Is Guild Wars 2 Ready?

These NPCs all just dropped dead simultaneously.

Went into the game today for a stress test. Started out being for only 4 hours and then it got extended for another hour, then another! They put up announcements in the game specifically asking players to test the BLTC, Currency Exchange and SPvP.

While it was nice to have more time to play, it was a little worrisome to think that the game is still needing so much testing at this stage. Plus, there were a bunch of bugs that we came across on our own: opening up your map in some areas caused your game to freeze up, sometimes so badly that you needed to restart your computer; certain combat skills were porting players to waypoints instead of into the fight, or else flat out killing them; NPCs were walking through the ground; Dezi disappeared for a while; and the infamous "dusty boobs" were still marring my human female's milky skin.

Dezi's hair, sceptre and cowbell, plus my Charr.

So is the game ready to be released? Are they rushing? Is this "not indicative of the game at release", as they say? I sure hope that these problems are getting fixed as I type. I pity the poor little employees slaving away over there in ANet's office, but it's crunch time, folks! You set a release date, there's no delaying now!

In spite of the bugginess, Dezi, Pol and I had a blast puttering around and playing with our skills. I made a Mesmer, as my recent readings had led me to believe I could enjoy that class. After playing it...I'm still not sure!! I don't know if I like Mesmer or not. I was actually kinda disturbed by the fact that I explode clones of myself. It was like killing a bit of my SOUL. <shiver>

Some positive things have shown up in this latest stress test, most notably the dance emotes! I was super excited to see a guy dancing when I first loading into the game. We ran around trying to find all the different races doing their dance.
We were slightly disappointed though. Apparently, the male and female dances are the same for each race, and most of the dances were not that distinctive or impressive. The Slyvari and Norn dances look like they are high on weed or drunk on ale (respectively), the Charr just stand and thump and growl, and the humans do a mishmashed routine of hip-hop-two-step-jazz-hands.
The best however, were the Asurans -- they do The Robot. Classic! Cannot beat that!

My First Dance Party!

Dezi & I showing off our sweet dance moves!

I heard mention somewhere that there would be a dance trainer or vendor in-game and we might be able to buy new dance moves. That would be sweet.

Other little fixes:

- a red bar will show under your action bar icon if that spell is out of range for your current target (used to be the number was red)

- character creation screens now have names attached to all the colours.

- a small digital clock is now on your mini-map and can be changed to server or local time

Things I'm still waiting for:

- get rid of the fugly neon green outline on NPCs at mouseover!

- play a sound when someone whispers me

- the game to be released  :)