(Feedback) The World of Guild Wars

I've always loved Role-Playing Games. Regardless of various types, I always find them the best because of the stories they tell -but not just the stories, but the characters, with their 'personalities' and 'history'. This is probably why I loved the Megaman Legends series, but never liked Megaman/Rockman.

The GW1 intro sucked and had nothing to do with the game, nuff said. Factions one rocked.

Anyway, with Guild Wars, it started exactly as I could have hoped for. Full Audio narration as the camera zooms around 'Pre-Searing'. Running around, reading as Gwen gives you a great idea as to the 'life' of the Ascalonians. The Heroes in the Manuscript all around the map, each with some quest that relates to the world and the impending disaster. It was awesome, even though the human-never-in-character-players were all "LFG" or "Byin Black Dy" or "Yous wants to join me guild!?"

Old Ascalon was also great, with all the 'Survivor quests' relating to you helping people around Ascalon and you even ran into the 'Heroes' Devona, Cynn, Mhenlo, etc...

But, that's where it ended really. The 'save-the-world' story carries on ok, but the Hero cast makes one or two almost pointless appearances and the 'world' suddenly seemed very empty. There are plenty of quests to keep you busy, but most didn't give me that "You're being drawn into the World of Guild Wars" feeling. The Heroes suddenly weren't in-depth and Cynn was the only one to do anything, with Mhenlo getting a small debut in Factions.

Factions manuscript has two pages for Eve, saying how Devona found her in a graveyard in Ascalon, howcome we didn't get to see that!? Hell, Eve is on the front COVER for Guild Wars 1, you'd think we'd have seen something of her.

Anyway, its a great game, but I truely wish that the developers will go back at some point and fill the various lands with a whole bunch of "Devona and Co Quests" or just scripted events that bring these characters to life. Hell, Cynn was the only one with any personality. I'm not even covering Nina the assassin who may as well have been a nameless NPC

Sorry for the rant, I love Guild WArs, but I'm really a fan of story and to me, it's being wasted here.
Please feel free to add your own opinions to this thread...

Guild Wars itself and its players have never really gotten into the story line and RPGing stuff as much other games.

That's because it's just weird to see whammos and eles having virtual sex out in the middle of a town... kinda kills the RPG feel...

"Hail, we must go kill the great evil... what in god's name are they DOING!?"

No worse than doing your typical RPG where you are the hero off to save the world and yet you still have to buy everything... Ungreatful _________s! >_>

Yeah there are gaps and such here and there, but it looks like they are at least trying to do some filling in. The guide book that comes with it gives you some brief background but thats where it ends. However for the most part I didn't see much about Prophecies that I didn't like and I also didn't see much of Factions that I did.... o_O Oh well to each his own...

*wonders if she will ever find time to play Magna Carta >_>*

Yea. I remember killing Diablo for the first time and I ran out of money for potions. Wheres the "Im RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing saving the whole world, idiot Jamella!" option at her dialog? =[

I tend to agree. The Guild Wars world feels somewhat shallow because of the lack of roleplaying. I dislike the cliche "hero" role that Guild Wars forces you into.

This is really my only complaint with Guild Wars. It suffers from Diablo-itis in more ways than one.

Sure, in any MMORPG the 'Role-Playing' part does gets hammered into Oblivion because of the 'Human' factor.

You can't exactly get drawn in with people talking in letters (l33t spr33k) and going 'lfg', 'brb' and 'afk' all the time. Not to mention giving detailed accounts of what everyone has to do on a mission before you even get there.

But that doesn't mean the developers couldn't at least try. I mean, how hard is it, when most of the dialogue is just 'text' anyway.

THAT made me smile

So true....scarily so....

When I first played GW in the beta, I RPed the first 5 minutes. Then I saw all the spammers, with "WTS" "LFG", and suddenly stopped, to never do it again. Would be cool if they would make a "RP Chat" though, so you could turn off local, and instead use this.

_Zexion

Alot of poeple now want to have fun through money, and they ignore the detailed quests, perfect example of this is droks run, poeple who have beaten the game already start another character, get it to beacons and then straight down to droks for some power leveling and armor, this skips more than half the game in tyria, its really annoying, but after 5 characters you kinda get bored of the sotryline

There used to be a petition for rp districts floating about the Sanitarium somewheres... It's probably still out there...

Its in the Index Of Ideas sticky.

I really liked some of the scripted sequences during and after missions. They really helped to convey the storyline. From my experience, online rpg's usually only have a back story written in the manual and then you get text quests in-game which have little or nothing to do with that story. It was a nice surprise to discover that guild wars didn't follow that trend. In between missions, I agree, there isn't much story or interaction with the main characters, but I'm guessing that would have taken a lot more development time ($$$).

As for human players role playing...I'd never be able to take them seriously and find them to be an embarassing joke. - no offense

I agree that the story writing could use quite a bit more to draw people into the PvE side of things. This would effectively draw more traditional RP players... However, we all seem to be forgetting one thing!

Anet/NCSoft NEVER labeled Guild Wars as a MMORPG. In fact, there are direct quotes all over the place where developers and other company representatives have flat out said this is NOT an MMORPG. It is being called an Action RPG, which even then, is a bit off as we all know the RP element is barely there in GW. Traditional MMORPGs often have better developed stories which better facilitate actual RP playing...

I do believe, that in Factions and soon to be Nightfall, developers are trying to create more involved story lines, however, following what type of gameplay GW is, it can NEVER be like traditional MMORPGs for any true RP'ers. But have hope! I saw some wonderful examples of more involving story line in the Nightfall Preview Weekend!! One of the best examples was towards the very end of the preview you got to be involved in an actual fantasy court case concerning the Sunspears and the Ruling party of Elona. It was GREAT as you were acting as the examiner/defender for the Sunspears and got to choose different witnesses and responses to the prosecutions rebuttles (however limited, but still fun).

I would say to the OP, stick with GW at least until we get to try Nightfall. The story involvment looks very promising and you RP'ers might get a lot more then yall realize!

cheers!

Yes its mostly since you are the hero in guild wars,you and the band of players you take along are the heroes,not Cynn,Devona,Mhenlo or any of the other heroes,they couldnt be as then it would be them,and not you,who become that hero to save the world,and having them in youre team would steal places ment for players,and i quite frankly cant see heroes like those taking a siderole in things while you steal the show,so the story will have to be about you with those other heroes doing there works "behind the scenes" so noone knows what there up to.

The heroes could operate next to youre team like somptimes happens but to have that done with ALL of them would give you half an army,so the missions would have to be spiced up alot.

And Cantha dousnt even have any real heroes..apart from Nika and possibly Danika,the rest are either

A:Instructors at Shing Yea Monestary,i see shing yea playing a major role in things but not any instructor in particular.

B:Luxon seaguards or champions.

C:Kurzich.

Theres the great pair of twins but for the rest...

Anyway,heroes arnt supposed to play a major role in things,as that major role is already taken by you.

This has been a complaint of mine ever since I've been playing GW.

Compared to other RPGs, and even other online RPGs, Guild Wars is basically a sad attempt to wrap a world around a PvP game.

If they'd just made it PvP, where you gain Faction by beating computer-controlled teams, either with henchmen or with other players (ie, made the Battle Isles the whole game) until you can/choose to play with a full team of other players against another totally human team, I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't be playing it, and would've probably beaten The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by now.

But they marketed it as an RPG, so I came in with a certain level of expectation.
I either expected it to be something totally immersive (a la The Elder Scrolls), or to be something with a rigid "party" structure, but no restriction on when you could choose to do this or that part of the game (a la Final Fantasy).

It is neither, after a certain point.
There is no immersion into the game world.
Players basically just use each other to get what they want.
The level cap further hinders full immersion, because instead of having "strong enough to beat [this or that boss]" (Final Fantasy) or "strong enough to reach my character's full potential as a sentient being" (Elder Scrolls) as the goal, the game's goal becomes, basically, getting more money to get better armor so I can show off to total strangers why I am the uber pwnage (oh, and that l33tspeak bullshit doesn't make GW players look any more intelligent than trained chimpanzees)

There's no emotional attachment to the world of GW, so why are we surprised that so many players want to skip straight to Drok's instead of playing the game plot out the "right" way?

Agree with you there! Ive been playing since xmas, and have now come to a stop. Ive got 15K armor for all my toons and max weapons, done both games, what else is left to get? Go get some titles to try and look cool to people on the internet I guess ANET would like people like me to go play PvP, but i just find it boring as hell and a waste of time

You could say the same thing about a number of other MMORPGs. ITs an issue that none of them can seem to escape.

To nitpick a little, I believe there is an explanation of that around somewhere. Basically, it has to do with a sort of noninterference policy from Heaven, and Jamella and the other merchant there are heavenly beings who are bending the rules enough just by being there and providing support to the hero(es) in a place where normally there wouldn't be any merchants at all. If they provided stuff for free, that would be crossing the line from something they could claim was just offering services to heroes that will be there anyway and outright support. (Okay, it is a little weak, but at least they made the effort )

On the level cap - I don't think it makes that much of a difference to the ability to roleplay a character - does a character really have to become a virtual god to be a character? In fact, I'd say that GW probably has more room for the growth of well developed characters - with most RPGs your development essentially stops when you reach the maximum level and all you can do from then on is find better equipment, while in GW you can continue to learn more and more skills. There are, of course, other things in the game that can discourage roleplaying, but changing the level cap won't encourage roleplaying in any way.

And there have been points when I've had a certain degree of attachment - I had a certain "oh, that's it, the Charr are so going down!" moment on learning Althea's fate. You do get a little jaded after a while, though - and in that example, all the people selling her ashes in Piken's these days does kinda spoil the moment.

I have said this in another thread... I do not want to be the hero and that is why I like Faction more than Prophesies...because you are even less of a hero in Factions. I do not want to be Keanu Reeves. I do not want to be the Chosen One... unless the princess I save is actually going to walk around my virtual house in my virtual world and provide really good virtual "services" every morning. Being the main hero is over-done, over-rated. I want to be a good grunt.

Beside, it never feels like you are the hero in any online game because a) everyone else is also the chosen one, and b) you kill the same bosses over and over again, and most importantly c) the complaints about GW made by the op (level cap, power-leveling, leet-speak or whatever, no in-game character talk, etc) are exactly the same as in other games.

True, other games do facilitate role-players (who make up maybe .5% of the player population) better. They have a little more persistance and most importantly, more "spaces" to role-play. GW should improve on this for the betterment of all. But I don't see it lacking compared to other games.