Guild Wars: Preview - Guild Wars Beta Event

Nearly 3 years ago, NCSoft showed me a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) in production that was to have no monthly fees. Blasphemy! Quests were to be repeatable but would change each time you did them. Impossible! And it was beautiful to look at. What are they thinking?! The game was Guild Wars and (at that time) was not yet a blip on the radar. Since then, its development has accelerated to the point that at the 2004 E3, there was a worldwide beta "showoff". Guild Wars has come a long way - and just this past weekend, I was able to experience a little of where it's going.

For those who haven't been following its development, Guild Wars (GW) hopes to break the traditional mold of both how MMOGs are designed but also how you pay for them. The latter is interesting to those of us with smaller pocket books and also limited time to experience content: the current plan is for the game to be free after purchase. You buy expansions once available when you are ready to move on. The former takes a bit more explaining.

Traditionally, MMOGS have been a group of players with a set of skills determined either by their profession or developed individually into a set of strengths and weaknesses. Players then form groups - hopefully complementing each other - and hunt the land ridding it of evil (or being evil themselves) and completing quests or missions. GW has taken the approach of limiting the skills you can use at any time. A player can learn some 150 skills but can only access 8 during play without going to a city to change skills. This has the advantage of not overpowering a group or any particular individual within the group and also of "forcing" the players to work as a team. For those who find this silly, realize that many skills require components, supplies or reagents and the simple fact is you can't carry your house on your back. So, knowing that you'll be questing against fire-based enemies it would make no sense to carry supplies for aggressive fire attacks.

Another seldom-used feature of MMOGs is dynamic quests - quests that are not static, but change each time you do them either randomly or based upon any number of criteria. It's been hinted that previously completed quests and the skills of the party will help determine exactly what the quest will be. Do you save the girl? Do you save the girl but find her a willing captive? Do you save the girl only to find that she was no more than a pawn in a larger overall picture? Do you save the girl to find she's a duck? "grins"

This weekend, as reported in an exclusive interview on IGN, (http://pc.ign.com/articles/578/578286p1.html?fromint=1) players were to be given a taste of what will help to serve to ensure that the players don't feel as if they're playing 6 months of the same content while waiting for a new expansion - dynamic environments. To explain dynamic environments it becomes necessary to take a step back and explain instanced locations. An instanced dungeon, city, location, etc. is one that is generated specifically for that individual or group. No other players will be available to help or to hinder. This reduces "quest camping" - long lines waiting for the reward; "quest jumping" - where someone takes the reward you spent so long waiting for; and "empty quests" - you do the quest, but you're following so closely to those in front of you that someone else has just come up the road and triggered your quest or killed your spawn. With instancing, the dungeon/tower/city is yours. Finally, instancing, when used properly can greatly reduce lag. GW has done a fantastic job of using this in cities. There may be 20 instances of a single city. At first, this seems to be inconvenient - what if my friends are in at instance 9 and 14 and the person I need to trade with is at instance 2? GW has made it possible for you to switch to the location you need to through the use of something as simple as a drop down menu.

When you take into account the idea that your questing experiences are based on your previous acts (and those of your party) and instanced locations you'll find that the developers have given themselves a wonderful tool - the ability to make each instance of each location tailored to the party. A very basic example (using completely made up monsters) could be: all 4 of your party members have completed a quest that rids the world of a waddling platypus. They were rampaging towns and causing mayhem and each of you, at some point individually, completed the requirements to rid the land of said platypus. The quest you have gathered together for now is going to take you to a great wall to place a standard upon the wall as a beacon for allies - but this area is known for being the breeding ground for the platypus. Yet, all four of you have rid the world of them, therefore, you will not see them on your quest. The group next to you has only had 2 players rid the world of them, so they will see them, but the volume experienced won't be nearly that of the 3rd group where no one has beat back the ferocious platypus.

While this is a silly example, if you consider the volume of possibilities and the enormity of differences in gameplay for each player is mind-blowing. You could be talking to an NPC that sells a much-wanted but rare item yet the player standing next to you sees a potted plant. And what you see as a desert could be a hill covered with blooming flowers for another. Add together the combined experiences of a group and it is simply a staggering tool.

Unfortunately, I can't report to you my opinion of how well this worked this weekend. It wasn't until late Saturday that I came across the IGN article and, to be blunt, the quests were wickedly difficult. I played some 17 hours over the three days and it took 6 tries to finish part 1 of a single quest. Therefore, I wasn't able to complete anything to the point of making change in the world. But, if it works as intended I very much look forward to it.

The second item being tested this weekend was a new User Interface (UI). Having not experienced the previous interface I can give no comparison but I can say that I found this one to be rather simple and generally intuitive. Nearly everything can be hot-keyed and customized to your own comfort. After playing MANY MMOGs I look for this immediately. *Hint to Arena.net - Make key bindings that default to the key settings of other games and your players will love you. I did find not having a help system to be a bit of a hindrance. There were times I wanted to understand better what exactly a function did, but as it is a beta, I'm assuming the help files simply aren't yet available.

Changing your system settings is simple. There are tick boxes and slider bars. Nearly everything had a basic mouse-over description - though as I stated a help function would have made things somewhat simpler. The paper doll was very easy to use. The slots for armor and weapons were easy to recognize; experience earned was obvious - though I'd have liked to know how much more I needed for the next level; and one of my favorite features was the ability to hotkey up to 4 separate "outfits". By this I don't necessarily mean just my armor, but also my weapons, jewelry, etc. Because GW is played as a dual profession game it made it very simple to switch from being a leading ranger in a group to a support monk. I spent a LOT of time as a monk so I really grew to appreciate this ease of use.

The UI for the chat system I'm mixed about. When not in "active" mode you have no window, just public text that scrolls - about 6-7 lines max. When in active mode - meaning you have tabs for public chat, guild chat, group chat and whisper - the transparency disappeared. I couldn't find a way to resize the window either. And, although I understand the appeal of tabbed chat it simply isn't good for building community. The simple fact is, if I'm in a private chat window with someone I'm going to ignore the public chat window - that includes all cries for help and questions regarding the game. This is bad for n00bs and experienced players alike and leads to an awful lot of whispering to players that are afk. That being said, I found no bugs with the chat system and it was very simple to use.

Finally, I'd like to speak about the group-building feature (for lack of a better term). This is when you've taken on a quest and then go to a staging area where you prepare for your quest. In this weekend's event, the main quest was one to determine what was happening on the Northern Wall (it continued from there but after 6 tries to finish part one I never made it any farther). While in this staging area you see above the head of each player their 2 professions and current level. I played a Ranger/Monk. Upon my last entry into this quest I was level 4, so above my head it said R/Mo4. As a quest leader this is invaluable in building the team you need. You might also see an icon of a person with a number 1-4 above it. This indicated that this person is a quest leader and has "x" number of people in his/her group. From here two things can happen. The leader, knowing the type of professions in her group can look for a player with the profession and level to balance her team and then send them an invitation to join. He/She would simply click on them and then click invite. Or, should you see that this person might be someone you'd like to join you can do the same - click on the quest leader and ask to join. In both cases there is the option to accept or decline. Finally, there is one last chance to do any needed shopping and when ready, the quest leader will take you to your instanced quest.

I've purposefully avoided gameplay and game design because this IS a beta and I'd like to spend more time before I form a more complete opinion of the game itself. I do have to say this, though. This is not a dial-up friendly game. When moving from area to area, I often had to download 12-15mb location patches. Then, once entering I would continue to stream data - as much as 5mb more. This is a LOT of data for someone on dial-up so if you are, be wary of disconnects.

Guild Wars has changed much since I first saw it - well, I've actually got something to see now! The beta preview events are yet another unique idea that Arena.net has used to get the word out. This weekend I felt was a success in showcasing their UI and quest system and only wish I'd had the opportunity to see the dynamic environment. Perhaps in February. And perhaps I can talk a little bit about the game then, too, as it grows nearer completion.