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[Column] Guild Wars 2: Awesome Design
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The epic battles, amazing visuals, and compelling story all make Guild Wars 2 so much fun. ArenaNet did such a great job designing this MMO, but the real beauty of it didn't hit me till earlier last week. Guild Wars 2 is the only game that's designed in a way that I can not only get some of my friends to play, but also some of my family as well. I finally have a game that I can play with everyone that I care about at the same time!
Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: Awesome Design.
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I have some friends that I’ve been playing games with for years and years. That group is growing now thanks to Guild Wars 2.
Comments
It really was in the beginning but it actually got pretty interesting at the end of last season.
The game still need an expansion though, and if that is far away then it need to open up Crystal desert or Ring of fire pretty soon.
Neither will be in soon. Living Story Season 1 left the direction towards the dragon waking in Maguuma Jungle. That's where the game's areas are going to open up, either with Season 2 or an expansion.
With all due respect David, articles like these just anger the heck out of me.
While I agree with the premise that Guild Wars 2 is an MMO built for everyone, it's hard to find an MMO these days that isn't built for everyone. There isn't an AAA title on the market anymore that doesnt have training wheels for new players and challenges for older players.
I would actually make the argument that other MMOs do a much better job at providing a good experience for all. WoW, Rift, Lotro, etc offer multiple tiers of difficulty so players can tune their experience to fit their need. Meanwhile, outside of fractals, GW2 is still using the one difficulty fits all approach.
If an article like this genuinely "angers the heck" out of you then I think you need to re-evaluate your life! There's plenty of worse things to get angry about, you're gonna give yourself an ulcer if this angers you that much.
gw2 is very good mmo but either LS2 need to have more permanent content or release an expansion just like gw1 did and still alive and have player base after all these years even with release of gw2. while on the other hand all LS1 of gw2 was temporarily contend," do it in 2 weeks time or forget about it forever"
with improvement i can easily say gw2 will be among top mmos for years to come.
Not really.
David is trying to pass his opinion off as an MMO veteran who has finally found his game after many years of searching which simply isn't true. His articles are often written from the perspective of a beat writer who is being paid to cover the local team.
Many players come here looking for unbias information about MMOs they may enjoy. It's one thing to have an opinion on a certain game, it's another to be willfully ignorant of the rest of the market and give praise where it's not warranted.
I guess my anger may be misplaced and that it shouldn't be directed at David or his article but instead should be placed at this site for allowing articles to be posted on the main page which are clearly paid advertisements being disguised as opinion pieces.
I started GW2 last month. Realized that I hate the PvE as why am I there became a question I asked myself. Very little lore but guess also means no broken quests makes it easier for maintenance. I am not a PvPer so sPvP is not for me but I tried it out. Not bad but not a hook for me. Personal story is ok but going solo can be brutal at times. I played WvWvW and realized that it is not the same enjoyment I got from DAoC. It is not horrible but if I had not gotten lucky and got into a guild that I enjoy playing with then probably never be logging into the game.
I got the game because a friend asked me to then all he does is log in for dailies and leaves. WvW is ok but the more I play the more I see how I will find something else (waiting on Wildstar at the moment) that doesn't seem to be so cheap. I feel like GW2 is a cheap game. It seems structured to need as little maintenance as possible. I was just in Edge of the Mists yesterday and someone asked if it was intentional that green team is made up of all the winning teams because of being outnumbered for the whole time.
This leads to the Spring Season of WvW that really made me decide that I will have some fun and do things at times but this game will never really capture my attention though will enjoy playing with a few guildmates at times. Superior numbers win and can either be on a server that floods WvW or can get on lower pop server and see how your effort is sometimes worth nothing no matter how hard you try but other times a small group can hold out for enough of your server to show up.
Play with anyone I know would only happen because of one reason and that is that the game is cheap. Easy to find a special and is a cheap game overall. I just look at the options to know with the basic choices I have there. The game is playable and unless in WvW or sPvP then I could not see many ways to complain if you enjoy the game. I want to enjoy the game but really only enjoy certain little things. I know it is an MMO but the RPG part it feels RPGlite to me. Simple and works but is not made to wow you or knock your socks off.
Imo GW2 does a few things better than any other MMO i've tried. The scale to map-level is one of them. It keeps players at different levels an oportunity to do content together. Gathering is made so all can harvest the same ore, herb or wood so no ninjaing of resourses possble. All can ress, and imo people are pretty nice when it comes to giving a res. Also, i realy lke the dye system.
So GW2 has alot going for it. Still i miss the old trinity, and while this event thing is kinda neat it does feel a bit silly that they start over basicly the instant you fnished them. It's not too bad though, i treat them more or less like endless dayli quests. Optional, and better than dayli quests in most other MMO's
Another thing is, missing a dodge even in entry level dungeons are brutal. I realy would have preffered the hard mode version for max level only and normal mode reduced slightly in difficulty. Entering a hard mode dungeon as a group a few level over the recomended level is realy tough. Considering people at ex. level 45 have mostly green armor and not all talents set and yet it's the same dungeon people at level 80, probably with superior armor, will join.
Also, did i mention i miss the Trinity in GW2's dungeons ?
It suffers heavily from the solo friendly design that has become the mantra of modern MMORPG design. Instead of learning from all the ways the second Guild Wars expansion negatively affected the community of that game, they just made it even worse. Generally speaking, I feel no need to ever actually organize a group to play Guild Wars 2. I run around the open world all alone. If I need to do an instance, I do it with strangers, the only requirement is that you have "the plan" memorized, which is one of the things I loathe and detest about WoW style raids. If I want to play PvP it's just massive zergs circling each other, and loaners(usually PvE centric players forced to be there for map completion) getting ganked by the opposing zerg. The combat is weird pseudo action combat. They should have either pushed all the way through to a decent action combat system, or stuck with the original model, because lots of times the hybrid system is just frustrating which ever side you are coming at it from. GW never had the classic trinity, but I see the loss of even the modified trinity as just another symptom of making the whole thing more casual and solo friendly.
I made a ton of friends playing the original Guild Wars, because we had to band together to complete content, only to watch them all slowly leave the game once the developers added customizable heroes making most of the game easy to do solo. I haven't made any new friends playing Guild Wars 2. I haven't needed to. It's massive, and it's an RPG, but it hardly feels multiplayer at all.
Just my 2 cents, as an avowed Guild Wars fan boy. Take them as you like.
This article was really cheesy. I don't understand how it made main page.
Aside from that - I do agree that the level scaling is awesome. One of those features I would wish to see in more games. It allows you to experience content in any which order you wish, as well as experience content again and again while it is still feeling somewhat fresh. (Side note - since Anet reworked the traits systems it seems the scaling does not work as well as it used to).
The only things I wish were not part of the game are:
The zerg style mindset of the playerbase - the champ trains and WvW trains are ridiculous.
The fact that people just race through dungeons, running past mobs and skipping bosses is annoying. Anet needs to create vanquish rewards like from GW1 - and if people are skipping bosses - fix those boss encounters so that it is more worth experiencing.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
Compelling story, have they added that in recent patches because all I remember was Traherne?
Guild wars 2 has its niche, and its niche will love it, but for me it made me appreciate structured gameplay, roles, specialisation, and group dynamics.
What guild wars 2 does well is allow you to have lots and lots of short term goals that build into long term ones, appealing to casual and hardcore completeionists alike.
Useless article. Since ArenaNet fails to deliver for nearly two years now even the big fans like David North begin to think of stuff to write now, I guess.
I finally have a game that I can play with everyone that I care about at the same time!
Does this tell something about this game or about his family and friends? Even the slowest of your friends and family will have completed this game over and again. You should have written this a year ago, it might have made more sense than today.
You can always try to solo Arah like a huge chunk of experienced players do atm. Or you know, do the Queen's Gauntlet while being naked and with blue weapons at tier 3. Speak about difficulty then
Oh really? I've been playing the game since the second beta weekend and only JUST got 100% map completion on my ONE character a few days ago. I've happily been playing hours upon hours of World vs. World and a couple of Living Story episodes in between.
So please, don't discount other people's opinions because they don't apply to you. I, too, have never played an MMO where so many people I know play...many of them I didn't even realise game at all.
Champ trains are, for the most part, gone. Most champion mobs in the most popular areas have been converted to veterans and elites. Also you can roam perfectly in WvW but the point of it is a war, and as such there are huge scale fights. With the right commander and VoIP it gets fun. And good luck zerging the latest crown pavillion. Sure you can, if you want to fail that is
I agree the trash mobs are unrewarding, but they were rewarding at headstart, so were the chests. Then people started to bot in and out of dungeons just wiping trash and chests, not caring for bosses, hoarding hundreds of gold along the way. So they scrapped it entirely and made the rewards at boss ends. Assholes will be assholes
Besides, the boss encounters are really fun, especially at Arah. I have 3 armor sets from there and almost 4k tokens stored. I love running this dungeon ^_^ When i want to have fun I also wipe all the mobs around : ) You see, since the game has LFG tool, you CAN and SHOULD write your requirements in the description, E.g. berserker-only? fun? speed clear? dungeon sell?
It´s a shame.
I think you've missed the point of his post, all games allow you to pick where and what to play but none of the ones you mentioned allow you to do it with friends who are at a vastly different level and stage in the game.
I played Lotro for a long time and the thing that annoyed me is once I made friends I played with them for a while, but then I had a break and came back, to discover that they are now miles ahead, and coming back to play with me without trivialising the content isn't really possible.
Its more about the level scaling than the difficulty of content.
But hey each to their own.
GW2 does do a lot of things right. Some things that I think every MMO should implement. However, all the flaws drove me away. I almost envy people who can play it so passionately, because I had hoped to be drawn in like that, and I've tried to go back several times. Maybe one day.
And off topic a bit - How come Rift never gets praised as much as GW2 for the leveling down system? I actually prefer Rift's system because I can control my level. Sometimes not pulling aggro from every little mob is so nice.
well i havent play fractals, but in WvW, i felt the same .
30-40 people playing daily having common targets and meeting in the same place. After 1 month you can create bonds and friendships or just relationships with so many people ...
also i dunno how are you able to play other MMOs, after GW2 when i go for other MMORPGs i feel they are clunky and strict, although GW2 is also a strict MMOworld ... GW2 its not perfect, it has flaws and many of them, but so far what ever it does it is doing better than others ...