More junk and stuff.
Loading hasn't been a problem at all since that initial load. It seems every day theres a 1MB or so download when I connect...probably contains that days updates (they update all the time). It also loads in the background as you play. Seems to work as planned and I haven't notice any extra lag or anything. So kudos to the GW people.
I learned about the city "districts", as they call them. See, each city has a max capacity. When this capacity is reached a new city instance is created and people entering the city will go into this new "district". Its the same city...parallel universe. You can switch between the districts with a little drop down menu and meet a whole new set of people.
GW quests are interesting. There are Quests and Missions. Quests are your usual fare. Go out, explore, kill something, find something, bring back something, etc. These are all optional, you do them for XP, the reward. or just for fun. You can also learn new spells from these so its worth checking out.
Now missions are different, as they advance the storyline of the game. Its pretty cool and makes the game almost like a singleplayer game. Cutscenes and everything.
Next bit is an explination of the first mission I was on.
As an example the first real mission I got was to investigate the Charr army north of the Great Wall (or whatever the wall is called) and report my findings. So I head out with a team of henchmen since it'll be hard to solo. Took a healer and a mage (elementalist) with me. For the most part it was simple mobs...some scorpions and these dudes called Grawl. Think...less annoying murlocs. The zone I was in wrapped around itself in interesting ways and was generally fun to explore. I came up on some gargoyles fighting a group of scorpions...which was cool to watch them go at it then jump in and clean up.
I came upon a ghost at a tomb. He was restless since grave robbers took his armor, and he asked me to get them back. There were 4 pieces of which I already found 3. This became a secondary objective of the mission so I made sure to keep an eye out for the last one. A little walking and some dead scorpions later I found the last bit and made my way back.
This is cool about GW and their instanced questing. Nothing was respawning where I had already cleared, and nothing would unless I left the zone entirely. So it makes backtracking not such a chore, grinding mobs for no reason.
Anyway, Mr. Ghost was happy and gave me a 1,000XP bonus. Sweet.
Moving on I eventually found some Charr. The Charr are the bastards that made the world suck, so we hate them. My group (remember, AI henchmen) killed the 3 or 4 that were in our way...though it was rather tricky. Almost took out the healer. We prevail and move onward.
I found what I was looking for, and they cut to a cutscene. We see a small Charr army, maybe 50 guys and a leader looking all evil and stuff. They spot us and make chase! At this point control is returned and I have to outrun these 50 marauding Charr back to the gate to warn the guards. Intense! The path I took in was blocked so I had to take another path...this one more obvious and direct. A message popped up that said only one of us needed to reach the guards and we'd all get credit for the mission. Would have been cool to have a warrior in the group hang back and distract the Charr to give the others more time. Alas, the AI is smart enough to want to save their own asses. We passed by some scorpions...no time to kill them. The Charr apparently don't like scorpions either, so the stopped and killed them for us. All I saw was the entire group of Charr bunch up where the scorpions were for about 2 seconds, then continue chasing me.
I made it back to the gate and let the guard know there was incoming bad dudes. They were overwhelmed so he issued a retreat, and that ended the mission.
Long story short, pretty damn cool. The instances allow for things to happen and play out that wouldn't be possible in a "regular" MMO such as WoW. Very cool.
