Category: Guild Wars 2

Pure Exploration

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 Onlineâ„¢ 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

Kill Ten Rats Events

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

MMO Herds and Guild Wars 2

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

Hype

Hype has become the subject of the day, and I will contribute two repeats to the discussion.

First, You Are Judged Against Your Hype. Doing something modest very well gives you Portal or perhaps Torchlight. Take your pick on “shooting for the stars and not even delivering all the features on the box.”

Second, the example that always comes to mind on “failed to meet explicit promises” is Warhammer Online, as Zoso points out. If you ask me about WAR and I just mutter, “bears bears bears,” that is what I am talking about. Not only did developers explicitly identify a problem, identify a solution, then implement the problem exactly as described, but you were reminded of it constantly. Every time a quest sent you back to where you just came from, “bears bears bears.” Every time you killed a named enemy then got a quest to kill that named enemy, “bears bears bears.” Every time you saw a kill collector, the half-arsed version of the solution, “bears bears bears.” Then later tiers had such content/leveling curve issues that they added a bunch of kill ten rats quests as an improvement, and it was an improvement. Bears bears bears.

I am ambivalent about hype. I am skeptical, but I am gullible enough to take what people say at face value. It is not as though I am hurt if they fail to meet expectations they explicitly set; I just don’t trust the company or anyone who was identifiably a factor in lying to me.

: Zubon

Note that there is a separable issue for just doing badly. Alganon is a game that delivered everything it promised [Carson says no] badly. Earth Eternal seems to have had a similar problem.

[Update]

Guild Wars 2 Manifesto 2.0

First, if you haven’t seen this new gem from ArenaNet then feast on it in as high a def as you can muster.  It’s an updated video version of their earlier manifesto newly born for the upcoming games conventions.  The video starts out with a few of ArenaNet’s top devs giving some quick phrases on their design philosophy to shatter the current MMO mold.  The video is interspersed with in-game footage and a little concept art, and about halfway it switches over to full in-game footage showing some very impressive events.  The locations largely focus on the human starting zone and the Brand, a late game charr zone.  According to the accompanying ArenaNet blog post Walking the Walk these will be the two areas gamers will experience in the convention demos.  A deeper look at the video and the post after the break.

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Manifesto 2.0

Guild Wars 2 News (8/9)

Lots of Guild Wars 2 news has been dropping as the energy for the game ramps up to the first public hands-on demo of Guild Wars 2 at gamescom next week.  Thanks as always to the community at Guild Wars 2 Guru for keeping super up to date on any Guild Wars 2 rustling in the internet.

First up is a small note.  The guys at Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz of PvP Online were invited by ArenaNet to play Guild Wars 2.  Later on the UStream channel for PvPTV, Scott talked briefly about his play experience. One interesting point he made was how there was usually a watermelon collecting event at a farm, but when he got to the farm it was instead overrun by rabbits.  There were no instructions as to what to do with the rabbits, but with a moment’s search he found a cage to put the rabbits in.  It should be noted that he completely ignored the ongoing “large” event where some big monster was attacking and NPCs were running to defend.  In other words, he played how he wanted to with all the ongoing events.

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 News (8/9)

That New MMO Smell

Hello, gamers, listen to your MMO, now back to Guild Wars 2, now back to your MMO, now back to Guild Wars 2.  Sadly, your MMO isn’t Guild Wars 2, but if it stopped using stock Pokemon sounds and switched to something that would blow Hollywood away, it could sound like Guild Wars 2.

Listen around, back here, where are you? You’re in the marketplace with the MMO your MMO could sound like.  What’s in your ear, back at me.  They have it, it’s a farmer with a fresh harvest of that thing you love.  Listen again, the produce is now a crazy fisherman.  Anything sounds possible when your MMO sounds like Guild Wars 2 and not 8-bit audio.

Do you want an MMO that can sound like an actual living city with drunk patrons at the Busted Flagon talking about the illegal deal that went down in the alley by the bar while crickets chirped?  Of course you do!  Swan Dive – into the best aural experience of your life.  So gamers should your MMO sound like Guild Wars 2?  You tell me!

–Ravious
on a pale horse

Snappy One-Liners

One of my main concerns while watching many of the videos the Guild Wars 2 folks have been sharing are the little one-liners the characters shout when they attack. You know, things like “Take that!”. I knew right away I would get sick of hearing that sort of thing all the time. Thankfully, they agree with me. Read this quote from their latest news, Talking Heads: VO and Dialogue in GW2:

We’re also aware that there can be too much of a good thing, which is why we’ve developed a sound throttling system so you won’t hear the same combat chatter repeated over and over again during fights. Those concerned about the game being diluted with “snappy one-liners” can breathe a sigh of relief. You won’t hear quips every five seconds, and most of them aren’t smarmy in nature. That annoys us just as much as it does you.

Make sure you listen to the samples while you are there.

– Ethic

Character Tao in Guild Wars 2

“Tao” is one of the most simple [religious] concepts ever to describe, and one of the hardest to fully comprehend.  Simply put it is “the way.”  In smaller personalized chunks it can represent the way of living, the way of living, or the way of self.  Every MMO, whether I like it or not, has a player Tao.  In so-called amusement park MMOs (e.g., World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online) the way to play is nearly set in stone.  Sure there are filthy roleplayers that clog up an inn or ancient, ruined megastructure now and then, but all they are doing is forcing sandbox play into the set of preordained rides.  It’s very hard to fight the collectively defined way to play.  It’s even harder for a player to feel like the way of playing is his or her own.

Even though ArenaNet kept away from this deep waters concept, their latest blog article basically presents their view of Tao through an MMO through their systems of “personality” and “karma.”  They are systems to help define a player path, but also to let the player personalize it.

Continue reading Character Tao in Guild Wars 2

Ghosts of Ascalon Follow-Up Interview

ArenaNet more than graciously gave Kill Ten Rats a chunk of Jeff Grubb’s very busy time to ask five follow-up questions stemming from Ghosts of Ascalon.  Who better to ask than one of the co-authors  of Ghosts of Ascalon himself? Read on to hear about hints at the developer’s cut of the shadow show, more on the Deep Sea Dragon, and most importantly, thoughts on perspective.

Continue reading Ghosts of Ascalon Follow-Up Interview