Friday, August 21, 2009

Guild Wars 2 Preview

There is a great Guild Wars 2 preview on Eurogamer. Guild Wars is one of the best online RPGs ever released. But what excites me the most is this:

"We actually don't have a traditional RPG/MMO quest system," Flannum continues. "Instead what we've got are Events."


Looks like the trend towards creating content with goals available to the public (as opposed to individuals running ticking off their own personal list of checkmarks to complete their 'quests'), like Warhammer Online Public Quests, is continuing. But these look better because they are supposed to end. As new Events get discovered the world changes. THAT is how you add immersion to a game, by allowing people to shape the game's history through their actions (or inaction).

This sounds a lot like what the Heroes of Telara developers have said they plan for their game:

Unite with your friends and plan play-sessions around scheduled events that change on a regular basis.


I wish we had more information to compare the two approaches.

But hopefully the deathknell is tolling for the traditional quest system and the static, unchanging worlds will be a thing of the past. The quest system caused the MMO industry to become very solo oriented; with the shift to more public goals, MMOs might become social again!

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