Category: Guild Wars 2

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[GW2] Charr Rule

How can this iconic Guild Wars race get any cooler? Their pseudo-leader is named Smodur the Unflinching. They are badass. Possibly one of the most badass fantasy/sci-fi races ever created, especially on the protagonist side. Take the hardness and grimness of Sparta, the structure and purpose of Ancient Rome, and make them anthropomorphic, meat-eating predators.

I remember an old Ang Lee interview where the director talked about making the movie Hulk where he really wanted to play up that childish impulse to just smash things recklessly. It plays to our id, if you will, that we usually repress so we can have nice things and bigger wallets. The charr are the Guild Wars 2 race that call to similar primal instincts to dominate, to bully, and to win at any possible costs. Hey look, Guild Wars 2 is also a PvP game that will attract PvP players.

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Shades of Zoo

A zoo is a different kind of theme park, but there are many different kinds of zoos. Guild Wars 2 fans are trying to envision that upcoming game through the lens of Rift. I wouldn’t say it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but it might be better to say the arena is Disney’s Animal Kingdom versus the San Diego Zoo. Disney’s Animal Kingdom is on the borderline of being a theme park in the harshest MMO sense. The caretakers call the exhibits “stages” or “sets” (my former zookeeper wife couldn’t exactly remember), and they want every zoo patron to see exactly the same experience. On the other hand, San Diego Zoo is a “progressive” zoo, which seeks to put the animals in as natural a cage as possible without it being a nature reserve.

Like real zoos, MMOs with dynamic event systems can vary along these shades of gray as well. In Rift, events are like a calling. I drop everything I am doing and run towards the rift, invasion, or my favorite a planar tear, which I can open with a skill to start a rift. They are the exciting thing going on when the rest is filler by comparison. It gets even more interesting, in a Skinner sense, when players are rewarded more so for attacking specific colors of rifts, such as death in the latest world event Grim Harvest. I’ve seen other players completely ignore, for example, a dominating life invasion to go for that one death rift in the corner of the map. In Guild Wars 2, since everything was an event, I didn’t really care whether there were other players or how active the event was. I just went where I wanted to play during the demo because activity was everywhere.

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[GW] Cash Shop Thoughts

The last Guild Wars microtransaction released was the Mercenary Heroes item, where players can purchase mercenary hero slots to fill up with their own alternate characters. In other words, you can have a full party of, well… yous. ArenaNet even made sure to double-up the worth of all those costumes sitting in the wardrobe by making sure the mercenary heroes could be decked out in all the various regalia.

Previously I saw only unicorns and rainbows from this offering. It’s way more personal than elite. I’m the only one that’s going to care if my nearly six-year old man necromancer is in every party I use. It’s luxury, and it feel like it. This ties in with personalization; I can only analogize it to the difference between grilling a chuck steak and grilling a porterhouse. No one else cares what goes in your mouth. Finally, it wouldn’t affect gameplay… Continue reading [GW] Cash Shop Thoughts

[GW2] Tap Repeatedly Interview

Lewis B over at the gaming blog Tap Repeatedly has a three–part interview with ArenaNet’s Art Director Daniel Dociu. Lewis B took time and care in preparing for this interview, and he even takes Dociu by surprise pulling out Dociu’s quotes from decades ago. For any budding game artist, this interview is a must read.

With regards to the games, there is not that much new except Dociu hints at “next races to be introduced in future expansion packs.” But, given the treatment on the non-playable Guild Wars 2 races (recently the Skritt), amazing races are not necessarily going to be playable. Dociu also gives an interesting take on how they wanted to bring this “painterly” style to the original Guild Wars, yet the company was not ready for such a risk. The design of Guild Wars was played safe in areas, it appears.

Check out the full interview for a ton of other tidbits and insights.

–Ravious

The Essential Scatter

As fun as I had last time around in my guild’s massive Gloamwood event, I noticed a flaw. Or rather, I saw the flaw in another form. It’s a unique flaw that has been appearing more in the age of public grouping. Let us call it “the zerg.” The zerg is a group of overwhelming force of otherwise unimpressive individuals, and a zerg in an event usually emits a strong gravitational pull entrapping other players. It’s not a unique thing, as its been for as long as there has been open world PvP (if not longer). Yet, it comes across as something different, possibly fouler, when the zerg’s opponent is the system.

Near the end of the Gloamwood crusade, I was starting to get bored. I was thoroughly enjoying all the camaraderie, but the game was being distilled down to merely following the herd and firing off as many spam skills as I could before whatever was targeted inevitably popped. The system was stretching to the outer limits of its “balancing.” Yet, there were far too many players for it to respond in a useful way. This is when the system needs for players to scatter.

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[GW2] PAX Chat With Jeff Grubb

I had just introduced myself to a legend. Jeff Grubb was one of the first ArenaNet devs I started talking to at the NCSoft Meet and Greet at PAX East. He recognized my name, and I apologized for being a thorn in his side ever-seeking answers to the deep lore of Guild Wars. It was just that this man had helped build a world so deep and mysterious that lore-delvers, like myself, were constantly trying to make sense of it all. This was not the first world he had touched, as Grubb had helped build many of the most famous Dungeons and Dragons worlds. Like all the ArenaNet developers I would meet that night he bled enthusiasm, his infectious laugh hinted at the fact he kept lore secrets that would drive Cthulhu mad, and it was apparent that, like the man said, Grubb contained multitudes.

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[GW2] PAX Chats on Mechanics and Crafting

Jon Peters (“Pepperjack”) and Jonathan Sharp (“Chaplan”) gave me so much information, my simple sheet of paper with a few questions looks like five different people wrote across the page as fast as possible. There are arrows, sideways sentences, boxed off areas, and I’m not sure it will even all be able to be translated here. Whereas other developers at the NCSoft Meet and Greet at PAX East represented the content, lore, or art departments. These guys represented all things mechanics. With that there was one dominant theme in my talks with Peters and Sharp, they are still iterating on nearly every mechanical feature in Guild Wars 2. It is important to keep in mind that even things fans “know” now because of the demo, interviews, or official articles might be obsolete on launch.

I’ll give an example, at the outset, with the vitality attribute. With a blog article on the newly condensed attributes, many fans were unhappy with vitality. Toughness seemed like the cool attribute reducing the damage per hit, but vitality simply gave more health. Peters said that a necromancer, for instance, is still going to love vitality because it synergizes so well with their skills and Death Shroud. Yet, they understand that vitality might need a twist, similar to how the precision attribute garners crit effects. If toughness is the straightforward “reduce damage,” and vitality gets that twist, then the pair will more closely mirror power vs. precision. This is not to say that vitality will definitely change, but it is important to note that even the most basic mechanics are still being viewed with a careful eye.

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[GW2] PAX East Dev Asides

I talked to so many ArenaNet developers at PAX East. Sadly there were a few I did not get to, but the ones I did talk to were more than happy to discuss their job. I would like to thank all the developers again. Anyway, this post is dedicated to all those discussions I had. There will be two other posts regarding lore and specific mechanics, but this one is for all the other tidbits. Fair warning: I don’t have anything exclusive, mind-blowing, I-can’t-believe-you-got-a-dev-to-say-that, but these tidbits are interesting enough for me. I hope you enjoy.

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[GW2] Demo Thoughts

This was it. I was at the opening of the NCSoft Meet and Greet party at PAX East 2011, and I would be playing Guild Wars 2 for the first time ever. After this there would be no going back. I was almost unsure how to tackle the demo. Some players were going to go in like data miners and suck as much marrow from the demo’s bones as they could. Others would try and explore to the farthest reaches the demo would allow. Others would just play, perhaps not realizing how deep the rabbit hole went. Should I go in as a journalist, as a fan, as a player? Should I watch the cinematics I had already seen? Should I carefully choose my character’s set up? I had no idea as I clicked the “start demo” button.

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[GW2] A Crafting Recipe, Revised

ArenaNet came back and clarified some of the mis-assumptions and issues people are having with the crafting system reveal in two forum posts, which Vulturion graciously copied in to the comment’s on yesterday’s post. First, given that so many ArenaNet employees were mid-flight to PAX East, or preparing for the journey, it was pretty awesome of ArenaNet to so quickly respond. In lieu of the response, I want to hedgingly retract my position from calling the discovery system to learn recipes “superfluous.” I am still going to grill whoever gives me a demo at the NCSoft Meet and Greet, but at least I see where ArenaNet is trying to come from.

Stupidly enough, I think they added the discovery system not so much for their initial reason, but for fun. I mean really, how often do you compare your recipe list with another crafter’s to reinforce your self-worth as a crafter? You know what’s scientifically proven to be fun? Surprising rewards. Mess around with a few materials, and surprise, you found a new recipe!

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