Critical Consensus: Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet delivers the most compelling MMO in years, and a strong argument for the death of the monthly subscription
It doesn't take much imagination to see Guild Wars 2 as a death knell for the subscription MMO. Bioware is in the process of building a micro-transaction economy for The Old Republic, Funcom is seriously considering its options after The Secret World's underwhelming performance, and the popularity of ArenaNet's highly anticipated sequel has simply underlined what many have known for a long time. For EA, which published both The Old Republic and The Secret World, the success of Guild Wars' business model will be a painful reminder of what could have been.
But this isn't all about business models. As difficult as it is to imagine a future for subscription-based games in the current climate, quality is generally a pre-requisite of success regardless of how the money is made. And according to every critic who has stopped playing Guild Wars 2 for long enough to write an actual review, ArenaNet has given its paying customers good reason to spread the word, striking a fine balance between familiarity and innovation.
"Guild Wars 2 feels like what World of Warcraft 2 would be, if there were such a thing"
Penny Arcade
"Guild Wars 2 feels like the right game for the right time," Penny Arcade's Sophie Prell writes. "Star Wars: The Old Republic is enjoyable, but the game's dungeons, grouping, and key rotations feel old hat. The Secret World is quirky and absorbing, but its class-less, level-less system and mission structures can seem experimental and ahead of their time. Guild Wars 2 feels like what World of Warcraft 2 would be, if there were such a thing.
"You're still in solid MMO territory with tab targeting and a medieval fantasy setting, but the process is streamlined to cut out extraneous or tedious busywork. The gameplay feels smooth and organic, and above all, convenient."
Guild Wars 2's innovations are subtle, and all in the service of removing the friction from the traditional MMO model - the "grind" that has ensnared many, but alienated so many more. This sentiment is echoed by virtually every review in existence, with Ars Technica's Andrew Groen contemplating why so many MMOs, which demand a high degree of commitment from their players, make the simplest actions so difficult and time-consuming.
"Despite living in realms of mysticism and magic, their characters are forced to travel through the world manually on foot or on mounts (at best there's limited fast travel through portals)... Once upon a time in a land called '2004', things were even worse. Until, that is, Blizzard's World of Warcraft arrived.
"WoW has dominated the MMORPG landscape so thoroughly and for so long that its design has become the modern standard, even if we often don't really remember why. It was due to a player-friendly design that borrowed heavily from the games that came before it, but it made the experience of an MMO much easier to enjoy for the uninitiated player. In this way, Guild Wars 2 seems poised to repeat history.... Here, at last, is an MMO that respects your time."
In Guild Wars 2, quests aren't handed out piece-meal by NPCs; they begin as soon as you enter the area in which they take place, and any rewards are received the moment the objective has been fulfilled. Fast travel is available in an instant from anywhere in the game-world, player characters are automatically levelled to cope with the task at hand, and the best, most compelling content - be it bosses, raids, powers or loot - is liberally sprinkled throughout the game, rather than cloistered in the upper reaches of the levelling system.
While this may seem obvious, it is also entirely brave. These tendencies were common in MMOs because the developer needed to give players a reason to keep paying while they inched towards the blockbuster content. ArenaNet has taken a more player-friendly approach, reasoning that making the experience accessible and rewarding throughout will be just as effective in creating loyalty.
As Groen points out, "ArenaNet seems intent on tearing down the artificial barriers of the modern MMO that only serve to add unnecessary length to the experience.
"In the eternal fight between lore, game design and player experience, Guild Wars 2 feels like it's on our side. It's almost spooky"
Rock Paper Shotgun
"This philosophy permeates the whole of Guild Wars 2. Unlike most MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is neither free-to-play, nor does it charge a monthly subscription. You pay a one-time price for the game and play forever. Since you're not being charged a monthly fee, the developer has no reason to goad you into playing for months and years. This is a game you could conceivably "beat" in two or three months rather than years. It's a new idea for a new marketplace. No more can an MMO seek to dominate players' time. The competition is too fierce, and it iterates too quickly."
During a recent conversation at Gamescom, EA Play4Free's Sean Decker told me that the key to retaining players in any multiplayer online experience is matchmaking; if your game doesn't allow players to find each other and play together easily then the battle is already lost. This is another area that Guild Wars 2 shines, giving its quests a free-form structure that allows players to pick-and-choose what they do next from a range of quests all running concurrently. Each completed sub-objective contributes to that quest's progress bar, but there's never a need for the player to see something through against their will.
"Having four or five things to do in each quest cleverly hides the grind and repetition that plagues most online RPGs," CVG's Andy Kelly writes. "This means you can alter your play-style depending on your mood. If you don't feel like fighting mobs, there's always an alternative. You can finish most quests without even raising your weapon.
"Better still, you never feel lonely. If another player is in the middle of killing an enemy, you can help and it'll count towards both of your progress bars. It's this collaboration that makes Guild Wars 2 an incredibly social experience, even if you aren't playing with friends. The large amount of players currently invading the game's servers is not unusual for an MMO at launch, but seeing them all working together is. You won't spend all your time in the game silently grinding through quests on your own; you'll be doing them alongside massive groups of other players.
"In World of Warcraft you'd have to organise raids or wait in a queue to experience these big group boss fights; in Guild Wars 2 they're everywhere, and anyone in the area can join in instantly. It's a level of accessibility rarely seen in an MMO, and putting long-time players on a level playing field with fresh-faced newcomers gets rid of the elitism that's usually rampant in games like this."
Rock Paper Shotgun's Richard Cobbett distils all of these features and design choices into a pithy summary of Guild Wars 2's greatest strength: "It's general attitude." The absence of a monthly subscription seems to empower ArenaNet to concentrate on making the game as enjoyable as possible for however long each player chooses to invest. There are wrinkles, of course, and Cobbett devotes more time to discussing them than just about any other review, but the MMO is perhaps the most inherently flawed of all genres, and Guild Wars 2 gets more right than any in recent memory.
"In the eternal fight between lore, game design and player experience, Guild Wars 2 feels like it's on our side. It's almost spooky.
"When the hype around a game is this heavy, it's easy to expect perfection. Guild Wars 2 is not perfect. It is, however, the most fun I've had with an MMO in a very, very long time, and the first to turn social questing into something even solo-minded misanthropes like myself can do on a whim. That alone makes worth it playing, and this is just the start of its story. I can't wait to see where it goes next..."
I'm a big MMO PvP player so my comments are from the kid inside me not the developer;
GW2 does many things quite well but it may stumble over time due to its non "gear as a goal" type core character system, but since they are only looking for a retail box sale of (1) per user that may be just fine for them. Perhaps they don't want people there for 7+ years as a hobby. I think their game has nothing to do whatsoever with business models-people have recently begun to clamor over F2P and subscription this and that. It's like suddenly noticing that some products are gluten free. GW2 is a product done their way, just like the first one, although I hope they can keep up with the overhead!
Even just 10 days after launch many of my hardcore PvP player friends all came right back to Warhammer. (The last bastion of group/warband PvP-Hello EA missed opportunity here) Most of their comments I agree with. GW2 is fun in a Multiplayer Skyrim kind of way. It's not a long term goal driven game where one day you will don that incredible set of Warpforged armor and dual wield both RR100 Scenario weapons (a grind or commitment of at least 6-8 months) It doesn't have the glory of having a 189-2 arena record, or a fun premade that bust faces in battleground in WoW, and it certainly doesn't have that fear of being flat out murdered and your house keys jacked like in UO in the old days.It doesn't have an "us" vs "those bad guys over there" sense of group pride and identity either because the difference between teams is colored text only. (which by the way makes ganking impossible you can see it so far away)
What it offers instead is;
-Location based population shifting events-(instead of your typical laborious and meaningless MMO quests) an evolution of Warhammer's Public Quest system that ends up being a mayhem style zerg, but hey that can be fun!
-A fun story line that really does the best it can to be personalized.
-A Structured PvP system where end game gear is free and the real skill is finding that optimum set up with an emphasis on survivability and escape mechanics instead of flat out DPS burst. Think of it as 5 on 5 pickup basketball.
-WvW, which although is quite a riot, is glorified zerg-on-foot, with massive open locations and no mounts giving you that old DAoC penalty for dying kind of feeling, except you're not gaining RR, you're hoping to win for a crafting bonus ;\ Jogging shoes not included!
In summary, GW 2 is about just having fun and isn't about long term achievement or goals being directly related to character power. In fact I think they planned it that way. They wanted to make a game that was fun for a lot of people and I think they've done it.
The bad thing is lots of folks, myself included, have grown accustomed to and enjoy gear and character power, because eventually it separates the casuals from the hardcore hairsplitting perfection players and then going toe-to-toe with them is a real rush.
Hopefully they can sort their auction house (yet to work) and forums (not a priority for them atm)
It's a fun game and really different, with systems that mean you can pick up and play whenever you want without fear of out leveling-or out power curving your friends. I hope they sell bucket loads of copies, because they have clearly demonstrated perseverance and follow through with their ideas and have had the guts to evolve on a lot of nagging dumbness that plagues MMOs.
Nicely done.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by T. Elliot Cannon on 4th September 2012 5:21pm
Posted:8 months ago