I’ve noticed over the past year that people have began to expect more and more out of Arena Net when developing Guild Wars 2.
While I can understand the desire to have more, I think people tend to forget all the great things Arena Net has accomplished with Guild Wars 2 and I think it would be a good idea to have a little reminder to that. Once something becomes the ‘norm’ in a game, it’s quite frequently overlooked, which is what I think happened with a lot of the features Guild Wars 2 has to offer.
Therefore, I decided to put this here on the Guild Wars 2 forum to remind players of all the good things Arena Net has done. Or rather, not all the good things, but 20 of them.
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1) No Monthly Fee. Let’s face it, most MMOs available these days are either pay to play or free to play w/ subscriptions optional. If you’ve ever been someone who has played a game like WoW or SWTOR, you know as well as anybody that these games offer a free to play option, but they restrict you with the amount of the game that you can play. These games will often neuter your entertainment in the game and force you to want to pay for the game. With Guild Wars 2, you can certainly purchase gems… but you can play the game without restrictions entirely for free, after buying the game itself of course.
2) No Fetch Quests. There are still some people who don’t mind doing fetch quests, but a lot of people have grown tired of the concept and want something new. With Guild Wars 2, having hearts that appear around the map is a much better alternative than talking to someone, then going to slay a certain number of mobs, and then come running back to talk to that person. No longer do I need to spend an hour running from somebody to a field and then back to that somebody, I can just walk into the field and spend ten minutes doing the heart quest before going on my way.
3) Instant Travel. Most games, if they have a travel feature (blimps, waypoints, etc.) will make you sit there and ride a vehicle or an animal before you reach your destination. While I’m one of those people who doesn’t mind doing this because you get to see the beautiful world the company has designed for you, I understand some people don’t want to wait 10 – 15 minutes to go from Point A to Point B. You still have to pay a travel fee like you would in other games, but it’s much easier to travel from Point A to Point B with waypoints in Guild Wars 2 than say, riding around on a speeder in SWTOR.
4) Dynamic Events. Similar to the Heart Quests, Dynamic Events are events that take place around the map at random times and you can join in to get experience. So again eliminating the need to have fetch quests, they make the world seem more alive by having these events occur, and some events will have chains that become different events and are a possibility to level even if you are in a low level zone.
5) No Kill Stealing. Yeah anyone who’s played an MMO is familiar with this concept. You’ve started attacking a mob, but then someone who does more damage appears out of nowhere and attacks the mob too. By doing more damage, they manage to take the experience, the loot, and the kill from you. This mechanic is what made it difficult for someone to level a Healer character because they didn’t do as much damage as pure DPS classes. With spontaneous grouping during dynamic events and everyone getting credit for attacking a single mob, it reduces the level of headache you might get when someone appears to help you kill something. It’s much easier to feel like you’re helping somebody when you appear to fight something and it doesn’t take experience away from them in the process.
6) The downed state. Anyone who’s fought a major boss in another MMO is familiar with the scenario where you and the boss are both at a sliver of health and then suddenly, the boss is able to defeat you and their health immediately refills to max, thus eliminating all the hard work you had just done. Having a chance to beat the boss and get back on your feet is a win in my book.
7) Plentiful variety of dyes & ability to dye armor. Most games didn’t adopt the ability to change the color of armor until long after launch, while as with Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, there has always been an option to dye your armor. In Guild Wars 2, every color of the rainbow and then some is available AND you are given a number of dyes upon character creation to make your character have a unique-ish look to them. In other games, you would have to find armor that looks exactly alike in order to ensure that you didn’t look like you were made of rainbows. With the ability to freely dye your armor as much as you like, and having the dye saved in your hero panel after you’ve unlocked it, is a MUCH better alternative than what other games have made us deal with.