Not sure why all the negativity, some people just don’t have open minds.

Fire spells would be instantly extinguished, frost spells would be…interesting,electricity spells would be certain death and spells based on “force” (PWS for instance) would have trouble with water (does the bubble trap water inside it? does it create a pocket of air? if it lets water in, why does it stop other things?)

Underwater is just…blech. No me gusta.

The armour is a good point though

Besides, underwater combat as a whole doesn’t work as a concept. Magic really shouldn’t work there in most cases, guns and arrows shouldn’t work at all. Armour would drown you instantly, and the whole idea of combat being anything other than an ugly, unwanted affair is odd to me.

A few of the things that really grabbed my attention is that many of the enemy attacks seemed to be avoidable and are clearly broadcasted, when the necromancer is on land fighting against a centaur, she seems to be able to side step the spear thrusts, well a few of them at least. In the water when the broodmother attacks she has an animation where she pulls back before each attack, and has a special attack where she swims away before charging back and stunning the player. Later on the player has enough skills to keep that grouper fish at a distance. Though it seems a bit laggy in the video, it does seem to be even more action-orientated combat than I was expecting.

They’ve really put a lot of effort into it, putting in special skills including those to sink or float the enemy or players. It must be to do with the story, there’s one elder dragon still in the depths, and the kingdom of Orr was underwater until recently, parts of it may still be. Old Lion’s Arch is underwater, I think they made the conscious decision that they wanted the player to explore and see these old areas submerged to show the impact of the emergence of the Elder Dragons. Which is as good as reason as any because I’m quite excited being able to explore the depths.

I was torn on Vash’jr. On an aesthetic level? Gorgeous. Really they did a good job with it, and I’ve been a little cold on some of WoW’s aesthetics lately. On an actual adventuring standpoint? IMO it was annoying as hell. I do think WoW functions better on the X-Y axis. I mean, I thought some of the flying stuff was annoying(AA P3 got easier over time but it’s still not a favorite) and so on. I just did not like adventuring or combat there. Which was a shame since it, again, was beautiful. If they create a very fun underwater environment, then I’m all for it, by all means.

GW2 is one of those games that’s on my radar, but approached with cautious optimism(well-I use cautious optimism a lot these days.) I think they’re onto something, but I’m also one of those people who don’t care if a game has the holy trinity. If it does, but the game is awesome? Great! If it doesn’t, and the game is awesome? Great! If it does/doesn’t but the game is not good? Not great. I’m cautious of GW2 because I sometimes get the impression they’re trying different for different’s sake and that it might backfire on them if they aren’t careful.