Exploring in Guild Wars - part 1

I'm new to the world of Guild Wars. I've never played Guild Wars 1 (I had my hands full playing Lord of the Rings Online at the time) and I know next to nothing about the lore. I'm just enjoying the game and let new things come on my path.

And that seems to be the perfect approach to this game. So far, I've got the impression that a lot of Guild Wars is about exploration.

Would Hiking Simulator 2012 have been a better name?

Okay, I do get the name Guild Wars. In gaming, war sells (and peace doesn't) and for the rest the name is obviously directed at the PvP or WvW part of the game, which I haven't been able to try out yet. However, other than that, the gaming experience seems to strongly revolve around exploration and cooperative gameplay as opposed to competitive gameplay. So I would argue Guild Wars' gaming experience is actually more peaceful than war-like in this regard.

Mechanics stimulating cooperative gameplay:

1) no tagging mobs: whether you started the fight or not doesn't matter; everyone who attacks a mobs gets credit for the kill. It doesn't even matter if you're grouped or not. 

2) no loot rolling: everyone gets their own loot from missions they have participated in. Unusable loot can be transformed into useful crafting materials at the spot. 

3) crafting nodes do not disappear after using: so instead of having to find secluded places where nobody else looks for them, you can look for nodes on the way without having to spurt to reach it faster than someone else. Naturally, you cannot use a node twice (unless it's a rich node). The nodes do respawn in other places after a while in order for an area not to be depleted for your character forever.

Let's chop down this tree - together!

These seemingly simple and small differences have caused Conrad and I to deploy a totally different playstyle compared to usual, though. It is super much fun to just run around, gathering materials together and, oh, complete some missions too on the way because there happened to be some mobs standing in the way. All of this results in a fluid, immersive playstyle with an amazing feeling of realism.

Mission: pick up a flask of bees to drive away harpy invaders

Ravanel uses Bee Nuke. It is super effective!

Cooperative gameplay and community building

I would argue that the focus on cooperative gameplay affects the community in a positive way. One of the first things that Conrad and I noticed was how friendly the world chat was. It strongly reminded me of Lord of the Rings Online before it went free-to-play.

I'm sure this can be partly explained by the buy-to-play (as opposed to free-to-play) model, meaning that the younger teenagers won't have access to it (sorry teenagers, I'm old and boring like that and I lose precious brain cells from reading infantile jokes in general chat).

I think the cooperative gameplay may help as well, though. Simply lacking the means to grief people for your own gain (e.g. by stealing loot, quickly gathering a node or quest item while someone is fighting the mobs guarding it, tagging a mob someone else needs etc) means there are no incentives to rant and call names. This, combined with a mature community as a base, creates a friendly community.

Conrad (to the right) couldn't get rid of the rabbit he was carrying after he had already finished that quest in another way. He didn't mind, though, as it gave him a speed buff.

Or less social?

However, one could also argue that it creates a less social community, because a lot of actions that force players to interact with each other (such as distributing loot or looking for and grouping up with other players to finish a quest) are not present. Maybe I have been interacting with other players less than I would have otherwise. There's a lovely system of speech bubbles appearing above character's avatars when typing in /say, but when exploring I rarely see people use it, apart from thanking kind souls for reviving people (and sometimes not even then). Then again, I don't think this is any different in other MMOs.

I think that the actions forcing players to interact with each other I spoke of earlier are often felt as nuisances or sources of stress for players, though. Hooking up with complete strangers is something most are hesitant about, hence the negative connotation of the word "pug" and the tendency to group up with friends or guildies. So far my exploration experience may have been a solitary one (or well, a duo experience in my case), but it's been a good one.

What do you think?

This time I talked a lot about exploration, the social and the cooperative nature of Guild Wars. There's much more to exploration than what I've been able to cover here, though. Since this is supposed to be a blog post, and not a whole book, I'll post the rest of my impressions next week in part 2. Stay tuned!