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Guild Wars 2 Devs Aiming For the Top
As various MMOs have been released over the past several years, their developers have been wary about the inevitable measuring against World of Warcraft, often saying that "second-best" is more than good enough for them. Not so for ArenaNet as they work on Guild Wars 2; they're aiming right for the top. And according to a detailed preview now up at Eurogamer, their effort is paying off :
"Two huge and risky decisions have been made in its design: junking the 'holy trinity' of character class roles (protective 'tank', damage-dealer and healer) and doing away with the quest-style architecture for game content. Yet, in moment-to-moment play, Guild Wars 2 looks and feels instantly and reassuringly like a fantasy MMORPG – just a noticeably fresh one. It's a question of flow. Combat is still hotkey-based, but faster and smoother and more streamlined, involving more movement and positioning. The levelling curve is now an almost flat line, replacing the epic ascent with a steady journey where content, not advancement, is king."
That's an incredibly difficult goal for a game with tens of thousands of players on a server, all trying to change the world. Unless they stick with their "instanced world", but that isn't really an MMO, it's a single-player or small-group game with "3d avatar chat rooms" called "towns". What I like about WoW is that you can bump into people doing stuff while you are out there doing stuff. I've made friends by seeing someone having a tough time in a fight and going and helping them out. That never happens in GW. Having that flexibility and a dynamic world seems impossible to me, but I hope I'm proved wrong some day.
GW and GW2 are not very level-dependent, and use a skill system where you don't have access to all your skills. You have to pick and choose which skills you have available to you at any given time. That and the interactions between skills creates a complexity and depth of play which provides plenty of replay value for the same scenarios. In other MMORPGs, each class uses pretty much use the same 3-5 skill combos for everything because they're the best. In GW, there are literally millions of different combinations of skills to explore, with dozens and sometimes hundreds of effective combos. The "best" combo will vary almost with every fight. So no, they don't have to sink billions into development to give you something new to try. When the player gains new skills or they add new skills, suddenly the old content becomes new content. It has a very high degree of replayability.
Most MMOs turn into grindfests because that's the best way for the company running them to maximize revenue. People are paying $15/mo to level, so its in the company's best interest to slow down your leveling as much as they can. That way you stick around playing longer, which means they collect more months of fees from you. Sinking 12+ hours a day into the game is also a consequence of that. You want to level faster, but the game deliberately slows down your leveling, so you spend more time playing it every day.
GW and GW2 don't have a monthly fee. You pay for the game, you pay for expansions, and you pay for certain upgrades. That's it. So they have no incentive to make the game a grindfest. In fact the opposite is true - they want to do everything they can to get you through the content quickly so you'll buy the next expansion, but they also want to make every minute you play as fun as possible so you'll feel it's worth spending the money on the next expansion.
Couple this with levels not being very important, and there's no incentive to play 12+ hours a day (unless you find it fun enough to play 12+ hours a day). You just play for as long as you're having fun. I've played GW 12 hours a day, I've played it 1 hour a day, and I've stopped playing it for months at a time. It's very friendly to casual gamers, and the amount of fun per hour is much higher. IMHO it's a much better model than the level/grind fest that other MMOs have become.