| Published: Waubonsee Insight |
| Date: February 2007 |
| Section: Arts and Entertainment |
| Comments: |
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By: Ian Essling
Massively Multiplayer gaming has exploded in the past few years. Games such as World of Warcraft shot the genre into the mainstream of society. The ability to play in the same world as literally thousands of other players appealed to many gamers, and there are now dozens of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) to choose from.
One of the major caveats to this style of gameplay, however, is the monthly fee. Most casual gamers (including this writer) balk at paying a subscription for a game that they may play for only a few hours that month.
ArenaNet, a company formed of ex-Blizzard ( Diablo , Starcraft , Warcraft ) employees, turned the industry on its ear with the release of Guild Wars in 2005, an online multiplayer role playing game without a monthly fee. Instead, they offer additional chapters to the game, available every few months for purchase by players. While the extra chapters add a huge wealth of content, they are also standalone, meaning that someone can enter the game by purchasing either the first edition, Prophecies, or one of the expansions, Factions or Nightfall.
Players who only buy one chapter can continue to play the campaign in that game and can play in the Player vs Player arenas as long as they like.
No one is forced to buy the expansions, however, ArenaNet's theory that gamers will be willing to purchase the extra content has been proven mostly true.
From a purely numerical standpoint, even if you buy the expansions the day they come out, you are paying $50.00 every six months or so, which divides out to far less than the normal $14.95 per month that MMORPGs charge.
Aside from the unique fees and expansions, Guild Wars introduced a number of revolutionary gameplay features that sent shockwaves through the gaming world. Gone were MMORPG staples such as spawn farming (sitting with a party in the area that enemies spawn and wiping them out over and over again).
Instead, Guild Wars creates a unique 'instance' of an area every time a party enters it, and thus takes away the monotonous aspect of spawn farming, and also eliminates problems such as player killing.
Guild Wars also walks the fine line of a game being accessible to casual players, while leaving open options for hardcore gamers.
Because of the way its missions are run, a player can pop online for half an hour and actually accomplish something, whereas other MMORPGs often require many hours of straight-through game playing to make a difference, leaving casual gamers far behind.
Another aspect that appeals to many players is the way skills are handled in Guild Wars .
Instead of simply letting characters draw from their entire pool of skills during a mission, players are forced to choose only eight skills to take into battle. Once out of a town, the player cannot change their skill choices.
This completely changes up the "normal" procedure for skills, and brings strategy and decision making to the forefront of the battle.
This approach helps, again, both the casual and the dedicated; casual gamers are not intimidated by players who have unlocked every skill in the game, because when it all comes down to it, everyone is taking the same number of skills into combat.
Even then, two players bringing the same skills into battle may play very differently; many skills work best in combination, and it is up to the savvy player to use them correctly.
Veteran gamers will tweak every skill and attribute point down to the most minute detail, of course, and this is just another example of how the game caters to all players.
On top of that, the game allows you to alter your character's attributes as many times as you like. Once you earn your 200 stat points, you can redistribute them to different areas and save each 'build' as a template. Basically, you can have different versions of a character and swap between these builds with just a couple clicks.
For example, you could have a Warrior who focuses on sword skills, but also has a skill set that uses party-friendy "Tactics" or a high-damage, boss-killing hammer, and effortlessly switch between the three depending on what the mission requires.
Add in the ability to have a secondary profession (which you can also switch later in the game), and Guild Wars offers one of the most unique and customizable character palettes in existence.
The ability to change so many attributes of your character grant another mode of freedom; if you decide halfway through the game you don't want to be a Warrior/Necromancer and instead want to be a Warrior/Mesmer, you can simply pay gold or do a quest (depending on which game you created the character in) and change your profession.
The normal RPG mold locks characters into their classes and stats when they are created, although some new games have begun to allow more flexibility, perhaps spawned by Guild Wars' success.
The latest incarnation of Guild Wars , Nightfall, adds even more revolutionary features to already stellar game.
In an effort to promote community and player cooperation, nearly every quest in Prophecies and Factions was impossible to complete without teammates. Guild Wars did allow human players to take AI controlled 'henchmen' along on missions, but these characters were weak and often very stupid; their tactical decision making skills rivaled those of an algae-covered rock or a brain damaged millipede.
As a result, players were often forced to wait in outposts or towns until other humans working on the same quests joined the party. This sort of dependence on other humans to advance through any area of the game turned off some players. Obviously, the point of playing an RPG online is to play with other humans, but sometimes a player just wants to go hunting or exploring on their own, and in the first two episodes of Guild Wars , this was rather difficult; henchmen died far too easily and building an entire party of like-minded players was something that sometimes required an insane amount of patience.
In Nightfall, ArenaNet introduced AI characters called "heroes," fully customizable companions that are earned through various quests. These characters are much more powerful than henchmen; they can be outfitted with weapons from your inventory, and can use any skills that your account has unlocked.
The inclusion of this option opened up the world to even more players. By utilizing these powerful heroes (whose AI was considerably better than the rank and file henchmen), players could complete quests and even missions without relying on another player.
In fact, I was able to take a new character all the way through the first stage of the game (to level 20) by only using heroes. Normally in mission areas, finding a group of players is not difficult, however, I wanted to see if it was possible to play through with heroes. Aside from one sticky situation in a major mission where you attain level 20, the heroes performed quite admirably.
Players are limited to only three heroes per party, however. To level the playing field somewhat, players can fill out the rest of his or her party with henchmen if necessary.
The first time I joined a human party was on a hunting quest to destroy a unique monster, and ironically, when the human-filled party failed miserably, I grabbed my trusty heroes and took down the beast much faster.
Part of that, of course, is that heroes are not afraid of dying, and quite frankly, a lot of human players don't follow that "stand your ground or die trying" edict.
Since this isn't technically a 'review' article (it's more of a 'feature,') I am not really obliged to say anything bad about the game. Since it's quite difficult to actually find something, I just won't; editor's prerogative.
Guild Wars is a spectacular game; with an innovative gameplay system and a much smaller monetary investment required, it appeals to a much wider range of gamers than most MMORPGs and opens the door for players who might never have tried an online role playing game.
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