Dark Horse Rising
Guild Wars has always been a bit of a dark horse in the MMO world; built as a pay-once, play forever model, it cut across the grain of many other MMOs, offering end users a massive amount of content, as well as featuring paid expansions.
The team at ArenaNet made a conscious decision to re-imagine everything without reservation. That means that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t look, feel, or play like any other MMO you’ve enjoyed in recent years.
The Art
After playing Guild Wars 2 for 40 minutes I’ve decided that I’m not going to call the visuals “graphics” anymore; they’re art and should be referred to as such. The style evokes the feeling of water colour paintings, and everything is cast on an incredibly epic scale. Characters are fluid in movement, even when moving erratically or rolling out of the way of incoming attacks. The two bosses I saw were HUGE and looked fantastic.
The Gameplay
Guild Wars 2 isn’t a traditional style MMORPG. While you do have attacking skills, utility skills, and a global cooldown to deal with, you’ll notice that many traditional MMO elements have been given the boot. There is not taunt mechanic; if you want to take a hit for someone, get in the way. See someone taking aim at you with a projectile? Roll out of the way.
The action feels incredibly energetic and satisfying. Unlike other MMOs, Guild Wars 2 keeps the combat fresh; it always seems frantic and unhinged - which are the most exciting moments in other games.
Coming soon... we hope.
While the version of Guild Wars 2 that I played felt incredibly polished, the developers maintain that there’s still work to be done. When quizzed on a release date they replied “when it’s done”. After having a 40 minute taste, I can say without hesitation, I hope that it’ll be done sooner rather than later.
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