I played a bunch of Guild Wars this weekend as I am slowly working on my titles. 17 more Nightfall explorable areas to completely vanquish of mobs, and I will hit “I’m Very Important” from the maxed titles achievement track. This might come as a surprise to many of you who might think that I should be a “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” considering how big a fan of Guild Wars I am. But, I play Guild Wars for fun, and it is fun. When it’s not fun (and vanquishing is coming close to not), I stop playing the game or gameplay type within the game.
Although, like many of the casual hardcore club, I have kept my eyes on the prize of having a super-Saiyan Hall of Monuments simply because of the link between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. This goal has conflicted with more fun Guild Wars gameplay like the recent War in Kryta mini-campaign or the inefficient Fort Aspenwood PvP map. Other things like Eye of the North reputations have slowly been built up, my Sweet Tooth and Party Animal titles are about to break 2,000, and I’ve been hoarding diamonds for the hopeful market jump. With upcoming Hall of Monuments news, this might all change.
Continue reading ‘HoM-rizon’
Following up from the official announcement of the Guild Wars 2 necromancer, Eric Flannum, the lead developer for Guild Wars 2 was able to answer a few questions about this dark profession.
The role of the necromancer in Guild Wars was not easily defined, as it straddled the line between hexer, minion master, and even melee. The necromancer profession in Guild Wars 2 seems to be a streamlined version of the necromancer of old. In re-defining the necromancer profession, what role do you intend for the necromancer to play in groups?
Continue reading ‘Guild Wars 2 Necromancer Interview’
Yesterday, ArenaNet officially announced the necromancer profession. Of course, the fourth profession for Guild Wars 2 has been known since the gamescom demos started going public. I am happy because in Guild Wars, my main is a necromancer. I can’t say the profession is my favorite because ritualist makes the decision too close to call, but my necromancer character is my favorite.
Out of the four professions announced, the necromancer seems to have gotten more re-definition than the elementalist, warrior, or ranger. There are still supposedly two more professions based on Guild Wars professions (current belief is mesmer and assasin) and two professions that are entirely new (current belief is “paladin” and “alchemist/gadgeteer/gunslinger”), so the Guild Wars 2 necromancer might not be the furthest away from its original. However, the changes are significant enough to note.
Continue reading ‘I, Necromancer – Guild Wars 2′
There are two game mechanics that really came to light at gamescom that seem to be hitting a nerve with the Guild Wars 2 communities. I already gave my thoughts on the cooldowns for elite skills, and now I want to talk about Guild Wars 2 energy.
Before I do, one of ArenaNet’s programmers discovered a karma reward for completing an event chain in charr territory while playing with the gamescom demoers. (I have an unfounded feeling that it might be part of the “kill ten rats”-type quest with the asura. See Pat Cavit’s comment below.) The reward was donning a golem armor with new skills, and the programmer decided to stay in the golem for quite a long period of play. That’s a pretty cool reward for sticking out an event chain.
Anyway… energy.
Energy in Guild Wars is an encounter-based resource especially for higher end PvE. Each character gets her own pool of energy, and when most skills are used the skill depletes an amount of this pool. If there is not enough energy in the pool to pay the skill’s energy cost the skill cannot be used. Players can easily burn through their energy in a matter of seconds by using expensive skills or spamming skills over-aggressively, and so with energy-replenishing skills and, more importantly, the healing/energy web created in a synergistic party of 8, maintaining energy in Guild Wars is a resource mini-game. Energy ultimately sets a tempo for a single encounter.
Continue reading ‘Thoughts on Guild Wars 2 Energy’
I’ve been learning a lot about Guild Wars 2 skills from all the footage of the Guild Wars 2 demos coming in from gamescom. The skills are fairly similar to the ones in Guild Wars with a few twists and differences.
We’ve known for awhile that the first 5 skills are based on the weapons in the character’s hands. Two single-handed weapons gets 3+2 skills, and a double-handed weapon gets all 5 skills. Then the remaining 5 other skills can be chosen from a pool, similar to Guild Wars, with the exception that out of those 5 there is one elite skill slot and one heal skill slot. One thing we learned from gamescom is there seems to be no conventional auto-attack. Instead a player right clicks a skill for the auto-attack “slot” so when an enemy is attacked that skill will be repeated.
Continue reading ‘Guild Wars 2 Skills and Recharge’
I feel bad for ArenaNet that the leaked video was the first footage we saw of gamescom, but things have turned around quickly:
The necromancer is the next profession for Guild Wars 2, and from this video, my favorite Guild Wars 1 profession is looking pretty cool. ArenaNet says we will get a more official release of the profession sometime later. However, it looks like a necromancer builds up “life force” and then goes in to some kind of shadow form called “death shroud” with a new skill bar. I am very interested to see more details on this profession. Many more professional sites (with video) are popping up with gameplay impressions from the early press demos at gamescom.
The live stream of gamescom has also started! I don’t know what events will play today because there is no Wednesday schedule on the NCSoft gamescom site. However, in channel they are announcing the next upcoming presentations. An Aion presentation is first up.
And of course, the moment I post this ArenaNet puts up a new blog post with thoughts from the animators.
For the most up to date information, I would check out this forum thread or the Guild Wars 2 Guru front page.
–Ravious
A lot of people that watched the leaked videocam of a Guild Wars 2 demo (beware: poor quality and obviously a dev in godmode), saw at the very end of the video… dun dun dunhhh… a kill ten rats quest… specifically an asura needs harpy glands to make some perfume. Go kill enough harpies to get the harpy glands.
At first, I was kind of bummed just because some naysayers put down the event quite harshly. But, I thought about the differences. Crucial differences.
First, it’s not a quest for you. It’s an event for anybody that wants to help. Honestly, though, that isn’t a very strong selling point. Kill ten rats together is still… you know. In hindsight, it really had to be expected. They have over a thousand events, if not more. In a game based largely on combat, I think it would be nearly impossible to make each event based on something other than kill count or item collection. It is very unlikely that Guild Wars 2 can defy each and every convention in the MMO genre. This one just hit close to home.
Anyway, the reason to write this post is the second difference. When a player completes the quest for the asura by bringing back a handful of harpy jigglies, the world changes. Perhaps the asura starts selling perfume to players for a short time. Perhaps the asura tells each buying player that it was thanks to Legolocharr that he can sell perfume. That’s the potential I hope ArenaNet taps to make their kill ten rats events a bit more special than what we are used to.
–Ravious
A commenter at the PC blog every PC gamer should follow Rock, Paper, Shotgun with the moniker ExRTW gave a long, insightful comment on the news story about all the layoffs for All Points Bulletin (“APB”) developer Real Time Worlds. In my opinion, the saddest part is, rather than being a revelation, it really just seems to confirm everything we knew or should have known about the game. The game definitely had highlights, but the community pretty much seemed to be unified on the main problems of the game: vaporous design and silly business plan. As ExRTW notes, they were pretty big problems for a released game.
The biggest issue, for me, was the business model. It confused me even though I could rationalize that $50 for 50 hours of gameplay (not counting art time) was a pretty good deal for a fun game. I would guess most potential consumers who gave APB a free pass with some of the gameplay could not do so when they also saw “subscription.”
I’ll be honest. I still have hopes for APB. There is some great potential, but I imposed the 6-month wait (or Steam sale) rule on myself for the game before launch. Hopefully there is some energy and funding to change the big problems before the game goes belly up. Good luck to all ex-employees of Real Time Worlds, and good luck to those staying the course in the emptier halls. I hope all you guys can land on your feet quickly.
–Ravious
there will be blood
Thanks to a guildmate I came upon this interesting blog run by David Edery, who has his fingers interwebbed throughout the gaming world. The post of interest was an argument for “aggressive” monetization of games. He wrote that Western game developers were wary of Asian games, especially F2P games, where a player could buy everything from functional items, boost items, aesthetic items, and so on. Edery said that Western games had a much more tame monetization of games.
To be honest, I found the entirety of the post a little vague. He has some hyperbolic analogies such as comparing F2P games to coin-driven arcades or TV advertising, and it is unclear whether he is talking about true F2P games or something less when he talks about how some developers rope off a portion of the game for later purchase. Then he briefly brushes past the wildfire topic of “ethics [in a cash shop],” which is a too-big-for-this-post concept that really muddied his best point. He did have a fantastic point in his post “[a] game with a more diverse array of offerings is going to satisfy more people and earn more cash in the process.”
Continue reading ‘$omething for Everyone’
Guild Wars 2 has no quests. At least it doesn’t have quests in the conventional sense where each player is nearly insulated in purpose outside of specific group content. I know there have been countless occasions where an unknown player and I happened to be killing the same mobs in the same area, yet we did not group up to share the experience. I might have been almost done, not wanting to group up in case the other player just started. I might have needed boar tails, and each dead boar only has one (except when I apparently can’t find it on the carcass). I might have just not wanted to deal with another possible unternet duckwad. There was an activation energy to sharing this content, and I rarely, if ever, breached it.
Guild Wars 2 has events. Events have purpose within themselves. If I see a player killing boars, I can join in for the same purpose with the same duration and roughly the same reward. There really is no activation energy to overcome. In fact, I would guess it is the opposite. I bet it takes more “energy” to choose to ignore the player-active event. It’s like some “herd instinct” activates to make us want to play with other people. That is why, after all, we are playing MMOs, right?*
Continue reading ‘MMO Herds and Guild Wars 2′
