Guild Wars: Mission Bonus Pack Q&A

Developer interview about the Bonus Mission Pack up at the official site. Conveniently, it finally reveals some details about two weeks before the offer expires so, yeah, good timing there. However, for people like me who are still on the fence (And looking for a little post-NaNo present) it comes at a good time. I'm of two minds after reading the interview. First, I'm put off by the idea of playing historic characters with set skill bars. That's just not Guild Wars to me. The game's all about being able to pick and choose and customize in order to meet a specific challenge. I want to do that myself, not have the developers do it for me. But here, I don't even get to select a henchie team to run with, it's a solo mission with pre-packaged skills. That might be fun but it's not really why I play the game. I was pretty much expecting some kind of time warp with my existing characters and possibly some fat loot to be found instead of some loregasms. We're not even getting new maps, as the pack is just going to use some old maps with some new skins.

On the other hand, reusing old maps with new textures sounds like finally harnassing the power of instancing. And that's definitely something I'd like to see the developers do more of. And while I'm skeptical of the developer's definition of "challenge" which mostly seems to involve cranking up levels and slathering debiliating effects on everything, the promise of environments customed tailored to a preset skill bar does sound promising. Like the developers might be able to pull off some interesting tricks. But, again, I'm worried that it's all going to be laid out on railroad tracks. That there's going to be one way to go through these missions, one way to make a purse out of the pig's ear of skills you're handed, and only one narrow vision for how these missions are to be played. If there are multiple paths, different options, separate routes that can be followed to success depending on how clever or quick you are, well, that's a different story.

Valuing this pack is difficult because it comes as an add-on to content I'm buying anyways. I know I'm not going to be shelling out $30 just to play four missions that sound like the developers have been playing around with the basic game format a bit too much with. But if I pick up GW:EN though the online store - where I just realized that I get a minor discount on since I own the other chapters - then it's basically free. But I'm really not too keen on GW:EN, either. But I have to admit, the combination of the two is mightily tempting. And, as I said, a carrot for finishing my November project might be awfully valuable...