Preparing to meet the messiah of MMO's

I've spent too many years in pre-launch MMO communities to not have a feel for the usual hustle, bustle and feeling of how those communites operate. Pre launch communities usually have three groups of people that inhabit both official forums and forums on fansite, and industry websites. You have fans who have already "bought in" to the game for whatever reason, and they are on board with the information you are getting. These are generally the largest group, hence being fans. The second largest contingent are people who dont like anything about the title for whatever their reasons may actually be. I'm not convinced that most of the reasons are valid, but there is generally a healthy sense of antagonsim between these two camps, and debate ensues over pretty much ever morsel of information. The third, and far smallest group are the folks who are trying to decide for themselves if they like what they are hearing, and how it applies to them. They dont have money on the fight, they are just observers.

Guild Wars 2 is perhaps the first time I've seen a different spread of the community. For perhaps the first time ever, I'm seeing about 80% of people falling into the fan column, and a good portion of them are willing to pontificate that this game is the 2nd coming, and the savior of the genre. Dont believe me? Check out the article from PC Gamer. ArenaNet has promised to do something different, and after years of games that want to resemble World of Warcraft (they may want the earnings of WoW, but nobody has come close to equaling that success in any way imaginable) this seems to be striking a powerful chord to disenchanted MMO'ers. Of our other two groups, the second largest is the people who are trying to be objective and understand how their gaming experience is impacted by what GW2 is offering. Shockingly, the smallest contingent is the "haters." Usually haters cant be shouted down by fans as there are too many, but in this case they are just so overwhelmed as to barely be heard. I'm not sure that is a good thing, but it is a surprising thing, so people with so diverse opinions on most topics have finally found something that they agree upon.

Personally, I was in the SWTOR camp for years so I did not pay a lot of attention to the hyperbole about GW2, because I was convinced that most of it was exactly that, hype. "You cant change a world, at least not for more than 10 minutes," and so on is how I felt. With my recent step back from SWTOR, and putting together my list of things that really matter to me in an MMO, I was able to take a step back and look at a game that isnt that far from launch (and to me that means within the next 4 months) and see what it had to offer, without being caught up in years worth of hype.

Fortunately for me, ArenaNet had recent put on a fairly large press beta event which gave a lot of coverage of the game both in print, and video which gave me a recent plethora of source material to draw upon. I immediately went to check out TotbalBiscuit, my favorite Cynical Brit to see what he felt about the game, and what kind of experiences he had. As usual, I found a number of video's on a wide ranging subject matter, from character classes to PvP, to jumping puzzles, but in typical Brit fashion, I found his summary of impression video to be an honest compendium of what he both liked, and disliked about the game.

I also spent some time seeing what Gamebreaker.tv's MikeB, aka Fony had to say about the game. Mike's commentary is sometimes a little over the top, I was definitely impressed by his little series of Captial City tours, and a tour he did of one of the WvWvW PvP areas. This was a 25 minute video that definitely impressed me.

With a little bit of background, I knew enough that I was intrigued, and wanted to find out more, so I made the commitment, pre-purchased the game (figuring I could always go back to Gamestop and get a refund if I did not like the weekend event, and that may not be accurate) and decided that when a weekend event came up I wanted to be a part of it. With that in mind, I started watching other video's on classes, started reading more about the game, and I noticed that more and more of the hype was being driven by people who played the game, in fact I found far less negative impressions or experiences than I had from just about any other MMO to date.

While all of these are good signs, I'm not about to make up my mind after a weekend, but there is definitely enough here for me to want to take a deeper look, and see exactly what GW2 has to offer me. That's actually what matters, not what ten reviewers, or 13,000 fans find interesting, but what is going to be interesting to me, and what will engage me. I have some long term concerns with a perceived lack of end-game material, yes I have loved raids for years, so will impromptu public events be enough for me? I dont know. Part of what I love in PvP is the community, I like seeing names I know, there is often a healthy respect formed there and World versus World versus World means I'm fighting nameless, faceless foes, people who I just dont care about beating, so there isnt that little extra something from knowing I beat someone I know is tough. Yes combat is different than what I'm used to, and there is a lot for me to experience, but I do actually want to see how I feel about those things.

I guess more than anything, I'm interested to spend a little bit of time forming my own impressions, and drawing my own conclusions. It isnt often you get to meet someone who most people identify as a messiah, and while I'm going to look at it with my own jaded eye, I have to admit, I've liked what I've seen so far enough to make the dollar commitment. I'm not looking to expose the messiah, or to like him just because someone else tells me that I should, I just want to see for myself what he's all about. We'll see after the weekend how I feel.