Monday, February 16, 2009

Seven Favorite Things - Guild Wars

Kill Ten Rats has started a little meme about their 7 favorite things in an MMO...specifically about Warhammer. The original from Syp was a favorite 7 things about Warhammer period.

KTR is the one who challenged us to do this for any game we like.

I have decided to do mine on Guild Wars.

Why did I pick this instead of my current favorite? As nothing has compared. There are so many things this game did right compared to the competition, that I just am glad to experienced such a title.
Anyways, why don't you do the same...and state your 7 favorite things about your favorite games, and lets make today all positive...shall we?

My 7 favorite things about Guild Wars
1. The Story - Right off the bat, whether people hate or love this mechanic, the story is gripping and well done. The game also has an ending, which makes working towards a goal more prominent...thus making the game more fun, with the need to continue to find out what the end involves...
2. The Visuals - Released about the same time as WoW, the game showed that you did not need to have cartoons to play within the roles you defined. The world had unique locations, and the instancing allowed a level a detail that still looks incredible to this day.
3. The Combat - Fast, furious, and thanks to a skill system that kept you thinking, every time you were out and about, fighting mobs could be different.
4. The Henchmen - And now Heroes, you the player were not limited by "When is my guild going to log" or "I need to find a group to run that dungeon"...this also became like a mini game in learning how to progress with computer controlled AI...which a majority of the time worked better than the humans anyways. It added almost an RTS feel to combat.
5. The Price - How could we not say it. Pay one price for the box, and never a monthly. And thanks to the chapterized setup, we got regular content on a regular basis.
6. Gear Reliance - Was a non-issue. Thanks to the no raid scenario, the player had the capability to get the best stuff whether alone or with 6-8 players. Persistence was key to getting cool stuff thanks to the rewards system for collectibles.
7. Crafting - Which has become a detriment to so many games. GW made it so that your need to stop all the combat and fun to go get resources, and experience boring downtime, was avoided. This could be expanded, but always made me realize that crafting was one of my most hated MMO conventions...that I even avoid it completely in my latest games...until someone makes it fun and easy again.

Have a good day!

3 comments:

Tesh said...

:D Nice writeup. GW did so many things right that it's pretty much my gold standard for how I gauge new MMOs. Even something as divergent as Wizard 101 got the GW comparison screen before I put a lot of time into it.

Interesting that you'd call out crafting as being a bad thing in most MMOs. I don't disagree, but I still like the idea of crafting and a vibrant economy in an MMO. Making it *necessary* for progress in the game is indeed a Bad Idea, though, so maybe we are indeed on the same page.

Elementalistly said...

"Making it *necessary* for progress"

That statement, or the need to do so much to get a focus on crafting is my issue.
WoW seemed like an acceptable form of crafting, but I do not want to stand around either in town or near another object (like in LOTRO) and waggle my avatar hands to get some item, to mix with another item to make something...and then do that for hours on end...
I do not mind gathering stuff too much, but then I want to give that stuff to someone else and let them make it..
Also, in regards to resources, in GW, the whole break down the crap to make resources was genius. Get that in a game, and I will look it over.
GW just rocked overall...

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Nice list, I agree on basically everything there.

Crafting is a difficult topic - I think it is something that many people like to be there, along with a market. The problem has been to take that game element and make it a significant part of the game - most have failed more or less there, IMHO. Games like Guild Wars and City of Heroes have kept it simple, yet useful.

Old SWG had a pretty nice set-up for crafting in terms of mechanics. But it was a fair amount of grinding if you wanted to reach master skill level. And to make a good profit and/or sell most of what you made you had to be at master level.

Earth & Beyond had also a fairly neat crafting system, breaking down looted resources to learn how to craft that stuff and get resouces. And the crafted stuff was better than the original and the quality depended on the skill level also. The market/trading part sucked though.