I'm skeptical and a bit cynical because all of the recent MMO's I've played have all been no fun. Like a lot of people, I went from playing Everquest to WoW, from WoW to Warhammer, from Warhammer to Aion, and from Aion to Rift. I don't really enjoy bouncing around trying out all of these different games, investing months of time and realizing they suck.
I honestly don't remember too much about Everquest. Playing WoW from beta through the completion of its first expansion cycle was great, I just never understood how people could stick with it after that. I thought that the attunement quests and the entire Onyxia / Nefarian story line was great. The world-wide Ahn'Qiraj gate opening event involved a spectacular story line. WoW sucked me in for a long time but once the expansions started pouring out it was so obviously more of the same I lost the will to even play...
Warhammer was a different experience. It was always extremely buggy but enjoyable anyway. Warhammer didn't suck me in quite as deeply as WoW did because of its bugs. You couldn't achieve any level of immersion into the world because it was constantly reminding you about how seamless it wasn't. PvE in that game was as bad as Conan in that it was nothing more than a string of endless bug exploits for free gear. I remember I had similar hopes for Warhammer that I have now about Guild Wars 2, but Mythic really screwed themselves on the game engine. It was a tragic failure.
I didn't have that sense of hope for Aion. It was just there when Warhammer's grind started to get to me, and the people I regularly play with were trying it out. PvP in Warhammer was fun, but they never implemented any kind of ladder/arena system so it turned into a gigantic grind I couldn't ignore. Aion's "asian" style leveling was brutal. The brutality was compounded by the fact that there was no enduring story line in the questing, and no apparent attempt at creativity whatsoever. It was neat to fly, but that was the only highlight in Aion.
Rift is a PvE'rs game. The end game had some interesting mechanics, but again no ladder/arena system in PvP. I actually love the way they constructed their class system, with all of the variety of mixing and matching different skill trees. The PvP system in Rift is just another grinding time sink however, like the old days of grinding weekly for High Warlord in WoW, or grinding 80 Renown ranks in Warhammer.
For Guild Wars 2 to succeed for me (an average gamer) its got to pull off a few things. Consider this a wishlist for the perfect MMO.
For Guild Wars 2 to succeed for me (an average gamer) its got to pull off a few things. Consider this a wishlist for the perfect MMO.
- It needs to have a rich immersive environment (which apparently it has from the videos I've seen)
- It needs to have some form of competitive PvP which is more than just another grind with an end point (it needs a ladder/arena system)
- It needs to have some form of open world PvP that matters.
- It needs to promote local server culture. (limit the amount of clustering and involvement between servers). Guild rivalries are where its at, but this only works with a thriving population so it's hard to pull off and I don't reasonably expect it to happen.
- I needs to have some PvE but not so much that it becomes the main focus. Let it tell a well thought out story, but let the fighting between factions be what animates the story.
- Progression needs to be non-linear and open ended, with quests that do not have a single fixed outcome.
- It needs to offer horizontal expansion at a 100 to 1 ratio (or more!) to vertical expansion. Releasing $60 expansion packs every few years that completely reset your heroes progress just demolishes my will to play...
They've been talking up the game like they're really trying hard to exceed all expectations and deliver a game of extremely high quality. I wish them luck.
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