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Guild Wars 2 is the first mmo truly designed for massive population
Zeus.CM
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,788
Think about it.
- Which mmo increases the number of mobs automatically in event (~quest) based on how many players are participating?
- Which mmo rewards every players that hits the same mob with 100% reward (in exp and drop)?
- Which mmo allows high level players to go back to newbie area and still have a challenge and often difficult encounters?
- Which mmo makes boss fight more interesting (adds new abilities to boss automatically) the more players are fighting it?
- Which mmo is designed for such a replayability that even though you've 100% explored some area, and you come back tommorow it won't be the same again (not to mention branching story and different story for each race)?
- Which mmo makes every gathering node instanced for every player?
...
Bottom line, Gw2 is designed to be healthy populated in every corner because of dynamic events (ever changing world), scaling system (challenge everywhere you go), encouraging players to work and play together (by giving them 100% reward even if you 'steal' mob), etc (end of thinking capacity)...
But even this is NOT enough to make it really massive!
The right business model is also extremely immportant, and by destroying P2P, and introducing B2P they are doing it right. There's no preassure on players to pay anything every month to play. Cash shop is completely optional and since the game doesn't really allow P2W, players should be safe from it. But then there's a question - why not go completely F2P with cash shop to make it really massive? NO. Because it will lure the wrong type of players, not to mention gold sellers, kids of every age (I don't like to play with kids, is there something wrong with me?), whiners, trollers from other games etc. Also, cash shop would have to be much more agressive to keep the profit. B2P is the perfect middle ground. It will filter its population and allow cosmetic shop to keep the profit up.
All in all, I don't think you will ever feel completely alone in this game, even in hidden places because this game is paradise for explorers. Hell, even in closed beta events you would often play with other players anywhere.
Just my 2 cents. Thanks for reading....
Comments
Thsi was the first game I"d say that decided to improve on the "original" formula.
The original formula, from the mud games, was to take a computer or solo RPG, and have you able to play it with other people. So, instead of formign a party in Ultima or Final Fantasy, you can do that with others on the internet.
I don't know where we loss this concept. Oh I know, as usual, the nerd got bullied. For some reason we caved in to PVP (Never had party members physically killing each other in a game as the object of the game). We caved into crafting (Had games where we customized gear, but not where it was a signifant part of the game). We caved into the restrictions of programming. (The trinity wasn'st the perfect system, it was all they could do with the tech they had. You needed a role to not encumber the programming. Especially at a time when people saw the cash cow that was the subscription fee and rushed to get MMOs to market).
At some point, the RPG blueprint was loss in the shuffle. Quests needed to be clear and static. Wheras in Ultima I need to rescue the king, in an MMO we needed to dumb it down to kill 10 guards. The game stopped being about people who play RPGs and started being about people who just want to be apart of the new hotness.
Instead of working together, the above elements create an enviornment of competition. You were competing for nodes, competing to kill those 10 guards, competing to kill the special monster that spawns once a week, there was so much competition. I realized how horrible it had become when I was playing SWTOR in january, and I lured a monster to a fellow jedi just so i could finish my quest and destroy the last computer.
That was Rock Bottom for me. That was when i realized, i am going to chill out and wait for GW2. Look at who I was. I was a jerk. And the games arem ade so that the person who is the jerk will get more gold, get more experience and be able to do more things.
Exactly, current mmos only encourage competitiveness and not coorporation. Being a jerk was the only way to beat others in race to the end. Finally there's an mmo that will break that and make us enjoy journey to the end, and back.
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
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I completely agree. MMOs have lost all good there is about an RPG.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
CoH did a lot of that scaling stuff on opening day eight years ago.
We knew MMOs could do it. The problem was that EQ didn't, and so games that copied the EQ copy also didn't.
The problem is that to scale, your combat math has to be designed to do it from the ground up, and uncapped so that it can get down to the job. In traditional MMOs, fixed abilities, fixed loot tables, set pathwalkers, and lots of hardcoding are faster and easier.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
That's true, a lot of peopl edon't understand the word innovation. It's not inventing something new. It's taking things and making them feel new.
Scaling existed in COH. Dynamic Events has existed in games for at least 5 or 6 years. But no one thought of combining the two. For instance, Runes of Magic had some cool events that woudl happen. But there was no scaling, so whereas, it seemed like a great cool group activity, it soon became 2 or 3 guilds "running" the events. Since only 32 people could get credit in it, we'd control who got in and who was not getting in.
INtroduce Scaling to this formula and no-need-to-formally-party parties. Toss in a touch of treasure based on contribution. Now you have innovated the dynamic event to something everyone can do, no one feels shafted at and the overall challenge of the game is still there.
But it's also reliant other innovation; games designed for soloing. Without lot of wandering solo players bumping into each other to form chace groups, dynamic events are really not necessary or particularly viable.
So the interim step (the most soloable game in history, and arguably the most asocial player base) also had to happen first.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
WoW imo completely destroyed the MMO part of a mmorpg, Games pre WoW had the element in howeevr wasnt as well implemented as GW2 has done it. For example EQ was a community based game it was better to group up and be nice to each other because if you screwed somone over they will remember and so will everyone they know, In social games thing spread fast good or bad. EQ was the best game ive played so far because of those elements i didnt play many other preWoW games but they were somwhat familiar with the social aspects aswell.
Actually, how would you feel about bow down and worship Cryptic Studios or maybe NCSoft?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I'm pretty sure you don't get 100% reward all the time. [bronze,silver,gold]
I think if you wait a few years, your statement will hold more truth. In a few years, dynamic events will be come a robust system as long A-Net continue to add further events in the current world [which they said they would]
I wouldn't say its evolution, but it's a step forward from wow based mmo style; it's a direction will needed.
These are the exact reasons why GW2 will be successful. Who cares about it being a WOW killer and all that BS that was going around for a while, these reasons will be why GW2 will continue to be successful for a long time after launch.
Actually, how would you feel about bow down and worship Cryptic Studios or maybe NCSoft?
I would be just as sarcastic if I saw people worshiping there too.GeezerGamer..
You are never competing for mobs in this game even with a level 80 player in the hood because the level 80 will be knocked down to the effective level of where he is playing for challenges sake so he cant one shot anything and many things will still be very much a challenge..
This is one of those classic traditional mmo rulesets that has been banged into our heads over the years that traditionally when a character leaves a newb area he is never to return to the now useless grey area, this feature of GW2 is actually a very good thing for players wanting to go back to newb areas to play with guildies and or spending true high quality gaming time with wife/girl friend/friend/kid or other casual players that get behind, or just wanting to go back and do DEs and other things you really enjoyed at level 4 you can now enjoy at level 4 again while getting very good experience for it..
For many it will be a really awesome and heavily used feature that speaks for itself...
Playing GW2..
Recently MMOs have become a sort of "The game you MUST play in order to get to the game you WANT to play"
I hope this is the cycle that's broken
Hehe, true. MMOs seem to have stopped being all about having fun and now are all about I don't know...something else
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I'm a bit confused by your post and whether you are talking about mmos or single player RPGs. Are you using UO as an example of the original formula mmorpg? UO started as a pvp world. Felucca was pvp until Trammel was introduced for 'carebears' and consensual pvp. So you might say that mmorpgs began with open world pvp and have slowly cut it down and down. I also remember quite a bit of consensual guild vs. guild pvp in UO, especially on Europa through the Europa Roleplayers Association, it added to the flavour of the game. The pvp in UO didn't make it any less RP, in fact it really added to it for me. Consensual pvp adds to RPGs in my experience. One of the reasons i'm looking forward to the World vs. World vs. World of GW2. As for caving in to crafting, 99% of gear in UO was player crafted and player's vendors were everywhere selling their stuff so it was also present at the start of mmorpgs and has been diminished since by raid gear.
I don't want to play an mmorpg like a single player RPG, which is one of the reasons the current crop of themepark mmos is so disappointing. I want roleplaying and I want interaction with other players. Cooperation is important but pvp and making, selling and using crafted gear is also a big part of that for me.