The top five Guild Wars features we take for granted
by Rubi Bayer 
Oct 12th 2009 at 5:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Guild Wars, Business models, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Guild Wars 2, Free-to-play
When you're sitting around on a Tuesday morning (every week) waiting for your World of Warcraft updater to patch, just think about the fact that Guild Wars players don't ever have to deal with something like that. "A new build of Guild Wars is available..." We see the green message, log out, and are back within minutes with the update. What about server downtime for problems? With a very, very few notable exceptions, it's nearly nonexistent. It's pretty easy to take for granted the absence of something, but this is a huge perk that Guild Wars offers. How does ArenaNet do this? That's one of the great mysteries of the game that arguably may have one of the best server teams and configurations ever.
"Hey, guess what? My mom showed me how to map travel the other day! It's amazing!" says young Mauban in the Map Travel Inventor quest in Nightfall. He's right, it's pretty great. Map travel -- instant porting to any town or outpost that you have walked to once -- was created to help eliminate the need for mounts, and has really spoiled us as GW players. I got teased a bit recently for complaining about the horribly long run to a dungeon. "Ugh, it takes a half hour!" After a while, you get so used to it you forget what a great feature it is. Map traveling allows you to get where you are going right away, and get started playing, and isn't that why we're there?
This is probably the biggest feature that turns traditional MMOers off, but there are advantages to be had beyond the initial feeling that it's not an MMO if it's instanced. In a persistent world, there are queues for bosses, unnaturally-timed respawns and a feeling that you're just another cog in the wheel. With an instanced environment, there's more a feeling of accomplishment that you just won't find in that traditional persistent zone. Eventually, ArenaNet took this one step further with the introduction of vanquishing. Vanquishing is a way for a party to entirely clear a zone of its inhabitants in Hard Mode. Once that area is completely cleared out, it is marked as Vanquished on your map, and you can continue working towards the Vanquisher titles for each chapter's maps. There's something about vanquishing an area and reclaiming those lands for your people that really pulls you into the story.
2. Business model
An MMO with no sub fees was a highly unusual concept back when Guild Wars was introduced, and turned out to be a great idea over time. A free-to-play game is more attractive to the casual gamer, because there's no pressure to make sure you're getting your money's worth every single month. "Casual gamer" equals "wider audience", which equals sales. In addition, the f2p model was pretty attractive to those who were considering the game but weren't quite sure about it. A one time expenditure made it worth a try, and gave them a chance to see what a beautiful game it was. It obviously worked through two new chapters and an expansion, and these days you can find game developers following in the footsteps of ArenaNet everywhere you look.
Aion's recent issues with server queues gave us a new appreciation for the Guild Wars single-server format. Aion struggled for a solution - rolling out new servers, temporarily disabling character creation on some servers, and ultimately offering a free one time change to selected servers. While Aion players were queueing for hours to log in, those of us in Guild Wars were enjoying playtime on one server, hopping districts in a matter of seconds if things became a bit crowded and bogged down. There is no "Okay, I'm creating my character. What server are you on?", we just log in and play. The convenience of being able to switch characters at will and still join all of your friends, and jump districts if overcrowding or lag becomes a problem, is a luxury that most MMOs don't offer.Guild Wars has been referred to as MMO-lite, and that may be a pretty apt term for it. But when ArenaNet launched the game, they brought some groundbreaking new ideas to the table, and a new approach to a lot of MMO standards. That outlook is one of the things that's helped keep Guild Wars fun for over four years, and it's the reason that Guild Wars 2 holds such great promise.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tom said on 5:10PM 10-12-2009
A good list of things to love about this game. The difficulty is finding only Five Great Features in Guild Wars, since there are so many others...
-- The Level 20 Cap
-- The Elite Skill Capture System
-- The option to use Heroes/henchmen
-- Great primary stories and quest design
-- Gorgeous World
-- The 8-Skill bar
-- Dual Classing
Sigh... I really do like this game. I was very sad to see it go into "retirement mode." :)
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jtrain said on 9:46AM 10-13-2009
I couldn't agree about elite skill capturing and the 8 skill bar more.
For anyone that doesn't know, you don't 'train' elite skills in GW. You actually have to venture out in the world, find a boss or 'elite' that uses that skill, defeat him and learn his skill. In my opinion, this is by far more fun than dinging 80, walking up to a trainer and clicking the "learn" button a few times. I actually think pretty much every skill should be acquired in this way.
5 years and 2 xpacs have introduced quite a few spells/abilities for players in WoW, and many players struggle with not only remembering and using all their abilities appropriately, but laying out the UI so as not to have ability buttons cluttering the screen. GW makes you choose 8 abilities at a time, vastly simplifying both the mechanics of the game as as well as the UI.
PeterD said on 5:47PM 10-12-2009
If Guild Wars 2 can capture even half the things Guild Wars did well while giving us new options and experiences it will be a fantastic game.
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Jess said on 6:22PM 10-12-2009
I love Guild Wars, but I must admit, I'm not a fan of the instanced worlds. Otherwise I hope GW2 maintains the GW legacy of said features.
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Ayonyx said on 6:34PM 10-12-2009
I was actually commenting with a friend about how I would have loved to see NCSoft use a similar system to Guild Wars with a single server (in regards to Aion).
However, I have a feeling that Guild Wars 2 will deviate as well from the original server system that was present in the original game. A recent article talking about PvP in Guild Wars 2 talked about server vs. server combat.
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Calvin said on 9:13PM 10-12-2009
From what I understand, it's going to be the same as switching districts in the cities, but instead of it just being that city, it will be the whole world. (At least you'd think it would make sense to make it this way)
Tyranor said on 7:04PM 10-12-2009
While all these features are good, they contribute to the reason as to why I don't consider guild wars an MMO.
You only ever "play" with 8 people at once. Sure, you see loads in the lobby, but when it comes to actually playing, it isn't "massive" at all. In that type of game, I prefer Neverwinter Nights.
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Cathal said on 5:14PM 10-13-2009
TBH When playing WoW, questing or doing dailies I rarely see other players out in the open, (as in not in cities or outposts). I have the potential to see tons of players but I rarely do.
Only time I ever see 4+ players in WoW are in heroics and raids.
And yes I know you made no link to WoW, and I'm not saying that GW is an MMO and just saying...
Vulturion said on 7:07PM 10-12-2009
I heart Guild Wars!
Here's hoping GW2 is more of the same.
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kzaske said on 1:43PM 10-13-2009
It is my hope that Guild Wars 2 keeps every feature you listed above. I feel that Guild Wars is what other MMOs should be.
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Dareth said on 8:03PM 10-12-2009
This should have been a top ten list, because you're taking for granted about five more things that make Guild Wars awesome (some of which, have already been mentioned). In no particular order:
Hundreds of Skills and Insane Levels of Build Customization: Very few games allow the freedom of class, stat and skill customization that Guild Wars allows (I haven’t played them all yet, but I’d be willing to bet none give you as much freedom as Guild Wars). And as if this freedom of character design wasn’t awesome enough, they went and made sure there was no way for you to make a mistake and doom your character to being less effective than the other guy. Skills can be swapped for better skills, attribute points can be reassigned and secondary classes can be changed. Every time you enter a town, you can completely change the way your character works. Or you can find something that works and stick with it.
Group Combat: Nothing bores me more than the 1v1 combat that seems to be the norm in most of the MMOGs I’ve seen. Don’t get me wrong, a 1v1 fight can be exciting if done right, but when you walk into a field and see a dozen snarling monsters and you know you have to fight them one at a time, often resting between fights, you can’t exactly feel like much of a hero. In GW, you walk into a field and see some snarling monsters and you know pulling one out of the group is impossible, you also know there's a patrol that comes through every minute and there might be some monsters hidden under the ground or hiding in the trees ready to pop up.
Armor Stats and Armor Appearance are completely and totally separate: Ever find a tunic with really amazing stats only to discover it looks like garbage? (Like, literally, it looks like someone stapled a chunk of rotten meat, a tin can and a broken bottle to a tattered shirt.) But you know you have to wear it because the stats are too good to pass up. This doesn’t happen in GW, every set of armor is available to craft with the best stats available (that’s not to say you won’t have to work for it). So you don’t have to worry about sacrificing stats to look just how you want to look and you don’t have to sacrifice looks to have the best stats.
20 is Max Level and most of the game is end game content: In GW, it's not about getting there, it's about BEING there.
As mentioned: Heroes and Henchmen. A lot of people seem to hate the H&H, but I love ‘em, if only because they allow me to find a few party members for everything I want to do, instead of the few things everyone wants to do.
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m0r1arty said on 8:56PM 10-12-2009
That's me in the middle!
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dennis.schuette said on 3:40AM 10-13-2009
I can't see that the second point is true and the business model is followed widely. The GW business model is an anomaly which works fine for GW but wouldn't work, at least not at the sole business model, for most other virtual worlds. Other than that I agree with this list.
For me, apart from the patching process, the ability to switch languages in-game with only a keystroke is one of the most awesome GW features, particularly so if you're a non-English native speaker. Never seen that in another VW so far...
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Philip said on 8:06AM 10-13-2009
Final Fantasy 14 had a similar feature that allowed you to select the Japanese translation for a word when speaking to someone using the Japanese client. The flip-side to this was you had to have heard the word used in a sentence before, such as Joyeuse ( a rare sword that would sometimes attack multiple times on one swing). That was a great feature that made talking to the Japanese a lot easier when grouping for parties.
Brajt said on 10:02AM 10-13-2009
Gief dwarf chars and chars that can jump and im sold!
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vaarsej said on 11:28AM 10-13-2009
The whole point of instanced worlds is so that you don't have players camping elite skill mobs for hostage, i guess.
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Morningbell said on 10:10PM 10-13-2009
The "no patch" update thing has pretty much nothing to do with the quality of Guild Wars' team. Quite simply, Guild Wars has less content than games like WoW, and they release the big chunks of it in smaller, more closely-packed expansions than WoW does. WoW's patches contain MAJOR content changes and the nature of the two games mean that WoW requires much larger files (and thus a much longer download) to be downloaded in its patches.
WoW is just a bigger and better game, and requires more maintenance and more information as a result.
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Sally said on 11:26PM 10-13-2009
WoW Bigger? Most definitely.
WoW Better? Well, I would argue against that comment.
But whatever. We are all entitled to our own opinion.
But you ruined a good post with a blantantly biased comment.
Sente said on 5:06AM 10-17-2009
Morningbell, I think you are missing the point with the no downtime (not "no patch") update system of Guild Wars.
There is not really any "we are taking down the servers a bit for an update/maintenance" situation, like with most other MMOs. The on-the-fly patch/update system will cause some loading delay for you only when there is an update of something, when you need to access that content. Possibly also a need to relog at your convenience for some updates to take effect.
This includes getting new campaigns/expansions, not just smaller patches/updates.
Morningbell said on 2:42AM 10-14-2009
Ouch. Ruined is a bit of a strong word, innit? I know I'm biased, but I thought that the stuff before that was a fairly solid point. Bigger=more data=longer patch times, plus the content-introduction system is different between the two games.
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