Guild Wars 2 Hands-On Hot

 

Other recent MMO's have tried to change around the way things happen whilst we're doing those quests. Rift, for example, taunts you with the ever-present threat of enemies from another dimension suddently turning up and killing all your quest-giving NPCs. TERA, meanwhile, suggests that we shouldn't have to deal with targeting and auto-attacks, and that combat should be about action. The Old Republic, meanwhile, thinks that all the quests should be given to you in cutscenes.

 

Guild Wars 2 offers a different suggestion altogether: get rid of quests, at least in the sense most MMO gamers are used to. It's alternative? a world laden with quest regions, where turning up to a preset area and helping out - whether killing monsters, using objects, or gathering items - counts toward a tracker. Kill enough creatures, use enough objects and collect enough items and you get a reward of experience and some cash, delivered to you by in-game mail. Most follow the trypical MMO staples, but some are more inventive -one village in the Norn region of the Shiverpeaks has you entertaining children by throwing snowballs at them, and dodging ones they throw, for example.

 

Each area also has a series of events associated with it. This can occur at any time - much like Rift's invasions, there doesn't appear to be a set trigger - and are where the real fun begins. Events are like random Public Quests from Warhammer Online - taking place over several stages, and rewarding anyone who participates even partly. Some will have players escorting groups of NPCs, whether it's guarding a caravan travelling between towns or forming part of an assault on an enemy encampment. Some require players to hold off waves of attackers, others defeat a powerful monster, and so on; what makes them unique is that they have a (somewhat) lasting effect on the world. Joining an assault force will - on a successful vistory - result in a previously enemy-occupied area being taken over by friendly forces; at least until those enemies launch their own, event-controlled counterattack. Participating in events simply requires you to turn up; any contribution to the event, however minor, goes rewarded, and you don't need to form groups with other players to make the most of it either. 

 

In truth, the quest areas and events don't quite change things up as much as you might imagine. Whilst they do streamline the time-honoured 'wall of text' quest description problem, the basics are not radically changed: You turn up to a quest area, do what someone else tells you to, and get rewarded for doing so. It's considerably slicker and allows for more variety and co-operation with other players, but you're still, basically, doing the same things, just in a different way. 

 

So it's fortunate that Guild Wars 2 strives to be different in other ways, too. Foremost of these is in it's core mechanics, which take a fast, often brutal approach to combat. Like the first Guild Wars, there's no mana system, just a series of skills - the first 5 of which vary depending on the weapon you have equipped, with further customisable skill slots unlockable as you progress. Unlike Guild Wars, the second game has more traditional levelling systems (which goes up to 80) and equipment systems, but the combat has a very action-y twist. Damage is heavy and quick - your own attacks, whether fireballs conjured from a sceptre or swings of a sword - are lightning quick, and heavy use of positional tactics is a must - AoE spells have subtle radii drawn on the ground where they will take effect, and you have a dodge ability that is vital to master if you want to avoid heavy damage from attacks. It's not quite the demanding action of TERA, but it's close, and combat can be frenetic and fast-paced.

 

A particularly nice introduction is the 'personal story' system. You get to make a series of choices during character creation that involve your character's backstory. During the game these are referenced to create your own personal story which focuses around your chosen character and his or her history, though they have wider-ranging consequences too, such as deciding what part of the world you call home. It's a great way to add attachment to your character, as well as replayability to the game - I tried out two human storylines over the course of the weekend, (as well as a Charr and a Norn). One of my characters was a silk-tongued noble warrioress, who never knew her real parents; the other a street urchin who ran with a local gang and as a youngster dreamt of joining a circus. Despite both character starting out in Divinity's Reach, the human starting city, and both stories involving a group of local bandits, their tacts were quite different, and you're even given choices that affect which missions you'll play that have further-reaching story consequences. My noble, for example, plied guests at a minister's evening party for rumours and intelligence, but could instead have broken in to a manor to uncover information, whilst the street urchin fought to get his friend out of trouble with his old gang, and ultimately had to chose between saving the friend and saving hundreds of innocent people. Such choices don't come about so often as to feel forced, but often enough to make you feel in control of the saga. As you advance, the story slowly increases in scale, and takes you on a helpful journey across the world as it does so. 

 

There are niggles, though. Story missions are spaced so that the next mission is normally about 2 experience levels higher than the previous mission, which means you can't just follow the story through as you might want to - particularly because the missions aren't easy and currently can't be taken on by a group of players (though this seems to be due to a bug).  Compounding this is another problem: you don't always get enough experience from a quest area to advance to the next level, even though the next quest area is set a level higher. Since you can't re-play completed quests, you often have to make up the experience shortfall in different ways. Some of this can be alleviated through taking on Events and by exploration - Guild Wars 2 offers generous rewards for visiting new locations and teases you with often demanding skill challenge icons on the map. Some can be alleviated just by switching to a different weapon and killing some enemies of roughly the same level - each weapon has five associated skills, and all but the first must be unlocked by defeating foes; this adds a great deal of variety to each of the game's eight classes; a hunter with a longbow has access to a very different set of skills compared with a hunter using a greatsword. Most physical combat classes unlock additional weapon sets later on, too, so you can have two banks of skills to switch between on the fly.

 

The other way to make up the experience deficeit is to visit other parts of the world and take on even-level quests there. I'd advise against taking on lower level tasks, as Guild Wars 2 has an especially agressive downlevelling system that can end up rendering you a bit of a weakling when you're suddenly bumped down to level 6 from level 14; especially so when an elite creature or boss gets in the way and your character is too feeble to fight it. Thankfully travel between cities - and between previously visited locations - is easy, thanks to the return of the waypoint system from the first game, allowing you to teleport to any location you know just by clicking it on the map and paying a paltry fee. It can be a little awkward with instancing, however, as the beta client would often throw you onto an 'overflow' server, even if your groupmates were in the normal instance. 

 

There are five playable races in Guild Wars 2, - though only the humans, ferocious catlike Charr and 9' tall shapeshifter Norns are currently open, with the diminutive Asura and the elfish Sylvani yet to be released to testers. Each of their starting regions is full of flavour, with the steampunk visuals of the Charr city feeling particularly unique, and the corresponding story quests are equally characterful. You then have eight classes - sorry, professions - to choose from, none of which quite fit into established MMO convention as all are capable of multiple roles in combat, and every class has at least one self-heal ability. The Warrior and Guardian fulfill the basic melee damage roles, though warriors can use bows and rifles. Necromancers summon undead allies to fight beside them, whilst Rangers have their own animal companions. Elementalists can call on four different elements of magic to vary their roles between healing, support, and damaging abilities, whilst the Thief and the Mesmer use subterfuge, misdirection and illusion to distract foes. The Engineer, meanwhile, can set up turrets to attack or debuff enemies or heal and buff allies. With different combinations of weapons, each class is capable of taking on all manner of roles, and Guild Wars 2 proves quite demanding in the way that swapping quickly between weapons and skills is key to success. There are a whole suite of crafting professions avaialble too, all of which start you out with a few basic recipies but require you to experiment with ingredients and items in order to unlock better items, though the results can be spectacular.

 

And what about the real money stuff? Guild Wars 2 won't carry any subscription fees, but an in-game marketplace will gladly take your cash in exchange for bonuses and cosmetic items. Links to the shop are nowhere near as prominent as you'd find in, say, Lord of the Rings Online or Age of Conan, 

 

The only PvP available during the beta was a team domination style mode, requiring the teams to capture and hold objectives on a map to score points, though there was plenty of player killing, too. Characters were bumped up to max level (80) for these encounters, which showed a confident if not overly original take on the game mode.  The full game promises a return of large scale PvP content and world vs world conflicts, so we look forward to seeing how those shape up as the game nears release.