Lens on Two Is Greater Than One

IN THE BEGINNING

Let me make a dark and dreadful confession...I really didn't like Guild Wars.

Shortly after it came out I picked up the Collector's Edition, tried it, couldn't get into it at all, put it away.

A couple months later, I tried again.  I picked up the Prima guide hoping that more information would allow me to "get over the hump" and latch onto GW like a remora.  Newp.

I must have tried five or six times over the next couple of years to "get into" Guild Wars...and I finished with a .000 batting average.  The game struck me out every time.

Now I was no MMO tyro...by the time that Guild Wars launched I'd played, in varying amounts, (to save space I'll use the abbreviations) AO, DAoC, E&B, SWG, CoH, EVE, WoW, MxO, and had even poked a bit at EQ, UO, and EQ2.  But the mechanics in Guild Wars seemed not only different, but off-puttingly so.  Movement by clicking.  Instanced playspaces.  Artificially constricted movement areas (no jumping or moving through much of the terrain).  Skills acquired in irregular, even unpredictable ways.  And not much in the way of guidance as to how to navigate this very different way of doing things.

In the years since, we've seen WoW's Brobdingnagian market presence blot out the sun of innovation...jeez, even for me that's purple prose...so something different is valued more today.

I tried to love Guild Wars...but I didn't.

And then, a little more than five years ago, they announced Guild Wars 2!

My reaction?  "Oh god, not another fantasy game!"

I may have yawned.

THE WORM TURNS

I am a bit more than just an average MMO player.  I actually own (and have read!) maybe a dozen books on MMO design.  I have a keen interest in games, game theory, game history, and more than 30 years of playing computer games.  I also like to keep my eye on games in development...even games that might otherwise make me yawn.

My yawning stopped when I read the first interview with one of the ArenaNet team where they specifically said that Guild Wars 2 would be a full-blown MMO.  Now I was going to start paying attention.

Guild Wars 2 moved into the "check out all articles that come out on this game" category, alongside such contemperaneous projects as Rift, SWTOR, and The Secret World.

My interest slowly grew in GW2 as it seemed that every article and every ArenaNet dev blog I read made things sound niftier and niftier.

And then it happened...

No, they didn't have me at "Hello".  They had me at "The Shatterer".

I believe the first time he showed his adorable little head was at Gamescom in 2010, where ArenaNet let RealLivePeople(tm) play one of the dynamic events, the one that ends with The Shatterer, an adorable big-honking skeletal-looking dragon.  I saw a couple of videos of the event and the guest of honor and had an immediate, visceral reaction...

Sold!

So began the Dry Days, the Days Of Our Waiting, and they were numbered in the way-too-many.  Oh sure, I scoured the MMO websites for info, clung to every honeyed word that dripped from the mouths of the ArenaNet employees, and still it wasn't enough.

But we knew it was getting close...first they opened beta sign-ups in February and had 1,000,000 of us raise our hands and shout "Oooooo, me, me, mememememe!"  In March, they included select media into the beta test, always a sure sign.

Finally, in April, they announced the first beta weekend, with access guaranteed to anyone who pre-purchased the game.  And like a massive school of piranha when a victim of a severe cheese-grater accident falls into the fish tank, we launched ourselves in a frenzy.

Once I could finally get through the Boston-Marathon-like congestion, I happily handed over my $80.

I'd love to see what their networking numbers looked like when they opened up the pre-purchases.  And I'd have loved to have seen the smiling faces of the Money Guys over the next couple of days.

The waiting was almost done...but they never tell you that the last two weeks are the worst...

CUE CHOIR OF ANGELS

Friday, April 27, 2012.  How can the anticipation of so many players be measured?  How much more anticipation can be piled on top of that by the ArenaNet folks, eager to see something they've spent years working on get its coming out party?

The beta starts on time!  I create my character and after a couple of hours...I'm thinking maybe I blew eighty bucks.

It's not the same problems I had with the first Guild Wars, but it just feels...funny.  Odd.  Not only are some mechanisms new and different, but some are really frustrating too.  And I'm dying a lot when level 5 and 6 mobs come in waves to our little level 3 event.

A couple of hours later...and it's beginning to get better.  I'm starting to grok how the differences work and how to work the differences to my advantage.

It's happening at last...that thing I looked for so many times in the original Guild Wars...I'm getting "over the hump", it's all clicking into place.

And a couple hours after that, with me now a near-rabid fanboy, I'm desperately trying to keep a couple of my friends from giving up on the game.

They too have hit the "wtf just happened, why is my level 3 getting nuked by waves of level 6 mobs at an event" problem.  I try to soothe them with "It's beta, there are a lot of players around so the events are spawning lots of mobs, it'll get fixed!"  (Note: I was right...it did get fixed.  But it was bad that first weekend!)

Slowly...they come around.  The game "clicks" for them too.

This procedure is repeated several times over the next couple of days, where more friends and guildies get to try out the game and start off with a lot of cognitive dissonance.  We assure them, "There's a learning curve.  Give it a chance!  Here, let me show you this cool thing..."

In time...they all come around.  Far too soon, the Epic Bunny fight that marks the end of the first beta weeekend is done, and shortly thereafter the servers go down.

Withdrawal symptoms begin early the next day.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Since then we've had several short stress tests (so-called because the stress of only being able to play for four hours has been proven to cause brain aneurysms) and a couple more beta weekends.

I've played all of the classes to pick out the ones I like most (and the ones I only like a lot, and the ones I only like slightly less than that), and I've tried out all the starting areas.  Outside of the game, my friends and guildies have talked about Guild Wars 2 extensively, and it's made regular appearances in many of my blogs, where I've discussed everything from the "real-money in" system, to the event system, to the tactical and strategic value to the weapon-based hotkey system.

I've even live-blogged it a couple of times.

And now I find myself back where I was in April...waiting out a couple of very long weeks!  Hell, I've even gone back to Guild Wars and finally managed to get "over the hump" a little bit and play more in the last few weeks than I ever managed to in 6 or 8 or 10 tries in the past, put together.

But at long last, the clock is almost done ticking.  We have a launch day, and a launch time.

With three weeks left, I expect in comparing the suffering of the next two weeks with that last, excruciating week of waiting...

One will be greater than two.


Note:  this was written for GuildMag's Blog Carnival (http://www.guildmag.com/blog-carnival-4-five-years-of-waiting-for-guild-wars-2).  Thanks to my guildies for suggesting I add my two bits into the discussion.