If you will allow me a little drama, as a Star Wars fan from toddlerhood who represents the prickly sort of person whose itches aren’t quite being scratched by Bioware’s upcoming efforts, I want to take a moment to express my dismay at the news that Star Wars Galaxies will be shutting down this December.
I had always envisioned this gaming world as large enough to accommodate at least two sorts of fans of the IP, covering a swath somewhere between sandbox, free-form play where you can make your own destiny or even avoid being anybody of consequence at all, to the epic cinematic storytelling that ensures you will be a beloved (or feared) name for the history books. But I was wrong, and this online Star Wars world is going to become a lot smaller, and a lot poorer for the loss.
Given the high stakes involved in bringing Star Wars to online life, who in their right mind would even make another attempt at a different vision once SW:TOR has gone live?
Fortunately, just as I was becoming mellow in my Guild Wars 2 anticipation, even going so far as to stop refreshing forums all day and focus instead on growing a new arsenal of games I can play in the interim (bless all these games that are going Free 2 Play this year!), ArenaNet has a Fanday and drops two bombshells of information on the starving masses. Not content to let the denizens of Guild Wars 2 Guru speculate GW2’s release date out into the 2020’s based on lack of revealed information about game mechanics, ANet has published blogs about dungeons, underwater combat, and oodles of video and some NDA–free impressions to demonstrate that both are fully functional.
Thanks ArenaNet; I’m now back to wanting GW2 to be out so bad that it hurts. The only thing that could make this summer of GW2 love better would be if NCSoft would do something similar to Bioware and set up a GW2 demo station across the street from Comic Con (Mr. Randomessa and I being two of thousands who were unable to secure tickets to the con in the 0.002 seconds it took for them to be sold out this year).
In the meantime, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get home from work and enjoy that 20 minute demo of underwater gameplay, so toodles!
Casual Is As Casual Does 
I’m still warming up to the underwater combat information… it just hasn’t quite grabbed me in the same way the dungeon info and videos have. However, it does appear to be far more interesting and involved than any previous game’s attempt at similar environments … at least that I can think of.
I’m really happy about the apparent design choice to compromise on the accessibility/challenging balancing act that always has to be negotiated in an MMO these days.
Story mode = accessible (shouldn’t prove too difficult for PUGs and folks who perhaps aren’t as ‘hard core’ as your typical raider.)
Explore mode = challenging (gloves are off now – you’d better know what you’re doing… and so had everyone else in your group. Ventrillo or similar communications are probably required for success.)
The only way they could have possibly made me even happier would have been if they also said that each time you ran through the dungeon in explorer mode the degree of difficulty is further increased. Naturally, this would appeal to the ‘achievers’ in all of us, and being able to say that your group just completed the Ascalon dungeon in explorer mode on the 10th degree of difficulty. Not to mention that there would be a whole other level of significance to seeing someone walking around in a complete set of a dungeon’s armor.
Increasingly more difficult dungeons sounds like an interesting take on things (though I’m not sure how they would balance it and how far is reasonable to expect them to take the difficulty: to the 10th level? 20th?); you should probably post that on the GW2 forums or somewhere the devs are likely to see it if the though hasn’t crossed their minds already!
I’m staying away from too much GW2 info. I want it to be a pleasant surprise. Without a solid year release window, I don’t want to start the hypemeter. I’ve about burnt myself out on SW:TOR hype
Hey, fair enough; you do what works for you! I’m the opposite – I just can’t get enough of this stuff. 🙂
[…] to ArenaNet, who did indeed hear my plea to make Guild Wars 2 demos available to the ticketless this Comic-Con weekend, I will be in San […]
Man i can’t get enough of Guild Wars 2