Guild Wars 2

The Guild Wars 2 Manifesto

“We founded ArenaNet to innovate, so Guild Wars 2 is our opportunity to question everything, to make a game that defies existing conventions. If you love MMOs, you’ll want to check out Guild Wars 2, and if you hate MMOs, you’ll really want to check out Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world that’s got more active combat, a fully-branching, personalized storyline, a new event system to get people playing together, and still no monthly fees.”

There is no branching to the storyline. This is the first intentionally misleading statement. About the only major choice in the game is the choice of which order to join. After which it proceeds identically on every player, with the only difference being what missions you choose. The missions have no effect on the outcome. The choice only effects what mission you take directly after, and then the story returns to the status quo.

“The look of Guild Wars 2 is stylized. We’re going for a painterly, illustrated aesthetic. Everything in our world feels handcrafted and artisanal. We treat our environments as if they are characters themselves.”

This is the only honest statement. The game is gorgeous and I wish to congratulate whoever thought up the Kodan’s Sail-glaciers.

“When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

This is the second intentionally misleading statement and undoubtedly the biggest one. The end game is nothing but a mercilessly boring grind with no fun to be had as a reward. The reward of dungeon gear is not for completing the challenge, it’s for completing the challenge dozens of times to a point where you just want to be done with it and never have to run a dungeon again.

For the people enticed by this game’s claim of being for people who hate mmo’s, this is the most disappointing falsehood.

“As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you are doing. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

This is the third intentionally misleading statement. Anyone who has been to Orr can tell you that a boss you kill just respawns a few minutes later and it doesn’t matter how many times you and your zerg kill it. Nothing about doing zerg laps in Orr makes people feel heroic.

“We do not want to build the same MMO everyone else is building, and in Guild Wars 2, it’s your world. It’s your story. You affect things around you in a very permanent way.”

This is the fourth intentionally misleading statement. You do not in any way whatsoever affect the world in a permanent way. That village you saved will just be attacked by a suicide squad of whatever that zone’s bad guy is, and 5 minutes later you can do it again.

“Cause and effect: A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”

Technically, yes. But this has nothing to do with the game’s design.

“You’re meeting new people whom you will then see again. You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, who then remember you. The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

This is the fifth and final misleading statement. The village will stay rescued for all of 10 minutes. The village only remembers you if you just saved it, unless they are talking about the karma vendors.

Arenanet, Will you defend your claims? Or will you admit that you gave up on your own dreams and that this manifesto cannot be considered as any guarantee of quality on your part?

Everyone who became interested in Guild Wars 2 because of this video wants to know.

+1^infinity

Seriously, everything you said is true. They lied about the design.

Well what was you expecting a full fledged sandbox? you take some of it far too literally, by changing the world they meant dynamic events, if you expected more then your outta your mind.

But I do agree, this game has less fun LONGER grinds than games like World of Warcraft even… funnily enoug hthe game the fanboys attack for being a “treadmill” ….

“Tokens and legendaries are optional you dont have to get them” YES well done fanboys, everything in an MMO is optional congratulations, point is we want reasons to keep playing , fun rewarding reasons, be they aesthetic.

But its not just about reward, its fun achieving the reward.

I want a nice Orrian set, do I go through well structed dungeon content to do it?

No I have to go with 2-boss farming groups on mindless boring boss enoucnters with no thought put into them untill I have 1500 tokens.

If that is “better” than WoW’s Grind Treadmill then I lose faith in humanity… at least WoWs “gear treadmill” has spontanious loot excitement, well structured boss fights and dungeons, well defined roles ect ect.

This game is mindless in its current state, people say its a challenge but it isnt….

Yea looks like they lied to you pretty hard, guess its time to move on to the next game huh.

I’ll just stay here to lockup after you leave.

I noticed this in the BWE’s. I was hoping that the final game would prove me wrong in every way.

And to add to what you’ve already said:

“And then when you play the combat in our game. You will say “Wow! That’s incredible, I’ve never seen anything like that before… I swung a sword, I swung a sword again, heyy I swung it again – that’s great.”

Sorry – this really got to me in the BWE’s and I was hoping higher level mobs / bosses would be designed radically differently to make me like the combat system. Right now it really is about swinging your sword, swinging it again, and heyy you just swung it again. I was and still am completely underwhelmed by the combat which is made worse by the poor mob/boss design.

Birdy.4816:

Well what was you expecting a full fledged sandbox? you take some of it far too literally, by changing the world they meant dynamic events, if you expected more then your outta your mind.

But I do agree, this game has less fun LONGER grinds than games like World of Warcraft even… funnily enoug hthe game the fanboys attack for being a “treadmill” ….

“Tokens and legendaries are optional you dont have to get them” YES well done fanboys, everything in an MMO is optional congratulations, point is we want reasons to keep playing , fun rewarding reasons, be they aesthetic.

But its not just about reward, its fun achieving the reward.

I want a nice Orrian set, do I go through well structed dungeon content to do it?

No I have to go with 2-boss farming groups on mindless boring boss enoucnters with no thought put into them untill I have 1500 tokens.

If that is “better” than WoW’s Grind Treadmill then I lose faith in humanity… at least WoWs “gear treadmill” has spontanious loot excitement, well structured boss fights and dungeons, well defined roles ect ect.

This game is mindless in its current state, people say its a challenge but it isnt….

You’re missing the point – running a 5 man dungeon 100+ times for 1 set of cosmetic gear is a much better design than being rewarded with better loot after 3+ 25 man raids.

WOW what horrible, horrible liars!

You know what you should do?

You should do the ultimate form of protest!

You leave and never come back!

Once ANET realizes that they have lost one of their most valued and most renown members, they will see the error of their ways and make progress on fixing up the game!

But before you leave, make sure you make an “I Quit” thread on these forums!

A lot of people here will appreciate it and will be really, really sad to see you go.

+1 for Naminator. Great suggestion.

A game can still have a branching storyline and still arrive at the same conclusion. From point A on, your goal is to kill a dragon. How you get there is what defines the storyline as “branching”. You’re attempting to pigeon-hole the term into what you think it is, despite the fact that it’s not solely limited to that. A little off-topic, but I’ve noticed this mentality a lot in people complaining about this game; they have deep-seeded preconceptions about what makes something what it is (i.e., if it’s not a race to 80 before you get to the real game, it’s not an MMO).

I can agree with you on the “grindy” aspect of dungeon tokens; I personally believe that one run should give you one armor piece or a weapon. That would yield a favorable reward for every dungeon run (unless you’re looking for some miniscule stat boost and progression gearing, in which case, you’re definitely playing the wrong game, because ANet said several times months ago that wouldn’t be in the game), while at the same time encouraging multiple runs of the same dungeon. However, if you don’t find the gameplay fun, that’s your opinion; many others, myself included, don’t share it. I get a great amount of glee simply from jumping between mobs with a greatsword and participating in a combat system that is easily much more engaging than most MMO’s.

I do agree about the repetitiveness of DE’s to an extent, but they are a good concept, infinitely more fun than traditional MMO questing, and will likely subside in monotony as more are added. And yes, more will be added.

Cascading events, contrary to what you said, do impact the game. Some events will not even be playable unless you succeed (or fail) the events before it. Most world bosses will not show up unless the meta-event chain succeeds up to that point. This affects the game in a very real way and makes the players feel like they’re involved in what’s going on around them for themselves and everyone nearby significantly more than killing 10 rats, doing dailies that involve killing x Champions, or downing Arthas.

Naminator.9316:

WOW what horrible, horrible liars!

You know what you should do?

You should do the ultimate form of protest!

You leave and never come back!

Once ANET realizes that they have lost one of their most valued and most renown members, they will see the error of their ways and make progress on fixing up the game!

But before you leave, make sure you make an “I Quit” thread on these forums!

A lot of people here will appreciate it and will be really, really sad to see you go.

Where to? We should go back to WoW where we are allowed to criticize GW2’s manifesto being completely contrary to its delivery?

Zen.1740:

Naminator.9316:

WOW what horrible, horrible liars!

You know what you should do?

You should do the ultimate form of protest!

You leave and never come back!

Once ANET realizes that they have lost one of their most valued and most renown members, they will see the error of their ways and make progress on fixing up the game!

But before you leave, make sure you make an “I Quit” thread on these forums!

A lot of people here will appreciate it and will be really, really sad to see you go.

Where to? We should go back to WoW where we are allowed to criticize GW2’s manifesto being completely contrary to its delivery?

Well according to you, WoW is just as big of a grindfest as GW2, so why not?

Naminator.9316:

Well according to you, WoW is just as big of a grindfest as GW2, so why not?

Citation needed.

Yay! Someone made a post like this. About time ArenaNet sees what they promised and how they disappointed so many of their players.

Come on ArenaNet… I trusted you.

Zen.1740:

Naminator.9316:

Well according to you, WoW is just as big of a grindfest as GW2, so why not?

Citation needed.

ou’re missing the point – running a 5 man dungeon 100+ times for 1 set of cosmetic gear is a much better design than being rewarded with better loot after 3+ 25 man raids.

Ok, so now this is the part where you ask me to provide you word for word proof, and that this quote is completely misunderstood.

Krimlin.3257:

Yay! Someone made a post like this. About time ArenaNet sees what they promised and how they disappointed so many of their players.

Come on ArenaNet… I trusted you.

I can’t see many WoW players sticking around when Pandas are on the horizon.

Zen.1740:

Krimlin.3257:

Yay! Someone made a post like this. About time ArenaNet sees what they promised and how they disappointed so many of their players.

Come on ArenaNet… I trusted you.

I can’t see many WoW players sticking around when Pandas are on the horizon.

If you’re implying that I am going back to that, you’re wrong, although I may have misunderstood. I apologize if this is the case.

I don’t plan on going there. Have before, swore I would never go back.

It’s also very difficult to convey tone on the Internet. You shouldn’t feel bad that you didn’t accomplish it successfully.

Yes, the OP is correct. However, reading between the lines of what the developers were saying, I pretty much expected that the game would turn out the way it actually has.

DusK.3849:

A game can still have a branching storyline and still arrive at the same conclusion. From point A on, your goal is to kill a dragon. How you get there is what defines the storyline as “branching”. You’re attempting to pigeon-hole the term into what you think it is, despite the fact that it’s not solely limited to that.

I think many of us find the personal storylines a bit meaningless. There are some good bits, but there are a lot of really bad bits. It’s good that you get different kinds of choices to suit your playstyle e.g. Option A: rush in waving your sword and screaming DIE SCUM, Option B; lure the enemy into exposing themselves, but it doesn’t have quite the same effect as making some kind of moral choice which has some lasting effect on your character. For instance:

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand consequences to our decisions that decide more than just what kind of mobs we have to attack in the next personal story instance. Edit: just to belabour this point, it would been better to give every class in the game the exact same storyline right from the start, and allow them to make choices that affected the course of the story in a meaningful way, than what we have at the moment.

Game stories as a whole are usually pretty terrible, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t keep asking for the same standard of storytelling from a game that I might find in a really good fantasy novel. Bioware can do it, and even Funcom have managed to pull off some fantastic dialogue in TSW, so it’s such a shame the Anet didn’t come up to scratch on this one.

With respect to the DEs, they make more of a difference in the later zones than in the earlier ones, particularly the ones where it leads up to a dragon showing up. It can feel a little annoying and repetitive to defend a waypoint heroically and then find it being zerged by Risen again 10 minutes later. I suspect you will have to spend a lot of time in a zone doing the same events over and over again to notice any narrative differences.

I would love to see cumulative player actions gradually steering servers in a slightly different direction. However, I think I’m being overly optimistic about this.