MMO Weekly: Why Guild Wars 2 Will Rock

[:1]Jeff Hollis' MMO Weekly is now online. This edition he focusses on Guild Wars.

"Why Guild Wars 2 Will Rock and why it went so wrong with Guild Wars"|||Am I the only one that just gets a blank page?|||I brought the article up...|||Quote:








Am I the only one that just gets a blank page?




Just in case anyone else run into that error, which I too get from time to time, it's the most annoying thing.



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Hello there, my fellow sojourners in geekspace, and welcome to this week's edition of MMO Weekly. In this week's adventure, we'll explore a little MMO production company known as ArenaNet, and we'll talk about two of their MMO projects.

As you may (or, if you've only been playing MMOs for a couple of years, may not) already be aware, ArenaNet published an MMO called Guild Wars (GW) waaaay back in April of 2005. GW was, and is, a groundbreaking game full of great features. There are so many things about GW that are beyond good, it would be hard to list them all. GW allows players to make hybrid classes, the art is utterly fantastic, the expansions are actually full versions of the game, the music is great, there is tons of content, blah blah blah. GW is simply a great MMO.

The problem with GW is that it has committed two mortal, deadly sins. The first of its major sins was that it launched within six months of another huge, successful MMO - in this case, World of Warcraft. GW dropped off the radar because WoW was simply so big and successful at that time. WoW overshadowed Guild Wars in a very significant way [Ed - Not sure anyone knew WoW was going to be as huge as it was, not even Blizzard, so I'm not sure this is a fair comment, but the opinion of our beloved Jeff, so we'll let it slide...!].

The second sin GW committed was racial exclusivity, or the "humans only" error. While I don't want this to cause a big debate, here's the skinny:-

Years ago, an analysis of MMOs was done, and it was determined that Asian players don't care much about race options in an MMO. However, western players care about race options deeply. As you may have already guessed, players could choose to play a human, a human, or a human in Guild Wars, and nothing else. Sure, there were different kinds of humans, but the variety was...well, there wasn't any, really.

The problem with committing these two sins is that both of them seriously gimp the potential success of an MMO. No matter how many things you do right, these things will limit an MMO's appeal to the public. In the case of GW, too many people were simply too excited about WoW to give GW a second look. If they'd launched six months later, GW might have become a much, much bigger game. What's more, the humans only error limited the appeal of a game, particularly in the West. Go figure.

Despite this, and to no one's surprise, GW is a game that remains huge in a number of Asian markets and has a much smaller following in the US, EU, and elsewhere. Five years and three expansions later it's still a very, very good MMO.

Some time back, ArenaNet announced that they were working on Guild Wars 2 (GW 2). From the moment I first heard of the project, GW2 struck me as having truly incredible potential to be a huge success. Why? Because GW2 is designed along the same principles as GW was. GW2 is to have all the technical advances, the beautiful artwork, the interesting content, and everything else that the original Guild Wars had, and one thing more: five races to choose from. Also, the races in the game aren't your standard fantasy fare; I actually found many of them to be interesting. Here's the break down:

The Humans: Go look in a mirror. See that? Odds are, you just looked at a human. Sure, it's a boring choice, but you're guaranteed to have completely generic and average stats. Whooopeeeeee.

The Sylvari: GW doesn't call these slim little tree dwelling pansies "elves". That's because, even though they're cute, slim, magical, arrow-shooting effeminate nature-lovers, they're really quite different from elves. Those differences include....um......uh.....well, the minute I come up with a way in which they're different, I'll let you know.

The Norn: If Conan mated with a giant druid (which is pretty likely to have actually happened, since Conan mated with everyone), you'd get a Norn. They're gigantic warriors from the frozen north, and they can shape shift into bears, snow leopards, ravens, wolves. And their women are hot, which is a bonus.

The Asura: Cute little gnomes that are good with magic, and are wonderful engineers. (Hmmmm...it seems like I've seen this in another MMO I played recently. Oh well, it's probably just a coincidence.) If you take a look at the Asura, they have a distinctly Asian artistic vibe to them, which is either appealing or derivative, depending on your perspective.

The Charr: The big, monstrous race of GW2. They're part lion, part minotaur, and all mean and nasty. They also make a lot of "war machines" and use gunpowder; generally, their whole vibe is very ugly and mechanical.

Although I poked a bit of fun, I found a number of these racial options to be intriguing. The Norn? Shape-shifting giants are a cool concept. The Charr? C'mon, they're oilpunk badasses. The Asura? They rely on a combination of pets, magic, and engineered gadgetry, which has me curious.

I simply found the racial options offered by Guild Wars 2 to be refreshing on two fronts. First, it's obvious that ArenaNet doesn't want to commit the 'humans only' error twice, which is a good sign. Second, they didn't go for a generic 'humans / elves / dwarfs / other things J.R.R. Tolkien thought up 60 years ago' thing that everyone else has done. They innovated a bit, and I like that.

Does this guarantee that GW2 will be a big game, or will be the 'WoW killer'? No, nothing guarantees that. However, based on the quality that GW brought to the genre, and the fact that ArenaNet is now introducing races into GW2, it does give the game a shot at becoming an unbridled success. I wish them the best of luck.

By the way, Guild Wars 2 is set to release in 2011. Though that's a bit far off, it's certainly a quality title to look forward to.

And with that, it's time to wrap up this week's edition of MMO Weekly. If you found this scribble-fest entertaining, please feel free to visit us over at WanderingGoblin.com, where we scratch out this kind of low quality nonsense each and every day. For now, ciao!








The gist of the article seems to be "GW was really cool, except no one (except like more than a million players, I guess) liked it because it didn't have racial variety, but GW2 will have different races so it will be much better."

While the recent trailer showed off the new GW2 races at their most interesting, racial "diversity" (in reality, restriction) feels more like a negative than a positive thing for me personally.|||Racial diversity is a must, I have to agree with that.

However... the article did point out that GW innovated in so many ways over MMOs (incl current ones lol). But they didn't really emphasize that.|||Quote:








However... the article did point out that GW innovated in so many ways over MMOs (incl current ones lol). But they didn't really emphasize that.




Especially that free MMOs are possible! Maybe with a little modification (maybe more stuff to buy from the store, especially stuff that can be VERY useful, even make everything a bit cheaper so that more people will buy), it will be perfect.|||Quote:








Racial diversity is a must, I have to agree with that.




As I said, one million GW players seem to disagree.|||I can't see much importance to racial diversity, but then I don't care that much about what my avatar looks like. Most of them are still in basic max armor. There's something like convergent evolution working too, so that no race is overpowered or overpowering. So, it becomes one more choice on the list: shape of avatar, fighting style.|||Personally, I completely disagree with the guy about racial diversity. I think being able to play all sorts of odd creatures is just plain silly.

But then, I do see that a lot (really, a lot) of players do want that option - I just don't understand why.|||I don't get it either.

I care for the ability to customize appearance since that's what seperates you, almost exclusively from other people.

At least the ones that don't know you.

But that never had anything to do with different races.

I don't see why I should enjoy playing race Y more than race X because X is the regular rpg race (human of some sort).

All in all, they all play basically the same, and appearance (and lore, but lollore) ends up being what makes them different.