Hat tip to Syp:
ArenaNet talks about the design manifesto behind Guild Wars 2.
I’m looking forward to this one, and I love this quote:
It all gets back to our basic design philosophy. Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward. Our games are designed to be fun from moment to moment.
Imagine that. (…and then weep a little for a sector of the game industry where such a design ethos is atypical.)
I keep my fingers crossed for ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2.
I die every time we fall back into the inglorious past of MMO design and get served yet another DIKU MUD derivate.
People love the old stuff by far too much! Time for Guild Wars 2 to shake up the market!
I love that sentiment and, even though I still get nostalgic over the old days, I champion the idea of casual and accessible MMO gameplay. The problem we face at the moment is the rift between “hardcore” and “casual” players and the stigmas that exist with each.
Like I said there though, is this true now?
I’m going to try it out and see when I get the cash.
That quote was my almost immediate impression of Guild Wars, when I started playing slightly over a year ago. =)
Fell in love with it, lock stock and barrel.
That being said… I don’t have very high hopes for sequels where games are concerned.
I don’t really like the general path ANet seemed to be moving down with Nightfall and Eye of the North. I love heroes, but not how they seem to be going for more grind. I realise that on some level, people want grind.
But the thing is, although grind can be relaxing (indeed it can!), I don’t like grind-linked-to-getting-something-even-if-it’s-just-a-title grind. (Not sure if that made any sense.)
However, ANet has certainly done better (in my puny opinion anyway) with Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North, than Blizzard did with the Burning Crusade.
The sheer disappointment I felt with TBC was, I think, a huge factor to my quitting when WotLK came out.
Another meh-ugh sequel game that comes to mind is Sacred 2. Sacred 1/Gold was such an amazing game that I really loved – and still do love. Sacred 2 is… more beautiful. And less everything else. Including fun – and I’m not the only one with the opinion.
TL;DR version:
I really hope GW2 is at least as good as GW. Because if it’s inferior to GW, a little bit more of my nuggetty gamer heart will crumble into dust. I also studiously avoid all GW2 articles, because I a) Never really cared to follow this kind of hype anyway – it’s not just GW, and b) I really, really don’t want to be horribly disappointed.