Guild Wars 2 MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

Anticipation, the Mischievous Mistress of MMO Gamers

Heading into gamescom 2010 last week, I knew that the world premiere for Guild Wars 2 would prove to be one of the hottest tickets at the show. Anticipation for the live demo has been steadily building since last spring when ArenaNet decided it was ready to begin sharing gameplay details such as the dynamic events system, personal storylines and home instances, and the mechanics behind weapons-based skills and traits for each profession.

It seemed as though, much like the Elder Dragons which have forever changed the landscape of Tyria in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet left no gameplay stone unturned and was intent on reinventing their own masterpiece franchise. And if there’s one thing Guild Wars fans have learned over the years, it’s that ArenaNet has built a reputation on never letting the proverbial gameplay cat out of the bag before its time. ArenaNet has also taken more than a few major leaps of faith by marching to the beat of its own drummer rather than settling for a carbon copy of industry norms and calling it a day – leaps that have paid off in spades as soon as gamers realized that these weren’t simply arbitrary decisions being made for the sake of being different.

As summer marched on, more and more gameplay details were revealed for Guild Wars 2, with even seemingly minor concepts like being defeated in combat taking center stage and rising up to claim a more active role in the combat experience. Fans were even given their first glimpse into the Tyria of Guild Wars 2 through the eyes of Dougal Keane and his companions in Ghosts of Ascalon, the first of three novels slated to help transition key storyline elements between the original campaigns and the upcoming sequel.

By this point even MMO gamers not already intimately familiar with Guild Wars Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North had begun to stand up and take notice. The concepts being presented by ArenaNet were a breath of fresh air in an industry dominated by decade old gameplay templates, but for many there remained a healthy dose of skepticism due to the post-WoW era when AAA titles would build up plenty of pre-launch hype only fall flat once released as soon as players discovered that what may have sounded awesome in print and looked to be solid in trailers didn’t necessarily translate into an awesome gaming experience.

A Window into the Future

Realizing that once the doors at gamescom opened to the public on Thursday it would be nigh impossible to get anywhere near one of the demo stations for Guild Wars 2 without a lengthy wait, I made a veritable beeline to the NCsoft booth bright and early on Wednesday morning. As luck would have it I had a short window of time before my first appointment for the day, and I intended to fully capitalize on the opportunity to dive directly into the demo.

A good portion of my first steps into Tyria as a human necromancer are chronicled in a two part video series that I was eager to share with our readers. The first provides an initial look at character creation and the human starting area of Shaemoor located just outside of the massive city of Divinity’s Reach, and has me rambling on about the various UI elements. For the second, longer look at lower level gameplay I was joined by Game Designer Izzy Cartwright who spent some time explaining not only the unique Death Shroud class mechanic of the necro, but other never before seen aspects of the game such as how skills are obtained, the ‘downed’ state in action and a whole lot more.