Guild Wars 2 is looking real good so far. From the game trailers to the gameplay demonstration, developer diaries write-ups so on and so forth, the game sounds/looks/feels like it is going to be a blast. I’m really all hyped up over this game already. For those of you who do not know, Guild Wars 2 is the sequel (like duh) to Guild Wars, which is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) similar to that of World of Warcraft etc.
In this latest video they released, they talked a lot about the design choices of the game and what they want to express to gamers, what they want gamers to feel. It is amazing the way they go about talking about it, whether or not whatever words they say being realized can only be known once it is released. But for now some of the key phrases that totally caught my attention are stuff like how quests now become more realistic and immersive for example the standard MMO quest of killing certain number of this monster due to them attacking a town becomes real in GW2 where you actually see these monsters attacking a town etc. Decisions players make also now seem to have permanent global effect rather than just to users. You shape the world the way you want it. Sounds ambitious, but I really hope they achieve that effect.
I did try out Guild Wars 1 for a while (the trial period), never gotten myself to spend the money to actually purchase the game since I always thought that I should wait for the sequel to arrive (tried it only last year). Without the adequate time to invest, I told myself to refrain from buying since it would probably not be properly utilized. Still during the trial period, I found myself enjoying the game but not to a really great extend. The main reason was this; the game battle system did not engage me or “wow†me enough. There are so many games that work along the same basis of point click attack skill attack pot attack rest. Though Guild Wars itself differ from that, the whole idea of the system itself feels largely the same. I wanted something different, like an action battle system similar to that of the Monster Hunter series.
The action battle system has yet to be widely implemented within MMORPGs. In fact, I only do know of no more than five games to date that actually have such a battle system, one of which namely Risk Your Life was a game that I enjoyed a lot mainly because of its battle system. I like the freedom, the sense of control you have in such systems. When I heard about TERA Online, I was totally amazed, aroused and excited. Though Guild Wars 2 is not about to have such a system (from what I read and comprehend), it promises to have a more action oriented fast paced and with that I felt that my MMO experience will definitely go for the better. It is as if one of my countless dreams are about to be realized (not by Guild Wars 2 but at least maybe by TERA).
So what are your thoughts about Guild Wars 2? Will it be a success? I’ll be there for sure, to try out the game at least for quite some time. (With that said there is FFXIV is about to be released. I’ll try it out as well. FFXIV, GW and TERA are the only MMOs that I feel might engage me more than ever.)
An ambitious statement by them: “If you love MMOs you’ll want to check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs you’ll really want to check out Guild Wars 2”. I certainly hope so.
Sounds pretty awesome.
I like how the game is focused around the player, though I feel that
to implement such a system, the use of ‘instances’ will dominate the game, hence making it less interactive as compared to classic MMOs. Because it wouldn’t be cool to see centaurs destroying buildings while chasing you, and then you see it happening again to another player would it?
Another aspect about Guild Wars 2, the graphics do seem rather impressive, yet it seems supportable by many systems, even those that do not own high-powered graphics cards, which I feel might be a smart move by the producers.
I guess at the end of the day, whatever makes a good game are the systems involved in the game, rather than the specifications of it. The more creative the systems employed, the greater the hype.