Guild Wars 2 First Impression

I'm just going to get this out of the way, I was never a huge fan of Guild Wars. I picked up a copy of Guild Wars and the Factions expansion back in 2008 and didn't get very far. The game was unique but it failed to pull me into the experience and hold my attention like it did for so many other people. There was certainly nothing wrong with it and I thought the whole setup of the pesdo-MMO was pretty neat, but in the end we parted ways after only a couple dozen of hours (at the most) That said, after a few hours with Guild Wars 2 I see the potential for a long lasting and very rewarding relationship.

Tyrial is a very open and expansive world

Upon creating my Human warrior who was born into nobility and has a dead sister which apparently angers him, I was thrust into the mini-tutorial where me and all the up-and-coming heroes of Tyria must defend the village of Shaemoor from the hordes of Centaurs. Already I noticed the biggest area where Guild Wars 2 tries to differentiate itself from other MMOs, the focus on teamwork. Instead of being told to go kill X amount of enemies by myself and complete a small handful of quests before finishing off some boss and entering the actual game world, I was told to defend a location. Any player in the vicinity could join me and all of us worked seamlessly on the same task without having to add each other to a party. As the number of players grew so did the amount of enemy attacking. The tutorial ended with the newly collected horde of heroes rushing towards a final boss, which seemed to scale appropriately given the amount of players, and bashing on it until it exploded knocking everybody unconscious thus teleporting us to the game world.

Instead of going into all of the different features that make up Guild Wars 2 and talking about how these differentiate Guild Wars 2 from other MMOs (I'm saving that all for my review which will probably be quite lengthy), I'll just say that my experience so far has been fantastic. I'm about 10 hours in and I've completed all of the content in the first zone and I'm on the level 14 story quest. It's the first time in an MMO I've actually cared about the story quests and my own character because of the way they present the quests and instance you off in the game world to focus on your own personal story.

What I've enjoyed the most so far is how Guild Wars 2 promotes exploration and teamwork. The flat level scaling really helps the exploration portion of the game as discovering new locations, points of interest, waypoints, and vistas all gives you a proportional experience gain to your overall level. Teamwork is the focus of all the questing and world events. You can be in a party but it's not necessary. Unlike other MMOs, the game does not punish you for being in a party by reducing your experience gain. Instead during the world events it rewards you by scaling the amount of enemies and their levels to make the fight even more tough but increasing the reward for completion. I find myself rushing to the aid of other players instead of trying to avoid them so they do not steal my mobs and slow my leveling.

There will be sieges. 

The world events have been a blast so far and make the world feel the most alive I've ever seen in an MMO. Some of these events, even in the low level zone of the game, bring in a lot of players from all over. More than once I have been fighting along side of at least 50 others players to defeat a boss or waves of opponents. The game appropriately scales the difficulty depending on the amount of players around and it also lowers your level to the highest level allowed in the zone so that you are never too overpowered. These mechanics all combine for some very unique fights spread across the entire zone. I hear in the later levels the events become even larger and more difficult as they replace raids and dungeons that would be found in other MMOs and I cannot wait to take part in those.

Did I already mention beautiful graphics?

I have not yet dabbled in the PvP aspects of Guild Wars 2, though I fully understand how big of a role they play. The idea behind the World vs. World vs. World PvP is teeming with potential. The structure of the PvP also eliminated the need for factions in the PvE world which gave the world a whole different personality. There is no longer content you cannot access with your one character so you do not have to create a character of the opposing faction just to experience all of the PvE content. This also plays into the emphasis on teamwork as everybody is now working on the same content.

Overall I have been extremely impressed with Guild Wars 2. I could go on about how brilliant the combat is, how amazing the environments are, how the voice acting and production values are some of the best I've ever seen in a video game, how the game has no monthly fee and its cash shop is offset with item drops... but I'll save all of that stuff for updated impressions and my review in a few weeks.

Freemium vs. Free-To-Play - Why EA's Vision is Doomed to Fail

With the announcement that Command and Conquer Generals 2, being developed by Bioware Victory, has been renamed just Command and Conquer and been refactored under EA's freemium model, it has left many gamers very disappointed as the once great RTS series known for its over-the-top single player campaigns, cheesy FMV, and memorable character, has now completely abandoned its roots and focused on freemium fueled multiplayer.

This should come to no real surprise to anybody who has been following gaming news the last few months. In late July, EA Interactive's senior vice president said that the freemium business model was going to be the "market-leader" (source: Gamespot). A month before, Peter Moore, COO of EA, was quoted saying that "I think, ultimately, those microtransactions will be in every game, but the game itself of the access to the game will be free" (source: Kotaku) Clearly EA has warmed up to the free-to-play market enough to understand it's potential revenues.

And why wouldn't they? After going free-to-play, Turbine's MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online saw a 500% increase in revenue (source: Gamasutra). The free-to-play tank battle game World of Tanks by Wargaming sees profits in the double digit millions (source: Game Industry International) each month. Those are numbers that cannot be ignored. Many other MMORPGs have gone free-to-play to save themselves from ending up like Star Wars Galaxies. Free-to-play seems to be the future. With some promising titles like Firefall and Planetside 2 releasing before 2013, there seems to be a bright future. EA seems to just be following the crowd and trying to ride this revenue wave like everybody else.

However, EA has been dabbling in free-to-play for quite some time now and the results have been less than amazing. There have been a number of freemium modeled free-to-play games that EA has launched throughout the years. Some include Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliance, Need for Speed World, Risk: Factions, Battlefield Heroes, and Battlefield: Play4Free   The Battlefield games are undoubtedly the biggest free-to-play games that EA has actively promoted. Though these games follow EA's freemium model as a framework for their free-to-play structure.

This vision of freemium is where EA fails. Unlike what other publishers and developers see as free-to-play, EA's vision plays out more like a glorified demo and falls for the dreaded pay-to-win schemes that 90% of the free-to-play FPSs are notorious for.

For example in Battlefield: Play4Free   you unlock weapons for certain duration of time. These weapons are purchased with in-game credits that you earn or real world money. At first it's pretty easy to unlock new weapons for 1-2 day periods. However as you continue to play, the prices for these weapons increase overtime. Eventually the amount of playtime required to unlock a weapon for just a 24 hour usage becomes far to great. Losing the weapons puts you at a major disadvantage, so the only way to get these weapons is to pay real world money to unlock them for extended periods of time. However, even if you pay real money you do not unlock the weapon permanently. Eventually the weapon goes away and you're forced to purchase again.

Both Battlefield Heroes and Battlefield: Play4Free suffer from this. The games novelty wares off very quickly when you realize you're being forced to pay real world money to unlock weapons and keep up with the competition. This is freemium. You cannot unlock all of the content of the game without purchasing at one point, and that is a major problem.

Compare that system to Tribes Ascend. In Tribes Ascend you may purchase weapons and upgrades with real-world money or earned experience. Naturally, the earned experience costs are pretty high. However, once you unlock a weapon or an upgrade it is yours to keep forever. No unlocking a weapon for 24 hours like many other freemium shooters. This system feels much more rewarding and does not punish people at any time nor does it try to squeeze money from existing players. There is still cash-only items in their cash store, but these are limited to skins and voice overs for your character, not for weapons and equipment. Basically  while you could buy every gun and upgrade in the game with real world money, there is nothing there that can give you a real advantage if you pay. This is free-to-play done right.

EA's vision of free-to-play, the freemium model, has been greatly flawed. It requires those who enjoy the game to continually dump money into it if they want to enjoy it after a certain amount of hours. This model doesn't reward people for playing for long periods of time, thus keeping the community alive and active, rather it punishes people for playing a long time. It punishes free players and premium players all the same. Since all unlocks are not permanent, or if they are permanent, they cannot be unlocked by a free player. This turns the games from free-to-play to pay-to-win.

I understand the need for a game to be profitable. If you could easily unlock 100% of the content for free, there would be no intensives for a person to put any money into the game. Successful free-to-play games have been able to balance the gameplay between free and premium players while not punishing either at any time. Free players always have a chance to be competitive and are never at a disadvantage to those who pay. People have proven to still be willing to pay money for in-game content despite the content being obtainable by just playing the game.

EA needs to have a little more faith in their own customers. World of Tanks and Tribes Ascend both put faith in their customers and they trust that their user base will buy content despite being able to unlock all of the core gameplay elements. EA's version of freemium punishes the community too much. It locks out the free players from all of the content, dangling it in front of them whenever possible and it punishes those who pay for the content as often their purchases are not permanent. If the iOS market has shown me anything it's that playing half a game feels incomplete and does not compel me to want to purchase the rest. Microtransactions that add up much quicker than the value of the game deter me and others from purchasing the game.

Given EA's track record with trusting their consumers, this doesn't leave me hopeful. If EA does not adapt their freemium model to be much more consumer friendly, I fear that the C&C series will just be the start of EA's attempt to break into the free-to-play market and they'll bring down every series they can with it.