Guild Wars launches today after a big PR campaign which included
giving journalists access to the pre-release game complete with
guides and instructions.
Below is one enthusiastic take on the game's launch ...
Guild Wars is the debut online role-playing game from ArenaNet and it was
almost a year ago that ArenaNet shocked the world by allowing everyone
who had an inkling to do so to try out Guild Wars during the weekend of
E3.
Guild Wars will not charge a monthly fee. Merely buy the game and you
are in. The game will offer new modules in the future, and the
modules will cost additional money, but no $10-$15 monthly fee will be
charged, period.
ArenaNet's unique streaming technology forever eliminates the concept of
patching a game. You don't have to wait a month for the next big patch
to experience new content. Instead, the game constantly and
intelligently streams new content to your computer in the background
while you play.
Guild Wars is created to allow you to play with a group or to play on
your own. It's true that some missions would most likely not be possible
with just one player, but with a system of non-player characters called
henchmen, you can fill out a group without other players joining your
team. You can also use henchmen to enhance a team of players. Simply
choose a henchman from any of four selected professions -- or one of
each -- and head out into the mission. You'll find that the henchmen are
able players, and contribute towards the gameplay in meaningful ways.
Character management is easy to figure out and combat is of the mouse
click variety. Although your character can have many skills at his or
her disposal, they are allowed only eight in any given mission.
Regardless of the reference, the adventuring begins with the universal
first step of creating a character. For at least the immediate future
all player characters will be human -- male or female Some of the names
are a bit unusual, but it's easy enough to recognize them for what they
are. In a few instances, an NPC may grant you the option of exchanging
some skill slots, but only in skill-related quests. New playersÕ
characters are on a different server than yours; in Guild Wars, all
characters live in one seamless world.
With each class currently offering 75 skills, the potential variations
are staggering. Every combination of two classes results in 150 possible
skills from which to choose and with six different classes that
makes&well; we'll leave the calculations to someone else. You don't have
to be a math genius to recognize that it's an unbelievable number of
options.
Guild Wars takes the best elements of today's massively multiplayer
online games and combines them with a new mission-based design that
eliminates the tedium of those games.
Within a quest you have unprecedented freedom and power to manipulate
the world around you: your magic can build bridges and open up new
pathways, or it can burn down forests and tear the ground asunder.
Two main sorts of adventures await players. Missions, complete with
cinematics, advance a high-fantasy "save the world" central storyline.
Quests offer a less involved experience for those times when you're more
looking to just get together with a couple buddies and go slay some
monsters, or even if you want to go by yourself. For those times when no
one you feel like grouping with is around, computer controlled henchmen
hang out by the gates to help fill out your party as needed.
Guild Wars has an ability to let you take from it what you want. For one
player, it could be all about playing through the story, doing side
quests and adventuring either solo or with friends. To another, the
quests and missions may only be a means to an end and once having
reached high enough level focusing on a gladiatorial career for the
glory of self or their guild. For most we expect it will be some
combination of the two, but it's the versatility to enjoy whatever you
feel like on any given day that's most promising. All that remains to be
seen is whether it can deliver on the potential and become the next
online fantasy star.
Guild Wars will be on most store shelves on April 28th, but preorder
customers will be able to enter Guild Wars on 12:01 a.m. Pacific on
April 27th. The period of Early Access will extend for 48 hours.
For all theÊ information on Guild Wars check
http://www.guildwars.com
Mstation Games Review
Fri, 29 Apr 2005
http://www.computerandvideogames.com
http://www.gwonline.net
Advertisers have traditionally viewed interactive entertainment with a
certain degree of trepidation. Videogames are unquestionably having a
major impact on the amount of time that people spend watching
television, listening to radio or reading magazines - all traditional
vectors for the advertising industry - and unlike those mediums,
videogames don't lend themselves to being interrupted by short bursts of
advertising creative.
The trepidation is, therefore, understandable. Games reinvent the rules
of media and leisure time, forcing advertisers to find new ways to
convey their message to a generation that's increasingly savvy - and
cynical - about marketing. To top it all off, the last time a new medium
emerged, advertisers got it wrong - and the online advertising boom and
bust has only in the last couple of years cycled back to more
sustainable, albeit still impressive, growth.
However, the planets appear to be aligning for advertising in games,
thanks to a number of key factors. The growing popularity of videogames,
and the slew of consumer research showing how much time young males
spend in front of their consoles, is kicking advertisers into action;
and the looming hardware transition, with all its attendant R&D costs
and margin pressures, is making game creators and publishers more
interested than ever in supplementary sources of income from their
products.
Product placement in games is nothing new, of course, but we can expect
to see it grow significantly in the coming years as more and more
mass-market advertisers jump at the chance to see game characters
quaffing their soft drinks, using their deodorants or dealing with
unsightly skin blemishes with their skincare creams. More innovative,
arguably, is the appearance of advertising hoardings for real-life
products in Funcom's massively multiplayer game, Anarchy Online. With
the next-gen consoles all set to go online, don't be surprised if
downloading new advertising hoardings automatically from the publisher
becomes a standard feature of sports and racing games, at the very
least. And it's not exactly in-game advertising, but Gizmondo's move to
subsidise the cost of its console hardware by pushing video ads over the
mobile network to its users is certainly a clever move, and one we
expect to see replicated on more connected devices.
Gamers expecting to see the price of videogames in general fall as the
medium starts to be funded by advertising will be disappointed, however.
In certain cases companies may try to use advertising to subsidise the
price of their products - Anarchy Online and Gizmondo are two good
examples, in fact - but in general publishers are talking about
advertising as a supplement to existing income. This shouldn't come as a
surprise to anyone, though; Hollywood has been courting product
placement in its movies for years, but the fact that the heroes of the
piece use Apple Powerbooks or Alienware PCs for their world-saving
exploits, possibly while sipping a Diet Coke, has never had any impact
on the ticket price at the box office.
However, both advertisers and publishers need to be careful about how
they approach this brave new world. Incremental revenues of several
dollars per unit are a hugely attractive prospect for publishers, just
as the ability to address the videogame-playing demographic - young,
tech-savvy and stuffed with disposable income - is for advertisers. It's
important for both parties to ensure that they aren't blinded by these
prospects, and end up killing the goose that promises to lay the golden
eggs by stuffing games with inappropriate or intrusive advertising.
It's a combination of that form of overkill and other factors such as
the lack of sensible metrics to measure response that burst the online
advertising bubble in the nineties, and while all sides seem determined
to get the metrics right this time, some of the rhetoric emerging about
in-game advertising creatives are more worrying. Gamers enjoy watching
advertisements, we're told. Product placement makes the game world seem
more real. Advertising deals enhance the game experience.
None of these things are necessarily untrue, but they all need to be
very heavily qualified. Advertising hoardings on a racetrack are one
thing; the sudden appearance of a present-day soft drink in a science
fiction universe is another thing entirely. One of the stars of a sports
game downing a Coke isn't the same as Solid Snake self-consciously
slapping on the latest Calvin Klein aftershave before a mission; and the
subtle, humorous or creative use of a product in a game isn't the same
as an extreme close-up on it to drive home the point, which will just
end up provoking derisory snorts from the audience you're so desperately
trying to look cool to.
Finding new forms of revenue will hopefully allow the games industry to
spread its wings creatively and reduce the risk of trying out new
things; it will help to smooth out the impact of the transition period
and keep smaller businesses profitable. Engaging with the advertising
industry is an obvious and arguably essential move - but publishers
shouldn't forget that the advertisers need videogames more than
videogames need advertisers on board. Games are putting the squeeze on
traditional advertising mediums, and have lasted for over two decades
without advertising dollars to prop the industry up. Both creatively and
commercially, this is an alliance that can happen on the games
industry's terms. Publishers just need to be sure that they don't hand
away the crown jewels in return for short-term profit.
Gamesindustry.biz has excellent daily news of what's happening in
the business part of the games world.
Mstation's view on this is that underhand advertising is just
that -- underhand. Programming kids in this way is especially
underhand. As for the money, let's face it, it's another chapter of
greed.
