Another week has come and gone … it seems like time flies much more quickly since I started writing these weekly summaries! And what a week this has been, not only has TERA launched, but there was some excitement as a long-rumored Elder Scrolls MMORPG was announced. For years, Bethesda has been denying there will ever be a TES MMO, but it seems the temptation was too sweet to pass up and we shall soon have one! I’m of mixed minds about it, I’ll admit. Several years ago I would have jumped in excitement, but I haven’t enjoyed any of the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind so the prospect of an MMO based on the current state of the series leaves me somewhat uninterested. But I’ll definitely be watching in case I’m surprised.

I was reflecting last week that we were in a sort of golden age of gaming, the announcement of a TES MMORPG seems to continue that trend. Guild Wars 2, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo 3, Torchlight 2 … a lot of heavy hitting franchises are on the horizon. I’m wondering, will we be seeing more announcements for MMORPGs and sequels for other games? Personally, I’d love to hear there was a Yakuza MMO in the works, although I suspect I’m doomed to disappointment there. But next week my enthusiasm will return – keep an eye out, I’ll be reporting on The Secret World‘s first public beta weekend! And on with the show!

• Mike has spent his time immersed in Guild Wars 2 and TERA. He gave his impressions of GW2‘s World vs. World and then compared it with TERA combat.
• Randy reported on Ensemble Online, an up and coming RTS by indie developer SemiFormal Studios. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one!
• It’s always sad to see games being cancelled, especially when they look as interesting as this one did. Pitchblack Games canceled Dominus.
• Lots of TERA news! iTZKooPA collected lots of information for those looking to read as it downloaded. There’s a new trailer, and Mike gave his first impression.
• Mordil returned, hyped up with excitement for TERA as well as his own game. Check it out and send him some encouragement!
• Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls… Heartbourne announced the announcement, Mike found the trailer, wondered why fans grumbled about it, and dug up a wealth of information. I don’t want to be intrigued, but non-instanced dungeons makes my crusty old-timer’s heart go pitterpat!

The first beta weekend kicked off for Guild Wars 2 yesterday, which gave me the chance to try out the game for the first time. If you’re a dedicated reader of Lorehound, you’ll know I’ve been looking forward to World vs World for a long time, so I spent the majority of my time there.

During this first beta weekend, only three races were available, Human, Charr and Norn. I decided to go with Norn and selected a class I normally don’t, a Thief.

I started off in a small town and immediately began trying to figure out how to get to World vs World, since it’s been said you can start there at level one. After a few mins of searching, I gave up and figured a NPC would tell me, so I began doing some quests. After a few quests and no help, I just started spamming the local chat until someone told me how to get to the Mist. Some nice people whispered me how and I was off. (Hero PvP menu)

You begin in a very small outpost that acts as an intro tutorial with three lessons. Once you complete that you are teleported to a slightly larger area with more tutorials and once done with that, you’re teleported to Lion’s Arch, a large city back in PvE. This was confusing for me because it took me a little while to realize this wasn’t World vs World. Why was I being sent back to PvE when all I wanted was PvP?

Around the area were four more portals, Blue, Red, Green and Eternal Battlegrounds. Having read up on the system, I knew those were the portals I was looking for, but I had no clue what color I was. The NPC at Lion’ Arch tells you to check you Mist Score Board, but doesn’t tell me how. I couldn’t find any game menus that showed it and had to look at key binding to find the hotkey for it (N). Once I opened the score board, I finally saw what color my server was and then entered the corresponding portal.

ArenaNet really needs to work on their tutorials for World vs World. Most of them were pretty bad, not just this one. If I was a player who didn’t know anything, I would have been completely lost.

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Call me biased, but I was under the impression that the hype surrounding Guild Wars 2 was all about its World verse World PvP system. This was the big selling point, the killer feature that would change the MMORPG genre and save us from the horrid existence of theme-park games, but after reading a post on ScaryWorld’s I’m not so sure.

I never even really considered that PvE would be the reason for some people to be excited about GW2. I mean, been there done that, right? Sure PvE is a must have and ArenaNet is adding their own features and flavor to it, but in the end, it’s just more PvE. There’s dozens of other games that have great PvE, but not one triple A title I would consider to have great PvP, with the exception of Eve Online of course.

To be honest, if Guild Wars 2 didn’t have WvsW, I don’t know for sure if I’d even try it out. So how about you? Are you guys excited for PvP (WvW) or the PvE system? and if PvE, why?

It’s been an exciting week here at LoreHound! PAX East happened last weekend, and I wish I could have gone with iTZKooPA. But he was busy stalking game developers while there, and brought back a bunch of interviews which are in the process of being smoothed out and put online for everyone to see. I’m obviously biased, but I think they’re some of the best video interviews I’ve seen and and I’ve really been enjoying watching them. I can’t wait for the rest of them to be finished up! Thanks everyone for bringing these interviews to all of us who were unable to attend!

Now that I have gotten my PAX excitement out of the way, welcome to my very first weekly recap! Every Friday, barring strange and unexpected circumstances – which will hopefully be few and far between – I’ll be summing up the week and providing links to the week’s events. So if it’s been particularly busy and things have been pushed off the front page too quickly, you can catch up here. I’ll do my best to keep my commentary short and to the point, although I’m not entirely certain how well I’ll succeed as I can be rather loquacious and pithy when left alone. But, on to the show!

• Mike summed up TERA’s Closed Beta 5 with a preview of the Velika Invasion Event.
• PAX Interview with Executive Producer, Fernando Paiz about DDO’s upcoming expansion Menace of the Underdark. Enter the Druid! And Epic levels! Watch the second part here.
• Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes entered open beta, and Mike has a limited code to use for Easter goodies for those who sign up.
• I reported a deck builder for The Secret World, created by a poster on the Secret World official forums. I’ve already had hours of fun playing with this.
• PAX Interview with Todd Harris of Hi-Rez Studios about the future of Tribes: Ascend. Learn about future content and spreadsheets. Yay, spreadsheets!
• Mike talks about pre-orders for Guild Wars 2.
• TERA’s early start is now a lot earlier. Read what Mike has to say about it here.
• Randy reviewed Tangleroot Gorge, an adventure pack in Dungeons and Dragons Online.
• PAX Interview with Christina Sims in a brilliant Vanessa VanCleef cosplay. LoreHound exclusive!
• SWTOR delayed Ranked Warzones, an expected feature of patch 1.2. Read about Mike’s disappointment and watch the trailer for Explosive Conflict, the new Operation. Also, free gametime!
• PAX Interview with Lead Producer Andy Velasquez about Neverwinter, Cryptic’s upcoming D&D MMORPG. LoreHound Exclusive!

• PAX Interview with Todd Harris about the future of MOBAs and Hi-Rez’s upcoming game SMITE.