I don’t know if my thoughts on the subject really count, but hopefully they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. See, I’m not actually an avid mmo player, but rather an avid mmo attempter (that made sense right?). Over the years I’ve tried very hard to find an mmo that is right for me. It’s the vastness of an explorable world that fascinated me with the genre. But I’ve come the conclusion the norms and standards of the genre I can’t get along with. Leading me to think that I actually dislike mmos. My brother and I both have never enjoyed the grindy, limited, and constricted nature of the genre. This is why we’ve been absolutely die hard Guild Wars fans ever since Factions (where we discovered the franchise). The Guild Wars franchise has always been the anti-mmo. Doing many things against what was the norm, the granted, and the given of traditional mmos. Tera was the very first mmo I decided to give a serious shot at playing (I’ve tried many big name mmos). I gave it a good try, but eventually for the better enjoyment of my life I decided to give up on it, and any other future mmos, because they just do so many things that I find not enjoyable. I could probably write a 5,000 word post on all of the reasons I’ve been in love with the GW franchise for these many years, but I’ll try my best to summarize. Beware, wall of text incoming.
A really big part of it was instanced, and balanced structured pvp. I relate to pvp the way a cat relates to socialization – I want to pvp when I feel like it, and not be forced to when I’m not in the mood. I don’t enjoy open-world pvp in my pve world. There’s nothing wrong with people who do, but I just personally want to play the game at my own pace, in my own way.
The next big reason is I hate mandatory grind, which every other mmo seems to be bursting from the seams with. GW never had mandatory grind. Original GW max level was 20, and that certainly wasn’t the point of the pve experience. GW2 max level is 80, but they removed the exponential xp requirement in the leveling process. Each level after I think it’s 15 (not sure) takes about the same amount of time. I define grind as a bad “time spent playing vs personal progress and/or enjoyment” ratio. Now, before anyone calls me out for being some impatient person who wants instant satisfaction let me remind you – it’s just a GAME. Games are meant to be fun. If you’re not having fun, then stop playing, it’s really that simple. Everybody has games they don’t enjoy, so it’s not like I’m some evil product of today’s society.
For those people who enjoy having a long term-goal, there was always COSMETIC things you could go for. Titles, pretty armours, shiny weapons, etc. But NEVER a stat advantage. And that’s how I view prestige. I think it’s really important for people to have a long-term goal, and to have something to show for their time spent playing the game, but that long-term goal should never give you a stat advantage. If you’ve played the game a really long time, you’re going to understand it a lot better than a new guy. That is what gives you the upper hand. Skill should always trump math in my opinion. That being said, I’ve always been against invisibility in pvp. I think it’s stupid, and if you do allow it in pvp, then everyone needs a reasonable way to counter it, or be able to see them. When they announced that GW2 was going to have it (original GW didn’t), I was very, very saddened that they chose that route, but I can honestly say that it is the only thing I dislike about GW2’s design. That’s it. I’m not going to throw out the whole pizza just because I don’t like olives.
Earlier I mentioned that my brother and I find mmo’s limiting, and constricted. What I mean by this is party composition. I don’t like the dps,heal,tank trinity. It puts up very solid boundaries in who, and what you can play with. GW2 allows all of my friends and family to play the class they want to, and not be forced to pick something else because “Oh, sorry Tom, but you’re going to have to play a dps because we already have a healer.” We all find it frustrating trying to co-ordinate who can or can’t play what. We all just want to enjoy the game, but there’s this crazy frustrating barrier in the way.
Another reason I find mmos limiting is because of the nature of how leveling in rpgs works. You grow higher levels, and then you can’t play lower level content because you’ll one-shot everything. My friends and family have vastly different schedules, and there is simply no way that we could all find time to level a group at the same rate, at the same time. GW2’s level scaling system allows myself (who has a lot of free time) to continue to play the game and grow my character, and still be able to join up with my sister when she has a few spare hours to play here and there, even though I’m level 80, and she’s level 26. This is a freedom that most rpgs simply don’t have.
This last reason is probably the biggest one of all as to why I love the GW franchise – art, music, and the world. I have a deep love of art, music, and aesthetics. The first thing that grabs my attention to any game, regardless of genre, is its art style. I don’t mean realistic graphics vs non. It’s hard to explain, but the only thing I can think of calling it is art style, or aesthetics. For example, I think Crysis and WoW are both really great looking games. Crysis because of its crazy high-end graphics. But I like the way WoW looks (I find the game boring as hell, but I think it looks nice). It’s very clean, has a nice cartoony feel. It’s well done. So ya, I’m a huge fan of how GW2 looks. I’m also a huge sucker for orchestral music, and Jeremy Soule is my favourite composer. He’s done the music for almost all of my favourite games, and I love everything he makes. I guess I could throw in the fact that I also love the story and lore of the Guild Wars universe as well. I like learning about the history and background of fantasy worlds, whether it be GW, Halo, Star Wars, or The Hobbit.
So, in summary, I’ve been shamelessly in love with the Guild Wars universe ever since I found out about it. Before GW2 came out, every design or game aspect preview they would talk about would make me squee. I am dead serious that (aside from the invis in pvp) it’s truly as if AreanaNet designed a game specifically for me. If I wrote down a list of everything I wanted in an rpg, they checked off every single item on that list. I’m not saying any other mmos are bad, there’s nothing wrong with any of them. I’m just saying that GW2 is the perfect one for me. I took a break from GW2 to try out Tera because I wanted to give the traditional mmo format one last try, but in the end, I have definitively proven that they are simply not for me.