It was nearly eight years ago (February 2005) that I started
playing Guild Wars Prophecies. Joining the beta testing team and falling in
love with what then was an entirely ground breaking MMORPG. When the game was
released officially in April that year the response was huge. Critically the
game won several prestigious awards, IGN’s Best PC RPG, and Gamespy’s MMORPG of
the Year. By August 2007 Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall (the first two
follow up expansion packs) had sold more than 5 million copies. The game’s only
true competition was World of Warcraft, which released on November 23, 2004 and
is the undisputed leader in the battle for consumer dollars and time.
Unlike WoW’s monthly subscription model NCSoft and ArenaNet
chose to make Guild Wars free to play. You bought the game license and then
played as much as you wanted, at no charge. Arguments will always abound over
which is the better game and business model. WoW’s clunky graphics and endless
grinding have always put me off. Guild Wars on the other hand looks like art
and plays like it too.
Guild Wars 2 had been rumoured for some time. The
announcement of the follow up game first came out on March 27, 2007. The sequel
announcement coincided with the release of Eye of The North, the final Guild
Wars expansion pack.
Fans then waited a further 5 years for GW2 to be released.
The amount of development required meant that no firm, tentative or other
suggested release date was given. Utilising new, proprietary technology to
produce a dynamic 3D world built around critically acclaimed concept art, Guild
Wars 2 promised a totally different approach to MMORPG’s in a game where your
choices and actions would change the environment around you. Where strategy and
tactics would play a greater part in success and skills would be learned in an
entirely different way. Oh and no monks (healing class) characters at all. You
are on your own out there.
So does the game deliver?
This is where a critical review of Guild Wars 2 gets
complicated. ArenaNet did the right thing in adopting many of the successful
elements of World of Warcraft, we now have crafting professions, gatherable
resources and dynamic areas where you spend a lot of time interacting with
other players fighting monsters and achieving quest goals.
The graphics are still excellent, though they have retained
some of the more artistic elements present in the concept art. This is
restricted to the maps (where instead of shadow of war darkness over unexplored
areas, you have a blurred, brush stroke like texture over the unreached areas
of the world) and loading screens. It’s better than having sponsor advertising
though (now there’s a hideous thought).
When it comes to gameplay, you still grind your way through
endless mobs of enemies, all carefully levelled to be a challenge, without
being unbeatable. Most of the drops are rubbish, but with the inclusion of the
crafting professions you can use many of the teeth, bones, hides, and goo
dropped by monsters in their death throes to make armour, weapons, jewellery, clothes
and food.
The questing system is completely linear. Your personal
story requires you to go from one quest to the next, often with a recommended
level difference of 3 or more. This means you have to go off and do side quests
to level up. The personal story line is intriguing and well written. The fun
really begins in the exploring and the opportunities found in the dynamic
world.
NPC’s are represented by gold hearts on the map. These are
people who need items, or something killed and they are open to anyone coming
to help. After killing a dozen monsters, and gathering a bunch of whatever item
the NPC requires, you gain experience, and the option to buy what they are
selling using karma as a currency (gold, silver and copper are also used with
merchants).
This adds an entirely new element to the game. The dynamic
world works best when the screen announces there is a new event nearby – and
you join 200 or more other players in a live battle fighting against some great
foe. It encourages the best in social gaming. When a stranger falls in front of
you, you have the option to pause in battle and spend a few second resurrecting
them. This also earns you experience.
The best thing about this is that these live and graphically intense
battles are well managed and the graphics engine, game physics and general
programme doesn’t crash or overwhelm a mid-level system even at the highest
resolutions.
The rest of the time you explore, and earn experience by
discovering waypoints (that you can teleport to for a small fee) and Points of
Interest, which encourage you to explore the nooks and crannies of the map. The
final feature are Vistas. These are high points that you climb up to, the view
from there is a sweeping panorama that also earns you experience. Assisting each
NPC with a gold-heart over their heads, discovering each Vista, POI and
Waypoint – earns you a chest reward (with experience, buffs and currency in
it).
The guilds still exist, and after some initial bugs the
partying system works well now. Allowing you to team up with friends and guild
mates to complete both personal quests, general adventuring and even dungeons.
This is a game designed to get you involved, and it does an
admirable job of it.
While I have no problem discerning fantasy from reality,
it’s the realistic elements that bother me in this game. There is a sense of casual genocide that
permeates this game. Every playable species (and every sentient non-playable
species) believe that they are on the right path. They are the ones who shall
inherit Tyria – the meek are going to be crushed, stabbed, slashed, burned,
frozen, blown up and drowned. It’s not the conversations you have with
character that you then kill en masse. It’s the finer details, like the way
they scream when they are on fire. It’s quite off putting when you realise that
the lumbering troll you are about to destroy has some strong personal views on
the current socio-political landscape.
Humans, Asurans and Nords have all been displaced by catastrophic
upheaval. This is a fantasy world set 250 years after the apocalypse. Tempers
are still frayed. Humans are forcing themselves into Centaur lands, Charr have
built a steam driven empire on the ruins of the human world, the Asurans are
forcing their way into every corner of the world with the casual contempt they
have for all races. Even the tree born Sylvari are exterminating other species
in an attempt to secure themselves some nice woodland property.
The role you take in Guild Wars 2 is not noble. You aren’t
so much the brave adventurer you were in Guild Wars, as a tool for
nationalistic expansion and colonial assimilation. The only thing missing are
the missions where you are asked to escort missionaries, or deliver plague
laden blankets to primitive tribes people.
In Guild Wars none of your enemies talked to you, unless they were
really bad guys and they were part of the greater story. They were also human
and there was a sense of right in taking up arms against them. In this game,
with its vastly expanded mythos, landscape and complexity of biodiversity –
most of the creatures you encounter have something to say. The snow giants,
once a complex and proud race, now farming potatoes and waiting for you to hack
them up. The rat like Skritt, sometimes you have to wipe them out in their hundreds,
and other times you have to save them from their obsession with shiny (and
radioactive) things. The centaurs remind me a lot of Native Americans. Forced
by an alien invader to take up arms – and based on the ease with which they
die, they are similarly outclassed in technology.
None of these misgivings stop me playing the game. They do
leave me with a lingering sense of unease and wonder if anyone else is noticing
the depth of the game, or if we have all become too desensitised to violence in
games to draw comparisons to real world issues.
www.guildwars2.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars_2
