Sunday, August 17, 2008

We need a new Guild Wars campaign!

It has been over three and a half years since Guild Wars was released and personally I still enjoy playing it. When ArenaNet released the 'Eye of the North' expansion (almost a year ago) they said it would be the last piece of new content for GW before the release of Guild Wars 2. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed at first, but I was also excited at the prospect that GW2 was in the works. Now I'm craving a new campaign to GW because I know that GW2 is still a long way off. I definitely think there would be a market for a new campaign, even with the advent of WAR and WotLK only months away. Since GW uses a pay upfront pricing model, it has an advantage over the subscription type MMOs, because you can keep going back to it over and over without having to re-sign up. This is ideal for the casual gamer.

I don't think there would be a problem finding new class types for a new GW campaign as the forums have flooded with ideas for years. My two favorite choices being the Druid and the Weapon Master. The Druid would be a shape changer with healing and beast skills (similar to a Ranger). The Weapon Master would be a melee class capable using using any weapon, and would specialize in turning melee attacks back on the attacker. Awesome!

ArenaNet made a mistake when they took development effort off GW and moved it all to GW2. They should have expanded their staff, not moved it off one project and on to another. There was still 2 years worth of new GW campaigns and expansions that they could use as a cash cow.

Hopefully ArenaNet will hear my plea, and begin work on a new campaign right away, so that I can have something to play over the Christmas holidays ;)

7 comments:

Talyn said...

No way. I fully agree with their decision to stop making campaigns, as the campaigns themselves, while enjoyable to play, quickly demonstrated the weakness in that model. What was left? Go back and play through Prophecies and you see Canthans and Elonians were already there, the basis for those campaigns and their cultures had already been thought out. Dropping the campaign model was a smart decision.

I wouldn't mind more expansions, however. Perhaps not quite to the extent of Eye of the North, but smaller periodic expansions that flesh out parts of the world we've seen, as well as adding to all that blank area of land still on the map. There's plenty they could to by having a smaller team produce smaller episodic expansions, say $10 each that have a new dungeon or two, maybe a new zone or two and a few pieces of new loot to adventure for.

Crimson Starfire said...

At the risk of sounding stupid, what was the weakness in the campaign model? I thought it worked fine...

Scott said: "There's plenty they could to by having a smaller team produce smaller episodic expansions"

They tried this with the bonus mission pack, and it didn't go so well. You need a complete campaign in order to introduce a new subset of skills, otherwise PvP will be all over the place for people that only own 5 of the 13 mini expansions.

Elementalistly said...

@Crimson
The weakness is the fact that what have we done already? Leveled to 20 three different times. Do you want to do that again a fourth time?
While the adventure packs would be much better.
If it is PvP, then they could release bonus skill set packages. Move classes to other campaigns or try new classes.
My wife and myself are enjoying the fact we do not need to worry about leveling again, and just running new content with different goals.
I actually would just prefer GW2 by the beginning of next year, but it is not going to happen.
Guess continuing playing GW and WAR will be it until something better comes along or GW2.

Talyn said...

As Openedge1 stated, the flaw in the campaign model is that each campaign Arena.net had to re-imagine the game all over again. Come up with a story, come up with a back-story to level 1-20. Add two more classes and a few hundred skills. Etc. Same circus, different tent. Read any GW2 interview and they say the same thing. It was too limiting and they burned out just doing the same game over and over.

The BMP was its own thing, and didn't bring any new skills that I remember, just something new to do (and not even as your own characters) and new weapon skins.

I'm talking more along the lines of a complete quest/dungeon story to play through set in places like the Wizard's Tower in Kryta, and other places we've seen but can't enter in all the places in the game, as well as fleshing out some of the blank areas on the maps. New challenges, new titles, maybe a few weapon skins... maybe even going so far as to include new armor skins or even new skills but skills would be last on the list unless Arena.net already has some spares worked up but didn't have a place to include them, which is doubtful.

Thallian said...

I'll definitely try out GW2. As long as its free to play after you buy it.

Crimson Starfire said...

@scott and openedge1

Damn, I totally never thought about it that way. Ironically I'm a developer, but I never stopped to think how much development went into building a GW campaign. No wonder they stopped building them.

I have to admit, even though the campaigns must have been a pain to build, they were awesome to play. The extra effort didn't go unnoticed.

@thallian
ArenaNet said that they were going to keep the pay upfront model for GW2. I'm so pumped for it that I might actually consider converting this blog into a shrine to GW2 ;)

Elementalistly said...

Well, surprise...we got something new
And can I say

"Snooze!!"

check my blog about our new "Hero" addon
Yea!

GW platitudes