So I had to run my big mouth last week and mention the “50 or so features” I’m excited about for GW2. And having such an attentive (and cunning) readership, someone had to take me up on this via email – of course!
“Fifty things you look forward to in Guild Wars 2, Syl? Well, let’s hear’em!”
Fine. In fact, I did not just use a random number to exaggerate a point. Fifty is a pretty adequate size for a list of things I personally can’t wait to see. I don’t know if you will like them, but I dare say there’s lots of freshness and exciting potential! And so, challenge accepted. I’ll share my personal list with you so that the uncertain may be convinced and the unhappy may see the light! Let me convert you to try GW2!
For sanity’s sake though, I am not gonna give a link or source for any of the items mentioned. That would be way too time-consuming and if you are really interested to hear more about one, there are GW2 Guru, Youtube and Google. However, in the light of all the first-hand info out there by now and having read major part of it, I am not making anything up (I hope).
50 Reasons to be excited about GW2 (in no particular order):
- The side-kicking feature
- Flat leveling curve
- Lots of dyes!
- Personal character story and personality
- Extensive character customization
- No holy trinity
- No potions
- Small UI / minimal actionbar
- The downed state
- Dynamic/scaling events and quests
- Massive WvWvW battles
- PvP from level 1
- Gear equalization for group PvP
- The home instance / player housing
- Linked home cities
- Mini-games (bar brawls! snow balls!)
- Audio dialogue
- Flat highlvl gear progression
- Cosmetic items
- The Mesmer, the Engineer and pretty much all classes
- Large scale maps
- No flying mounts
- Original soundtrack by Jeremy Soule
- Beautiful 2D background artworks
- The Norn, Asura and Charr
- Underwater combat
- The weapon/-skill system
- Cross-profession combos
- Small HP bar
- More area spells and effects
- Dedicated self-utility / self-healing
- 5man content all the way
- No raids
- Individual trait lines
- Inclusive crafting system
- Multi-guild system
- Adventure modes for dungeons
- Outdoor bosses
- Easy server switching
- Transmutation stone for gear
- No abilities directly target allies
- Active combat; dodge, block
- Interactive environment
- Mostly universal attributes system
- Most abilities and skills usable while moving
- No language/coop barrier between factions
- Over-flow server while in queue
- Public FFA events and quests with scaling loot
- More frequent day/night-cycle (non-realtime)
- Guild halls announced for later
So….what’s not to love? I could have come up with more to tell you the truth!
What are you personally looking forward to the most? Or are you still convinced GW2 is not for you?
What do you mean by “29. Small HP bar”? And “44. Universal attributes system”?
As I understood and have seen in gameplay vids, the health bar in GW2 is much smaller, relatively speaking, than in most MMOs. It’s a smaller amount of HP; you can see it go down frequently while people are fighting, but it also fills up faster. overall it just fits the more active, mobile combat style and personally I find this more exciting (basically being closer to death/the downed state). I could have worded it better probably. 🙂
The attributes seem to always be the same, no matter for which class. the same stats are used for every archetype, as opposed to more class-specific stats. of course you will still weigh them differently depending on class and playstyle/spec. but I like that you don’t have to go learn specific attributes when you create a new character/class.
small edit: there appears to be in fact 1 class-specific attribute per class, out of a total of 10. that still makes the stat-system very comprehensive imo, but I now amended the point somewhat to reflect this. 😉
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute
I’m really interested in GW2 because of many of the things you listed, don’t care much about some of them but only disagree with two:
29. Small HP bar – I would understand this in a game with healers because it seems there is a limit on how little healing can be done before most of the healers start to feel they have no impact. (It seemed to be common complaint in early Cata.) However, GW2 has no dedicated healers so I feel they could have opted for slower combat.
As for the small HP levels fitting the more active combat style, it is possible that I’m wrong and it really does. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine a FPS that wasn’t a twitchfest until I’ve seen WoT.
33. No raids. I’m sorry but I can’t think of this as an advantage. I understand people not being bothered with this. The exploration mode seems quite challenging (I haven’t played it though, only seen the video) so with proper tuning they can provide PvE challenge and it’s possible there will only be two important differences from raids – less people and the fact the raids are often done in multiple sessions. (I’m not sure whether it’s even possible to re-enter the instance in GW2, I’ve seen a video where the characters die a lot, their gear starts to get destroyed and one mentions they can’t zone out and back in to repair it.)
Not everyone likes it that way but not everyone minds it either so I can understand people not being bothered by the lack of raids.
I understand why someone would miss the raids – I used to be an avid raider in WoW myself. it’s just that by now I have enough of all the downsides of running with raidguilds, recruitment, raid agendas etc. – I’m personally at a stage where I have more fun with a small bunch of trusted friends I can count on. therefore being able to 5man all content really suits me. 🙂
there are still the outdoor bosses and large events that scale with group size and of course WvW where you will be able to play in bigger numbers.
You have a point about the HP bar; but then I guess it’s being compensated for if the HP regen is rather fast. the footage I watched makes that impression. we’ll see how it turns out, I’m sure GW2 difficulty will be balanced fine and content won’t be too hard for the average player.
I think the natural regen only kicks in out of combat. I’m also not talking about how difficult GW2 is but what kind of difficulty is; I am happier with games that do not require me to react within 0.2s or suffer terribly. I understand that many players feel like swimming in molasses if the game is slow but that’s the way I like it.
Yeah I see. it will take time for me to adapt to the faster combat too but I expect to enjoy it. one big challenge will be to watch the environment, patches on the floor etc. for healing effects and utility. abilities and skills in GW2 are a lot less target-focused but area-focused, for example you cannot target anyone for healing, all healing is indirect and players need to learn make use of such benefits. a bit like learning how to use the new AoE ground heals in Cataclysm was.
I think you’re right on the regen, it’s OOC only; I watched this PvP video recently – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMrpolYQvag&feature=related
it shows rather nicely how the HP bar behaves and how important things like dodge, self-utility and making use of area effects will be for survival.
I can´t believe “lots of Dyes” only made it to number 3 😛
(in no particular order)!!
Can’t let people know why I truly want to play this, can I? 😀
the smart ones can read between the lines though =p
I even got 60 reasons!
60 minions still only count as one! 😛
It’s interesting how lists like these reveal different preferences. For example I’ve been delighted that SWTOR has potions that actually have a point and I always feel very clever when I manage to survive a tricky situation due to potion use. Why do you look forward to there being no potions in GW2?
I look forward to it mostly because I got a little tired of all the buffs, timers and consumables to track in WoW. I’m craving simplification right now; focus on combat itself, on movement, coop and strategic use of your skills and abilities. I won’t miss having to prepare potions all the time or trying to remember using them / tracking their CDs. there will still be the self-utilities in GW2 and also longer food buffs for stat boosts, so that’s plenty.
On a more general note, ArenaNet removed replenishment pots from the equation because the energy system in GW2 works differently than before and is used as attrition mechanic. not being able to speed up things like HP or energy regen is a way to pace progress and also keep encounter difficulty in check. it’s another move away from item-centric gameplay.
then there’s the notion that pots & consumables in general are gold sinks in many MMOs, although I don’t see that as such an issue.
How is it in SWTOR – it sounds as if pots are more meaningful than they used to be in WoW? are they also more expensive/rare in that case?
P.S.: There’s a rather lengthy article on YT about why potions were removed from GW2. it’s maybe too much information if you’re not very interested in the game, but I’ll link it in case anyone wants to have a look 🙂 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABmmM22gJMg
Drat, my comment from yesterday seemed to get lost in the ether. Hopefully this isn’t a double post I’m missing.
Anyway I think #1 should be the ability to jump (compared to Guild Wars 1) and especially the ability to jump down little slopes rather than run endlessly around them! 😉
I just checked and it didn’t end up in the blogger spam at least!
And you wouldn’t believe it, but I had “jump!” in the list while writing this! 🙂 it got too long though, I had about 55 points and thought I should probably focus on essentials more. I think jumping is super important, but then am not sure it can be seen as a singular feature “to look forward to” in an MMO, hehe! I’m glad it will be there though, I was always annoyed in FFXI.