Guild Wars 2

As I have been wandering around the world doing 100% map discovery I ran into a couple of events that immediately drew me in and gave me that rewarding feeling for playing the game.

These events didn’t show up on the mini map, but simply were player initiated actions based on reading the conversation text.

One event had a crypt full of angry spirits. In one room there was an empty coffin, when inspecting it your only conversation option was “this isn’t worth my time I’m out of here”.

In another room there was a statue that when inspected stated that the makers of the statue spent a lot of time kneeling in front of it.

At initial look most players will shrug that off and walk out of the crypt as i almost did. After taking a second to actually read the conversation pop ups I thought to type /kneel in front of the statue.

That’s when the magic happened. A ghost appeared and told me why the crypt was angry, the coffin was guarded by a spirit and now that it has been desecrated he had enraged the rest of the spirits. The only way to stop him was to speak his name to summon him and put him to rest.

I was sucked in, I felt like I had a direct influence in the game and that my critical thinking skills and reading helped me come to a point that most gamers might not have seen.

I felt special.

This event ended by her telling me the name of the spirit, but instead of having me type the name at the coffin I was given the option to say it via conversation options. I would have liked it if the player was forced to have to remember the name and type it personally as another reward for actually reading.

I come from an older generation of online gaming. Where you had to type everything and figure out the key words in order to interact with NPCs and get that next quest. This harkens back to that idea without making it overly tedious.

More events like this that reward players for role playing or actually reading the quest text and feeling like a detective without handing it to the player on a silver platter would be highly welcome and I feel greatly give a sense of reward to the player because instead of just clicking away at random text options they feel like they did something and solved a riddle.

This is the same reason why I love the jumping puzzles. No one is giving you a quest and telling you to explore it. It is there to discover as you adventure. Little pearls of fun hidden away.

Bring back the quests and adventure!

I always talk to named NPCs – you don’t always get an event, but you always get some information, even if it’s just more background on the area you’re in. I ran into a friendly (conned green) human separatist who apparently didn’t realize I was the same person that just trashed their camp. She was looking out over a huge camp of ogres and we had a short conversation about how conflicted she was about the pact with the Charr and what her motivations were for being a separatist. It was interesting.

Talking to an NPC I found in a cave caused her to show me the jump I had to make to find a hidden chest. I just love that I can find hidden areas and such just by being observant and curious.

This is by far what makes me log in every day. Don’t know what’s around that next corner…

This is why I’ll be playing GW2 for years.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Talking to an NPC I found in a cave caused her to show me the jump I had to make to find a hidden chest. I just love that I can find hidden areas and such just by being observant and curious.

I wonder how many players who went from 1-80 in a week and quit because they ran out of things to do even know about this, or the statue…

Too many I am sure. If this became a primary way of getting quests and adventures it would make it more interesting instead of the guided interactions that almost every game has now, let the player drive the game instead of the other way around.

It’s an unfortunate side effect of the subscription model – without a clear direction to follow, too many players will get frustrated and quit, leading to a decline in subscriptions. With GW2’s pay up front model, you could be talking to someone months from now and they tell you that if you talk to such-and-such NPC it will open up new areas or begin undocumented events and so on. You can pick up the game again any time and continue exploring.

I prefer this to the monthy sub model. Not everyone will feel the same, however. Many people have gotten used to the other way, or never knew anything different.

Kind of a tangent but I think shows the idea of “undocumented events”.

I played Everquest way back when. The first big undocumented event was the legend of the Fiery Avenger. The lead game master used to sport the weapon and walk around towns while talking to people. It was a big flaming 2handed sword and everyone wanted it. No one knew what class could use it as the GM was a ranger wielding a 2handed sword which was impossible with the game mechanics.

Throughout the game there were little seemingly unrelated quests that eventually lead up to the search for the Fiery Avenger. It was a race and no one knew what the reward was going to be. You had to find NPCs and guess what to say to them since there were no guided conversations. Just text and a box to type in: “Where is the fiery avenger…..Who is miragul……How do find the sword”

This one thing brought whole servers together of unrelated guilds and people were scraping for clues on what to do next and where to go. It was amazing and truly epic. Later things became so predictable and everything was documented on webpages that everyone had epic weapons and everyone was amazing, but that first time was memorable and I still remember the first guy to get the fiery avenger. Gaunt, an erudite paladin on the Tunare server.

If this could be recreated on a smaller and repeatable scale all throughout the game world I think it would make players feel truly rewarded.