It all started with Ultima Online…
There was a unity in Ultima Online that I couldn’t quite place my finger on for many years as I tried to rekindle the feeling it gave me through the more modern games. I couldn’t find ONE. WoW was the first game that was “new” to me, but it still had a feeling of emptiness in the long run, the constant need to get that one piece of gear to be better than your fellow players, or being looked over in a group because they already had too many of that type of character. This was not like Ultima Online to me, in Ultima Online everyone fought, everyone invaded new territories… So why was I being punished for my choices in the game?
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To find the replacement for Ultima Online I was wrongfully looking for FFA PVP where I could loot everything off a corpse. A game with an open world to explore and housing. A game where I could claim my territory such as a grave yard outside of town in Ultima Online.
What I didn’t think about until Guild Wars 2 was the first memorable moment in Ultima Online the MINUTE I logged into this new idea of an MMO. Thinking of all the ways I wanted to run my own tavern or build my own life in this world, it all came down to the simplest moment; I logged into the game saw the first humanoid character I could find and I typed,
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“Hi! Are you real?” and I will never forget the smile on my face as it replied back, “YES!!! HI!!”.. turning to my Dad who was just as interested in this new fangled “online world”, I said, “holy crap look, this guy is actually playing too!” I felt like he was my friend already and all we had exchanged was a friendly hello. Even the simplistic approach Ultima Online took with its chat system. The words appeared over the heads of the character talking. This worked really well at forcing you to associate the person talking and the character on screen, instead of having one eye glued to the bottom left corner of your screen. This is something
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I thought this kind of a moment would be unachievable since half the reason it was so memorable was because of the fact that it had never been done before. In today’s day and age with 5 MMOs being released every minute, the surprise, the anticipation, the magic was gone… or so I thought.Guild Wars 2 does lack, there is no “say” option or chat bubbles over heads, so while their game really wants you to focus on the game in front of you and not the health bars, skill bars, etc, you break your immersion with that damn chat box. Hopefully it will be added before ship. This has since been implemented and it is BEAUTIFUL!
“It is like a virgin who loses their virginity to someone they did not love, and regrets it, thinking they have ruined sex forever. Upset and feeling lost that they have had something so special taken from them. What no one ever tells them is that if you love someone, you will re-experience that ‘First time” (albeit without the awkwardness and the moment will probably “last” longer
Guild Wars 2 has the ability to be that love for some of us, it has found the fundamental piece of the puzzle that Ultima Online had: The greater purpose. Making those around you special and exciting to see. (It may not be the spectacle of your first MMO, but like your virginity, new things can always spice it up.) When you run into another player, through their dynamic event system you are no longer upset or angry with them for kill stealing or ruining your event. You are excited because you know if they participate as well they are helping you to reach your goal faster. This was very much like Ultima Online, other than those who decided to be PKs (Player killers) when a monster spawned everyone in the area got a shot at kicking its ass. And even when the PKs showed up it was the Blues(notable people) vs the PKs, so unity again. I know I keep referring to this as UO, but it isn’t UO and I want to make that clear. It is a game going in a new direction, one that emphasizes group play and reward for it. It is a modernization of an old “ideal” rather than a rehash of an old “idea”. To me that is what makes it as exciting as UO was to me 15 years ago.
I was looking at Guild Wars 2 very wrong when I first approached it. I thought of it as WoW with new features. It is NOT WoW and it is NOT Guild Wars 1. Those who expect that, may be disappointed if they don’t like change, but even those who hate change I think will be pleasantly surprised by the way the game helps you to reprogram your brain to enjoy the playstyle in front of you. For instance, I was very intent on joining a PvP server as I do with every game. There is something about those small battles that occur whilst leveling between those in the area who also want that Quest item drop or whatever it may be. The wasted hours of leveling, fighting one another for territory control until one concedes. Problem here is like I just said I was looking at it as WoW terms. There are NO PvP servers. WHAT? HOW CAN THIS BE? CAREBEARS!!!
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TRAMMEL NOOBS!(UO reference) I agree, that is what I thought, until I learned more about the game and the dynamic system. The game actually convinced me through the way it plays out to feel that same feeling of accomplishment through participating and completing goals with those around me. Through the dynamic events and the cooperative gameplay I mentioned above you feel much more immersed in the world versus your own ego. And you didn’t halt your game progression by duking it out over that ego. Want to duke it out? Go to WvWvW or Arenas(I’ll talk about this more a little bit later in this). Any game that can make me want to run across a map to resurrect (all classes can res) a fallen comrade rather than rip his heart out, steal his house key from his loot, spit on his body, cut it up, lock it down in my new dinky house, only to give it to the player who does the same to me to marvel upon, has really accomplished something spectacular.
Video games offer the alternate reality, and Guild Wars 2 allows this to be even more so with its feeling of unity with those players around you, fighting hard for that greater purpose. As you Quest you battle together to better the world, to rid the world of evils, things bigger and greater than us. In the game it is possible, in reality the bigger than us things are harder to grasp and the ones who do grasp it hold on so tightly to a “faith” that it often pushes us to discriminate and kill one another over.
I get addicted to these games easily because they are an escape from real life, the hardships of finding the perfect job, finding fame, being rich… who is to say these “social” norms are what we should be doing… To me life consists of interactions, everything in-between that, defined by society, is filler for a gap created by that society itself. Shouldn’t we be trying to better ourselves, not monopolizing things to get ahead, creating startups that garner millions of dollars in an instant, patenting medications making them inaccessible to the millions they could help. Sure competition helps to push innovation, but are we beginning to push the line of innovation to a pipe dream and no longer wanting to innovate, but win the lottery via mediocrity, dumb luck, and “I got here first” syndrome?
Our minds are programmed to buck at the idea of thinking against being that guy who buys coke.com first, deep down we al want the money, some of the fame, or recognition in one way or another. We want to feel accomplished and that our existence had meaning. That is where these games excel. They push us to feel like we will become a stone monument of a fallen hero when we die, such as would be seen in a Lord of the Rings movie. People years and years later bowing at it’s marble foundation.
Video game worlds make you feel as though your actions are no longer trivial in the scheme of the world around you. Without having to actually die and go through the shitty times war brings. To me the Fantasy genre always hit home to me.
While I wait for Guild Wars 2 to be released my mind races with how the world will expand and tell me a story I didn’t know, what monsters I will defeat in order to achieve “hero” status, and most importantly what race and profession to pick.
It is the equalizer of steel and metal, mixed with the different unexplainable magic that make it so fun to choose. Wizards that can die and come back to life through an incantation, rangers who can shoot arrows 4 at a time, warriors that can use holy magic to enchant their weapons to glow bolstering the troops. The norms of these worlds are broken, and the suspension of disbelief is accepted. Through this we get different races of people.There is extreme importance in Fantasy genres for other races. They show the diversity of peace and tranquility, those who are bullish, those who are other worldly, etc. We need those to balance our real life reality. As humans we suffer from very stubborn ways of thinking. A world constantly killing one another over resources, religion, or race. In these games it is refreshing to play a race that looks at the world in a way that may never be achievable my mankind in reality. Or perhaps going the exact opposite and being eviler than the worst kind of evil we have seen.
Humans are usually portrayed as arrogant bastards in videos games, fighting one another and having quarrels that are not that of a greater purpose but of their own agendas. And this can be quite a draining idea, since it mirrors our life so much.
But there is always that idea of the “hero” or character you play if you choose a human being redeemable. As humans ourselves we need to have the feeling and the hope, that things will get better. That we will get our heads out of our own asses and will take on the Star Trek like approach to life of “bettering ourselves” in the hopes of finding out more about the world around us instead of fighting. (you know, no currency or payments for jobs, just our will to be better and explore the world and that which is greater than us) The idea that your character can be that ONE human who is Aragon from Lord of the Rings, and no matter what the odds are against him, he will overcome them and prove to the other races that Humans can be about more than just themselves.Guild Wars 2 seems like it will allow you to role play your character, not the tavern walls in the cities. To me role-play is about adapting to the gameplay mechanics and world around you in a way that fits the character you pick, not typing walls of text about who you are, where you come from, and why you are not actually a “Warrior” as the game would label you as. Instead make it a reality; there is no holy Trinity and they really mean it. If you want to make your Warrior different than DPS or TANK, then do it! Pick up a rifle, put points into supportive skills, drop war banners for all to fear! If you think you can fool ArenaNet into accidentally making one class a “Healer” over another, you are mistaken. However if you pick the class because you think it is cool and you want to play it, learn your skills, watch your own health, and know your sh*t, you will be rewarded greatly. The problem here is all the classes are soo cool, you may go into thinking you want to play one class and end up wanting to play a completely different one after playing it, or stuck between 3 of them!
In Ultima Online I was in a guild called the Brotherhood of Steel, we were a group of players who were armor smiths and crafters. Our colors were green and dark grey and we looked awesome. We were very non confrontational. But my gameplay style was very in your face, so I took my character and skilled him in a way that fit my playstyle. Through that style we made an offshoot of the guild that was the protectors for the brotherhood. So through the game mechanics and flexibility of each characters skills and professions, we could really get immersed in the gameplay. Guild Wars 2 has the ability to do this as well; through a dye system, you can have matching armor colors whenever you want without needing to wait for a specific drop, you can craft in any profession, switching without penalty, being part of multiple guilds at once, and the list goes on… Essentially they have improved upon my old love, UO, and made it easier to fill the role you wish, using the game in front of you, and not a backstory that would fit better in a romance novel than a video game.
All in all, I am very excited for Guild Wars 2 and what it brings to a very one dimensions MMO market. When forums are all ablaze about every class feeling over powered, you know the balance is damn good, because you are the hero, you SHOULD feel overpowered!
I am also excited to see what they do with the potential housing development they brought with the player home town instances. Nothing EVER beat making a fire outside of my house in Ultima Online with buddies after hunting and just shooting the breeze. Hey, anything that can give me the “withdrawal” effects that Ultima Online did, is a good game in my eyes. (Social Studies Teacher: “Who here knows what a scimitar is? Me when I was 14 half asleep in the back day dreaming of Ultima, “OoOOoo me me me!” See video games teach you things!)
Guild Wars 2 is a new game, in a very modernized MMO world, but it gives us the tools to truly sit back and enjoy the world and the people around us in that world. So just remember, when someone walks by you, take the time to say “Hi”, it could literally change their lives.
