Two years ago, Kill Ten Rats interviewed ArenaNet’s Global Brand Director, Chris Lye, who toed the curtain that would soon unveil the Guild Wars 2 marketing campaign. Since that time, Guild Wars 2 has consistently been a marketing force. For example, mmorpg.com, a major MMO news site, has pegged Guild Wars 2 as the most anticipated MMO even through other big MMO launches. I asked Chris if he would want to follow up on that interview, and he was able to bend space/time to add another hour to last Tuesday to answer. Check out his thoughts on community, the gem store, and big marketing moments below. Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Interview with ArenaNet’s Chris Lye
Category: Guild Wars 2
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.[GW2] Planting Server Roots
Yesterday was a pretty exciting day in Guild Wars 2Â fandom. The beta client went out for players to download the 12 gb or so before this Friday. ArenaNet also put up a blog post explaining how to choose and transfer to and from servers. It’s pretty simple.
Players choose a home-world. Their account (and all characters) are linked to that home-world. Players can transfer to another home-world for 1,800 gems once every 7 days. Players can also go play on other worlds as guests (not available this beta weekend), but they lose some of the rights of citizenship (such as World v. World access). Continue reading [GW2] Planting Server Roots
[GW2] Hiking the Cooperative Journey
Over the weekend I had a revelation in gaming. I played Journey on the PlayStation 3 (PS3). For those that have a PS3, the $15 for the game is more than worth it. It’s the story of your journey to the holy mountain. It’s rather gameplay light, and it is more about the experience. Given the amazing Metacritic score, I know I am not alone in believing it is an experience worth playing.
There is one catch to the game. As players go along they are occasionally joined by another player. Creative Director of thatgamecompany, Jenova Chen, likens Journey’s cooperative style to hiking. A player might notice another player behind and make sure the other player stays behind. A player might just let the other player pass, or the player might wait up so they can walk the holy path together. While players can unlock content gates for each other, it’s not like Portal 2’s cooperative mode where the two players have to be in constant communication to move forward.
Out of this simple canvas, magic happened. Each time I met a new red-robed pilgrim, there was a connection. Sometimes we played around not caring about moving forward. Other times we helped guide each other over the next hill. Of my two favorite moments, one I can’t share for spoiler reasons, I had a companion go up ahead, and something bad appeared to happen. I hunkered down, refusing to move for quite some time. Eventually I saw a bling in the distance as my companion was communicating with me via our one communicating button. He was waiting for me… right at the end of the level. He could have just moved on, but instead he had waited to make sure I would be okay. Experiences like that stand out in the noise of games where most human allies act like bots.
Why am I discussing Journey so much with a Guild Wars 2 tag? Continue reading [GW2] Hiking the Cooperative Journey
A Stable Bass
This is one of the occasional music posts, so depart here if those annoy you. This one gets the WoW tag: we have a five-person group with three in the flashy front roles, but I’m focusing on the two in the less visible roles. Rather than one song, our music of the moment is Pentatonix in the third season of The Sing-Off. You can see all their performances in this compilation, but I encourage you to pursue the YouTube links for videos from “mrduckbear11,” who posts clips from the show, because the judges’ commentary is actually useful rather than just “the nice one, the mean one, and the overly excited one.”
The Sing-Off is essentially American Idol a cappella, skipping the part where you humiliate the lousy singers. The winners in the third season were a small, young group that was mostly noted for their interesting and risky arrangements. Five people, three lead singers, lots of interesting sounds. Listen to at least a few, and then listen to a recurring theme in the judges’ commentary: their percussion and beat box are great and tie everything together so that their lead performers can shine. Try starting at 4:30 on OMG or 6:08 on the Forget You/Since U Been Gone mix. Shawn Stockman’s phrase is “meat and potatoes”: they are strong on the fundamentals, not just the flair. Compare that to Delilah, another group from season three that started with one of the best performances in the series but was eliminated after a performance with a brilliant lead but a failure of support. The lead on that is actually better than The Band Perry, but the commentary is on-point: it becomes discordant without a base to stand on. Compare to Ben Folds’s discussion of their first performance, when the support worked well.
Do I need to unpack the analogy at this point? We even have the perfect analogue with a 5-person, 3-DPS group. You need those big, shiny numbers to win, but they don’t matter without your tank and healer. It got me thinking about the offensive line in (American) football: it is an unglamorous role with almost no statistics to support who is better or worse, and the camera is on the guy running the ball, but you can definitely tell when the offensive line fails and the quarterback is crushed before he can try to do anything interesting. If you know to watch, you can see the tank quietly being a superstar, but good support is usually invisible. (Grabbing another game, a friend loves to watch StarCraft replays at LAN parties and should about how the player trying to do something flashy or cheesy gets crushed on fundamentals. Grabbing a third, I still play League of Legends Dominion occasionally; people chase for kills, but capping the points wins the game.)
Do you have a favorite fight where the tanks and the healer really take front stage, rather than seeing people compare kill counts and damage meters? Flip back to the mix video and try 2:53, where the background gets center stage, the a cappella equivalent of a drum solo. Part of the appeal of City of Heroes was how support could be strong, essential, flashy, and featured, while a damage source is a damage source, and then there is the difference in LotRO DPS compared to WoW.
: Zubon
This comes on the eve of the Guild Wars 2 launch, a game eliminating healers and tanks, and I’m nearing the end of my time in Guild Wars playing a ranger as a support class.
Time Consumption
I have been looking at my /played, and I am not convinced that a MMO has hundreds or thousands of times the enjoyment of Portal or Portal 2. There is a lot more to do, but there is also a lot more of “something to do.”
I am increasingly looking to entertainment that does not have a quota of content to fill. The need to have another episode, another hour of play, another month of subscription fees can be productive, but it also leads to filler. When I read George Martin, I really believe that he needs another 500,000 words to tell his next story arc. He is not fulfilling a contract requirement. When I see a TV show that was written to last 1 or 2 or 3 seasons, I am thrilled, because the creators had a story to tell. When the initial story is over and they are stretching for 100 episodes, maybe they found a great take on “the continuing adventures of…” or maybe they just wanted to get enough for syndication.
Despite this, I know I will continue to spend more time on things that are designed to take up time rather than continuously finding new sources of great, dense content. The world seems basically structured for that, and trying “just one” will consume as much time as twenty entertainment sources that chose to refine rather than bloat. Star Wars: TOR seems to have fallen on both sides of this problem: it is story-based, so it has a finite end point at which players quite; it is an MMO and yet another Star Wars tie-in, so it will “supplement” whatever story it has with bloat like mixing sawdust into sausage. Some cash cows attract quality talent because of their high-profile, high-paying nature, but in terms of getting the best entertainment per hour, we should probably be avoiding established IPs, avoid MMOs, and avoiding sequels.
Unrelatedly, I pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 and got my cousin’s kid the collector’s edition.
: Zubon
10 Helpful Hints for the Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event
Now that the Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event (BWE) has been announced for April 27-29, I decided to make a small guide for those coming in to a fresh Tyrian world.
1. Welcome to IN MEDIAS RES, SOLDIER!
I have seen a lot of comments about the opening scene in Guild Wars 2. Basically for 2 of the 3 racial starting areas we’ve seen, it is chaos. Ghosts popping out of nowhere in the charr area, centaurs running amok throughout a human starting area, and norn standing around their forest picking their ears while players hunt. Don’t fret! Players are practically given god mode in the opening area. There will be plenty of time and safety to fiddle with dye colors and key bindings after the opening scene. Press “W”+Mouse 1 should get you through the area. Try and learn what you can during this time, but you will get a chance to go more “at your own pace” afterwards.
2. Always Be Movin’
That is the golden rule for Guild Wars 2 combat. Don’t stop moving! Seriously, I don’t care whether you are a rifle-toting warrior or a greatsword-wielding ranger; don’t stop. If you find yourself in a red circle, then move faster. A stationary soldier is a dead soldier. Your #1 skill for each weapon will be an auto-attack so you can concentrate on moving while your character will keep trying to swing away. Make sure to use Mouse 2, or whatever, to face the enemy while you are circle-strafing. If you don’t like auto-attack then CTRL+click the skill to disable it. Be prepared to press “1” a lot after that. I would also suggest keybinding dodge instead of double-tapping movement or mouse-clicking the button.
Continue reading 10 Helpful Hints for the Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event
[GW2] Market Power!
Guild Wars 2 is on sale today. Best way to buy it, in my opinion, is definitely just going with the digital offerings from the linked site. The Collector’s Edition appears nearly all sold out in Europe, and I don’t know how long before GameStop and BestBuy close out that SKU.
It’s an interesting tactic because it is the first time I bought a game… actually purchased, and I won’t get to play it for awhile. ArenaNet promises that there will be a Beta Weekend Event at the end of April, but this is not the actual game. This is a beta test. Doing a bit of research for this post, I found it interesting that Diablo 3 (considered a rival to Guild Wars 2 by some) was also up for pre-purchase. Except there was very little incentive to pre-purchase Diablo 3. Pre-purchasing Guild Wars 2 ensures beta access and a 3-day head start. The head start alone is worth it, in my opinion. Continue reading [GW2] Market Power!
[GW2] The Late Fool’s Guild Wars 2 Contest for the Insane
There’s a definite disturbance in the Mists when it comes to the Guild Wars 2 in-game store. Until people get comfortable playing the game the theorycrafting on this subject is just going to enrage many people. Serene minds prevail here and there, but it’s like breathing less to stop global warming.
So, on this humble blog let’s theorycraft, I say. Let’s theorycraft some crazy. ArenaNet is stockpiled with people of multitudinal imaginations, and there must be white boards filled with gem store crazies. Let’s help them add more from across the internet.
What are some crazy or fun gem store items you would like? Let’s make this fun too. Whichever comrades come up with best crazy, cool gem shop items [decided by me], they will win prizes (must have valid email with entry) from Kill Ten Rats. The current prizes are: (1) a sealed Guild Wars platinum edition, (2) a never been opened Art of Guild Wars hardcover, (3) two original [“officialâ€] prints of artwork created and signed by Katy Hargrove* (4) 8 Guild Wars skill pins**, and (5) some amount of gems/gold on Guild Wars 2 launch***.
First place gets first choice, second place second choice, etc.  ArenaNet employees are not eligible; go write on your own white boards. Non-North American people, I will do my best to cover shipping costs. You might have to work with me if you win and default to (5) or help me with shipping costs.
You may enter as many times as you wish. Please one comment per entry. Important note: You are not designing an item that will go into the game, this is purely conceptual. Deadline is April 25, 2012. Continue reading [GW2] The Late Fool’s Guild Wars 2 Contest for the Insane
[GW2] GameStop Pre-Sellurchasing CE Today!
For better or worse, the only Guild Wars 2 Collector’s Edition retailer in the U.S., GameStop, has the Collector’s Edition in their system, and they are ready to start selling it now. I went to my local GameStop to pre-order the pre-purchase, which will be available April 10, 2012. Here’s why: Continue reading [GW2] GameStop Pre-Sellurchasing CE Today!
[GW2] The Speed of Gold
Since ArenaNet has ordained EVE Online to be a spiritual guide to gems in Guild Wars 2, I figured it would be worth taking a look at some of the EVE Online blog bits, which were linked to me by smarter people than I. EVE Online is all about economy. PLEX, which are  1-month subscription coupons, are traded on a market for ISK (gold). Players with a few extra bucks to spend might forego a 3D movie and buy a PLEX to turn it into ISK for their next big spaceship project. Simple economics says that the more demand for PLEX the more ISK someone can make in selling one to the market.
Moonshine-still economics says that this will also get players “farming” more ISK to get more PLEX, and eventually PLEX will be an unworthy amount of time-played value worth of ISK. That’s the way economics works on 180-proof corn mash anyway. Continue reading [GW2] The Speed of Gold