"You want in, tallie? Well tough blasters!"

Having concluded their first Beta-Weekend for their much-anticipated MMO Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet is flooding the internet with updating regarding the various mechanics present in-game. With so much to read over it almost seems impossible to catalog them all in a news post… so perhaps some tasty tidbits and some delicious links, eh?

New to Guild Wars, and I’m fairly certain MMOs in general, is a mechanic that they’re calling “Downed Mode”. Likely familiar to the fans of the Left 4 Dead franchise, when a player is reduced to 0 health they’ll fall to the ground but continue to struggle on. Their skills become limited to 3 profession (or class for most of us) based skills to fight off the baddie you happen to be facing, while a 4th skill will allow you to channel a heal spell that will heal you back up, but can be stopped by any of the local denizens poking you. You can, of course, be healed by other people or if you happen to score a kill on a monster you’ll “Rally” and rise back to your feet with a small amount of health to continue the fight. Don’t think it’s all easy-mode however, as the time you have available in your “Downed” state before you are defeated is based on how often you’re put into the “Downed” state during the course of play.

…why do I have the feeling that if there is going to eventually be a tank/healer relationship in this MMO that we’re going to be looking at healers trying to join “The Purple Club” again. Yesssss… old and obscure EverQuest reference is successful.

This… does not look like a 'Rally' kind of situation…

Also new to this most recent build of the game is the changing of the Death Penalty. In most MMOs, when a character would find themselves in the graveyard or laying on the ground watching their friends mop up the monsters around them, a penalty would normally be assessed, and up until this last Beta Build, Guild Wars 2 had one different than most. Now while I don’t fully understand what they mean (cough, I’d still love a Beta invite, cough), it seems as if in their old system, you could choose where you wanted to revive in terms of local waypoints, and depending on the one chosen you would be assessed a monetary penalty equal to twice the cost of traveling there normally.

…now I don’t know about a lot of you out there, but that just sounds exploitable once you’ve got a lot of money. In World of Warcraft, if I was offered the ability to near-instantly travel to the a flight point or waypoint, but it cost me twice as much, I would choose the more expensive way every time.

But no longer, now going with a far more traditional Armor-Durability system, Guild Wars 2 will “Damage” a random piece of gear on a character should you die, however the “Damage” has no effect until you still accumulating damaged gear. Once you have too much damaged gear and you die once more, your whole set of gear is considered non-functional and must be repaired by local NPCs for a modest cost. This sounds incredibly forgiving and while perhaps laughable to “hardcore” MMO players, might well be a welcome cost to more casual or light-players.

Another mechanic talked about in the new build are Meta-Events. Now already in Guild Wars 2 are dynamic “events” that take place randomly in zones, cities and general areas that will provide spontaneous content from time to time. Meta-Events take these randomly (or at times not-so-randomly) occuring events and blow them up on a large scale. Pesky centaurs attacking a small village? Ehhh, let the newbies handle it… Centaurs attacking half the zone and no one’s safe?! Mwahaha! Now this sounds like an evening! The events are designed as both a content-module and a storytelling tool, allowing Guild Wars 2 to spring to life where other MMOs might simply carry on during any part of the day.

Is it wrong that I look at this picture and don't wonder if he's cold, but want to know where he bought his jacket? Yah I know… I'm weird.

Also being discussed are some User Interface changes, a few mini-map (“compass”) enhancements and a bit of an overhaul of the “Boons and Conditions” (or Buffs and Debuffs by another name) system with a host of new status effects to enhance or plague your gaming experience… but we’re already getting pretty lengthy here.

For more information about the changes check out ArenaNet’s Blog and while you’re there, pound on their doors for some Beta Keys, there’s a whole lotta reviewers here who’d love to get their hands on this game.

Nobunaga

An eccentric millionaire bent on world domination, or at least trying to find happiness and ponder the existentialism-… oh who are we kidding he's just an evil eccentric who wants to take over the world while having an amazing time playing whatever games strike his fancy. Known amongst the Blizzard community as "The Dreadmist Man".

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