Ex-Blizzard lead men, Strain and O'Brian, Profiled

obchrisj writes "Wondering how Guild Wars came to be? FileFront profiles the conceptualizing, trials, and tribulations of ArenaNet's MMORPG, slated to be released sometime early this year, in an article titled, "F! True Game Story: Guild Wars". In case you're not in the know, Guild Wars was started by well-known ex-Blizzard employees, Jeff Strain and Mike O'Brian."

Comments

I miss "Tagu"

[bonch]

I miss "Tagu." That is all!

Honestly, the voices of the previous games were sorely missing from WarCraft III's lame "can the formalities" dialogue and phrasing. Most of the humans and Orcs were missing that vocal quality we loved from before.

Anyway, I don't think Blizzard has really been the same company for years. Not since StarCraft. There's a paraphrased story about one of the programmers for StarCraft whose wife went into labor. He checked out a laptop and headed to the hospital and continued working on the Campaign Editor in the lobby. When he was invited into the room with his wife who was giving birth, he continued working. His wife looked at him and said, "You're missing the birth of our daughter to work on that damn game?"

His response: "It's not some damn game! It's StarCraft!"

I don't think that passion is still there, especially with the influence of Vivendi. :)

Re:I miss "Tagu"

[Anonymous Coward]

- You're missing the birth of our daughter to work on that damn game?
- It's not some damn game! It's StarCraft!

What a fucking moron! I don't have a GF, but I sure wouldn't miss the birth of a child for some stupid game. Missing sex once or twice maybe, but not a BIRTH! It's not passion, it's being stupid. You don't need to praise his actions like he was some kind of god, he's just a very stupid human being...

Re:I miss "Tagu"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not long ago it was very unusual (almost unheard of) for men to be present in the delivery room during child birth. The fathers would sit in the waiting room until it was all over. I'd like to know how 50 years transforms a universally accepted practice into something that makes one a "very stupid human being." I'm guessing you are a teenager who thinks the universe was born in 1985. Go read a book. You might learn something.

This is not competition for MMORPGs.

[Viewsonic]

It is basically a visual Battle.Net where people can walk around and talk and create groups with each other. However, at the core of the game, it is still groups of 5-6 players doing missions, not much different than multi-player Diablo, Neverwinter Night, etc .. It is very slick, and Diablo fans will simply love it. It is the next step for multiplayer games (A visual gameworld to walk around talk/create groups in) ..

But it is an entirely different beast than a full-on MMORPG like WoW, which are geared to having groups of 40 players fight dragons and such at the same time. Or huge PVP battles with hundreds of people in the same location just battling it out. You simply cannot compare Guild Wars to games like WoW, EQ 1/2, etc .. Totally different games entirely.

Re:Play GW this weekend (morning of Jan 7)

[FinchWorld]

If Guild Wars rewards playing skill, I'll play it. Somehow, though, I think my character's damage, or chance to dodge an arrow or a sword, is going to be based on invisible dice rolling and not my actions

You might want to play it first, yes there is invis dice rolling, yes it depends how high oyu're skills are, point is though you're capped on skills, as soon as you hit level 20, bang, no more point to improve you're skills in, ex now only earns you points with which you can buy skill/actions (Of which you can only use 8 at any given point) and pointless that let you rearrange any attributes you currently have.

As for clicking on someone and attacking you can do that, however people who are actively using there skills will own you all the time, they'll be tripping you, hexing you, cripling you. You'll be lamely tring to hurt them in the most basic way. You'll need to use all you're skills, and how you use them depends enitrely on ou're role, you may be a warrior, so trying to d more damage, necromancer, raising minions and stealing health, monk, healing, smiting undead for lots of damage, protection spells, elementalist, magic damage like tradition wizard, mesmor, hexing, enchanting, and breaking them to, ranger, well bows, training an animal to use it battle, setting traps.

And thats not even mention team composition and the fact you have a primary and secondary class....