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Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Rundown

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gw020In all honesty I thought I would never be writing this post.  I got an opportunity to play the game last year, and what can I say, I really hated it.  The entire thing felt extremely “grindy”.  I felt clueless as what I should be doing and what I should be focusing on.  I went from heart to heart, and event to event, and would still end up having to go out into the fields and grind random mobs just to get to the next story element.

All that said, I was just honestly expecting too much for the state the game was in.  There has been so much obnoxious hype surrounding this game, and so many often times violently devoted fans force feeding the notion that Guild Wars 2 was the gaming Messiah.  After all of this, and after reading the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto blog post, I was expecting bottled magic.  When this unrealistic expectation did not appear before me, I rejected it wholly and had essentially written off the game.

What changed my mind

gw055I really hated the original Guild Wars, but even saying that I own two different accounts from two different attempts to play the game.  I expected to give Guild Wars 2 a chance, regardless of my pre-disposition.  With the very public beta weekend coming up, I went ahead and preordered the game to give it another chance.  Essentially I went into this weekend expecting the game to be horrible, based on my previous experience.

I allowed myself to play the game with a fairly clean palette.  What can I say, the game has grown on me.  I can’t entirely attribute this to my change of attitude, because really the game is in a much more polished state.  Previously most of the mobs were not even properly itemized, so that only added to the feeling of purposeless grinding.  This time around I allowed myself to wander aimlessly, explore, and work my way through the various objectives on the map in a much more fluid way.

The Strong Points

gw012Dynamic Mentoring:

This is by far my favorite feature of the game.  As you move through the world, and it is a huge one, your level is automatically mentored down to the content.  If you wander back in a level 4 area at level 15, you will be scaled down to level 6 or so allowing you to participate in events.  The best part of this is that you gain experience and karma similar to your native level.

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Auction House Anywhere:

This weekend there were some major issues with the Trade post system, but when it was working it was nice.  Essentially you can open up your commerce window, and buy and sell from the trade post anywhere in the world.  Once the bugs are ironed out, this will allow you to clear your bags of anything worth selling very quickly.  The only negative of the system, is that it is not terribly straight forward, and it takes a bit to figure out that you have to physically go to a trade post location to pick up your items and earnings.

gw007Dynamic Role Switching:

Early in the process, they have claimed to be abolishing the holy trinity of MMOs.  This is certainly true from one perspective, but I like to look at it slightly differently.  Each weapon set, gives you your first 5 hot bar abilities.  Each weapon combo, gives your character a completely different feel, and you can swap these out on the fly based on your situation. 

I tended to focus on a sword and board style tanky warrior all weekend, but my choice of main hand greatly changes the flavor.  From my shield, I gained hot bar slots 4 and 5, but if I equipped a sword in my main hand, I gained a good deal of mobility with a nice leap, as well as a powerful cleave.  If I swapped in an axe, I lost the mobility, but gained a strong 360 multi target AOE.  If I changed it out again for a Mace, I gained several new defensive abilities, including a really strong block/counter attack combo.

If I dropped the shield entirely, and equipped a two handed sword, it gave me a series of very powerful AOE attacks, perfect for playing a more dps role.  If I equipped a rifle, I had the ability to actually do powerful ranged damage.  To complement these weapon abilities, are a series of skills that you purchase with points earned by doing the various skill challenges spread across the map.  While there are still very clear tanky, dps, ranged, style roles, it feels like you have the freely to swap between them at will just by changing out your gear.

gw025Huge Detailed World:

I cannot emphasis this one enough.  The world is massive, and filled with tons of exploration candy.  I put on several levels by just roaming around aimlessly trying to unlock the various points of interest on the map.  A lot of times in these games, you sacrifice detail for size.  However every little corner of the map seems to have the same artistic care as the main hubs.  I found lots of little secret paths, stuff hidden under water, and plenty of other reasons to go off wandering.

I have a friend who claims she is part mountain goat, and she would have felt right at home in this world. If you can see it, there seems to be a way to get up there.  I’ve only actually seen a very tiny portion of the map in my roughly 20 hours or so of gameplay.  I’ve already seen snowy mountain peaks, lush forests, and murky swamps.  The best part of the world are the cities, they are more detailed than I have ever seen in an MMO.  They didn’t just get the city proper right, they got the surrounding land, and suburbs as well.

The Weak Points

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Limited To Original Server Choice:

This one is pretty massive to me.  When you first log into the game, you are asked to choose a server.  At this point there is no real way to fully understand the ramifications of this choice.  Essentially this server becomes your home server, and the only way to change servers is to pay 1800 gems (which if it follows standard cash shop trends equates to $18).  There is a system in place, that lets you play on other servers as a guest, but since this was disabled during beta weekend it is uncertain how limiting this will be.

Why is this such a huge deal?  Well this is just one of the ways the game is not super friendly to groups of friends that want to play together.  As a long time guild leader, it is always a struggle to try and get all of your members on the same server at the launch of a game.  SWTOR had a great system that let you preload your guild onto a server intact, but even with that there were a good number of stragglers that could not be bothered to sign up for the system.

As a result, even with that system in place it was a mess those first few weeks getting everyone re-rolled in the right place.  Essentially there is no re-rolling on a new server without an additional cash outlay.  This system is going to be a wholesale nightmare for large guilds, and will likely cause a certain measure of un-necessary fragmentation.  I know personally that I can afford to pay to swap servers, but not every member of my guilds can.  My only hope is that for a few weeks after release they turn on the home server moves for free.

gw005Overflow System:

This honestly could have just as well gone as a positive, but it has some rather crippling side effects.  When you load into your server, instead of placing you in a queue, you get placed into the Overflow system.  This is great because it allows you to get in and play immediately, but in essence it places you in limbo.  You are not really on the server as the rest of your friends. 

So if you are trying to hook up and play with other players, you can wind up in separate instances with no way that I could find to swap between them.  Since this entire system is a bit murky, I figure this is going to cause more than a small bit of headache.  All that said however, I applaud the efforts they have made to remove queues from gameplay. 

gw033No Golden Path:

This is what gave me so much trouble when I had played it last year.  You have series of instanced storyline quests that move the tale of your legend forward.  The problem is there is no clear path outlined for you to get from point a to point b.  If you were like me and went into this expecting the same basic quest construct as the rest of mmo-dom, you will likely find this as mentally jarring as I did. 

Guild Wars 2 essentially is a sandbox, much the same way as Skyrim was.  Quests exist out in the field, in the form of the various hearts on the map, but there is no guiding hand to make sure you go by and visit them all.  On your map, there is a completion score showing how many hearts you have completed, points of interests discovered, and waypoints unlocked.  I found that wandering around and exploring, took me across most of the major hearts and events, but I just had to change my mindset.

gw032Voice Acting:

This is something odd, because while playing this weekend I recognized a good number of the voices from SWTOR.  The male warrior voice, sounds like the same actor that played the Jedi Consular.  Another voice I recognized as the woman who says “Oh Spanios” during “Lovers” quest on Tython.  The problem is, the voice acting as a whole is not nearly as high quality as it was in SWTOR.  While some of the same actors obviously were involved, the delivery just feels a good deal more stiff, and forced. 

On the positive side however, the world is full of dialog.  As you walk through the cities there is often times a murmur of multiple conversations going on at the same time.  It really makes these areas feel more lived in.  The only place you really notice the stiff delivery of lines, is during the story quests, when you have nothing else fighting for your attention.  It wasn’t bad enough to keep me from playing, but it was noticeable.

The Takeaway

gw029As the weekend has gone on, the game has grown on me more and more.  Essentially I have adjusted my outlook to fit the game, rather than trying to mold the game into what I was expecting from other games.  GW2 harkens back to an older era of MMOs, where the focus was on exploration rather than following a pre-planned path. Will I be cancelling my paid subscription MMOs to play it?  Not likely, but I will be playing Guild Wars 2 when it releases.

Scarybooster put the game in perspective for me this weekend.  Essentially he said that he is viewing this game as competing with the other free to play experiences.  When you view it in that way, then it wins hands down against the other f2p titles.  The world is huge, engaging, and as you move through it you are in no way gimped for not having spent money.  When you look at the game like that, it is a complete no-brainer to buy.

For many players this game will be enough to make them cancel their subscription accounts.  For me, it just scratches a different itch.  I have no plans on cancelling either EQ2 or SWTOR for the sake of this game.  I am in the position where I can do that.  I think for your average player, this game will be enough for them.  The game is a much more polished experience today, than it was at the tail end of last year when I initially tried it.  So I have some hope that all the little bugs and annoyances will be given a thick coat of shine before release.

So all this said, I am taking back my opinion on the game.  I am officially “un-writing it off”.  I look forward to release, and look forward  to seeing how the  game progresses as we go through other beta weekends.  As we close out the weekend, I made it to level 15, after 20 or so focused ours of gameplay.  With 80 levels worth of content, and large chunks of it unique to each race, it looks like there will be more than enough content to satiate us.  Fun combat, lots of content, and no subscription fee seems like a win to me.

On Recapturing the Magic

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or “I’m New Here So I’m Going To Start By Disagreeing With Bel”

Bel’s post below, "Warcraft Broke Me" got me thinking. I’ve been in largely the same boat he is, having finally stopped playing World of Warcraft without getting heavily into any other MMOs. You should read the post, it’s a good one, but as a quick recap he’s rediscovering the joys of not being tied to a game and, as he’s put it to me a few times, is "living an actual life again".

I’m doing the same thing. In the last month I’ve started working out again, picked up painting, get out and hang out with my friends a lot more often, and largely don’t really see a massive lack in my MMO schedule. When I play (Rift, currently), I play because I want to and I have fun, and when I’m through having fun I stop and do something else. It’s probably terribly inconvenient for the hardcore in the group, but I actually legitimately enjoy every moment I spend in game, which is something of a surprising new feeling.

For me, though, it doesn’t feel like a whole new paradigm, or a huge shift in the way I play games from here on out. I remember the feeling when I left Everquest, and how I played a few games hyper-casually (and even not so casually), but without the devotion of scheduled playtime and other things. I played a handful of other games before sinking into Star Wars Galaxies and dropping down that rabbit hole… despite the feeling I had at the time that I would never get into a game as heavily as I had Everquest.

The Pendulum

It all feels like a pendulum to me. Back and forth, with one end being a total disconnect from MMO-playing and the other end being the depths of hardcore, scheduled raid leadership. It hovers at the edges of the swing, but it still feels like it’s swinging, and when I don’t expect it, it’ll come hurtling the other way and while I look around now at my "freedom", I’ll play something, blink, and then realize it’s three months later and I’m leading or helping lead a raid group.

I think the only time things have ever really not worked out has been when I’ve tried to push the pendulum one way or the other before it’s good and ready. I tried to force myself to drop out of the raiding scene in WoW at once point, stop playing the game entirely and concentrate on some important stuff (like getting a job), and while I had the discipline to stay away until I’d accomplished what I needed to, it was less than a week after that I’d come back to the game, voraciously seeking what I’d tried to be rid of. I’ve started MMOs with the plan of having a solid group, planning on hitting max level and grouping together and even raiding, and it always seems to fall apart. It feel s forced, like I’m stopping the pendulum mid-swing and trying to make it reverse.

The Priority

I’m almost certain I’ll end up back in the hardcore scene at some point in the future, sticking to a solid schedule, showing up on time (or early!), making sure everything is in order and accepting no distractions, going through all of the trouble of recruiting, helping people improve, and dealing with drama and the other issues that come up. When that happens, it’ll almost certainly be fun, and I’ll have no idea what will trigger it. It might be tomorrow, it might be years from now. At the time I went from being an egregiously casual WoW player to a hardcore raider, I would have told anyone who asked that that switch was the least likely thing that could possibly happen, but there it went.

Right now, my priority is having fun. The pendulum swings, and I have fun. Best I can ask for, yeah?

Rift 1.02 Patch Rundown

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2011-03-01_173151

Taking a quick break from the “Why You Should Be Playing Rift” series to throw up a semi related post.  Today a deceptively small patch was applied but it has some pretty major ramifications for the players.  You can view the full patch notes in their unadulterated form here, but basically the patch can be divided up into three major features.

Coinlock Feature

COINLOCK FEATURE — Account Security
* If your account is logged in from a significantly different location, your characters will be ‘Coin Locked’ until an additional ownership verification is made.
* A Coin Locked account will receive an e-mail to their registered account address containing a code to enter in-game to unlock the account.

* A Coin Locked icon will appear on the bottom center of your screen if your account is in this state.
* While you are Coin Locked, characters on your account cannot:
– Access the Auction House.
– Send Mail (can still receive and view mail or remove items).
– Sell to vendors.
– Salvage, Runebreak, or destroy items.
– Trade.
– You can continue to play and gain coin and items, but cannot get rid of them.

* If you are Coin Locked, click on the Coin Lock icon and enter the code found in your e-mail from Trion.
* You can also have Coin Lock emails re-sent to your email address by clicking the button on the Coin Lock interface.
* Once you have verified ownership from a new location, that location is whitelisted for future account access.
* If you cannot access your email or are otherwise unable to change your Coin Locked status, contact Customer Service.

For the last few weeks the assault of hackers of players accounts has become epidemic.  This is a new paradigm in the MMO industry, never before has a brand new game been assaulted this quickly and this thoroughly by the goldseller community.  Trion has been quick to address things like spammers, and this patch adds additional features for that as well, but protection against account hacks takes time to design and develop.

That said… we are still seeing countermeasures roughly 3 weeks after release of the game.  I think by anyones gauge that is extremely fast service.  So far all of their bug fixes have been extremely timely and setting a new standard.  It will be extremely hard to go back to the previous norm of having bugs that are not “exploits” take months (if ever) to get fixed.

This seems like it will work a lot like the system WoW has put in place after years of being deluged with hacks.  Primary difference here is that you can still play the game, you just can’t remove anything from your characters.  I think overall it’s a better solution since if you want to log in to check on something from a friends house, you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of unlocking your account just to get into the game.

Lessening Mob Aggro and Dismounts

* Made a number of changes to how NPCs react to higher level characters:
– Characters under the effect of Exposed no longer have an additional chance to be dismounted.
– Reduced the minimum aggro range of monsters significantly below a character’s level.
– Increased the rate at which aggro range reduces as a character’s level increases relative to a mob.

This addresses one of the major rallying points of the complainers in the user community.  I personally did not mind it as bad as some, but I will definitely agree it was damned annoying when running through Freemarch at level 40+ and getting dismounted by a level 8 wolf.  Another major complaint was that the exposed debuff not only made you take more damage, but had a greater chance to get dismounted.

We will have to see how this shakes out in game, what I hope it does not do is make running cross zone completely safe.  Personally knowing that I could not outrun a mob meant that I was less likely to skip my way through content, or at least be more cautious as I do.  One of the things I have come to appreciate over time is that no matter what level you are, you are not the gods we were in WoW.  However these changes should make it much nicer for when a group is rolling from rift to rift.

Additional Spam Filters

* Reporting mail as Spam now works a lot more like the chat and /tell spam system.
* Sending mail that the game filter recognizes as spam results in an additional coin charge.
* Mail you receive that has been flagged as spam will go to the Spam tab of your mailbox UI.

As Trion buffed up their in game chat spam filters, it pushed spammers to start using the mail system.  We’ve all known the annoyance of getting to our hunting destination only to receive a mail message that sits there blinking incessantly, making you wonder will this be the 1 in 100 time someone actually sent me a real message.  The chat spam system has worked amazingly, and any improvement to the mail reporting system to make it more like that should be excellent.

I hope all of these changes send a clear picture to both the gold sellers and plat buyers, that this game does not want their ilk.  Trion has been criticized over the number of hacked accounts and the amount of initial gold spam, but I honestly feel they are doing as well as they could be for a fresh mmo right out of the gate.  Based on what has happened in previous major MMO releases like Aion and Warhammer, no one could conclude that the hacker community would get so sophisticated so fast.  Especially considering that it took years for WoW to reach the state it is, where basically if you are playing without an authenticator you are asking to have your items stolen.

Full Patch Note Listing

Rift 1.02 – 3/17/11

COINLOCK FEATURE — Account Security
* If your account is logged in from a significantly different location, your characters will be ‘Coin Locked’ until an additional ownership verification is made.
* A Coin Locked account will receive an e-mail to their registered account address containing a code to enter in-game to unlock the account.

* A Coin Locked icon will appear on the bottom center of your screen if your account is in this state.
* While you are Coin Locked, characters on your account cannot:
– Access the Auction House.
– Send Mail (can still receive and view mail or remove items).
– Sell to vendors.
– Salvage, Runebreak, or destroy items.
– Trade.
– You can continue to play and gain coin and items, but cannot get rid of them.

* If you are Coin Locked, click on the Coin Lock icon and enter the code found in your e-mail from Trion.
* You can also have Coin Lock emails re-sent to your email address by clicking the button on the Coin Lock interface.
* Once you have verified ownership from a new location, that location is whitelisted for future account access.
* If you cannot access your email or are otherwise unable to change your Coin Locked status, contact Customer Service.

MAIL SPAM FILTERING
* Reporting mail as Spam now works a lot more like the chat and /tell spam system.
* Sending mail that the game filter recognizes as spam results in an additional coin charge.
* Mail you receive that has been flagged as spam will go to the Spam tab of your mailbox UI.

GENERAL
* Made a number of changes to how NPCs react to higher level characters:
– Characters under the effect of Exposed no longer have an additional chance to be dismounted.
– Reduced the minimum aggro range of monsters significantly below a character’s level.
– Increased the rate at which aggro range reduces as a character’s level increases relative to a mob.
* Fixed Forest Disruptor companion so his footsteps are not as loud as a full-size Treant.

ZONES
* Runic Descent: Expert: Corrected an issue where this instance could end with players still inside.
* As a result of the above change, the Captured Soul NPC will be re-enabled after this update.
* Moonshade Highlands: Rational Ward: Fixed issues with quest not updating.

RAIDS
* Greenscale’s Blight: Ongoing tuning for Duke Letareus, Infiltrator Johlen, Oracle Aleria, and Prince Hylas.
* Greenscale’s Blight: Prince Hylas is immune to player abilities that reduce healing taken.
* Greenscale’s Blight: Fixed an issue that could cause Greenscale’s protective Life Aura to occasionally not spawn.
* Akala: Reduced health of Stone Wardens in the Akala outdoor raid to make the first phase possible with 10 players.
* Akala: Akala’s Aegis of Stone and Gift of Laethys buffs can no longer be purged.

Why You Should Be Playing Rift: 02 – Porticulum Network

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wysbpr_logo

Over the last few weeks I have become some what of a “Rift Evangelist”, as I have spent hours preaching to my friends why they should come over and play this new game.  It is not something I have really consciously done, but I seem to have a constant stream of “isn’t this cool” moments to share.  This series is devoted to these little sometimes overlooked features of the game, that all help to add up to such a rich experience.

Episode 02: Porticulum Network

 

wysbpr_02_porticulum

The Porticulumn Network is one of the coolest features of the game, but is also one of the most indirectly complained about systems for players coming from other games.  I will admit at first I was one of the complainers, even going so far as to post on the beta forums about it.  However after living with the system, I have come to appreciate exactly how amazing it is, both for rapid transit and the way it very gently nudges the player population to be community minded.

wysbpr_02_defiant_map

What the Porticulum Network gives you is the ability to transfer from between any two ports on the network instantly for a nominal fee (that gets less and less nominal the further away from your current hub you go).  This is what we loved so much about the Dalaran portals in WoW, Fast Travel devices in Everquest II, and the various Plane of Knowledge portals in Everquest.  This allows you to move quickly to wherever in the world your guild needs you to be.

The player starts with no portals connected to his or her network.  They receive the first connection on their hub by visiting the Porticulum Master for their faction’s capitol city.  From that point on, they can connect additional ports to their hub by talking to the Porticulum Masters in each of the zones explored.  The above image shows a complete network for the defiant side (minus the new Porticulum at Knight’s Stand added in 1.01 patch). 

When you talk to any Porticulum Master you are given the option to Bind Soul for a small charge.  Doing this will give you the Soul Recall ability, and allow you to return to your bound porticulum.  This ability has a hour long cooldown and a brief cast time.  With the Total Recall guild perk you are able to reduce the cooldown to 50 minutes.  This allows you to rather quickly get to anywhere in the world once an hour.

What You Give Up, And Why It’s a Good Thing

Now we get to the point of complaint many users including myself initially have.  The zones in rift are fairly massive, and take a large time to cross.  If you notice, most zones have only one portal.  What the game lacks is an intra-zone taxi system, like flight points and horse paths that have been utilized in various other mmos.  Initially this seems like a massive thing to give up, players like to be able to go where they want to when they want to with minimal effort.  However, like the heading alludes to, not having these ways to travel intra-zone safely is a good thing.

Taxi systems general allow the user to skip large areas of content safely.  In a game like rift, where part of the design is a constantly changing world where rifts and invading armies besiege towns, it requires community interaction to turn the tide of events.  As you move through a zone, you are forced to confront these forces head on to survive.  As a result I have seen random groups of players gathering to take down rifts on a regular basis.  This kind of impromptu interaction is what I feel will keep the player community active and thriving.

As you move into some of the larger and more difficult to traverse zones there are multiple porticulum in the zone.  For example Iron Pine Peak a 40-45 zone, had 3 well spaced portals allowing you to pop between major questing hubs easily.  When you enter this phase of the game, the lack of an intra-zone taxi system really goes out the window.

It’s All About Immersion

One of the things has been amazing about this game is the level of immersion the player has.  As you travel across a zone you carefully cling to the roads, knowing that just off the path lies your likely death.  The game brings back the edginess and fear factor that so many early MMOs had.  In Everquest, I knew that if I went wandering off in unexplored territory I was likely to find something that would squash me like a bug.  However in the World of Warcraft era, we as players have become lazy as we are used to being able to wander zones with godlike impunity, or simply fly over the top of them ignoring all of the would be pitfalls. 

I’ve come to appreciate the uncertainness and randomness of encounters this game has brought back to the MMO genre.  I remember the sheer fear I had the first time I stepped foot into Muire Tomb in Dark Age of Camelot, or cautiously running the zone boundaries of Kithicor Forest trying to get through to the safety of Rivervale before nightfall.  While I considered it inconvenient at the time, and was happy to see things like that gone in World of Warcraft… I have come to realize now that I have it back how much more depth it gave the game.  After all, isn’t the reason why most of us play these games to have a break from our normal lives and be thrust into epic battles that just don’t exist in real life?