yaleartificer ([info]yaleartificer) wrote,
@ 2005-12-18 12:36:00
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Guild Wars: Give me MMOR!
After coming home from the mall yesterday (where we saw a bunch of campers outside Best Buy waiting for XBox 360's to spawn), [info]digitalemur surprised me with my Christmas present: Guild Wars. Many know this as the massively multiplayer game with no monthly fee, and some even know that I tried to drum up support for it about 6 months ago, but we ended up having too many Mac users to make anything but World of Warcraft possible. Finally, I got the chance to play it ... and it even surpasses my expectations.



Having played GW for about 4 hours last night, I have to say that a lot of things about this game rock my socks. With no monthly fee, the game designers have no reason to waste your time. Want to go to a certain city you've been to before? Hit "M" to call up the map, then click on the city, and you're there. No corpse runs -- if you die in an instance, you just take a cumulative penalty to your stats that goes away if you leave the instance and do something else. A star on the map shows you exactly where you need to go for each quest, and I've yet to receive a quest that says, "Kill lots of Foo monsters until one randomly drops a Bar." Nor has any quest yet to ask me to kill more than 3 of the same thing, but that may change as the game goes on, as it did with WoW. I'm hoping it doesn't.

But the other thing I love about Guild Wars is that combat feels like a game instead of a task. Right from the outset, I got several powers that aren't your traditional MMORPG set of damage-over-times, roots, and direct damages. "Empathy" does damage to the enemy every time they attack something. "Animate Bone Horror" let me raise little skeleton munchkins from recently defeated enemies to send against foes -- you could get a nice little group of them on your side if you fought several enemies in a row. Another early skill gave me a tradeoff of temporarily reducing my max HP for faster regeneration. Actively choosing between these things wasn't simply a matter of "root, blast, fireball, fireball" or "Totem, totem, bash, heal, bash" that my mage and shaman in WoW devolved into, but made strategizing fun, especially when fighting multiple enemies. You can only choose 8 skills or spells to take into combat, which I think is a great choice that allows for a lot of customization and also makes for less HUD clutter. You have both a primary and a secondary class to draw skills from, the main difference being that your primary gives you one powerful ability that is unavailable to secondaries of that class. Leveling up is also interesting -- you get multiple points to spend on either making certain skill types more powerful, or to increase raw abilities like "Fast Casting," the Mesmer primary ability that does just what it sounds like. This point system also means that when you take on a quest to get a new skill (and the quest-givers give you these skills before you leave for the quest rather than after, which honestly makes a lot of sense), you're not just going to get more powerful fireball, but a totally new ability.

Other things I was impressed with: There was practically no patching to be done after I installed the game, and no graphics had to be fiddled with -- it just ran. And it runs beautifully -- I find GW's realistic graphics more appealing than WoW's cartoony look, though I know that's a matter of taste. The dialogue from the NPC's is solid -- no anachronisms or lame punny names. Heck, even the players on my server by and large avoided annoying middle-schoolisms in their names, though there was one "YourHotMomxxxxx" running around. HP regeneration
has not only a speed but an acceleration, a beautiful innovation that means my waiting between fights was practically nonexistent. Enemies generally were not "pullable," but responded to defend others of their kind, which made them seem much less stupid. And the quests so far have shown some promising ingenuity -- one of my first necromancer quests had traps that could be set off by animating bone horrors next to them.

Okay, there must be a downside, you say. Well, the main one I've seen so far is that it's still only available for PC, though I don't know about the feasibility of using an emulator on a Mac. The climb to the level cap of 20 is much shorter than WoW's climb to 60, since the designers wanted people to get involved in PvP much sooner (though there are a lot of quests for new skills available at 20). You can't jump around the environment, which pretty firmly delineates where you can and can't walk. And there are no /silly or /train commands. Aside from that, I think I'll be having a lot of fun with this game, and I hope some of you with PC's might decide to take the plunge, too.

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[info]locke61dv
2005-12-18 08:26 pm UTC (link)
Wow. I think this sounds *fantastic*. This is totally the kind of social contract I'd rather see in my MMORPG. Would you say this is more amenable to casual play?

Sadly, I have a Mac, so GW seems sorely out of reach.

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[info]yaleartificer
2005-12-18 10:44 pm UTC (link)
Would you say this is more amenable to casual play?

Yes, definitely. Not having the monthly fee makes it a lot easier to put the game down for a while. The only qualification I'd add is that I haven't tried PvP yet, but I expect there's a big learning curve there -- so many people have been playing for so long that there's bound to be some intimidating metagame wrapped up in it, like Magic. But for PvE, I think the reduced transit time, no corpse runs, and general lack of drudge work should make for a more casual time commitment -- though I'm sure it depends on your social circle, too.

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[info]yaleartificer
2005-12-19 03:55 pm UTC (link)
This website had an amusing way of putting it:

Guild Wars: The MMORPG That Won't Own You.

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[info]locke61dv
2005-12-19 04:21 pm UTC (link)
I'll read that later, thanks!

But here's another other thing: I think it's in most MMORPG's best interest to encourage social dysfunction / unhealthy play. Slightly less so for GW because there's no monthly fee, but they still want you to play enough to get your friends to join in.

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[info]sandmantv
2005-12-19 07:37 pm UTC (link)
If GW is cheaper and has better coding so that it runs better than other games, yay for them. You telling us this is capitalism in action and certainly a reason to support a better price/performance combination. Does it take less computing power to run? I honestly don’t know and also don’t know how I’d find out (ie i dont trust reviews or req specs in this regard). As for people can do it using a modem, sure, almost all MMPORG’s are client-side enough that they run fine with a modem. This all being said, you’ve certainly convinced me to try it should I get an opportunity, since there is a lot I will give up for saving $15 a month. (And if GW solved the problems of having collision detection PvP with armies of skeletons and minions for multiple players, with very little lag, then damn, they deserve some computing award.)

And of course GW is better than Evercrack. Both GW and WOW (and EVE, which is what I’m surprised you aren’t playing actually. That seems the cool game of choice) were made years after EQ discovered a lot of mistakes to make, by making them. WOW’s instances are far superior to what the article you mention primarily discusses. And yes, at most half the game is instance – but the key thing is that since the really good stuff is in instances, the hardcore people are primarily there, alleviating a lot of burden on non-instance areas. Striking a balance between instances and interactive world is tricky, but I think it works really well here (for Horde at least) and you’d be the first person I heard to say you quit WOW because you had to spend too much time competitively camping.

The ease of server-transfering a character sounds awesome, but even then is tricky. Remember one of the primary reasons you can’t hang out with new friends in WOW is that the gulf between 60 and 1 is insane. WOW tries to make a realm where there is community, and you are stuck with your friends there for that character for the bitter end. Since GW is specifically designed for a quick level cap, and reflects that. And there are many reasons a low lvl cap can make logistics easier – but most people usually want more time spent lvling.

I guess it all comes down to goals. That reviewer complained at length about how you need to spend hours and find huge raids to get the best gear. I simply do not understand why everyone WANTS the best gear. There are 5 million people playing WOW, and I expect the people who put the most time and thought into to have better stuff than me, and I expect a company to make a game for some people who want to do that. Blizzard managed to make a game for people who don’t want to do that too – but the loud voices all complain that since there are higher goals that COULD be accomplished, they aren’t fulfilled with just the goals of “getting a mount” or “hitting 60” or whatever goal you set for yourself.

(Of course at this point, the complaints you've raised regarding WOW start to diverge significantly from the points he raised.)

Also, no clue what this reviewer was talking about with Diablo2. Hitting lvl 99 and getting the elite sets took a TON of grinding, and it was quite possible to get the impression that you weren't cool if you did anything less. The solution of course was to only play for your goal, and stop playing the first or second time you killed Baal.

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[info]sandmantv
2005-12-18 10:47 pm UTC (link)
Ok, so you know that GW isn't a PvE game, but a PvP focused game, right? The lvling up grind is supposed to be done like a tutorial, and you hit the cap pretty fast and get into the battle. So yeah, they're not going to make you spend as much time climbing the lvl mountain, or travelling etc, since that's not what gametime is centered around. I'd hesitate to even review a game based on that aspect which should take about 10% of the eventual gametime.

A lot of people seem to not accept that these different MMPORG's occupy niches. GW is the definitive PvP niche, there are good PvE niches, and WOW is trying to be the mainstream behemoth. If you want to make a character that can somtimes PvE with friends, sometimes solo around, sometimes PvP, that's what WOW is for. (And WOW's patches are about the fact that they repeatedly add new content to the game, which again if you don't want to play for many months and explore new dungeons, is just a wasted hour or two of downloading, but isn't fair to compare to a PvP game. Might as well mention that GW takes less diskspace too and that's a bonus.)

And there are definite reasons not to enjoy PvP games where most people have the same/narrowly selected band of skills and items: being high-skilled is just as much a time-sink as finding new items. Ie, go play Starcraft or Ultima Online , it becomes a twitch-fest. Which is fine for some people sure, just a different niche.

"X ability does more damage" or "Y ability is casted faster" sounds like exactly the talents in WOW, not really sure how they're new given the way you describe them, but I could be missing something.

So again, if PvP is your niche, of course it's a better game for you. But comparing them objectively gets really silly. And also, there isn't any game-premise out there for MMPORGs that a bunch of Korean kids won't kick our ass at so hard they trivialize our experience.

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[info]yaleartificer
2005-12-19 05:07 am UTC (link)
"X ability does more damage" or "Y ability is casted faster" sounds like exactly the talents in WOW, not really sure how they're new given the way you describe them, but I could be missing something.

It's the skills, not the attribute point-builds, that I was saying were new. The point allocation part of leveling up is very much like WoW's talents; but because the way to get a more powerful fireball is to put points in that kind of magic, you know that when you get a new skill it's not going to be just a more powerful fireball. You can go Google the Mesmer spell list if you think I'm exaggerating about the newness of the skills, though. We've got some serious blue magic going on there.

I'm enjoying the PvE of Guild Wars much more than I ever did the PvE of WoW. To argue that this is because GW isn't focusing on the PvE does not make sense, so maybe I don't understand your argument. Regardless, I'm going to go play Guild Wars now. Whee!

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[info]sandmantv
2005-12-19 07:39 pm UTC (link)
I guess I was confused. You said it’s like only being able to lvl up to 20, which in WOW is really short and I would imagine not worth buying a game. But it’s possible you meant something else. I admit I haven’t played the game, but given what you said and the reviews have stated, “content till lvl 20” sounded an apt descriptor.

I’m just tired of people expecting WOW to be all possible things to all people. It’s one game among many with plusses and minuses, and niches it fills. Unfortunately one of the worst problems has been that so many people play it and talk about it, that it becomes easy not to play it for your goals, but for goals that are “cool”. Ie, you can get the impression that you’re wasting your time playing it unless you reach lvl 60 and get all purple gear – when in fact, the game is designed to be equally satisfying to people who only want to play to lvl 40, accomplish a few quests, and then maybe roll a new character or even quit the game.

There are a lot of MMPORG’s out there. GW, EVE, SW, Puzzle Pirates, Animal Crossing, FF11, and the line between FPS and MMPORG is blurring. And every single one of them feels the need to say “since we choose this niche, we are better than WOW in these ways, and that is all that matters”.

Anyway, yes, go play a game with fewer people and be proud of how that means more focused players and less teenager L3g0l4s’s – but a lot of what you describe is simply a matter of putting yourself in a smaller group, not that either game is superior or not. Of course, that may be an excellent reason to play a more elite game: smaller pool removes the dreck. But inversely, that smaller group means less likely to be able to play with the people you want to.

If you know your goals and what's important, and what's not important, then by all means pick and choose a game on that. WOW knows it for people that want a diversity of possibilities, none of which are optimum.

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[info]yaleartificer
2005-12-19 08:58 pm UTC (link)
I know it's easy to get defensive when I make comparisons with WoW, but I'm honestly not trying to attack your way of life here. When talking about the things I like about Guild Wars, I'm necessarily going to compare them to WoW, because that's what I figure people are familiar with. I could compare the build point system to Dark Age of Camelot, or talk about how dying is far less punishing than in EQ, but I think these are less meaningful to my immediate circle.

I don't mean to say WoW doesn't have a niche. WoW just does things that drive me up the frickin' wall -- it just seemed a huge amount of time in the game was spent doing unfun things like getting from here to there, waiting for crafting progress bars, and killing the same monster type over and over to fulfill a quest. I'm not even talking farming or grinding here -- the quests themselves told me to do this really repetitive, boring stuff. I understand, though, that the repetitive, timesucking things that make me want to bash my head on the desk are the very things that other people might find relaxing. Heck, if you're chatting the whole time, not having to strategize over combat could be a plus. I was just looking for more game in my game.

Level 20 does take longer in GW than WoW -- I'm not sure how long, having yet to hit it myself, but I can feel the advancement slowing down to a more moderate pace now that I've hit 5. Regardless, I've never believed games should artificially pad themselves out just to make you feel like you've gotten your money's worth. Short games, like short books, are easier to go through multiple times, and GW certainly seems to offer replayability with 30 primary/secondary combinations and lots of skill list customization.

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[info]sandmantv
2005-12-19 08:06 pm UTC (link)
Also, still confused at the mechanism for finances GW uses, but shots that WOW features exist simply to waste your time and make you play more months since that’s how they get their money, seem harsh.

You say “you have to run back to your body in WOW, and I hate long runs” which is, subjectively, understandable and you personally would rather take other forms of Death Penalty. However, if WOW had the rule like GW where you essentially have to start any instance (or solo area even) over when you die, there would be just as much extra time required to accomplish your goal, and you could still say “see, they have incentive to make you waste time and give them more money”. Or if it had the XP hit that EQ has. Fundamentally any Death Penalty is going to involve time-wasted.

(Fundamentally this is possibly related to the lvl/difficulty cap, which continues to have sweeping design ramifications. As difficulty and skills of characters increase, the desire to take a constant hit for returning to your body, rather than restarting the dungeon, increases hugely.)

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[info]yaleartificer
2005-12-19 09:07 pm UTC (link)
However, if WOW had the rule like GW where you essentially have to start any instance (or solo area even) over when you die....

You don't have to restart the dungeon when you die in GW. Everything you killed is still dead, as long as you don't leave the dungeon to get rid of the death penalty.

Also, still confused at the mechanism for finances GW uses, but shots that WOW features exist simply to waste your time and make you play more months since that’s how they get their money, seem harsh.

But not implausible.

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[info]sandmantv
2005-12-21 08:44 pm UTC (link)
You get a stat penalty, as if something that killed you before could be doable with less stats, to remove the penalty you must restart, and if the whole group wipes you must restart (or so the review said). Sounds like a restart almost encessarily.

...

Did you read what I just said? Yes, it is implausible that they make you walk from graveyards in order to increase time played in order to increase monthly fees. Especially once you consider that any other method of DeathPenalty (restarting dungeon, XP hit, item dmg, etc) generally simply equates to "more time played".

Next, think about this chain of logic. They instituted walking from GY's so that those extra minutes spent walking, would translate into more months played. That presumes extra time spent would be spent over days, and not into making the current play-time longer (play tonight for 3 hours instead of 2). This makes sense maybe if they believe people have an overriding desire to hit certain goals, a constant number of hours to play per day that will never be more or less, and thus in order to accomplish those goals will spend any number of days that Blizzard arbitrarily chooses.

Compared to "make a game fun, they'll play for it for multiple months instead of a week." There might of course be conflicts between fun and "addiction", but making you want to play a game more makes a lot more sense than presuming you want to play a game for a set goal, and stretching the number of days it takes to acquire that goal via making more downtime at certain period.

In fact, if you're going to be cynical about motivations, it's quite easy to say "I trust the motivation of someone that gets paid for every month I enjoy something - not someone who wants to sell me something once and then doesn't get any benefit from my continued satisfaction". But such arguments are silly, when the actual game can just be tried and enjoyed for itself.

PS: They added a graveyard next to Ragefire Chasm.

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[info]sophiescat
2005-12-19 08:25 pm UTC (link)
I think some of wow's cheesiness (holiday stuff etc.) actually helps to make the game less geared towards hardcore players then other games that try for more "authenticity". It makes it quite possible for to to focus primarily on getting my characters cute pets, pretty clothes and shiny mounts. (Yes I realize that the miny goals I have for my alliance characters are super girly).

I found the article you linked in an earlier comment weird because I found Diablo 2 much harder to play causually then wow - monthly charge non withstanding and much more about getting the best loot and macho posturing. Almost all the other complaints about EQ seem to have been mostly fixed by WOW and other post EQ games or seem to be about trade offs.

Am curious about how a game with almost all instances counts as a MMORPG - it seems more like a regular video game or a lan party.

Guild Wars reminds me a lot of Neverwinter Nights in terms of the abilities etc. listed - don't remember actual character play being that much more interesting but i think what class/profession you chose will make the strategy lvl / repetition pretty different. Priests or Warlocks in WOW seem to require a lot more strategy of the type you mention earlier on then mages or shaman - though not sure what they are like at higher lvls.

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[info]yaleartificer
2005-12-19 09:31 pm UTC (link)
I think some of wow's cheesiness (holiday stuff etc.) actually helps to make the game less geared towards hardcore players then other games that try for more "authenticity".

Oh, no question -- I think WoW's holiday stuff sounds great, from what I've heard of it. I was more thinking of Neverwinter Nights, and how the sloppy dialogue in that game just gave me the impression that the designers weren't really trying. I don't mind anachronisms that have a fun payoff, and the writing in WoW is really just fine. --Uh, except for the mythology books scattered around, but luckily nobody has to read those.

I mainly linked to that GW vs. EQ thing because it was somebody commenting on how commitment-intensive GW is (which I don't have enough experience yet to fully judge myself), and because I thought [info]locke61dv would enjoy the "doesn't own your ____" theme. Plus I liked the Tyler Durden quote.

Priests or Warlocks in WOW seem to require a lot more strategy of the type you mention earlier on then mages or shaman - though not sure what they are like at higher lvls.

I agree that healers tend to allow for more strategy than other classes in groups, because the choice of who to heal when is strategically interesting. In fact, I chose the shaman for my second WoW character because he was a healer who could run fast, which was my best attempt to allay two of the more repetitive aspects of the game. But having played healers in two MMORPGs now, I'm ready for a strategy that doesn't involve watching my companions' declining life bars instead of the action.

I didn't play a warlock in WoW because it was very similar to my cabalist in Dark Age of Camelot (a pet class with DoT's and life-transfer spells), but I admit that character was pretty interesting.

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