Gaming: When Guild Wars 2 disappoints

I've tried to write this post a number of times in order to express my disappointment in and frustration with the new "Feature Pack" that Guild Wars 2 released on April 15, 2014. It's taken me nine days to personally digest the monumental game changes, sort through public opinion of them, and boil it all down into something that makes sense to me.

Then I realized that through out the whole process one important question remained unanswered. "Why?" Why did the development team at ArenaNet feel these changes had to be made? Sure, they gave a myriad of reasons in the teaser articles they shared under the guise of keeping us informed. Those reasons ranged from the typical need to balance the game to untypical need to keep our armor from clipping during combat. In fact, pre-release the game developers seemed very free with information, as if they wanted us to understand what was going to happen to the game. Looking back now, I see that those articles are full of just enough of the right kind of information to head off a pre-release revolt.

I have eight characters. Seven of them are below the maximum level of 80. Thanks to the reengineering of traits, I now have no desire to level them the rest of the way to 80. My sense of progression, my sense of accomplishment, has been completely wiped out. If I wanted to grind levels, I'd go back to Lineage II! The really sad thing is, though, that when I heard about having to hunt grandmaster traits in the open world a la the original Guild Wars, I was very excited. I loved the thrill of finding the boss, killing it, and taking it's elite skill for my own. How much fun would it be to do that in Guild Wars 2? Well, not much, to be honest. Join a zerg (if you're lucky enough to be on at event's scheduled time - because everything's scheduled now), auto-attack, and go get a snack. No thrill. No excitement. Whooo, you got the grandmaster trait. Whoopee. Pretty soon I'll be able to face-roll the keyboard and win the game!

One group this "Feature Pack" has shined a lot of light on are the role players. I'm not a role player myself but I feel for them and the fact that their communities, and role playing in the game in general, have been shredded by the institution of the mega-servers. Not only are they are being trolled (sometimes rather rudely, too), but they've lost the ability to tell the stories they want, how they want, when they want, and with whom they want. They can't meet up with friends or guild mates to role play because the mega-server has spread them across various shards with no way to sync up except to log in and out repeatedly. Even then there is no guarantee they'll all make it to the same shard.

I'm not even going to go into the new wardrobe, dye, transmutation, and town clothes fiasco except to ask, "Why?"

Why, ArenaNet? What was the thinking behind the redesign of these game systems? As professionals, you should know that to take away a player's sense of progression in a game is a huge, HUGE, no-no. You should also know that messing with the cosmetic elements of the game is also a huge no-no. As an aspiring game and narrative designer, I'd love to know what the thought process was behind these changes.

As an avid player that loves Guild Wars 2, I'd love to see these changes rolled back. Please. Give back my reason to pla

Gaming: Interview with Angel Leigh McCoy of ArenaNet

Recently, I had the fantastic opportunity to interview Angel Leigh McCoy, a narrative designer at ArenaNet, who is currently working on Guild Wars 2. She has written about the Asurans and helped develop the new Sylvari race. Outside of ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 she is the head editor of WilyWriters.com and a published author with a penchant for horror and dark fantasy.

Follow me behind the cut for the interview and a look into how art influences games and game writing!

Guild Wars 6th Anniversary

I was excited to see that it was Guild Wars 6th anniversary celebration this weekend. I love that game. In fact, it's my favorite MMO of all time. So, I signed on last night looking forward to some anniversary fun. Sadly, it was not to be had.

First of all I looked through my many toons to see if any of them had a birthday gift. Only my little monk had so I eagerly clicked on it and got a Palawa Joko mini-pet. Not bad for a 2nd year birthday gift. I quickly stuffed it in my Xunlai Chest and logged into my main character, a wammo named Proper Jack. I made a quick trip to the Eye of the North and dedicated the mini-pet at her shrine. She gets all the good stuff.

Next I took her to the Shing Jea Monastery where the anniversary celebration was taking place. This is where the disappointment set in. They had the usual Shing Jea Boardwalk games going which are essentially pay-for-title-points events. I didn't want to take part in them because I'm trying to save up for an elite armor set for Jack.

So, I decided to try the roller beetle racing. It was fun the first 3 or 4 times around the track. Then boredom set in because the track never varied. The skills never varied. The mystery boxes set along the track only contained power-ups and no other prizes. Setting boredom aside,  I raced enough to get 5 of the victory tokens. This is quite a feat for me since I'm rather bad at racing but I wanted to get at least a small prize. Turned out I wasn't even able to get the smallest prize because they cost 10 victory tokens.There was no way I was going to race enough to get 5 more tokens. It just wasn't fun enough for me. So, I gave my tokens to my husband and he got a Flask of Firewater with them. All of that for a +3 to his Drunkard  title.

While I am disappointed that the 6th Anniversary celebration wasn't better I do know why. They are focusing their energy on Guild Wars 2 and that is perfectly acceptable to me. I'm very excited about Guild Wars 2 and thoughts of it soothed my disappointment away. I can't wait to make an Asuran. Hopefully there will be a Golem-mancer profession for them. That would totally ROCK.