Guild Wars 2: It's mmoRPG

The design of dynamic events are likely to put the "multiplayer" more strongly to the forefront of Guild Wars 2 than some MMOs achieve, particularly with persistent results. But that's not where they're stopping with trying to make things more dynamic and interesting all-around. They want to emphasize the RPG influence as well, through the use of a personal storyline.

In single-player RPGs (and, to a lesser extent, co-ops), there's generally a single main character. What that person chooses to do (or not do) has a permanent effect on the course of the storyline, and the story is about those things. In MMOs, players generally are completely interchangeable in most quests; whether you're an elf or an orc or a warrior or a cleric, you still get the exact same quests (excepting, perhaps, the starting area quests), and you rarely get many options which way the story will go.

ArenaNet wants to make Guild Wars 2 have an element closer to single RPGs in the form of personal stories. The details of the gameplay have still not been entirely revealed, but the basic gist is this: the choices you make, starting in character creation and moving through any number of quests or story elements, will vary your experience and offer different story paths based on those choices. Any two given players are unlikely to experience the story in the exact same way, even if they are the same race and profession.

The personal story gameplay will be one of the only parts of the game that uses instances (they also apparently plan to make dungeons instanced). In decided contrast to dynamic events having an affect on the world for everyone to see, these areas will be unique to your character. Other players can see at least some of your story by grouping with you; the team leader will be the person whose story is shown and who makes the decisions to advance it.

Some people are concerned about that, feeling it might cut down on group play through the personal storyline. I am not, and here's why: City of Heroes has a similar mechanic, and it works out fine there. What people do is rotate who is the leader so that everyone gets to accomplish a certain amount of their missions, but you also get to see some of the story you might not currently have access to, as well as having the fun and advantages of fighting in a group, and even getting to face different enemies sometimes.

One of the more intriguing parts of this is that they intend to make you part of the game world from day one. You aren't just another anonymous adventurer; you actually will have acquaintances and friends and contacts (and possibly enemies?) based on decisions you make in character creation. And the best part? A portion of your home city will be instanced for you, giving you a home base, which is updated based on things you've done in your personal storyline. Of all the things about this, that's one of the ones I most wish I had more details on, but one example given was that a person might acquire certain merchants or other NPCs that will hang out in their home instance.

Character creation is necessarily going to be a little more detailed than simply picking a race and profession. For instance, if you are a human, you might have ancestors from any of the human lands, and you might be part of the gentry, or a commoner, or someone who grew up on the streets. Asura will belong to colleges; charr to legions. Norn will pick a spirit to be associated with; sylvari a season/time of day pair. And that's not even the extent of it; there will be some additional questions giving you choices of other details, perhaps including something about your personality or your views of other races, including minor ones.

Naturally, there's some skepticism among players about just how much your experience will vary based on those answers—with even the ten questions they're currently working with (which is subject to change), there could literally be thousands of options across races, and making thousands of substantially different storylines would seem to be prohibitive even for the large team they have working on the game. I imagine that in some cases it will have more to do with flavor and minor tweaks than it will anything significant. But even if "thousands" seems a little high to work with, "dozens" sure does not, and even "hundreds" might be within the realm of possibility. I would, frankly, settle for as little as two or three substantial differences per race, because even that is vastly different from the experience you get from most MMOs.

Speaking of variety, although they've not released any solid information on character appearance customization yet, they did in passing mention it will be substantially more robust than the first game had. That's another thing I'm pleased about, and hope they get around to showing us some of that soon.