day 4 of the blogathon: NERD!
so guild wars 2 is pretty much going to be the best game ever.
Well, not game in general, because games are very different. But the best traditional MMO. It's going to be good enough, I think, that soon Guild Wars 2 (GW2) clones will start popping up. This post is mostly going to be talking about the things in gw2 that are better (in brief, since most people reading this post already know most of this stuff (sorry folks)), and more importantly, why that matters.
1. Server guesting
Last fall, I played WoW again for awhile, often enough that I was able to keep with wow conversations during dragon con. I was even excited when I heard about Cataclysm. However.
Dragon Con is also why I stopped playing wow.
There were sooo many cool people there, all of which played wow, and they all played on a different server than me. I'm a slow leveler, so that mean I either paid $25 (!!!!) to play with them, or I had to spend six plus months or more getting to their level to play with them. Neither of which sounded worthwhile.
GW2, however, has server guesting. So all my characters are on one server, but all I have to do with cool people I meet at dragon con is click "guest to this server." Then I can play with them as much (or more likely, as little) as I want. Hell yes. Also, if I have different friend groups, I don't have to level up the same character for every group.
2. Actiony, solid-feeling combat
In every single MMO I've ever played, the combat is very static and feels very floaty. Hell, in wow, running away when you're taking damage is a newbie mistake (it generally puts out of range of your healer). and the combat is just... stand there, look at your bars, hit the same combination of keys again and again.
That's not fun to me. I'm not in a large orchestra, I don't want to play sheet music.
In guild wars 2, circle strafing is totally valid. You can cast while moving, you can DODGE. Enemies have tells for big attacks, so you can get out of the way. And furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the combat just feels Right. It feels satisfying in a way that wow has never felt, and even shooter games tend not to. And since there's no healers, the only time it's not good to run away is if you run off a cliff, or into another enemy. And it feels so, so good.
Last time I played gw2 (during a beta weekend- the game was playable but only for three days), I played as an Elementalist, which is basically Ang from the Airbender series. I was underwater, fighting a couple drakes that attacked me while I was trying to see what as at the bottom of the lake. I dodged around, swam around, threw boiling rocks at them, teleported when I could... and then, when they were both almost dead, I teleported into three more. This happened three more times, and I lived. Because I dodged cleverly and kept moving. At the end of it, I felt like the most awesome badass to ever live. I have NEVER felt that from a game before. (I may have felt that from a game before, honestly. Just not in a long time and not that I can remember off the top of my head)
I may put a link in later, to demonstrate.
Okay, apparently I'm doing it now.
youtube video of Guardian combat in guild wars 2
3. "yay! more people!"
MMOs for me have always been very lonely. This is... I don't even have words. This is not why I'm paying 15 dollar a month! (did I mention that gw2 has no subscription fee?) I remember seeing this really beautiful waterfall in a far off jungle in WoW, and feeling really sad about it, because I had no one to play with.
GW2 doesn't prevent this from ever happening, BUT. Most of my friends are playing it. Also.
There are two reasons that content starts to become lonely in wow (and other mmos). The first is that there needs to be a large world to fit all the content. GW2 has a smaller world, I think, and has more things happening in each area. The second is that x-stealing is a thing. Kill stealing, when I attack a mob with a ranged attack just as you're about to attack it. Node stealing, when I mine iron before you get out combat, so I get the material and you don't. Those things are just... not a problem in GW2. Iron nodes are individual, so if I mine iron, the node is still there for you. Everyone gets full XP and loot for a monster, even if they just hit it once. *yeah!*
4. I can play with my friends
Most of my friends are playing gw2. This was also true with wow, but I still didn't get to play with them. They would play one night without me, and then suddenly I was ten levels below them and there was no content in the whole game that we could both have fun doing. And since they all played more than me, when wow first came out, I spent a month, maybe two, trying to catch up to everyone's level. Then I gave up.
In gw2, I get leveled down to the area I'm in (so does everyone else). So if I want to play with Christina, friend of Jacob, who plays games way more than me, I can. She just comes to where I am, and her level 50 becomes a level 15 like me. And we both have fun, instead of neither of us having fun.
5. I can play how I want to.
god, this post is so long. Maybe I should learn how to use cuts.
I don't want to kill Skrit, the sentient thiefy rat people that the Charr hate. They're increadibly cute, lovable, and you know. Sentient. I like to get into games, so I feel guilty killing sentients. I didn't enjoy Grand Theft Auto because. Well. Killing, stealing, just in general being a bad person. In wow, there are quest chains. They go something like this.
step 0. talk to quest giver
step 1. kill ten rats
step 1a. talk to quest giver
step 2. gather five cannon balls from the rat liar
step 2a. talk to quest giver
step 3. kill ten slightly larger rats
step 3a. talk to quest giver
step 4. kill the rat leader
step 4a. talk to quest giver
Let's pretend, for the sake of discussion, that the rats are skritt. Well, then I can either grind for a long time to make up for the lack of doing that quest chain, or I can feel horrible about myself for half an hour. In guild wars, instead of quests, there's hearts. The hearts are still "help this person", but they're more freeflow. Here's how they go.
Step 0 (optional) talk to heart person.
Step 1. Kill rats, or slightly larger rats, or steal cannon balls from the rats, or kill the rat leader. Once you do enough of any (or all) of those things, you can xp and a notice that the heart person likes you now.
Step 2. read your mail (which you can read from anywhere). The heart person has sent you a thankyou note with a bribe.
Step 3. (optional) talk to heart person again, about how much they now like you.
I don't think I need to explain why that's a million times better.
And hell, if I don't even want to help people, if I just want to explore the world and gather minerals and craft trinkets, I can. I can even level pretty consistently just from exploration and crafting.
So yeah, long post. But it's a lot of explanation that comes down to. Guild Wars 2 is fun in a way that most MMo's aren't, and more importantly, it's easier to play with my friends, and I can do what I want in the game without having to suffer through what I don't want to do.
ALSO. It's sooo much less sexist than most games. But that's a post for some other time.
Well, not game in general, because games are very different. But the best traditional MMO. It's going to be good enough, I think, that soon Guild Wars 2 (GW2) clones will start popping up. This post is mostly going to be talking about the things in gw2 that are better (in brief, since most people reading this post already know most of this stuff (sorry folks)), and more importantly, why that matters.
1. Server guesting
Last fall, I played WoW again for awhile, often enough that I was able to keep with wow conversations during dragon con. I was even excited when I heard about Cataclysm. However.
Dragon Con is also why I stopped playing wow.
There were sooo many cool people there, all of which played wow, and they all played on a different server than me. I'm a slow leveler, so that mean I either paid $25 (!!!!) to play with them, or I had to spend six plus months or more getting to their level to play with them. Neither of which sounded worthwhile.
GW2, however, has server guesting. So all my characters are on one server, but all I have to do with cool people I meet at dragon con is click "guest to this server." Then I can play with them as much (or more likely, as little) as I want. Hell yes. Also, if I have different friend groups, I don't have to level up the same character for every group.
2. Actiony, solid-feeling combat
In every single MMO I've ever played, the combat is very static and feels very floaty. Hell, in wow, running away when you're taking damage is a newbie mistake (it generally puts out of range of your healer). and the combat is just... stand there, look at your bars, hit the same combination of keys again and again.
That's not fun to me. I'm not in a large orchestra, I don't want to play sheet music.
In guild wars 2, circle strafing is totally valid. You can cast while moving, you can DODGE. Enemies have tells for big attacks, so you can get out of the way. And furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the combat just feels Right. It feels satisfying in a way that wow has never felt, and even shooter games tend not to. And since there's no healers, the only time it's not good to run away is if you run off a cliff, or into another enemy. And it feels so, so good.
Last time I played gw2 (during a beta weekend- the game was playable but only for three days), I played as an Elementalist, which is basically Ang from the Airbender series. I was underwater, fighting a couple drakes that attacked me while I was trying to see what as at the bottom of the lake. I dodged around, swam around, threw boiling rocks at them, teleported when I could... and then, when they were both almost dead, I teleported into three more. This happened three more times, and I lived. Because I dodged cleverly and kept moving. At the end of it, I felt like the most awesome badass to ever live. I have NEVER felt that from a game before. (I may have felt that from a game before, honestly. Just not in a long time and not that I can remember off the top of my head)
I may put a link in later, to demonstrate.
Okay, apparently I'm doing it now.
youtube video of Guardian combat in guild wars 2
3. "yay! more people!"
MMOs for me have always been very lonely. This is... I don't even have words. This is not why I'm paying 15 dollar a month! (did I mention that gw2 has no subscription fee?) I remember seeing this really beautiful waterfall in a far off jungle in WoW, and feeling really sad about it, because I had no one to play with.
GW2 doesn't prevent this from ever happening, BUT. Most of my friends are playing it. Also.
There are two reasons that content starts to become lonely in wow (and other mmos). The first is that there needs to be a large world to fit all the content. GW2 has a smaller world, I think, and has more things happening in each area. The second is that x-stealing is a thing. Kill stealing, when I attack a mob with a ranged attack just as you're about to attack it. Node stealing, when I mine iron before you get out combat, so I get the material and you don't. Those things are just... not a problem in GW2. Iron nodes are individual, so if I mine iron, the node is still there for you. Everyone gets full XP and loot for a monster, even if they just hit it once. *yeah!*
4. I can play with my friends
Most of my friends are playing gw2. This was also true with wow, but I still didn't get to play with them. They would play one night without me, and then suddenly I was ten levels below them and there was no content in the whole game that we could both have fun doing. And since they all played more than me, when wow first came out, I spent a month, maybe two, trying to catch up to everyone's level. Then I gave up.
In gw2, I get leveled down to the area I'm in (so does everyone else). So if I want to play with Christina, friend of Jacob, who plays games way more than me, I can. She just comes to where I am, and her level 50 becomes a level 15 like me. And we both have fun, instead of neither of us having fun.
5. I can play how I want to.
god, this post is so long. Maybe I should learn how to use cuts.
I don't want to kill Skrit, the sentient thiefy rat people that the Charr hate. They're increadibly cute, lovable, and you know. Sentient. I like to get into games, so I feel guilty killing sentients. I didn't enjoy Grand Theft Auto because. Well. Killing, stealing, just in general being a bad person. In wow, there are quest chains. They go something like this.
step 0. talk to quest giver
step 1. kill ten rats
step 1a. talk to quest giver
step 2. gather five cannon balls from the rat liar
step 2a. talk to quest giver
step 3. kill ten slightly larger rats
step 3a. talk to quest giver
step 4. kill the rat leader
step 4a. talk to quest giver
Let's pretend, for the sake of discussion, that the rats are skritt. Well, then I can either grind for a long time to make up for the lack of doing that quest chain, or I can feel horrible about myself for half an hour. In guild wars, instead of quests, there's hearts. The hearts are still "help this person", but they're more freeflow. Here's how they go.
Step 0 (optional) talk to heart person.
Step 1. Kill rats, or slightly larger rats, or steal cannon balls from the rats, or kill the rat leader. Once you do enough of any (or all) of those things, you can xp and a notice that the heart person likes you now.
Step 2. read your mail (which you can read from anywhere). The heart person has sent you a thankyou note with a bribe.
Step 3. (optional) talk to heart person again, about how much they now like you.
I don't think I need to explain why that's a million times better.
And hell, if I don't even want to help people, if I just want to explore the world and gather minerals and craft trinkets, I can. I can even level pretty consistently just from exploration and crafting.
So yeah, long post. But it's a lot of explanation that comes down to. Guild Wars 2 is fun in a way that most MMo's aren't, and more importantly, it's easier to play with my friends, and I can do what I want in the game without having to suffer through what I don't want to do.
ALSO. It's sooo much less sexist than most games. But that's a post for some other time.