A key portion of the Eye
of the North landscape – and one of the first
massive structures you’ll see in the game – is the
epically sized Hall of Monuments. Exploding out of the frozen wasteland
of the Shiver Peaks, the Hall of Monuments acts as a sort of
“trophy collection” for players that have garnered
particular accomplishments in Guild
Wars. Five unlockable monuments can be placed throughout
the hall and serve as records for your collected armor sets,
miniatures, completed campaigns, unlocked high-end weapons, titles and
more. With each monument that you display in the Hall, players will be
able to go into the Hall of Monuments in
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars 2 and
view their old treasures to bestow certain unique aspects upon their
new characters.
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style="font-style: italic;">Your first look at
the Hall of Monuments.
To a long-time MMORPG player – one who has played through
original and sequel titles like Everquest
and Everquest
2 – this is an extraordinary step forward in
player sustainability. For many players, there was a hesitation to move
onto new games simply because of all the time and energy
they’d spent in the old world to attain certain items. Using
the EQ and EQ2 example, I saw entire guilds split in half because a
number of players didn’t want to move onto the new world. The
developers at Guild Wars
may have found a solution to that problem and have certainly taken a
step in the right direction.
However, a good portion of the Hall of Monuments is dedicated to items
that can be found exclusively in the Eye of the North expansion
content, so there is more than enough incentive to have players engage
in the content located with Eye
of the North. Furthering their GW2 characters aside, the
dungeons and monsters located within
style="font-style: italic;">Eye of the North
are some of the most hardcore and intense PvE dungeons that
I’ve ever experienced.
The Meat and Potatoes
Eighteen new multi-level dungeons have been added with this expansion,
and “The Depths” – as they’re
lovingly called – span underneath the entire continent. These
dungeons are not for the faint of heart either, they feature all sorts
of traps and puzzles for players to solve and elude, and the boss
monsters at the end of these dungeons are no walk in the park either.
The Eye of the North
expansion also expands upon the already solid graphics engine that has
been chugging along for the past two years. The graphics
can’t be called “cutting edge,” but the
new environments are definitely stylized to a beautiful degree. Instead
of drawing cold, gray landscapes to put the characters in, the
developers created a purple-hued sky for the northlands and
“The Depths” have more colorful lifeforms than
you’ll find in almost any other MMORPG.
On top of that, the music in Eye
of the North is phenomenal. From the moment I first heard
the bleating horns and pounding percussion, my body primed itself for
triumphant battles and heated combat. The dynamic sound truly works
well in the game, and I found myself anxiously awaiting the next
musical score that would come blooming out of my speakers like some
long-dormant flower.
Despite the continued upgrades on the graphics engine and the fantastic
musical score, I never felt the same sort of epic
“pull” that I did when I explored
style="font-style: italic;">Everquest or
style="font-style: italic;">Everquest 2
Although the roleplaying experience was thrilling and fun, it seemed to
stem more from the strategy and tactics involved with my characters
than any sort of relationship I had developed with my characters
“role.”
Concerns?
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/13834"
title="The Hall of Monuments is a popular place">
src="/image/view/13834/preview"
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style="font-style: italic;">The Hall of
Monuments is a popular place.
And this hits squarely upon one of my main complaints against
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars: Eye of the North
and shows where the Guild
Wars team has had the least amount of success. When
developing games for player versus player combat, it’s
essential that the designers of the game focus upon the balancing of
the skills involved in combat first while taking a look at the player
versus environment portion of the game second. If you look across the
board at Guild Wars
reviews, you’ll often find that critics love the PvP and
strategic element of the game, but think the storyline is lackluster.
When GW was focusing on the PvP aspect of their games, this turned out
alright. But with GW:EN, they’ve set their sites on the PvE
elements and have exposed many of their weaknesses in the process.
Unfortunately, the quests, storyline, and general RP environment in
GW:EN aren’t as intriguing as players would hope them to be.
The voice-acting, in many cases, comes across as flat and lackluster.
The quests tell a story, but it’s not one that is
exceptional. In the end, I don’t “care”
overly much for the main characters in the story, which is something
that’s essential for solid storylines and a factor in superb
PvE play.
Final Comments
Thankfully, exploring the multi-level dungeons and the general PvE
combat in Eye of the North is a fantastic experience whether
you’re playing solo or with a guild. Choosing your skills
before you enter a mission is a heart-rending task, and if
you’re not prepared or aware of what’s inside the
mission, you could find yourself in a tight spot very quickly. The
monster AI has been improved from previous versions, and the general
dungeon-y feel of the game comes across very well. While this may sound
like a contradiction from my previous point, I assure you that solid
combat can make for fun gameplay as much as intriguing storylines or
punchy characters.
Through it all, I found Guild
Wars: Eye of the North to be on the same sort of level
that I’ve come to expect from the rest of the franchise.
Although they’ve yet to create a perfect game, I believe the
crew at ArenaNet has educated themselves with each new experience by
taking their development one step at a time: PvP, expanded PvP, then
PvE.
If Guild Wars: Eye of
the North is any indication, you should be on the lookout
for Guild Wars 2.
The game can only expand upon what’s been done in the
original Guild Wars
series, and that’s saying quite a bit about what’s
in store for players.
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- Terrific PvE combat and dungeons
- Even more graphical goodies
- Hall of Monuments
- Free to play after purchase
- Chat interface can be clunky
- Storyline shallow and poor voice acting
- Hard to find groups
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(4 / 5 Hammers)
style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Ten Ton
Recommendation:
Wars player, Eye
of the North is absolutely a must have. GW: EN is a
terrific expansion to an already popular series of games.
Ten Ton Hammer is your
unofficial source for
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