[Guild Wars] The latest update out of ArenaNet has added something I like to call “Voyeur Mode”. The official name is a more boring “Observer Mode”.
That’s right, you can watch certain matches – time delayed 15 minutes to avoid abuse by cheating. This sounds interesting enough, I’d like to see more games add something along this line.
Sadly I stopped playing Guild Wars months ago, pretty much lost all interest in it. The Observer Mode is something I will check out, if only to study the technical side of it all.
Whenever a top 100 ranked guild plays in the Tombs or in a rated guild challenge, the game is automatically available for everyone to see. Other “special event” games will also be available for viewing.
Everything that observers see is delayed 15 minutes from the original game, to prevent cheating. Games become available for observation approximately 15 minutes after they start, and remain available until approximately 15 minutes after they finish.
While you are watching a game, you can chat with your fellow observers. There is no limit to the number of people who can simultaneously observe a game, but for purposes of chatting, observers are randomly assigned into groups of about 100 people.
In Observer Mode, the Map Area window displays the positions of all characters on the map. You can click on any character to jump there. Alternately, you can use Auto Camera mode to let the game pick the most interesting targets for you.
A new heads-up display automatically shows you the Health of teams that you are currently watching. If you prefer to use the Party window to view party status details and to select players to watch, you can easily switch the Party window back and forth between teams, or you may choose to view multiple Party windows and watch different teams in each window.
And in other news, ArenaNet has announced the Guild Wars World Championship 2006 with a payout of $100,000 in cash prizes. Qualifying rounds end January 1st so get cracking.
– Ethic
I briefly checked out a match between the #5 ranked guild and the #75 ranked guild at the Tomb of the Primeval Kings before work this morning. Observer mode is quite cool, I have to say. When you are in town, you just pull up the menu by pressing ‘B’ and you get a list of battles which you can watch.
I’ve been playing Guild Wars at the weekends for several months now, and I’m still enjoying it. Haven’t yet tried PvP, though.
I started WoW the other day, but it hasn’t really grabbed me yet, but maybe it will when I do a few more quests and get used to the UI.
Cool… will be checking this out in the mornin’ when I get off work.
And for Brinstar… PvP is one of the first things I did and the chief reason I played GW… go out and enjoy it!
OK I logged in and tried it out.
Pros:
-Chat! So far it seemed to have a lot of helpful and mindful people talking strategy and what not. One of the matches actually had a couple of participants in the chat talking about it.
-Easy navigation. Click a name and it auto locks on and goes there.
-Class combos are not hidden and all skills are displayed as they are used.
Cons:
-No rewind or fast forward. If you miss something … you missed something.
-Piggy backing on the first con you don’t always join in the start and miss some valuable tactics. The first set of attacks tells a lot IMHO.
On a scale of 5 this gets a 4.5 for implementation and a 4.5 for useability. Only marked down for no ability to rewind or fast forward (maybe I’m just missing the controls???).