Rawson

The appeal of Diablo is the gear lottery, along with the ability to play with your friends easily.

I'm excited for the game because I played the beta and really liked the experience. Could have been more difficult, but I chalk that up to playing what is essentially still a tutorial.

Anyone who thought a launch of this magnitude - for any game, from any company - needs to seriously sit down and re-examine their expectations.

Yes, it kind of sucks to not be in the game, flawlessly, on the exact moment it launches. But I find it hard to believe that any game's servers will hold up to the tune of literally millions of people all trying to interact with it at once.

Thank you for the kind words. It's been a long while since I last wrote about video games in general, beyond forum comments.

As for WvW, I'll agree. It seemed like a zergfest to me, but I imagine that this was likely due to it being a new experience for both myself and the overwhelming majority of people playing. I can see the gameplay for WvW forming its own strategies and tactics as people play more and become more acclimated to the nuances of the game.

In my last blog post, I expressed how eager I was looking forward to the first Guild Wars 2 beta test. As I wasn't lucky enough to be picked, I had to get in by pre-ordering like so many others. I've been looking forward to Guild Wars 2 for awhile, as I greatly enjoyed the first one. So, with the weekend event now over, I'm left to think about what I had experienced.

What I experienced was, in a word, great. Yet, at the same time, hard to talk about. In a lot of ways, it breaks preconceived notions and ideas involving the genre. To explain the game and why things work, you have to step back and explain everything about the game from the very beginning. The most evident thing I noticed was that Guild Wars 2 doesn't punish you for playing with other people, I never found myself running out of things to do, nor was I ever in competition to finish objectives. This is in contrast to most other MMOs, which make other players a liability or something to avoid. I regularly found myself getting angry at other players for daring to attack my target, yet had to pause and remind myself: That doesn't matter. They're not stealing my kill. I'll still get credit and reward, and so will this other person. They're not competing with me, they're helping me. This fundamental concept of relaxed teamwork is something that has been sorely missing from the genre, removed way back when EverQuest became popular. The PvE events (the primary replacement for standard quests) took simple and familiar concepts like going out and killing monsters, escorting caravans, and interacting with objects, but then made these concepts fun again by simply allowing other players to jump in and engage with you at any moment. The effect is a PvE experience that's more relaxed, doing away with the stuffy notions we've dealt with for years, as MMO developers seem terrified of letting us have fun, much less having fun with other players outside of a structured group. This leads to a more chaotic and fluid experience, and I loved it.

The PvP, however, was my main draw. I enjoy competitive games, and Guild Wars managed to be the only one of the overall genre that pulled it off with any semblance of success by allowing players to hop in from day one and compete. I'm happy to say that this tradition has carried over successfully. In my times of playing organized small teams, we were all powered up until we were even with each other. With equal level and equal gear, teams could play evenly, and being able to do this within the first few moments of my character existing was stupendous. At a moment's notice, I could drop the PvE event I was doing and go become a max level killing machine, fighting other max level killing machines, with no grind required to enter this point. After all, why should there be a grind involved in competitive games? StarCraft 2, for example, has a healthy competitive scene, and I don't have to play for hours to unlock actually worthwhile units. Guild Wars 2 follows a similar philosophy with its player competition. What matters is personal skill and teamwork; not who has the best gear.

In the touted WvW (reminiscent of Dark Age of Camelot's RvR), however, things were a bit different. Not all the skills were unlocked (although they could be unlocked by killing other players and NPCs), and it struck me as a bit more of a zergfest than a competition of who's the best. To ArenaNet's credit, they consider WvW a more casual form of PvP than the organized teamplay. I'd liken this to WoW's battlegrounds, versus its arena. Regardless of the fact that I felt as if my character may be a bit lacking because she hasn't unlocked every option yet (unlike the organized play, where everything is unlocked), every player was once again bumped up to max level to ensure fairness, and the mode was an easy way to relax and feel like I'm contributing to a larger war effort. What surprised me in WvW, however, was how important siege engines were, and the possibility of recruiting neutral armies to my side. At one point, a fort for my side was being defended by a bunch of frog people my side helped out as part of an event within the large PvP zone. The mode comes across as a successor to DAoC's RvR, and created by people who passionately loved that game's mechanic. It wasn't what I was primarily interested in, but I found it to be a fun way to spend time all the same.

The only real complaints I can leave with the game are obvious ones: The game's performance was lacking, by ArenaNet's own admission. Currently the game is very heavily CPU-bound, which leads to poor frame rate, especially in populous events or WvW battles. There was also the issue of server lag and stability, but to its credit, the game was mostly playable during its first public beta event. I've seen release launches of MMOs that were in far worse condition than this game. And finally, my only other annoyance was that some of the events wore out their welcome, or were obtuse with what the objectives were. However, the game provides you with plenty of alternatives for leveling and progressing, including WvW. This worked so that on the rare occasion I didn't enjoy an event, I could easily run off and find something else to do.

It's very rare that an MMO encapsulates me, considering how bitter and mean I can be towards such a bloated and inbred genre. However, I think this may be the new one for me. It hasn't been since WoW's initial 2004 release that I found myself really enjoying an MMORPG, and wanting to see more of what it offers. The next beta event can not come soon enough.

I predict that the next CoD game will have something involving shooting thousands upon thousands of people who talk differently than the white Anglo-Saxon protagonists.

@Funkydupe said:

These games can be great for people who doesn't already have 3-4 MMOs among their past gaming experiences. Sometimes I think we just have to wake up and say that these games aren't for us anymore.

To that, I honestly wonder if such a market exists anymore. WoW was an outlying case, in that it brought millions of people into a genre all at once, whereas before it was generally assumed that all games were fighting over the same niche market. So there's certainly the possibility.

However, Tera is not WoW, it's not made by a company like Blizzard, and WoW was appealing to both MMO newcomers and vets at the time. While there will always be some people for whom X MMORPG is their very first one ever, I wonder if that's honestly a worthwhile chunk. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people who have played Tera, or will play Tera, have played other MMOs before.

But even if it's a sizable chunk of people who have never played a game of this genre ever before, does that excuse it for being filled with tedious filler? Can the allure of being in a virtual theme park for the first time ever actually work anymore, now that it's no longer a novelty? I remain dubious.

@niamahai said:

but...how is the /dance?

we are still one gen away from the MMO that will rewrite the MMO genre due to tech and business limitation.

I don't see how GW2 quest structure. is going to be any different than this. Its saving grace is that is has no monthly subscription.

Mechanically? GW2's quest structure is very different, in the sense that there are no proper quests. Rather, the primary pull of PvE content will be going out to events that occur in the game world and taking a part of them. Note that I said "take a part of." You won't have to compete with other players to get the first hit on a mob or anything like that. Instead you participate in order to earn XP and rewards, as if you're automatically all part of a big group, which I agree with. It's ridiculous that people play an entire genre of "massively multiplayer" games as if other players are a plague that should be avoided. Additional players should make the game more fun, not be a source of annoyance.

As for the events? You can follow the events in a suggested order, but it's not required. Events themselves aren't required at all, even. If you'd rather PvP, you totally can, and level up by doing so. The aim is to do what you think is fun, not to chew through a million same-y quests until you get to the even bigger grind at the endgame. The main appeal to GW2 is that it's an MMO with all the annoying bullshit stripped out.

Not trying to insult you here, but I do find it kind of amusing how a lot of MMO players seem to be unwilling to accept the concept of a game where you do whatever you want because you enjoy it, and aren't forced into hopping from one quest hub to the next.

Yesterday, I went in to my local Gamestop to cancel my pre-order of Tera. Upon telling this to the man behind the counter, he laughed and said, "I don't blame you." He and I proceeded to agree on the reason why I would do this. This cancellation was not done easily, mind you. Tera and Guild Wars 2 were two of the few MMOs coming out that actually managed to pick up some interest from me, as they looked to be standing above the mindless wasteland that the entire genre and its players seems to be content with. So, why did I cancel my pre-order, effectively sealing off my interest in the game?

In a nutshell, the problem is everything except for the combat. More specifically, what I do between combat encounters, and why I'm doing these combat encounters. Now, I did enjoy the combat system, and I thought that the world and characters looked fantastic. But these two good elements (the latter one being superficial, to boot) doesn't make up for the bulk of the game being a gauntlet of same-y quests that all follow the generic MMO questing archetypes. In the very first quest hub, I found myself being told to go kill a certain number of mobs, then told to go back and kill a few more of the same exact mob, as part of a completely different quest, as if the game needed to test my ability to retain the knowledge of, "circle around the bad thing and click until it's dead."

In my mind, this sort of game design is unacceptable. I've played more than my fair share of MMOs, and I'm simply sick and tired of game design built solely around wasting my time with a high number of repetitive, menial tasks. Ideally, the moment I can prove that I'm capable of overcoming a challenge, the game should have me move on to the next bit of content. The only content I found myself enjoying was the instances and large mobs (or BAMs), where the BAMs were starting to become a bit boring after having to kill multiple of the same beast for a single quest. I like games that evoke a David and Goliath mentality, but the original story would not have been nearly as interesting if David continued on to kill Goliath's six brothers. I can't help but feel that Tera would have been better if it focused less on having dozens of boring generic quests in each zone, and instead focused on a few quests that were more in-depth, or simply less quests, but with higher rewards

For full disclosure, over the course of the three closed beta weekends I played, I rolled a new character each time. First, as a popori slayer, then a high elf archer, and finally with a high elf warrior. Each time I played with a new character I got a little bit further, and each time I would stop after roughly a day and a half of my casual play, ultimately reaching the esteemed level 24 with my warrior. This wasn't particularly far, but I didn't feel as if the game really engaged me enough to warrant any further look. It may get better, but Tera's not the only game in existence, and I'm more than capable of playing games where I'm not forced to play through boring content in order to have fun. I have a job, and I'm going to college. I need entertainment, not another source of frustration and boredom.

As much as I liked the few bits and pieces of Tera, it simply did not make up for the huge amounts of pointless filler. As a result, I cancelled my pre-order, and am now looking forward to the first Guild Wars 2 beta weekend. It may not be the exact game I'm looking for, but to ArenaNet's credit, they don't seem concerned with wasting what precious little time I still have. I can't say the same of Bluehole and En Masse.

@Benny: I understand that it's different than server region locking. However, let me explain:

I will be buying the NA version of the game. This presumably means that, in order to play on my account, one has to be connecting to the game in NA.

Now, let's say that a Russian person manages to get my account information, and attempts to log on and steal my stuff. He won't be able to, barring some proxy services that may not even work for the purposes of an MMO. This makes the region locking a form of basic account security. Sure, it may not work at protecting people all the time, but it's better than nothing at all.

This isn't the only MMO to start region locking. Tera is also doing the same thing, locking out most of Asia, Russia, and Africa from the North American servers.

Unfortunately, it seems more and more like this has to be done to protect the accounts of legitimate customers, as well as curb spammers.

In this economy, they'd be stupid to do so. Increasing the prices per game while money's tight would be a huge reason for people to not jump over, and instead stick with the huge 360 and PS3 libraries.