Eye of the North: the Sneak Peek Weekend in review

Well, the Eye of the North preview weekend is over. All in all, I'm pretty impressed - it's a worthy expansion, and was a lot of fun. I'd like to highlight the 'expansion' aspect of it. I came across a lot of characters who weren't level 20, who were complaining about the difficulty.

ArenaNet have always been clear - unlike previous chapters, Eye of the North is an expansion for existing players. There are no new classes, and there's no beginner area to get used to the game and to level up. The moment you step in, *boom*, the action starts.

The new Title Tracks are great. There's one for the Ebon Guard, one for the dwarves (the Deldrimor Title Track) and one for the Norn. Progress on all three is boosted by doing missions, as well as talking to NPCs in explorable areas, who will give you bonuses for killing monsters.

This all gives you an added incentive to explore a bit more - find new areas on the map, new monsters, get just a few more bonus points - it's pretty compelling.

Downsides? The missions are very long, and are chained. Despite being given 3 Primary Quests, you could only progress on the one for the Norn over the Sneak Peek weekend. This one splintered into many different missions, each one leading you to a new area, meeting new allies, who then gave you more missions.

The rewards were very good, but some of the missions themselves were very long, which meant there were big gaps between settlements. This could cause problems for people who only had an hour to two to spare for playtime - you'd be unlikely to fully complete a mission in that time unless you were really rushing it. Or maybe that's just me likely to fully explore areas and have a good old nose around ;-)

The whole weekend was good fun, though. I now have a tapestry for my Hall of Monuments, and I need to decide in which alcove to hang it so I can start storing my achievements and gear.

If you missed the Sneak Peek weekend, Eye of the North hits retail shelves on the 31st of August. Keep an eye on our Guild Wars forums for more articles and information on Eye of the North.

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