To begin with, I never really understood MMO's. They always seemed like standard RPG games but with the added benefit of forcing you to socialize with other people. Something the average MMO player would probably not be very good at. Now, don't get me wrong, I LIKE RPG's, they take time, granted, but it's rather relaxing when you have a few hours to just power up the PS3, and pretend you are SONATHORN! LORD OF THE BLACK CITADEL. And just immerse yourself in another world, that's what it's about, immersion.
You know what isn't immersion? When I find myself constantly interuppted from my slaying of dragons because some little turd wants to buy my armor. Or when I find myself unable to actually ACCESS half of the content because unlike the skeletons before them, these skeletons I need to fight now drank red bull and decided they have it out for me and thusly will violate my asshole if I'm alone. Thus forcing me to team up with a group of five or so rabid pre-teen sugar hyped screechlings, all who somehow alternate between rubbing their pixie dicks at the jiggle physics, screaming at their mothers for a chicken sandwich, and boasting with how they've slept with my mom and how I'm a jewish ****** fag. Does it sound like your average XBL shooter? That's because it's exactly like that, with the dumbing though MMO's have gone through these days, and the sheer amount of ''F2P'' ones you find on the sidebar of Newgrounds, this it the new main MMO audience.
And what probably astounds me the most, is how all of this wonderful experience seems to provide the reason for whatever generic company is running this scthick, to charge me fifteen dollars a month to actually DO any of this.
Yep. Dear generic company: f**k YOU.
Granted, this makes perfect sense from a business perspective, we've long shown that people are idiots who will buy anything as long as it's cool, so even if it's the most bland, unpleasant, and poorly executed game in ages, you will still find plenty of people willing to spend their allowances on said games given you provide them with plenty of shiny achivements and pump enough money into your advertising department to glorify all of this nonsense. You are trapping people in the hamster wheel that is your average MMO, and getting them to keep giving you money regardless of how ''good'' or ''bad'' the game actually is, it's the gaming equivalent of crack cocaine. Very s**tty cocaine, mixed with hamster piss.
This brings us to Guild Wars 2, which as one of it's selling points states how it doesn't actually charge any monthly fee. While this DOES provide an early moment of thrill, this is quickly replaced by knowing that I will ONLY have to pay sixty dollars to play this game. I am also quickly reminded how this only solves one problem. I still have to deal with the s**tty skeletons, I still have to deal with the screechlings, and I still have to deal with the fact that since they aren't taking my blood every thirty days, NCSoft is probably going to find some other method to get their blood money, some dark forbidden method most likely, dealing with ancient forgotten cults, blood sacrifices, and unspeakable nameless horrors from the very depths of-
I'm sorry, where was I again? Oh right, Guild Wars 2!
The latest addition to the large pulsing mass of MMORPGS by NcSoft, Guild Wars 2 is brought to us as a new innovative MMO, this isn't saying much by itself, every single generic hotkey mashing mess will sell itself as innovative because at level ten you can hop on a broomstick and FLY AWAY, not from the game itself, sadly, as many would attempt at that point, but just like... around the zone?
That said, playing Guild Wars 2, I was pleasantly surprised by the things they did do differently, entering the game for the first time, I got to make my own character, from the same general goodiebag of races and classes most fantasy games will offer you: humans, of course. Plant hugging elves which are supposedly NOT elves, but rather Sylvari or something. Horned cat things, giant vikings, and these disturbingly cute beady eyed guys I imagine to be the sort of creature that will bite your fingers off if you get too close to them, or smash you you with their giant robots, because they have giant robots.
Class selection was fairly basic as well, you have warrior, other warrior, thief, pet-owner, mage, stage magician, engineer, and necrohiliac.
You can also pick your general appearance, backstory, shiny item, which parent sexually abused your character, etc. The latter supposedly has some effect later on in the game, where you can play a mission related to it, but I never really got that far.
So, long story short, I decided to go for a petite white redhead other warrior with a shiny helmet and a regret at having never joined the circus, I'm not kidding, this is actually an option. And was promptly thrown into the game to repel some centaurs. Once all the filthy half breeds were dealt with, I was kicked out of the tutorial area and left to do whatever I wanted in the big wide open world. So, I decided to go exploring. Exiting the city, I was actually surprised when I found that my usual MMO playing style of ''find-all-the-quests-do-them-all-and-turn-them-in'' wouldn't swing. You see, Guild Wars 2 does away with the standard fetch five bear asses questing system, instead utilizing a... well...
Basically, it's like this: you go to a questing area where a random NPC will tell you their general problem, at this point, you and any other player who subsequently enters said area will be able to help the NPC by killing the things causing the problems, OR repairing things, or setting traps, or whatever is related. There's always multiple things you can do, and every single thing done will add towards a progress bar, once the bar is full, the area will enter it's final stage and you will have to fight a big ugly worm boss or whatever. Then everyone who contributed is rewarded based on how much they contributed. It's an interesting concept, really, but it does have some flaws.
For starters, these events are on a loop, there's no actual sense of acomplishment, a guys farm will always be attacked by worms, the big water tanks will always be in disrepair, nothing ever changes. At least when I picked up five bear asses, generic though the quest was, at least I knew that the farmer would have his five bear asses, and wouldn't f**king bother me about it again the next time I stepped in his general vicinity. Furthermore, you will hardly ever find yourself at the start of one of these things, if you do, it's because nobody else wants anything to do with it, and you will be forced to slowly trudge the progress bar to it's finish by yourself. Alternatively, you will find someone being taken care of by fifty or so people, and wonder why the hell you would even BOTHER.
If you wonder why I haven't talked about the gameplay, that's because there isn't much to talk about, you have skills which you hotkey, and you use them. It's hardly rocket science, especially when you realise your skills are limited to your weapon, any weapon you equip will provide between three and five skills, but these are locked, you can't actually USE them until you hit enough enemies to learn them, a slightly confusing concept when you realize that you are holding a hammer, and each skill is basically a different way of smashing things with it, it's like your character was f**king lobotomized. It's only an inconvinience though, unlocking all your skills will take a few minutes at best, and then you can just move on to the next thing. But it makes the skill system feel rather simple and bland. You do have a few ''class'' skills, but they are hardly anything to write home about, as they mostly deal with healing yourself, and maybe one or two buffs or gimmicks related to your class.
In the end, Guild Wars 2 is a decent game, maybe it gets better later on, but that's hardly a good selling point. It's still an MMO, and it still will eat up days of time, but if you have said time, you could do worse than it. Considering the stiff chlorea infected corpses of the cash cows it's competing with, Guild Wars 2 comes off as just fresh enough that given the choice, I'd go for it. Furthermore, as it is still a ''free'' game, you could theoretically take a break anytime you wanted and come back later, but this is the same argument I've heard drug-addicts use, and anyone who has enough time to sink into getting twelve MMO character to the maximum level is clearly just addicted enough that I wouldn't trust them to exercise mediocrity, whether the game actually lets them leave their cage, or atempts to bolt them to the computer, its ultimately up the individual person to exit their house and try going for a walk. Sure, most MMORPGS will try to twist your arm with the constant payments forcing you to make the most of the gametime you have, but it's still a game dumbass, nobody is forcing you to play. And whether you pay-per-month or not, choosing to play is still ultimately YOUR call. And I'm going to go ahead and choose to keep playing for a while, I'm actually not repulsed by this thing, not yet, anyways.
You know what isn't immersion? When I find myself constantly interuppted from my slaying of dragons because some little turd wants to buy my armor. Or when I find myself unable to actually ACCESS half of the content because unlike the skeletons before them, these skeletons I need to fight now drank red bull and decided they have it out for me and thusly will violate my asshole if I'm alone. Thus forcing me to team up with a group of five or so rabid pre-teen sugar hyped screechlings, all who somehow alternate between rubbing their pixie dicks at the jiggle physics, screaming at their mothers for a chicken sandwich, and boasting with how they've slept with my mom and how I'm a jewish ****** fag. Does it sound like your average XBL shooter? That's because it's exactly like that, with the dumbing though MMO's have gone through these days, and the sheer amount of ''F2P'' ones you find on the sidebar of Newgrounds, this it the new main MMO audience.
And what probably astounds me the most, is how all of this wonderful experience seems to provide the reason for whatever generic company is running this scthick, to charge me fifteen dollars a month to actually DO any of this.
Yep. Dear generic company: f**k YOU.
Granted, this makes perfect sense from a business perspective, we've long shown that people are idiots who will buy anything as long as it's cool, so even if it's the most bland, unpleasant, and poorly executed game in ages, you will still find plenty of people willing to spend their allowances on said games given you provide them with plenty of shiny achivements and pump enough money into your advertising department to glorify all of this nonsense. You are trapping people in the hamster wheel that is your average MMO, and getting them to keep giving you money regardless of how ''good'' or ''bad'' the game actually is, it's the gaming equivalent of crack cocaine. Very s**tty cocaine, mixed with hamster piss.
This brings us to Guild Wars 2, which as one of it's selling points states how it doesn't actually charge any monthly fee. While this DOES provide an early moment of thrill, this is quickly replaced by knowing that I will ONLY have to pay sixty dollars to play this game. I am also quickly reminded how this only solves one problem. I still have to deal with the s**tty skeletons, I still have to deal with the screechlings, and I still have to deal with the fact that since they aren't taking my blood every thirty days, NCSoft is probably going to find some other method to get their blood money, some dark forbidden method most likely, dealing with ancient forgotten cults, blood sacrifices, and unspeakable nameless horrors from the very depths of-
I'm sorry, where was I again? Oh right, Guild Wars 2!
The latest addition to the large pulsing mass of MMORPGS by NcSoft, Guild Wars 2 is brought to us as a new innovative MMO, this isn't saying much by itself, every single generic hotkey mashing mess will sell itself as innovative because at level ten you can hop on a broomstick and FLY AWAY, not from the game itself, sadly, as many would attempt at that point, but just like... around the zone?
That said, playing Guild Wars 2, I was pleasantly surprised by the things they did do differently, entering the game for the first time, I got to make my own character, from the same general goodiebag of races and classes most fantasy games will offer you: humans, of course. Plant hugging elves which are supposedly NOT elves, but rather Sylvari or something. Horned cat things, giant vikings, and these disturbingly cute beady eyed guys I imagine to be the sort of creature that will bite your fingers off if you get too close to them, or smash you you with their giant robots, because they have giant robots.
Class selection was fairly basic as well, you have warrior, other warrior, thief, pet-owner, mage, stage magician, engineer, and necrohiliac.
You can also pick your general appearance, backstory, shiny item, which parent sexually abused your character, etc. The latter supposedly has some effect later on in the game, where you can play a mission related to it, but I never really got that far.
So, long story short, I decided to go for a petite white redhead other warrior with a shiny helmet and a regret at having never joined the circus, I'm not kidding, this is actually an option. And was promptly thrown into the game to repel some centaurs. Once all the filthy half breeds were dealt with, I was kicked out of the tutorial area and left to do whatever I wanted in the big wide open world. So, I decided to go exploring. Exiting the city, I was actually surprised when I found that my usual MMO playing style of ''find-all-the-quests-do-them-all-and-turn-them-in'' wouldn't swing. You see, Guild Wars 2 does away with the standard fetch five bear asses questing system, instead utilizing a... well...
Basically, it's like this: you go to a questing area where a random NPC will tell you their general problem, at this point, you and any other player who subsequently enters said area will be able to help the NPC by killing the things causing the problems, OR repairing things, or setting traps, or whatever is related. There's always multiple things you can do, and every single thing done will add towards a progress bar, once the bar is full, the area will enter it's final stage and you will have to fight a big ugly worm boss or whatever. Then everyone who contributed is rewarded based on how much they contributed. It's an interesting concept, really, but it does have some flaws.
For starters, these events are on a loop, there's no actual sense of acomplishment, a guys farm will always be attacked by worms, the big water tanks will always be in disrepair, nothing ever changes. At least when I picked up five bear asses, generic though the quest was, at least I knew that the farmer would have his five bear asses, and wouldn't f**king bother me about it again the next time I stepped in his general vicinity. Furthermore, you will hardly ever find yourself at the start of one of these things, if you do, it's because nobody else wants anything to do with it, and you will be forced to slowly trudge the progress bar to it's finish by yourself. Alternatively, you will find someone being taken care of by fifty or so people, and wonder why the hell you would even BOTHER.
If you wonder why I haven't talked about the gameplay, that's because there isn't much to talk about, you have skills which you hotkey, and you use them. It's hardly rocket science, especially when you realise your skills are limited to your weapon, any weapon you equip will provide between three and five skills, but these are locked, you can't actually USE them until you hit enough enemies to learn them, a slightly confusing concept when you realize that you are holding a hammer, and each skill is basically a different way of smashing things with it, it's like your character was f**king lobotomized. It's only an inconvinience though, unlocking all your skills will take a few minutes at best, and then you can just move on to the next thing. But it makes the skill system feel rather simple and bland. You do have a few ''class'' skills, but they are hardly anything to write home about, as they mostly deal with healing yourself, and maybe one or two buffs or gimmicks related to your class.
In the end, Guild Wars 2 is a decent game, maybe it gets better later on, but that's hardly a good selling point. It's still an MMO, and it still will eat up days of time, but if you have said time, you could do worse than it. Considering the stiff chlorea infected corpses of the cash cows it's competing with, Guild Wars 2 comes off as just fresh enough that given the choice, I'd go for it. Furthermore, as it is still a ''free'' game, you could theoretically take a break anytime you wanted and come back later, but this is the same argument I've heard drug-addicts use, and anyone who has enough time to sink into getting twelve MMO character to the maximum level is clearly just addicted enough that I wouldn't trust them to exercise mediocrity, whether the game actually lets them leave their cage, or atempts to bolt them to the computer, its ultimately up the individual person to exit their house and try going for a walk. Sure, most MMORPGS will try to twist your arm with the constant payments forcing you to make the most of the gametime you have, but it's still a game dumbass, nobody is forcing you to play. And whether you pay-per-month or not, choosing to play is still ultimately YOUR call. And I'm going to go ahead and choose to keep playing for a while, I'm actually not repulsed by this thing, not yet, anyways.
