First Impressions of Guild Wars 2

So, the first open beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 has been and gone, and I spent most of my weekend glued to it. There are posts and comments and whole blogs devoted to the game all over the internet, so I won’t go into a massive amount of detail here. Instead, here are a few of my first impressions (bearing in mind I didn’t try PvP, or crafting, or get past level 14) – and if you’re not interested in the game itself, you can always enjoy the pretty screenshots!

Bugs.  Let’s get this one out of the way first. GW2 is still in beta testing, and whilst it generally ran smoothly, there were a number of bugs to be found. These ranged from the mildly annoying (a bit of server downtime and a bit of lag; NPC voices not following the script onscreen), to the massively frustrating (inability to consistently get into the same district as friends, or to travel as a party), to the downright hilarious (managing to complete quests in the wrong order and having the NPCs involved first get stuck in a wall, then jump around as if they’d had too much caffeine).

The centre of the human city, Divinity's Reach, with its massive glass dome and orrery.

Combat.  GW2’s combat has got to be one of its strongest points. It’s fluid, engaging and much faster paced than in many MMOs, with an emphasis on moving around and constantly changing tactics, rather than just standing in one place and spamming a single skill.

Skills.  Having said that… the skills are a bit limited, moreso for some classes than others. Coming from the original Guild Wars, where – for example – a Ranger might have a hundred different skills for use with a bow, GW2 has something like ten which are bow specific. Whilst there’s a lot of variety from one class to another, within each class, the option of creating different builds (sets of skills) seems fairly nonexistent.

The glorious fields surrounding Divinity's Reach, where human characters start.

Events and quests.  ArenaNet have said a number of times what Guild Wars 2 will be completely different to other MMOs in terms of quests – namely, that there aren’t any, but the game is comprised of dynamic, ever-changing events instead. In practice, this doesn’t quite hold true. Even over the course of a weekend, I found quite a bit of repetition in the randomly-spawning events, whilst those that are there all the time and can only be completed once were essentially quests tied to a single area. Not quite as revolutionary as the game’s developers have tried to make out, although it’s possible more events have yet to be added.

Story.  The ‘personal story’ quests for each character are an improvement, though. Each player will advance through different story quests, depending on the choices they make in the game and in character creation. The scripting, cut-scenes and coherent plots of these personal stories were all top-notch, and make the game a bit more… well, personal.

Another view of the impressive Divinity's Reach, showing some of its scope and complexity.

Setting and landscapes.  I think it’s fair to say that ArenaNet have some of the most talented concept artists and level designers in the business. Guild Wars 2 is an absolutely stunning game, with constantly inventive and beautiful landscapes. The music and sound effects are also excellent, making the overall setting wonderfully immersive – something that screenshots and even YouTube videos really can’t do justice to.

So, what are my overall impressions of the game? I’ll admit to a little bit of disappointment. Having played other, recent MMOs – and after having seen this game hyped up for several years now – Guild Wars 2 isn’t as inventive and ground-breaking as it likes to think it is (when compared with Rift’s similarly social, dynamic gameplay, for example), and there’s a certain amount of restriction to the classes that many MMO players will be unhappy about.

However, it’s also a beautiful, high quality game, which looks polished before it’s even finished. Is it a game I’m happy to have paid for? Will I likely spend hundreds of hours on it after release? It’s a resounding ‘yes’ to both of those. Will I still be playing GW2 seven years after release, as I did with the first Guild Wars? From the evidence of the beta weekend, I’m tempted to say ‘no’, but I feel that’s a bit unfair. After all, the game has yet to actually be completed – there’s still a lot of work to come from ArenaNet yet, and I’m sure the game is only going to get better.

Gearing up for Guild Wars 2

This weekend, the original Guild Wars (an MMORPG, for those who haven’t heard of it) is celebrating its seventh birthday. I’ve been playing GW for at least six of those seven years, so it’s no surprise that I’m eagerly anticipating the sequel, Guild Wars 2 (no surprise it’s called that, either). Guild Wars has been a massive part of my gaming life – I’ve put more hours into it than any other single game, and it’s inspired  a number of my pieces of fiction. Finally, after what has felt like an excrutiatingly long wait, this weekend I’ll finally be able to play GW2, by joining its first open beta test.

I won’t pretend the wait has been an entirely joyous one. I don’t usually have a problem waiting for games (the same is true of books) and I have no reservations about the content of the game itself, but the company behind it – ArenaNet – have made some frankly bizarre decisions over its production and marketing. There was the enormous beta test sign-up (over 1 million people signed up, in fact), which led to only a single beta weekend, and therefore felt a bit pointless – everyone who bought the game, only a couple of weeks later, is now guaranteed access to further test weekends, after all. Then there was making everyone who took part in that past beta weekend sign a non-disclosure agreement, despite the fact that virtually every aspect of the game has already been talked about online (in great detail, too) and journalists were allowed to continue blogging and recording videos in-game. Why muzzle everyone else?

And then we come to the biggie: it’s years since Guild Wars 2 was announced, and there’s been a steady trickle of information about the game all that time. It’s now possible to buy the game, and has been for a few weeks. However, the game still has no official release date – ArenaNet refuses to pin down a date. It’s a mark of how much fans are anticipating GW2, and how much they trust the company, that so many – myself included – have already handed over their cash.

This post isn’t intended as a massive moan, though – I have every faith that Guild Wars 2 is going to be a magnificent game. I’m looking forward to finally getting a chance to play it this weekend, and I’ll try to blog and post a few screenshots as time allows. Whilst this weekend is only a beta test rather than the release of the full game, it’s still a massive occasion for many fans of the franchise, and could mark a truly momentous year for MMO gaming as a whole.

This Writing Life: Linear Narratives vs. Open Worlds, in Gaming and Fiction

There’s been a lot of gaming going on in our house recently (there usually is), which has got me thinking about RPGs and – of all things – narrative structure. Take two games that are both classed as RPGs but which are actually very different: at the moment I’m thinking of Final Fantasy XIII (or most JRPGs, for that matter) and Skyrim. Both set out to immerse you in a fantasy world, and feature a fair amount of customisation for your player characters, but that’s where the similarities end.

Let’s start with FF-XIII. I’m not going to go into the story – that’s irrelevent for this post. Suffice to say it has a story, and a very linear one at that. As you play through the game, you are forced along a single path, uncovering backstory, world details and character development as you go. For many gamers, being ‘railed’ (stuck to a single path within the game, with no player choices to be made) is something to grouse about. I, on the other hand, really like it. This is the form of gaming that, for me, most closely mimics the narrative structure of a novel. Whilst it’s not for everyone, the strictness of the structure does ensure that you really know the characters by the end of the game, and you’ve lived through a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end (as long as the writers/developers have done a decent job, of course).

Next we move onto Skyrim, which is entirely at the other end of the spectrum. Skyrim provides the player with an extremely open world. You could easily spend weeks playing the game without ever following the ‘main’ storyline. Your character develops entirely as you choose, and world-building comes from talking to NPCs or reading books within the game (woah, meta). Whilst this can be rewarding in its own way, it’s not something you could ever achieve in fiction, as far as I can see. A book with so little structure would just be unreadable – in fact, it would become essentially a piece of world-building and nothing else, particularly as Skyrim doesn’t go in for deep character development. I’m not sure it can, when there are so many hundreds of NPCs and your own character’s personality is built up from your responses and nothing else (you essentially have no history before you arrive in Skyrim, a trait which all of the Elder Scrolls games seem to follow).

What really got me thinking about this was the latest Final Fantasy game, XIII-2, which employs a system of jumping around between different time zones. Essentially, the player can experience the story in almost any order, although within each zone, the story and events are fixed. Does this map onto a style of fiction? I’m not sure. I considered the Choose Your Own Adventure books I talked about recently, but they provide a different ending for every read-through, whereas I think the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is fixed. Perhaps it’s closer to this sort of thing, in which the pages/scenes can be read in any order. Each re-reading of the book/play-through of the game will reveal new insight into the overall story, but the constituent parts remain the same.

This is not a blog post for which I can draw any sort of conclusions, because I don’t have an argument as such, and I’m not going to choose one structure as superior to the rest. All I would say is that there are all manner of sources out there from which writers can draw inspiration, including for their narrative structures. I know there are writers who will sniff at gaming, just as there are literary writers who disdain all ‘genre’ works. However, until you’ve sampled a little bit of everything, you can’t really know what you’re going to like – or what you can learn from.

Weekend Thoughts

So, the weekend has rolled round again and I’m feeling warm and lazy and full of delicious, delicious Earl Grey tea. As such, I’m not going to do a writing post today, but instead just a quick update.

Ah yes, writing. Let’s get that one out of the way. I’ve done pretty much nothing on the writing front all week, and in fact work has been pretty slow for about a month. First there was the week before my holiday, when I decided to wind down and relax a bit. Then there was the two week holiday, when I also decided to relax because, well, I was on holiday and I was going to make the most of it. This week has included a load of extra shifts at my ‘day-job’ (actually an evening job, but still the one that pays the bills) and a trip to London. Basically then, no writing, no editing, no proof-reading but I’ll be getting back to all three on Monday when life goes back to normal.

Speaking of London, I was there to attend the Amorphis/Orphaned Land/Ghost Brigade gig at the O2 Academy Islington. Once we actually got there (suffice to say, there are at least two O2 Academies in London and the gig wasn’t at the one we went to first…), it turned out to be a very nice little venue and the gig itself was excellent. Ghost Brigade sounded a lot like Swallow the Sun, with a bit of post-rock thrown in. Amorphis sounded much as they always do and took a few songs to really get going, but were great once they gained a bit more energy. Orphaned Land were the real highlight of the night though. This was the first time I’d seen them live and they were truly fantastic from beginning to end. As an Israeli metal band, they also play the sort of music that you’re unlikely to hear anywhere else, at least not in the UK.

Finally, a last quick update on what I’m reading and playing: ‘The Adamantine Palace’ by Stephen Deas and Torchlight respectively. I’ve also just bought the RPG Risen, which I’ll be trying out this afternoon, but might have some thoughts on after that.

28/04/10: General Updatery

My life seems to be composed of too many things to do and not enough time to do them at the moment, so I thought I’d do a quick update on what I’ve been up to.

Writing: I’m working on two entirely different projects at the moment, one in the very earliest of starting stages (a fair bit of planning and about 1500 words written), the other getting closer and closer to completion as I press on with editing. Whether working on two things at once is wise remains to be seen, but I’m managing to focus on both, so there doesn’t seem to be any point putting one aside.

Reading: I’ve just finished C.E. Murphy’s ‘Heart of Stone’, as my previous review shows. I’ve also been rereading ‘Emma’, by Jane Austen, for at least the second and I think probably the third time. After that, I’ll probably pick up something a bit different – ‘2666’ and ‘Cloud Atlas’ are both on my bookshelf and both are starting to intrigue me. But then there’s my craving for some good, old-fashioned epic/heroic fantasy, for which I have a copy of James Barclay’s ‘Dawnthief’. I’ll probably end up reading two or three of these at once, just be to awkward.

Playing: Actually not a great deal this week, due to the larger than usual amount of work I’ve got done. Some World of Warcraft, some Mass Effect, some Final Fantasy XIII. Yup, pretty much evidence that I’ll play almost anything with the ‘RPG’ label attached.

And that’s it for this update. Hopefully I’ll get another Writing Life post out this week, before I disappear from the internet for a few days over the bank holiday weekend.

Word Metrics 1/2/10 and a General Update

It’s perhaps a bit early in the day to be posting word metrics – it’s only 11am here and I might do more writing yet. Still, I’ve got a bit of breathing space in which to post a blog entry, so I’ll go ahead anyway.

I’m not actually sure what percentage I was on last time I posted one of these, but I think I’m making respectable progress. I’m about a quarter of the way through and I think I really understand all my characters and what they want. I also have a clear idea of what the end is going to be like, though bits of the middle are still decidedly fuzzy.

This also brings my yearly total to 12265. Not bad for a month’s work, I reckon, although some of it will never see the light of day, being just character studies or things written because I’d burnt out on the novel but still wanted to write something.

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And now, because I have time, a quick update on everything I’m doing apart from writing.

What I’m Reading: Currently ‘The Warrior-Prophet’ by R. Scott Bakker. I really enjoyed the first book in this series (which, incidentally, is a few years old now. not something brand new) and I’m enjoying this one too, although there does sometimes seem to be too much philosophical discussion and not enough actually happening.

What I’m Listening To: Not as much metal as I used to, as I feel like I’ve exhausted all the decent metal bands. New music in the genre just seems to be derivative or in styles that I don’t particularly like. Having said that, I’ve just discovered Green Carnation and I’m particularly liking their album ‘A Blessing in Disguise’.

What I’m Playing: Too much World of Warcraft and not much else. As with most MMOs, I go through weeks of playing it obsessively, before abandoning it entirely for a while. I have also been playing a bit of Assassin’s Creed and the first of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games. The former’s game mechanics began to annoy me so much that I’ve given up with it, but the KOTOR games are always good so I’ll probably keep going with that one.

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And that really is everything from me for now. Time to get back to work.

Fatal System Error: I haz it

It’s been pretty quiet around the blog for the past week, for a very simple – but expensive – reason: last week, after suffering numerous crashes and error messages, my laptop finally died. I’m fairly certain some vital internal component has simply given up the ghost after two years of fairly intensive usage, but I’ll see if I can get it fixed over Xmas by a family member who knows far more about computers than I do.

Now, on to the expensive bit. With two essays to finish, I didn’t really have time to try to get my laptop fixed or save up for something fancy, so I’ve bought the absolute cheapest thing I could find that would open my essay files and allow me to browse the internet. Yes, it’s a netbook/notebook – the Acer Aspire One. It seems you have to pay an extra £70 or so for a Windows version so I’ve even got one running Linux.

First impressions? It’s light, the keyboard isn’t a great deal smaller than on my old laptop, it’s fast and runs Firefox and OpenOffice with ease. On the negative side, I’m still struggling a bit with Linux. Installing new programs seems to be pretty much impossible because I just don’t know what I’m doing and despite the reams of advice on internet forums, there are generally too many conflicting answers for me to get anything to work. That also means no more PC gaming for me, apart from the occasional hour of Guild Wars on my boyfriend’s computer, but with an X-Box 360 hopefully arriving at Christmas, I’m not too worried about that.

In terms of writing, I’m actually getting a lot done, partly because essays are out of the way and partly because this notebook has far fewer distractions than my laptop did. But an update on that is going to have to wait for another post.

An Uphill Struggle, with added Fingerless Gloves

This last week has seemed like an uphill struggle. I feel a little bit like I’m fighting a war – against my laptop. Yup, it’s the old computer troubles again. Actually, in the 2+ years I’ve owned it, my laptop hasn’t been much of a problem, but this past couple of weeks have seen random program crashes and the dreaded blue screen of death appearing. Fingers crossed, everything’s back under control now after a great deal of prodding and poking.

So what else have I been up to? Less work than I should have been doing, very little writing and lots of playing Guild Wars. I’m firmly back on a gaming spree at the moment, with GW and Descent 3. Which brings me to my moment of ‘squee’ for the week:

This Xmas, I will finally, finally, be getting an X-Box 360. I’ve been wanting one for the last six months but, being a poor penniless student (I’m typing this wearing fingerless gloves because I don’t want to turn the heating on – it’s very Dickensian in our house) I haven’t been able to afford one. But hurrah! Come Christmas, I will finally have one, after which point I can bombard this blog with all sorts of games reviews and complaints of how much I suck at anything above ‘Very Easy’ difficulty level. Good times, no doubt.

And now, it’s back to huddling round a cup of tea for warmth, or something equally frugal and British. Good times? Maybe not.

What I’ve Been Up To This Week

As you may already know, I’m not keen on posting the minutiae of my life on the internet. What I do love to do, however, is spread some love for the great things I’ve been listening to, reading and generally enjoying. So, what’s in that list this week?

What I’ve been reading: At the start of the week, I finished Tithe by Holly Black, which was really enjoyable, even though it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I thought Kaye was a great character and the fey world she was drawn into was fascinating. Now though, I’m reading Night Life by Caitlin Kittredge, what I’d describe as an urban fantasy/supernatural mystery. Well, something like that anyway. The genres within fantasy have always been pretty silly. Anyway, I’ve gone from one feisty heroine to another this week. Luna, the star of Night Life, is a werewolf cop and one of the most engaging, genuinely kick-ass women I’ve come across in fiction in a long time. She don’t take shit from nobody. Ok, enough of the terrible attempt at smack-talking. Suffice to say, I’m really enjoying this book.

What I’ve been listening to: Nothing new, unfortunately. I’ve dug out my Opeth CDs though, after seeing them live last night. Once again, they confirmed why they’re pretty much my favourite band. Mmm, Opeth. Oh, and The Dead Robots’ Society writing podcast. If you’re into writing and podcasts but you haven’t listened to this one yet, you should really give it a go.

What I’ve been working on: I’ve finally started editing my latest novel, so most of my writing time has been spent sat in front of a massive stack of pages, scribbling all over them and generally ripping them apart. There’s something strangely therapeutic about putting a big line through half a page at a time and knowing that you’re never going to have to go back to it again. Other than that, I’ve been making slow progress on another new novel. (I should probably give these code names or something; just saying ‘new novel’ is getting confusing.) So, progress has been made, but it’s slow.

What I’ve been playing: Descent 3. Which is almost 10 years old now, but in terms of flying around and shooting things, it’s still a pretty good game and one which doesn’t make my laptop implode when I try to run it. Plus, I didn’t actually finish it the first time I played it, probably back when it first came out. Hopefully it’ll be second time lucky.

And I think that’s it for now. Word counts will be coming soon, as will some more meaningful posts about the editing process that I’m working my way through. For now though, good luck for the final week if you’re doing NaNoWriMo. And for everyone else… Er, happy last week of November!

Sword of the New World: The Best Free MMORPG?

As I’ve made clear in the past, I’ve tried an awful lot of MMORPGs, both free and subscriber only (Perfect World, Rappelz, Tales of Pirates, Rohan, Dofus, World of Warcraft, Cabal and probably some others I can’t remember). In most cases though, the free to play ones don’t stay on my computer very long, sometimes even for less time than it took me to download the installer. So, it was with a degree of trepidation that I spent somewhere in the region of twelve hours downloading, installing and patching an MMO called Sword of the New World.

I have to admit though, despite the long wait, I’m pleasantly surprised. SotNW definitely stands up with the best of free to play MMOs and perhaps even some of the pay to play ones too. Here’s a more detailed look at what I thought of the game.

  1. System specs: My laptop is two years old now and wasn’t top of the range when it was new, so whether games will actually run is a big issue for me. To my surprise though, Sword of the New World runs beautifully and not even on the lowest graphics settings. So far it’s been smooth and lag free, which is definitely a bonus.
  2. The look of the game: I’ll be the first to admit that I have a real fixation with pretty things. To this end, I love games that look good. SotNW really stands up here. It looks gorgeous, from the detailed landscapes and textures to the brilliantly OTT character costumes. Despite the fictitious world, the game as a whole has a ‘baroque’, historical feel to it, rather than the fantasy setting of many online games.
  3. Playability: This is one area where Sword of the New World is slightly let down. On the plus side, it has the interesting feature of being able to play up to three characters at once. Unfortunately, managing these three characters in areas so heavy with monsters that you can quickly became swamped is not always easy. There are also so many keyboard shortcuts that it’s almost easier not to bother learning them at all. Add to that the ‘not entirely obvious how it works’ systems of stances and skills and the game can be a bit overwhelming for the new player. I’m still not convinced I’ve got the hang of everything yet, but I’m getting there. Overall, it’s a complicated but likely rewarding system, particularly at higher levels.
  4. Other observations: One thing the game does have going for it is the more-or-less perfect English in character dialogue boxes. There are a few typos (particularly in NPC names) but overall the dialogue is readable and gives a sense that the game might actually have a bit of a story to it (this is a far cry from a lot of free MMOs I’ve played, in which the text has been translated into English, often from Korean, but very poorly).

So, overall impressions: Sword of the New World is an interesting and very good-looking MMORPG, offering a different set of attractions from many of its competitors, particularly in the ability to play more than one character at once. I’ve yet to see much of the social side of the game, as the starting areas seem to be fairly quiet. However, I’m likely to keep playing and try to get to some of the busier areas, as the game runs beautifully, looks fantastic and has so far proved to be pretty enjoyable.

Does Sword of the New World have the potential to be an alternative to other MMORPGs, even ones which require a subscription? Probably not, as the playing style it offers is somewhat different to traditional games of this type. However, if you’re fed up of badly-translated, bland-looking and boring to play MMOs, Sword of the New World might be one to try.