Earlier this week Agile made his list of the 5 MMO’s he most looking forward to. I’m right there with him, watching how all 5 of those develop. However, there’s one missing from his list that the more I see the more exciting it looks: Guild Wars 2
The original Guild Wars has always been the game I should have tried but never got around to. It has a unique Collectible Trading Card Game-like combat system and by and large wasn’t one simple cookie cutter deck for max dps for each class. Over the 5+ years of its life, the game has quietly sold an impressive 6 million copies. It’s been built, survived, and grown on a box sales only model- No subscriptions, just periodic retail expansions to fund its servers and development. To my understading, the Guild Wars payment model is one of a kind. It would have to be considered one of the MMO world’s great success stories, if everyone could agree on whether or not its actually an MMO. Lack of a persistent world is the reason most people will say it’s not. ArenaNet refers to Guild Wars as a “CORPG”.
Until a few weeks ago, GW2 was pretty far off my radar- understandable for a sequel to a game I never tried. However the developer’s blog at ArenaNet has changed that, and every post I have read has piqued my interest more and more. Back in April ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien posted this Design Manifesto. In the months since that was posted, the team at ArenaNet has regularly posted good essays on the various ways they are trying to walk the walk and improve the MMO experience with GW2. In short: a not only persistent but living world that evolves with the choices the players make; an in-depth personal story based on both decisions made at character creation and decisions made in game; new ways to encourage socializing in game and not penalize people for grouping; a very flat leveling curve and a stated goal that the game shouldn’t be grinding to get to the fun, but fun throughout.
All of that sounded good, then they pretty much blew my mind with this:
The game looks beautiful, for starters. The devs are very clearly fans of the genre, and seem to understand all that is wrong with the pretty stagnant state of MMO design, let’s hope they can fully realize their very ambitious goals. If the game is half of what they want it to be, it should still be something special. Over the next month we should get a much better idea of how it all plays when they start demoing it at both Gamescom and PAX. I might have to make the trek to Seattle and see if I can sneak into PAX and get my hands on the demo.
G Jr.
Your review and the trailer have piqued my interests in this game. I will have to pick it up once it comes out and join Agile and you in exploring the new world.
agilegamer
ha! I was going to talk about Guild Wars 2 in my next post, and go over Rift after that. It's the persistent world thiing that gets me every time. Now, according to this video, it DOES look like a persistent world. However, is it the SAME world persistent for EVERY ONE?
It SEEMS like they're going with a somewhat similar model they had before. Where the world is persistent "for you." I can see some attraction there - where the player is the center of the game. Why else are Mass Effect, Fall Out and Dragon Age so popular? Among other reasons, the player feels like he's a mover and a shaker in the world, and in an MMO, it's just typically not the case. I mean, the truly great characters IN game are typically pretty major losers in real life - since it takes so much time, and I'm not quite sure how you hold a full-time job, have a social life and put that much time into any one game.
But, back to GW2 - that to me will be the big question. How do you have a persistent world that other people share that is impacted by your decisions? I agree, it takes a HUGE amount of suspension of disbelief in order to believe that the boss you have just slain pops right back up 4 minutes later.
Honestly, I think Bioware and TOR has the best potential for doing what GW2 is setting out to do. Just my two coppers. ;)
OregonUriel
Read the posts on their blog. When addressing grouping, they make a point of talking about area-wide events that all player in the region would be aware of and basically need to choose fight or flight. This implies that the world will be persistent for all.
It is possible they will use a phasing system like 'Wrath' introduced to WoW- something I think will start showing up in more and more games, including TOR. No one would argue that Northrend isn't as persistent as anywhere else in WoW, but there are definitely changes made to the environments based on quest chains you have completed. As such, you won't see someone standing right next to you if they haven't reached the same point or are well ahead of you in the chain.
I can see your faith in Bioware and it's not misplaced. They have consistently produced quality games. However from what I have seen, the story aspect of TOR is where the majority of the game's innovation is. Now don't get me wrong, that's all good...it's what Bioware does best. I do think ArenaNet is perhaps being a little more ambitious in what they are trying to change in the genre, however. Not just story, not just combat, not just grind, not just grouping, but all of it. At once. Whether they can deliver is a big question, of course.
The Sixth Man: Guild Wars 2
by Uriel
Earlier this week Agile made his list of the 5 MMO’s he most looking forward to. I’m right there with him, watching how all 5 of those develop. However, there’s one missing from his list that the more I see the more exciting it looks: Guild Wars 2
The original Guild Wars has always been the game I should have tried but never got around to. It has a unique Collectible Trading Card Game-like combat system and by and large wasn’t one simple cookie cutter deck for max dps for each class. Over the 5+ years of its life, the game has quietly sold an impressive 6 million copies. It’s been built, survived, and grown on a box sales only model- No subscriptions, just periodic retail expansions to fund its servers and development. To my understading, the Guild Wars payment model is one of a kind. It would have to be considered one of the MMO world’s great success stories, if everyone could agree on whether or not its actually an MMO. Lack of a persistent world is the reason most people will say it’s not. ArenaNet refers to Guild Wars as a “CORPG”.
Until a few weeks ago, GW2 was pretty far off my radar- understandable for a sequel to a game I never tried. However the developer’s blog at ArenaNet has changed that, and every post I have read has piqued my interest more and more. Back in April ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien posted this Design Manifesto. In the months since that was posted, the team at ArenaNet has regularly posted good essays on the various ways they are trying to walk the walk and improve the MMO experience with GW2. In short: a not only persistent but living world that evolves with the choices the players make; an in-depth personal story based on both decisions made at character creation and decisions made in game; new ways to encourage socializing in game and not penalize people for grouping; a very flat leveling curve and a stated goal that the game shouldn’t be grinding to get to the fun, but fun throughout.
All of that sounded good, then they pretty much blew my mind with this:
The game looks beautiful, for starters. The devs are very clearly fans of the genre, and seem to understand all that is wrong with the pretty stagnant state of MMO design, let’s hope they can fully realize their very ambitious goals. If the game is half of what they want it to be, it should still be something special. Over the next month we should get a much better idea of how it all plays when they start demoing it at both Gamescom and PAX. I might have to make the trek to Seattle and see if I can sneak into PAX and get my hands on the demo.