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Guild Wars Launches
NCSoft's newest edition to their ever expanding stable of games, Guild Wars, has launched in North America and Europe. From what I saw while in-game things seem to be working well from a technical standpoint. Commentary from the player base is already available from the fine souls at f13.net and Grimwell.com. More specific commentary comes from AFKGamer, who has commentary about the title a few days ahead of time, and on day one of play.
Bought my copy today. Reading the WoW VN boards gives the impression that the players are scared that GW will be better than WoW. Given that WoW has a poor endgame, a real level grind to 60 & non-implemented Battlegrounds; and GW already has a PvP oriented endgame, I think it's going to steal quite a bit of Blizzards business.
It'll probably take mine.
Guild Wars is a pretty sweet game. I had a preorder, so I was able to play for several weekends over the past 6 months or so.
It's a 3D RPG-style game similar in design to Diablo II. The PvP, the best part IMO, is really fast-paced and fun and team-oriented -- it's similar to a lot of FPSs in that regard, you play a brief round and if you die, you can be resurrected but you don't respawn automatically.
It's loads of fun; the drawback is that if you are playing alone, it gets boring quickly, because you are playing with random people who you don't know, and you usually get crushed if you don't have a decent amount of coordination.
To fully experience the game, I highly recommend joining a guild that uses a voice chat system to talk to each other during battles. It makes a huge difference in the quality of your organization, and you get to know your guildmates pretty well.
Another drawback of the game is that it runs only on Windows. Windows makes me extremely sad and I dearly hope they port it, because my Windows machine is several years old and it hates everything.
... You need to play this game. Guildwars has literally taken every element I dislike about MMORPGs and fixed it.
Never actually owning the game, just renting it via monthly fees? Nixed that, since there is no monthly fees.
Down time between battles? Nixed that, since after your out of combat your health/mana regen shoot through the roof.
Crowded dungeons, trading spawns, etc.. Yep, every zone is intanced. You will only be playing with friends and never have to worry about your adventure getting interrupted by anyone else.
Like PVP occasionally, but hate getting griefed or risking losing items/time from death penalties? Well your in an instance so your safe from griefers, and if you do want to PVP just go to an arena and battle your heart out.. when you leave it is as if you were never there (save for the gained rank points).
Even the smaller things I never even really knew I hated until they were not there.. Spending half my time running from location to location - Gone (just open up map, click on destination, and bam you teleport). Spending the other half of my time trying to form a group - Much easier now, since a 'gathering stone' type system is built in.
There are some other things I really like, but it might irk some MMORPG fans.. For one your power in the game is mostly dependent on your playing skill. You will get a bit stronger by gaining levels, but by and large it is a skill based system. Combat is skill based and very fast paced, as most debuffs/buffs last for about 15 sec. PVP is ruled by a balanced group, rather then 4 people spamming the template of the week.
I would encourage everyone to give it a try, this is not like any MMORPG you have seen yet.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
But note: I am going to play this game to completion. For those of you neh sayers that claim that this game is going to be too short... Try to collect all of the skills. And good luck trying to... each profession has 75 for a grand total of 450. All I have to say is: Settle in... GW is here to stay! See you on the servers!
Awesome - thank you.
Their site does not make it clear AT ALL. But if you download the 71k client and run the setup, it downloads some additional files. Once loaded, you have a chance to create a new account. That then directs you to a site called PlayNC.com - from there, you have the option to purchase the game online and get a key (no box).
Exactly what I was looking for.
Maybe PVP will be entertaining. Who knows, you have to do this overhead to get there.
Actually, no, you don't. You can create a PVP only character that is max level, but you can't ever take that character anywhere but the PVP areas. You can't even go to town. Also, you're stuck to preset skills until you find skills via the PvE game.
Its as annoying as hell, but as a game developer, I can see why they would do that.
Because they aren't good enough to make an engine that doesn't allow people to fall through the geometry (or their map makers can't effectively limit the range of movement naturally)?
Because they are lazy and would rather put a huge artificial barrier in the players way than implement a better system?
I can't think of a single reason that doesn't come back to them taking the easy way out. Not exactly a good message to send when you want people to be impressed by the quality of your game.
I was in a group in WoW, and someone had to go afk for a bit. In apparent boredom, another guy in the group decided to see if he could jump in the lava and then jump back out before dying.
It didn't work. We ended up having to wait for him instead so he could get back into the instance (from being a ghost).
They didn't take the "easy way out." Making a game of this calibre is not easy, let me tell you, so I fail to see why this small "feature" is indicative of laziness or inferiority when everything else in the game screams quality and effort. As it is, you obviously know little about how games (engines, in particular) actually function.
It's their game, and they've decided this is the way they want people to traverse through their world. They decided to set the pace of the game. So far, I haven't heard that many complaints from it, and the ones I have were relatively minor compared to your arrogant diatribe.
As a game programmer myself, you saying that they're not talented or that they're lazy makes me incredibly angry. You're picking out the one subjective flaw in the game and obnxiously and insultingly overreacting to it, ignoring the great work the game actually is composed of.
Its like other MMORPGS, but only takes 5 seconds to log on. Thats right, no stupid logo screens, no loading screens, just instantly in the game.
God spoke to me.
Wish I had the mod points.
:)
Far too often do people call a design choice they don't like or understand 'An easy way out' or 'Stupid' or some other way of saying 'its not what I would have done, so its wrong'.
Except they didn't do anything.
For me, playing guild wars has been like Looking at all the things that other mmogs have tried doing but failed... except done in a way that works. It really looks like the designers have played other games that would be considered competitors and aggressively looked at what pissed players off the most and tried very hard not to include those aspects of the games. (Things like level grinding, mean death penalties ect...) All the while creating a unique and thoroughly fun gaming experience.
I really think this game shows what can happen when people who like games, and know about games... make games.
Well that's my two bits, feel free to disagree with me. (I can't believe I just wrote that
This has always been the number one problem in Australia with EQ - a 6 hour downtime for patching during Australian prime time, followed by minimum 5 minutes, sometimes half an hour of downloading, and then your P4 3GHz PC takes its time logging you in. Then you're on for half an hour, there's a little network problem, and you come back (after another couple of minutes) to find you've just died and you're not exactly sure which way you were running when you were disconnected...
Or better still, like a friend of mine - sitting on the boat, and during a bit of lag ending up stranded on an island that the boat passed through, with some pretty mean looking goblins eyeing you over. Care to spend an hour or three swimming out of trouble - if you can avoid the sharks??? And no, despite petitioning, there was no divine assistance offered to the victim of a bug.
At least on GW if you suffer from a bug (I got stuck under the stairs I should have bee on during the last beta weekend), you can close the client, log back in and 5 seconds later ... it's like the bug never happened.
If you want continuity, to me it looks like GW will provide it. I'm checking the funds, and most likely buying a key tonight.