Why I Think You Should Play Guild Wars 2

Until this weekend I have been a somewhat blindly devoted fan of Guild Wars 2, proselytizing to all who will listen based on optimistic developer blog posts and glowing accounts from other fans. This weekend, as part of the pre-purchase beta event, I got my first chance to play the game at last. It was great fun – confusing at first, due to a combination of a new and unfamiliar control scheme and terrible lag on a crowded server, but once we got the hang of it there was plenty to see and do, even restricting ourselves to straightforward PvE.

 So from the more measured perspective of experience, would I recommend Guild Wars 2? My first instinct is to say absolutely. At the beginning it may not feel so revolutionary or different to other mainstream MMORPGs, but the differences are there and they change the experience in more subtle ways. The longer I played, the more it made sense to me and the more I wanted to see and do and experiment with. ArenaNet may want to make some changes to the first few hours, but I agree with this article that making the player learn by doing may be kind of the point. However, if you’re not interested in buying the game and sitting through 20 hours of gameplay on the off chance it might turn out to be interesting *cough*, my advice is:

You should play Guild Wars 2 if…

Mass Effect: An Overview

Fear not, spoiler free.

I have now seen a full play-through of Mass Effect 3. I haven’t actually played the game, because I am physically incapable of playing shooters and could never get anywhere in the first game, but lucky for me BlueJay was doing his play-through in our lounge so I got to be a spectator (as it is, I may take a friend’s advice and start an adept on ME1 and just use powers in place of guns wherever possible).

 

So, what did I think? Many, many things. So many that I’ve got a series of posts planned to cover criticism and discussion. Having watched the ending last night, though, I thought I’d give an overview of my general impressions before launching into the specifics.

Guild Wars 2 is the answer to all your prayers!

It’s possible that I am a little prone to hyperbole when it comes to Guild Wars 2. I might have a tendency to insist that it will answer the demands and desires of everyone – PvPer, PvEers, hardcores and casuals, even the people who don’t play MMOGs at all because of the frustrating player communities or the repetitive and boring gameplay. You could say I’m an blindly obsessed fangirl, and you could go on to say that GW2 has enough of those already. I wouldn’t blame you for saying any of those things, but trust me when I say that on this occasion, I have a reason for claiming the title of this post.

In the course of reading about MMORPGs in general, I came across an article entitled ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: The Past Present and Future.’ It was published in 2008, after giving an overview of the history of the genre and some stand-out examples in its development, the authors discuss the results of a survey in which they asked MMORPG players (and those who had experience with such games but weren’t playing currently) what game features they liked the most, what the biggest problems were, and what they’d like to see in future MMORPGs.

Well, four years later online games are finally stepping out an innovating a little bit more, and it looks like we might be getting out ‘third generation’ MMORPGs. What made me happy, though, was how many of the survey respondents’ concerns are also the concerns of ArenaNet in making Guild Wars 2 the game that players always wanted.

People Who Suit MMOs

As part of the background reading for my thesis, I recently read Richard Bartle’s ‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: People Who Suit MUDs.’ It’s something of a classic in game design, and I’d heard his terminology before (often on Kill Ten Rats, a blog I highly recommend), so it was great to finally read the original piece.

My initial impression was that although Bartle’s player types are still useful categories today, a lot of his examples and criteria are very out of date. The article was written in 1996 and based on MUDs, text-based virtual worlds much closer to programming or writing than current online games. Player-killing isn’t the issue it was then. As I read on, though, I found that Bartle’s four categories still have clear analogues in MMORPGs, lending great weight to his typography in my mind.

Guild Wars 2: Traits and Attributes

A new post from Jon Peters over at the ArenaNet blog has got fans and followers in a tizzy, and understandably so. It seems there have been some quite substantial changes to the trait system since I last read anything about it, and many are voicing fears that the new, less open system will encourage just the kind of min-maxing and role specialisation that Guild Wars 2 has strived to discourage in the past.

Looking at the comments on the GW2 Facebook post (which represent a less informed and critical segment of the fan base than major blogs or Guild Wars 2 Guru), there seems to be some confusion over this rather complicated article today, so I thought I’d briefly sum up the system as I understand it here. In general, as with many aspects of the game, how well any of this works is something I don’t think we can pass comment on until we’ve played the game ourselves.

(Speaking of which, sign-ups for the closed beta have closed, with over a million volunteers in 48 hours. The next beta event will be at the end of March, so don’t wear out your refresh key just yet!)

The Eternal Sun – a fanfic.

Like many slightly geeky types, I have been exposed by friends to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. A most unlikely series for young adult geeks to fixate on, perhaps, but  has captured the hearts and imaginations of a lot of people, and in the process become one of the internet phenomena of recent times. I’m not ready to name myself a pegasister just yet (that’s the closest female equivalent of a brony, I’m told), but somewhere along the line I started watching for the sake of joining in on friends’ conversations… and now I’m up to date with the latest episodes.

Watching this surprisingly well-written and increasingly self-aware series as an adult, it’s all too easy to view with a cynical eye. The show is intended to be suitable for very young girls, and its themes tend to be exactly what you would expect in such a feel-good kids’ show. Part of the charm of the brony fandom is that they have embraced these messages of friendship, kindness, tolerance and determination so enthusiastically. When I watch the show with friends, however, my mind tends to wander down more sarcastic paths, and this fan fiction (my first in many years) is the result of such thoughts.

For those in the know, this is not Cupcakes (link deliberately excluded for the squeamish). I intend for this story to have a happy ending and a lot of the same overall messages that My Little Pony actually has – I’m just going there through some darker ideas. I have done everything I can to make this (including future chapters) consistent with the show and its canon; that’s part of the challenge. It should be believable, for fans.

Here, then, I present the first chapter of ’The Eternal Sun’, hopefully with more to follow. Comments are welcome. I’d like to dedicate the story to the two friends who got me into this mess… you know who you are

EDIT: Here’s a Google Docs link where I will put up all chapters in one place.

Chapter One: The Power of Friendship

 “…and that’s why it’s important to have friends who really understand you, and love you for who you are.”

Princess Celestia snorted to herself, tossing aside her student’s latest letter, which crumbled to dust before it touched the ground. They seemed to get more insipid and idiotic every time, and yet they served their purpose well enough. Bit by bit, Celestia had gleaned useful information from Twilight Sparkle’s experiences with her friends, and it was paying off.

Twilight was an excellent student, of course – that much was true. She wouldn’t have made such a good pawn otherwise, but her natural understanding of magic combined with her naivety and blind admiration for her princess made her the perfect candidate. Celestia still remembered clearly how the young unicorn had blundered into her life just as she was wracking her ancient brain for a solution to her problem. Now the day was fast approaching when she would never have to read a friendship report again, and it couldn’t come soon enough for her.

Role-Playing Games, Simulation, and Skyrim.

Computer- and console-based role-playing games owe a lot to pen-and-paper tabletop games of yore; this is fairly obvious. Having only recently dipped my toes into the d20 system of Dungeons and Dragons, I’ve begun to notice a lot of the more subtle connections and conventions that turn up as survivals in video games (Kingdoms of Amalur bears many of the hallmarks of a game that comes, perhaps too closely, out of the D&D tradition). Naturally it’s more evident in older games – as is the case with most media, video games started out copying what was already established and are only recently growing into their own territory, making greater use of what the platforms allow.

Part of that growth has involved a growing understanding of what certain conventions are there for, and whether they are still necessary or even useful. In some cases video game players can do without them; in others, electronic games provide a much better way of handling the same issue. I want to consider this in terms of Skyrim, a game I am still enjoying immensely and one whose atmosphere I have come to really appreciate.