Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 is finally here and thankfully, it’s amazing. The game’s massive continent of Tyria is littered with plenty of quests, epic scenery, and dungeons to keep players busy for a long time. The sheer amount of things to learn and do is mind boggling. Combine this with the game’s dynamic leveling system and you get a broad range of content, across all levels, that is compelling and fun. Rather than letting other players get in the way of this enjoyment, the game creates a system which allows groups of random players to flourish. Players are encouraged to band together rather than pit themselves against each other which yields a stress-free questing experience. This liberates players and creates opportunities for interaction and teamwork that simply don’t arise in other games. This is the first game I’ve played since Saints Row the 3rd that clearly prioritizes the player’s enjoyment and bases its design decisions around this philosophy. Guild Wars 2 is just plain fun.

One the most successful aspects of the game is the way it creates a laid-back cooperative setting. It handles player to player interactions extremely well. Rather than competing against each other, GW2 encourages players to group up to complete objectives. While not in a party, players that kill the same enemy both get experience and unique loot. This fosters a comradery among players and helps promote interaction and the forming of impromptu groups. Another thing that reduces frustrating competition between players is the sharing of harvesting nodes. Once a player gathers the material from the node, it remains active for other players to harvest as well. It’s nice not to race around the map raging at other people farming materials and trying to complete the same quests as you. This cooperation removes all aspects of hostility toward former allies and elegantly solves a problem which plagues the genre. This creates a care-free environment to adventure in which is my favorite part of this game. It’s just incredibly relaxing to venture out into the sprawling world and find fun things to do. An MMO that actually encourages players to interact with each other… how about that?

While you are out questing, group events will appear throughout each zone that require players to converge and unite in order to complete objectives. You’ll be prompted with a message on your screen that says, “New group event nearby”. The event gets marked on your map with an orange circle. These events range from escort quests, to gathering said items, to killing a bunch of stuff etc. These quests sound mundane, but they’re not… at least initially. The way the events are intertwined into the environment and the way that they bring players together is pretty clever. An example: your group is tasked with protecting a bridge from a barrage of pirates carrying explosive charges. You need to defend said bridge for four minutes. If your group fails, the bridge is leveled and the areas it previously connected become inaccessible. An interesting thing about these events is that they lead to other events. After a failed bridge defense, a new quest arises where you need to protect builders as they attempt to reconstruct the bridge. It’s nice the way these events string together and also lead you to new areas.

The environments in the game are expansive and gorgeous. The art design is stunning. It’s typical fantasy fair but it’s done in an imaginative, painterly, awe inspiring manner. Sprawling, dense forests, snow capped mountains, mysterious, expansive caverns – that sort of stuff - stuff that makes you want to explore just to see what’s around the next bend. It’s hard to explain why it’s so enjoyable to simply walk around the zones exploring and appreciating the environment. I think it’s the relaxed nature of the game – you never feel rushed. The game embraces this beauty by placing Assassin Creed style vistas throughout each zone. Climb to the top of the vista point and the game rewards you with a brief cinematic clip of the camera panning out and showcasing the area.

Reaching these vistas may be one of my favorite things to do in the game. It requires this odd hackneyed style of platforming that is straight up janky and bizarre… but I like it. It takes weird strategies and hack-ass techniques to conquer some of these climbs and the game wants you to do this. It’s odd, but it works for some reason.

The game encourages exploration by placing points of interest, waypoints, scouts, hearts (basic quests), and skill point rewards throughout each zone. Way points are locations on the map that can be teleported to for a small fee once discovered. Points of interest are, well… exactly what they sound like – small parts of each zone that may not contain a quest, but have some unique assets or characters to discover. Scouts are marked on the map by a little telescope. Find one of these guys and they’ll reveal a small chunk of the map for you and give a brief description of the conflict in the zone. The hearts mark the basic quests in the game. Rather than using traditional quest givers, the game delivers quests to you in a broader fashion via these heart zones. The heart covers a fairly large area and gives the player multiple objectives to complete. Kill things, collect stuff, revive fallen comrades, disrupt enemies etc. There are more area specific objectives too – it’s not all fiddle-faddle. This broad zone approach with multiple objectives frees you up a bit so you’re not just looking to complete one specific task. It makes leveling up a breeze.

Upon leveling, the way the game handles talent points is unique and clever. Points are divided into traits and utility skill points. Traits govern raw stat boosts while skill points allow you to unlock utility skills unique to your class. At level ten, traits are unlocked. Each time you level up you can allocate them anyway you see fit. Each time you dump 5 trait points into a certain stat you unlock bonus attributes related to that stat. The larger attribute bonuses are awarded on each increment of 10. Rather than hashing all the points out each time you level, the game awards skill points in a different way. Skill points are scattered throughout the world of Tyria and are marked on the map by blue emblems. You need to seek them out and complete challenges in order to earn the points. Some are as simple as channeling on an artifact or consuming an experimental recipe while others pit you against formidable enemies. Once the challenge is complete the point is yours to spend at will. The early tier skills cost 3 points each, mid tier cost 6, upper tier cost 10, and epic level skills cost 30. As you unlock more points, skills further down the tree become available. If this all sounds incredibly confusing don’t worry, it is. It’s a whole lot to absorb and you’ll only understand it by playing the game and using the systems. Just take away one thing: earning skill points by exploring and completing challenges is unique, awesome, and keeps you adventuring.

The story in the game is fully narrated and unique for each race. During character creation, you pick from different origin backgrounds which govern the way your character’s early-game story will unfold. The story is played out through instanced missions where the player will interact with NPC’s and complete objectives. These missions are more structured than the heart quests and are much more interesting. They are all fully voiced and do a fine job of unfolding the story. The dialogue is primarily delivered in cutscenes by 3-D characters in front of a blurred out background. Main story missions take place about every three character levels. This creates a nice pacing because you have to do other quests in order to reach the appropriate level. Completing other quests often leads you into the zone where the story mission is located which creates a nice flow. The fact that the game has a solid story to follow is great. The only other MMO experience I have is WoW and the storyline in that game is disjointed and pretty much non existent.

The combat in GW2 is straightforward and fun. It works on a cooldown system much like other games in its class. The uniqueness comes from the fact that you can carry two weapon sets, switching between them in mid battle. I’ve been playing the game as a ranger; carrying a longbow in my first slot and a one-handed sword and dagger in my second slot. It allows me to attack from range and at any point, close the gap, and strike from melee range. This adds a lot of versatility and strategy to the combat. When your abilities for one weapon are on cooldown, you can switch to your other and get a fresh set of abilities. There is however, a cooldown on the weapon switching so you can’t just keep swapping sets (the first swap has no cooldown). This keeps the action fast paced and rarely leaves you sitting around auto-attacking while you’re waiting for your abilities to refresh

Adding to the pace of the combat is the ability to dodge and strafe. While strafing as a ranger, you are still able to cast channeled abilities which encourages you to move around during a fight. You’ll need to move around quite a bit because most of the enemy attacks can be dodged or side-stepped. The dodge is executed by double tapping a direction while you can just strafe to side-step. You need to spend your dodges wisely, however. There is an endurance meter which will drain after each use. You’re allowed two consecutive dodges before you have to wait for the meter to charge up. Positioning plays an important part in your survival. Enemies show visual cues when they’re about to do a large attack, or circular reticles will appear on the ground if an AOE strike is on its way. These cues give you plenty of time recognize the ability and avoid it. It feels fair and provides a decent challenge, keeping you on your toes during battle.

This reactionary type of combat carries over well into the grouped instances. Rather than relying on the traditional roles of healer, DPS, and tank, GW2 focuses more on awareness, positioning, and control. A group’s survival depends on their ability to single out and focus down enemies, avoid damage, heal themselves, buff teammates, and revive fallen comrades. Any class can resurrect downed allies mid battle so it’s up to the whole group to pull together to survive.

Each dungeon has a story mode the first time you play through it. While not particularly involving, it gives context to what you’re doing and makes for an interesting play-through. Once the story mode is beaten, you can play the dungeon again in “Explore Mode” which removes the cut-scenes and increases the level of the dungeon by 5. It’s always a challenge to play these dungeons even after you pass the level range thanks to the games dynamic leveling system.

The dynamic leveling system is innovative and game changing. This single feature makes the game flow incredibly well and questing with friends has never been easier or well balanced. The way the system works is by scaling your character’s level down if you’re too high level for an area. If you are level 30 and visit a level 12 area, the game will scale your level down to 13 for the duration that you are in that zone. This ensures that when you visit low level areas, the game will still provide a challenge. The game basically makes it so you can’t cheat and this makes all of the zones viable at any level. This allows friends of vastly different levels to be able to quest together at any point. This feature just feels awesome and brings fairness, consistency, and relevance to the entirety of the map that simply isn’t present in any other game. It seems like such a simple idea, but it’s truly amazing.

The PVP in GW2 feels well thought out and balanced. There are two different types of PVP modes: World vs. World battles and traditional 5v5 to 15v15 battles. The World vs. World scenarios pit 3 three opposing servers, consisting of up to 500 players each, against each other in massive battles. Players fight to control objectives on a large-scale map. There are siege weapons, special resources, and waypoints to capture. Points are awarded every fifteen minutes to the teams currently holding the camps, castles, and towers. There is an ever present circular graph in the PVP menu that shows each server’s control over the battleground. The amount of control contributes to server-wide bonuses such as crafting, harvesting, and experience bonuses. Players of all levels are allowed to fight in this ongoing battle for control.

The traditional PVP battles have players face-off for control of multiple control points. It’s a capture and hold type system where the team to reach 500 points first will win. Hold more control nodes and your team earns points faster. Each map has unique features such as catapults that once controlled, can change the tide of battle. The interesting thing about this mode is that it puts all players on an equal playing field by bringing everyone up to the level cap of 80 and unlocking all weapon skills. This makes the battle feel fair and well rounded. Bringing enemies to the ground in PVP does not kill them. It sends them into a down-but-not-out state that requires them to finished off (it’s easier said than done in a crowded battlefield). This coupled with the fact that any player can resurrect downed teammates makes for frantic, fast paced fights.

GW2 is accessible and oozing with great content. There are so many things to do and so many systems at work that you’ll have your hands full in terms of substance. It’s fun both in short 20 minute bursts or in epic five hour sessions. That’s one of the game’s great achievements. It always makes you feel that you’ve accomplished something even if you haven’t invested a lot of time. For a $60 one-time fee, the value inherent in this game is LUDACRIS. The way the game liberates players and creates a laid-back cooperative atmosphere is one of its greatest accomplishments. It’s just incredibly enjoyable to go out in the world and experience the game. This is a game designed around you. It wants you to venture out and enjoy yourself and it provides you with all of the tools to do so. If you have even the slightest interest in MMO’s or RPG’s, don’t pass this one up.