Guild Wars: The Future Looks Bleak

The more I hear about the new GW the more disappointed I am. Take, for example, the latest PR push (Which, if you've visited the official site you've probably seen, but in case you haven't there's a pair of interviews with the developers newly floating through the ether – here and here).

Now, as a jaded veteran of the Guild Wars scene, I know that it's early in the development process – the game's not due to even be tested until next year and any release date is figmentary at this point – and a lot of the promised features may be so much vaporware. After all, if you tracked the original game before its release, as I did, then you would have been very disappointed if you took the press release hype as gospel truth. The game changed for any number of reasons (And in positive ways, generally speaking, I think) but there weren't the in-game forums and guild support that had been discussed previously. Or, when you get right down to it, an emphasis on using instancing to create privatized game worlds. Or even using the game's streaming technology to deliver interesting updates. Oh, sure, we get a quest or some tweaks every now and then as well as the content for the latest expansion to unlock with a code-key so we can play as soon as we rush home from the store but back when I first became interested in the game the expectation was DAOC like chapters. Frequent updates on the scale of Sorrow's Furnace, in other words, but those because the exception rather than the rule.

But, really, you can go down the list of what's touted as positives in these interviews and there's absolutely nothing I find appealing. Including the laughable comment in the Wired piece that GW2 isn't trying to be WoW 2.0. When, you know, if you ask me and most other GW players I've talked with, it sounds like they're trying to make some kind of unholy hybrid of the two. And, you know, I just might go down that list at some other time. GW1 was only just released in 2005, and maybe it's just me, but looking over the list of promises and advancements that have been made, I wonder why it's necessary to start all over instead of improve what's already there.

I'm, in so many words, pretty happy with the game I have. It could be made a little better but so could anything. But this new game they're going to make sounds like it's going to throw out everything I like or change it around completely – while keeping or emphasizing everything I have a problem with.