Breaking the MMO mold

Ninjitsuu

I understand that everyone is entitled to thier opinion, and that there are different strokes for different folks. However, with that being said I think there are some major areas of GW2 that have been grossly overlooked by players either intentionally or unintentionally.  I will list a few of them and then list my own take, and feel that they are things fans and haters can agree upon.

Breaking the MMO mold from the ground up.

What I mean by this is that they are changing the archetype for MMO games in several different, bold, and exciting ways. A dodge mechanic that anyone can wrap thier head around. OMG a guy swinging a giant hammer is about to crack my skull open, allow me to double press my directional key, and instinctually roll out of the way to avoid damage. Just a simple mechanic that was faster building muscle memory in  30 short hours of beta, than hundreds-thousands of hours spent on favorite toons in other top MMO's (I believe it's been dubbed "The Guild Wars 2 Effect").  People have made the arguement that you dont have enough endurance to dodge more than 2 times in 30 seconds. Well this may come as a surprise to some folks, but this developer LISTENS to player feedback, and is determined to dethrone Blizzard. Do you seriously not think that they will address the fine tuning such as, gear sets offering more endurance, increasing the base amount of endurance, reducing the endurance cost of dodging etc. Also consider this... L2P. It's a different game than you are used to.

A self heal on a relatively balanced and short cooldown. 'Nuff said. Everyone can res in combat. 'Nuff said.

Being able to cast abilities on the run. Genius. Breaking the mindset that says a mana user or any other class similar has to stand still to cast thier abilities. Meanwhile that rogue or warrior type can run around and slam people on the move. I honestly can't believe its taken this long for a dev to realize how asinine this is. People make the arguement that they have almost no instant cast abilities and that it makes a swing time for a meele character unbalanced blah blah blah... You have to look at the mechanics at face value. Though the game is very polished already, it is NOT released yet and has many things that can be EASILY adjusted in many different ways. Just think of the possibilities, instead of the shortcomings of a first real beta event. I can't fathom the fact that certain individuals out there are bashing the game when it is in beta. Albeit, a very complete, well rounded, and polished beta, but still a beta nonetheless.

Simplicity at its FINEST. I know for a fact that players are getting sick and tired of having 30-40 abilities, and either the class needs to utilize them all to become effective, or needs to put them all in a mile-long-macro and spam 2-3 keys. Where is the fun in that? Honestly after a single weekend event I can no longer tell you why the genre has held my attention for so many years. It's like coming out of the dark ages to discover the intel i7 and fiber optic interwebz (why, thank you captain bad annalogy). You have 9 keybinds (not including class mechanics on F1/2/3/4). You have to choose between weapon sets, which determines the 5 base abilities. Um, YES PLEASE?! then you have 5 utility skills that are often EXTREMELY hard to choose from. No longer do I have to watch umpteen cooldowns and have every key on my keyboard bound to something and have to buy a keypad and mouse with 30 buttons on it so I can play my character effectively. Oh yeah, and your base attack YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CAST! This is the style we have all been waiting for. ANet asked, why? and we love them for it.

Dynamic events that are fluid and found at every turn. RIFT tried. I think we can all agree that the dynamic events are a great, fun way to level, farm, unlock abilities, or gain favor points with. Yeah thats great, but where the gem TRUELY lies, is in the cohessive environment between people who don't know eachother from Adam. You can be off on your own little adventure and stumble upon 30 people fighting in areas for a common objective and WORKING TOGETHER! The want to succeed is shared by everyone in the group. But wait heres the best part,  you don't even have to be partied with the people for everyone to benefit from the event. You dont ever even need to look at your chat box, or right click someones portrait to invite them to a group because they tagged your mob (even though they did it on purpose and decline the invite anyway). They have not only taken the frustration out of events like this, but also made it fun, and teamwork oriented. Imagine that! We really ARE playing an MMO! We can work together with people outside of the guild?! WUT DO?!

The WvWvW environment was absolutely thrilling for me and my friends. And we were clearly not the only ones, based upon the throngs or blue invaders and green invaders that were beating on my castle door untill I jumped on a morter and my buddies jumped on hot oil vats and made them wish they were never born! *Panting* Is it a zerg fest in it's current state? yes. Will it change as the game progresses and players progress and guilds form and people know how /where to get siege gear? yes.  Even in it's current state, I have to say that me and my friends litterally lost ourselves on Sunday night. we spent 8+ hours in the Eternal Battlegrounds in the blink of an eye until the servers came down. I honestly cannot tell you when the last time I have completely lost track of time like that was (well, aside from for blacking out at parties). It was completely engrossing, an absolute blast, and I for one can't wait to do it again.

Making things simple when it comes to commerce and player administration. Here is where all of the day to day errands that come with MMO's is either simplified, or eliminated completely. Mobile mailbox? yes please. Mobile auction house? yes please. Account wide grouping? yes please. Account wide banking? yes please. So many times I have been logging to different toons to craft, or run a friend through a dungeon, or been selling things on the auction house and WISHED for these features that it seemed that developers neglected, to purposely piss thier fan base off. 21st century here guys, there is no need to require a person to walk across the zone because the mail icon popped up and you have been waiting for an item to sell, only to find out that it's a gold spammer. If I can get the notification of mail, I can get the mail itself. Saving time, where, particularly SWTOR intentionaly WASTES your time ( oh wait, you never saw SW: Ep 7? yeah, you know the one where Luke is on his speeder for 30 minutes getting to the fight, and then made to drive across the galaxy 3 planets away to talk to Obi Wan again? Pfft, nub).

There have been concers as to P2W, and the cash shop as a whole. Consider this, you can buy anything in the cash shop with in game gold. You can buy in game gold with real money. Gold farmers beware, players can purchase thier gold legitimately through ANet's cash shop. Fear it you annoying gold selling scumbags, fear it. Do you really think that buying siege equipment for 7 silver is that difficult for the average player, and will have a hard time competing with someone who spends 20 dollars on gems for siege equipment? Really? Do you really think that a small X.P. boost is that game breaking, and that you will be so under powered while the person that spends 20 dollars on a negligble amount of boosted XP will be over powered? Wake up. Go farm some DE's and go buy an XP boost. Done.

Eight classes that all play and feel diferently, but can be played any way you see fit. 5 races that are different from the norm, and no faction separation. No holy trinity that dictates what you do, and when. I have seen many posts over the last couple of days about character models and the look of the game overall. The game looks good. Whether you think the Norn chicks are hot or the Asuras are funny looking, or you Prefer RIFTs character appearences to GW2, or don't give a damn what it looks like. The game is not bad looking, and the nineties didn't call and ask for thier graphics back, in a F2P game. What could you possibly have to complain about. PLAY the game, don't get hung up on appearences. GW2 has so much more to offer than the appearence of your character that's going to get burned alive by a vat of burning oil anyway. Just sayin'.  Aestetics aside, just these simple things make the game stand out, and give the game a distinctly different feel and experience.

My point in all of this is, yes there are some things that need to be ironed out. But look at the features and mechanics at face value. They have broken the mold, taken giant steps in the right direction, and simplified a commonly jumbled MMO expirience into a nice, simple, clean and well thought out, fun to play, teamwork driven game. They have changed the genre for the better, and hopefully for the forseable future. This will be the benchmark for future MMO's. The question is not if Guild Wars 2 will be fail, the question is, will other developers adopt the same doctrine and be able to keep up.

Look out Blizzard, your reign is about to come to an end.

 

ArChWind

Just commented on all the excess gravel in a sandbox now I need to contemplate the excessive use of rails in a theme park?

 

Making a theme park like a sandbox = boulders in gravel

 

nuf said

dubyahite

Quite the wall of text.

Also, I don't know if you knew this, but there is a GW 2 forum!

Vercinorix

I tend to agree that new MMO games need to break away from the WoW clone model. My interest in them is directly proportional to how much any new game manages to do so.

IMO, too little effort is spent these days looking at what has gone before and attempting to learn lessons from it. As an ex WoW player, I really don't want to play WoW again, but with a few changes. Fresh and seriously innovative will attract my attention.

With that said: If you want to write an essay it pays to take the extra time to organize your thoughts and how you choose to write them down. Your goal should be to present yourself as an objective observer. The original poster did not manage to do this at all.