Guild Wars 2

Imagine, if you can, this game without all the Guild Wars trappings…

If Guild Wars 2 was not Guild Wars 2, but rather a new game with no ties to any previous game, a game with an original setting featuring lands, races, and lore unique unto itself, but using the same game engine/game mechanics that we have here, would you play that game, and if so, what would you think of it?

I think it would be a fun game, especially if it had 15’ tall green guys with four arms. Ahem. I also think it’s possible for a game’s setting to so overshadow the game itself (see also STO) that, at least for some, the perception of the game’s quality can be adversely altered. Guild Wars (including all campaigns and EOTN) has a secure spot in my Top Five Favorite PC games of all time. Guild Wars 2 – for all that I personally find it somewhat disappointing as a follow up to Guild Wars – is, in my opinion, a pretty darned good game. Well. Except for Orr… and some of the personal story missions with way too many bad guys… and the excessively extravagant loot drops (that was a joke, ha ha, fat chance)…

It’s not inconceivable that it could, depending on where it goes from here, knock some other game out of my Top Five. Maybe even Windows solitaire! Who knows?

What do you guys think? About the game behind the game, so to speak.

It depends on what that new setting is. I play RPGs, MMO and otherwise, for the lore as much as, if not more than, the gameplay and it’s almost always the lore that first gets me interested in a game.

I think the gameplay is good enough that it’d make a great game with different lore, but the lore needs to be up to scratch too. I’ve seen several games where the developers made the mistake of thinking it doesn’t matter, you throw together some vaugely fantasy related things, say some big evil is attacking the world and as long as combat is fun you’ve got a great RPG and it just doesn’t work that way for me.

Nope. I play games first and foremost for the story. If there was a game without any progression at all, just exploration and narrative, it would become my all time favorite instantly.

Although GW2s lore is a lot shallower and less morally ambiguous than its predecessor, its still an interesting world that allowed me to dive in and enjoy myself for as long as I could find any information with substance.

I’m not playing the game anymore (for actual gameplay reasons), so I would definitely not want to play a product with identical game mechanics with a different skin slapped on.