Guild Wars Still In The Thick of Battle

1up.com has an interview with community relations manager Gaile Gray. They discuss changes since the launch, and how the company has acted to keep the player-base happy in a title with no fee to keep them grounded. From the article: "August's event showed us that increasing the rewards for PVP play was both necessary and wise. The feedback we received before the event provided us with a lot of guidance on what players wanted most. We reacted with a substantial boost to faction points and with special rewards for PVP accomplishments...and the players loved it. We're going to keep watching the gameplay progression and reward systems to ensure that both PVP players and cooperative players are adequately rewarded."

Comments

GW -- reasons for long-term success

[Morgaine]

I'm skeptical whether that will work or not, but we'll see. I'm rooting for them, and not because I play the game (I don't)

Try it briefly, and you'll see why they are extremely likely to succeed. There are five key reasons why I think it's almost guaranteed, by design:

• They are creating an ever-growing CAPTIVE audience, unlike any other MMOG-type game. The audience is captive because of the lack of monthly subscription costs. After all, once you've purchased the extremely cheap game pack (just 18 UK pounds from play.com), why would you delete it? You're captive for good (in principle), even if you don't play it, as you'll still have GW announcements on your mental radar. In marketting terms, that's a goldmine.

• They have utterly eradicated all the horrors that plague more conventional MMOGs, like kill stealing, camping, camp stealing, xp grinding, LFG waiting, getting mobs trained on you, and many others. This makes people who have experienced those problems before appreciate GW for eternity.

• They are unique in providing a game which supports the solo gamer totally brilliantly (the henchmen concept is terrific), and the casual gamer as well (no LFG timesink because of henchies, and a trillion short but rewarding quests to do). Yet somehow, ie. through the sheer brilliance of the design, they've managed to make it equally excellent for team players, and for the non-casual hardcore. It's hard not to be impressed.

• The design of the game is such that there is a MINISCULE loading on servers. (It's almost tempting to call it a P2P game mediated through a central transport proxy.) As a result, their server requirements must be massively less than for any conventional MMOG, which means that their no-subscription business model isn't sucked dry by huge platform hardware, admin, and support costs. This approach is wonderfully scalable both from a technical and a business perspective. (I work in platform scaling, so I know a scalable design when I see it.)

• And finally, the hardcore element. It's probably fair to say that Guild Wars is one of the hardest online games in existence if you want it to be, but very easy if you don't. In other words, if you decide to fully assimilate and understand the hundreds of skills of your primary and secondary profession and how they interact with and how they counter those of your opponents then the game is extremely challanging.
  
  It's mind-bogglingly complex to be fully aware of the professions of those you are fighting and what skills they are using, to counter them appropriately, while at the same time managing your energy reserve, and looking out for your team. This is nothing like a straight turns-based MMOG like EQ, where once you engage combat, the outcome is largely decided as long as you don't do something dumb. GW is fast and furious --- no tank taunt to trivialize the gaming in PvE, and effective foe AI so that the healer always gets it first, just like human players do.
  
  If you've absorbed the above, you'll realize that PvP in Guild Wars is either fantastically brilliant (if you like PvP) or appallingly dreadful (if you're a PvE-only fan), because GW's PvP is trully player-skill-based: ie. the best man/woman wins, regardless of equipment. This is why the Koreans own GW's PvP space --- they work hard to understand the game, and it's their human skill/experience as players that makes them use the in-game skills so devastatingly. (America comes a beleagered and very battered second, and the chewed up and splattered remains of Europe a very distant third.)

In summary, Guild Wars can't fail, not by rights anyway. It will fail only if not enough people hear about it, or if its totally excellent developers leave the company. (No, I don't work there, I'm just an appreciative player, completed it on main.) :-))