Guinea Pig Wars: The BMP 4 months after

Guild Wars has become a guinea pig for ANet.
I do not want to say this in a negative sense, but they were and are testing concepts for the upcoming GW2.

Roughly 4 months ago the BMP was made available for purchase through the online shop. People were begging for it, we all probably remember the BMP craze.

For those who do not remember, BMP is the abbreviation for the Bonus Mission Pack:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bonus_mission_pack
The Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack consists of four missions covering historical events: the Battle of Jahai, the Tengu Wars, the rise of the White Mantle and the Searing. It was released on November 29th 2007. The Bonus Mission Pack was made available in online retail stores, including the Guild Wars In-Game Store, from January 28, 2008.


Some days ago we had the update with the PvE/PvP skill split and lots of discussions, especially over a statement Isaiah Cartwright made in an interview.

As he put what he said in relation, it is only fair to cite him:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_...iah_Cartwright
I think a lot of people are missing my point with this statement " PvE players tend to want extremely overpowered things and feel epic while killing lots of things." I'm not saying that PvE players don't want a challenge, I'm saying they want to be powerful, feel epic, and overcome challenges, shooting out a fireball that kills 1 rat, vs a fireball that kills a cave full of trolls has two very different feels. I also never liked the term "PvE player" as so many different people enjoy different things both casual and hardcore, it's just always been my impression that going on an adventure to slay a dragon feels way cooler then going on an adventure to clear rats from a farmers house. Yet mechanically they are the same thing. In any case sorry if I came across offensive, was just trying to explain some of the challenges in designing a single game for multiple people with multiple goals for their playing experience. Izzy @-'---- 00:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)



Still, what did the BMP offer?

We got one-shot missions with very limited replay value. The main aspect was the free weapons at the end of the missions. There are no money or other item drops during the missions.

* They were designed as single-player experiences giving people an "epic" feeling of being part of major events in GW history.
* We were given a fixed skillset, fixed stats.

OK. This is for sure not a viable design for the whole of GW2 as MMO, just an idea. But one thing is clearly visible:

EPIC = KILL TONS OF MOBS WITH OVERPOWERED SKILLS.
+ a fancy cinematics backstory.

But did this always work?
We have some missions where people just tear through very easy mobs till the end, namely Turai's Story.

Then we had Togo's story. Despite featuring a totally freaking "Togo Nuke" style skill that one-shotted all guards, it took some care if you wanted to do the bonus. The normal story progress itself was very easy.

Saul's story features a very powerful Signet of Judgement and he tears through hordes of Charr after some required sneak action. Basically we nuke tons of low level Charr to feel epic, you recognize the few mixed in level 20+ Charr easily, because they are still standing when the other are down.

Gwen's Story on the other hand puts you in a weaker position and makes you flee from mobs. An interesting change!


BMP reception in general:
The BMP got tons of positive feedback, not only here on this board.

-> But now, 4/5 months later, who really bothers with the BMP missions again?

People got the weapons they wanted already. Plus we set another precedent that people will pay 9.99 bucks for this tiny amount of content. Most bought it for the weapons probably.


I see the great danger that ANet feels encouraged by the positive feedback.
Imagine the worst case scenario, which is unfortunately not too unlikely:

GW2 might feature huge zones where people group up for questing solo or in small groups such mini-missions/quest in a seperate instance.


Perhaps with set/fixed skills/build for each class. The party search feature would feature a quest list (i already heard rumors about this) that also serves as a party search feature. You got X/X members, boom, all get asked if they want to do this mission/quest now in their quest-instance.
Of course there will be tons of consumables and ursan-style skills specialized to help people farm better, too.


This is my horror vision of GW2. It would not be the first time that ANet takes a well received and good idea too far. But who really knows all their intentions behind the BMP. I would be glad if I am totally wrong this time.

I remember the BMP was made on the side for fun to fill in some back history.
Then they used it to promote the webstore.
I don't remember them saying what they did in the BMP, they made last year, will be what GW2 will play like, next year.

I can't make head or tail of your incoherent post. What point are you trying to make?

First present your thesis, then list your arguments in support of the thesis, organised such that each argument follows from earlier arguments.

Seems like anet should not forget three things:

a) Good feedback in shortterm does not equal good feature for longterm. BMP is already kinda forgotten. We had other features which had excellent feedback but turned to be cathastrophic (6man HoH) in few weeks.
b) People want what they cannot have. Hence huge demand for BMP that had little to do with its merits.
c) Give unique, desirable, rewards that dont mess up economy anymore and people will love you. But that does not mean they love getting them.

As far as premade bars go ... i can see it. PuG problems in gws PvE are easy to see reason for: Despite somewhat easy gameplay, people tend to use suboptimal (i am being very kind here, i should call them stupid) builds. So they mess up.

Solution devised by devs: Premade bars that cant be messed up works. It dumbs game down greatly, but it works.

It they make premade bars profession specific like we have seen in BMP, it would be one step further.

It removes problem: stupid players that ruing pugging. Just imagine if your Warrior in party was forced to premade build of dslash, your monk to heal/prot hybrid, etc etc ... No more weird useless builds. You get usefull party member.

Other MMOS do this by limiting amount of skills. Chices players dont have to make are wrong choices that players does not make. Unlike GW, in other MOOs it is impossoble to load damage dealers bar with likes of flare, so you get people to suck less and become more usefull in parties.

I use it when i need a weapon for a new char or a weapon for a hero. I think that's really all it's good for unless your really bored xD

I'm sorry but forcing players to play specific builds does not make your game fun. making builds is part of guild wars and inefficency can be fun, because its only pvw and you're not hurting anyone (if you care so much that someone isnt using Dslash, go play with your heroes).

All the ursan people seems to disagree.

Class diversity is what makes guildwars unique. However, Ursan beats out class diversity because most players DO NOT WANT diversity. Before ursan it was just FOW GLF 2 NUKERS, 2 MONKS, TANK, BONDER, SS, and maybe a splinter barrage.

Ever tried to get into a non ursan grp as an assassin/derv/rit/para? Para and rit can even be very beneficial, but most experienced ppl reject the idea of class diversity.

I dont want to make this into an ursan rant, but at least ursan lets all classes farm.

I think you have no little idea how experienced players play, but i assure you, bonder monk and tank is nowhere to be found in their parties.

Most experienced people always have space in party for Rt/Para/Assassin/Mesmer/Dervs/Whatever. But granted that those people can run decent builds and cooperate. Average player just cant, he wont get to those parties regardless of profession anyway.

Any party composition can win any PvE challenge, easily. All you need are people who cooperate. That is problem in PvE where you just can't get stranger to listen to you and act a bit selflessly: bring some support skill or different attribute lines, drops useless stuff for more usefull ... etc ...

Class diversity functions well. Its players which don't.

I mean, who has patience explaining mesmer that he would be very usefull if he dropped his pet, went /rt and brought splinter and ancestors to buff assasin instead?

I played each mission of those exactly once.

Then I decided that they completely uninteresting, have no replay value, and are basically boring.

And while for many this "Epic" style may be what they like, I am not one of those.

But neither my, neither their voice is definitive. I played GW for "balanced" aspects.

Our guild groups ran anything. But rarely bonder, quad nuker and never any of such cookie cutter groups.

What you're talking about is lowest common denominator PUGs. "Experienced" players however rarely mixed with those.

Ah, farming!

That's not the same as mission groups, is it? Those that wanted to farm rolled whatever profession was best, and they will do so again. They don't care about anything whatsoever, unless it makes their farming run 5 seconds shorter.

The Bonus Mission Pack was a waste for me. The only benefit I got out of it was the gold obtained for completing the "discoveries"... the gold items that could be gained served no purpose for me.

I'm one of the few people who like green items and weapons mainly because it's one whole thing... unlike the need to dig and find inscriptions and handles or whatever needed that the "clean" gold weapons happen to be.

I played each of the BMP missions once and that was it. Again, it was a complete waste...

Wait, wait. When you hit Ursan Blessing, you erase your class and turn into U/x. If my Mesmer uses UB, he isn't Mesmer because he has no mesmer skills on the bar. The only way someone would notice the difference between a warrior or a mesmer in ursanway is ONLY by the useless class tags and appearance. Because they both use same skills...

Guild Wars has been an on-going experiment on both ArenaNet and NCSoft's parts since the beginning.

NCSoft - can you make a good profit off a non-monthly-fee on-line game. This was a reason for both BMP offers - to attract sales to the on-line store where more profit is made by the publisher.

ArenaNet - what works best and makes the game buyers happy to play the game and tell other people to buy it. This is the reason for the constant changes throughout the life of the game. GW was in a constant open beta status.

Did I or do I now care? - NO. Great game, great fun and I don't care who gets the profit from my purchases.

What kind of strange little world are you living in? These are PUGS we're talking about....Diversity might as well be an old wooden ship to these people.

I don't mind being a guinea pig as long as the experiments are fun.

The BMP was fun. Once.

Which brings me immediately to Anet's major weakness: they have brilliant designers but completely miss the ball concerning added value to the game.



Case in point (you saw this coming): Underworld and the Fissure of Woe.

These areas still have wide appeal three years after their release. People have been asking, pleaing, demanding, blackmailing, begging to get the other three Realms, based on the game mechanics of the other two.



Their quality, you ask?

Simple design, solid background story, not too easy, not too hard, entirely unforgiving. Extreme replayability.

These are the two areas in the game ArenaNet got completely right (well, save for a few unfinished quests and the lack of an end-boss of some sorts).

It's sad to say, but it's a level of design quality I no longer expect them to reach ever again.



Please, ArenaNet. Prove me wrong.

old old wooden ship?

But that is the point ... you cant get even basic cooperation from pugs ... sometimes you can't even make them bring essential, common sense, stuff that enables whole party to pass mission casually and have fun instead of painfull experience that eventually ends in loss.

Problem: UW/FoW were succesfull experiment. There is (was) no reason for anet to repeat this experiment. It worked just well. Sorrows Furnance worked also quite well. Tokp didnt really work out and became just another farm spot.

After that they tried "Raiding for GW" style missions which feature bigger party size and rooms you "have to figure out" and "BOSS"es you also have to figure out. (aka, come up with gimmicks.) I guess it was considered at least partial success because this concept went to mass production mixed with tokp as dungeons in gwen.

After that they tried to create sorrows furnance/raid hybrid with DoA and based on its failure they tried another take on it with slavers exile.

As you see, being guinea pig is bad because succesfull experiements dont get repeated but unsuccesfull ones get.

What does it mean? Game gets crappier because just repeating good stuff is not goal. Goal is to keep reinstorducing rehashed bad stuff untill it becomes good. So eventually good content becomes oveshadowed by "failed experient" type content.

BMP was a great idea and very fun to do. I believe that they should make another BMP! They should release some fun things before GW2!

I think that A.Net is very well aware of how often the BMP missions are played each day... in fact all of their content.

And I think we have always been guinea pigs for the whole series:

A.Net always tries new things, tries to push boundaries, etc. The campaigns if really looked at closely are so different in style and what they offer. A.Net could have just made "more Prophecies," but they didn't.

Some things are awesome and some thing suck, but my hope is that they have learned so mucking fuch through their *first* game that GW2 will be awesome.

Yep, my personal problem with trying out new things is that most of their new ideas either suck or that good ideas get implemented badly.

At the very core, GW is a really great idea and an alternative to fee-based MMOs for players with little time and/or money at hand. I still hope they go with a low level cap or none at all. But it seems they rather add more of everything to the game.

My greatest fear would be that we get "spectacular" and "epic" gameplay like in the BMP. They did not make these small snippets of story because they love us, because we are such good customers and so on. I just wonder what they learnt from the BMP... that people clap and cheer to one-shot content without any replay-value? Hopefully not!

hehe i had people begging from me to buy it for them what great fun that was.

The only reason FoW and UW are played so much is that they are so lucrative. That's it. If you added another version of UW where ectos wouldn't drop, you'd see the same you see with the BMP: play it a few times while it's still fun, and then move on to something else.

The reason BMP is not played so much is simple: it's tiny. 4 missions and that's it. Also, far fewer people have it, compared to the campaigns and expansions.

One thing is true, though - the fixed builds do make for little replayability. However, they add a lot to the storyline effect. And, amazing as it may seem, some people do like the storyline and LOVED seeing how exactly the Mursaat gained dominance over the White mantle and similar.

The BMP is interesting, because it breaks almost every MMO rule in existence and gets away with it.

* Players do not get to play their own character
* Players do not progress in terms of power
* Players do not play with other players
* Players do not create their own build

But is the BMP fun? Yes it is fun.
Does it have replay value? Yes, there are the bonus goals. Sure the BMP will fade, but do you play the Wilds every week?
Does it have rewards? Absolutely, a full set of skins for each mission is more than most missions.

The BMP further proved that microtransaction content will be accepted by the community, as well as highly experimental mission designs. Sure, it is not replayed as much as other elite dungeons, but then again those dungeons are played because they are farming spots, nothing else.

I would gladly take any BMP style mission if I encountered it in GW2. As strange as they appear in a multiplayer environment, they add something to the game. The idea of selecting a particular reward for achieving a quest is also very nice. Better than picking up scraps while doing the mission until you can buy or craft a new weapon or maybe get the skindrop you desire.

And if the price-value ratio is ok, who would not take episodic or additional content for GW this very minute?

I bought heaps of stuff off the online store to qualify for the BMP and I'll be honest, I only did Togo's story, Saul's story, and got halfway through the others before I got bored and put the BMP to bed, never to be played again.

BMP was boring. I was expecting full team missions, and got half cocked solo missions. I didn't pay for it though, so nothing lost.

This could be viewed as cynical but thats how corporations work. Market analysis, planning..etc. That it sometimes fails is sometimes the case though, it seems.
I would like to bring an example where things were done differently though. When NCSoft was planning their current Lineage 2 chronicle, they started what maybe described as major brainstorming among their Korean player-base [they comprise the majority] on a forum on the official site. The devs interacted with the players.
From what I understand [I could be wrong] I short list was made of the most popular elements which were later incorporated into the new chronicle and things undesirable which were eliminated.
It would be nice if something like that were done in regards to GW2 and GW1 too, I think.

From the introduction of Sorrow's Furnace Anet introduced a new type of play which included farm grind for those special greens. Then with Factions, Nightfall and GWEN it escallated into more farm grind for those greens and special weapons of GWEN for HOM. This is what a lot of people wanted. Inscribed weapons is what a lot of people wanted, same with the insignia's for armor. People screamed on the forums (not just this one) for more barbie doll type ability to customize their characters (and heroes). Now, here it is, we have it. But, of course there are always QQers who want the OLD days, the HIGH economy and most players (casuals) having little more than a collectors weapon/item or pay the price for the good stuff from the handful that want the OLD ways again.

GW's has evolved and I'm pretty happy with the evolving, but, it's still not enough. We need more higher end gear (not just looks), more neat unique greens and more options for inscriptions (haste +10%) or (running speed +5%) and lots more I could list, but, it's useless here.

The only thing about the BMP that I liked about it was the "weapons", I'd be pretty sure most people bought it for this reason. Those that screamed nooooooooooooo Anet don't provide it openly again for "everyone" didn't want people to have it because of the weapons, not because of the stories I can bet you that. But, we all got it or have access to it now and those wonderful weapons that we can either use or give to our heroes.

And the grind required to get Norn Armors and those special PVE only skills for GWEN I'm certainly happy about as well. If NF/GWEN and parts of Factions are a look into GW2 then I'm pretty happy. Too many people were running thru the content of Prophecies to get to the high end armors and skills and weapons (ruined Ascalon and Yaks Bend pvp) and I'm glad to see GRIND can be a way to stop all that in the latter chapters and hopefully in GW2 as well. I say if you want it "for each character" you gotta EARN it "for each character". Good job Anet please keep this philosophy in GW2 and give us more high end long adventures to get to swords of everslaying and stuff like that.

I enjoyed the BMP missions, I thought the missions were fun and offered a good look into the lore, and of course, gave us some really great rewards. I'd love to see them do something similar in the future, but I think they probably shouldn't be restricted to solo missions next time. Being able to play through them, with even just one other player would have made it a lot more interesting.

I'm still playing the BMP, not all the time but I'll jump back in every week or so.


If Arena Net offered 200+ BMP styled missions, I'd probably own everyone of them--and play them, as would many others. I still think they're a great addition to the franchise. Especially as a side feature to the Missions and chapters, quests, mini games. I'm still enjoying dwarven boxing, and haven't even hand time to explore Polymock. . .

Be not afraid. GW2 will likely have something for everyone.

i don't know about that. would people be going to fow/uw if those areas didn't drop shards/ectos?

I thought the BMP was cute, fun, and worth the $10 (though I got mine for free), especially if you're a lore-nut. The rewards are beautiful, the environments are beautiful, and the presentation is perfect.

Also, no one would do UW or FoW without the ectos, shards, and reward chest at the end. Who goes down there regularly nowadays? Mainly Ursans looking to clear the UW as quickly as possible. Do you think most of them know (or care) about the lore of the area, or read the quest descriptions? Even if they did in the beginning, they certainly don't now; it's all about the money and items, gogogogo.

Think of it this way: for about a year before the reward chest was added to FoW/UW, who went to UW at all besides spider capping groups and solo/duo farmers of some kind? Basically no one, ever. FoW was played quite often, because it was an "elite" area that wasn't too hard, so it was basically the only real endgame open to many players...and shards drop often enough in a group to be worth it. But really, most of those groups just did Forgemaster runs; I'd be surprised if most of the players in those groups even knew how big FoW really was, outside the Chaos Planes.

Armor level, dude. A caster is at a significant disadvantage vs. a Warrior when using Ursan blessing due to base AL.

And your class doesn't change. Stop talking nonsense. Seriously.

Yes, cry more. You got Bonus Mission Pack just for that you spent 30€. I plaid it on frined's account ( I don't have credit card) and I've done every mission at least 4 times. I enjoid every time.

Did Gwen's story once. Maybe one day when I'm really bored I'll try another.

I would, but I never have enough time, in one chunk, to group with others, (rl AFKing constantly) thus I'm stuck struggling to work my way through, just to see the sights (as 600/Smite combo (me and a hero)).

I'd pay for an upgrade, BMP style, that would allow me solo access to these areas sans shards/ectos just to see the sights.

Maybe there's a 4 man build out there I'm not aware of. . .

um, I played two of the missions, didn't finish, didn't go back

'nuff said

I think you would find that Ursan players actually hate Ursan. Players will always use whatever tools are given to them that preform the best and most efficiently. A-Net forces the player to use Ursan because it is superior.

I love when people say "but you do not need to use it!!" regarding anything overpowered, broken, or explotative, but as long as it is in the game, players WILL use it because it is there and it is the best means of advancing towards thier goals. They may very well quit the game the day after they reach thier goal because it was so boring and tedious, but they will use the best and most effective method time and time again regardless of how boring and repetitive it is.

...have you read the (many) Ursan threads? There's a significant number of people even on these forums who honestly enjoy it, and I'd wager that number is even higher in-game.