Guild Wars 2

I’m just ‘barely’ getting started today, and my plan is to nibble along and not move all that fast and just try to listen in chat and learn what to do, yada yada.

After doing the opening (which, was kinda hard for me and a very close call, with those pairs of super-powered Vets), I just walked into the new zone, hearing the new music, the ambient sounds of people fighting, talked to the telescope person.

I guess what occurred to me is it’s a lot like getting ‘really’ good modules from some of the better story tellers in the original (not ‘2’, blech) Neverwinter Nights game.

I used to get into building modules for my friends, and we used to have LAN parties where we’d design modules such that the story could be told with a live DM, so they were more open ended in design. Later I polished and completed some so they were playable by themselves. I got into creating my own script classes that I could apply to NPCs and give them interesting attributes based on things that were going on around them. I learned how to go beyond the base tool and learned from others how to use 3DMax to create items, tiles, etc. Started simple and created an entire copy of the docks as ‘high docks’ that would match the height of this awesome galleon someone built. Created a light house tile with a tall tower and placeable object on top with big fire and spinning mirror for the light, complete with translucent light that dispersed out into space as a cone and spun around with it. I built an ‘invisible’ set of docks with even more height variations to serve as camera dollys to do some interesting cut scenes. Good times.

But it hit me, this is all like downloading great NWN modules, and playing them through. Which, were awesome. Even some of the ‘not as good’ ones were fun enough to play, extending the life of the game. Not a knock on the developers, story tellers, artists at all! There were some really talented people making some great modules for NWN, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them went on to participate in making full games.

I don’t know, was feeling nostalgia when I was hit with the thought of “Hey, this is a lot like getting an awesome NWN module!”, and thought that subconsciously it might be why I have a positive connection to the presentation style.