Guild Wars Preview

“Our belief is if you have 10 minutes before dinner, you should be able to get into a game and have 10 minutes of fun,” said Jeff Strain of the ArenaNet Guild Wars team. 

Strain was in the NCsoft booth promoting one of the next massively multiplayer online role-playing games for the Texas MMP publisher at E3 in Los Angeles Friday. 

Guild Wars takes place in a time after a once-proud kingdom has fallen. It is a time when new warriors are challenging to lead bands of like-minded individuals to the promised land. But challenges await along the way.  

ArenaNet, developers of the game, have taken a good long look at MMPs and have determined that what is out at the moment does not truly satisfy what players want. To accomplish that, they are taking some new directions with Guild Wars. For example, there will be no monthly fee for the game. Gamers can purchase the product and play on the servers free. When the next chapter comes out, players can purchase that as well, but the game will not require that gamers purchase successive expansions to enjoy the game.  

“Guild Wars is also pushing on removing the grind in MMOs,” Strain said. “We are charting new territory. This is a unique combination of game elements.” 

When a player undertakes a mission, he or she will be able to select the skills they wish to take into the mission. It is about how you use that skill that matters the most. Consider the skills akin to cards from the Magic: The Gathering. Each card (or skill in this instance) gives certain skills that players can incorporate. How does one train up a skill? 

“You don’t,” said Strain, “you find them.” 

This is a game that is about tactical combat. There is no player crafting and mobs will drop items that it may be wearing. Each mission in the game has a staging area, so getting into a party for accomplishing a mission will be easy. Instanced missions have persistent affects. If you have a mission and kill mobs or destroyed elements within the game, should you not finish and return to that area, the environment will be as you left it. 

While there is no crafting, the game does allow a player to change the color of the armor that character is wearing through dyeing. Again this is straightforward and easy to do, and preliminary reports indicate that the robust economy scene is being driven by players looking for dye.  

The game also features PvP, whether at the one-on-one area or of up to 24-versus-24. When the game ships, there will be 7-8 regions as well as a good variety of missions. If a player dies during a mission or in combat (there is a full-time tournament), there is no experience-point loss. Instead there is an in-mission penalty on attributes, but once you leave the mission, you are bounced back to full skill. 

As for server stability, the folks who have built this game were responsible for the Battle.net system for Blizzard.  

Guild Wars features strong graphics and a solid idea that will benefit the casual player and challenge the hardcore gamer as well.

For All E3 2004 Previews