Guild Wars 2

Mercenaries are looking better and better. The gaming world is expanding too fast and group related objectives are become too hard to accomplish due to people being spread around too thin.
What if you were allowed “2-3” mercs on your character and if too many characters + mercs are on a map, you are told to kick a merc in 2 mins or the last one in your stack is automatically kicked.
Some retooling of the maps may need to occur to make sure world bosses don’t totally screw with those people just out farming or completing other objectives nearby.
Just a thought, don’t think it will happen any time soon, but I can dream.

Mercenaries look worse & worse to me. We get more tools to do more things and more ways to get others to help us out. Group-related objectives are becoming easier to accomplish.

Adding NPCs that accompany your character strikes me as the final step for an MMO before going into the home stretch of retiring it from active development. An MMO thrives on massive multiplay; it turns into a coop, single player game when the focus changes to using NPCs.

As a game expands into new territory, the old spaces become less populous. Unless the game keeps expanding its user base to make up for those not playing in the old content areas. The company cannot control the user base for numbers of players, but it can control the AI behind the game and what is allowed to make up for the loss.

I didn’t hear too many people complain about the mercs being brought out in GW1. The biggest problem I did hear was the merc grabbing aggro or getting stuck. I saw many PUGs filling ranks with mercs or NPCs when there weren’t enough people around.

No one is saying you have to use mercs, just allow the option for those who do.

When Heroes were added to Guild Wars, the whole game changed. No longer did we call on game friends to fill spots for Missions. We just used Heroes.

It really was a sad day for Guild Wars.

Thus, I don’t think ‘Mercs’ would be a good idea for Guild Wars 2.

As much as I loved Heroes and (some) Henchmen for GW1, I don’t see mercs working well for GW2.

Quite honestly the open world stuff is so easy you don’t need automated help, plus there’s so many zergs at times. In all other places where they could be used: dungeons, raids, etc. It would not help considering how Arenanet’s goal for this game seems to be “casual pop in/out, have fun with friends.”