Hands On: Guild Wars
The cost of online gaming could change when Guild Wars debuts!
Tags: Guild Wars Categories: PC Previews, Previews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Nov 9th, 2004
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Ever since the debut of EverQuest, one of the first, the concept of massively-online multiplayer RPGs (MOM-RPGs) have grown in popularity. But at the same time, a series of problems has also grown up over time and – by and large – never been addressed. But now, with the pending debut of Guild Wars, the folks at NCSoft and ArenaNet hope to change that.
According to their press releases, Guild Wars is similar to many current MOM-RPGs, but offers several major and important differences. First and foremost, Guild Wars will have a retail price for the product itself, but unlike most MOM-RPGs, Guild Wars will not feature a monthly fee in order to play. Instead, Guild Wars will offer periodic “chapter releases” that will add to the online world of Guild Wars, for about the cost of most other games’ expansion packs; the purchase of these new chapters won’t be required, but will add to the game experience, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that the purchase of new chapters will be voluntary. That means if you purchase Guild Wars but no further chapters (though why you wouldn’t want to periodically enhance the game is a bit puzzling), you could, in theory, play Guild Wars for as long as it remains a viable online game without ever dishing up one more penny.
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For casual online gamers, this is a revelation; traditional MOM-RPGs that require monthly fees may pad developers’ pockets, but make such games imposing for the more casual gamer; for example, a casual gamer might play for 20-40 hours in the first month of owning a new MOM-RPG, then settle into a more casual pace of maybe two to five hours a month as they spend time with family, try other games, etc. And yet, whether you play 40 hours or four hours per month, you’re still paying that same monthly fee. That’s why so many MOM-RPGs suffer from transient populations of gamers; a few hardcore gamers stick around and get their $12 worth and then some of gaming every month, but many gamers will cancel their accounts within the first year, sometimes within the first six months, because of the ongoing fee in relation to how often they play.
Guild Wars changes all that; in theory, the expansion packs will be enticing enough to encourage ongoing purchases and therefore profit for NCSoft and ArenaNet, but the lack of a monthly fee will encourage casual online gamers to not cancel their accounts due to infrequent use. It’s a smart idea, and hopefully it works out financially for NCSoft, so that other MOM-RPG developers fall in line.
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Another difference between most MOM-RPGs and Guild Wars is how the game is structured; most MOM-RPGs offer persistent worlds where everyone plays on the same “field.” However, that has led to a series of problems, such as “camping,” “kill-stealing,” and long lines to complete quests. To address this problem, Guild Wars is structured so that each party that forms and takes on a mission, in essence, gets their own “copy” of that quest map. They play through the mission, but without the hassle of having other parties lined up to complete the mission, without having other parties come in and finish off that 2,000-hp level boss you’ve been battling for the past 10 minutes, stealing the XP and treasure for themselves, and without the clutter of other parties not currently online cluttering up the map.
Yet another major difference between Guild Wars and most MOM-RPGs is that most MOM-RPGs only fix problems through large, periodic patch releases; in contrast, NCSoft and ArenaNet are promising a “streaming” technology that downloads fixes as they’re solved by the development team, as you play. If it works, it could eliminate a lot of hassle. And the differences still don’t end there!
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Another major difference is that Guild Wars is structured to enable several different styles of play: if you don’t have the friends or the patience to make friends in order to form a party, you can form a party of “stock” characters and play through some missions as a single-player experience. This is handy, especially once the game has been out for a while; if you come into an established MOM-RPG as a new, level 1 character, it can be hard to find many people who want “your puny level 1 sorcerer” slowing down their “level 50 and above” party. Adding in this solo option allows you to level up your character so that you can eventually be powerful enough to be considered a valuable potential party-member. The game also offers the options of multiplayer party-based missions, massive guild-based mission play, and competitive guild play. There are many more options than most MOM-RPGs offer, which has caused NCSoft to offer a new terminology for the vastly re-thought genre that Guild Wars represents. “We prefer to call Guild Wars a competitive online RPG,” their FAQ declares. So call it a CO-RPG.
DEN took part in the Free World Preview Event over the Halloween Weekend, a kind of pre-beta kickoff to draw interest in the game, and here are this previewer’s impressions.
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First of all, Guild Wars does live up to its billing as a top-notch game from a graphic perspective; the look of the game is on par with the best current offline PC RPGs, comparing favorably to Temple of Elemental Evil, Dungeon Siege, Gothic II, Sacred and others. There’s plenty of detail, large environments and great-looking, large characters that hold up well when the camera zooms in. What is impressive is that Guild Wars pulls this off while requiring only an 800 MHz to 1 GHz processor speed, and the whole thing still runs smoothly, even if all you have is a 56K dialup connection, a step sure to make the game friendlier to non-broadband customers, which is still the vast majority of internet users. The game looked sharp, sharp, sharp!
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The World Free Preview Event was fun, but held back by lengthy downloads, considering that not only did one need to download the client software, a slim package under 5 MB in size, but each time you leave one zone and enter another, you needed to download another five to 20 MBs. This limited how much gaming one could do in a three-day weekend, since much of the time was spent downloading new areas – especially heinous on a 56K connection. Still, this is a problem that will mostly disappear once the retail version hits shelves, which is roughly expected to happen in February 2005. The retail package will contain all the graphics for all areas that are part of the initial release, so those massive downloads will not be part of the final retail product and the background streaming will take care of bug fixes in the background while you play, rather than clogging you up before the game begins, as was typical during the preview event.
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Even without the benefit of documentation, Guild Wars is fairly easy to play for anyone who has played recent PC RPGs, such as Neverwinter Nights or Morrowind. There are some subtleties to the controls, to be sure, that could benefit from documentation, but you should be able to figure out most things through a little trial and error. The game is played with common areas and mission areas; common areas are shared by all players and are where you can join guilds, stock up on items, train, meet others to form parties and receive missions. Mission areas are identical but unique to each party that goes on them. In the missions this reviewer played during the preview event, the structure of Guild Wars seemed sound, with the typical mission taking anywhere from 20-40 minutes to play through, depending on the size and skill of a party. There is plenty of storyline to add to the experience, giving Guild Wars a feel more familiar to console RPGs than the typical MOM-RPG on PC. At the time this reviewer played, there were plenty of online players playing that you could try to form a party with, but few seemed willing, preferring to explore the game on their own; that should change once the downloading of areas issue is solved by the retail release. Thankfully, you can form an effective party from NPC stock characters and go through as a solo adventurer, a welcome way to get straight to the gaming itself if you don’t have a bunch of friends who have the same leisure time schedule as you.
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Some oversights, naturally, still exist; when I played, there was no evidence of a “Save Game” option in any menu, which meant trusting that quitting the game would result in no loss of progress; presumably, this will be fixed by the time the final retail version ships. Other bugs also seemed to be indicative of the pre-beta status of the game during the preview weekend; the ability to equip and upgrade NPC party members was absent when you’re on solo adventures; NPC party members level up, but I found no easy way to apply their upgrade points the same way I could to my own character. And one problem with being a solo adventurer is that if you run out of room for items, it seems you’re the only member of your party who can carry anything, which if it continues that way would mean making far-more frequent visits back to town to sell off treasure and items you don’t need.
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Still, these are small issues for a piece of software that hasn’t even entered beta, yet. The game ran smoothly on my 2.08 GHz Athlon XP-based PC with a 64MB GeForce 4FX graphics card, despite playing on only a dialup connection; the game should be even smoother for broadband gamers. While some interface issues have to be addressed before retail release, Guild Wars looks quite promising at this point. We at DEN are rooting for this one, since it could radically change the pricing strategy of online gaming, if it becomes successful! We’ll be watching!
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Tags: Guild Wars
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Nov 9th, 2004 and is filed under PC Previews, Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
