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Guild Wars 2 Preview - PAX Prime 2010

A new breed of MMO gaming

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For me, the original Guild Wars (Guild Wars: Prophecies) was a solid and relatively action-packed RPG that was a blast to play through with friends but never gave me enough of the long-lasting MMO feel to keep me around once I hit level 20. I loved that Arenanet was looking to bring the MMO experience to gamers who didn’t feel comfortable with the standard $15 monthly fee, and for that alone, I always supported the game. Despite my previous experience with the game, nothing had prepared me at what I saw NCSoft’s Guild Wars 2 booth at PAX earlier this month.

Leading up to PAX, I had seen very little about Guild Wars 2. The Necromancer announcement trailer looked amazing and dragged me onto the site for a bit to check out the other previously announced classes. Everything looked great, but I still felt as if this game was one that wasn’t on many people’s radars, and I wasn’t quite sure how successful I could expect it to be upon launch.

Guild Wars 2

Upon my arrival at the Guild Wars 2 booth at PAX, I felt fairly confident that I was a bit of an odd man out. The booth comprised of approximately 16 different stations playing the game and every single one was packed, as well as all the entirety of the ground floor in and around the booth, with tons of rabid gamers looking for a brief chance to play the game or even just watch it being played. Gamers stood and waited in line for hours in order to play the game. The rather epic line rivaled some of the expo’s other big titles like Halo Reach. It seems Guild Wars 2 is much more highly anticipated than I gave it credit for.

Let it be known now, if you didn’t already know, that Guild Wars 2 looks amazing, not only in terms of pure graphical prowess but also in terms of animation and art style. Glancing from screen to screen inside the booth, I was treated to a wide array of interesting and awesome bits of action. Guild Wars 2 as graphically powerful and impressive now as Guild Wars 1 was at the time of its launch in 2005. On one screen, a Charr Elementalist cast a spell that brought a huge swirling tornado into existence that was then directly controlled by the player. Being presented in an extremely exciting and cinematic manner, this was just one example of the new aspects in Guild Wars 2 that felt way outside of standard MMO combat.

The game’s visuals are wonderfully similar to the concept art that can be commonly seen on the game’s website. In certain aspects of the UI and menu system, it is almost exactly the same, but in the general gameplay visuals, they pull heavily from the concept art in a great way. It really works to give the game a grittier and much more mature feeling than the original, a game with an already beautiful and somber atmosphere.

Guild Wars 2

One of the things I was able to take away in my brief time with Guild Wars 2 is that Arenanet is obviously trying to do something different than just make another cookie-cutter MMO. Obviously some elements are the same, there are still text boxes for quests, inventories, leveling, and skills as these are, for the most part, the standards of the genre. Where other upcoming MMOs like The Old Republic are removing text boxes in favor of fully-voice cutscenes for every quest, Guild Wars 2 is looking to build an eerie and beautiful world with unique and interesting combat where players will be doing things they have never been able to do before in other MMOs. This is an exciting prospect. Based on my experience, the combat seems to keep close enough to common MMO mechanics as to not be entirely off-putting and confusing like Age of Conan’s real-time combat while also being more than a simple tab-target and auto-attack system.

One of the most interesting aspects of Guild Wars 2 is that it is a fully-fledged sequel to another currently active MMO, something that we rarely get a chance to see in the gaming world. I was sure to ask one of the available Arenanet devs what players of Guild Wars 1 can expect to carry over between the two games. Although they weren’t spilling all the beans on cross-game connectivity, they did divulge a few interesting facts. Because the game is set 250 years after Guild Wars 1 and many of the game’s mechanics have seen significant alteration, players will not be able to bring their Guild Wars 1 character over into Guild Wars 2. What they will be able to do though is tie their account to both games, reaping the benefits of both game’s characters in their Hall of Monuments and achievement lists, and at the launch of Guild Wars 2, character names from Guild Wars 1 will all be reserved (I’m assuming for a somewhat limited time) for use in Guild Wars 2. Even though these are all interesting little features and the devs promised more details would be announced in the coming months, I can’t help but hope that Arenanet is preparing some more significant bits of connectivity between the two games in the future. A true MMO sequel is an interesting thing and adding more benefits to players of both games could not only lead to a better player experience overall but help Arenanet and NCSoft net more players and cash as well.

In the end, my experience with Guild Wars 2 was one of the most interesting moments I had at PAX. I had no idea how popular the Guild Wars franchise remains to this day and how anticipated Guild Wars 2 has become since its announcement all the way back in 2007. The game looks and feels absolutely wonderful, even in this somewhat early form. Both its visuals and its interesting bits of gameplay really make it feel like a fully-fledged, next-generation entry into the Guild Wars series. This game went from being entirely off my radar to one of the best looking MMOs on the horizon. I’ll be extremely interested to see how it does when it launches in 2011.

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#8 Sep 28, 2010 02:12:41 (Sep 28, 2010 02:12)

SpectralShock
Ah yes that was my bad. Still, you're correct about some folks making this out to be more than it is.
#7 Sep 27, 2010 23:40:49 (Sep 27, 2010 23:40)

Sittin Duck
+1
"Where other upcoming MMOs like The Old Republic are removing text boxes in favor of fully-voice cutscenes for every quest, Guild Wars 2 is looking to build an eerie and beautiful world with unique and interesting combat where players will be doing things they have never been able to do before in other MMOs."
 
There is nothing intrisically wrong with this statement. However, I have noticed some fanboy rage from the statment, and I made an  observation that if you wish to avoid fanboy rage, that you might avoid making any comparisons between this title and rival titles. I admit on further review, that it is a rediculous idea to neuter one's articles to avoid pre-pubescent fan rage.
 
#6 Sep 26, 2010 23:50:42 (Sep 26, 2010 23:50)

SpectralShock
Agreed with all the comments below. As I mentioned, I think Sirdesmond made a great point by not drawing any conclusions in the article in regards to voice acting or what will be included in the final product - as such, simply nobody has this information yet, and we're not going to guess in our previews.
 
@Sittin Duck: We didn't even bring up SWTOR in the article.
#5 Sep 26, 2010 20:53:57 (Sep 26, 2010 20:53)

Sittin Duck
+1
There seems to be a bit of confusion about VO in the game. A lot of us are under the impression that the game would have full voice over. I looked back at the developer article talking about it and can't seem to find anything that suggests that it would be fully voiced over. We know that there are over 60 feature-length films worth of voice work for the game, and that in the DEMO ALONE that there were over 60 different voice actors who lent their voices to the characters and NPCs. We know the first part from the dev blog http://www.arena.net/blog/talking-heads-vo-and-dialogue-in-gw2 , the second part from a dev post on a forum frequented by the devs. But its still unclear as to whether the game will be fully voiced or not. I've asked for developer clarification on a forum frequented by them. IF it is true that the game is fully voiced, its intirely possible that what we saw at PAX and Gamescom  was just the Textboxes turned on so people could tell what was going on over the convention noise, or that they haven't fully implemented the VO work in the game yet. However, it is also possible that the game isn't fully voiced over, and we will still see textboxes.
 
As far as the comment that was made about it, this is a year that is filled with some high profile MMO's, and with that means that there's a lot of fanboyism going about. There is a little bit of rivalry going on specifically between some of  the SWtOR and GW2 fanboys. When comparisons are made between the two titles, it can have a polarizing effect, and if one of the fanboys thinks that you made a comparison based on something that they think isn't true, they will jump on you. This is made worse by the fact that there a several gaming media outlets that aren't giving GW2 much coverage, but are its competitors, and so this causes a bit of senstivity among the fans. Its best not to compare them IMHO, or at least until they are both out. They aren't mutually exclusive since one doesn't have a monthly fee to compete with the other.
#4 Sep 26, 2010 18:12:52 (Sep 26, 2010 18:12)

sirdesmond
In what I was saw of the game, there were some moments of on-screen text relating to quest and other activities, but I never claimed that that was a bad thing or anything of the sort. I was comparing Guild Wars 2 intriguing and amazing looks combat as one of its biggest differences from the standard MMO formula in the same way that Bioware is looking to make The Old Republic different by making the game entirely voiced-over. I'm sorry if it came off in a confusing manner.
 
I was not intending for this article to be a full overview of every major game mechanic of Guild Wars 2 but about my experience with the game at PAX as this is some of the new or potentially interesting information about the game. For those interesting further, there is plenty of other information to be found online.
 
I'm quite excited for the game actually, especially after seeing it in action.
#3 Sep 26, 2010 17:47:23 (Sep 26, 2010 17:47)

gaeanprayer
+1
I'm sort of confused as to what the first poster was talking about...nowhere in this article did I see the author say there were no voice-overs, or mention a healer class at all. Also, there ARE text quests. The biggest draw for GW2 are the events, but there are actual quests, ranging from personal storyline, instance quests, and just random things where you help npcs on a smaller scale which have an affect on how they address you.
 
Imho poster, you should read an article before commenting on it. Check your facts, while you're at it.
 
#2 Sep 26, 2010 12:03:58 (Sep 26, 2010 12:03)

SpectralShock
Our writer wrote a preview based on what was shown at the PAX event. There were indeed text quests, and our writer never said the game has no voiceovers. Nothing was mentioned about healer classes?
 
We know it's a persistant world, hence why our writer kept referring to it as a true MMO and not a hybrid that the original game was.
 
IMO this article does a great job overviewing what was shown for the game at PAX. It is not meant to cover anything and everything about GW2 - that's what we use our news coverage for
#1 Sep 26, 2010 06:58:53 (Sep 26, 2010 06:58)

highlife88
-1
GW2 doesn't have quests. Instead ,it uses ''events'' which are upgraded Public quests, sou you couldnt have seen any quest texts. Thats one of the reasons people are so hyped up about this game. Except that, GW2 wont have dedicated healer classes and ''holy trinity''. Also. Huge majority of the dialogues is voiced over. And unlike GW1, GW2 will have a persistent open world.
 
Imho author, if youre not interested in GW2 dont write a preview of it where you tell wrong informations about the game....
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PC
Our Review of Guild Wars 2
86%
Great
The Verdict:
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