Guild Wars 2

 

The most devoted fans have likely been waiting for years, playing and enjoying the original of the game still despite it becomming quite aged when compared to newer titles in the rapidly expanding MMO market. Others have merely waited for months, eager for news and hungry for new beta footage and gameplay videos. Others still have yet to hear about this upcomming title which is sure to leave its mark in the MMO genre.

 

Personally I was never a big fan of Guild Wars (the original, that is). Of course, being a bit of a gamer and loving the MMO genre, I had to test out Guild Wars at least once. Even more so since I had heard so much positive feedback about the game, and anyways it was (and still is) free to play so there was no real arguments for me to pit against an increasing peer pressure from online friends. Eventually I caved in and downloaded the game. Once I had it installed I spent about 10 minutes creating a character. Normally I spend alot of time in the character creators in MMOs, but GW had very few choices. I spent more time putting colors together and finding a name for my character than I did “creating” it. Not exactly APB quality customization in that character creator. Anyways, long story short… I entered the game, set up my keybindings, eagerly ran off to get out of the city and explore. Well, I got to the first rock that was directly in my planned path, found myself unable to jump onto it or over it… In fact, I found no way of jumping at all.

After that realization I logged out and never played it again. Total time playing Guild Wars, roughly 20 minutes.

Now let me just clarify things right away. Firstly, I quite often play on RP servers when I play MMOs so I have no desire to be bunnyjumping all over with my character while playing, nor do I have any kangaroo genes (at least not scientifically proven). But not being able to jump at all was just such an unacceptable limitation that I found myself unable to cope with crashing into every rock and running all the way around huge logs.

However, with no real experience or background from the original, what makes Guild Wars 2 such an exciting title for me?

The quick answer, everything!

To sum up a few of the things that makes me look forward to the release.

• No more holy trinity.
• No more competing over loot drops.
• No more “ninja’ing” resource nodes.
• Questing has been made very inclusive and easy.
• Completing, or failing quests have consequences.
• Brilliant world vs world feature.
• Very elegant teamwork options e.g. creating a wall of fire so teammates will get flaming arrows when shooting enemies behind it.
• A huge, handcrafted world that looks nothing short of amazing.
• Playerbase and community that seems very friendly and mature.
• Very interesting lore (and yes I read the books they published as well).

If you haven’t read the books but you want a glimpse at the lore as well as some nice background on the heroes that you will meet in the game, then they are absolutely worth picking up. Personally I ordered them straight from the Guild Wars 2 home page, but they are also available from other sites such as Amazon.com in both paperback and eBooks for Kindle.

As far as storylines go though there is alot of different turns for your own personal story. There are 5 races, each starting with an initial story which you define at character creation. This storyline then branches into two internal storylines as well. That results in you having 5 x 3 x 2 different storylines, ending up with 30 potential storylines to explore if you want to see all of the game. However, that is only up to level 10 and the game has 80 levels total, where you start a new chapter of your storyline every 10 levels. Certainly enough variation for most of us, and perhaps even for those who love to uncover every story!

Luckily they have announced the pre-order date, April 10th, and I will for sure order myself a collectors edition of this game (who wouldn’t want an angry Rytlock figurine on their desk while playing). While no launch date is yet announced we can assume it will be, relatively compared to the years of waiting, soon! Meanwhile we’ll just have to keep enjoying the various beta reviews, footage and youtube videos.

Considering Warrior is the class I am most likely to try out first I’ll add this video spotlight from the awesome guys at Yogscast (and check out their other videos as well, they are quite entertaining)!