Would you refer a friend to play Guild Wars 2 in the future based on this weekend event?
To keep it short: no. I liked the overall story but the event was horribly executed. The story’s only hiccup is the disconnect between these two thoughts:
1. “We, the Consortium, just violated the natural habitat of the karka and caused them to ransack Lion’s Arch.”
2. “We, the Lionguard, want you to go massacre the karka into near-extinction because you are heroes, and the karka are definitely in the wrong here.”
Anyway, an extension.
No, I would not refer a friend to play Guild Wars 2 based off of this weekend’s event. However, I would refer friends to play Guild Wars 2 based off of existing game content, and have done exactly that in the past.
I’m one of those players who finds immense enjoyment in discovering secrets and finding adventures within games’ worlds. I try very hard to avoid looking up the answers to puzzles and try to find and experience everything on my own. The members of my guild aren’t necessarily of the same opinion and do often look answers up while playing. However they have conceded that it is vastly more enjoyable when a group of us sit down as friends to tackle a problem and find a solution.
For example, I just happened to stumble across the Hidden Garden jumping puzzle by pure coincidence while adventuring. My guild had never heard of it before and hadn’t been there yet, and so they dropped everything they were doing to join me and find out what it was I had discovered. We then spent the next four hours exploring the area and helping everyone get through it. Just like that, drop of a hat.
It may seem like a simple or mundane thing to do solo or if you’ve looked up the answers, but when we sat down to view it fresh each minor discovery made was a huge accomplishment. We went from, “What in hell is this place?” to “This was one of the most enjoyable experiences we’ve had as a guild thus far.” I am very certain that this is what any developer would describe as working as intended, and I mean it sincerely when I say that I want whoever designed this puzzle to be beaming with pride if they happen across this post.
This is the sort of stuff that games are meant to be about. Games are supposed to bring friends together and allow them to build memories and stories together. In a way, we are all a little bit norn. We want to boast about how we were there that one time when Jim fell through the floor into that ancient temple, or reminisce about the time Susan found that magical artifact in the jungle. We want our enjoyment and our joy to be shared by others, and we want to encourage them to share those experiences first-hand in the future.
Guild Wars 2 is rich with this type of content and potential. Grabbing a friend and stumbling into an adventure is as old as old school gaming gets. You don’t need to rely on gimmicks or artificially create those moments for us. You just need to provide us with the ability to create those moments for ourselves. The formula is already there, and it’s already in motion. Players are already enjoying the fruits of your world designers’ labors. You just need to embrace it a little bit more wholly and allow it to truly flourish in such a way as to connect with each variety of player.
A one-time-only event in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. I’ll only ever discover the Hidden Garden for the first time once, for example. However, I’ll always carry that memory with me and my guild will always remember it as one of the finest times we’ve had as people and as friends while playing this game. This kind of one-time-only event experience might be unique to us, or it might not, but ultimately it’s an experience that neither isolates us from other players nor interferes with how they wish to experience the game.
The Lost Shores event attempted to force this sort of thing on the players. Forcing it doesn’t work. If it’s not organic, don’t do it. Personally? I find Southsun Cove to be a boring map. It’s frustrating to travel alone in while simultaneously trying to discover its secrets… which I suppose is acceptable, seeing as it had very few secrets to share in the first place. Unlike the Hidden Garden jumping puzzle, I am sorry to say that whoever designed Southsun Cove should feel as though they could have done a better job.
My advice is to take a step back and embrace what you already have going for you in the future. Everything we do as players is a one-time-only event. You don’t need to create them for us — you just need to provide us with the opportunities we need to set out and make them on our own.
So to recap: No, I would not refer a friend to play Guild Wars 2 in the future based on this weekend’s event. I would refer a friend to play Guild Wars 2 based off of the pure joy I’ve had exploring your vast world. I just wish that respawn rates weren’t so absurd in higher level zones so that I’d have a better chance to actually explore them.
Men of Science [MoS] – Tarnished Coast