Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently gone back to play the original Guild Wars, I find that the experience left me introspective, considering why I didn’t like its sequel very much. I won’t con you by leading you in with any other opinion.

There were a few stand-out elements that were immediately obvious to me. Such as animals being window-dressing for the scenery rather than actual mobs, I dug that. It meant that unlike Guild Wars 2, you couldn’t end up taken down in one hit by an angry lynx after having been praised as a war hero for his efforts against the Flame Legion. That was silly.

This leads me to another thing. Flow. Guild Wars 2 had some really weird disconnections between zones that its precursor never did. For example, stepping out of a city to find yourself in a zone 30 levels above you was something that would never have happened, there. The design of how places linked together and how they were related was superior, the closer you were to civilisation, the safer you were.

And the aesthetic flow was better — in that the zones surrounding a city would actually reflect that. The Black Citadel and its surrounding lands never had that. The charr had cars but no roads, really? Tanks but no real factories? No infrastructure to speak of? This did much to break my immersion and my enjoyment of the game.

Another thing that stood out was how exploitative it had all become, how much it drove you to buy things from the cash store. For example, how easy it was to craft armour without needing to grind, how long a single salvage kit would last you, how you could just be running around and doing stuff, then there’d be this collector who’d offer you a new piece of armour for things you were already doing. It had the illusion of that, but it was perverse. Through a twisted, smoky, distorted lens.

It’s something you can only really understand if you’ve returned to Guild Wars 1 again after its sequel.

In Ascalon, another revelation occurred to me. By introducing other players, they could no longer have the superlative AI they once had. If I may, I’ll relate a story of the original Guild Wars which will so lucidly express to you the difference in how the AI was handled. A friend and I were tackling some charr, we found a high point up on a cliff and we were attacking their healers.

The healers hung as far back as they could, away from us, trying to keep out of range. Their ranged fighters tried to put a roadblock between us and the healers. And what were their melee fighters doing? Where did they go? They flanked us! They came up the hill from behind and blocked us in, there. When the melee fighters had us locked down, their ranged fighters came into closer range, and used more powerful attacks.

Let’s run a comparison with Guild Wars 2. The mobs tend to attack in zerg waves, they would never even try something like flanking a foe. Ranged mobs are dumb and quickly get into melee distance, and worse, if you try to snipe yourself from a height, the game pops up with ‘Blocked!’ and the foe below you squirms around trying to somehow path their way to you, desperately wriggling.

“How do I use the stairs! I don’t know how these things work! Does anyone have a manual? There’s someone shooting at me up there and I can’t figure out how to get to them!”

(Cont’d.)

Then there was the multi-classing, which I thought they’d keep in Guild Wars 2. Imagine how many ills could have been solved with multi-classing. See, the more nuanced classes in Guild Wars 2 feel like they’re meant to be paired up with another. If you could, say, have a Paragon/Engineer, that would fix so many problems. But no, that’s impossible, they had to force the single class system to make it familiar to other MMO players. Apparently, the average MMO player isn’t bright enough to grasp the concept of a multi-classed system.

I think the only thing where Guild Wars 1 fails the same as Guild Wars 2 is the story. I think they’re just badly managed in that regard and ArenaNet tends to run out of money. And yes, I’m talkin’ about Trahearne. Of course.

The end-game I would have preferred was if my warband and my Order compatriot had remained with me for it, and if I’d been taking orders from the equivalent of my racial leader of Destiny’s Edge. Instead of the atrocity that was The Pact, we could have had something like… The Coalition, a mutual agreement to work together. Destiny’s Edge could have been appointed as Generals to guide and order us.

It wouldn’t have made any difference to the lore, since history could just record it as “the many hands of the Coalition of Orders,” or somesuch. It could have spoken of the eloquent tactics of the Generals, and the efforts of the agents of each Order (including us). All this could have been achieved without ever introducing Trahearne.

I’ll admit, I used to think that Trahearne was someone’s Gary Stu. I still do, to a degree, because there’s a serious Sylvari fetish (used to express a deep obsession) through the entire game. Though I think the reason it became necessary is because they just couldn’t afford to pay the voice actors any more.

So the end of the game was just…

Well, let’s just say that the least we say about that, the better. I actually feel sorry for them, because it was one of the most memorably bad things I’ve experienced in an MMO, and I’ve witnessed a lot. It was far, far worse than Kormir, even.

Another bad move was the inclusion of a certain someone who designed the cash shop to be more exploitative, to make it necessary for play. With the only other option being grinding. Now, whilst that might be hard to believe, if you play Guild Wars 1, this all becomes clear. Pretty much everything that’s a purchase on the cash shop is available in Guild Wars 1 as a free item. It reminds me of the sort of behavioural conditioning used by mobile games with in-app purchases.

“I’m still good at the game! …but it’s getting harder. Maybe just a little help from the cash shop wouldn’t hurt. Just a little more. Just a little more. Just a little more. Just a little more.”

I was under the impression that it would be closer to Guild Wars 1, honestly. The end result is similar to every other exploitative MMO out there. In fact, one of the only MMOs I’ve seen that doesn’t exploit people is the original Guild Wars and The Secret World. TSW is weird, though, because it actually gives you cash shop money for completing quests. I wonder how they even make money.

But The Secret World reminds me more of Guild Wars 1 than Guild Wars 2 ever could. Not to mention that TSW has no levels, and horizontal progression. It has the best instance of horizontal progression I’ve ever seen, honestly. I daresay that it’s better even than Guild Wars 1. It’s just that the combat and AI lack in comparison to GW1.

And I look back…

I remember why I was so excited about Guild Wars 2. It was going to be this game with pretty good writing, with great aesthetics, with excellent mechanics, and no subscription or exploitation of their player-base. That might seem like it’s impossible to achieve, but… when you look at Guild Wars 1, it isn’t.

I invite you all to go back to Guild Wars 1 to play it again to see just how much better it was, in every conceivable way.

(Cont’d.)

Honestly, if anything, Guild Wars 2 was the game that managed to kill my interest in MMOs. I don’t know if I want to play them any more. What I want are more games like the original Guild Wars. I want games which uphold those values. I don’t particularly want other people in my world, anyway, aside from the odd huge battle.

And, I think, that’s perhaps the best way to handle this. Guild Wars 1 with large, quest-based battle arenas. Just drop the Shatterer into Guild Wars 1, and make it so that more than a group of players can go there. That’s immediately going to make for a better and more enjoyable game.

Finally…

They were originally going to add mercenaries to the game, which you could use as tactical backup. In Guild Wars 1, this made the whole experience more strategic rather than just spamming keys. You actually had to use your hero flags to do well in a mission. You had to split people into groups and do so wisely, otherwise the superlative AI of the enemy forces would rip you a new one.

In Guild Wars 2, that just turned into the usual spamming of keys.

And that’s endemic of it. I can see how Guild Wars 1 was some kind of influence, but it ends there. Guild Wars 2 has more in common with The Old Republic and World of Warcraft in its methods than it does with Guild Wars 1 or The Secret World.

The lack of aesthetic cohesion, the terrible AI, the exploitation of their players, the horribly written and managed end-game…

It’s soured me to Wildstar, too. To NCsoft in general.

So that’s that.

(P.S.: The less said about amateurish redesign of the asura, the better. I saw Vekk again recently, and… I’m so, so, so, so, so, so sorry about what they did to your race, Vekk. Vekk needs hugs.)