Guild Wars 2 Gameplay – WvWvW Map

Leave a Comment / Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, RvR, WvWvW / February 21, 2012

The above map is the current beta WvWvW map. The world is divided into Green, Red, and Blue servers. The bottom center area is the contested area of The Mists. The icons on the map indicate different points of interest. It appears that the color of the icon indicates which side currently holds it. The legend is:

Castle (Only 1 on the map, in the center of the contested area)
Keep
Supply Camp
Tower

Each home area has:
6 Supply Camps
4 Towers
3 Keeps

The contested center area has:
6 Supply Camps
12 Towers
3 Keeps
1 Castle (Stonemist Castle)

ArenaNet has stated this is their working beta version and subject to change. A few thoughts on the map:

1. It appears to be largely equal. While the battlefield as a whole won’t be different, there is a positive in homogeneous maps. The complaint in other MMO PvP maps in the past were that the maps were “unequal”. Those who have played World of Warcraft early on can probably recall the uproar over Alterac Valley and the supposed biases and design flaws built on purpose into the map to benefit one side or the other. While the MMO community as a whole enjoy beautiful battlefields of varying terrain, they care even more that its absolutely equal. This design theme will head-off any complaints ahead of time.

2. There are plenty of objectives to capture, especially in the middle area. It also appears that there is no progression or order to captures; You do not need to capture the closest point first in order to capture the next. Besides raiding supply caravans, a group of people can get behind enemy lines and capture supply camps to hinder siege weapon creation or a tower to provide a staging point to go further into enemy territory.

What is up in the air is whether there will be requirements to capture the center Castle or other important points on the map. Could potentially a group go deep into enemy territory and capture the center castle from under the noses of the other two sides? I am curious as to how they will handle if one team absolutely dominates another, and not only pushes them back to their home zone, but also takes all their towers and keeps in their territory? Will there be a mechanic to allow those who have been pushed back so far a chance to retake at the least their own territory, or will they be stuck in their home base for the rest of the two weeks?

3. It appears that access from one home territory to another is limited to just the adjacent territories. This leaves the top middle home zone vulnerable to three fronts, unless there is a way for the left and right home zones to access one another through a portal of some kind, as currently on the map they’re only accessible by the top middle and bottom middle zones.

I’ll leave you with a 45 minute video of WvWvW beta gameplay.


Guild Wars 2 Gameplay – WvWvW Information

Leave a Comment / Guild Wars 2, RvR, WvWvW / February 19, 2012

In the latest ArenaNet Blog Post on Guild Wars 2, Systems Designer Mike Ferguson outlines the way WvWvW (World vs. World vs. World) will function in Guild Wars 2. This article will address the strengths and concerns of this design.

The Battlefield
The large battle area, called the Mists, made up of four battlefields is a good way to create a “World PvP” feel in an instance. One central battlefield zone with three outlying battlefield zones representing the home locations of each side. Keeps, towers, and resource camps are spread out through the areas.

The primary concern the average MMO player would have is for lag/FPS issues if a large number of people congregate to one area and fight. Games like Warhammer Online and SWToR have resorted to capping the number of people in open world areas to deal with performanceissues. But this detracts from the feel of a huge war on a battlefield. So what ends up happening is limited numbers of people fight on battlefields designed to accommodate more, too vast for them to fill it up and creating an empty world feeling.

ArenaNet has stated that they had been testing the WvWvW zone internally for a while,accommodating 500 or so people comfortably. This is good news, primarily because they know of the potential performance issues that could arise, as well as working on optimization early on in the development cycle. It is good also that the battle areas look sufficiently large and combined with a healthy number of people, will hopefully create a feeling of a large scale war. However, with potentially three servers’ worth of players fighting on a battlefield, good FPS and lag with 500 may turn out to be too low a goal to aim for in regards to performance.


W v W v W – Three factions

One of the major highlights of the Guild Wars 2 WvWvW system is that it will feature faction divisions similar to Dark Age of Camelot, in a three faction set up. This addresses a major issue in faction balance in regards to Open-World PvP areas in games such as Warhammer Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The developers for those games spent a lot of time developing the art and feel of each faction, but whether due to the inherent nature of the art style or more attention given by individual designers, the “evil” side drew more players and created large faction balance issues across almost all the servers. In a game with PvP instancing this downside can be mitigated, but if one side outnumbers the other side more than two-to-one, open world PvP doesn’t work.

Guild Wars 2 addresses this by having three servers fight each other for dominance. This achieves two things. First, this acts as a self-balancing mechanism. If one side is too strong, the other two will (theoretically) work together to defeat them, in a “balance of power” type system. One caveat is that it is also possible for two sides to gang up on one, creating a very poor competitive environment. Second, it creates a social environment on a server and helps to create server pride, something that cross-server battlegrounds and instancing popular in today’s MMORPGs has damaged greatly. Third, varied server populations will create new dynamics and interactions every two weeks. Two large servers paired with a small server will play out differently than one large server and two small ones.

By shifting the focus of the WvWvW system to whole servers as opposed to intra-server factions (Horde/Alliance, Order/Destruction, Republic/Empire, etc.) it will hopefully greatly reduce player discontent over and real or perceived class imbalance or favoritism for one side or the other. New players will choose to roll a character based on the community and people on it, rather than the aesthetics or how “OP” one side’s class is.


Objectives that Matter

There will be various objectives of different sizes for players to aim for depending on how many people they have available. Small resource camps can be raided by a group of five, smaller guilds can take watchtowers, and large guilds can siege and captures keeps. Siege weapons can be built, and buildings and walls are destructible, broadening strategy in PvP.

One of the important things is that ArenaNet has created this game with the goal of making battlefield objectives a desirable and integrated part of PvP from the start. MMO veterans remember how tacked-on keeps were in Warhammer Online. They were crammed into the game before launch with little testing and ended up being a disaster. With the system in place, it was more rewarding to take a keep than defend it. This created an environment in Warhammer Online where two large zergs would end up taking turns capping a keep to claim rewards, and the two groups never coming to blows.

In Guild Wars 2, points are gained through holding objectives. Guilds can claim and bolster their keeps, helping to create an incentive for guilds to hold keeps, if for nothing more than pride. At the end of two weeks, the points are tallied into a War Score and server rankings adjusted.


Relics Reborn

In Guild Wars 2, Orbs of Power will exist which, if captured, will give boosts to your side while fighting in the Mists. These will work in a similar fashion to relics, in that they will start out in keeps in the home locations of each side, but then can be captured and relocated by enemies to their keeps. If it isn’t placed in a new keep quickly, it will return back to where it was taken.

This is a great idea and adds another dimension to combat, as well as providing a way to break stalemates. The system will be similar to the one DAoC has, and help make some keeps more valuable than others, forcing large siege battles.


Final Thoughts – It would be great to see some more information on perhaps an example scenario/battle that has played out on beta servers. It would also be great to see them push performance optimization of the Mists up to 800 players at least. With three servers and the non-subscription model, it is a very real possibility that there will be more than 500 players on the battlefield at once at peak times. 800 is a realistic number, and ArenaNet has not stated if there will add in a hard cap for players numbers. They have not indicated that there will be multiple instances of the same battleground, so it may very well be only one battleground shared by all three servers at one time.

Guild Wars 2 – Hall of Monuments Rewards: Weapons and Armor

Leave a Comment / Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 / February 14, 2012
If you have a Guild Wars 1 account with Eye of the North expansion pack attached to it, you can complete achievements to gain points toward rewards in Guild Wars 2. Located in the Far Shiverpeaks is the Hall of Monuments, where you can keep track of your in-game achievements and reward points.
The rewards are items such as armor and weapons, as well as titles for your characters. The rewards can only be obtained through Guild Wars 1. The stats for the items are unknown currently(albeit stats won’t really matter all that much). The points required aren’t currency, but just an achievement level. For example, if you have 10 points, you qualify for any reward that requires 10 points and under.
Weapons
Gnarled Staff – Staff – Requires 7 Points

Living Short Bow – Short Bow – Requires 8 Points

Fiery Dragon Sword – Sword – 10 Points
Diamond Aegis – Shield – Requires 11 Points
Centurion’s Claw – Dagger – Requires 13 Points

Wheelock Rifle – Rifle – Requires 14 Points
Wayward Wand – Scepter – Requires 16 Points
Seathunder Pistol – Pistol – Requires 17 Points
Deldrimor Mace – Mace – Requires 19 Points
Chimeric Prism – Focus – Requires 20 Points
Ithas Longbow – Longbow – Requires 22 Points
Fellblade – Greatsword – Requires 23 Points
Ice Breaker – Hammer – Requires 25 Points
Flaming Beacon – Torch – Requires 26 Points
Stygian Reaver – Axe – Requires 28 Points

Mountaincall Warhorn – Warhorn – Requires 29 Points

Armor
There are 3 sets of armor, one of each type (Light, Medium, and Heavy). Requires 6 Points.

In addition, there are 4 additional pieces:
Baroque Mask – Head Armor – Requires 12 Points
Heavenly Bracers – Hand Armor – Requires 18 Points
Icelord’s Diadem – Head Armor – Requires 24 Points
Fire God’s Vambraces – Hand Armor – Requires 30 Points
Stat-wise, they will most likely be similar to gear found regularly in Guild Wars 2, as the rewards are meant more to be unique and as a way to reward those who played Guild Wars 1. This should be incentive enough for those of you who still have a Guild Wars 1 account to finish up any outstanding quests and achievements. There are a lot of guides out there outlining ways to rack up points. While 50 is the maximum needed to collect all the rewards, only 30 are needed to get all the item rewards, as 30 to 50 are only title-based rewards.
In another post, the pets and title rewards will be outlined. Stay tuned.

Diablo 3 Release Date – Targeted for Q2 2012

Leave a Comment / Diablo 3, Mists of Pandaria, MMORPG, World of Warcraft / February 10, 2012

According to a Blizzard slideshow presentation on their 2011 Q4 financial results, they reveal on page 18 that they will be aiming for a Q2 launch for Diablo 3, the latest game in the Diablo franchise. The same slide also reveals that more information will be out for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria on March 19th. Mists of Pandaria will be the 4th expansion pack and will feature the new continent of Pandaria, a raise in the level cap from 85 to 90, as well as new game features.

There will be no Blizzcon this year as there will not be a lot of new information to announce with 1 game and 2 expansions already set to release this year.

Diablo 3 – The Witch Doctor

Leave a Comment / Diablo 3, Witch Doctor / February 9, 2012

The Witch Doctor is one of two spell-casting classes that will be playable in Diablo 3. So what defines the Witch Doctor and its role in-game?



Pets: The Witch Doctor has access to 2 types of permanent pets – Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan, a large zombie. They’ll be in a role similar to the D2 Necromancer’s Skeletons and Golem, providing a degree of dps and general crowd control / interference.
Damaging Spells: Most of the spells do Poison, Fire, or Arcane. The damage spells take on the form of a creatures, for example a frog that does poison damage. The spells are well diversified between single target, multi-target, and AOE damage.
Crowd Control: While a number of spells can be runed to snare or root, the three primary crowd control spells are:
  1. Horrify – a fear spell
  2. Mass Confusion – confuses enemies and has a chance to cause some affected for fight for you temporarily.
  3. Grasp of the Dead – an PBAoE snare and DoT.
Blizzard’s decision to perhaps limit the number of permanent summons is a step away from the “Zoo Herder” play-style of D2’s Necromancer, as those who specialized into summons had difficulty in harder difficulties unless they also invested heavily into the Poison & Bone Spell or Curses trees in order to boost direct damage spells to help out the summoned pets in combat. Specs around Revive were also viable but required shifting away from “Zoo Herding”. The Witch Doctor will still bring a degree of summoned pets, but by limiting the number of summon spells, it will force diversity in Witch Doctor builds and at the same time allow those builds with summons to also be potentially viable in harder difficulties.
There are also a couple “temporary” pet spells available, such as Fetish Army and Hex, involving the fetishes we know and love from D2’s Act 3. The Fetish Army summon can be viewed as a burst cooldown as the fetishes last 20 seconds and the cooldown is 120 seconds. Hex summons a fetish shaman that will turn enemies into chickens temporarily. There are a few more temporary summons if you choose to utilize a rune to do so, such as a giant toad, a giant spider, or a spirit.
Overall, the Witch Doctor looks like it will be a good class that can manage harder difficulty levels on its own through crowd control, a strong variety of damage and DoT spells, and pets to soak up damage and run interference. Visit our blog again in the future as we cover Witch Doctor spell & rune builds.