Guild Wars 2 shoots to redefine both massive and Multiplayer

If you self-identify as an MMO-head, you will no doubt recognise a number of your own unique behavioural traits. An urge to shout “Ding!” on your birthday, noticing dungeon acronyms in every car license plate, and possessing some degree of knowledge regarding ArenaNet’s Guild Wars.

Originally released in 2005, the original game series still boasts a thriving player base and has numerous accolades under its belt. For this reason it may come as a surprise that Guild Wars 2 has been in development for over four years. Throughout this time, both ardent fans and enquiring newbies have been fed piecemeal information about the game, and the level of hype and adoration has skyrocketed.

So what claims can Guild Wars 2 make to distinguish itself from the MMO competition? Well, like its predecessor, it follows a single-payment buy scheme. This means that once you have bought the box, there is absolutely no subscription fee. Superficially this seems like a fairly shallow bonus in that you’ll shell out less money each month. But the ‘boons’ of this system run much deeper. ArenaNet don’t need you to play their game for an extended amount of time to make more money.

Their entire ethos shifts away from long, arduous grinds and towards more rapid, viscerally gratifying gameplay. Unlike the original Guild Wars, however, the game is set in a persistent world – you will always be surrounded by other real world players (for better and for worse).

Now I hope you’re sitting down, because this is a shocker; Guild Wars 2 doesn’t do quests. Heresy! you cry. ArenaNet have chosen a somewhat more interesting variant on this tired system called dynamic events. While the concept isn’t entirely novel (Trion’s Rift earlier this year utilised something similar with their eponymous, region-wide ‘rift system’), it greatly promotes player exploration.

Events occur naturally across the world for you to dive into – once you step up to some scene of action, a list of ‘objectives’ appear for you to contribute to. Success or failure will trigger a logical consequence in the persistent world; if you successfully defend a village from some marauding centaurs, you may then be asked to gather some material for village repairs.

If you failed, however, you might be asked to go to another town to recruit some help to recapture the settlement. In Guild Wars 2, you are not expected to just feel like ‘another player’. As the impressive manifesto trailer underlines, your actions will have a very visible effect on the world. They want you to be the hero.

ArenaNet also want to take a destructive swipe at set class expectations. They have explicitly done away with ‘the holy trinity’ of the MMO; there are no longer any dedicated ‘tanks’ or ‘healers’. Guild Wars 2 instead opts for a very fluid triad of damage, control and support roles, which each class can dip in and out of on the fly. Everyone comes with their own, unique selection of self-healing skills which will be the only reliable way of staying alive.

Furthermore, no individual can just stand around and take a beating from a group of enemies or a grand-scale boss. Dodging, positioning and mitigation are absolutely vital. Most skills cannot be directly targeted, but they all can be cast while moving. In this way it aspires to do away with the combat conventions of most MMORPG’s; rhythmic sequence mashing, popping potions and staring at the same health bars. Instead we are treated to action-centric, environmentally-aware, twitch based combat more reminiscent of single-player adventure games.

When talking about any MMORPG, it is impossible not to draw comparisons with Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. It has entirely dominated the PC market and its success is sonorous in its permeation into almost every facet of popular culture.

It does its job well, and doubtlessly developers hoping to have a hit in the genre tend to tread on ground already broken, sometimes with a spattering of unique selling points – new settings, a singular new mechanic, new class structures and the like. But nothing has ever stolen WoW’s legendary, orange-text crown.

Superficially, Guild Wars 2 may appear just another clone. Looking through videos you will see the typical fantastical plant-like anthropods firing arrows at a spell-casting werecat. But I believe ArenaNet have jumped feet first into a huge project, with sword and spear aimed aggressively at the old way of the MMO. The systems and mechanics they have employed truly appear invigorative, and those which it cannot help but borrow from its imperious forebears have undergone extensive polishing.

With closed beta set to open before the year rounds off, we will have to wait to see if Guild Wars 2 will herald the ‘next generation’ of the MMORPG. Either way, I feel confident we can expect something decidedly massive.