Tuesday 21 February 2012

The Next Guild Wars 2 Killer?

Guild Wars 2 has been amassing popularity at an alarming rate due to the presence of closed beta. Since Press have garnered quite a lot of positive feedback for the game people are becoming more intrigued with the game. I mean there are a lot of us who have been interested from day one, but there are still people who have never heard of it.

Now I think popularity for Guild Wars 2 is good and bad. At the one end, popularity is awesome. More players which will really bring great success for ArenaNet. We all want this, ArenaNet wants this and NCsoft wants this. It's inevitable, money is a crucial part of any games development process. And they are aiming for that pot of gold at the end of the "development" rainbow. But I wonder if this outrageous popularity isn't going to have drawbacks.

We all hear many things around the MMORPG world. I'd say one of the most heard sayings being "Is this the next WoW killer?" World of Warcraft since it's release years and years ago has been the pinnacle for MMORPG's and a great comparison point. How does this game match up with World of Warcraft, as it is the reigning subscription king. I think for Guild Wars 2 if it were to take this "throne" of sorts there would be a lot of negative pulled along with it.

I think the mass of players in World of Warcraft brought out it's more negative side. It was frequent to encounter very negative and aggressive players. And there was this sort of elitist hierarchy during raiding where it would be hard to reach this standard. Like you need to have this armor, these weapons. The game at that point for me didn't become fun. It became crude competition and the only way to emerge victorious was to put in more hours. Skill took a backseat and the difficulty curve flattened fairly quick.

So for Guild Wars 2 these are some things I wouldn't want to happen. I don't want to have to have these items, these utility skills and this elite skill to be invited along a dungeon. I don't want everyone comparing Guild Wars 2 to new games releasing after.

I think though that there is a chance, with a negligible uncertainty, that across the internet the term "will this be the next Guild Wars 2 killer" might become popular. And I have mixed feelings about that.

Ramble Complete.


6 comments:

Grzegorz said...

I don't really think that popularity has anything to do with existence of aggressive players. GW was like "elite" but still it was full of morons.
Nah, I don't agree with you.

Evan Johnston-Robertson said...

Fair enough. I just think the more players present, the more players flesh out this sort of "meta" where only certain skills or equipment is viable.

krone6 said...

When I first read the title i thought there really was a game in development trying to copy gw2 like many f2p mmos copy wow. I was glad you didn't link anything since it means gw2 will probably have a longer time to make its money back.

Evan Johnston-Robertson said...

Yeah looking at the title now that's what it seems like at first glance. Guild Wars 2 will definitely make it's money back as the initial buy cost is only the beginning, future expansion packs and micro transactions will aid them financially. I'm fine with micro transactions too, I throw a couple dollars at League of Legends every now and then. Guild Wars 2 will be no different.

Lizzy Pantalaimon said...

ArenaNet really isn't after that much of a profit at all, I think. NCSoft might be after it, yeah, but Anet certainly isn't. Also, Anet devlopes the game that every class can play every role, even with different skillsets (like an fire elementalist and an air elementalist can both do great damage) so I don't think people will start to deny others for NOT having certain skills. Also about the items: the best items in GW2 do not have better stats than other max level items. What makes them unique is their rare skin, pure cosmetic. That's what makes it impossible to ask for certain items, because statistically every item is the same in level (of course items are different in which stats they improve).

Please believe me when I say that ArenaNet has thought about ALL these things you are wondering about. They have developed this game for over 5 years without a deathline, so they are making a really splendid game here :))

Thanks, and sorry for my English if I made any mistakes: English is not my nattive language.

A experienced Guild Wars 1 Player who has been following Guild Wars 2's developement from day 1.

F. C. said...

I don't think GW2 will have this kind of trouble, even if it manages to grab every immature and troublesome WoW player:

- No loot rolls, ever. No way to killsteal or to steal a gathering node. Apart from bad language in chats, there should be no real way for one player to harass another in the PvE parts.

- Events on the open world are open to everyone who wants to participate. Skills that benefit friendly players are not targettable, and affect even players outside a group. No way to shun a specific player or deprive him of the (AoE) healing/buffs.

- No event mechanic that allows a single player to wipe a group. The most a player can do to hamper a group is joining the event and suiciding himself - which should not be much different from doing the same event with a willing, but bad, player.

- Instanced content is done in 5-man groups, which should be much easier to find than raids. I didn't hear anything about locks, which adds to the (already high) flexibility in making it easier to assemble groups.

- In World PvP, a player can't see his opponent's names. Much harder to focus fire on a single player, then. Also, a player that feels like too much a target can just join the biggest zerg and feel protected.

In short, ANet has designed the game systems to make it hard to grief, and remove most negative consequences from someone attempting to grief you. Instead of hoping for mostly nice players, ANet removed the ability for nasty players to cause harm.

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