Category: Guild Wars 2

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Guild Wars 2 Saturation and the Third Option

I think Dan over at Biff the Understudy sums up what has happened in the week of Guild Wars 2 quite nicely. I’ve read every interview, watched videos multiple times, and delved in to the forums. There is just too much to talk about. It’s like standing under a waterfall trying to fill a plastic cup. And, there will be more today!

Two quick semi-relevant points: it sucks that the extreme focus of this week is on Guild Wars 2, when it is Guild Wars’ birthday.  It feels like whatever celebration we had for Guild Wars already passed.  But, it seems Guild Wars Beyond is in it for the long haul so in a way this year the birthday was smashed flat across months instead of one critical day.  Second, most of the Guild Wars 2 interviews keep saying “in the coming months” or “for the next few months” instead of “year.”  This could go two ways: at the end of “the next few months” (1) beta starts, or (2) they go back in to submarine mode ala Diablo 3.

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Saturation and the Third Option

Guild Wars 2: Let There Be Light

The week of in-depth articles has begun with the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto.  It’s so hard not to shake your head.  The game sounds too good.  It sounds like there are too many things I have thought about for “my MMO.”  Like partying without partying (Public Quests 2.0) or player synergy:

And like the original GW, in GW2 the creativity doesn’t end with your own character. When you play with others, you’ll find that your abilities can complement theirs, and that you can discover new skill combos and strategies between professions. So if you’re playing an Elementalist, try casting a fire wall, and then see what happens when your friends shoot projectiles through it.

The systems sound great, with the first specific article on the combat systems by Eric Flannum (whose coming was foretold with the great Sacrifice). It is not all donuts and jelly. There is one thing that bothers this ol’ MMO player. “Each time you play through the game, you can experience a different storyline.” So not only are they going toe-to-toe with the storytelling masters BioWare, but they too might be making a storytelling system where players can miss things. I truly hope that they make it closer to Guild Wars Nightfall where players could decide a few paths, but could always go back and pick up the actual benefits from the path not taken. I am going to be sad if they make the story system where it’s better to read ahead and figure out which rewards (i.e., path) I want ahead of time.

I don’t want to end on a bad note though because the whole article sounds great. Environmental weapons (throwing boulders back at Elementals), dynamic world, and the basic design philosophy of a game which is not about “preparing to have fun” sound like a bunch of ingredients I want in an MMO. It’s going to be an exciting next few months, and I hope they don’t slow down the pace until launch.

–Ravious
the unreal is more powerful than the real

Interview with ArenaNet’s Chris Lye

I had the chance to ask ArenaNet’s Global Brand Director, Chris Lye, a few questions about marketing in MMOs.  Chris talked about dreams, demons, and marketing the Guild Wars series, and he was kind enough to drop a nice big Guild Wars 2 bite.  Check out the full interview after the break!

At gamer events, how do you describe your job to people?

Basically “Marketing Guy” gets the point across. Alas, people seem to have a very narrow (and dim) view of marketing – usually they think it’s just the ads. However, to do marketing right, especially for an MMO, it’s about building customer relationships – so I’m also responsible for ArenaNet’s website and the community team. Continue reading Interview with ArenaNet’s Chris Lye

Guild Wars Beyond

Gamespot has a good interview with the Guild Wars Live Team’s Linsey Murdock.  While the updates have been rolling in for awhile now, the interview helps to re-focus what is actually going on.  And, what is actually going on?  A new campaign has started titled ‘Guild Wars Beyond.’  This campaign will start to wrap up, and also advance, much of the lore of the original Guild Wars to set the stage for Guild Wars 2 with ongoing updates throughout the year.  It starts, obviously, by looking at the human side of things because in Guild Wars 2 the human nation is Kryta and the human hero is Logan Thackeray.  This first chapter gives some good answers as to how we get there about 250 years later.

It is important to note that anybody that wants to wait, for whatever silly reason, should be able to experience all these additions as well when they chose to join in.  In other words, these additions are not merely temporary stemming from some passing event.

Continue reading Guild Wars Beyond

Guild Wars 2 Alliance Necessity

There is a lot of talk regarding the mechanics leap between Guild Wars 1 and its successor.  We already know that Guild Wars 2 is changing the series in a big way with the inclusion of large persistent zones and the lack of exclamation point-type quests.  There are so many other mechanics questions remaining unanswered.  Will our skill bar be as limited as it was in the original Guild Wars?  How will professions work across all the races? How will we find events, which seem to replace quests? Ad infinitum.  These questions are all important to the enjoyability of the game and the feeling of Guild Wars.  I feel there is another far more consequential mechanic that should be duplicated to Guild Wars 2. That mechanic is alliances.   Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Alliance Necessity

Guild Wars 2 Stuff (3/22)

It’s been awhile since my last Guild Wars news post, but I think that ArenaNet slowed down quite a bit for the explosion of awesome we are expecting on Guild Wars 5th Anniversary (April 28).  Hopefully the engines will begin to pick up more speed in the coming weeks.

ArenaNet’s Daniel Dociu gave a presentation at GDC.  Unlike the many bullet-pointed presentations at the con, Docui’s presentation was filled with tons of concept art from the Guild Wars series.  It even had a few 2.5d animations like the kind shown in the first Guild Wars 2 video (my favorite parts).  Fans kindly asked – as kindly as any rabid, starving weasel can – for the presentation to be uploaded.  The Community Managers pushed to get the presentation out to fans, which I believe was not originally planned.  The presentation was slowed down with a few sounds and Guild Wars 1 music added so that all could see in high quality.  The first two parts of four have been released so far, and I expect the last two parts to be released by the 5th Anniversary.

At GDC and ECCC (another small con), the Community Managers handed out some interesting flyers.  The flyers had a picture of either a White Mantle guy with the word “Obey” or a hand holding the Shining Blade-iconic sword with the word “Dismantle.”  Each picture also had a 2d bar code, which gave the URL to a site showing the flyers pictures.  Here is the link to the White Mantle flyer and the link to the Shining Blade flyer. 

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Stuff (3/22)

More Beauty

Daniel Dociu, concept art god, had a presentation at the recent GDC.  Instead of doing bullet point powerpoint slides, he decided to blast a few retinas with some old and new concept art going by at warp speed for the Guild Wars series (including Guild Wars 2 concept art).  ArenaNet worked hard to push out a high-quality version of the video so people would be able to stop watching the cam versions.  Enjoy!

Guild Wars 2 Stuff (2/26)

Before I begin with Guild Wars 2 news, be sure to check out the huge skill balancing update to Guild Wars 1.  A lot of people worked very hard on balancing extremely popular (and therefore touchy) farming skills, buffing entire lines of skills, and working on the balance across the PvP formats a bit more.  Then Linsey Murdock of the Guild Wars Live Team hints on Facebook that the next big patch will be a content patch, and she will have to kill people off.  My guess is she might be planning to push forward with the timeline in Guild Wars.  Now, on to the future.

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Stuff (2/26)

Guild Per Thing

I am a monogamistic bloke when it comes to joining a guild for an MMO.  I dislike playing alts to begin with, but being a member in two guilds for one game seems even more like alting.  It seems discordant with my usual MMO goal of making human connections across the electronic ether.

My first MMO, A Tale in the Desert, doesn’t count because my one character could belong to as many guilds as I desired, which to me makes more sense than anything else.  Yet, it was a smaller community to begin with.  I’ll skip World of Warcraft where I mostly soloed and PUG’d anyway even if I did belong to the guild.  (I still feel guilty for taking a gold, way back in the day, to buy a guild tabard I never wore.) Then I played Guild Wars.

Continue reading Guild Per Thing

Guild Wars 2 Stuff (2/4)

The ArenaNet community managers are using an interesting tactic over at the Guild Wars 2 unofficial forum where they take the gist of a thread and quickly interview the devs themselves.  I really like that they are opening up a tad more communication, but the quick hits can get lost in the middle of a 20-page thread.  So, every week or so I’ll try and pull them from the water and comment on them here (especially since JR is slacking on the front GW2G page). Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Stuff (2/4)