Tag: Guild Wars 2

Guild War 2 Trumps TERA, Play While You Queue


Someone must have told Guild Wars 2 developer Arenanet that I was comparing MMOs based on how they handle server queues. At least so far in the beta, TERA compensates players who spend more than ten minutes in line for their server with a period of bonus experience upon logging in. I didn’t point this out in the TERA article, but you can actually leave the game without logging in and still receive the bonus.

Guild Wars 2 says sucks to your queue line assmar. Martin Kerstein has posted over at Guild Wars 2 Guru that instead of throwing the players in line and punishing those who join fuller servers at launch, Guild Wars 2 will simply move the player to an overflow server temporarily while they wait in line on their home server. Once the line opens up, you can head back in without delay.

Let me explain what an overflow server is and what it does. It is a technology we also use as our version of a queuing system. When a map or a world you want to log into is at capacity limit, the game will ask you if you want to play on an overflow server – so you can actually play while you are in a queue. Once space opens on your world, the game will ask you if you want to join your friends on your world. And you keep all the progress you made while you were playing on the overflow server.

(Source: Guild Wars 2 Guru)

Guild Wars 2 Opens Door For Non-Cosmetic Cash Shop


By now, I hope that I don’t have to lecture any of you on how important wording is in this industry. When Realtime Worlds said that they had no intention of shutting down All Points Bulletin, they didn’t factor in the results of their ongoing chapter 11 bankruptcy forcing the game to shut down. When Turbine stated that they had no intention of selling equipment with stats at the time, they technically spoke the truth. When Sony answered the free to play question by saying they would not alter existing player’s game, and launching a separate product, they were telling the truth.

Guild Wars Guru has noticed an alteration made to the Guild Wars wiki by user JohnSmith, who is a confirmed Arenanet employee. Previously, the article read:

Yes, micro-transactions will exist. These will be cosmetic additions which will not affect balance or gameplay, similar to the transactions offered by Guild Wars.

Now the article reads:

Yes, micro-transactions will exist. Be assured goods and items bought for cash in GW2 do not offer any advantage over those available in the game through the investment of time.

So the wording changes from only cosmetic items to not being more powerful than existing items. Now, this could simply be referring to Arenanet’s plan to include mission packs and transmutation stones in the cash shop, or the possibility of boosters, or it could open the door for selling equipment that is only as powerful as equipment found in-game. Martin Kerstein of Arenanet weighs in later in the thread.

As usual, everybody just needs to calm down a bit. This change was done to actually make the wording easier to understand – seems like that was not the case.

But the statement in it is still the same: Nothing you will be able to buy in the in-game store will give you an advantage over people who are not buying anything. That is the baseline.

So the outcome is that Arenanet, for now at least, is being vague on a familiar level to companies of the past. For now we’ll simply have to wait for clarification by Arenanet on an exact list of what will be sold in the Guild Wars 2 cash shop.

Games To Watch Out For: NCSoft Edition


If there was ever a game to give Diablo 3 a run for its money, it is Lineage Eternal. Fully revealed late this year, Lineage Eternal brings players back to the days of Lineage with even more chaos and destruction. We were treated to a fourteen minute video of pure gameplay, with cutscenes, massive battles, and showcasing the game’s physics and destruction engine. With the success of Lineage and Lineage II, especially in the Korean markets, Lineage Eternal looks to bring back the days of dealing destruction on a massive scale.

We eagerly await more Lineage Eternal information in the coming year.

Do I need to elaborate? Guild Wars promises to give something everyone can enjoy, from the hardcore player vs player to the MMO fan who simply wants an open world to explore. Arenanet promises to build a dynamic world without subscriptions or heavy grind, world PvP, and the ripple effect. In the case of dynamic events, considerably similar to the public quests of Warhammer Online but on a much larger scale, the actions of players will determine in what direction each phase of the dynamic events move.

Guild Wars has a very strong following of gamers, like it or not, and will prove to be among the biggest releases of 2012.

 

Week In Review: This Article Is Private To You Edition

World of Warcraft phasing, North Korean isn’t (?) gold farming, Nintendo wants massively single player games, Guild Wars 2 has breasts, and Darkfall’s “wipes” in this week in review.


For the one or two of you who have followed my Star Wars Galaxies articles, you’ll notice I’ve stopped doing them. The short end of the story is that I have nothing more to talk about with the game, while writing up the fifth week article realizing that from a few weeks in my articles were nothing more than “I’m having the same problems, there are these bugs, and I’m traveling far for the missions.” I know all three of the people I saw over the month and a half that I played will be angry at me for saying this, but at this juncture (with the shutdown coming) Star Wars Galaxies is like a museum. You go in an see the exhibits, how the cavemen lived years ago, and you walk out. The game hasn’t aged well and if Sony and Lucas Arts had anything to say about it, the massive size of the game (You truly have to experience Star Wars Galaxies to understand how enormous this game is) made a free to play transition simply unfeasible.

I will be covering Galaxies in the final days, however.

1. When You’re Phasing: Important Quest NPCs.

I’ve recently re-subscribed to World of Warcraft after being offered seven free days, and one of the more impressive features I’ve seen so far is the phasing technology. Now, I’ve commended the story telling in Runescape as allowing moderately world changing events to take place in the player’s own vision, but Blizzard takes this a step further by introducing far more story moments, cutscenes, and the aforementioned phasing. To the unfamiliar, phasing is a system where players can see different versions of the same area, depending on the completion of quests. So if I lead the invasion into the Worgen territory, I will see an empty battlefield afterward. A player just entering the area would still have hostile NPCs and a war raging around him.

For the complaints players have of being in the same area yet not seeing one another, this relieves one of my biggest gripes with MMO quests: The “Kill the leader of the Centaur,” quest only to have the leader respawn after a predetermined time. Or being given a quest to eradicate rats from an area, only to have them still be in that area. The quests feel far less superficial, as you have the visual feedback that you’ve actually accomplished something.

My main issue is that the quests were clearly not co-written. All of these quests were written specifically when Cataclysm released, but clearly not with any overlap. Thus, I’ve had to abandon three or four quests because the phasing caused the NPC I needed to turn the quest into to die, turn hostile, or simply leave. My research on the forums shows these quests bugged with reports dating back to around Cataclysm’s release, meaning I can chalk off those low level rewards.

2. North Korea…Isn’t Gold Farming?

Believe what you will. Following last week’s news that North Korea is funding hackers to bring in a few million dollars by breaking into South Korean MMOs to set up bots to farm gold, the North Korean state-run propaganda machine has come out to state that all claims are false, and made up by their South Korean neighbors. Granted, we won’t know for sure who is telling the truth, as either side could be using this as a propaganda machine against the other.

3. Nintendo Patents Massively Singleplayer Online Games

Say hello to the future additions to MMO Fallout, perhaps. In a bizarre move, Nintendo has patented the concept of the MSO, or Massively Singleplayer Online game.

“A method and apparatus that allows a player to play a massively single-player online game without directly interacting with other players, while affecting and being affected by other players playing the online game.”

An idea for this would be a Diablo-esque game where players can play in a single player or multiplayer environment, but with a global auction house (similar to Diablo 3). Granted: This is a Nintendo patent, and generally when Nintendo patents something weird, we never see that idea again. So this may be the last you hear of the MSORPG.

4. The Tree People Have Breasts

I saw an interesting thread on Guild Wars 2 this past week detailing two things the MMORPG.com forums can’t seem to get enough of: The Sylvari and breasts. The poster went on a rather impressive explanation as to how the Sylvari join with other races and must thus make themselves more attractive to that specific species. The Charr are easily satisfied, but the humans are more xenophobic and likely to become hostile to an overly different species, IE: The Charr. So in order to be more attractive, the Sylvari took on traits attractive to humans, ie: big mammary glands.

It’s a very detailed way to say “because we know what percentage of our players are heterosexual men, therefore boobs. Breasts, melons, headlights, creampuffs.” You know the recipe.

5. I May Be Right About Darkfall’s “Wipe.”

I’ve revised my speculation on Darkfall’s wipes a few times, after revelations that the wipe may not be a wipe in the sense of “characters deleted, starting fresh.” The more Aventurine talks, the more a better image begins to come into focus, and after their latest blog I think it’s safe to say that the “wipe” refers to new skills that will replace old skills (but start at 0) and redundant skills being removed completely, which Aventurine has confirmed as true. Such a system isn’t really a wipe in the traditional sense, and regaining the few new skills will be far less enduring than a full wipe.

But who knows? I know I don’t.

There's Funcom In My ArenaNet, And I Like It.


You drunk Scottish cyclops.

Those of you in the Age of Conan beta will probably remember various nights spent sitting in a bar, knocking back an ale, and beating the crap out of your up-to-then drinking partner. Of course, along with a few other features heavily advertised (npc raids on player villages, among others) for launch, are well aware that two years after Age of Conan’s launch, most of these features are set for a release date one week after never. Drunken bar fights were silently swept under the rug and haven’t been heard from since, at least until now.

But not in the game you’d expect. Taking a cue and miss from Funcom, ArenaNet announced that Guild Wars 2 will feature drunken bar brawls. Speaking in a recent developers blog, you will not only be able to get insanely drunk, but the ale you drink will have various effects, including a noxious belch that poisons anyone drunk enough to stumble into its cloud. Smash your stein over someone’s head, and use the remaining shard as a shank! Kick someone into a table, splintering it, and then beat them to unconsciousness with the pieces of the table. The goal is to play dirty, you’re in a drunken bar fight, not Sir Lancelot’s jousting academy!

ArenaNet wants bar fights to feel like true bar fights, otherwise “why bother having them?” Of course, there are more lighthearted activities to be had in your city of choice.

More on Guild Wars 2 as it appears.

There’s Funcom In My ArenaNet, And I Like It.


You drunk Scottish cyclops.

Those of you in the Age of Conan beta will probably remember various nights spent sitting in a bar, knocking back an ale, and beating the crap out of your up-to-then drinking partner. Of course, along with a few other features heavily advertised (npc raids on player villages, among others) for launch, are well aware that two years after Age of Conan’s launch, most of these features are set for a release date one week after never. Drunken bar fights were silently swept under the rug and haven’t been heard from since, at least until now.

But not in the game you’d expect. Taking a cue and miss from Funcom, ArenaNet announced that Guild Wars 2 will feature drunken bar brawls. Speaking in a recent developers blog, you will not only be able to get insanely drunk, but the ale you drink will have various effects, including a noxious belch that poisons anyone drunk enough to stumble into its cloud. Smash your stein over someone’s head, and use the remaining shard as a shank! Kick someone into a table, splintering it, and then beat them to unconsciousness with the pieces of the table. The goal is to play dirty, you’re in a drunken bar fight, not Sir Lancelot’s jousting academy!

ArenaNet wants bar fights to feel like true bar fights, otherwise “why bother having them?” Of course, there are more lighthearted activities to be had in your city of choice.

More on Guild Wars 2 as it appears.