Guild Wars 2

This is something I’m just becoming aware of as I do more raiding. MMOs have kind of forced raiding on us from day one. Everquest had it. Dark Age of Camelot had it. WoW was only that. There really hasn’t been that open world and exploration type game in decades. Literally. Dark Age of Camelot came closest because no matter what armor capped out on stats. Mythic invested a lot into actually making game content instead of some kind of endless monotony. How they managed this? I’m still trying to figure it out.

One certain difference between games today and older games was that all these ideas like ‘raids’, ‘dungeons’, ‘dragons’, and whatever really weren’t systematized. Players called these things that, but not the developers. It was a dungeon if it was underground and had architecture. It was otherwise a cave; in which case people called it whatever it’s game name was. Again, WoW started this idea of calling things “raids” with a capital R.

Everquest 1 really gave Blizzard Entertainment the idea raids should be capitalized. People “raided” (just a slang term at the time) the Planes. The Planes were places where the Gods dwelt. There were tons of gods and your character had to chose one when you made it. Far later in that character’s life you could actually use a Wizard or Druid to force a portal into the Plane of this or that deity and kill it. These were huge maps entirely devoted to the theme of that particular god and it’s minions. All of it was in the venue of open-world content.
Dungeons were another matter. These were literally dungeons; underground places with architecture. Some few were ruins, but always the idea behind a dungeon is thematic in this sense of run-downness or abandoned-something.
Dragons, world bosses, and such-like were a big deal. There were dragons that ate boats (really), dragons that haunted mounts, planes, caverns and etc. Basically the world was full of so much diverse stuff every action had to be pre-considered and all consequences of exploration into an environment taken into account. Dragons were something a person did not poke unless you wanted to die and probably everyone else in the zone with you. These were not the farmed creatures we have currently.

Dark Age of Camelot backed up from this by doing something very clever. Dark Age of Camelot was a continuous world. Very little besides raid areas and dungeon areas were broken up by a zone boarder. No mountains or invisible walls blocked one region off from another by and large.

Today the gaming market has taken the WoW model and cloned it ad-infinitum. The problem is that it really seems as though the entire MMO community has kind of “been there done that”.

To quote a friend just now: “There are no big rewards from dungeons anymore, all open world is farming, and therefore very repetitive. I feel like there’s so little to do in this game at the moment. I just wanna raid all the time and I don’t really want to do that. It’s going to get old. We’ve done this already in every mmo ever.”
- They were talking about Guild Wars 2, but at this point this is the statement of ALL MMOs today.

What gamers are craving, and absolutely not getting, is themetic content and consistency of design. Integrity is the old notion of this.

There are not many modern examples. The only truly thorough one is Dragon Age: Inquisition. It is thoroughly imagined. Content is recycled by renewed missions that send you back to maps you have already done again and again, and the missions are open world sorts of things against lore related content. The landscape is continuous and natural. If you have seen it in Dragon Age: Inquisition you’ve seen it in real life. If you haven’t it’s because it’s a creature in the game, not a landscape.
This is really where Everquest, Dark Age, and even Diablo I and II worked. It’s why Path of Exile is working. It’s why Super Adventure Box worked. People are looking for something just like real life, but in another era slightly historical because we like the song, “If I knew then what I know now…,” is true of all of history. If we could go back in time to any of these eras…
This is probably why Scarlet was so popular. It was steampunk, a very witty fun woman who you just weren’t sure if she was right nor not, and a whole lot of themetically friendly content to the era in which the game takes place in. And what era is Guild Wars 2 if we had to guess? The era of the legendary safaris: ala, Frederick Courtney Selous – (1851-1917). If you need a film to imagine then “The Ghost in the Darkness” minus the railroads. With the helicopters and such you can go right ahead to Raoul Allier missionary editions and 1940s Red Cross stuff. Themetically we’re probably closer to the Exorcist films though.

Basically, people are starved for another world. Earth is a pretty stressful place to be living right now. There’s not a lot of anyone saying anything positive. People want something they can beat, not something they have to beat themselves against and then fail. I’m not talking about raids at all, by the way. People just want to be part of a breathing world. Our grandparents and even great-grandparents went to the Moon. What have we got to look for as our generation’s mission? Governments are failing everywhere or hanging on the fringes. Economies are shoving people into some pretty bleak situations. Student loans terminate most of our futures if we do get into a good school. So, the MMO world and games in general are kind of missing the point.

People want beautiful worlds that aren’t trying to kill them right now. Worlds. People want zones that might try to do that that threaten something they actually want to defend.

This is probably the great challenge for every MMO out there. It doesn’t matter what game is out there right now, the product is always the same thing. There’s a valley or a bowl. You are in this valley or bowl. You can climb anywhere and everywhere inside that. Something runs through it you have to kill. Do this so many time and you get a reward. No one cares. For all the reasons above, people have just stopped caring about that.

What people want more and more is to play, too. That’s where jumping puzzles, exploration, missions, adventures, expeditions, and all the rest of such concepts play a part. Expeditions could be places with no way points, maybe just a rez area like in GW 1 you have to reach first before you get to use it. And it’s way out there. But whole zones like that. Just less with “slap the monster dead” and more with “how does this contribute to the world?”

And people are really looking to laugh about something together. This generally is accomplished as an after-the-fact moment. “Wow, that moment when you and J got trampled at the Settlement gates… I thought that was it!” …“I know, right?”
Part of the problem with Tyria right now is the sense we’re just not able to do anything. Who cares about Dragons when Kryta is basically half taken by the Centaur? Seriously? Why haven’t we addressed this yet? Why hasn’t the grass grown back? Especially Kessex Hills?
Now, before everyone has a fit! The devs only have so much time on their hands. That’s why. And that’s the only good answer. So that’s that.
The point in bringing it up is presentations. If you go back through and read this post again to here, or just think back, I think a lot of the complaints against Heart of Thorns comes down to the fact people are stressing out badly in RL. The come onto games to not do that. Then game slaps them with more stress and people pop. The length of this post is just trying to give some ideas on why. Mostly because nobody is saying it.

There’s some gems of wisdom in there. Thanks for posting!
Gave me some ideas for things I wish to see in games, but I’ll sit on that for now.

Eirdyne.9843:

This is something I’m just becoming aware of as I do more raiding. MMOs have kind of forced raiding on us from day one. Everquest had it. Dark Age of Camelot had it. WoW was only that. There really hasn’t been that open world and exploration type game in decades. Literally. Dark Age of Camelot came closest because no matter what armor capped out on stats. Mythic invested a lot into actually making game content instead of some kind of endless monotony. How they managed this? I’m still trying to figure it out.

One certain difference between games today and older games was that all these ideas like ‘raids’, ‘dungeons’, ‘dragons’, and whatever really weren’t systematized. Players called these things that, but not the developers. It was a dungeon if it was underground and had architecture. It was otherwise a cave; in which case people called it whatever it’s game name was. Again, WoW started this idea of calling things “raids” with a capital R.

Everquest 1 really gave Blizzard Entertainment the idea raids should be capitalized. People “raided” (just a slang term at the time) the Planes. The Planes were places where the Gods dwelt. There were tons of gods and your character had to chose one when you made it. Far later in that character’s life you could actually use a Wizard or Druid to force a portal into the Plane of this or that deity and kill it. These were huge maps entirely devoted to the theme of that particular god and it’s minions. All of it was in the venue of open-world content.
Dungeons were another matter. These were literally dungeons; underground places with architecture. Some few were ruins, but always the idea behind a dungeon is thematic in this sense of run-downness or abandoned-something.
Dragons, world bosses, and such-like were a big deal. There were dragons that ate boats (really), dragons that haunted mounts, planes, caverns and etc. Basically the world was full of so much diverse stuff every action had to be pre-considered and all consequences of exploration into an environment taken into account. Dragons were something a person did not poke unless you wanted to die and probably everyone else in the zone with you. These were not the farmed creatures we have currently.

Dark Age of Camelot backed up from this by doing something very clever. Dark Age of Camelot was a continuous world. Very little besides raid areas and dungeon areas were broken up by a zone boarder. No mountains or invisible walls blocked one region off from another by and large.

Today the gaming market has taken the WoW model and cloned it ad-infinitum. The problem is that it really seems as though the entire MMO community has kind of “been there done that”.

To quote a friend just now: “There are no big rewards from dungeons anymore, all open world is farming, and therefore very repetitive. I feel like there’s so little to do in this game at the moment. I just wanna raid all the time and I don’t really want to do that. It’s going to get old. We’ve done this already in every mmo ever.”
- They were talking about Guild Wars 2, but at this point this is the statement of ALL MMOs today.

What gamers are craving, and absolutely not getting, is themetic content and consistency of design. Integrity is the old notion of this.

There are not many modern examples. The only truly thorough one is Dragon Age: Inquisition. It is thoroughly imagined. Content is recycled by renewed missions that send you back to maps you have already done again and again, and the missions are open world sorts of things against lore related content. The landscape is continuous and natural. If you have seen it in Dragon Age: Inquisition you’ve seen it in real life. If you haven’t it’s because it’s a creature in the game, not a landscape.
This is really where Everquest, Dark Age, and even Diablo I and II worked. It’s why Path of Exile is working. It’s why Super Adventure Box worked. People are looking for something just like real life, but in another era slightly historical because we like the song, “If I knew then what I know now…,” is true of all of history. If we could go back in time to any of these eras…
This is probably why Scarlet was so popular. It was steampunk, a very witty fun woman who you just weren’t sure if she was right nor not, and a whole lot of themetically friendly content to the era in which the game takes place in. And what era is Guild Wars 2 if we had to guess? The era of the legendary safaris: ala, Frederick Courtney Selous – (1851-1917). If you need a film to imagine then “The Ghost in the Darkness” minus the railroads. With the helicopters and such you can go right ahead to Raoul Allier missionary editions and 1940s Red Cross stuff. Themetically we’re probably closer to the Exorcist films though.

Basically, people are starved for another world. Earth is a pretty stressful place to be living right now. There’s not a lot of anyone saying anything positive. People want something they can beat, not something they have to beat themselves against and then fail. I’m not talking about raids at all, by the way. People just want to be part of a breathing world. Our grandparents and even great-grandparents went to the Moon. What have we got to look for as our generation’s mission? Governments are failing everywhere or hanging on the fringes. Economies are shoving people into some pretty bleak situations. Student loans terminate most of our futures if we do get into a good school. So, the MMO world and games in general are kind of missing the point.

People want beautiful worlds that aren’t trying to kill them right now. Worlds. People want zones that might try to do that that threaten something they actually want to defend.

This is probably the great challenge for every MMO out there. It doesn’t matter what game is out there right now, the product is always the same thing. There’s a valley or a bowl. You are in this valley or bowl. You can climb anywhere and everywhere inside that. Something runs through it you have to kill. Do this so many time and you get a reward. No one cares. For all the reasons above, people have just stopped caring about that.

What people want more and more is to play, too. That’s where jumping puzzles, exploration, missions, adventures, expeditions, and all the rest of such concepts play a part. Expeditions could be places with no way points, maybe just a rez area like in GW 1 you have to reach first before you get to use it. And it’s way out there. But whole zones like that. Just less with “slap the monster dead” and more with “how does this contribute to the world?”

And people are really looking to laugh about something together. This generally is accomplished as an after-the-fact moment. “Wow, that moment when you and J got trampled at the Settlement gates… I thought that was it!” …“I know, right?”
Part of the problem with Tyria right now is the sense we’re just not able to do anything. Who cares about Dragons when Kryta is basically half taken by the Centaur? Seriously? Why haven’t we addressed this yet? Why hasn’t the grass grown back? Especially Kessex Hills?
Now, before everyone has a fit! The devs only have so much time on their hands. That’s why. And that’s the only good answer. So that’s that.
The point in bringing it up is presentations. If you go back through and read this post again to here, or just think back, I think a lot of the complaints against Heart of Thorns comes down to the fact people are stressing out badly in RL. The come onto games to not do that. Then game slaps them with more stress and people pop. The length of this post is just trying to give some ideas on why. Mostly because nobody is saying it.

proper post yes.

I used to play GW2 every day, simply because i could pop in do something and just pop out and pick up again next day. no stress. now with the HoT adition, we sort off cant really do this anymore. to progress and get decent xp for masteries…… well it is becoming nearly a second job. Not even logging in every day anymore. Kinda sad about that in a way.

You had me at Daoc and I kept on reading. Nice stuff.

The part about god’s having their own realms in EQ….
Reminded me of whatever happened to god realms in guild wars? I would love to see that come back because you can get really creative with what they look like and how they function.

The thing is people get themselves into a state. They can pop on a do a bit. It’s entirely their choice to do this. But there’s another difference between games of yore and games today. We had a lot less stuff vying for our entertainment hours.

In the old days, we played a game for a long time before anything reasonably decent came out. We didn’t have entire TV series we could watch at one time, or at least, nothing like the access to them we have now.

At this very moment, we have more and more stuff to do in our copious free time. So people feel pressure, but really, you can go and get one thing done if you want. You can’t do everything in HoT on your personal schedule, but there’s definitely stuff to do.

Like you don’t have to do an entire meta event it level masteries. I didn’t. I didn’t have any trouble walking into the HoT zones, and just doing a few events, even when there weren’t tons of people around. People want to get to that story now. Or that skill point. This content was meant to last…people want to consume it.

Plenty can be accomplished in HoT in short bursts as long as people readjust their thinking.

Eirdyne.9843:

This is something I’m just becoming aware of as I do more raiding. MMOs have kind of forced raiding on us from day one. Everquest had it. Dark Age of Camelot had it. WoW was only that. There really hasn’t been that open world and exploration type game in decades. Literally. Dark Age of Camelot came closest because no matter what armor capped out on stats. Mythic invested a lot into actually making game content instead of some kind of endless monotony. How they managed this? I’m still trying to figure it out.

One certain difference between games today and older games was that all these ideas like ‘raids’, ‘dungeons’, ‘dragons’, and whatever really weren’t systematized. Players called these things that, but not the developers. It was a dungeon if it was underground and had architecture. It was otherwise a cave; in which case people called it whatever it’s game name was. Again, WoW started this idea of calling things “raids” with a capital R.

Everquest 1 really gave Blizzard Entertainment the idea raids should be capitalized. People “raided” (just a slang term at the time) the Planes. The Planes were places where the Gods dwelt. There were tons of gods and your character had to chose one when you made it. Far later in that character’s life you could actually use a Wizard or Druid to force a portal into the Plane of this or that deity and kill it. These were huge maps entirely devoted to the theme of that particular god and it’s minions. All of it was in the venue of open-world content.

Obviously you didn’t play WOW at launch otherwise you’d know that it didn’t have ‘raids’ in any form at that time, also of course raiding in WOW never was anything other that a small minority interest, Blizzard themselves admitted less than 5% of players ever cleared BWL when it was finally released and only 15% of players ever had been inside it.

I did every raid and thing WoW had to offer between launch and C’thun. WoW had no proper raids for quite awhile though, you’re right. UBRS was probably as far as it got. But the first raid was Molten Core. I played a priest back then. The first fight you had to Mind Control those rock elementals at the start of the zone. The gear looked horrible, it was long and pointless, and people quit doing it pretty fast as a while. That and people got really sick of farming that Salamander boss in BRD to get the warriors gear ready. Being a Priest back then was like getting towed around on a leash, but at least it was still a largely adult community. It took most of 2004 and 2005 for the game to shift over to all . You’ll be hard pressed to find a game I haven’t played that’s MMO. I played heal bot for my sister and her hubby for most of my childhood.

Well said, Eir. From the stuff I saw a year or however long ago (or 2 years? dang, time flies, I can’t even keep track) EQNext understands this on some level in spirit, even if not in the exact words.

I wonder if they will pull it off though.

Eirdyne.9843:

Dragons, world bosses, and such-like were a big deal. There were dragons that ate boats (really), dragons that haunted mounts, planes, caverns and etc. Basically the world was full of so much diverse stuff every action had to be pre-considered and all consequences of exploration into an environment taken into account. Dragons were something a person did not poke unless you wanted to die and probably everyone else in the zone with you. These were not the farmed creatures we have currently.

Dark Age of Camelot backed up from this by doing something very clever. Dark Age of Camelot was a continuous world. Very little besides raid areas and dungeon areas were broken up by a zone boarder. No mountains or invisible walls blocked one region off from another by and large.

….

To quote a friend just now: “There are no big rewards from dungeons anymore, all open world is farming, and therefore very repetitive. I feel like there’s so little to do in this game at the moment. I just wanna raid all the time and I don’t really want to do that. It’s going to get old. We’ve done this already in every mmo ever.”
- They were talking about Guild Wars 2, but at this point this is the statement of ALL MMOs today.

….

Part of the problem with Tyria right now is the sense we’re just not able to do anything. Who cares about Dragons when Kryta is basically half taken by the Centaur? Seriously? Why haven’t we addressed this yet? Why hasn’t the grass grown back? Especially Kessex Hills?

Now I’m sad I haven’t played DAoC before, but I really like what you described in paragraph 1 and 2. Would be amazing to have that feeling in GW2 – however, one of the many complaints about that, with GW2 primarily having pulled a lot of casual gamers, is that not everyone wants to do organized kills. What do you suggest we do in that scenario? Don’t poke the dragon?

For the third quoted paragraph, I know you weren’t directly jabbing at raids, but what are your thoughts on those who haven’t had raided before and want to do so in GW2? To them, it’s not “We have already done this in ever mmo ever.”

I also agree with the last part. Although it’s hard for Anet to do, I would like some closures to the pressing issue at hand (kessex’s has grass growing back, orr is cleansed, etc.). Different maps based on where you are on the story should spawn you in certain version of the map. Although I’m not sure what the technical implications of that is (might be difficult).

And about the IRL stress issue that is going on, I know games are here for people to relax and get away, but getting away can also involve getting heavily immersed into fending off / killing a difficult boss

All in all, great post OP, I really enjoyed reading it.

Eirdyne….great post …..wondering if you are aware of Black Desert online …..sandbox mmo……open world with not a single loading screen , endgame is more based on trading , pvp , GvG , asweome housing/gathering system where you can have AI gather crafting materials if you have nodes that connect to a mine (let’s say).

I’m very curious about this game ……and hopefully will succeed so I can move on something new and refreshing.

I like GW2 , but the new meta events and the new way of leveling in HoT are pushing me back to the old Tyria , if I want to participate to a meta event in HoT , I need to check at what time it starts , been enough luck that enough players are in the map and sometime I spent more than an hour to go on with a meta to realize that map have not enough players to complete the meta.

Play a video game should be a way to relax , have fun and do freely what you want…..to play HoT …I have to schedule my time , organize the groups , taxi people in , and most of the time spend an hour or more to complete the meta …..and because not enough people in the map ….event fails.

Meta in HoT on my opinion needs to be shorter , less people required to complete and made it more fluid for new people , let them know where to go and what to do.