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So I spent MOST of the day cruising around as an Engineer in the GW2 beta. I have opinions now, okay? I have them!

First off, I feel like I have some attachment to my character. Between this and TOR I am all about character attachment now, wow. My character is a gadgeteer genius girl who grew up as a member of the fairly idle rich. She regrets never running away from home to join the circus, and she absolutely treasures her goggles, which let her analyze things for weakness and learn new details. This is NOT me roleplaying! This is part of the character questionarre they have you fill out at the start of the game. See?

Click here to see.

So that is pretty awesome. The character creator, by the way is ALSO pretty boss. You don't have the freedom of a Champions Online but you DO have some fairly distinct facial detail settings, the ability to tune your starting clothing colors, that sorta thing. No fat people though. No fat dudes, no fat chicks. Thanks for that, Arenanet. Can we get some of those?

So they've stated repeatedly that one of their THINGS with this game is to get the player in there doing AWESOME SHIT right off the bat, and they succeeded. I did the tutorial, save a village from a centaur attack, yeah yeah... okay. I jump in some water and swim down to see what's in there.

Right away my character pops on a rebreather, so there's no breath meter. I can chill down where it's wetter ALL I LIKE and I'm not gonna drown. Which is good, it's really gorgeous down there. Anyway I'm chilling and I notice that my combat skill has changed to "Homing Torpedo". Okay... what am I gonna try that out on? Oh hello how about this small SHARK bearin' down on me? So I homing torpedo a shark to death.

I am level 2.

I am shooting self-guided missiles in a desperate underwater struggle with the greatest predator known to mankind.

That is PRETTY AWESOME for level fricking TWO, okay?

Anyway! I am, as I stated, playing an engineer. I do NOT feel like I'm lacking for versitile moves in a fight, y'know? Like I have not even tried two pistols and that's 33% of my options here. For a while I was rocking the pistol-shield combo, which let me stun-counter incoming melee, reflect incoming projectiles, and do a variety of debuffing shots to anything standing in front of me AND set people on FIRE with BULLETS which was pretty excellent.

Recently I found a giant bayonetted musket that looks like the Warhammer Imperium has begun recruiting straight from the 1800s and just updating the tech to fit in, so I have been wielding the rifle. The rifle is interesting because a lot of the skills it grants focus on moving me around the battlefield, for example a charged shot that sends me flying ass-over-teakettle away from the target (which is cool if I do not really want to be standing in front of that dude anymore) and another move where I basically rocket-jump using a bullet somehow, because physics is for SISSIES.

Speaking of rockets I have NOT yet bought the rocket shoes in the skill purchase menu. I have bought a flamethrower, which sucks -and- blows... really, it pulls people towards me OR away from me AND I can lay down a wall of fire in front of me and suck&blow people back and forth through that all day long... and I bought a big ol' box of misc hand grenades, which allows me to not only carefully pick and choose from a flavor selection of poison, cryo, shrapnel etc grenades but ALSO allows me to just alpha-strike with the damn things by hurling a big double handful of 'em out at random.

Oh, speaking of combat. You know how when you're playing an MMO... okay, you might not know but pretend like I make sense ... you know how you're playing an MMO for the first time and you're like "Oh, an archer! I'll duck behind this cliff edge and he can't hit me!" and his arrows come curving around the wall and hit you anyway? And you're like "wtf" and the game's like "SORRY MAN" and you're like "Well I'll stand on this rock and shoot arrows of my own at that melee dude" and the game's like "NOPE RESETTIN' THIS ENCOUNTER BECAUSE HAX" and you're like "Come. The fuck. On."?

WELL GUILD WARS 2 HAS NONE OF THAT BULLSHITTERY IN PLAY, MY GOOD FELLOW.

When somebody shoots an arrow at you and you jump outta the way, YOU HAVE EVADED THAT ARROW. You are not takin' damage here today. So combat is not I repeat NOT a line of guys standing perfectly still in a line and swinging wildly at each other's hitboxes while numbers fly around in the air. Combat is made of people LEAPING AROUND LIKE NINNIES, getting flanking positions, dodge-rolling, moving to use the landscape as cover, setting up combinations of skills for extra damage and status effects, rezing each other mid-battle, it is DELICIOUS CHAOS and it basically feels like the most action packed thing ever as long as you're into this kind of thing and not, like, off playing Devil May Cry and wondering what I'm yammering about over here.

Okay but most of what I've talked about is coooombat all the COMBAT come ON sqrl get away from the COMBAT is there anything else going on?

Well, I do have that personally-tuned storyline that's a lot of fun. For example, my noble engineer has to infiltrate a fancy dress party to gather evidence that a particular minister is a corrupt doucheparade who is hiring bandits for nefarious purposes. (Spoilers, yo, but... like, level 8 spoilers. Game goes to 80. You're cool.) The thing is, at the time I was wearing the largest popped collar known to humankind, a cowboy hat, a set of like... skateboard-pad boots... it wasn't pretty. I wasn't pretty.

I looked like this, kay? It's a look that says "I am a cowboy and also wow is it COLD out here."

So what I DID was, I opened the character menu. One key. I hit "Town Clothes". One click. Okay, I am now dressed in a civil-looking outfit. I open the Dye Menu. I love the dye menu. I want to marry this thing. You can change the color of your clothing on the fly. I changed away from my rainbow clown look to a fairly neutral color scheme, and then I infiltrated that party.

See me, lookin' all prettylike in my fancy gown, totally cruising the appetizer table for spy secrets? That is CLASS. Later in the party I snuck outside and listened to a dubious conversation through a window. Don't think I -needed- to. But I could. That was awesome.

I'm loving Guild Wars 2.