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Flameseeker Chronicles: Five things to love about Lion's Arch
Lion's Arch, the quintessential Tyrian player hub, has undergone quite the extensive renovation for Guild Wars 2. As a special treat for the last beta weekend, the city was made explorable to players for the first time -- and what a treat it was! After the Rise of Orr and the accompanying land shift, Lion's Arch as we knew and loved it in the original Guild Wars was flooded. It has been raised anew, very near the first city, and stands as a monument to piracy, desperation, and inter-species cooperation (not, perhaps, in that order). So what makes Lion's Arch awesome? It's one of six huge cities that are the thriving populatiion centers of Tyria as we find it in Guild Wars 2, and since it doesn't have one single race to lend it culture and purpose, you can bet it had better be pretty special.
Flameseeker Chronicles: After beta action report
Well there you have it, ladies and gents: The first Guild Wars 2 beta weekend over which people had direct control over their participation has come and gone. It was quite the exciting weekend, and it's amazing to see the volume and content of feedback being provided. If you missed out on a chance to get your hands on the game, feel free to form some vicarious impressions; there's tons of footage out there from oodles of people. Massively has a few streams recorded, and I have a niggling feeling that someone will have plenty of extra footage. It was great to be back in the game, it was great to get to talk about stuff with people and stream and share pictures, but mostly it was great to see the world populated the way it really needs to be to feel alive and whole. Beta being beta, that brought its own set of challenges and learning experiences -- mostly for ArenaNet -- but on the whole I hope that most people agree that this was, if not a truly delightful weekend (I can't expect everyone to share my taste in games), then at least a solid and informative one.
Guild Wars: What keeps fans coming back
Spring is in the air in Guild Wars! I can hear the pitter-patter of speed-enhanced feet coming from the Dragon Arena, the roar of the crowds watching Rollerbeetle races, and the endless grunts of unlucky players on the Nine Rings. It's a celebration -- the celebration of the seventh anniversary of Guild Wars, to be precise. In and around the annual birthday cupcake hoarding that's going on for the duration of festivities, this year has a few other exciting tricks up its proverbial sleeve. For one thing, a new and limited-edition pet has been made available; the Hound of Balthazar can be unlocked for free by having a brief chat with Ceira, Sworn to Fire, in Embark Beach. For another, the bonuses from all weekend events are active for the anniversary, so players will have to go pretty far out of their way to not reap sweet, sweet rewards for any time spent in-game between now and May 8th. Seven's a pretty nice number, don't you think? This is something of a special event, as ArenaNet's promise to get Guild Wars 2 shipped before year's end means that this'll be the last birthday that Guild Wars gets to have before the sequel comes along and grabs everyone's attention -- if, indeed, that's not already happening, what with the beta weekend that's going on right this moment. Even with Guild Wars 2 soaking up some limelight, though, Guild Wars is doing its creators proud and aging with grace and dignity. Let's take a look at some of the building blocks of the game's longevity.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Dreaming of green knights
April's had some exciting moments, has it not? The month is going to end on a high note for many Guild Wars 2 fans. Even if you're not one of the many many people who'll be in the upcoming beta weekend event, the lack of a non-disclosure agreement for participants of this round means that anyone can stream, post, and chat about her experience. That means a new level of transparency and insight, hopefully, so that's cool. You know what won't be available in the beta? The Sylvari and the Asura, once again. ArenaNet's included Lion's Arch in this newest beta build, but that's about all that's new. I've gone on record as saying that I'm perfectly content to wait 'til launch for the Asura and Sylvari so that they're all pristine and new and ready to be explored, but I've got to say that that contentedness gets a little more strained each time we hear or see new stuff about the Sylvari. That's been true for months upon months, but it just keeps getting better.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Simplicity itself
ArenaNet is designing Guild Wars 2 to appeal to bucketloads of people. The studio's got the PvP and competition, the high-end dungeon challenge, the super-cooperative and dynamic PvE content, the compelling and branching storyline, the flashy (and occasionally sensibly flashy) armors -- there's a lot going on. Part of what makes that possible is the use of very approachable systems. These simple systems pop up all over the place: the straight-forward lists of boons and conditions that affect players, the common capture point mechanic over which more intricate PvP objectives can be layered, and the relatively small pool of skills from which to assemble a build. The beauty of their simplicity is that the simplicity itself isn't a limiting factor -- you can't do only simple things with them. In this way, simple systems have a low entry barrier and a high complexity capacity. That means that more people can enjoy the game with relatively little skill and that there's a lot of room for time, dedication, and finesse to lead to outstanding results. Anyone can play, but not everyone can (or will) master elements of the game.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Line of succession
Sequels are tricky business. The more fans swarm around a game or franchise, the thicker the air gets with opinions regarding what the heart and soul of that game is all about. With that in mind, I don't envy sequel game designers the task of figuring out the balance of enough of a nod to the original to maintain the emotional connection that longstanding fans have without making newcomers feel locked out of something. One of the most frequent questions that pops up in the discussion of Guild Wars 2 anticipation is whether or not it's worth it for incoming players to take a spin through the original campaigns and expansion to pass the time. This is mostly tied in with discussion about the Hall of Monuments account rewards. In my opinion, the HoM rewards should be the least compelling reason to start a play-through, although it's still a good reason; even some members of our staff are haphazardly trying to find time to wade back through the stories before release. But considering everything in ArenaNet's design philosophy, we know the HoM rewards are unlikely to offer a statistical advantage, so they should be little more than a perk. Moreover, most of their value, it seems to me, should be from what they represent, which is both time spent in-game (forging that emotional connection) actually earning the reward points and the references some of them make to the original game. I still remember my first Stygian Reaver in GW, and that is why I'm looking forward to wielding one in Guild Wars 2.
Flameseeker Chronicles: What's your golden carrot?
On the Sunday of the most recent beta weekend for Guild Wars 2, I found myself trying to figure out precisely what incentive my friends and I might have to go through the explorable mode of dungeons before we hit level 80. The question arose, in a roundabout way, because there's not a tremendous amount of XP available (you spend more time killing fewer things), which makes sense if you're a developer trying to discourage players from entering a dungeon they have no intention of completing in order to farm experience, but it left us wondering whether we'd feel compelled to participate in explorable mode dungeons as we progressed through the game. The point of the matter is, unless you're well and truly enamored of the armor attainable through a specific dungeon's tokens, there might not be much empirical motivation to get through a repeatable dungeon. This stood out to me because so much of the game's reward structure is so clear and well-designed. Although I'll certainly never make the claim that the game will please everyone, or even that ArenaNet's fine folks are trying to please everyone, it is evident that they're building in support for a wide variety of play and reward styles.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Life in the legions
Last week, Leif Chapelle, a content designer, took some time to update the ArenaNet blog with a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at personal story in Guild Wars 2. He sketched out the structure of how players' biography choices affect their storyline: "To experience every potential storyline being told from level one to 10, you'd need to play the game 30 times (five races times three initial storylines times two internal branches in each storyline)... We have 80 levels of progression for your character, and every 10 levels or so, you'll begin a new chapter in your story." To someone who has rolled a seemingly endless string of alts in virtually every game I've played and is extraordinarily trigger-happy when it comes to remaking characters, this shows a great deal of promise. I'm sure it's quite an angstilicious idea for people who want to savor ALL THE STORY, but I hope that such types might admit (however grudgingly) that too much story is a better option than too little.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Setting up for success
Community Team Lead Martin Kerstein updated the ArenaNet blog a few days ago with some information about his team's plans for the Guild Wars 2 community. The two big bits of news were that there will be official forums (to the evident skepticism of the Guild Wars 2 Guru mods) and there will not be a typical fan site program. The most interesting bit, to me, is this: "Our goal is to use a scalable, inclusive ecosystem instead of a rigid fan site program that doesn't scale well and excludes large parts of the fan base." What I'm hoping this means is that the team members are opening themselves up to a lot more flexibility in which fan sites they support. This is great if it means that small blogs and niche communities can be more easily promoted; we already see this happening, as the Guild Wars 2 twitter feed is usually full of retweets pointing out various fan creations and posts. The flip side of this is equally true. In his article, Kerstein talks about wanting to promote a mature and helpful community, so hopefully the lack of a rigid structure in fan site support means the team members don't feel pressured to include and support toxic communities just because they've hit standardized milestones. I have high hopes for this scalable community engagement style, and I hope to see it pay off for a lot of smaller fan sites and projects. If the folks at ArenaNet want to demand more of the quality of their community, more power to 'em.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Quest education
Looking around the Guild Warsy corners of the internet, I've found some confusion about quests and dynamic events. Having this handy platform to stand on, I thought I'd try to clarify things for those who aren't really sure what standard XP-gain looks like in Guild Wars 2. If this is old news to some of you, I apologize, but please remember that not everybody's been leaping on news scraps like a ravenous puppy for the last two or three years. With the pretty aggressive abandonment of traditional questing in Guild Wars 2's PvE, there seems to be some misinformation about what directed content will look like. It's relatively accurate to say that there are three main types: personal story quests, renown hearts, and dynamic events. Dungeons, another type of PvE content, are kind of a world unto themselves; they're approached by way of the personal storyline but evidently aren't actually necessary for progress along that line (in an effort to not force people to team up in an MMO unless they jolly well feel like it). They contain events but also static objectives. However, since they're cordoned off by way of instances, it seems pretty safe to leave them out of this conversation. Let's dig in, shall we?
Flameseeker Chronicles: How do trinities work?
People have had varying reactions to Jon Peters' post on ArenaNet's blog last week, which explained the newest system of traits and attributes for Guild Wars 2. There've been all sorts of thoughts about it: that it's awesome, that it's unnecessary, that it's a whole lot of words to keep track of (I'm saying that, in fact, and I'm firmly in the camp of folks who think it's all pretty great). Specifically, the inclusion of the compassion attribute, which improves a character's healing output, has raised a glaring red flag for some players who are afraid this is the first step toward holy trinities and dedicated healers. I respectfully disagree.
Flameseeker Chronicles: I hope you like PvE stuff
Guild Wars 2 folks: What a week it's been, am I right? After the flood of impressions and videos after the select press embargo lifted, ArenaNet decided to whip fans into a veritable frenzy by accepting beta signups from Wednesday to Friday. Fan response was insane -- over 1,000,000 signups in under 50 hours. While a few cool kids on the internet have tried to scoff at that number, I really can't -- it's just staggering to me. If you were on vacation, sick, or hiding under your pet rock between Wednesday and Friday, I'm sorry -- there was a lot going on. You might consider checking out ArenaNet's blog post to catch up, as there's now a link roundup for your convenience. It's like the team wants you to be able to find out stuff about this game it eventually wants you to buy. Next the devs will be making themselves available for question-pelting on Reddit in an effort to promote clear and rapid comm-- oh wait.
Flameseeker Chronicles Extra: Guild Wars 2 crafting explained
Remember how I wanted to talk to you about crafting in Guild Wars 2? Let's do that now. I made a video while I was fiddling around with the weaponsmithing and armorsmithing disciplines in the recent Guild Wars 2 closed beta press weekend, and I've included it in this extra edition of Flameseeker Chronicles. Let's take a look at exactly what's going on for your first 25 points or so in these disciplines.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The I-word
I like to poke fun at ArenaNet staff members for their use of the word iteration. That's not because I think it's a cop-out or self-aggrandizement or anything. It's because I like to think of it as being at the top of an internal buzzword sheet with all the blogpost writers trying to work it into their text to earn an extra nickel. It's a patently whimsical notion, and I have a special spot in my heart for the patently whimsical. It's nice to see that concept of iteration lending real benefit to the game. Sure, it's caused forumites no little angst; when we heard that the trait system was being reworked, for example, certain people were convinced that the iterative process meant that the game would never launch. I don't understand the panic-stations mentality. Any game company exists to make money, and you don't make money by spending five years developing a game, taking a demo on the road for two years, and never releasing it. You also don't make money by releasing a crap game. ArenaNet wants to make a lot of money. That does not make the company evil. It motivates the team to make as good a game as possible because people like buying good games. Despite those so-called fans who look for the slightest provocation to bring out the sackcloth and ashes, the strength of the iterative process is shown every time we get to see a new demo of Guild Wars 2. Beyond just seeing a higher level of polish, we can see that certain events have been reworked, and the changes are to only the players' benefit.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Big changes
The last chapter of Guild Wars Beyond's Winds of Change was released just a handful of days ago, bringing nine new quests, fancy weapons, fresh rewards, and a heaping helping of story to the land of Cantha, not to mention a significant update to the way ArenaNet is telling the tale. Miku's Tale in particular boasts a few distinct differences from earlier parts of this storyline -- largely, the consensus seems to be, for the better. There was a fair bit of griping after the first portion of Winds of Change went live and a widespread agreement that something was not quite right about the way the quests at the start of Winds of Change were being handled. ArenaNet responded to this with promises to go back and retune quests, mostly in response to the argument that mobs were too hard. While I certainly understand a fiendish level of mob difficulty acting as an intimidating gateway to players less comfortable with fighting in Guild Wars, I don't think it was really the heart of the problem with the earlier Winds of Change content.
Flameseeker Chronicles: What lies ahead
To say last week was exciting for Guild Wars 2 fans is a bit of an understatement. Mike O'Brien gave the community the news it's been dying to hear, Ree Soesbee told us all about the Jotun (no, seriously, I hate those guys and their stupid KDs), and... well, some other things happened too. We've got lots to talk about, so hit the jump and let's dive right in.
Flameseeker Chronicles: We don't need no stinkin' endgame
We talked a lot about the concepts of endgame and raiding on last week's Guildcast, but since not everyone has had time to watch it (and because the subject is still knocking around in my head), I want to address it a little more in this week's Flameseeker Chronicles. There are so many assumptions and so much speculation and so much talk about the concept as a whole and how it applies to Guild Wars 2, so let's dive on in.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Efficient Hall of Monuments progress
Guild Wars 2 is drawing ever closer. It may not feel like it sometimes, but it's getting nearer each day. A lot of fans are easing the pain of the wait by playing through Guild Wars 1 in an effort to beef up their Hall of Monuments scores for the day GW2 arrives. The Hall of Monuments in GW might only award titles and cosmetic goodies, but we gamers do love our shinies, so lots of people are diving into present-day Tyria to make some HoM progress while they wait for GW2. I posted a series of Hall of Monuments guides almost a year and a half ago, and while most of it has stood the test of time very well, I want to revisit it. The reason I want to do this is to smooth the path a little more. So many people are still coming into Guild Wars for this reason, and starting from scratch with such an enormous goal can make a lot of them throw in the towel. Thankfully, ArenaNet has added some features into the game in the past few years that can make your Hall of Monuments progress more "hare" and less "tortoise," with the same prizes at the end. They all work together so you can get the most of your travels through Tyria in a much shorter time. This one's for the min-maxers, so follow along to read about three simple things you can keep an eye on to speed up your HoM progress!
Flameseeker Chronicles: ArenaNet talks PvE vs. PvP
"I don't care for PvP, so Guild Wars 2 doesn't really interest me." This is something that I've heard with some regularity over the past year or two, and every time I sort of shake my head in confusion. How could anyone perceive Guild Wars 2 as a PvP-only game? Really, just take a look at what we've seen from the development team and how PvE-centric it is and it seems that you'd get the impression that if anything, there's more of a PvE focus. Of course, I can see where this perception comes from -- Guild Wars 1 holds the same perception for a lot of people, so it carries over. As a huge fan of both games and a pure PvE player, I thought it would be fun to take this week and clear things up. Eric Flannum and John Stumme were kind enough to help, stepping in to answer a few questions about the balance of things both past and present. Curious about what they have to say? Click past the cut and take a look!
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars' elite areas -- Urgoz's Warren
All was quiet at ArenaNet last week as the various members of the Guild Wars 2 team enjoyed a well-deserved vacation. I'm going to consider it a welcome breather after being drowned in so many squee-worthy updates the previous week and take the opportunity to turn my attention back to Guild Wars 1 and another elite area: Urgoz's Warren. I really enjoy Urgoz's Warren for a couple of reasons. Obviously, it gives me tons of Kurzick faction, but once you've got the hang of it, it's a fun challenge even without the perks. It's full of environmental effects and hidden enemies that prevent you from simply charging in and blasting away, so you have to think ahead, be careful, and play strategically. Follow along after the jump and we'll take a closer look.
