My time in Guild Wars 2 Beta
(Guest poster, SteveH)
I'm no wizard, sorcerer, or any other conjuror of magic, I just happen to get into a few betas!
Anyway, here in lies my thoughts of the weekend I spent in the Guild Wars 2 beta. It was sort of open so there's no NDA I have to fear.
Guild Wars 2 has been the MMO I've been waiting for both in terms of me hearing about it and thinking to myself "yeah!" and in terms of my feelings after I played it and thought to myself "yeah!" Why for? The biggest reason, for me, is just how fluid it all is.
You know the general MMO formula, quests you can do alone, quests you need a small group for, and then quests you need massive amounts of people for. Yeah, that was fun a while ago, but now I just don't have the time or patience to sit around and "LFG" for hours on end. This is what killed Star Wars the Old Republic for me, "DPS LFG" (2 HOURS LATER!!!) "DPS LFG.... please?" I just can't stand that anymore!
Well, GW2 doesn't kill that completely, just about 90% of it is now gone. There are still instanced dungeons that will require 4 or 5 people, so the LFG's will still need to be said but, due to some changes in the MMO formula, it's not that huge of an issue anymore.
Gone are the tanks, healers, DPS(es)(eses) of old. "But wait!" Says you, the MMO vet, "Who will protect the non-existent healers? Who will heal the non-existent tanks? Who will lay down the damage to the very existent bad guys?" The answer is "well, everyone." This is a game not about "knowing your role", it's about playing the game, reacting to the situation, thinking on your toes, and doing what is best at the moment it is best. This is the way the dungeons are, you group up with a few different classes, not because of their tanking or healing, but because of the tools they bring to the party to deal with what you might find down in the deep dark depths. That's the way it is and that makes it so much easier to find a group for those cases.
But dungeons are a small part to what GW2 brings to bear. The biggest part is the open world, and this is where it shines the brigtest. I liked the Lord of the Rings MMO and that is mainly because I loved the sense of adventure that game had. Finding those old ruins around the world, finding places that you remember from the books or the movies, it was great just to walk around the world and live in it. GW2 does this very well and also uses it to replace the quest system you all know and either love or hate.
GW2 doesn't do the old "find hub, grab 20 quests, go do quests, go back to hub, turn in quests, get quest to go to next hub, repeat until level cap", in fact, other than the dungeons and the "personal story" quests, there aren't any.
"So what is there to do?!"
Calm down you stinky hippy, I'm getting to that.
When you are released into the world (shortly after fighting a boss at level 1) you are shown areas where people could use your help. These sort of act like quests, yes, but you don't have to do those things. Sometimes the people need you to help them water their crops, feed their cows, stuff like that. Sometimes you'll gain favor with them for killing the centaurs or other baddies that are around the area, or revive the farmhands that the aforementioned bad guys took down. You can busy yourself with these "pseudo quests" if you want. They will begin to repeat a little, but it's an option you don't need to take.
Getting back to why I brought LotRO up earlier, the other option is to explore the land and see what's going on. Through exploring you'll come across events that are either about to take place or are in the middle of happening. These range from escorting a caravan through a road, protecting it from bandits, or saving a town from being overrun, and many more. These events scale based on how many people are around and doing it so, if you find yourself alone, you'll likely be able to handle it but, if a few other people are around and trying to take care of business, more monsters will spawn. Finding these events is great fun and lead to me just wandering in a random direction to see what I could find and, it was by doing that, which lead me to the more interesting and fun events I experienced in my time in game.
This brings up something I should address, there is no tagging bad guys as happens in other MMOs, this helps the fluidity I love so much. You don't have to worry about someone running up and stealing the kill you need for some quest, it doesn't matter! As long as you participate in a kill which, in my experience, meant hitting it about two to three times, means you get full experience and loot. Loot is also a "per person" affair instead of a "Per group" thing as in most MMOs, so there's really no reason why you shouldn't help someone fight a monster, or hope someone comes up and fights the monster you're fighting.
This meant that I was able to do everything I could find without having to worry about stopping and hoping to find a group. There were areas that I got killed in, yes, but it didn't take long for someone else to come along and join me in the area, fighting along side of me until they decided to branch off in their own direction. No need to group, no need for communication really, just fluid gameplay. I did what I wanted, they did what they wanted, and it all worked really well.
The only complaint I can level against the game is that, in some events, it got very zerggy, especially in the beginning. In the beginning areas there would sometimes be hundreds of people doing the same event meaning it was very easy to get lost in the crowd. As I mentioned, this really only happened in the beginning areas but, after that, people seemed to spread out a bit more and it wasn't an issue.
Oh, forgot something cool about events. Some events are just one shot things but many others have a track, which is very cool to see. One such instance of this was when I came across an event near a mine, these mole people were trying to rush out of the mine to build a defense tower outside, threatening the people who lived nearby. My job, and the job of the other players, was to stop them from doing this. We had two bars, one represented how much of the tower had been built and the other represented how many more waves of these mole people would come through. If the towers bar was full before the mole people number bar was emptied we would have failed the event (we would still get XP, Karma (think currency), and coin, just not as much). We managed to fight them off which triggered the second part of the chain, an NPC told us that the cave needed to be closed and, to do so, he would need to carry a bomb deep inside. The next part of the chain was to escort him to the area, protect him while he sets them up the bomb, and then run like hell. We managed to do this as well and got to watch as the bomb blew up the mine, closing it off for all players for a while (until a new event started in which the mole people break through and attempt to steal tools to make a defense tower).
Now, if we had failed, the mole people would have succeeded in making the tower and our task would have been to destroy the tower. If we failed that, it is possible the mole people could have attacked the nearby town making our task that of defending the town. Failing that our task could have been to retake the town. I love how the actions of the players can have an affect on the world, not just us playing the event. If a town is taken then no players can shop there, repair there, or activate the way point!
That's it for now. Tomorrow I'll write a (much shorter) article on the classes and how they played.
I'm no wizard, sorcerer, or any other conjuror of magic, I just happen to get into a few betas!
Anyway, here in lies my thoughts of the weekend I spent in the Guild Wars 2 beta. It was sort of open so there's no NDA I have to fear.
Guild Wars 2 has been the MMO I've been waiting for both in terms of me hearing about it and thinking to myself "yeah!" and in terms of my feelings after I played it and thought to myself "yeah!" Why for? The biggest reason, for me, is just how fluid it all is.
You know the general MMO formula, quests you can do alone, quests you need a small group for, and then quests you need massive amounts of people for. Yeah, that was fun a while ago, but now I just don't have the time or patience to sit around and "LFG" for hours on end. This is what killed Star Wars the Old Republic for me, "DPS LFG" (2 HOURS LATER!!!) "DPS LFG.... please?" I just can't stand that anymore!
Well, GW2 doesn't kill that completely, just about 90% of it is now gone. There are still instanced dungeons that will require 4 or 5 people, so the LFG's will still need to be said but, due to some changes in the MMO formula, it's not that huge of an issue anymore.
Gone are the tanks, healers, DPS(es)(eses) of old. "But wait!" Says you, the MMO vet, "Who will protect the non-existent healers? Who will heal the non-existent tanks? Who will lay down the damage to the very existent bad guys?" The answer is "well, everyone." This is a game not about "knowing your role", it's about playing the game, reacting to the situation, thinking on your toes, and doing what is best at the moment it is best. This is the way the dungeons are, you group up with a few different classes, not because of their tanking or healing, but because of the tools they bring to the party to deal with what you might find down in the deep dark depths. That's the way it is and that makes it so much easier to find a group for those cases.
But dungeons are a small part to what GW2 brings to bear. The biggest part is the open world, and this is where it shines the brigtest. I liked the Lord of the Rings MMO and that is mainly because I loved the sense of adventure that game had. Finding those old ruins around the world, finding places that you remember from the books or the movies, it was great just to walk around the world and live in it. GW2 does this very well and also uses it to replace the quest system you all know and either love or hate.
GW2 doesn't do the old "find hub, grab 20 quests, go do quests, go back to hub, turn in quests, get quest to go to next hub, repeat until level cap", in fact, other than the dungeons and the "personal story" quests, there aren't any.
"So what is there to do?!"
Calm down you stinky hippy, I'm getting to that.
When you are released into the world (shortly after fighting a boss at level 1) you are shown areas where people could use your help. These sort of act like quests, yes, but you don't have to do those things. Sometimes the people need you to help them water their crops, feed their cows, stuff like that. Sometimes you'll gain favor with them for killing the centaurs or other baddies that are around the area, or revive the farmhands that the aforementioned bad guys took down. You can busy yourself with these "pseudo quests" if you want. They will begin to repeat a little, but it's an option you don't need to take.
Getting back to why I brought LotRO up earlier, the other option is to explore the land and see what's going on. Through exploring you'll come across events that are either about to take place or are in the middle of happening. These range from escorting a caravan through a road, protecting it from bandits, or saving a town from being overrun, and many more. These events scale based on how many people are around and doing it so, if you find yourself alone, you'll likely be able to handle it but, if a few other people are around and trying to take care of business, more monsters will spawn. Finding these events is great fun and lead to me just wandering in a random direction to see what I could find and, it was by doing that, which lead me to the more interesting and fun events I experienced in my time in game.
This brings up something I should address, there is no tagging bad guys as happens in other MMOs, this helps the fluidity I love so much. You don't have to worry about someone running up and stealing the kill you need for some quest, it doesn't matter! As long as you participate in a kill which, in my experience, meant hitting it about two to three times, means you get full experience and loot. Loot is also a "per person" affair instead of a "Per group" thing as in most MMOs, so there's really no reason why you shouldn't help someone fight a monster, or hope someone comes up and fights the monster you're fighting.
This meant that I was able to do everything I could find without having to worry about stopping and hoping to find a group. There were areas that I got killed in, yes, but it didn't take long for someone else to come along and join me in the area, fighting along side of me until they decided to branch off in their own direction. No need to group, no need for communication really, just fluid gameplay. I did what I wanted, they did what they wanted, and it all worked really well.
The only complaint I can level against the game is that, in some events, it got very zerggy, especially in the beginning. In the beginning areas there would sometimes be hundreds of people doing the same event meaning it was very easy to get lost in the crowd. As I mentioned, this really only happened in the beginning areas but, after that, people seemed to spread out a bit more and it wasn't an issue.
Oh, forgot something cool about events. Some events are just one shot things but many others have a track, which is very cool to see. One such instance of this was when I came across an event near a mine, these mole people were trying to rush out of the mine to build a defense tower outside, threatening the people who lived nearby. My job, and the job of the other players, was to stop them from doing this. We had two bars, one represented how much of the tower had been built and the other represented how many more waves of these mole people would come through. If the towers bar was full before the mole people number bar was emptied we would have failed the event (we would still get XP, Karma (think currency), and coin, just not as much). We managed to fight them off which triggered the second part of the chain, an NPC told us that the cave needed to be closed and, to do so, he would need to carry a bomb deep inside. The next part of the chain was to escort him to the area, protect him while he sets them up the bomb, and then run like hell. We managed to do this as well and got to watch as the bomb blew up the mine, closing it off for all players for a while (until a new event started in which the mole people break through and attempt to steal tools to make a defense tower).
Now, if we had failed, the mole people would have succeeded in making the tower and our task would have been to destroy the tower. If we failed that, it is possible the mole people could have attacked the nearby town making our task that of defending the town. Failing that our task could have been to retake the town. I love how the actions of the players can have an affect on the world, not just us playing the event. If a town is taken then no players can shop there, repair there, or activate the way point!
That's it for now. Tomorrow I'll write a (much shorter) article on the classes and how they played.
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