PCGamePlay talks Guild Wars!

This is a translated version of the article that the dutch magazine PCGamePlay published in their July/August issue. Being one of the Dutchmen of GuildMag myself I got my hands on it and translated it (EDIT: Wow 5 hours, that took longer than I thought!) for your reading pleasure. There will most likely be some spelling errors in it, I apologize for that. But heck, I’ll beat Google translate anytime! Wall of text… engage!

Only a few MMORPG’s in development keep us as interested as Guild Wars 2. The need to return to Ascalon feels pretty big which isn’t surprising because Prophecies was a fenominal chunk of gameplay which went through the MMO-community as a shockwave. Prophecies was praised for it’s unique story-structure, beautiful atmosphere and graphics, the fantastic PvE hack&slash combat and the impressive PvP capabilities. And on top of that it didn’t require a monthly fee! But there were several discussions about Prophecies actually being an MMO or not. The abunanced use of instances and the addition of AI party members caused players not to care about other players much and that’s somewhat unusual for an MMO game. Developer ArenaNet is determent to wipe all the cons of the table and make Guild Wars 2 the ultimate game.
After Guild Wars: Prophecies (2005) ArenaNet came with two standalone campaigns (Factions and Nightfall) and a classic expansion (Eye of the North) but none of these additions reached the absolute awesomeness of Prophecies. ArenaNet knew this all to well. Adding the many different continents spread the players out over the world and besides, the addition of the new professions provided an abundance of skills. Over 1200 skills and the ability to combine them on one character turned down alot of players because they didn’t want to spent hours making a build that worked. The Guild Wars series kept making us think of Magic the Gathering where you’d have to choose your deck from thousands of cards. This might be fun for a hardcore player but you might scare a casual one and that should never happen. ArenaNet promises us big changes for GW2, not only a simplified skill system but also a persistant world with instances a unique quest system that should mean the end of green exclamation marks. But before we look at these new additions we will first take you into the gameworld of GW2. Because dragons and five playable races can’t wait to appear on the podium. Lights out, spotlight on!

The Awakening:

Guild Wars 2 takes place 250 years after the events of Eye of the North. In this massive sequel you will return to Tyria, the continent that was central for Prophecies. Tyria has been taken over by Elder Dragons which caused armies of undead and hideous creatures to appear in the lands of Tyria. Alot of things have changed in 250 years. The swallowed nation of Orr and it’s well known citizen the Undead Elder Dragon Zhaitan surfaced in the Sea of Sorrows. This caused Lion’s Arch to flood but it has been rebuilt in time. The Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik caused havoc in the south and the Charr have taken back Ascalon which is now known as a ghost town. Ebonhawke has become one of the most important cities of the Humans who also built the beautiful city of Divinity’s Reach. The Asura rebuild Rata Sum (as seen in Eye of the North) in a most impressive way and the Pale Tree with all it’s branches and roots has become the home of the Sylvari, a new race who was born out of the giant tree only a quater of a century ago. The religius landscapes have also been reshaped, the Humans still have faith in the old gods even though it appears that they have abandoned them. The Charr whipe their paws on the gods and dragons. The Asura believe in technology and their Eternal Alchemy (Gods and dragons are just a piece of one big puzzle) and the Sylvari are still too young to understand it all.
It is a fact that Zhaiten will play a central part in GW2 and will be the ultimate opponent. You will feel the presence of all the dragons in Tyria and see the trail of destruction they leave, but the confrontation with these dragons is something the developers leave for future expansions.

Unite or Die!

The arrival of the Elder Dragons makes for an unique situation in Tyria because all the different races must ‘stand together’ to survive, although each race has a different stance on the situation. The Humans and the charr have to settle their old feud and that of course is easier said than done. The Sylvari are rather unexperienced and can’t really estimate the thread so they can use all the advice they can get. The Asura are, as expected, are cocky enough that they think that they can take down the dragons by themselves, and if they fail they’ll just hide underground (Someone should make them realize that the situation in serious and while you’re at it, tell them to stop experimenting on their new pets called the Sylvari). And the Norn warriors are so proud and independent that they might walk right into the dragons with their stubborn head. The task of the players is to unite these races to fight against the Elder Dragons, this journey will be presented as the personal story of the players in GW2 and ArenaNet will use some of the same storytelling techniques as the perfected instanced ways used in the original Guild Wars. GW2 plans to go even further than the previous series and wants to add the singleplayer RPG story to your MMORPG experience, quite an ambitious task that is!

There once was… a dynamic event!

Guild Wars 2 offers more than just the story of the dragons who try to destroy Tyria. You’ll also deal with the rise and fall of the legendary guild called ‘Destiny’s Edge’ which is represented by all races. You will meet warriors like Logan Thackeray (Human), Rytlock Brimstone (Charr), Eir Stegalkin (Norn), Caithe (Sylvari) and Zojja (Asura). Each have their own personality and vision and an unsalted opinion about their companions. You can make friendship with these characters and even help them rebuild Destiny’s Edge with the goal to employ them in the battle against Zaithan. Next to this guild you also be able to befriend other organizations like The Order of Whispers, Durmand Priory and The Vigil. The Order of Whispers does not believe that the dragons can be defeated and wants to put them back in their cradle. The Durmand Priory consists out of scholars and scientists who want to document the entire history of Tyria for the benefit of all races. The Vigil in a powerful fellowship that offers aid to the people who have suffered from the attacks of the dragons.
As a player you will meet these organizations and you can even join one of them which gives you new quests and events. And thats not the only way to give a personal touch to the story. Upon character creation you will choose a race and answer ten biography questions with three to five answers a question to point your personal story in the desired direction. Add the stories tied to your profession and you will get a varied offer of story which should make GW2 fun to replay. ArenaNet knows by now that a large amount of players has played through the campaigns on multiple characters, and just for those hardcore players who invested thousands of hours in Guild Wars there will be a lot to discover everytime you replay the story. But also the people who plan to go through it once will experience something you’ve never seen in an MMO before.

ArenaNet has a lot of talented and praised people on the team and the art team is already known for the prizes on art competitions they won. It would be a waste if that art only was seen in a book form. So they developed a system for the cutscenes to make the art come alive, we’ve already seen a preview of this in the first Guild Wars 2 trailer and you can expect to see these kind of cutscenes in the game.

L’enfer, ce n’est pas les autres (hell is not the others)

It is a fact that ArenaNet is a star in telling stories. But we are most curious about the quest system they will be using. NPC’s with exclamation marks above their head are abolished, no more static vilagers with a green exclamation mark floating above them that explains through a text box that their village is being attacked and that you have to kill 10 of the attackers, that’s the old system. ArenaNet wants to go a step further by providing a persistent world stuffed with dynamic events. This is the biggest difference with the previous series because the traditional Guild Wars was mostly instanced, sure there were a few gathering places but once you go through the portal your party is on it’s own. You will never run into other parties and can never be disturbed by kill stealers and quest campers which pose a big problem in most persistent MMORPG’s. ArenaNet is positive that this won’t happen in GW2. Next to the instanced areas in which you play your personal stories there will also be very large persistant areas where all players can go about their business and react to the dynamic events that happen before their eyes.

For example: a flying dragon spits fire and sets a few houses on fire, the villagers are running around screaming for help. All the players around can attack the dragon (or not) and get XP and loot once they’ve contributed in taking it down. There’s no need to look at anyone in suspicion, if they make the last shot that kills the dragon once it’s down to 1% of it’s health they will only get rewarded for that tiny contribution. You won’t need to form a party which disbands after the dragon has been defeated (K THX BYE!). Once you come in action you will automatically become part of the event, that way it becomes easier for the soloplayer to take part in events without having to join a party, but ofcourse you can do so, after all this is still Guild Wars.

Skritt City

It can also be much more complex than the previously stated example with the dragon. A player can gain access to the capital of the Skritt, a kind of rat-like folk. But before you are allowed in the city you must first gain their thrust which happens through an event chain. This event chain starts outside of the city with a Skritt warrior which is being kidnapped by the Nightmare Court, a sort of evil group which originates from the Sylvari. As a player you can prevent the Skritt Warrior from being kidnapped, if you fail to do so you can choose to free the Skritt before he will be tortured and brainwashed. If you don’t succeed in rescueing  him then the Skritt will start an attack on the Skritt capital along with other brainwashed Skritt. If you can prevent the Skritt from being kidnapped (thus preventing the event chain) the gates of the capital will open for you and you will get an audience with the king who can offer you more events. If this king is killed during those new events then all the players will be set at the front of the gates untill they earn their thrust again. This city alone has 30 different event chains of which you can be part of and Guild Wars 2 will offer thousands of these events. Sounds pretty awesome huh?

What do you mean ‘I’m late’?

The question that most MMO player will ask themselves is if he won’t miss any events. Events are not like quests that stack up in your quest log, in GW2 you just walk around and let things happen, you will experience different things that your friend who walked through the same area just an hour ago. you will undoubtedly hear stories from your guildies about the epic adventures they went through without you because you were simply not at the right place at the right time. Will that pose a problem? ArenaNet thinks not because they say that a player will never feel like he’s missed out on something because new events will constantly happen around you so there will always be action for you to participate in. We must add to this that ArenaNet wants to integrate the events to the gameworld in a natural way but these events are of course bound to a repeating cycle . In other words, events will return even though, if you play in a normal way, you will be long gone by the time the events restart. You could just hang around in a specific area until you’ve seen all the events but it seems more interesting to experience them trough a different character.

ArenaNet will offer diferent professions next to the five races which is good for the repeatability of the game. According to the hints that ArenaNet gave us we believe that we can expect a total of 8 professions which is less than the 10 professions that Guild Wars had. But ArenaNet aims for quality not quantity, that also applies for the amount of skills.

Fire from the sky

It has currently been confirmed that the Elementalist and the Warrior will return as a playable profession in Guild Wars 2. The Elementalist is the ultimate ‘Nuker’ who can bombard large groups from a distance. He can reign down meteors, set up a wall of fire, shoot lightning bolts out of it’s fingertips, blind enemies with bright flashes, create an icy surface beneath his foe’s feet and cause small scale volcano explosions. Our favorite skill has to be the summoning of a Firebird (Phoenix) who can hit multiple targets before it returns to it’s master as a tame eagle. The Warrior is a close combat tank, he can slice throats like no other, and because of it’s defensive stances he can take hits pretty well. He can also raise banners to buff his allies and de-buff his enemies. Every hit the Warrior does give him adrenaline which can be used to spice up his powerful melee skills with extra damage or to use in a burst attack. These burst attacks use up all of the warriors adrenaline and deals a good amount of damage to the enemy.

Every professions has far less skills than in the previous games but these skills are balanced in a better way (again quality not quantity). Skills that do somewhat the same as the next are scratched making everything more clear. Your skillbar on the bottom of the screen will have room for 10 skills, the first 5 skills cannot be specified by the player but they are tied to your weapon and profession. Hardcore buildists probably can’t laugh about this but it makes sure that casual players also go into a fight with at least 5 usable skills. If you head out with a sword and a shield you will automaticly get Block and Shield Bash, if you go with a twohanded sword you’ll get skills that can do a lot of damage with one blow. You can bring two weapon sets so you swap between the two although a cooldown will prevent you from abusing this feature. The last 5 skills in the bar can be chosen to your desire but there will be a set slot for a healing skill and an elite skill (which will make a return in GW2).

Will ten skills of which a few are set be more interesting that eight fully customizable skills? The opinions will differ but the fact is that casual players will no longer run horrible builds, at least not half of it. Whats interesting is that you can expand these ten skills. The Warrior has so called ‘chain skills’, sets of three skills which are activated in a row and take up only one skill slot causing you to have more slots left for other awesome skills. Hopefully the Assassin will return and utilize the same concept.

Let the blood flow!

Fans of the Guild Wars series never had to complain about the graphics because when Guild Wars first hit the market it was among the best looking games. In the sequel players can expect a spectacular display of visuals in- or outside. The biggest addition has to be the combat animations which are so impressive that it’s hard to suppress a smile on your face. The goal for GW2 was to create a brand new animationsystem which doesn’t just look better but also help indicate what skills are being used. The result is astonishing, opponents are being smacked around, set on fire or frozen in mid-air. The Warrior skills Sever Artery and Gash spill blood in all directions and the way the Warrior rushes into things make you think of a mad bull. You will feel like you’re an elite warrior surrounded by worms that need to be crushed! And again, it’s not just about the eye-candy but also about easily identifying what skill your ally, or PvP-opponent is using so you know whats coming and what kind of impact that skill might have (don’t try to catch a meteor!) and anticipate your next move. Shockwaves will make an uproar and meteors will make expanding circles of fire. It’s not just the skills that have been worked out but the developers have added small details such as arrows shot through the Elementalist’s wall of fire will light up and cause fire damage. This will surely make tactical play more fun. Cool!

Player versus Player

Guild Wars is not only know for it’s outstanding PvE but the PvP gameplay has reached high tiers in the dedicated community as do the professional competitive tournaments. No wonder ArenaNet has focused special attention on the PvP part of the game. PvP in GW2 will be more accessible, the classical PvP-system where players choose their gear and skills then team up with a group or their guild will still remain in GW2. The previously mentioned skills and tactics will blossom in these PvP modes. Next to that ArenaNet introduces a new PvP World system in which PvE characters put up againts other players on an open battlefield called The Mists. This is alot less than the standard PvP option and will allow casual players to have some fun in PvP.

Next to the big deals that we talked about in this article we will discuss some of the other additions and improvements that ArenaNet has made. Like the vast underwater world you can explore in GW2 which won’t feel as threatening and unpleasant as in other MMO’s where the danger of running out of air is constantly on your mind. The upgrade system for weapons will also be expanded and the salvage system from Eye of the North will be turned into a vast craftingsystem with plenty of capabilities. Armor will no longer be bound to your profession so the amount of armor pieces available will also increase dramatically. The level cap of 2o has also been increased and the game will be larger than Prophecies. Guild Wars 2 is starting to look pretty good and will deffinitly be the best Guild Wars game so far with no monthly costs. Tyria here we come!