All together now!

It felt like a lonely game, despite efforts to initiate conversation on

my own.

Does a lifeless wasteland await after the level cap?

That still won't be enough to counter inevitable claims of boredom once a large number of players reach the level cap.

Do I look like a tank to you?

The problem is that we were dying.

A lot.

Death in here is even more certain than taxes.

The backlash could be catastrophic. I've already witnessed the problem in microcosm.

Combat: now with ghost bears.

I'm just not convinced that combat's all that "dynamic" or truly different compared to other MMORPGs.

It's a little hard to believe that the long wait's almost over. Afterof enduring messianic proclamations from a wildly devoted fanbase about how Guild Wars 2 is going to change the entire MMORPG scene, those of us who preordered ArenaNet's wunderkind get to see if it lives up to the hype this Saturday. I won't deny I'm excited. I haven't looked forward to playing an MMORPG with this level of excitement in years, and I've just finished updating my client so I can jump in as soon as it goes live. But I've been burned before -- no man knows the future, and as with all games of this size and complexity, there are literally a million things that could go wrong. In the spirit of objectivity and healthy skepticism, I present a few of my few lingering concerns:In theory, one of the greatest things about Guild Wars 2 is the way it encourages cooperation by getting rid of the whole "tagging" phenomenon. In other words, if someone outside of your group has already started combat with an enemy, you can still attack that enemy and get credit for your efforts without being grouped with the guy who landed the first blow. This is big. In its best moments, it ditches the anger and frustration that inevitably occurs when some jerk swoops in and kills the named NPC you've been fighting your way to for five minutes.The problem is that, in the beta, this system often creates a bizarre environment in which few people ever talk to one another while questing. Sure, there's usually some chatter going on in the general channels, but I've seen very little of the banter that usually takes place between players in the same questing area when they choose to group instead of fighting over the same enemies. It was only when grouping with some players who weren't aware that Guild Wars 2 doesn't have low-level dungeons that I started to make some friends outside of my own little clique. I've loved my time with Guild Wars 2, but I can't deny that it felt like a lonely game, despite efforts to initiate conversation on my own.This extends to Guild Wars 2's multiple-guild system, which allows you to be a member of multiple guilds at once. This should be a good thing. Over the years, I've amassed a diverse group of MMO friends: some are into hardcore raiding content, some are into player-versus player-combat, and some are into roleplay. I say with little hesitation that most of the guys from one group would never get along with players from the other two, and supposedly such a system would allow me to participate in events with each of them without excluding one of the others. Yet at the same time, I worry that it will harm the little sense of a tight community that exists in contemporary MMORPGs. Take World of Warcraft -- the server community there has been watered down with cross-server group finders and the like, but it's still possible to have a strong sense of allegiance there with a guild. Guild Wars 2 may not.It's long been known that Guild Wars 2 isn't designed as a raider's game, but I worry that it'll suffer something of the same backlash as Star Wars: The Old Republic after a good chunk of its players reached the level cap in a matter of days, cleared all the content, and then started complaining that there wasn't enough content to keep them interested. We already have a good idea of what Guild Wars 2's end game is supposed to be: you can either PvP, run challenging "exploration" mode dungeons, or go back and experience questing content you missed (and because of the level scaling, it won't be stupidly easy, either). In some ways, this is where Guild Wars 2's buy-to-play model shines the brightest -- since there's no subscription, you won't feel like you're wasting your money if you don't play for a few days. Yet that still won't be enough to counter inevitable claims of boredom once a large number of players reach the level cap, and Guild Wars 2's future thus hinges on how well ArenaNet handles these complaints a month or two after launch.The "trinity" of tanks, healers, and damage dealers (or "DPS" to the in-crowd) has been a staple of the MMORPG genre from the beginning, especially as regards PvE combat. Tanks soak up the damage and keep the enemy's attention, healers heal the tanks and occasionally the DPS, and the DPS bring the pain. It's a comfortable system, but it's also limiting since you're stuck with a certain set of gear and you're comparatively powerless once a key member of the trinity dies.Ditching it, as Guild Wars 2 does, thus sounds good, but I find myself wondering how well it works in practice. When I visited ArenaNet a couple of months ago, I had a chance to sit down with some of the developers and play through the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon that most players will get to encounter at level 30. The dungeon itself was a memorable experience, full of surprise experiences that demonstrated that Guild Wars 2's dynamic events even extend to the dungeons on occasion. The problem is that we were dying. A lot. We were all having fun, sure, but I realized I was with a group of people who'd played this game almostfor years now, and yet we could barely make it to the first boss without suffering several wipes. Eventually I (playing an Engineer at the time) just started healing everyone as best as I could, thus settling back into something resembling the traditional trinity setup.If that's what Guild Wars 2's dungeons look like with the people who made them playing, then I tremble to imagine what dungeon runs will be like with the usual ragtag group of random players -- especially if they're not communicating. With the traditional trinity, two of three good players in a group of five can often carry the bad apples in a game like Rift; in its absence, dungeon runs become chaotic, random affairs that I'm sure will erupt into name-calling, group-ditching, and all the other infamous downsides to MMO gaming once Guild Wars 2 gains momentum. And since that's the only real structured activity for PvE players to participate in aside from world bosses, ArenaNet might lose a lot of players who want something to do besides the PvP options. (I find them entertaining, but not everyone will.) And in my experience, that's going to be a very high number indeed.In its current form, Guild Wars 2 already looks like it's on track to be one of the most polished MMORPGs to hit the market in recent years, and playing in the last couple of beta weekend events felt like playing in a fully completed release. Yet one highly anticipated feature still hasn't been implemented, and that's the ability to "guest" on another server that you're not a member of. It's deceptively simple: a player from another server invites you over, and you can quest with them temporarily.It's a feature that I've wanted to try many times, since my friends and I could never decide which servers we were going to play on before a beta event, but it's never made its way onto any of the tests. ArenaNet has remedied this somewhat by allowing free server transfers at launch for the time being, but if they try to implement it during the live game and it goes poorly, the backlash could be catastrophic. I've already witnessed the problem in microcosm when at least three dungeon groups I was in couldn't get a player from another instance of the same zone in with us to start the dungeon, and eventually the groups broke up with sour epithets hurled at ArenaNet and one overly dramatic claim of canceling a preorder. That bitterness, I fear, will explode on a massive scale if the guesting system fails in the same way.According to ArenaNet's own site, Guild Wars 2's combat "is flexible, fast-paced, and dynamic. You'll achieve victory through timing, dodging, and quick thinking, not immobile number-crunching." And it's true that there is plenty of dodging and timing going around, but after several months of beta testing, I'm just not convinced that it's all that "dynamic" or truly different compared to other MMORPGs. For one, I just finished leveling up a Hunter for a new main in World of Warcraft, and while there's no real dodge mechanic in WoW, his Disengage ability allows him to jump out of the way of harmful area-of-effect spells or melee strikes in much the same way that characters in Guild Wars 2 avoid attacks. There's also plenty of timing in involved in WoW, in that I need to use Silencing Shot at just the right second to stop an enemy spellcast while playing as Markmanship, and while specced as Survival, I need to time my Explosive Shot procs so I'm not wasting them by using them at the same time.Playing as a Ranger in Guild Wars 2 (at least with a bow) feels enough like playing a Hunter in World of Warcraft that ArenaNet's combat system doesn't feel as innovative or "dynamic" as it may initially seem. The class itself differs greatly from its WoW counterpart in its use of buffs, melee weapons, and instant shifts of weapons, but even so most attacks still revolve around tabbing and locking onto a target and activating abilities. This is more than enough to keep me happy -- I've never really had a problem with tab-targeting in the first place -- but players expecting the same kind of mobile, crosshair-based action combat that they'll find in TERA will be disappointed. This might be enough to chase away players who avoid games like Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and The Secret World for the same reason: it feels too much like WoW.Of course, none of these things are certain. As with every game launch, there are a terrifying number of "what ifs" that'll remain unanswered right up until we start up the final product and jump in to explore. I'll be in there from the first moments on, so you can expect to see me put each of these fears to the test during the review process.: Nonsense! We all know that Guild Wars 2 will be practically perfect in every way. What could possibly go wrong? Ducks. Is anything in particular worrying you about GW2 that we should check up on at launch?