They said all this same stuff about SWG, then about WoW, then about WAR, then about Rift. GW2 is not going to be genre changeing, its just going to have all the same old stuff with maybe some new twists or polish on them. Games that truely defy convention have ALL failed miserably.
We all know where you are coming from , and we have all (vets at least) been burned in our expectations! But on the other hand where have ArenaNet ever failed to deliver ?
They haven't really done anything other than guild wars and it's expansions. Cryptic is a prime example of why not to get your hopes up too much when a company has only released one good game, look how they turned out when they moved onto other projects.
But ArenaNet haven't really moved on to other projects. GW2 is basically what they wanted GW1 to be when they started the company, only with the money and technology to pull it off. It's the same world, the same lore, the same basic principles driving them. Heck, GW2 started off as an expansion to GW1, until they realised that the old game engine wasn't cut out to handle dynamic events. BY your own argument, there is no reason for ArenaNet to trip over their own feet.
I'm sorry. It is still a themepark. All they did was add a couple of new rides. To me, from what they announced, it's still the same ol' same ol from before. I wish them all the best and I hope the gamers that play enjoy themselves. I just think the community is setting itself up for another WAR/AoC type of release. To me, it's better to go into these games with very low expectations instead of all the hype and then get disappointed when it doesn't turn out as advertised.
I really hope this is the peak of themepark mmos. That way, theres nowhere else to go except taking those baby steps back into the sandbox.
The ONLY big developer out there that has anything resembling a sandbox in the works is SOE and it's only been hinted at when Smedley told us all to stay tuned in regards another sandbox gamesother than Planetside 2. I'm not talking from small devs that might pull off an 8 bit sandbox game with mods and crap where servers are always being reset and that trash, but games with big money behind them that actually have a chance to see the light of day.
Originally posted by PosterTroll Originally posted by Foomerang I really hope this is the peak of themepark mmos. That way, theres nowhere else to go except taking those baby steps back into the sandbox.
The ONLY big developer out there that has anything resembling a sandbox in the works is SOE and it's only been hinted at when Smedley told us all to stay tuned in regards another sandbox gamesother than Planetside 2. I'm not talking from small devs that might pull off an 8 bit sandbox game with mods and crap where servers are always being reset and that trash, but games with big money behind them that actually have a chance to see the light of day.
If you want to believe Smedley, go right ahead. ArcheAge is a themepark/sandbox big budget mmo that Im looking forward to most.
I really hope this is the peak of themepark mmos. That way, theres nowhere else to go except taking those baby steps back into the sandbox.
The ONLY big developer out there that has anything resembling a sandbox in the works is SOE and it's only been hinted at when Smedley told us all to stay tuned in regards another sandbox gamesother than Planetside 2. I'm not talking from small devs that might pull off an 8 bit sandbox game with mods and crap where servers are always being reset and that trash, but games with big money behind them that actually have a chance to see the light of day.
If you want to believe Smedley, go right ahead. ArcheAge is a themepark/sandbox big budget mmo that Im looking forward to most.
I am a bit disappointed to see ArenaNet following in the Blizzard tradition of granting access to selected guilds, already creating somewhat of an elitist's club before the game has even launched. Not everyone who plays cares to be part of a guild, big or otherwise.
ArenaNet, people are already excited about the game, you don't have to give special treatment to guilds and fansites to generate interest. Your best feedback is going to come from the people who just play the game, without having a major vested interest in it.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II "People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Love Guild Wars 1. So, I am looking forward to gw2. The wait is horrible, but still may be in my fovor as i will or should be able to get a new computer by the time of release. Gw1 has become a little boring as people have vanished for a while. Guilds are hard to hold together and starting one is impossible at this point. I worry a bit about too much hype. Like other mmos that took forever to come out. Hope they dont lose the following. Would love to see old friends again.
looking forward to ARK and the old gang. hope to see you all there . ( Bru Tal Perception)
Oh, and if anyone knows who the original player named Bru Tal is let them know i would like to purchase that name from them.
I believe that with Rift, the MMO community still hadn't learned their lesson. The only thing that matters is gameplay footage, not slick trailers, not promises, not the articles on the website. From August of last year until about December it was nearly impossible to actually find Rift gameplay footage on the internet. It just wasn't there. I did find this video on gametrailers http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-10-rift/703468 and it pretty much looks like the most boring thing humanly imaginable. EDIT: Oh, I wanted to add that this video has only 8700 views or so. In my opinion, the info on the game was there but people were taken in by the great trailers they were doing and not looking for it.
At exactly the same time, GW2 is showing off The Shatterer, a midlevel open world raid encounter that scales up in difficulty as 60-100 people are fighting it in the demos. Rift released in March, we still don't even know when GW2 is coming out. Rift completely phoned in the game with tired gameplay, one leveling path per faction, uninspired cities, endless kill X quests. It wasn't until December and the negativity from the first couple beta events that they decided to go crazy and do 11th hour modifications to make the rifts and invasions more interesting in order to distract people from the rotten core.
GW2 isn't making promises, they don't even talk about anything unless it's already in the game and working. And we have hours and hours of gameplay footage to look at of multiple leveling ranges, races, cities. We'll certainly see more this summer as well. GW2 is the real thing. People who have done the research and known what to expect won't be disappointed at all.
That video (The Shatterer) didn't seem that impressive to me. I am not here to bash the game or be a naysayer.... I actually hoping for both GW2 and SWTOR to be good games that we will keep me entertained for years to come. The encounter in the video seemed like a giant zerg with little to no coordination or tactics. It appeared that everyone was just spamming their attacks. I know this may not be the case since we can only see one point of view in the video. To be honest, this is one of my fears in the whole casual grouping sense of the encounters and the lack of the traditional defined roles that you get with the trinity. I know these encounters are different in Rift, but Rift still relies on casual grouping as I like to call it and it always boiled down to a disorganized zerg which I honestly hate.
I plan on playing both GW2 and SW:ToR. I hope that neither end up being a disappointment like so many others. There are definitely some people on these forums that will go into deep/dark depression if they are the same ole same ole. I will never get my hopes up again for an MMO. I have been let down too many times in the past few years.
"A great example of this is a piece of concept art with a great Norn city that we see sitting on a massive floating glacier. "
That is a Kodan city, known as a Sanctuary. Not a Norn city. The Kodan are a race of giant warrior polar bears who primarily walk on their hind legs. I can see why you confused them with the Norn, as the Norn have the ability to transform into different animal forms, one of which is a giant bear.
I believe that with Rift, the MMO community still hadn't learned their lesson. The only thing that matters is gameplay footage, not slick trailers, not promises, not the articles on the website. From August of last year until about December it was nearly impossible to actually find Rift gameplay footage on the internet. It just wasn't there. I did find
(snips bla)
Rift completely phoned in the game with tired gameplay, one leveling path per faction, uninspired cities, endless kill X quests. It wasn't until December and the negativity from the first couple beta events that they decided to go crazy and do 11th hour modifications to make the rifts and invasions more interesting in order to distract people from the rotten core.
GW2 isn't making promises, they don't even talk about anything unless it's already in the game and working. And we have hours and hours of gameplay footage to look at of multiple leveling ranges, races, cities. We'll certainly see more this summer as well. GW2 is the real thing. People who have done the research and known what to expect won't be disappointed at all.
Sorry pal, but this sounds like the same ole' 'black&white seeing things' to me, the typical adulating about the game someone likes seeing no flaws in it at all and the hating/trashtalking on other games that aren't their faved game, seeing as good as nothing positive in it at all.
About Rift, people started to get more and more interested when they started playing the beta, and when the positive word-of-mouth started spreading more and more. Combine that with a polished product at launch and a dev team that has been working feverishly and visibly to generate an impressive amount of tweaks and updated, and it's no wonder that they managed to put themselves on the radar of a whole lot of MMO gamers, even without a wellknown IP.
What the Trion team has managed to deliver is building up a lot of goodwill with their first MMO, and that's more than a lot of other MMO companies gained the past couple of years.
As for GW2, I expect it'll be a great entertaining game, but I had also played their former game and liked it, I'm certainly not expecting a heaven on earth experience, but a fun, immensely enjoyable game nonetheless, at least for an intense couple of months. As I see it, GW2 will be a 'themepark 2.0 MMORPG', an evolution of the dev content heavy, game focused kind of design (in contrast to world focused as seen in sandbox MMO's).
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
That video (The Shatterer) didn't seem that impressive to me. I am not here to bash the game or be a naysayer.... I actually hoping for both GW2 and SWTOR to be good games that we will keep me entertained for years to come. The encounter in the video seemed like a giant zerg with little to no coordination or tactics. It appeared that everyone was just spamming their attacks. I know this may not be the case since we can only see one point of view in the video. To be honest, this is one of my fears in the whole casual grouping sense of the encounters and the lack of the traditional defined roles that you get with the trinity. I know these encounters are different in Rift, but Rift still relies on casual grouping as I like to call it and it always boiled down to a disorganized zerg which I honestly hate.
I appreciate that, it's a valid concern. I probably should have searched for and linked one that was a developer demo with voiceover where they are least talk about the cross profession combos, plant and pick up a banner, and use a mortar. My reason for linking it was just to contrast where Rift was at that time and releasing in March, vs GW2 already looking leaps and bounds ahead of Rift but still taking possibly an entire additional year to release.
Even if the video doesn't show it very well, the bosses of DEs do gain more abilities as more people arrive. We know that the shatterer encases people in crystals that heal him until they're destroyed. There's also the mortar emplacements that are dependent on succeeding in previous DEs to have available. The shatterer sends out minions to destroy them. He's got other cone and radial AOEs as well, perhaps other abilities. I'm sure we all hope that ArenaNet tunes these so that they're not irrelevant.
One video that gives me hope is this one where a thief gets 1-shotted by a DE boss about 1:50 in. That keeps me from thinking it's not just going to be a zerg. We have heard that DE difficulty has been toned down for the demos. If I remember correctly, they did set this event where pirates start burning a town to be normal difficulty and people struggled. I can't find the link, maybe someone can help me out.
It's pretty hard to find videos of people who actually remember that they can dodge or cast while moving. Even the dungeon footage that was just released was pretty underwhelming. The reviews (here is a great one) keep saying how they wiped over and over until they got the hang of it and changed their tactics around, but the video is apparently only of the story mode of the dungeons, which is the easy version that you have to unlock.
Dungeons are supposed to be the hard content requiring coordination, so it makes sense that DEs would be possibly doable with strangers soloing next to each other, but you'd be better off working together. Most other MMOs you can kill an open world mob in 15 seconds just facerolling, so it might not be appropriate to think that every GW2 encounter should be a work of grace and beauty. The shatterer is different being a raid boss, but it's still only a midlevel raid boss, and possibly toned down. They should have turned him so he'd wipe the entire demo's worth of players, that would be an awesome video.
I believe they've said that after all the professions are revealed, they're going to do a blog series on the combat itself. Hopefully we'll finally see some truly amazing gameplay footage by developers who have been playing for ages and really know the game. That would be a video that I think might finally lay a lot of fears to rest.
Still, I want to say I appreciate your skeptical but openminded opinion.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
As for GW2, I expect it'll be a great entertaining game, but I had also played their former game and liked it, I'm certainly not expecting a heaven on earth experience, but a fun, immensely enjoyable game nonetheless, at least for an intense couple of months. As I see it, GW2 will be a 'themepark 2.0 MMORPG', an evolution of the dev content heavy, game focused kind of design (in contrast to world focused as seen in sandbox MMO's).
Agreed. A bit of this game and a bit of WoDO should be just what the doctor ordered, one for when we feel for one type of gameplay and the other when we feel for the opposite.
Some people might dislike all kinds of themepark games but a well made themepark can be really fun, juyst like a well made sandbox (meaning Eve and in the old days UO). Bad made games of all cathegories is just a waste of time anyways.
How does the inclusion of things like underwater combat/adventuring make GW2 more than just a themepark?
I'm curious about this as well. Nothing in the article spoke to this point. Rift (recently) among others (EQ II - years ago) had underwater adventuring as well. So much so one could easily argue that underwater adventuring is a normal (read: not always used but neither a rarity) in the themepark formula.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
I believe that with Rift, the MMO community still hadn't learned their lesson. The only thing that matters is gameplay footage, not slick trailers, not promises, not the articles on the website. From August of last year until about December it was nearly impossible to actually find Rift gameplay footage on the internet. It just wasn't there. I did find
(snips bla)
Rift completely phoned in the game with tired gameplay, one leveling path per faction, uninspired cities, endless kill X quests. It wasn't until December and the negativity from the first couple beta events that they decided to go crazy and do 11th hour modifications to make the rifts and invasions more interesting in order to distract people from the rotten core.
GW2 isn't making promises, they don't even talk about anything unless it's already in the game and working. And we have hours and hours of gameplay footage to look at of multiple leveling ranges, races, cities. We'll certainly see more this summer as well. GW2 is the real thing. People who have done the research and known what to expect won't be disappointed at all.
Sorry pal, but this sounds like the same ole' 'black&white seeing things' to me, the typical adulating about the game someone likes seeing no flaws in it at all and the hating/trashtalking on other games that aren't their faved game, seeing as good as nothing positive in it at all.
About Rift, people started to get more and more interested when they started playing the beta, and when the positive word-of-mouth started spreading more and more. Combine that with a polished product at launch and a dev team that has been working feverishly and visibly to generate an impressive amount of tweaks and updated, and it's no wonder that they managed to put themselves on the radar of a whole lot of MMO gamers, even without a wellknown IP.
What the Trion team has managed to deliver is building up a lot of goodwill with their first MMO, and that's more than a lot of other MMO companies gained the past couple of years.
As for GW2, I expect it'll be a great entertaining game, but I had also played their former game and liked it, I'm certainly not expecting a heaven on earth experience, but a fun, immensely enjoyable game nonetheless, at least for an intense couple of months. As I see it, GW2 will be a 'themepark 2.0 MMORPG', an evolution of the dev content heavy, game focused kind of design (in contrast to world focused as seen in sandbox MMO's).
I'm not just talking out my ass here. I played Rift alpha until level 45 or 46 when I could not stand playing it anymore. Every quest hub had 3 quests; kill X mobs, loot Y items off different mobs, and collect Z off the ground. The kill quest I know got to at least 24 mobs sometimes, perhaps more. They were even more painful than that. It was very common to have additional unneeded mobs roaming around the area, forcing you to either avoid them or have to kill even more. Or you'd have to fight past and kill a half dozen of mob A to get to the ones you needed to kill, and then the followup quest would be to kill mob A. Or you'd get two quests to go into one area, and when you got back, you'd find a third from a different hub. Literally over and over and over.
Rifts and invasions were also irrelevant. Rifts always spawned in the same spot with the same 5 waves, so I started ignoring them after about the 10th one. Invasions were infrequent and soloable. If they established a foothold, just ignore it unless you needed to turn in a quest. It's not like you can actually save the world.
There was and still is only one leveling path per faction. There was a rumor they were going to wipe the characters and have everyone start over, I'd have quit on the spot rather than play the entire game again.
In the middle of November there was a thread by someone in the rift alpha forums saying they were disappointed in the game and quitting. 11 pages of players sympathized. I saved the entire thread to my hard drive.
I never played the beta, but I remember the early beta being considered a disappointment. I stand by what I said in my earlier post. Somewhere around the 3rd beta, they decided that the game really wasn't working. They dramatically upped the frequency of rifts and invasions. They started making invasions of elites and raid bosses that were never in alpha. They started putting in rifts that would create structures and some that were more like minigames. People really liked the change and reviews got more positive.
As far as I'm concerned, Rift didn't set out to make a great game, they set out to make a solid game. It's a depressing state of affairs when a game can garner goodwill and build up an IP simply because it actually works and didn't completely botch their launch. It's a credit to Trion that they did work so feverishly in the last few months and since release to really spice things up but personally I'm going to always think what an amazing game it could have been had they had a much grander vision right from the start.
The warning about the rift alpha NDA isn't up in the MMORPG rift forum anymore, so I guess it's ok to post this. If not, just delete it, my bad.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I was off-topic and should not have posted about the look of the game, but this is my example. It's Hello Kitty in 3D with textures and shadows. Races don't look like they are from the same world. Maybe those guys are aliens or something but the effect is jarring to me. Yes, I realize it's fantasy.
Wow!! I swear this game is a dream come true. I like so many different games but I can't ever really ever say that so and so is my one favorite game of all time. Guild Wars 2 truelly sounds like a game I will play for many years and I just don't see anything ever comparing to it!
I'm curious about this as well. Nothing in the article spoke to this point. Rift (recently) among others (EQ II - years ago) had underwater adventuring as well. So much so one could easily argue that underwater adventuring is a normal (read: not always used but neither a rarity) in the themepark formula.
While it doesn't answer the question of what makes GW2 more than a themepark (I'm dubious on that claim myself, and GW2 is the only game that holds my interest at the moment), the difference with GW2 underwater combat compared to Rift's and EQII's is that there is a whole nother set of skills you obtain underwater, and a new set of weapons, predicated on the fact that a real gun wouldn't work underwater, nor would real fire be able to shoot from your fingertips. As someone who flung fire from her fingertips underwater in Rift, and as a Conjurer in EQII, this is a welcome and novel change.
But it also doesn't make GW2 more than a themepark, IMO.
Comments
They really are pushing this underwater stuff. I haven't played an MMO yet that I enjoyed the underwater combat in.
I also didn't see ANYTHING that would make this "more then a themepark". It either is or it isn't.
But ArenaNet haven't really moved on to other projects. GW2 is basically what they wanted GW1 to be when they started the company, only with the money and technology to pull it off. It's the same world, the same lore, the same basic principles driving them. Heck, GW2 started off as an expansion to GW1, until they realised that the old game engine wasn't cut out to handle dynamic events. BY your own argument, there is no reason for ArenaNet to trip over their own feet.
Reality Bites. I'm only Barking
I'm sorry. It is still a themepark. All they did was add a couple of new rides. To me, from what they announced, it's still the same ol' same ol from before. I wish them all the best and I hope the gamers that play enjoy themselves. I just think the community is setting itself up for another WAR/AoC type of release. To me, it's better to go into these games with very low expectations instead of all the hype and then get disappointed when it doesn't turn out as advertised.
Power to the Sheeple
I really hope this is the peak of themepark mmos. That way, theres nowhere else to go except taking those baby steps back into the sandbox.
The ONLY big developer out there that has anything resembling a sandbox in the works is SOE and it's only been hinted at when Smedley told us all to stay tuned in regards another sandbox gamesother than Planetside 2. I'm not talking from small devs that might pull off an 8 bit sandbox game with mods and crap where servers are always being reset and that trash, but games with big money behind them that actually have a chance to see the light of day.
Power to the Sheeple
The ONLY big developer out there that has anything resembling a sandbox in the works is SOE and it's only been hinted at when Smedley told us all to stay tuned in regards another sandbox gamesother than Planetside 2. I'm not talking from small devs that might pull off an 8 bit sandbox game with mods and crap where servers are always being reset and that trash, but games with big money behind them that actually have a chance to see the light of day.
If you want to believe Smedley, go right ahead. ArcheAge is a themepark/sandbox big budget mmo that Im looking forward to most.
Arch what?
Power to the Sheeple
This game lost me with the anime-style art design of characters. Sure it's not a factor for many but was a deal breaker for me.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I think you have this art confused with another game's. There is no hint of anime-style in GW2.
Guild Wars 2!
I am a bit disappointed to see ArenaNet following in the Blizzard tradition of granting access to selected guilds, already creating somewhat of an elitist's club before the game has even launched. Not everyone who plays cares to be part of a guild, big or otherwise.
ArenaNet, people are already excited about the game, you don't have to give special treatment to guilds and fansites to generate interest. Your best feedback is going to come from the people who just play the game, without having a major vested interest in it.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Love Guild Wars 1. So, I am looking forward to gw2. The wait is horrible, but still may be in my fovor as i will or should be able to get a new computer by the time of release. Gw1 has become a little boring as people have vanished for a while. Guilds are hard to hold together and starting one is impossible at this point. I worry a bit about too much hype. Like other mmos that took forever to come out. Hope they dont lose the following. Would love to see old friends again.
looking forward to ARK and the old gang. hope to see you all there . ( Bru Tal Perception)
Oh, and if anyone knows who the original player named Bru Tal is let them know i would like to purchase that name from them.
I am quite interested in GW2 but it is a themepark, I dont see anything new that shows otherwise sorry
I plan on playing both GW2 and SW:ToR. I hope that neither end up being a disappointment like so many others. There are definitely some people on these forums that will go into deep/dark depression if they are the same ole same ole. I will never get my hopes up again for an MMO. I have been let down too many times in the past few years.
"A great example of this is a piece of concept art with a great Norn city that we see sitting on a massive floating glacier. "
That is a Kodan city, known as a Sanctuary. Not a Norn city. The Kodan are a race of giant warrior polar bears who primarily walk on their hind legs. I can see why you confused them with the Norn, as the Norn have the ability to transform into different animal forms, one of which is a giant bear.
Sorry pal, but this sounds like the same ole' 'black&white seeing things' to me, the typical adulating about the game someone likes seeing no flaws in it at all and the hating/trashtalking on other games that aren't their faved game, seeing as good as nothing positive in it at all.
About Rift, people started to get more and more interested when they started playing the beta, and when the positive word-of-mouth started spreading more and more. Combine that with a polished product at launch and a dev team that has been working feverishly and visibly to generate an impressive amount of tweaks and updated, and it's no wonder that they managed to put themselves on the radar of a whole lot of MMO gamers, even without a wellknown IP.
What the Trion team has managed to deliver is building up a lot of goodwill with their first MMO, and that's more than a lot of other MMO companies gained the past couple of years.
As for GW2, I expect it'll be a great entertaining game, but I had also played their former game and liked it, I'm certainly not expecting a heaven on earth experience, but a fun, immensely enjoyable game nonetheless, at least for an intense couple of months. As I see it, GW2 will be a 'themepark 2.0 MMORPG', an evolution of the dev content heavy, game focused kind of design (in contrast to world focused as seen in sandbox MMO's).
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I appreciate that, it's a valid concern. I probably should have searched for and linked one that was a developer demo with voiceover where they are least talk about the cross profession combos, plant and pick up a banner, and use a mortar. My reason for linking it was just to contrast where Rift was at that time and releasing in March, vs GW2 already looking leaps and bounds ahead of Rift but still taking possibly an entire additional year to release.
Even if the video doesn't show it very well, the bosses of DEs do gain more abilities as more people arrive. We know that the shatterer encases people in crystals that heal him until they're destroyed. There's also the mortar emplacements that are dependent on succeeding in previous DEs to have available. The shatterer sends out minions to destroy them. He's got other cone and radial AOEs as well, perhaps other abilities. I'm sure we all hope that ArenaNet tunes these so that they're not irrelevant.
One video that gives me hope is this one where a thief gets 1-shotted by a DE boss about 1:50 in. That keeps me from thinking it's not just going to be a zerg. We have heard that DE difficulty has been toned down for the demos. If I remember correctly, they did set this event where pirates start burning a town to be normal difficulty and people struggled. I can't find the link, maybe someone can help me out.
It's pretty hard to find videos of people who actually remember that they can dodge or cast while moving. Even the dungeon footage that was just released was pretty underwhelming. The reviews (here is a great one) keep saying how they wiped over and over until they got the hang of it and changed their tactics around, but the video is apparently only of the story mode of the dungeons, which is the easy version that you have to unlock.
Dungeons are supposed to be the hard content requiring coordination, so it makes sense that DEs would be possibly doable with strangers soloing next to each other, but you'd be better off working together. Most other MMOs you can kill an open world mob in 15 seconds just facerolling, so it might not be appropriate to think that every GW2 encounter should be a work of grace and beauty. The shatterer is different being a raid boss, but it's still only a midlevel raid boss, and possibly toned down. They should have turned him so he'd wipe the entire demo's worth of players, that would be an awesome video.
I believe they've said that after all the professions are revealed, they're going to do a blog series on the combat itself. Hopefully we'll finally see some truly amazing gameplay footage by developers who have been playing for ages and really know the game. That would be a video that I think might finally lay a lot of fears to rest.
Still, I want to say I appreciate your skeptical but openminded opinion.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Agreed. A bit of this game and a bit of WoDO should be just what the doctor ordered, one for when we feel for one type of gameplay and the other when we feel for the opposite.
Some people might dislike all kinds of themepark games but a well made themepark can be really fun, juyst like a well made sandbox (meaning Eve and in the old days UO). Bad made games of all cathegories is just a waste of time anyways.
I'm curious about this as well. Nothing in the article spoke to this point. Rift (recently) among others (EQ II - years ago) had underwater adventuring as well. So much so one could easily argue that underwater adventuring is a normal (read: not always used but neither a rarity) in the themepark formula.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I'm not just talking out my ass here. I played Rift alpha until level 45 or 46 when I could not stand playing it anymore. Every quest hub had 3 quests; kill X mobs, loot Y items off different mobs, and collect Z off the ground. The kill quest I know got to at least 24 mobs sometimes, perhaps more. They were even more painful than that. It was very common to have additional unneeded mobs roaming around the area, forcing you to either avoid them or have to kill even more. Or you'd have to fight past and kill a half dozen of mob A to get to the ones you needed to kill, and then the followup quest would be to kill mob A. Or you'd get two quests to go into one area, and when you got back, you'd find a third from a different hub. Literally over and over and over.
Rifts and invasions were also irrelevant. Rifts always spawned in the same spot with the same 5 waves, so I started ignoring them after about the 10th one. Invasions were infrequent and soloable. If they established a foothold, just ignore it unless you needed to turn in a quest. It's not like you can actually save the world.
There was and still is only one leveling path per faction. There was a rumor they were going to wipe the characters and have everyone start over, I'd have quit on the spot rather than play the entire game again.
In the middle of November there was a thread by someone in the rift alpha forums saying they were disappointed in the game and quitting. 11 pages of players sympathized. I saved the entire thread to my hard drive.
I never played the beta, but I remember the early beta being considered a disappointment. I stand by what I said in my earlier post. Somewhere around the 3rd beta, they decided that the game really wasn't working. They dramatically upped the frequency of rifts and invasions. They started making invasions of elites and raid bosses that were never in alpha. They started putting in rifts that would create structures and some that were more like minigames. People really liked the change and reviews got more positive.
As far as I'm concerned, Rift didn't set out to make a great game, they set out to make a solid game. It's a depressing state of affairs when a game can garner goodwill and build up an IP simply because it actually works and didn't completely botch their launch. It's a credit to Trion that they did work so feverishly in the last few months and since release to really spice things up but personally I'm going to always think what an amazing game it could have been had they had a much grander vision right from the start.
The warning about the rift alpha NDA isn't up in the MMORPG rift forum anymore, so I guess it's ok to post this. If not, just delete it, my bad.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Kinda have to point out that once a glacier is not attached to the land it becomes an iceberg...just sayin.
Your love of the halfling leaf has clearly slowed your mind...
well they were a subterranean race Untill the destroys foced them out of the ground, since then they have lived above ground
Wow!! I swear this game is a dream come true. I like so many different games but I can't ever really ever say that so and so is my one favorite game of all time. Guild Wars 2 truelly sounds like a game I will play for many years and I just don't see anything ever comparing to it!
You know what else is random? Hm? This:
While it doesn't answer the question of what makes GW2 more than a themepark (I'm dubious on that claim myself, and GW2 is the only game that holds my interest at the moment), the difference with GW2 underwater combat compared to Rift's and EQII's is that there is a whole nother set of skills you obtain underwater, and a new set of weapons, predicated on the fact that a real gun wouldn't work underwater, nor would real fire be able to shoot from your fingertips. As someone who flung fire from her fingertips underwater in Rift, and as a Conjurer in EQII, this is a welcome and novel change.
But it also doesn't make GW2 more than a themepark, IMO.