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’
Commenters elsewhere respond to Ravious’s post on the GW2 Necromancer. Within 24 hours of first Necromancer information, the comments note that Necromancers are overpowered and that Warriors will devastate Necromancers. It is not just that people are commenting on balance for a game they have never played, for which they have no stats, where the game does not even exist yet. It is that people have already chosen their classes and preemptively started calling for nerfs and buffs.
As scissors says, “Rock is imba. Paper’s fine.”
: Zubon
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’
Randomessa has a good account of Warhammer Online’s pre-release comments on public quests, which were entirely borne out. The public quests are more or less as advertised. You might dispute design decisions like the quick resets and having influence bars to fill (is that grind or rewarding repeatability?), but most PQ issues came from how other systems interacted with them. The main problem was population-based: you could not get past the first stage once the population lump moved past you, nor in PQs off the beaten path.
But does anyone really think that public quests are not good? When conditions are right for them to work, they work well. When conditions are not right, they limp along better than much non-instanced solo MMO content. They encourage socialization and teamwork. If you did not like particular PQs, fine. If you think the whole game is broken, fine, but this part works.
Steal this feature. Champions Online slots a PQ into the tutorial zone. If Guild Wars 2 and Rift are offering PQ 2.0, that will be an improvement from the current quest hub model (conditional on successful implementation). Are we just trying to reign in expectations about how awesome or revolutionary this is going to be, back to “good”?
Even if it is just putting sprinkles on ice cream, I like both sprinkles and ice cream, and that other place does not have ice cream on its dessert menu.
: Zubon
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
Hopefully the personal story acts as a guide through the zones because that will be necessary. Players need more purpose than pure exploration… — Ravious
He is probably right, but I wonder.
The first generation of graphic MUDs had far less guidance. I started with Asheron’s Call, which had almost none. There was no quest book. Some NPCs would trade for something in a dungeon or from a monster, and that was how most quests were structured. Some locations had stories that you could follow. For the most part, though: here, have a world, go nuts. (I could not tell you the current state of Dereth.)
We moved away from that pretty immediately. Asheron’s Call 2 was organized by vaults the way The Lord of the Rings Online™ has its epic story, although it was a ways from the now-familiar on-rails quest hub structure. A Tale in the Desert added levels and EVE added certificates to help guide people. Can I hope that Darkfall is a last sandbox without a trail of breadcrumbs?
I understand the desire for guidance. I know the feeling of “so now what?” But I also liked the Asheron’s Call feeling of deciding what I want to do tonight. It was more of scattered attractions than theme park rides. And that left us wondering what else me might find if we ran fifteen minutes in a random direction.
: Zubon
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
