Normally when you go underwater in a game, you have a breath meter that determines how long you can stay down there. This helps level designers design their oceans by limiting how far down the player can go. After all, not all games are Endless Oceans. It also keeps your character’s fingers from pruning.
Guild Wars 2, however, has some pretty wide ranging underwater exploration. When the level designers need to keep you from just heading out into the empty seas, they cite “currents” as the limiting factor. I would have also accepted “undertow”. But when it comes to briny depths, there’s some awfully amazing stuff in the water. And since all characters have rebreathers with unlimited air capacity and magical defenses against nitrogen narcosis and the bends, you can explore freely! The only drawback is that you look like a certain ridiculous villain in a certain recent movie.
As much as I skip over the lore while I’m playing Guild Wars 2, I can’t help but admire what an imaginative world ArenaNet has made. Ever see a frog in heavy armor? Well, you have now. Pictured. Left.
I recall another MMO called Vanguard having various dog and cat people, and as near as I can recall, they were just human character models with dog and cat heads stuck on top. It’s just like how all the aliens on Star Trek are bipedal humanoids with prosthetic noses or ears or whatever. One of the things I really like about playing a charr in Guild Wars 2 is that it’s not just a human character model with a cat head. The charr have an entirely different posture, size, and movement animation. Similarly, the various non-human races around the world — I don’t just mean the monsters, but the NPC civilizations — have a distinct look. In addition to the frog people, there are polar bear people, platypus people, rat people, and bird people, and not a one of them uses the basic human character model. In fact, with all these NPC races, with all the charr, with all the diminutive asura, it sometimes seems that human character models are the exception rather than the rule.
During one of the storyline missions in Guild Wars 2 — these will vary based on your answers to multiple choice questions when you make your character — I had to investigate some strange goings on in the sewers of Lion’s Arch, the game’s main city. The mission takes place in an instance of the sewers scripted to involve some things I’ll leave you to discover on your own. But as soon as you walk in, you see a steady stream of rats coming out of the sewers. The idea is that there’s something up ahead that they want no part of.
So I did the mission and then ended up back at the entrance, watching the rats stream out. I’m not proud of what happened next.
After the jump, a one-man Vamanos Pest Control Continue reading →
After saying a few words about the sexual harassment suit against Stardock, we briefly try not to talk about Guild Wars 2. Tune in to see how well that worked out.
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Chris “I’m Not Going in the Water” Hornbostel joins us this week to talk about what we love about Guild Wars 2, what we don’t love about Guild Wars 2, and the anecdote we would tell to express what’s special about the game. You can find us in the game at tomchick.6739, mcmaster.9567, and triggercut.2059.
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As an online game that you jump into to play simultaneously with a bunch of other people, the launch of Guild Wars 2 was remarkably successful. But as a game with the name “guild” in the title, the launch of Guild Wars 2 was an unmitigated disaster. I guess you could say they got it half right.
After the jump, belonging to clubs that wouldn’t have you as a member Continue reading →
It wouldn’t be a launch without a catastrophic failure and a lack of communication from the developers. But for most of Guild Wars 2’s first evening, ArenaNet decided to play it a little differently. The game launched exactly at the announced time, it was easy to get onto servers that weren’t listed as full, and the game ran smoothly for the most part. Other than being dropped a few times, which just meant quickly logging back on to find my character patiently waiting in the same place, the Guild Wars 2’s launch was a thing of beauty for how utterly unremarkable it was. It was the sort of launch that didn’t even seem like a launch. And you almost never see a launch like that.
For about seven hours, anyway.
At about 4am Saturday morning, the game basically shut down. The only error message implied that it was my router’s fault that I couldn’t get online. For a couple of hours, the only server status message from ArenaNet was that they were experiencing heavy volume and they are “monitoring the situation”. Now I can’t even get to the launcher.
But boy was it nice while it lasted. At a certain point, there was just too much to do, too many things to see, too many things to progress, too many places to go. I had to get away. So I ducked into the world vs. world to wander around and see what I could do as a solo player. Not much, of course. But I ran across someone else who had the same idea. We dove into the ocean to enlist the help of some little fish people. They’re like a cross between a seal and an otter and a Gungan. If you grind a bit for them, driving evil sea snakes out of their temple and gathering pearls, they’ll waddle out of the water. On land, they can summon a storm that heals your faction and randomly throws lightning bolts at enemy factions. Unfortunately, Guild Wars 2 shut down before I could see them in action. They better still be there when I get back.
