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Jason Winter has an article over at Game Breaker discussing options once the level cap is reached. You can find the original article here. For those that perfer to stay on page, read on:
Thanks to Game Breaker and Jason Winter for the great article!
I for one, see a bright future ahead for GW2!Can ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 Stand The Test Of Time?
Posted: April 26, 2012 5:00 pm
By: Jason Winter - @jayeluu
Guild Wars 2 is perfect.
OK, that’s not entirely true. Nothing is perfect. Well, maybe Kate Upton is.
But there’s one niggling detail about Guild Wars 2 that we’re all hoping will work out right, though none of us can know for sure. It’s not something that can be gauged in any beta test or any focus group – we’ll only know after the game’s been live for a while.
Will I still want to play it at “endgame”?
I know, I know, Guild Wars 2 has no endgame, not really. That was actually what really got me interested in the game when I interviewed Jon Peters and Isaiah Cartwright about a year ago:
No raids. No gear grind. No endgame.
Then… what?
Really… what?
I think the leveling experience will be fantastic, and the way the game handles grouping and dungeons and PvP will be fantastic. And not having to “change games” when you reach max level? Sounds great!
But, truthfully, a lot of games are already fun to level in. Then you get to max and, while the endgame grind might not be all that entertaining, it’s at least something.
There’s plenty of info out there about what you can do once you reach max level in GW2, but let’s not mince words: ArenaNet is doing something very different, something that’s practically unprecedented in MMO gaming.
It might work great. Or it might blow up in their faces.
No matter how much we hope or believe it might work, we simply won’t know until we’re all standing around a few months from now with our level 80 characters and going, “Now what?” Whether we find an answer to that or not will be the key to whether Guild Wars 2 can survive for the long haul.
Here are some of the reasons people have put forth regarding why Guild Wars 2 will still be enjoyable once you’ve hit the level cap:
Do more
You can still run around, experiencing dynamic events, running dungeons, collecting karma, gold, hearts, etc. once you reach max level, and, since you (presumably) liked the leveling process so much, you’ll still enjoy this.
The way dynamic events and explorable mode dungeons are set up, they should have a longer shelf life than most MMOs’ “endgame” content.
But everyone has their limits as to how much they’re willing to repeat. And MMO developers are notoriously short-sighted when it comes to predicting how quickly gamers will race through their content and demand more. Will Guild Wars 2 be any different?
Alts
So you’re bored with your max-level character? No problem, make another!
Most people probably will create one or more alts and, because of how dynamic events work, those characters should have a notably different and enjoyable leveling experience.
Fun as it might be though, it’s not a real solution to the problem of max-level boredom, as we’ve seen countless times before in other MMOs. You leveled that character all the way so you could play him or her, not a new character. Otherwise, what was the point?
PvP
PvP and WvW will keep people playing Guild Wars 2 for a long time. It’s essentially a form of user-generated content that keeps people playing online games, MMO or not, for a long time.
But some people don’t like it. I do, but that doesn’t mean I want to play nothing but PvP once I’m “done” with PvE. And in any case, ArenaNet’s put a lot into their PvE this time around and intend for that aspect of the game to stand on its own merits.
“It worked for Guild Wars”
It’s true that Guild Wars was quite successful by doing many things contrary to the above points, such as having a low level cap, a major focus on PvP, and little in the way of direct power grind for seven years.
But, Mike O’Brien‘s “We’re number two” statement notwithstanding, Guild Wars was never as mainstream as other MMOs. ArenaNet’s not trying to get all the GW players to try GW2 – they want all the GW players, plus a whole lot more.
Accepting that “Guild Wars did it and it worked, so it’ll be fine to do the same in Guild Wars 2” won’t propel GW2 to the heights ArenaNet has planned for it. Guild Wars had many good features, but it also had several drawbacks that kept it from truly catching fire.
No entertainment product can keep up with demand. It takes longer than two hours to make a movie or a few days to write a book, yet you consume those products in those brief amounts of time and understand that that’s how fast their creators are realistically able to provide them.
MMOs are no different. You will churn through Guild Wars 2‘s content faster than ArenaNet can create it. That’s indisputable. The question is, will it be enough – or at least appear to be enough?
I think many folks, myself included, are not wholly satisfied with the current crop of MMO offerings and are looking for a game with real longevity, one that they can really sink their teeth into, one that can occupy them for months and even years.
Guild Wars 2 might be that game. But it’ll have to prove itself first. And that’s something that no quantity of beta weekends can truly tell us.
Thanks to Game Breaker and Jason Winter for the great article!