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Guild Wars Expansion, Sequel Officially Announced
katalin writes "Arenanet, makers of the Guild Wars Massive game, have announced the first 'true' expansion pack to the game - Eye of the North. Next year will also see the beginning of a Beta test for a true sequel to the original Guild Wars. The new game will be substantially different from the current offering, with many elements similar to a more traditional fantasy Massively Multiplayer game. It still, however, will not require a monthly fee to play."
I currently play Guild Wars and I love it. It's an MMORPG the way it's meant to be - no monthly fees, a fun game, and one that you can just sit down and play with a group of friends or random people from the Internet. Both the expansion and GW2 look nothing short of awesome. I can't wait for more details!
--Thomas J. Owens
I'm still curious to see just how the concept of a very high or nonexistent level cap is going to factor into the Guild Wars design of PVE-even-with-PVP. Considering how focused ArenaNet has been at keeping PVP a very level playing field for everyone, any levels above something like 20 or 30 I assume will provide PVE-only benefits, if anything. Gaile Gray says the high level cap was a direct result of player request, but I imagine that request came from predominately PVE players. PVP-oriented players tend to want nothing to do with PVE and many resent the two modes of gameplay being so closely related. Guild Wars suffered more than anything from poor, linear level design. There were no open-ended quests, no two ways to go about solving a particular problem. Replaying the game with multiple characters truly amounted to doing the exact same thing all over again. That is what I hope they are able to avoid with GW2, although I think the design team would need to be replaced by another for that to happen...
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They could have done so much more with the PvE side of things. The campaigns themselves are excellent, but there's really nothing to do in the game that isn't directly related to powering yourself up for PvP. Equipment in the game plays a minimal role: there's not much you can carry and it isn't very important, and doesn't considerably strengthen your character. There are also no usable items, and the cool armor suits you can make are more for looks than function. There's really nothing to do in the game except PvP, but if you're into PvP then GW is a pretty solid game, moreso than WoW.
It's puzzling that they put so much effort into the PvE campaigns (cutscenes, voice acting and a linear story in the original GW) even though the PvE portion is little more than a way of leveling up and getting skills for PvP.
While Guild Wars [GW] differs from World of Warcraft [WoW] in that there are no monthly fees, GW doesn't gives users free content like WoW does. And while a WoW player will pay more than a GW player, if you want to be competitive, you have to keep buying the expansions the GW crew is rolling out.
But, also keep in mind for any of you who have not played both, or either, they are entirely different types of games. If you want PvE, GW just doesn't have it. And WoW's PvP takes a lot more work to be competitive.
I've played GW from nearly day one... And I've all but quit... It becomes quite the same thing OVER and over and over! Same monsters, quests, and same nerfs as soon as you find the working skill combo you like. I enjoy the fact it's not play to play, I accept the bit of lag I get and even the pain in the ass kids in outposts. But the original got VERY tired after the second rehash. Hopefully the new one will let me have my Charr Pyromancer!
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But the original got VERY tired after the second rehash.
:-) And it even requires high manual dexterity in the harder zones, and a good sense of tactics.
... it's merely that you totally failed to understand the game, because every profession is *utterly* different once you understand their skills and begin to master the builds.
This merely indicates that you approached GW as if it were EQ or WoW or AO. It's not.
GW isn't about grinding over and over again, with just the geography changing to make you think that you're doing something different. That's the old traditional tedium that GW was designed to leave behind, and it succeeded, superbly.
Instead, GW is about exploring the universe of SKILLS and CHARACTER BUILDS, and making yourself more and more competent by being ever more skillful with your builds and your use of those builds. It requires true player skill of the very deepest kind, full understanding of how the thousands of complex skills work, and also ability to use them well through sheer player practice and experimentation. For those who want to press the Attack key and then go to sleep for 10 minutes as in some traditional MMOG raids, this is the wrong game. But if you like to use your brain when playing, then GW is THE game to play -- it should definitely appeal to the computer science types.
GW is a joy to play once you're really skillful. Before GW, I completed two traditional multi-year MMOGs, and they were utterly empty of real player involvement and gameplay compared to GW, despite each of them requiring many years of level grinding.
So, your "got very tired" is no reflection on GW
GW is extremely easy for casual play, and extremely hard and complex for deep play. You were at the casual end.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
After reading the description of Guild Wars 2 and the Eye of the North expansion, it sounds like the biggest reason to play one of them is because it's linked to the other. COME ON GUYS. Do not insult my intelligence with your 25 year old gameplay and rabid greed. I am going to go back to playing Moo2 or U7 now.
I really loved playing GW. But the thing I didn't like was that all the characters are human. It would be really nice if there could be multiple races. Plus add the ability to customize the character at the beginning a little more. Give the character 10 points to spend on strength, speed, mental powers etc. The whole primary/secondary profession thing is nice, adds allot of options. Now just throw in races and a little more point allocation at the beginning, and that would be nice. Being a Charr W/E would be really cool.
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Am I the only one who's head exploded after reading this?
I love GW, and have waaaaaay too many hours in the 3 thus far. However, part of what I like is that the level cap is basically non-existent (albeit not in the first game, Prophecies, where you hit the cap about half-way to 2/3rds into the game). In the latest, Nightfall, you can basically hit "max" in 15 hours, and after you leave the "training island" you're in the thick of things. Which is great - no worrying about having to "level up", you find new skills as you hit new areas, and so you gain flexibility even though your power stays the same.
:)
I'm unsure who wanted "no level cap" - PVP is designed around everyone having equal power, while PVE is set as "you versus the environment", with the monsters getting more powerful (and thus requiring more intelligence, both in strategy and use-of-skills) as the game progresses. I love this model - I don't have to "grind" unless I really want to (Factions was pretty bad about that, relatively speaking, and though there are some artificial constraints in NF they're nothing horrible. And in Prophecies the only grinding you did was for money to buy cool new stuff). I'm also concerned about how this affects things. The number of skill points you currently get is by level (Level + 1 attribute points for each level - this means at 17th level you have 100 attribute points, and at 20 you have 200 (there's a quest to get you from 170->200)). So a level 24 character would have about 300 attribute points, and a level 100.... well, that's getting silly.
Anyhow, what I want to say - I'm one of the many people perfectly happy with the way it is. But, given their few missteps so far (aka "Factions"), I'm fairly confident it'll be fun. And if not, I'll still have Tyria, Elona, and (um, the other one) to keep me busy.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I love GW. It's one of the only PC games I still find time to play. The lack of monthly fees got me into it, but I stayed for the sheer casual aspect of the game. I don't have to grind all that much if I don't want to. Sometimes I can just get on for the Alliance battles. It has replaced most of the shooters I used to play in that sense. Instead of getting on to frag for a while, I get on for some flag capping. And the PVE is still fun at the higher levels. Admittedly, I don't play the high-end PVP stuff, but I probably could and do pretty well. With the new stuff with level caps, I worry that I won't have that anymore. To not build from scratch a PVP-only guy will mean I will have to grind and worry about farming and all that. I don't have time for all this extra work on keeping up with the Joneses. I dunno, it seems like this will drown out the casual players like me. That's the grief I hear from my friends who play WoW and EVE. And it's those complaints that made me ditch those two for GW. Hopefully they'll manage not to force out what I think is a big chunk fo those who play GW.
Arena.net's Gaile Gray has already said that the high or no level cap would only apply to the PvE portion of the game. When playing PvP everyone would be on a balanced playing field. I can't give you an exact location of the quote for this, but I know it was discussed in this thread on one of the bigger fan sites.