[GW2] A Very Scary Story

It’s a cold, dark October night. It’s nearly midnight and you’re browsing the web, no doubt swaddled in a warm blanket and sipping come hot chocolate or possibly some peppermint tea (how bohemian of you). You lazily flick between Facebook, Twitter and a number of different blogs. Suddenly, a new ArenaNet blog post pops into your feed reader. “That’s odd” you think “it’s a little late for them to be posting a new blog article”. Curious, you open the page and begin to read:

“Dear service user,


Over the past few months the leaders of the various divisions of both ArenaNet and NCSoft have met on numerous occasions to discuss the future of the project formerly known as “Guild Wars 2”. As a result of these meetings it is with deep regret that I must now inform you that the project formerly known as “Guild Wars 2” has been suspended indefinitely. This decision was formalised yesterday, but has been informally accepted by almost all members of staff since April 2010.


All previous demo gameplay was constructed on dummy servers in the weeks preceding each event. The 40 minute time limit was imposed to prevent the player from running out of the zone and into unconstructed space. All races, professions and all other miscellaneous videos were created through “stop animation” using cardboard, sticky-back-plastic and Uhu Glue. All landscape and character concept art was drawn by “Harry the sandwich guy” who brings us our lunches on Mondays, Thursdays and every other Friday, in exchange for a quick handie round the back of the building.

The “Alpha testing” phase has consisted of us ordering in pizza, browsing Facebook and playing Twister with the cleaning staff.

In an effort to scrape back the funds which our design team blew on the slots at Las Vegas, the charr plushes were made of several carcinogenic materials in a factory in Vietnam. One spark and they will burn up in 6.7 seconds and release a gas which causes blindness. Keep out of reach of children.

Colin Johansson was, in fact, a cleverly constructed android - programmed only to promote the game and kill on command. He has now been disassembled due to patent conflicts with Apple.

We feel very sorry about deceiving you all over the past 2 years; pretending to be working hard to bring you the most revolutionary MMO ever seen and instead spending the funding on fast food, fancy holidays and Farmville gold.

So, as a way of apology we will be offering a 25% discount on all Guild Wars cash-shop items.

Please buy the costumes; we’ve worked very hard on them.

Yours faithfully,

The Community Management Team”

Happy Halloween



A bit of a whinge about Multiplayer Stories

Most games today claim to want to make the player feel “heroic”. It’s an admirable intent; for a lot of people gaming is a form of escape, a way to be someone they are not – and most of us aren’t axe-wielding defenders of the planet, so it’s nice to be one for a short while. And it works... for single player games. For the most part, in single player games, the whole world must revolve around the player but I would question the applicability of this concept in a massively multiplayer context.

In a single player game the whole world can be controlled by the developer to expand and contract around the player. If they succeed in saving the town then the local crier can sing his praises and the populace can hold a parade in his honor: “Huzzah for Ballbag123, the saviour of Little Fartling!” you can be the hero because the world is built for you to be the hero.

In a multiplayer setting the world is built so that we can all be heroes, I get that. But when everyone is a hero, no one is. None of your actions can have a true permanent affect on the game world as doing so would take that content away from another player. So, we are all supposed to suspect disbelief when the “Great Dragon of Morcock” who you had valiantly slain all but 10 minutes ago pops up again and starts hurling fireballs: “Hey guys, you know that dying thing I did? That was a joke. LOL”.

Guild Wars 2’s (is that correct use of the apostrophe? My grammar-nazi senses are tingling but they may be off as it’s a Monday morning) personal story is seeking to solve a little bit of this problem by creating personalised story which acts almost as a single player campaign built into a multiplayer context. Essentially, it’s a dynamically evolving personal storyline which you can either play on your own, or drag your friends along as well.

I do think, however, that this is a bit of a plaster (that’s a “band aid” to you guys across the pond) over the actual problem. Shoehorning a single player story into a multiplayer game doesn’t solve the problem of how to tell a compelling story in a multiplayer context. Hopefully, the dynamic events system will go some way to patch this particular hole.

I draw the line at Panda

It’s a relatively arbitrary line which distinguishes what is “acceptable” and what is “unacceptable” in online games. If you reject the idea of playable intelligent pandas, why not reject the idea of playable intelligent wolves, cats, bears, goblins, plants or zombies? Why is the panda where the line is drawn?


Is it the markings? Racist! Could you live with playing as a beaver, but not a skunk? As a horse, but not a zebra? As a monkey, but not a lemur? Pfft... you make me sick.

Of course, I’m simplifying it for comic effect. In fact, WoW is a game I know little about and I’m only really using this whole panda- people debacle as a microcosm of the insane logic upon which MMOs are built.

Ps. This post is also built upon my long held assumption that the greyscale animals mentioned above are actually just olde-worlde versions of the other animals I stated. You know, before they invented colour television?