GW2 has to be one of the last MMORPGs to follow what used to be the traditional path to market. There was a lengthy development process lasting several years, throughout which ArenaNet released information in bursts, revealing classes and features with great fanfare to keep the interest pot bubbling.
There were interviews and discussions across the gaming media. There were playable demos at conventions. I recall there were even junkets where accredited press and favored bloggers were flown across the country for a hands-on and a hand-shake. It was the continued coverage from Zubon and the much-missed Ravious at Kill Ten Rats that finally piqued my own interest in a game whose development I would otherwise not have been following.
In the final months before launch ArenaNet ran a highly successful promotion within GW2's precursor, the original Guild Wars. I hadn't played that game for years but I ended up buying the collected expansions, contacting customer service to get my old account restored, and playing through a fair chunk of content to build up some Hall of Monuments points.
I was immediately and powerfully impressed, particularly with how it looked. In my first impressions piece I wrote "It looks absolutely stunning. Screen shots and videos really don't do it justice. The whole thing looks like a hand-painted, animated movie".
I was happy enough with the gameplay, too: "...based on just a few hours... what I've seen is an excellent implementation of traditional, standard and familiar MMO... Guild Wars 2 looks to be a really first-class AAA theme-park...".
Everything looked so good right up to launch, but...
But there isn't really a "but". A lot's been said, no little of it by me, about how ANet reneged on the (in)famous"Manifesto" but despite all that the game goes on, much the same, not least because most of the manifesto claims were manifest hogwash to begin with. Viewed with hindsight, the official Manifesto promo video makes that clear enough. Once you've seen the provenance of those stirring scenes in the game itself it's hard to believe the hype. (Okay, they were right about the art...)
I'm not here to warm over cold complaints, though. After all, I'm still playing GW2 eight years on. It can't be that bad, right?
No, it's not. It's perfectly fine for an eight-year old MMORPG. If I'm going to complain about anything, it isn't the game itself. It's that I'm still playing it.
Alright, not even that, exactly. After all, I'm still playing several games a lot older than GW2. The real problem is that GW2 is the newest MMORPG I'm playing regularly.
In the eight years since Guild Wars 2 appeared there hasn't been a single new entry to the genre that's been able to unseat ANet's sophomore effort from pole position in my play rotation. I've played a lot of newer games in that time - Final Fantasy XIV, WildStar, ArcheAge, Black Desert Online, Blade and Soul, Twin Saga, Revelation Online, Riders of Icarus, Elder Scrolls Online, a whole load more I've forgotten. But I'm not playing them now. I'm playing GW2.
Most of those games are still around. Some of them are doing pretty well, FFXIV and BDO especially. I still drop by a few of them, now and again, to see how they're getting on, check in with my old characters, have a bit of a run around. Sometimes I even settle in for a while, do a few more levels.
For years I've listened to MMORPG players talking about burnout and boredom and ennui. It's as much a trope of the genre as dodgy escort quests and elite raiding. I've been aware of it but I've never really felt it, personally. Any time I have sensed the chill shadow of disengagement on my back I've simply turned towards the warm glow of another MMO. Because there's always another MMO.
Or there always has been. Now, though? I'm not so sure.
In 2020 here we all are, blowing on the embers, or so it sometimes seems. WoW Classic, EverQuest Progression , ArcheAge Unchained, LotRO Legendary... The past sells better than the future, it seems. And even if it doesn't, it certainly feels like the safer choice, for players and developers both.
And we're all seeking a place of safety right now, even if safety also means stasis, repetition and tedium. It's ironic that, with a present that seems to consist of eternal lockdown out here in the real world (or worse, blind terror over things opening up that shouldn't), when we go in search of freedom and adventure in our fantasy lives, increasingly all we find are chores and tasks and every day the same as the last.
And that's what it comes down to, in the end. Not even just in the end. In the middle. At the beginning. When the newness is gone all that left is the same old.
Gone are al those new games coming out like flowers bloming in a rich, strange garden. Spring faded long ago and Summer, too. The first hint of Autumn chill was already in the air, eight years ago, when Guild Wars 2 opened the gates to Tyria. It's winter, now.
I used to enjoy paging through the multiplicity of lists of MMOs in development. Twenty MMOs to Watch. That kind of thing. They came out every year and there was always plenty to be excited about. Yesterday I took a look at what's out there now.
New MMORPGs 2020
11 Upcoming MMORPGs to be Excited About in 2020
The 5 Best Upcoming MMORPGs to Play in 2020
Perfect Ten: Upcoming MMOs to watch in 2020
Any of those doing it for you?
There are two or three I'm genuinely excited about, although we're fast approaching the point where they'll have been in development so long I won't quite be able remember why. Worse, I don't expect to be playing any of them this year, next year, maybe ever.
Some of the rest I could play right now, if I didn't care they're half-finished, buggy messes in alpha or beta or Early Access that still want my money up front anyway. A few are region-locked, which annoys me, but it's a mooot point because they're games I most likely wouldn't enjoy even if I could get at them.
And that's the big problem. Most of the games on all those lists look like nothing I'd want to play. I think it has as much to do with me as with the games. I have a very particular idea of what I want in an MMORPG and what I want is no longer in fashion the way it once was. No-one's making games like that any more. They cost too much and too many have failed.
Looks like I'm stuck with the games I already have, then. Which most likely means more Guild Wars 2, more EverQuest II, more EverQuest, probably even more World of Warcraft. A strict diet spiced only with a sprinkling of all the other ageing games that look and play just like them. I can't say it's a prospect to set jaded taste buds tingling.
See you in two years for Guild Wars 2's tenth anniversary, I guess. That should be a big one. And by then we should be starting to ramp up for EQ's silver anniversary and WoW and EQII's twentieth.
Can't say there's nothing to look forward to, can we?
Yay?
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I'm not someone who gets overly hyped about new releases -- better to keep expectations realistic -- but insomuch as I get excited for new releases at all, there's probably more upcoming MMOs that I'm interested in now than there has been in many years -- probably since around the time GW2 launched, at least.
ReplyDeleteMagic: Legends is top of my list, but I'm also cautiously optimistic about New World, and more "optimistic" and less "cautiously" all the time. I'm not sure if it will be to my taste, but Book of Travels looks very unique and potentially interesting.
Beyond that there are several titles that I'm less keen on but still at least curious about: Corepunk,Lost Ark, whatever A:IR renamed itself to, several crowdfunded titles that could be interesting if they ever actually launch.
Book of Travels gives me the creeps. Not entirely sure why. It reminds me of Glitch, which I absolutely loathed. It has something of the same vibe about it.
DeleteNew World I'm interested in but it's not a game I can imagine becoming invested in. I guess it depends how theme-park they go, by which I mean how much curated content they add. Sandboxes are toys, not games, in my book. New World was a fun toy in the first alpha but I can only play with a toy for so long.
I have no afection for or interest in M:TG so that IP does nothing for me. The gameplay looked outside my remit, too, although I haven't been following it at all closely.
The problem with almost all of them is the extreme "video gamey" nature. I'm getting considerably old for all that, unfortunately. The way the first generation of MMORPGs had to fit their gameplay around the limited technological standards of the time made them peculiarly suitable for older players, I think. Now those restraints have been removed MMORPGs are becoming just another kind of action game, sadly, and I'm never goping to have the reflexes for that again. I barley had them in my 20s!
I just realised while reading your post something that I kind of already knew, but it didn't strike me until now: I feel like might enter my second personal "game winter". The first one was at the end of the 90ies, when click-and-point adventures died out. The second one has happened already, in all likelihood, by the death of the "classic MMOs". The last time, I had about 6-7 years in which I played hardly any games at all, with the exception of Diablo II.
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that I could have gone seamlessly from the former to the latter, had I found Everquest when it was released, but it was so far outside of my scope that I only heard about it years later. I wonder which new kind of game type will become my third spring, if there is one, and whether I'll again only find it around summertime.
Yeah, that's something that happens to me continually in music. Not so much the winter part as the not finding things until they're in their summer or fall. I'm constantly on the lookout for new forms and genres but almost everything I discover that's new to me turns out to have been around for years.
DeleteIn gaming, as in music, things do have cycles. Point and Click adventures all but disappeared but then they had a resurgence and a revival. There are plenty around again now. The same will happen with "classic" MMOs. Whether or not what worked for you or me the first time around will have the same appeal in a retro version is another matter entirely, of course.
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ReplyDeleteIt is true, point and click has made a return to a certain degree. That maybe also something to hope for with MMOs then. I wonder whether classic/retro/... servers are our MMO resurgence, or whether there will be more. Maybe in another few years, who knows.
ReplyDeleteMy WoW experience has definitely been a double edged sword. I enjoyed revisiting it again, and I get to see parts of the game I missed last time around. But so many people just play with too much knowledge for the game's own good these days. It feels like half the players are munchkins. A lot of the extremely mechanics-focused of min/max and BiS and all of that has been transplanted from modern WoW right into its classic iteration. It's a weird situation. And I've heard the same for the time-locked EQ servers.