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Guild Wars Ramps Up To E3, Previewed Effusively

Posted by simoniker on from the something-different? dept.

Thanks to GameSpot for its hands-on impressions of ArenaNet/NCSoft's online PC RPG, Guild Wars, a subscription-free title that's previously received positive press. The preview explains that "the game relies on a skill-based system that's reminiscent of the card game Magic: The Gathering. You can collect and earn a wide variety of powerful skills and abilities, but... you'll be allowed to select only eight of them to take into battle", meaning that "a relatively new player will have a chance against seasoned veterans." It's also noted: "One of the most surprising aspects of Guild Wars is that the entire game will download to your computer while you play it", with only a "small executable program, about 90 kilobytes in size" needed - this is shown by the official download page for the E3 For Everyone alpha demo event, explained thus: "From May 12 through 14, while Guild Wars is being demonstrated on the E3 show floor, players from around the world will be able to play the same experience over the Internet."

5 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. E3 vs the world? by MMaestro · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Its a stretch, but maybe the developers would hold a special event before E3 ended. All the non-E3 players that are online vs what few people stayed in the booth to play. While they're at it, they could turn it into a Lord of the Rings like scene..

    "Just as our brave media correspondants were overwhelmed by the rabid gamers, the servers crashed saving our heroes from certain humiliation!'

  2. Re:An Excellent Idea by RealErmine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If one gets appreciably stronger by acquiring an item/ability from paid-content, it'll imbalance any conflict with a non-paying customer (it's a pvp game).

    One point that I have read about the expansions is that, while you must pay to get consistant access to them, even if you are playing for free you can be invited into an expansion area without paying. This helps insure that even free players can participate in expanded content.

    Unfortunately I cannot find where I read this info =/

    --
    Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
  3. Download while you play? by edwilli · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if they will use a BitTorrent or other P2P type download? Defer some of the cost on the server end, thus, giving it away for free.

    1. Re:Download while you play? by C0rinthian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They don't need to I think, everything seems built into the client. If it uses a P2P back-end, you wouldn't know it.

      It's quite incredible, the installer is under 100kb. When launching for the first time, you download about 30 mb to get to the login screen. Over half of which is downloading in the background while you set up your account. Dunno how much more needs to be downloaded until we can login, but it is very quick and painless on a DSL connection.

      I recommend downloading the client just to check out the engine. Even the login screen looks really nice. And to see something really cool, start resizing the window. Go ahead, it's not constrained to any particular aspect ratio at all. You can do whatever you want with the game window. I don't think there's a DirectX game out that can do that. Multi taskers rejoice!

  4. Re:An Excellent Idea by bluesnowmonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This requires that, expansions can't introduce 'phat lewt' in the traditional sense. If one gets appreciably stronger by acquiring an item/ability from paid-content, it'll imbalance any conflict with a non-paying customer (it's a pvp game). Imbalancing conflict with non-paying customers, in turn disincentivizes free players from sticking around, which will heavily diminish the viability of the 'free-play' option. Casual gamers won't likely hang out to be pummeled by paying customers with egregious PvP advantages.

    You and I came to exactly opposite conclusions. I think they'll get a huge fanbase very quickly initially, on the simple basis that it's a great new game and it's free. Then when the first exansion rolls out, it will most certainly have (it pains me to use the terminology) "phat lewt." Everyone who can pay at that point will do so, knowing that it's required to compete. Those who can't quite afford it will be filtered out mostly, but they were just wasting bandwidth anyway. What's left is a large, dedicated community with money to spend.

    It's a good plan if they've got the capital to survive until that first expansion.