Guild Wars: Bonus Mission Pack

So, the Bonus Mission Pack. I've been meaning to talk about this for a while but, eh, you know how it goes. Anyway, the idea is that if you spend a certain amount in the online store by a certain point you'll get a code to unlock some bonus content. So, spend $30 on things like GW:EN or to get three new character slots or whatever by October 31st and they'll throw four new missions in for you. Historical missions that let you play out battles and scenarios from the game's lore. Including at least one that sounds pretty important, story-wise, to the current expansion.

On one hand, it's a giant crock. A transparent way of driving up sales in the online store where, presumably, the profit margins for NCSoft are a bit better than your average brick and mortar joint. I mean, I'm not surprised or anything. It's a company and their goal is to wring as much money out of their customers as they can. But, you know, when I heard about it my first impulse was “Okay, now what can I buy in the store that'll add up to $30?” I mean, I haven't heard much about the missions, their length, whether I'll have to use pre-constructed characters or I'll be able to warp my own characters through time, somehow, to participate or anything of the like. All I knew was that there was something more to buy. To explore. To participate in.

And, you know, I'm hardly even playing the game at the moment.

So, if the lure was that strong for me, I can imagine what it's like for someone else who's been living and dying with the game. But, after a bit of thought, I'm not sure it's a worthy purchase, after all. It sounds like it's going to be just four extra missions and that's not exactly worth $30 to me. Not even if we're talking about massive Thunderhead Keep, “it just keeps going on” or epic dungeon crawlers like the Domain of Anguish. I rather prefer the shorter, more focused missions over the lengthy, involved ones you need to get some non-AI help for (I know, I know, I'm killing the game.) anyway. I wouldn't go out of my way to spend $30 just for the experience. However, if you're already going to spend that money on something else, it's not a bad bargain. Say you're hoping to get the x-pack, well, pick it up from the online store and you'll get those four missions as a bonus. Still, I can't escape the feeling that it's a rip-off, somehow.

On the other hand, this bonus mission pack is the sort of thing I'd hoped to see all along out of ANet. They've never leveraged their ability to stream new content to players as effectively as they could. About the one time they've gotten it right, I feel, was with Sorrow's Furnace. During the long lull between the original release and the first expansion, Factions, they put a brand new dungeon into the game. Not only a new dungeon but they also used it to implement the green weapons that players crave so much. It was a new place to explore with rich new veins of XP to exploit and it came with a bucket load of new loot? Sold. And they released the whole thing free of charge. I wasn't playing at the time but it quickly became a favorite when I came back to the game shortly after. It was great proof that the developers were going to be hard at work not just cranking out expansions but also working to improve on the existing content. Because, remember, at the time Factions was off on the horizon and there was a real question about whether a game without a subscription would get that kind of support.

Ah, but it wasn't exactly free because, at the same time, they also rolled out the online store and one of the first things they offered was a bonus music pack. It contained new songs and such for the new area but if you wanted them you had to shell out a bit more. My PvE soundtrack is supplied by WinAmp so I didn't bother and, thus, can't recall how much it cost at the time. That I wasn't alone in my apathy, it's no longer being offered, and that particular business model was never followed up on suggests, to me, that it was a resounding failure. But while (as always) the execution was lacking the seed of offering some additional content at a premium was planted.

But, for whatever reason, such offerings have been few and far between. The developers will tweak quests and update NPC skins but outside of Sorrow's Furnace there haven't been many big projects delivered to the players (I'm not really counting the Domain of Anguish because it was always supposed to be there, it was just a feature that was running late. I'm looking more for examples of large content added to the game as a bonus. Like the holiday stuff but, you know, permanent.). I can't think of one, actually. And, there, I think the developers missed a big opportunity. They could have been streaming sidequests and bonus missions to us all along. Injecting them into the game when there's a lull, say, in order to give flagging attention spans and enthusiasm a boost. A quest cycle here, a mission pushing the boundaries of what instancing can do there[1], and the game would have been much better off. And if they want to make a bit of profit off of it?

ANet and NCSoft have to make money, after all, so I really don't begrudge it to them. I don't think it's unreasonable to offer, say, another dungeon or different weapon skins or say a group of new heroes at a nominal cost. Especially if they're not essential to enjoying the game and, so, not a requirement like coming out with a new pack of skills to buy for $15~30 would be. I'd certainly rather they were offered for free but I'd also like my next car to be a gold-plated chariot drawn by ponies.

In other words, getting everything I want from the game is unrealistic. Because what matches my needs and wishes isn't necessarily what's best for everyone. I understand this and I understand that I'm not always going to get my way because, sometimes, the developers have to take other people into account, sad as that may be.

Still, with the chapters and expansions and updates we have I think those developers fell into an easy trap. The one that because they were delivering new content, because they were releasing new product for people to buy, that they had to make it worthwhile. That they had to pack enough value into it in order to get people interested. It's an attitude that suggests going for the big improvements and holding off on the smaller ones. But just like with skill updates where it's better to have frequent little rebalancings rather than one gigantic laundry list of changes – the better to test, the better to absorb, the better to seem like you're responding to concerns – the new content the developers provide could be parceled out in more discrete packages. An update every month or two which adds a handful of skills, a dungeon or two, and maybe a new profession. Fed into the ongoing game instead of disrupting it with a big splash. I'd like to have seen more updates like Sorrow's Furnace, in other words, and not necessarily for free. This Bonus Mission Pack comes a bit late in the day, but it's a good model for how the game can be added to in the future. Small, compact, offered for small fees without a retail box, for the people who really want something more to enjoy.

[1] – Instancing is another missed opportunity, if you ask me. When the game was still months away from release, I remember how it was being hyped up. Talked up by the developers. And, yeah, by fans and forum dwellers like myself. But not only was the non-subscription revolutionary, not only was the streaming technology revolutionary, but the power of instancing a shardless world was going to be brought to bear on creating an amazing gaming experience. What you did in a mission or a zone was going to have permanent, lasting effects but only for you. For your own personal version of the game, in your own private timeline, you'd be able to topple kingdoms and burn down bridges, actually impact the game world. And when you returned the consequences would still be there. But a new player coming along would have their own opportunity to create their own consequences, too. The game's storyline would be flexible, mutable, personalized but bending and twisting around different versions of events and outcomes depending on who you were grouping with. If you wanted to rerun a mission, you'd warp to an instance where you'd never run it before, like traveling back in time. If you wanted a world where you didn't burn down that bridge, there'd be a way to create that alternate reality. Somehow. At least, that's how I understood it. It didn't really work out that way, though, and instancing became just a fancy way of saying “We have lobbies that branch off to reduce stress on our servers. Oh, and no killstealing.” Nice but far from the revolutionary awesomeness it originally hinted at. But, you know, the game I built up in my head was always going to be better than the one I actually wound up playing.