- By way of Blue Kae's blog, we get news that Scarybooster is having a Developer Appreciation Week. But instead of making him do all the work, we all need to pitch in and participate. Developers take a lot of pain and poison throughout the year, so spending one day to thank them is the least I can do.
- This is going to be a group award because I don't feel qualified to single out one person from the many people responsible for this game. My appreciation today goes to the team at ArenaNet, both past and present.
- Guild Wars was the first online game that I ever played. Prior to that, I read all about games like Ultima Online and Everquest with growing degrees of excitement. These new virtual fantasy worlds sounded amazing to me. I wanted to be a part of that. At the same time, though, subscribing to a game still freaked me out. Nowadays, I think nothing of dropping fifteen a month to access Azeroth or Middle-Earth or New Eden. But it was a huge barrier to me trying those games. When ArenaNet told us that once you bought the box, you could play as long as the servers were up, that was enough get me to try it out. And they have stuck to their guns ever since
- Okay, so the cost wasn't the only factor. The other side of the coin was the art ArenaNet was putting out about the game. I think it was the Mesmer image that sold me. I jsut had to try out a game with such great looking characters. Guild Wars is a beautiful game even now, and it has the most amazing and varied world to adventure in.
- Many thanks to the men and women of ArenaNet. You opened my eyes to the wider world of online gaming, dominated my imagination for a couple years, showed us all that you don't have to fall in lockstep with the competition just to make a quick buck.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
Great post. GW is one of those games I've been flipping to try for ages, but have never gotten around to. The art direction and costume designs seem to be especially impressive based on screen shots.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed my time in GW and everyone in a while pop in to check things out. I think it's a testament to Arena.net that I played as much as I did considering my not quite liking of the character art style, the world itself was gorgeous. I'm looking forward to GW2.
ReplyDelete@ Yeebo - The economy is crazy and the player base is long established, but Guild Wars has reached such a mature state that there is no better time to try it out. And you can get some crazy cheap deals on the campaigns if you look around.
ReplyDelete@ Blue Kae - I don't go back to it too often, but I'll occasionally visit my characters. I'm really looking forward to GW2. I might even have to resuscitate my old GW blog.
Last few times I've gone back, finding myself in the city/lobby area and seeing all the names, guild tags, sellers, guild invite spammers, and what nots pretty much killed my interest right away. I think it's going to take a lull in my other games for me to go back to GW and also probably buying the two expansions so I can use a set of heroes to basically turn it into a single player RPG.
ReplyDelete@ Blue Kae - You make a good point. I inevitably turn most zone chat off, especially in the mail trading hubs like Lion's Arch and Kamadan. But you can't play through the main game (minus the elite zones) entirely on your own due to henchmen and heroes.
ReplyDelete