Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Valeron]

Mounts discussion is so page 20, new subject please.

True that. Let's talk about Mesmers.

[Wynnyelle]

Things I am looking forward to learning about in the near future:

Ranger pets.
WvWvW PvP.
The Sylvari and Asura starting zones.
Dungeons.
The 8th Profession.

[Trollsbane]

True that. Let's talk about Mesmers.

You want to talk about how they will not be the last class?

[Valeron]

You want to talk about how they will not be the last class?

Heh. That horse is not dead yet.

[Bullet Tooth]

You want to talk about how they will not be the last class?

I wish to discuss how Arena.net has us dancing like puppets trying to figure that out.
Cause it could be, because the art and hints suggest it will be a mesmer, but at the same time it's too obvious, isn't or? Or maybe it's so obvious they expect people will expect it isn't, and actually will be. Or they KNOW we know it's so overly obvious that it's too obvious and obviously the choice is to go with the least obvious choice instead while making us think the most obvious choice is too obviously obvious, obviously.

[DeanyKong]

My greatest regret in life is not going to PAX East to play the demo. I went to buy my ticket one afternoon. Turns out they had sold out THAT VERY MORNING.

[Merendel]

Heh. That horse is not dead yet.

Sure it is. Our necromancers are just exceptionally talented. That horse is in fact quite UNDead with a good paint-job to look alive. notice the attention to detail on the coloration.

Back on the subject of things to find and reasons to explore. I dont think an artifact system like rift or EQ2's colections is the way to go. Those systems are little more than RNG stamp collecting. its just the same nodes poping up in the same spot and the item you get out of that spot is random. oh each area of the map had a pool of potential items but you could just camp one node, collecting it as it respawns till you randomly got all of the ones for that area. Thats not encouraging exploration thats encouraging grinding.

One thing I have seen mentioned in a few interviews though is that exploration by players can kick off DE chains. When they talked about how DE chains started they indicated that some are time based resets, some just push back and forth and dont ever end, some are started by branches in other chains, and others can be initiated because a player went off and upset something while exploring. Imagine diving under a lake and you find a cave. Inside this cave you find a glowing gem on a pedestal. IF you go and touch it a hoard of zombies rises out of the depths and starts invading the zone kicking off a large chain. If no player disturbs that gem that event never starts. Seting off an epic event and geting to play through it feels like a much better reward for exploration than "Yay I've completed the bat guano collection, this npc gave me 20 gold for it"

[Sunseeker]

Artifacts in Rift were pretty much the same as "collections" in EQ2.

So? I pointed out Rift's system because I didn't play Everquest. I didn't really care for the "collections" aspect of it honestly, what I meant was that I liked that they were randomly found around the world. IMO, a MUCH better way to do things than WoW's suck-tacular "archeology" which just had you farming the same dirt holes for the same crap greys over and over.

Back on the subject of things to find and reasons to explore. I dont think an artifact system like rift or EQ2's colections is the way to go. Those systems are little more than RNG stamp collecting.

I honestly didn't have an issue with it. It was an enjoyable throughout the leveling process and added some excitement to what I might find next. I didn't bother to farm the same zones over and over, it simply gave me something fun to find other than just running around in circles in a new area until I got "you've discovered NEW ZONE!" messsages.

its just the same nodes poping up in the same spot and the item you get out of that spot is random. oh each area of the map had a pool of potential items but you could just camp one node, collecting it as it respawns till you randomly got all of the ones for that area. Thats not encouraging exploration thats encouraging grinding.

I'm not talking about grinding. I'm not talking about camping respawns. I'm talking about having something fun and flavorful to discover in a new section of a zone other than a message saying "You found ZONE AREA THREE! +150 xp!"

One thing I have seen mentioned in a few interviews though is that exploration by players can kick off DE chains. When they talked about how DE chains started they indicated that some are time based resets, some just push back and forth and dont ever end, some are started by branches in other chains, and others can be initiated because a player went off and upset something while exploring. Imagine diving under a lake and you find a cave. Inside this cave you find a glowing gem on a pedestal. IF you go and touch it a hoard of zombies rises out of the depths and starts invading the zone kicking off a large chain. If no player disturbs that gem that event never starts. Seting off an epic event and geting to play through it feels like a much better reward for exploration than "Yay I've completed the bat guano collection, this npc gave me 20 gold for it"

I'm not in any way saying such stuff isn't cool and I wouldn't love that too. But there's fun in simple discoveries as much as there's fun in great huge quests as well.

[Kaelwryn]

Hmm, maybe I am just a weirdo. But I have always felt that having a mount encouraged me to explore. I was really excited when they said you'd be able to fly in Azeroth. My thought was "Yes! I get to explore all those little spots I've seen over the years from the back of a taxi." Usually when I am flying up and down the continents, doing archeology, I will end up getting sidetracked because I saw something cool. Like the little plain that's up between Mulgore and erm Stonetalon/Barrens. o_o Prairie dogs with tiny little hats and knives.

I guess my natural curiosity helps feed into my desire to explore. However, I have never really wanted to explore GW to the fullest, mostly because I always found running around in some zones to be kind of tedious. That said I think that there are going to be a lot of waypoints, I may not noticed. Just have to wait and see. ~.~

[whatsmyname]

Personally, flying mounts killed the whole explore feeling in wow.

Same, the world is completely dead in wow because of flying mounts and dungeon finder.

[Deleted]

Heh. That horse is not dead yet.

"please ignore the high-voltage cables going to the muscles on its body, though"

---------- Post added 2011-09-26 at 08:46 PM ----------

Personally, flying mounts killed the whole explore feeling in wow.

I too agree with that.

[Sunseeker]

I think the need for mounts to explore really depends on the speed your character is moving. If GW2's "run" speed is fairly quick, like a sprinting speed, it may not be an issue. If GW2 gets a "sprint" like toggle either for short bursts or for sustained running, mounts might be unnecessary. If the fastest everyone "runs" is a brisk walk, well then yeah, it could be a problem.

[Kaelwryn]

Personally, flying mounts killed the whole explore feeling in wow.

I agree, most people do not share my enthusiasm and happily skip everything. That was merely my personal feelings when I heard that flying would be allowed in azeroth. I had seen so many nooks and crannies that I desperately wanted to check out, but couldn't.

[Deleted]

Game looks really cool, though I haven't seen anything mentioned about end game content. Since there are no sub fees do you think we are going to get new content in between expansions?

[An-Tuirseach]

Game looks really cool, though I haven't seen anything mentioned about end game content. Since there are no sub fees do you think we are going to get new content in between expansions?

Possibly. I don't see why not. Then again, if the dynamic content is all it's cracked up to be, they probably won't need to introduce "content" patches as frequently as WoW does, or at all for that matter.

[Xuvial]

I don't know how an MMO can afford maintenence, server costs, developmenet, etc when it fully relies on it's initial profits when people buy the game. Granted it's got micro-transactions happening, but I don't think those will generate significant revenue since they made it clear it would be purely for cosmetic purposes. So micro-transactions and expansions, that's the entirety of where their money will come from - considering Blizzard is earning millions every week and still don't give a shit about several aspects in WoW (PvP for example), how will ArenaNet afford to maintain the game and put resources towards new content and balancing?

[Borzo]

Hmm, maybe I am just a weirdo. But I have always felt that having a mount encouraged me to explore. I was really excited when they said you'd be able to fly in Azeroth. My thought was "Yes! I get to explore all those little spots I've seen over the years from the back of a taxi." Usually when I am flying up and down the continents, doing archeology, I will end up getting sidetracked because I saw something cool. Like the little plain that's up between Mulgore and erm Stonetalon/Barrens. o_o Prairie dogs with tiny little hats and knives.

I guess my natural curiosity helps feed into my desire to explore. However, I have never really wanted to explore GW to the fullest, mostly because I always found running around in some zones to be kind of tedious. That said I think that there are going to be a lot of waypoints, I may not noticed. Just have to wait and see. ~.~

I also have to go against the grain and say that flying mounts did 2 things for me:

1) When I needed to get from A to B, I could do it faster and with less tedium than before. ==> Good thing!

2) But it also gave me the opportunity to spend my free time - while waiting in Q or archaeologying - to explore. I've probably spent a couple days of gametime exploring places in WOW that were previously hidden. I'm not quite sure why people keep saying flying mounts destroyed exploration... it's done the exact opposite for me. Sure it's made exploration easier and faster... but that encouraged me to do more of it, not less.

(That said, I hope GW2 doesn't have mounts at all. The game is designed around being on the ground, and on foot. Once the game is "retired" I wouldn't mind flying mounts, to be honest... But the way their dynamic events and world is built, I can't see flying mounts adding anything new. The only reason mounts helped WOW was because the game and it's questing system was so poorly designed and full of "run here, now run there, now run back".)

---------- Post added 2011-09-26 at 04:14 PM ----------

I don't know how an MMO can afford maintenence, server costs, developmenet, etc when it fully relies on it's initial profits when people buy the game. Granted it's got micro-transactions happening, but I don't think those will generate significant revenue since they made it clear it would be purely for cosmetic purposes. So micro-transactions and expansions, that's the entirety of where their money will come from - considering Blizzard is earning millions every week and still don't give a shit about several aspects in WoW (PvP for example), how will ArenaNet afford to maintain the game and put resources towards new content and balancing?

Maintenance, server costs, and bandwith, are trivial costs and amount to almost nothing.

Development will be paid for by buying xpacs. If they can come out as frequently as they did for GW1 (every 8 months) then it will be plenty to fund the game with cosmetic micro-transactions on the side.

This video has been circulating, and might be worth watching:

[Deleted]

I don't know how an MMO can afford maintenence, server costs, developmenet, etc when it fully relies on it's initial profits when people buy the game. Granted it's got micro-transactions happening, but I don't think those will generate significant revenue since they made it clear it would be purely for cosmetic purposes. So micro-transactions and expansions, that's the entirety of where their money will come from - considering Blizzard is earning millions every week and still don't give a shit about several aspects in WoW (PvP for example), how will ArenaNet afford to maintain the game and put resources towards new content and balancing?

GW1 ring a bell?

blizzard themselves said the P2P model isn't neeeded to maintain WoW.

[Borzo]

Also, you need to realize that almost NONE of the $15 you pay for WOW is going into WOW. It's almost certainly going towards Titan at this point.

[Blznsmri]

I don't know how an MMO can afford maintenence, server costs, developmenet, etc when it fully relies on it's initial profits when people buy the game. Granted it's got micro-transactions happening, but I don't think those will generate significant revenue since they made it clear it would be purely for cosmetic purposes. So micro-transactions and expansions, that's the entirety of where their money will come from - considering Blizzard is earning millions every week and still don't give a shit about several aspects in WoW (PvP for example), how will ArenaNet afford to maintain the game and put resources towards new content and balancing?

Maintaining servers doesn't cost near as much as it used to back in the late 90's and early 2000's, so much so that its a non issue. With the buy to play model Arena Net was able to release major content updates (Campaigns and the Expansion that included new classes and skills, as well as zones, missions, minigames and dungeon-like areas) every 6-7 months until they announced Guild Wars 2 (with minor patches in between as well as implementation of new missions and store items).

It's worked before for them and it will work again.