Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto

Yesterday, Guild Wars' Mike O'Brien posted a design manifesto for the sequel to the MMORPG. In fact, in his introduction, he brings into question whether or not the first title can be considered an MMORPG, he suggests perhaps a CORPG, but guarantees that this time around, it will definitely be the former. What caught my eye is the same thing that has caused me to step back from most MMOs for a while: the attention to a lack of grinding and no monthly fee.

O'Brien then goes on to detail what will be different and set apart Guild Wars 2. Dynamic quests that don't necessarily just require an exclamation point'd chap or lass standing by, waiting for your heroic valor:

Let's say a village is being terrorized by bandits. You don't want to find out about that because there's a villager standing there motionless with an exclamation mark over his head who says when you click on him, "Help, we're being terrorized by bandits." You want to find out like you would in GW2: because the bandits are attacking, chasing villagers through the streets, slaying them and setting their houses on fire. You can stand up for the villagers, or you can watch their village burn to the ground and then deal with the consequences.

Also, the focus seems on creating a storyline that affects your character, hence the dynamism and choices as the one illustrated above. This is all part of bringing out more of the RPG aspect, particularly of the type for which I appreciate BioWare, in an MMORPG.

In regards to the social elements, the objective is to get people to cooperate, whether in a party or not. O'Brien illustrates that if a huge dragon flies overhead, people will want to fight or flee immediately, not necessarily group up and then attack. To aid this purpose, anyone who engages in the fight a decent amount, which is not further detailed as yet, will receive full XP. Say the village above was attacked and two discrete parties helped stop the bandits? Both parties would receive the rewards. There is also mention of PVP and competition between worlds where, once again, a party is not required to participate.

The last bit on which O'Brien touches is combat. He mentions that the first Guild Wars had a very CCG system to its skills, which aided the game by allowing players to create strategies and combinations the dev teams never anticipated, and provided interest and new life for the game.

Building on this same system, the focus seems to be to more visually representative and recognizable; make spells and actions more distinct in their design and intent. Furthermore, new abilities with races can be paired and complement your classes' abilities. Then, as with the first game, party skills can complement and aid each other. Environmental weapons add one more level, which are to make a more robust appearance on the battlefields.

All this is to aid in their basic design philosophy: "Our games aren't about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward. Our games are designed to be fun from moment to moment."

O'Brien ends by noting that their blog will detail further aspects of the game in the coming days. The next article is to more specifically look at the combat systems of the game, as explicated by Eric Flannum.

While everything else looks like it will make for a fun time if it is well-implemented, the decision to keep the non-subscription based model is likely what guarantees I will at least try this game.