Well shit, I really didn't care much for Guild Wars 1, but I think I'm sold on this one.

I have a bath running, I have no idea if it's half-full, full or overflowing right now. I was too glued to this video.

It looks fantastic.

Guild Wars Uno was my first online game. Loved it. Pretty hyped about the sequel.

They brag about their concept art being the best in the industry...and I don't think you could really deny them that. Amazing artwork and it really seems to rub off on the game environment. Some of those places look magical. Gives me geekchills. Wish I could go to cologne and try the demo out.

Oh, I forgot to mention the soundtrack...droooool

I'm sold.

I thought GW1 had some of the best multi-player I'd ever seen.

I lost an absurd amount of my life to the first Guild Wars and the fond memories persist years later - to the point where, thanks to their developer diaries (and this video), I'm going to pick it up again and finish off some quests so I can drop some more trophies in my Hall of Monuments.

Crap.

Excuse me? Since when did guild wars 2 obtain the best fckn art team ever?!

I do think the tankless combat system will be great (it isn't actually unfeasable.. guildwars does a great job in giving every class a selection of skills or the ability to obtain secondary skills for taking damage and evasion of damage), however I highly question its ability to do a persistent world and at the same time make the player feel like he is the lone hero. You simply can't just make a MMO game where YOU save a village and it stays saved, and not allow other people to save it. The new phase technology that blizz now uses could do that, but for each phase you intorduce into the game, it is effectively an area of the map where 2 selections of people are divided.

Wow! Looks amazingly epic!

Not an MMO. Unless they've deviated from the instance-fest that was the original.

By this definition Diablo is an MMO.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:

Not an MMO. Unless they've deviated from the instance-fest that was the original.
By this definition Diablo is an MMO.


Its persistent, as much as any MMO is.

It's good to see they realize that the first game filled a unique niche among MMOs. The lack of monthly fees, focus on action, quick leveling, and completely instanced design was perfect for more casual players. I just hope they won't ruin this one with micro transactions. I'm sure they're under a lot of pressure to somehow make it a cash cow beyond the initial sale.

Ever since WAR, I've stopped believing in anything any developer claims before launch. Still, this does look like it's worth a try.

I totally agree, what they claim to do in the video is physically impossible. How can you have thousands of players in the game and keep the state of the world as it is after a quest has been completed. By that logic, as soon as the first player or group of players finish a quest it's essentially locked out to everybody else.
>> ^jmd:

I highly question its ability to do a persistent world and at the same time make the player feel like he is the lone hero. You simply can't just make a MMO game where YOU save a village and it stays saved, and not allow other people to save it.

>> ^SpaceDude:

I totally agree, what they claim to do in the video is physically impossible. How can you have thousands of players in the game and keep the state of the world as it is after a quest has been completed. By that logic, as soon as the first player or group of players finish a quest it's essentially locked out to everybody else.</div>

It's not that hard, in fact it's nothing new. In the first game, everything was instanced, even the cities had maybe 30 instances going at once. To make you feel like you had an effect on the world they just have two versions of the city; liberated and enslaved. Once you've saved the city, you only have access to the "liberated" version. I'm pretty sure the first game did the exact same thing with a "ruined" version of a city, and the same idea is used in many MMOs in their "newbie islands".

There are disadvantages to the instanced model. It doesn't feel as much like a shared and continuous world, and it can make grouping harder. But of course, they want to play up all the advantages and not mention the drawbacks.

I disagree, as AnimalsForCrackers said that design is not an MMO. The principle of an MMO is that everybody in the game is in the same shared world. If you start adding instances or parallel universes you are moving more toward a standard multiplayer game where only a dozen players share the same world state.
>> ^entr0py:
It's not that hard, in fact it's nothing new. In the first game, everything was instanced, even the cities had maybe 30 instances going at once. To make you feel like you had an effect on the world they just have two versions of the city; liberated and enslaved. Once you've saved the city, you only have access to the "liberated" version. I'm pretty sure the first game did the exact same thing with a "ruined" version of a city, and the same idea is used in many MMOs in their "newbie islands".

TL:DR edit.

@harry, you're right man, since buying guild wars one (garbage), seeing how STO progressed (garbage, luckily i didn't buy), age of conan, and so on and so forth, the descent of mmos, i have absolutely no belief in any hype of a game.

I'll never ever buy an MMO for launch day, i will only ever buy it several months later if everyone (EVVVVERRYYYONNNNEEE) is raving at how amazingly amazing it is. And cos of that, i'll never experience another amazing mmo launch/first few months. You'll spend 2000 quid and 5 years trying games to get just one of those experiences. And i blame mmo companies.

>> ^SpaceDude:

I totally agree, what they claim to do in the video is physically impossible. How can you have thousands of players in the game and keep the state of the world as it is after a quest has been completed. By that logic, as soon as the first player or group of players finish a quest it's essentially locked out to everybody else.
<div><div style="margin: 10px; overflow: auto; width: 80%; float: left; position: relative;" class="convoPiece"> jmd said:<img style="margin: 4px 10px 10px; float: left; width: 40px;" src="http://static1.videosift.com/avatars/j/jmd-s.jpg" onerror="ph(this)"><div style="position: absolute; margin-left: 52px; padding-top: 1px; font-size: 10px;" class="commentarrow">◄</div><div style="padding: 8px; margin-left: 60px; margin-top: 2px; min-height: 30px;" class="nestedComment box">I highly question its ability to do a persistent world and at the same time make the player feel like he is the lone hero. You simply can't just make a MMO game where YOU save a village and it stays saved, and not allow other people to save it.</div></div></div>

Yes you can. They have.

This explains how it works:
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/dynamic-events-overview/

I'm still waiting for the MMO where you rape people.

1) The Victorian / Steampunk elements looked amazing.
2) The points that the female game designer makes are 100% correct. Immersion is ruined by lack of player influence on the world. The fact that they can articulate this so clearly gives me confidence that they can fix it to some degree. Blizzard realizes the problem, as well, which is why they've started to rely so heavily on phasing. Arguably phasing is a more seamless solution to the problem compared to phasing. Both are a bit unnatural, still.

>> ^blankfist:

I'm still waiting for the MMO where you rape people.


play WoW and roll a rogue.

That's not rape. That's "surprise sex.">> ^Shepppard:

>> ^blankfist:
I'm still waiting for the MMO where you rape people.

play WoW and roll a rogue.

While it looks nice technically, I've always felt Guild Wars lacked the artistic touch, to me it's like "yeah those are great looking polygons but the world it self is kind of bland and typical". For as old as WoW is, its artistic style still carries those ancient graphics even today, which is an impressive feat. Though of course that's quite a subjective area.

The way they talk about the game to me just screams, "we're seriously over compensating here", it just reminds of a Peter Molyneux speel and we all know how they turn out, moderately good games, fail to deliver on just about everything that would of made them unique.

I guess the good thing about GW is you just treat it like a single player game, no monthly fees and typically you get a good run through the first time. I enjoyed GW1 but it had very little replay value to me, the sense of character you have in other MMOs is completely lost in these super instanced MMOs. There is a strong disconnection and really no loyalty to "City Town #6", I really couldn't give a shit if the Centaurs want to over run it, I'll just go jump in to "City Town #7".

I stopped being interested in Guild Wars 2 after I heard (quite some time ago) that they were scrapping the max level of 20. From this video, looks like I need to give it some further looks.

I *hate* grinding. I *hate* level systems. I *hate* when my character at the end of the game is multiple orders of magnitude stronger than at the beginning -- Final Fantasy style (start with 38HP, end the game with 9999HP, yet nothing really changes because the ratios of damage / defense / max health etc. all remain relatively constant).

I've only really been into 2 MMOs. I started with UO at launch and played for about a year, eventually quitting because I hated the open PvP. It took me a long time to decide to give another MMO a shot after that, but I took the bait for Star Wars Galaxies and played from a few days after launch for over 4 years. I hated the leveling process in SWG, but once I had finished it I got to play a nice sandbox-style open world game that suited me very well. Too bad that the life-cycle management of SWG stands as probably the best example of what NOT to do in maintaining an MMO -- I'll never play an SOE game again.

I tried Guild Wars 1 and really liked it, but since I was at the time most active in SWG I never got community connections in Guild Wars that could have had me really hooked.

>> ^MilkmanDan:

I stopped being interested in Guild Wars 2 after I heard (quite some time ago) that they were scrapping the max level of 20. From this video, looks like I need to give it some further looks.
I hate grinding. I hate level systems. I hate when my character at the end of the game is multiple orders of magnitude stronger than at the beginning -- Final Fantasy style (start with 38HP, end the game with 9999HP, yet nothing really changes because the ratios of damage / defense / max health etc. all remain relatively constant).
I've only really been into 2 MMOs. I started with UO at launch and played for about a year, eventually quitting because I hated the open PvP. It took me a long time to decide to give another MMO a shot after that, but I took the bait for Star Wars Galaxies and played from a few days after launch for over 4 years. I hated the leveling process in SWG, but once I had finished it I got to play a nice sandbox-style open world game that suited me very well. Too bad that the life-cycle management of SWG stands as probably the best example of what NOT to do in maintaining an MMO -- I'll never play an SOE game again.
I tried Guild Wars 1 and really liked it, but since I was at the time most active in SWG I never got community connections in Guild Wars that could have had me really hooked.


The max lvl is 80, however like the original GW levels mean virtually nothing. In fact unlike others MMOs where each level takes more XP to gain, GW2 has the same XP required for each. Its more of a simple marker or your progress. If you are lvl 80, and you want to play with a friend of lvl 1, not a problem, GW2 will scale your levels to match.

I find this video to be misleading, while the graphics look great, and the idea's are great, they are just not feasible in an MMO, at least not in this fashion. It sounds to me as if it is going to simply follow the Guild Wars 1 approach and be a single player game with some coop thrown in and call it an MMO. Instancing ruins MMO's and this is one of the reasons WOW has been incredibly successful in my opinion. People want to see people around them, going about their business, random social or pvp encounters and the ability to pretty much go where you want, when you want, are what make a world seem real. Loading screens, lack of other players doing other things on their own and a sense of isolation ruined a lot of potentially great MMO's.

This is going to sound like I am a WOW fanboy, and while I am a great fan of the game, it isn't perfect, and I would be happy to see something great come along and compete on the same level, or surpass it. The thing that captured me when playing the game the first time was just walking around the world and exploring, not looking around an area, hitting a loading screen, and loading a completely different area, but physically walking from one land to the next. Yeah it has instances, but they are in places you expect and welcome them, I was excited about APB, but that isn't an MMO either, it is a multiplayer shooter with slighty larger servers than normal. A larger, living breathing city, would of been awesome, then instance the insides of the buildings, then I would pay a monthly fee, if it wasn't boring that is.

>> ^fujiJuice:

I find this video to be misleading, while the graphics look great, and the idea's are great, they are just not feasible in an MMO, at least not in this fashion. It sounds to me as if it is going to simply follow the Guild Wars 1 approach and be a single player game with some coop thrown in and call it an MMO. Instancing ruins MMO's and this is one of the reasons WOW has been incredibly successful in my opinion. People want to see people around them, going about their business, random social or pvp encounters and the ability to pretty much go where you want, when you want, are what make a world seem real. Loading screens, lack of other players doing other things on their own and a sense of isolation ruined a lot of potentially great MMO's.
This is going to sound like I am a WOW fanboy, and while I am a great fan of the game, it isn't perfect, and I would be happy to see something great come along and compete on the same level, or surpass it. The thing that captured me when playing the game the first time was just walking around the world and exploring, not looking around an area, hitting a loading screen, and loading a completely different area, but physically walking from one land to the next. Yeah it has instances, but they are in places you expect and welcome them, I was excited about APB, but that isn't an MMO either, it is a multiplayer shooter with slighty larger servers than normal. A larger, living breathing city, would of been awesome, then instance the insides of the buildings, then I would pay a monthly fee, if it wasn't boring that is.


The heavy instancing from GW1 is not in GW2. You are free to roam around, bump into others etc. The only places you will find instancing is the same places as other MMOs, perhaps with the exception of content based on your character (such as housing, or story content).

>> ^fujiJuice:

I find this video to be misleading, while the graphics look great, and the idea's are great, they are just not feasible in an MMO, at least not in this fashion. It sounds to me as if it is going to simply follow the Guild Wars 1 approach and be a single player game with some coop thrown in and call it an MMO. Instancing ruins MMO's and this is one of the reasons WOW has been incredibly successful in my opinion. People want to see people around them, going about their business, random social or pvp encounters and the ability to pretty much go where you want, when you want, are what make a world seem real. Loading screens, lack of other players doing other things on their own and a sense of isolation ruined a lot of potentially great MMO's.
This is going to sound like I am a WOW fanboy, and while I am a great fan of the game, it isn't perfect, and I would be happy to see something great come along and compete on the same level, or surpass it. The thing that captured me when playing the game the first time was just walking around the world and exploring, not looking around an area, hitting a loading screen, and loading a completely different area, but physically walking from one land to the next. Yeah it has instances, but they are in places you expect and welcome them, I was excited about APB, but that isn't an MMO either, it is a multiplayer shooter with slighty larger servers than normal. A larger, living breathing city, would of been awesome, then instance the insides of the buildings, then I would pay a monthly fee, if it wasn't boring that is.


They have said GW2 will be persistent. Whether all of what they have promised is feasible I'm not sure.

Tbh I never had a problem with the instancing. WoW had its own shards in its own way, I mean it was really multiple parallel universes, or realms. At least in GW you all shared the same realm, even if it was split into seperate parts. Its really impossible for all the players to share the same world, different games have got around that different ways, each solution has its pro and cons. It'll be interesting to see how they do it in GW2, but I think it will at least feel more persistent than GW1.

Looks spectacular. I'm intrigued by their claims... time will tell.

>> ^blankfist:

I'm still waiting for the MMO where you rape people.


Try second life...I'm pretty sure all sorts of crazy shit goes down on there.>> ^yellowc:

While it looks nice technically, I've always felt Guild Wars lacked the artistic touch, to me it's like "yeah those are great looking polygons but the world it self is kind of bland and typical". For as old as WoW is, its artistic style still carries those ancient graphics even today, which is an impressive feat. Though of course that's quite a subjective area.


Indeed it is, I've always thought that guild wars monster design and environment aesthetics have been pretty good - and that WoW has always looked (in general) fairly shit.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by radx.