PAX Prime ’11: Guild Wars 2

In the beginning, there was Ultima Online. House theft was rampant and griefing was law. The internet saw that it was good.

Then came Everquest, which brought 3D models made from 12 polygons and box art featuring some elf chick wearing half a shirt. Much of the internet would not sleep for three days and three nights playing this crap. They saw that it was good.

And Everquest begat World of Warcraft, who begat more Chinese slave labor gold farming operations than the world had ever seen. And WoW also begat a porn parody and The Guild, which despite being on the internet, is not porn. But the internet saw that it was good anyway.

And that’s where we are now. There are dozens of major MMORPGs out on the market right now, but none of them have successfully broken from WoW’s mold. Settings and crafting systems may differ, but no developer has been able to make much of a splash without borrowing heavily from Blizzard’s design.

That might be about to change.

ArenaNet is pushing for some pretty radical changes to the standard MMORPG formula with Guild Wars 2. Actually, some of these changes are a big deal to RPGs in general.

First, no healer class. Other classes have buff and healing abilities built in, eliminating the need for a cleric/priest/etc. This does a few interesting things. No longer do parties need to drag along and protect a white robed liability in order to make it through an instance or dungeon crawl. It also stops those players from trying to lord over other party members, and eliminates a time honored scape goat for party wipes.

Next, no mana bar. No little blue circle next to your red circle telling you that you are too tired for magics, while some guy with a big hammer swings it at you without penalty 400 times in a row. The designers are eliminating it in favor of the cool down timer non-magic classes have for their abilities. Their explanation for the change is that the old system, at least in MMOs, only served as another timer certain classes had to deal with while others didn’t. They’re just eliminating it and doing the balancing in cool down timing and damage instead, like with normal abilities.

The third thing I think is a change for the better is the instances. Or raids. Or whatever they call them in your MMO of choice. The point is, many of them have a noticeable affect on the world. The example I saw started with pirate zombies storming a beach. If the players don’t beat them back, the invading hoard will eventually occupy the surrounding area, up to and including taking over some towns. But beat them back and it keeps them in check for a while. I’ve seen multi-stage events in games before, but not ones that can have lasting effects for everyone on the server.

Lastly, water combat and exploration. The designers made some really cool and expansive underwater areas, so to get players exploring them, they have written in that all players have the ability to breath underwater through magic/technology/reasons. I like a design choice made in favor of fun and exploration as opposed to “realism” in a game full of cat people and ghosts and zombies and dragons. I didn’t get to see a lot of underwater fighting, but there were some abilities designed for it, like weighing an enemy down to make them sink out of your way. Kind of a fun little twist on the usual freeze or bind spell.

It may not be reinventing the wheel, but it looks like it’s taking a hell of a lot bigger step forward than just tacking in another game’s dialog system.