Less Linear Pathing

The further I progress, the more I'm annoyed by the excessively linear pathing that forces you to walk a maze to get someplace you can clearly see and is often below your current position. Or you're forced to go leagues out of your way to get somewhere that would be half the journey if you could just take some of the mountain passes that look like they should be navigable. I understand the reasons for the limitation, and that it would be a major undertaking to alter, but it kills the immersion almost completely in some cases running into invisible walls; it's like I'm playing some kiddie game. Granted, games like Diablo II had this characteristic, but technology and AI and processing power have advanced quite a bit since then.

That is my number 2 gripe with the game. I've never been in an MMO that wouldn't allow me to _fully explore the content_. Don't expect NCSoft will change the game design, but damn is it annoying.

It's not an issue with technology/AI, it's an issue with map design. Winding paths/mazes are commonly employed to increase the physical length of a mission/explorable area while keeping the actual zone relatively small, like a coiled rope in a box. It's a design decision, not something they weren't able to implement.

If this approach bothers you, close your eyes and imagine the rope is taken out of the box and stretched out before you: missions will be just as long and challenging coiled up or stretched out. When considering the mountains, forests, lakes and oceans retraining your freedom: those are the same as the walls in Doom, existing as a level boundary. A world has to end somewhere, and with the clear entrypoints of Guild Wars and seperate mission areas it would be quite troublesome to be able to move from map to map whereever you feel like it.

I mentioned technology because one reason for limited mobility is to eliminate having to deal with most ramifications of that third dimension. But yes, it is primarily a design decision. I guess having to stick to mountain trails and not being able to traverse every part of a lake would be easier to swallow if I wasn't losing that entire third dimension and if I didn't run smack into actual invisible walls along the shore where it can't be a too-deep-to-go thing.

Other games have had similar pathing limitations, but the implementation in Guild Wars feels more artificial to me, and stark artificiality is the one thing I don't want to see in a roleplaying game. I shouldn't have to so frequently feel like I'm bumping up against the virtual boxes in the game design. Granted, some games have it much easier in that regard because they focus more on indoor environment.

I'll also add that EQ2 turned me off with it's constant zoning when in town; WoW's open zones were a vast improvement (pun intended). And yes, I know that WoW can get away with it because they use a less intensive graphics engine.

Oh this reminds me of beautiful Morrowind...where you can literally go anywhere in any direction...

Loved morrowind, can't wait for Oblivion. Going to be so nice.

I'm a bit peeved by the boundary limitations in GW too... sure, they wanted mission based. But they also seemed to have locked paths in their heads too, which is just no fun.

A nice addition would be to have a "slow" effect when you approached an edge. This would give a "visual" indication of a nearby "wall". With the "slow" clearing as soon as you turned another direction.

Whatever happened to the promises of characters being able to "Manipulate the physical world in wondrous ways to complete missions"?

Well, you can open doors.
And rope bridges get destroyed.
And you cause rain to fall from the sky at some point.
And... there was that one thing with... hmm.

But I can't say I miss it much. They can't tie things like this to skills, and that would be the only way for it to be fun I think (meteor storm cratering a field, fire burning trees and similar aesthetics would be nice already) - scripted world changes are just that, they don't feel like your achievements.