Posts Tagged ‘guild wars 2’

After a rough start, I’ve been enjoying a return to Guild Wars. I’d thought about trying to do some Hall of Monuments stuff in preparation for Guild Wars 2 (not knowing how long said acheivements were going to take) and found myself enjoying the game just for itself.

The game shows its age in a lack of nicety in UI and game mechanics (Phil calls it handholding, and he could be right), but visually it is still stunning. Although I do have an interest in MMO history, I have a difficult time playing the forefathers of our current crop of games solely due to the game visuals – they’re just so ugly in comparison to modern games. Guild Wars, however, is gorgeous, which really gives me hope for the system-friendliness of Guild Wars 2. If they were able to pack this much visual candy into a game that ran on 2005-era machines, then surely the stunning visuals of the upcoming title should run well on most machines. Or perhaps I’m talking out of my butt and haven’t the faintest idea how it all works – I’m open to that possibility, as well. ;)

Click-to-move irritates both me and my RSI something fierce. The lack of help in accomplishing game objectives is also irritating. I dropped one ranger in Nightfall (or was it Factions?) when I reached level 10 and had no more quests. I ran around in the jungle and trotted through the desert looking for new quests, to no avail. The current one, in a different expansion, had no problem with quests. I have to do a lot of googling and wiki-ing (is that really a verb?) in order to figure out how everything works. I am attributing that to the age of the game as well – I think we’re all used to a lot more polish now. Handholding, as Phil says.

Armour is gorgeous, even the low-level stuff. Characters are pretty, even without a lot of customisation. Ranger pets are few and far between (where the hell are all the animals?). Map travel is awesome and lovely. Heros and henchmen are wonderful, expecially for antisocial buggers like myself – I’ll miss them in Guild Wars 2.

Difficulty varies wildly, sometimes with no warning whatsoever. (The lack of indicated levels for quests doesn’t help in this regard.) You can be happily slaughtering mobs with ease when all of a sudden you get wiped out by wave upon wave of what I am assuming are more elite mobs. There doesn’t seem to be any “elite” portrait frames, etc., to warn you that you are about to have more trouble than you can handle. Strange.

All in all, a lovely, very playable game despite its age. And I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to Guild Wars 2.

How did I totally miss this? This video and Bio Break post There’s no place like home (instances) give a good overview. As I watched the video, the main thought that I had was “this feels like Fable 3″. Fable was a game that I loved for reasons that totally surprised me…I actually loved riding into town and having my kids run up to me squealing in excitement that their Big Damned Hero mother was back. Then my hardworking husband (or wife, depending on which town it was) would fall into my arms. The villagers hailed me and cheered me. (Yeah, I have trouble being a bad guy – my characters were always well-loved.) The GW2 home instance will be quite similar to this.

In the video, the dev team gave an example of a choice that you have to make, which was to save either a hospital or an orphanage, but not both. In your home neighborhood, both are represented; if you saved the orphanage, the kids are happy but the hospital is burnt out. If you make the other choice, you have a working hospital, but hungry orphan kids have no place to live. The people in your hometown react to you according to choices that you have made in your life story.

I totally love this idea. It is the perfect balace between having your actions change the world around  you, and also being able to share a world environment with others.The problem with MMOs, of course, being that we are all heroes, every single one of us is The Chosen. On a realistic level, that just doesn’t work. I want to come home and have people clap my back and buy me drinks in the pub. I want a buxom wench to give me a sly look when she serves my ale, and I want my best friend to live next door. Yeah, I want to be a Big Damned Hero, you bet.

Now, if the game would finally come out! Every video makes me feel like a small child who knows that Christmas is just too far away.

This game is so stunningly beautiful.