GW2 Beta Weekend Event Impressions

Guild Wars 2 is not the messiah of the MMO genre, at least based on my experience this past weekend, but it is an extremely fun game, and sometimes, that's enough. I figure we should start by saying that, especially with all the hype the title has received. It's strange, looking back on some of my notes, on Friday night I was impressed by a few things, but generally felt a "meh" attitude towards the game. On Saturday I was struggling with the combat dismayed by the poor performance (yes, I know it was beta, and the client was not optimized, but it was hard not to pay attention to the performance) and Sunday morning it was like everything finally came together and fell in place and I was enjoying myself, wishing that the beta was not going to end. I think part of it was the culmination of all the little things that were "right" about the title, and the other part was finally getting a handle on the combat system which coming from traditional MMO's felt alien to me on Friday.

I started off rolling a human Thief, and jumped right into the mix, staying in the tutorial area a little bit longer than most people just so I could try to wrap my head around the combat system, and wanting to unlock some of my skills and understand them. Once I did that, I wrapped up the tutorial area, and followed the herd of players out into the world, and where I started experiencing mixed emotions. If you have ever done a beta event, or jumped into an MMO at launch you'll know what I mean, where there are 3,000 people right where you are, and everything feels crazy. I was blown away by how good the game itself looked. I'm not talking Age of Conan type of detail, it was like moving around in a painting. I cannot stress how good things looked, but my appreciation was muted as I ran towards the first "heart" I saw on the map, wanting to experience what questing was like. Try an imagine what seemed to be hundreds of people all trying to do the exact same thing, in addition to a slide show experience it was a struggle to do anything, mobs died incredibly quick, before most people could even attack. Even knowing what to expect, it did make it a little bit harder to enjoy what I was doing. 

After a little adventuring, I decided to escape the masses and head off for some PvP. I did several structured PvP maps to wrap my head around my boosted to level 80 toon, and had mixed results. I felt that melee was at a distinct disadvantage to ranged, and since I was not level 7, I had not unlocked the ability to swap weapons. At about this time I decided to jump into WvWvW PvP and it was there that the game started to click for me. I wont say that it was a drop in of Warhammer RvR PvP, but it did remind me of it in many ways. I had a level of familiarity with it, what to do, and how to do it. Darkhaven was a day 1 monster, and we had several small bands grabbing just about everything on the map, and it was fun. That night I rolled out a second toon, a ranger with my wife and we had a chance to do the starting areas with people more spread out, and I had another "click" with the game, and was enjoying it.

Without too much detail, I got into crafting on Saturday and found a system that I really enjoyed, I died a lot in PvE and PvP, but I found that I was starting to understand the combat system, and how to attack, dodge and stay alive, and slowly I was starting to enjoy the combat. By Sunday evening, I felt I had the combat system down, I'd done a ton of exploring, I ventured back to instanced PvP, and was cutting thru casters like a hot knife thru butter and feeling very good indeed about the game.

So let's talk more about some of the good, the little things, and some of the bad, because there are definitely a few issues I have with the game as it stands.

The Good:

ArenaNet got cities and music down perfectly, and they got them so right that I cant think of another MMO that has done it as well. Divinity's Reach had NPC's all over the place, and not just standing still, but moving around, engaging in conversations with each other, from the obvious wealthy areas to the slumbs, from the circus to crafting areas, the atmosphere felt hand crafted. Many doors were open, and you could go into bar's, and inn's, explore buildings and halls. This was absolutely a masterpiece, and I'd suggest anyone who wants to see an example of a great MMO city should visit for that reason alone.


Questing tends to make the game feel like a more directed themepark. Instead of hub to hub, players open their map, see which hearts are not filled, and then go off to do them. This isnt a bad thing, and it gave me reason to run all over, but it is a very directed experience. Most of these are located off main roads, so you do have a reason to go cross country, and it made a world of difference.

Underwater combat was novel, and I did spend a fair amount of time in the WvWvW area swimming around, and found several underwater entry points to keeps. It made me smile, and I know it may not happen often, but I can tell you now the first underwater assault on a keep I take part in will immediately set the WvWvW apart from other MMO's.

If I had written this on Friday, combat may have gone into the bad column, thankfully I took some time and learned it. One might think that only having 5 skills means shallow combat, and button mashing, and that's probably what I did early on, and it got me killed more often than not. With weapon swap at level 7, I was constantly trying to find which pairings worked well together, was it two pistols with two daggers? Pistol main hand and dagger offhand? Sword main hand and pistol offhand? When I finally found what worked for me, and I was dodging, combat felt good. This is, I think, the single biggest bridge for traditional MMO fans to adapt to, as combat almost played more like a hack and slash RPG. That isnt a great comparisson, but it's about as good as I can find. It'll take time for people to adapt, if they stick with it, there is definitely a reward.

Crafting is exactly what I'm looking for. Star Wars: The Old Republic took too much away from players letting companions do all the work, and Vanguard originally was too big a time sink (8 hours to gather materials and craft a small ship.) Nothing has ever equalled Star Wars: Galaxies crafting, but for where I am today as a gamer, GW2 does it right. I enjoyed gathering materials, the ability to craft granted recipe's, and the chance to randomly pull materials into the bench and see if I could discover a recipe. I'm sure that within weeks of launch websites will have all that info up for people to find, but it doesnt change the fact it exists in-game.

Despite my tearing apart some casters last night, I still believe that ranged has an easier go of things in PvP than a melee character. Part of my success was, if you are familiar with the map, around the Henge in Nifhel Forest, where I was able to line of sight casters and essentially force them to come closer to me.  All games will have imbalance, and I expect that, and most games it feels that ranged is better off than melee, so we'll have to see how this plays out.

Both instanced maps were fun, but I'd like to see more variety. The WvWvW area was a blast, and this early on it felt often like it was a zerg fest, but that's the same mentality I'd seen in other MMO's because it is the path of least resistance. Good leaders end up emerging, and you end up doing more with less people. I get the feeling I'll be spending serious time here, as it is the experience I've wanted in an MMO since Dark Age of Camelot, and to a lesser extent Warhammer Online.


I almost forgot to add how much I like the Auction House. Being able to list items while adventuring was great. I enjoyed being able to search by item, see what and how many of a certain item was available, and to set my own price that I wanted to buy an item at. After SW:TOR which has a horrid interface for the Auction House, I was blown away here by what I could do. Granted this isnt a make it or break it type feature in a game, but it is a convenience that is noteworthy and deserves mention.

The Bad:

I'm going to start with what I feel is an obvious one. The chat system is pure garbage, and it definitely has an impact on the community. For some reason the /local chat does not cover the entire zone, rather it covers in what other MMO's might be a /yell area. As an example, while I was at the front gate of Divinity's Reach I had conversations popping up that my wife did not see while she was at the crafting stations, a mere 10-15 second run from where I was. One of the common themes I saw was that people felt the game and the servers were "quiet". Apologists suggest that it is because people were too busy to be chatting, bull excrement. I've never been a part of game where chat wasnt fairly lively, even during a short beta. There are almost always people talking, asking questions, or being obnoxious. How on earth could ArenaNet build a city that feels alive and vibrant not have a chat channel that extends a zone? It's a social game. I'm not asking for server wide chat, but simple zone wide chat would make a world of difference.

The personal story. The hideous cut scenes, and yes SW:TOR spoiled me, and voice overs actually made me realize how good Bioware was at telling a story. I had a barely clothed NPC who appeared to be very young voiced as if she was in her 80's. This was a recurring theme, and it just made me wish that ArenaNet at least had an appropriate voice for the NPC.  Yes this is a step up from standard text quests, but it felt off, with a distinct lack of depth. I guess it's bad when you compare it to SW:TOR, and that might still be good enough to make it the 2nd best offering out there now, even despite the Final Fantasy-esque 1998 style cutscenes.

The instances. Again, apologists say that the only instances are for your personal story, and that is simply bull excrement. Being honest about it, overflow areas are, in fact, instances. It's the same technique used in Everquest 2, where for example Antonica fills up the game creates "Antonica 2" and people who zone in go to Antonica 2. I dont have any problem with this system when there is a way to shift instances to be in the same place as a groupmate. GW2 lacks that, and Saturday night I spent close to 20 minutes trying to get into the same overflow area as the person I was grouped with, it was a troubling experience. We could be next to each other in Divinity's Reach, and head out and we'd be in different overflow areas. Very simply overflow areas ARE instances, just not personal instances. I dont know how big a problem this is for times other than launch, but not having a way to join a groupmate is just plain stupid. Likely this takes care of itself, but add a mechanic to be in the same overflow instance as people you are grouped with.

Having to queue for WvWvW PvP. Take a step back, read that again, and think about what I'm saying. On both Saturday night and Sunday night I had to queue up for WORLD PvP. I understand there are cap limits, and I wonder if it is a total number or you are limited to a certain number of people per side, but it was a strangely frustrating experience to think that I had to queue up for instanced world PvP. Nature of the beast, but I do hope eventually ArenaNet can eliminate the cap for this area.

Summary:

I dont know if I'll spend a lot of time in future beta weekend events, simply because I am 100% confident that I'll be picking this title up and enjoying it when it releases. The items I singled out as being "bad" arent dealbreakers, and they arent horrid, but when you compare the polish of the rest of the game, they really do stand out. Granted ArenaNet has some polish and optimization work to do, but this game should release very well, and I did appreciate how ArenaNet addressed (lack of communication though) early login and network errors, which seemed nearly eliminated by Sunday.

This is a good looking, very enjoyable game. When I started the weekend I thought it was a bastard hybrid of Rift and Warhammer Online, at least in many concepts, but that would be doing it an injustice because it is so much more. I want to see some dungeons, and find out how they work, and how enjoyable they are, and despite the ArenaNet claim that endgame begins at level 1, I wonder where the staying power for me will be at level 80 beyond the WvWvW area. While PvP can extend a game because it is essentially player created content, I'm not sure where the PvE content will be, and if it will compare to the traditional MMO-esque grind experience of raiding and gearing.

Those questions however I dont think I can answer for myself until I hit level 80, and since this is a no subscription game, I wont have any problem enjoying the ride to 80 and experiencing for myself. No, this isnt the messiah of MMO's that some folks thought, but the bottom line for me is that I liked it quite a bit. We'll see where it's spot in the Pantheon of great MMO's ultimately will be, but hands down one of the better MMO's that I've experienced in quite a long time.

Communities and Guilds

So I've been thinking about this for quite a while, and I've come to the conclusion that there are game communities, and game guilds and they definitely are not the same thing. For the better part of the last 5 years, I've actively been a part of an online gaming community. I was one of the first members, an officer, and someone who cared deeply about the direction of the community. I took an active part in redrawing our charter, and trying to build a community that could put down lasting roots in an MMO. You see, despite being around as a community for 5 years, we had never put down lasting roots in a single MMO, and the pattern was alarming similar each and every game that we delved into. Bursts of activity early, zerg recruit all sorts of people, and around 60 days post launch members would start leaving the guild or the game, officers stopped honoring their duties and would disappear as well. On average, I'd say 90-120 days post release (sometimes longer, sometimes less) the guild would be down to single digit active members from highs of 80-100 active players.

The general sentiment of the officer team was that it was never the guild or the structure, but it was always just the games themselves, that nobody liked them. Considering that Vanguard and Final Fantasy 14 were titles we ventured into, I cant entirely argue with that idea.. I started to disagree with that sentiment last summer though with our Rift experience. While I did not get deeply involved in the game itself, I saw a divide in how a casual community operates. I saw what happened when people who were committed raiding types needed to pull people who were very casual, unfamiliar with min/maxing, and did not invest time outside of game to learn about encounters, were all put together. It was honestly a disaster.

This is where I started thinking about the differences between a game guild, and a gaming community. A community has a diverse group of members, quite often without any real bar to membership, and this means a vast variety of playstyles. Nothing at all wrong with that, in fact it's a very positive place for people to be. A game guild on the other hand usually is drawn together because they share a common interest in a single game, and they also usually have a membership application that helps them determine if an applicant shares a similar style of play. Extending this line of thought, while there is no guarantee a guild will last, it is my thought that a game guild has a better chance of an extended lifespan in a game than an online gaming community. The difference is level of investment in the game, versus investment in a community.

In order for a gaming community to make a lasting home in a title, I think that certain things are needed. The online community I belonged to had a relatively flat leadership structure, but I dont think that translates well into a game. I think that there has to be a single leader type. This doesnt mean a dictatorship, most decisions can be made among an officer team, but there has to be a person who makes the hard calls, or the unpopular calls, and does what needs to be done. Flat leadership too often means people dont take responsibility, and you end up debating for weeks over issues that need to be handled in hours or days.

The community itself needs to have strong leaders, and multiple voices. If there is a single strong leader, people again take the path of least resistance and just go along with him/her because they dont want to have a debate. If there are two strong voices you end up more often than not with cliques that form, or popularity contests going on.  This eliminates honest debates over merit, and people make decisions for reasons other than merit of the sides being presented. Short version is that if either of those things happen, you have piss poor people in leadership positions, because they dont feel comfortable, or confident enough to express their own opinions. So how does this happen? I think this happens when you dont accurately identify leadership characteristics in people, and you reward long time members and contributors for service, instead of making officers our of people who are truly leaders. Just because you contribute doesnt mean you are a leader. contributors can come in all shapes and sizes. Some folks who are contributors are leaders, and it isnt accurate that every contributor is a leader. I think this is a style that proves the adage: "The true test of a man's intelligence is the degree to which he agrees with you." You may have harmony (does anyone sense that I was the abrasive voice more often than not?) but you doom yourself to fighting uphill battles to have success as a guild in an MMO. This doesnt mean you cant do it, it just means you have to work harder, and the work falls on less and less shoulders. I believe the odds are against success with that format.

So after 5 years involved in the community I exchanged an e-mail with the founder, and resigned. Although I had not been active with the community in a few months, I got a nice send off post, and I wish everyone there well. These are tremendously great people who I respect, admire, and think will have fun in any title the venture into, however I believe the Chicago Cubs have a better track record of World Series success than they will of finding a game to make a lasting home. I'm sure it can happen, but I wont put bets on when. I'll still continue to game with several friends I met thru the community, but I've decided that for my next title, I want to play with people who will be there, and be active 120 days after launch. Maybe I'll pick wrong, but after 5 years of doing it one way, I'm going to find a group of people that embody what I want to find in a game, and I'll get to know them, and enjoy a title with them. Oddly enough, some of my best and longest game experiences were started just that way, and now I wonder why I got away from that.