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From the GW2 videos I have seen, the combat looks to be an improvement on hotkey MMOs but nothing like Monster Hunter, Blade and Soul, or TERA. I came away a little disappointed with what I have seen so far of the combat but this is coming from someone who never played the first Guild Wars and hasn't experienced the combat in GW2 first-hand. Most players in the press videos don't ever bother to dodge, so that probably didn't help. I do like that GW2 combat looks to have a nice amount of challenge and difficulty though.
That it does. ANet has gone to great lengths to ensure that even in low-level gameplay, dodging and essentially, playing "like it's PVP" with PVE mobs is the surefire way to beat them, instead of trading blows and standing there like in other hotkey MMOs.
EDIT: I used to do this often in WoW, actually. When I was bored of regular combat, I would pull mobs around for fun, and pretend they were PVP players. It was fun for me, but not exactly engaging at all. Knowing that the mobs will
actually try to kite you, dance around you while attacking, knock you back, etc is music to my ears.
If you watch the Ranger PVP video, it's pretty sick (and awesome) how the Ranger fires at his targets moving on the walls below him, and his attacks MISS because he's moving out of the shot where it was fired currently (it doesn't track).
So being a stationary ranger is not exactly great with moving targets - only by moving WITH the target and angling yourself ahead of his movement can you hit reliably - which is a lot like real life.
The same thing goes with melee, and the coolest part is if your swings are huge and wide-arcing, they WILL hit targets around you, regardless if you're targeting one.
So the game may be a target and hot key MMO, but the trappings of an action combat MMO are there, it just evolved from both ideas, really.
I love TERA's combat too - I've played in the beta weekends as well - but that game's quest system is entirely boring.
And if you love TERA's combat more, you might just have to suck it up for GW2, though I imagine the combat will feel right at home once you realize what you have to do.
A lot of problems press had with the beta weekend is they treated it like Warcraft - and they got trounced for it.
Beating on doors with abilities taking forever? Of course, you need, oh I dunno, SIEGE weapons. Questing with mobs actually taking damage and near dying after 2 or 3? Learn to realize that your skills are not just spam them and win - they are manipulations of the enemy that you have to use at the right time. Only your first attack is the one you should be hitting between setting up combos with your profession to win.
You can't walk into GW2 with the kind of mentality that "oh, I've played MMOs before, I can do this easy." It's not a clone of any other MMO. You will feel familiarity, but then it will subside after a moment when you realize, oh shit, you need to hotkey that dodge button and use it regularly. It's not an "oh shit" button, it's a "work me into your strategies" button.
