Guild Wars 2?

I’m curious what kind of movement forward is required for a genre not to die. Is this exclusive to MMOs? Are RTS, FPS, TBS games all dead as well?

FPS games have a lot of RTS and RPG infused with them these days, so I’d say no. Everything else, well, maybe.

But I don’t really agree with HRose’s definition of dead. Honestly if they put out a few RPG titles that don’t really push the envelope too far but are just really high quality storytelling experiences, I’d be a very happy man.

GW 1, yes. GW 2, not so much. The explorable areas supposedly will give you the option to enter a persistent, GW 1-city-like district, or enter your own instance if you don’t want to be bothered by other people. I suppose this is to allow “random meetings” like traditional MMOs, which is something I kinda missed from the original GW (although it’s the only MMO-like game I still play today). Missions, however, will still be instanced. Which is all perfectly fine by me, and I think is a great move for the game.

edit: I also hope they raise the level cap, even if it’s just a little bit. You can ding 20 in GW 1 in 2 days, less if you’re really hardcore.

Of course, in GuildWars, the game only really begins when you hit the level cap. Even in the original campaign, over a quarter of the PvE material was done after reaching level 20.

In the later campaigns, this percentage was even larger.

GW2 doesn’t necessarily need more levels in the conventional sense. Hopefully they will expand on the idea of collecting new skills even when you’ve reached the cap.

I really hope Guild Wars 2 manages to fix whatever it is about the mechanics in the first one that I find so completely unengaging. There are so many things about the game that are tailor-made for me: Deemphasis of leveling, progression through gaining new skills, a focus on opening new options rather than becoming more powerful, cosmetic rewards for hardcore play instead of practical ones…

And yet, I can’t get past the first couple hours of play, because there’s just something about the core game that I can’t stand.

Unless they have changed their strategy, one of the big points that I took away from the PC Gamer story was that they would lift the level cap to allow you to have billions and billions of little numbers that may or may not actually do anything. I don’t get the appeal myself - I’m currently in the process of grinding my first character in WoW to 80 and I see absolutely no intrinsic value to the process, outside of the fact that now I will be less likely to stop my subscription because I am going to by-God beat this game to death for what it has put me through - but apparently it’s important for the great roiling mass of people that aren’t me.

I feel the same way. Chief among the issues I have with the game is that you can’t jump. I mean really, what kind of game doesn’t let you jump? A bad one.

Say what you will about wow, I feel incredibly comfortable with its mechanics.

Most single player RPGs that I’ve played. So how exactly does jumping improve gameplay?

About the last thing I want is WoW game mechanics being introduced to GW2. For example, I really hope they don’t remove the option to roll max level characters so you can PvP immediately without being forced to grind PvE.

Jumping improves all games! MMOs in particular though. Don’t ask how, I don’t know how it works; I didn’t make the rules.

Well, I meant mechanics in the controls/action/gameplay sense. Leveling a character in wow sucks, and the game would be improved immensely if you could roll a max level character for pvp in wow. GW rules in that respect. I love a lot of things about GW, I just find the gameplay very stiff.

Jumping is a bad way to look at a real problem.

Jumping itself isn’t a problem, but it’s the symptom of a deeper issue with GW. You’re stuck in a labyrinth. Every small obstacle is impassable and basically 90% of the environment on screen is passive background. You can’t move around or explore if not through a predetermined path.

You feel exactly like a guinea pig in a maze.

For me the problem is in trying to lower the health bar of targets to zero while it jerks up and down forever.

It doesn’t feel like combat at all. It feels like trying to find a mathematical formula so you can get over the balance and win. It’s just not gameplay that I consider fun.

I’m pretty excited about Guild Wars 2, well at least I was. I don’t know what they’ve changed but they were going to have some kind of infinite leveling progression. It’s awesome because it’s honest.

Do you want to nerf a mobs ability to cast heals same as the ones a player can cast? I think it adds greatly to gameplay and makes classes like Mesmer shine by being able to shutdown healers. You know you can interrupt healers right?

I know how it works. I’m commenting on a very broad level the way I feel about the gameplay.

There’s a lot in GW I don’t like. I don’t like the classes, I don’t like the 8 hotkeys combination and so on. It was conceived starting from the concept of card games (you build a spec and then compete) and I just don’t like this overall approach.

I’d love a MMO that forgets hotkeys entirely and that has healing only out of combat.

Well, in general I like being able to hop around for no reason. But in many games the inability to jump is not frustrating because the terrain isn’t the sort of terrain in which jumping would be useful. Guild Wars is a maze of invisible walls precisely because you cannot jump, and it’s frustrating.

Card game structure works great. It allows you to be creative both in character specialization and team specialization. You should read some of the team builds and strategies posted by the top guilds on the main GW site. Clever stuff that was only possible because of the flexibility of GW skills/combat system. You don’t see anything of that level in any other mmo. Most other mmos just boil down to the awesome strategy of: get 2 tanks, 2 healers and some dps and you’re good to go. GW had things like the energy denial team build that kill you slowly by sapping your ability to react.

Sounds like you’re looking for a game that is NOT GW. If GW2 takes a completely divergent path, they will just end up losing most of their fanbase.

Well, trailer is out and it shows a very similar style to GW and the same trend of 90% cardboard cutout scenery (passive backgrounds and huge structures whose only purpose is to look pretty).

Not impressed.

Well the Charr running through the forest in the trailer jumped once. Not sure if that is in-game footage or not.

I believe that a z-axis is one of the things that prompted them to go with a sequel instead of another expansion pack. I’ll have to track down that PC Gamer story to confirm, though, but I’m pretty sure that there will be a bullet point on the back of the box or the website or somewhere to deal with the whole “Why can’t I jump?” problem.