Let's do this!

I never tired of bombarding my magic or sword-wielding opponents with loads of buckshot or blasts from my rocket turret.

Always make sure your hair is in place before smashing a rival server.

Your garden-variety kill and fetch activities still exist here.

No, that isn't concept art.

Since there's no need to ask another player if they don't mind grouping, you could run through an entire questline together and never say a word.

Capture the Flag is so yesterday. Now I bring down castles.

I know I felt something like this following Rift's release, but the semblance of dynamism that the rifts provided died out quickly.

Had ArenaNet not shut down the beta servers for Guild Wars 2 sometime around midnight last night, I'd probably still be playing it right now. It's that fun. Not since those first fateful days seven years ago in World of Warcraft's Elwynn Forest have I wanted to spend so much time in an MMO, and not since then have I found myself awaiting a release day with something other than a journalist's reverence for deadlines. As a person who found the first Guild Wars boring beyond belief, this comes as a welcome surprise. So far, at least, Guild Wars 2 looks like that rare game that might actually live up to many of the expectations heaped on top of it, and that means good things for both ArenaNet and the genre as a whole.My love affair with Guild Wars 2 started as early as the character creation screen. Long burned out on playing variants of mages, warriors, and rogues in MMORPGs, I gravitated to the Engineer, a support class of sorts that combines steampunk-inspired gadgetry and firearms with alchemical prowess. While the class' damage isn't where I'd prefer, I never tired of bombarding my magic or sword-wielding opponents with loads of buckshot or blasts from my rocket turret. I even liked the weapon setup -- combat abilities in Guild Wars 2 change according to which weapon you're using, which means that many classes constantly switch them out for greater effectiveness. Engineers are a little more steadfast. Using a rifle, for instance, allows me to cast a net that immobilizes my enemy; using a shield and a pistol allows me to let loose a devastating knockback. Combat still relies on lock-ons and tab targeting for the most part, but the ability to dodge attacks (by double-tapping the directional keys a la Age of Conan) and chase enemies while firing my pistol somehow made the combat more exciting than TERA's, which usually requires you to stand still to let loose a spell.Guild Wars 2's stories lack the choice-based narratives that spiced up the leveling experience in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but they're fully voiced and complemented by cutscenes at every turn. Just don't expect SWTOR's cinematic intensity; for the most part, cutscenes merely place your character opposite the NPC you're talking to. That's not to say that they're boring -- in my case, based on the options I choose at the character creation screen, a simple tavern brawl morphed into a larger story about mind control, saving the monarchy, and joining the carnival. You can always skip over the cinematics if you want, but they rarely drag on for long.Personalized stories are good and all, but they're never quite so interesting as simply roaming the land itself, thanks to the little dynamic surprises waiting around every corner. Here, ArenaNet proves that it hasn't forgotten the joys of exploration, and I usually leveled just by running in one direction and finding a new quest hub. Once while I was helping the residents of a monastery harvest fruit and kill grubs lurking about the garden (you know, your garden-variety kill and fetch activities, which still exist here), a band of centaurs charged up the hill and started attacking us. It wasn't long before a band of players showed up, and together we drove back the invading horde for wealth of experience points. It got even better. On another occasion, I was helping some players escort a shipment of beer through the Godslost Swamp, when a massive demon reared its head out of the waters to the west. After making sure the beer arrived safely (because surely that's more important), we then splashed across the swamp to join in the most epic fight I took part in over the weekend.The beast was the Shadow Behemoth, a 12-story-tall nightmare creature that swiped, bit, and called down spells that could one-shot you if you happened to be in the circles that immediately preceded their appearance. It was the closest thing I saw to a raid, and by the time we got him down, there must have been 60 players chucking spells and weapons at him, and many others ran around reviving players who got caught in the blasts and now lay begging for help in the final moments before their deaths. Had it not been for this Borderlands-like death mechanic (while allows you a few seconds to either down your opponent or get help from another player), I seriously doubt we would have beaten him. Most players learned from their mistakes after getting caught in the blasts the first time around, and we finished our struggle not for the promise of epic loot or gold or even achievements, but for the simple joy of working toward a common goal.Such a system works because, unlike most MMORPGs, anyone in Guild Wars 2 can join in on any fight regardless of who first "tagged" an enemy or who has a quest. There's no real quest journal because quests usually appear the moment you're in range for them, and completing them requires filling up bars instead of killing a specific number of enemies. Every player who attacks a particular enemy gets some kind of credit for it, which means players have an incentive to help other players instead of letting them fight alone. Guild Wars 2's attitude toward combat in the world is a very realistic one -- it acknowledges that we're all in this struggle together, and that it doesn't make sense to ignore or compete with our fellow men (or fellow hulking anthropomorphic cats).That also makes for a quiet experience. While I probably cooperated with over 100 different players outside my guild in normal quests throughout Tyria, I only talked to or heard from a handful of them. The only significant conversation occurred because one player asked if I wanted to group for a dungeon, not knowing that dungeons in Guild Wars 2 don't even appear until level 30. Since there's no need to ask another player if they don't mind grouping (so you're not competing with quest objectives,) you could run through an entire questline together and never say a word. Many do. This silence vanishes once you join a guild, but the perceived lack of conversation might make getting into one easier said than done for players without existing MMO buddies. It's one of the few cases in which Guild Wars 2's innovations might work against it in a small way.One place where players do get chatty is the world-vs-world battlegrounds, where entire servers battle each other for control of key points on a gigantic battlefield in the nebulous Mists. Even better, you can jump into these almost right after you've created your character. Participation was a little lackluster (likely due to the relatively small amount of players in the beta), but the excitement coming across from a full-scale battle in the wastes always leaves a good impression. This is more than mere player slaughter; world-vs-world PvP allows for full-blown sieges in which players build catapults and trebuchets to knock down the walls and gates of keeps, while players in those keeps can bombard their assailants with mortars and cannons. In feels much more like real medieval warfare than what we get in most fantasy-themed MMOs, and the rush of breaking down a gate and slaughtering a keep's inhabitants is one I'm looking forward to experiencing again at launch.I'm doing my best to keep my excitement in check. For one, I know I felt something like this following Rift's release, but the semblance of dynamism that the rifts provided died out quickly, and today many rifts churn without a single player trying to close them. Guild Wars 2's dynamic events aren't quite the same, since they feature widely different scenarios besides holes opening in the sky, but I can see a day when the Shadow Behemoth rages alone and unchecked, and when new players struggle to complete dynamic content that's meant for multiple players. I hope I'm wrong, and that remains a hypothetical worst-case scenario.So far, however, 18 levels in, Guild Wars 2 looks like a contender that lives up to the hype. It's polished, too -- I only discovered one major bug during my entire weekend jaunt (in which none of the slaves I freed seem to care that I was freeing them), and my framerates only sagged among the player mobs at the Shadow Behemoth. I can't think of a single setting that I didn't find worthy of a screenshot, and I like the ways in which Guild Wars 2 styles itself as a game you can get something out of whether you spend 30 minutes or six hours in it. Does that means it's the prophesied WoW killer? Not necessarily, but its mechanics take the evolution of the genre in many logical directions, and that already puts Guild Wars 2 ahead of many of its competitors. Oh, and did I mention that Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee? Wow.: MMOs are strange beasts -- I'm wary, because even a game that's awesome for the first few months of play can turn sour after you've been around the block a few times. How long do you have to play an MMO before you know for sure if it's good or bad?