Guild Wars 2: The 2nd M

One of the downsides of online gaming for someone like me is that, while I'm not really averse to grouping up with other people, for the most part I tend prefer to play with, well, just me and my SO, really. It's not that I won't play with others, certainly, but when one has an erratic gaming schedule (and even sometimes drops a game for several months at a time to do something else), it's very hard to get into and stay in any kind of guild... and even in the one case I have, the people involved were always moving much faster in various ways because they had more time in-game. So as you can imagine, I tend to prefer solo- (or, well, duo-) friendly MMOs.

However, there's one type of exception to this, and that's what you could call area or world events. The introduction of Rikti raids in City of Heroes, for instance, gave players a chance to temporarily group up to defeat a major menace, one that needed a fairly large number of players working together to take down. And I've always wished there would be more of that sort of casual, temporary grouping in MMOs.

Well, guess what? Guild Wars 2 appears to be planning on giving me that.

Guild Wars 2: Graphics

So. Guild Wars 2.

I'm still not happy with what I'm seeing of the human, norn, and sylvari female outfits, which are boobtastic and midriff-baring to an extent that just fricking annoys me (although at least in the case of the Norn, the guys seem to be getting a similar treatment, so I'll give 'em a pass on that race, at least), but let's put that aside for now to concentrate on the parts that I am decidedly not annoyed with.

Before I get into gameplay design things that are making me continue to be interested, let's tackle the other thing we've gotten a decent glimpse of: graphics.

I ought to be excited...

They've released more information on Guild Wars 2—some details on how combat is going to work, and some information on the first class. I ought to be excited, because I've been looking forward to this, but sadly, I'm not.

And it's for what I'm sure some people would consider a really stupid reason, which is this: the first class they released information on is a revamp of the Elementalist from the first game, and (much like the Elementalists in the first game), the human female is only wearing clothing by the loosest definition of the word "clothing".

And if that's what the human female soft armor is going to look like, I'm not going to be playing a human female soft-armor class. Especially when the male Elementalist shown is covered from head to toe, it irritates me when the woman's outfit is a bra and what from the back looks like a long skirt but from the front looks like a loin cloth.

I realize this is only one piece of armor, and I should wait and find out more, but it really, really taints the good information for me when the publicity for the game focuses on boobs. The human race stills show women in heavy armor that covers virtually nothing it ought to, and this is just more of the same, and it's really turning me off.

On comparisons to WoW

Because of World of Warcraft's extremely large player base and long-standing popularity, it's inevitable that any new MMO, particularly fantasy MMOs, will be compared to it. I'm not annoyed by that part, but I am annoyed at how the conversations frequently go.

There are a lot of people who basically say "[New Game X] has these features in common with WoW; why can't you do something original?" I hate to tell you this, but a lot of those features aren't original to WoW, either. Things like racial bonuses (D&D), weapons limited by class (D&D), auction houses (MUDs), the basic makeup of classes (D&D) and races (D&D), and even the concept of a talent tree (similar to skill/class PnP combos like Rolemaster) are things that have existed in fantasy gaming for a long, long time. WoW popularized many of these things but they did not invent them.

There are a number of things common to fantasy games and a number of things common to MMOs that WoW uses. That doesn't mean that other games using them are copying WoW; it means there's some fairly standard things people making fantasy games and MMOs do. WoW is unique not because of its general mechanics, but because of the specifics... and even games that use very similar mechanics can be vastly different because of that. So dismissing a game as being a "WoW clone" because they're using some really standard game and gameplay mechanics without at all even being willing to look into the details is... well, the word I want is probably "idiotic". Seriously.

I'm not saying there aren't games out there trying to capitalize on WoW's popularity by making a game that's similar in both mechanics and details, mind you. It's just that it seems like the only way to not get labeled a "WoW clone" by some people is to be in an entirely different genre (and even then...). And those people are really, really vocal, so I keep running across them, and it keeps being irritating. Luckily, I have a blog I can rant on about it, and just leave them to discuss their mistaken ideas by themselves.

So, DRM (Again)

Ubisoft's new DRM (which requires you to be constantly connected to their servers to continue playing the game) is a guarantee I will not purchase their games. Let's start with that.

Here's the argument as I understand it:

"Pirates have succeeded in cracking every single type of copy protection we have come up with. Therefore, the only thing we can do is continue to come up with more and more draconic and restrictive DRM, even though we are publically admitting we know it won't actually work for very long, in the hopes it will improve our sales while it lasts."

Here's the problem with it (and yes, I've said this before*):

The dedicated pirates are not choosing between buying your game and pirating it. They're really not. The people who don't want to pay for your software aren't going to, whether they can crack it in an hour because you used a known method of copy protection or they have to wait a few weeks for one of the smarter hackers to circumvent it or they just choose another game entirely. Because, really, your game is just not that special that they can't find something else interesting to do.

And that goes for the potential paying customers, too. And when you add the pirating to the lost sales from those potential customers who are sick of the current models of DRM (and the way game companies treat their entire audience as potential pirates), and then add in the people who have baldly stated they will pirate your game because of your DRM... well, do you suppose that number will end up with higher sales than before? Or lower?

I'm going with lower, myself.

ETA: Although this image has to do with DVD DRM instead of game DRM, I think it is relatively applicable here.

[*My Sims blog has several posts on the topic.]

Magical Skin

Here's something that makes my favorite hobby sometimes annoying: For the last 10-15 years, there have been hundreds of magazine articles, newsgroup posts, letters to the editor, and blog posts about how women who game are turned off by the way female characters are generally modeled, animated, and dressed. And yet there's been little to no change in this... and, in fact, in some ways, it's gotten worse. Better graphics and better physics brought us jiggle physics, which naturally were applied immediately to breasts. And it brought us more realistics body modeling, which led to increased breast focus and scoliosis swayed backs that emphasize the ass.

Mah Elite Armor, Let Me Show U It

← There it is. Xylia, my Beast Master Ranger, in her pretty Monument Armor from Eye of the North. It's unfortunate that it's on the low side for dyeability (and dye on it tends to really oversaturate, making it hard to get the colour you want), but I really like it anyhow.

Yeah, it's probably not that big of a deal... if I weren't spending money on gaining skills (on 11 different characters, heh) and buying non-elite armor and stuff like that I'd probably have had this a long time ago. I actually plan on getting this character several others, but went with this one first because we just happened to be getting the required faction rank around the time I looked at my bank balance and said "Hrm, I bet I can spare 50k." (Actually, 40k; I didn't buy the headgear, since I never display it on this particular character.)

Xylia's technically my "main" since she's the one I'm working on getting the most titles on, and the "owner" of the majority of my miniatures (non-combat pet things). Also the first character I made in Guild Wars. Ranger, despite some fairly unpleasant nerfing, is probably my favorite profession, enough so that I made a second one, this time without a pet.


People who read my Sims blog might remember I posted a picture of her and her companion (my SO's char) in what I said at the time was expensive armor. Hah. The "expense" of that armor totalled about half of what I spent for one piece of this one. But that was when the majority of my experience was in Prophecies, where it is much harder to earn money. Now that I've been through a large chunk of the rest of the game, I have a different standard for expensive. (Also a different one for "hard".)

There's a good chance my next elite armor will be for my other Ranger and will also be from Eye of the North... but that's going to have to wait. I have to spend a buttload of money trying to earn more Lucky and Unlucky points this weekend during the Canthan New Year festival. And also on more skills, since I'm still working on getting all the skills (especially elites) for Xylia.

A Guild Wars Glossary

Guild Wars Glossary

I originally wrote the City of Heroes/Villains glossary because I thought I would be posting a lot more about it. I guess that sorta didn't happen. Now I will write this one for Guild Wars for the same reason. This is very long, so I split the appendices over into a second post.

Last Updated: 22 Feb 2011

MMO general glossary

There's a few terms that come up regularly when I discuss MMOs, so it seemed like a good idea to have a central place to define them.

Last Updated: 10 Jun 2010

Oh hai again my again forgotten again gaming blog

Look, it's been a bad couple years. It's hard to get a lot of gaming done sometimes... let alone write about it. Only despite that I've got a long post.