that the devs are doing, but to me it should be called the Stress-Free Test! Or perhaps the Stress-Relieving Test? All I know is that I had a blast and the only negative feelings I had were when the servers shut down. There's always that awful moment of silence when that happens, when everyone in RaidCall sits quietly and forlornly staring at their monitors. Then someone inevitably says in a resigned voice, "Now what?"

Anyhoo, I have 40 screenshots to pore through so that should give me a few blog posts to write. I will start with a couple fun shots from today.

I am happy -- nay, ecstatic! -- that Dezi has convinced Modra & Cuge to join the game, and Dogmatichades has convinced Drakin to join as well. The three of them are old friends from other games we've played together and it was wonderful to have them chatting it up in RC again.
Modra & Cuge are from New Zealand and showed their excitement for GW2 by getting up veerrrrrrrry early to play in this Stress Test. Thanks for coming, guys!
And Drakin is a WoW addict who is now insisting that he is going to get "everyone" to buy this game and join up. Awesome!

Drakin (as Myst) was super thrilled with the combo effects in the game.
Here he is showing us how he can get a fire shield by casting an ability while running through my line of fire on the ground.
He said, "I am going to need an Elementalist around me at all times!"

It was interesting to hear the comments from Modra, Cuge & Drakin about the game as they are fresh and new to it. Cuge was impressed with the customer service, as she had written to ANet about an issue before she even bought the game and they replied to her personally. She also really liked the green arrows showing the way to your primary storyline quests, and the heart quests that "fill in" the heart when you're done.
Modra thought that the game wasn't "as pretty" as Tera, but it was still very good. He runs his game on full graphics...cuz he can! (Jealous!) He also mentioned that it's not so much the graphics or the gameplay, it's the community that he misses. Awwww, shucks. :)
Drakin was playing on a Mac and had to do something funky and technical to make the game work. He said that it was very "choppy" but hopefully that's something that will be fixed. He did insist that he lwas "loving it" and was super happy the whole time.

I'll post more thoughts and screens from the day tomorrow before I head off to the North for a weekend away at my family's log cabin. Later!

Quote of the day:
"Who killed Bambi? Oh right, I did." -- Modra