Guild Wars 2: Wants to beat World of Warcraft

 First a little history that some people might not know, Mike O'Brien the founder of ArenaNet, started this company in 2000 after leaving Blizzard(interesting isn't it?). Initially ArenaNet was called TriForge until it was acquired by NCsoft two years later.

 After the success of the first Guild Wars they are back in full force.

"Guild Wars beat all of our expectations and our company grew as we put out four expansions and we came together as a team and learned how to build content," - Mike O'Brien

 After years of waiting Guild Wars 2 is finally at the door, and their aim has changed since the first one. They are no longer content with surviving the MMO market, no longer will they remain in WoW's shadow.

"We’re in it to win it this time,...We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO. I think we have something unique here and players are going to see it and understand why dynamic events are a way better content model than people have experienced before in online worlds. Word-of-mouth will get people to understand that we really are doing something new and different. The sky’s the limit once this game is out. Online worlds have a networking effect. People will bring friends to Guild Wars 2. We hope all the people who play the beta weekend will tell their friends about it." - Mike O'Brien

 It is indeed a bold claim but Guild Wars 2 certainly does have the capability for it, however he tried to soften the "WoW-killer" slogan by saying:

"Nothing is going to kill WoW other than WoW. Games just don’t die...One MMO has been on the top of the heap for seven years now, but there’s been a progression in the industry for other games being able to attract more and more players. And we’re set to climb to the top."

 Now with only 2 days away from open-beta(on the 27th), it is time for us to be the judge. Will it meet out expectations? I'm sure it be great but we shouldn't raise our expectation to be too high, after all no game is perfect which is why most of us hop from game searching for one we can call home.

On a side note, its interesting how the game is coming out on the year of the dragon, with the dragon being the main theme of GW2 and how the open beta opens in weeked as the 7th year anniversary of the first GW.

 I'm trying to setup a live stream in http://www.twitch.tv/sive0n, hopefully i will be able to play the game while recording with my outdated CPU, though they have announced in the forum that GW2 is currently using more CPU than the Graphics card, which will more than likely be a bad thing in my case.

Read more »

Guild Wars 2: what is it worth to you?

  We already know how much Guild Wars 2 will cost, they have announced that it will have the same standard cost of a regular game where we live and with no monthly cost. This is the reason why games cost $60 in the USA cost €60 in Europe and a lot of people complain about this, it's not because of shipping costs like most have said, if that was truly the case then a digital version would not have the same 1-to-1 ratio conversion.

  Back on topic, when we pay for a game regardless of the genre or if its Console/PC game we are paying for entertainment and/or stress release. So the game's worth depends not only on how much fun it is to you obviously, but it also depends on why we play, how we play the game and how much time we spend doing it.

  One thing i like to do when I'm angry or frustrated is PvP, and I think the 5v5 PvP in Guild Wars 2 will be great for this. The lobby style quick-join is great when you don't have the patience to do anything else, and the lack of an annoying healer that "fully heals players when their are about to die" will do wonders for my sanity.
 
  So just turn off your brain, go completely Hulk and smash some skulls, preferably with some music. Its like that feeling you get when you are really fatigued and you hit the shower, but for the brain.
  Entertainment is the most common reason to play games, just like going to an art gallery, watching TV/movie, listening to music or reading a book is a form of personal entertainment as they provide a way for you to have fun, in fact games nowadays such as Guild Wars 2 are all that and more.

  In Guild Wars 2 we have amazingly beautiful scenarios which were literally hand painted, the sound is a masterpiece giving that additional boost we need to be fully immersed into the game, the music itself is nothing short of epic and it conveys the right feeling according to the zone you are in, the lore in the world of Tyria is vast, and the ability to create your own personal story through the choices you make will be even more exciting than reading a book.

   With every thing we talked so far, all that's left to talk about is the amount of time we spend playing and the amount of content the game offers. If we look at an average game which has the same cost at release as Guild Wars 2, more than likely it will have less than 8h of gameplay and an additional 50h assuming it even has multiplayer, which will more then likely be limited to small maps with a few players and will get boring soon enough.

  If all Guild Wars 2 needs to do is provide 60+ hours of entertainment to have a similar worth to other games, then that's a walk in the park for GW2, not only will it provide with at least several hundred hours of gameplay, it will do so with a massive community,  official PvP tournaments, an engaging story, difficult challenges and a world that will make you wish you could do like in TRON and digitalise yourself into it.

So how much would you pay for all this? is it worth the current price?

Read more »