The other day, a group of us in the Massively office watched the latest TERA demo video in a sort of horrified awe as the skimpily clad character ran with her fanny flying in the wind and gyrated her hips to cast a spell. It sparked an intense discussion among us as to the fine line between sexing a game up and over-sexing it just to draw in stereotypical drooling male gamers.
It’s a well-known adage that sex sells, and like it or hate it, attractive characters and skimpy outfits have been a part of MMORPGs for quite some time now. From World of Warcraft‘s seductive succubus to Age of Conan‘s topless extravaganza to Star Trek Online‘s character creation “breast slider,” game studios tend to play the sex card first and frequently to pull in customers. This is why, for example, male armor tends to always be practical (if oddly flamboyant) while female armor isn’t even big enough to protect one’s dignity, never mind one’s internal organs.
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<a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/browse?mkt=en-us&from=&vid=8cb424dc-cbdb-40be-90c5-8fb450462d2f&from=en-us" target="_new" title="Season 4 - Music Video - "Game On"">Video: Season 4 – Music Video – "Game On"</a>
A second comic series based on Felicia Day’s The Guild will be published in 2011:
Dark Horse will officially announce at Comic-Con International in San Diego that Felicia Day’s “The Guild” is set to return to comics in 2011. Day’s popular web-based video series, which entered its fourth season this week, follows the offline adventures of the Knights of Good, a guild within a massively multiplayer online role playing game referred to simply as “The Game,” though recognizable as a “World of Warcraft” analogue. Day writes and produces the series, as well as starring as Codex. This year’s three-issue “Guild” comic series served as an origin story, both for Codex’s gaming life and for the guild as an entity. The sequel series, however, will find each issue focusing on a single character and illustrated by a different artist. The first issue will star noble guild-leader Vork, and is co-written by Jeff Lewis, the actor who portrays him.
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In the ongoing slow drip of information about Guild Wars 2, today’s revelation is another profession to join the Elementalist and Warrior — the Ranger:
The ranger is a jack-of-all-trades and a master of them all as well, relying on his keen eye, steady hand, or the power of nature itself. A master of ranged combat, the ranger is capable of striking unwitting foes from a distance with his bow. With a stable of pets at his command, a ranger can adapt to his opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
A ranger is accompanied by his pet, a loyal animal companion. Rangers charm pets and then bond with them. A ranger can have up to three pets at his call, but generally speaking, only one pet can be active at any time. Pets’ base health, armor, and damage are based on the level of the player that owns them.
My very first Guild Wars character was a ranger (Raphia Naon), so I’m happy to see his “descendents” will still be around in the 250-years-later continent of Tyria.
The Ranger is nature based, primarily a ranged attacker. Rangers are special because all Rangers have a pet. In your biography you will get to choose between three different pets that you can start with, and that varies between race. Then you can have up to three pets, and you go to a pet management screen to pull out any of the three that you want – provided that you’re not in combat. And so what we wanted to do is encourage Rangers to have up to three pets that they nurture and adventure with, and those three pets can be very different, purpose-wise.
So I can have maybe a bear who is good at tanking, or a snow leopard who’s a good damage pet, and then maybe a Moa bird who’s a good support pet, depending on the situation I’m in. So say I’m grouped with a bunch of Warriors and I really don’t need a bear to tank, I can pull out my snow leopard. If I wanted some support I could pull out the Moa. And so Rangers are designed to have those choices with their pets, where the pets fulfill very specific roles.
The pets automatically level to the level of the Ranger, so you don’t actually have to level pets. So if you get to level 50 and you want to go get a new type of pet, you don’t have to spend a bunch of time levelling that pet. The pet’s going to basically be effective.
And also, in that last paragraph, we learn that the level cap has been raised from 20 to (at least) 50. Also, unlike the trap mechanics in GW, traps have changed in that a Ranger can only have one trap active, and must be in the vicinity to keep it working (but it will continue to work as long as the Ranger stays in range). Spirits are also a larger part of the Ranger’s abilities, but still limited to a single spirit at a time.
Update the second: Rubi Bayer also reports on the Ranger’s abilities:
Let’s begin with what sort of pets are obtainable. “ A ranger has three active pet slots. Outside of combat, or through the use of utility skills, the ranger can swap their active pet. There are 12 different types of pets, including some terrestrial (spiders), some amphibious (lizards), and some aquatic (sharks).” Since pets from Elona and Cantha won’t be an option. ArenaNet has beefed up the selection in Tyria. “Within each type there are subtypes that can influence pets’ abilities. For example, a polar bear might have an Icy Roar, while a brown bear might have a Fearsome Roar.“
Yes. Sharks. You can tame a shark. While the idea of having a shark pet is awesome just on its own, the implications are even more exciting. First of all, you’ve got a pet that can accompany you in underwater combat. But since your faithful aquatic pet can’t go traipsing through the woods with you (sadly, it is not a landshark), rangers need a bit more variety available to them. This limitation is removed through the ability mentioned above, allowing rangers to have up to three pets “on call.” You can switch between your pets to adapt to your enemies or your surroundings as needed.
These changes should work to make playing the Ranger a better-balanced experience: over the last year or two, Rangers seem to have been trapped (sorry) into a few specialized functions, but generally aren’t as useful on mission and quest teams as other professions. Certainly they aren’t as welcome in pick-up groups as monks, elementalists or ritualists are.
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Aha! My suspicions were correct: Guild Wars 2 will have no dedicated healing class. This is kinda significant to me, as my most successful character in Guild Wars is a monk: a healer. This change was somewhat telegraphed when they revealed the details of the Elementalist class last month, by having a skill slot that was only to be used for a healing skill or spell.
Simple systems like this, along with cross-profession combos, and the dedicated healing skill slot, help free players from the MMORPG shackles, and let us break the mold even more. We’re making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.
Everyone take a deep breath. It’s going to be OK.
We have lots of people in our studio that enjoyed playing monks in Guild Wars 2 and healers in other games. We examined what it was about the healer archetypes that people really enjoyed, and we took a look at what it was about those archetypes that made the game less enjoyable. Then we created professions to appeal to those types of players.
Support players want to be able to say, “Remember that one time when I saved you from certain death?” They want to stand in the line of fire and block attacks. They want to surround their allies with a swirling dome of air that keeps enemy projectiles from passing through it. It’s not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it’s about being there for your friends when they need you.
We’ll see. I admit that there are less-than-exciting aspects to running a healer, but one of the upsides is that you’re always in demand for missions and quests. For former schoolyard geeky team-rejects like me, this is a not inconsiderable benefit.
I do acknowledge the truth in the comic that accompanied the article:
Update: Interview with GW2 Lead Designer Eric Flannum (whose name is spelled in a couple of different ways in the article . . . perhaps a translation/transliteration issue, as Dieses Interview gibt es natürlich auch auf Deutsch).
Update the second: PC Gamer summarizes the healing and dying changes:
The tank stands in the front. The healer stands at the back. The damage dealers stand in the middle. So it has been for generations. Guild Wars 2 is making the latest and greatest effort to change that, PC Gamer can reveal, following an exclusive interview with game designer Jon Peters and lead designer Eric Flannum of ArenaNet. The biggest changes? Tanks are gone, healers are gone, the Death Penalty is gone, and you can still kick some arse while you’re lying on yours.
Blizzard, the publisher of World of Warcraft and other MMO games, has announced that they will no longer allow anonymous postings to their official forum:
Existing posts are not affected, but many WoW subscribers are concerned about the privacy implications of the move. Emails complaining about the decision are already flooding in — to El Reg’s inbox — so one can imagine the furore on Battle.net forums.
As one Reg reader says: “So every man, woman and child who plays World of Warcraft or the upcoming Starcraft 2 will only be able to post on their forums if they’re perfectly happy for anyone who may want to know what their name is. The mind boggles at the security implications from social engineering passwords, email addresses and account names or even safety if people have ex partners or stalkers etc. And then there’s the idiots who you meet in the games themselves who can now take their abuse to real life with just a little googling and rare name or background info.”
No doubt, Blizzard has considered this and is willing to wave goodbye to anonymous forum participants: damn the traffic — or dam the traffic? It simply wants people to behave themselves, to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment — one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. “
I’d have thought that a viable compromise between the current situation (anyone being able to post anonymously) and the “solution” would be to allow registered users to post under a pseudonym. Blizzard probably doesn’t want to police their forums too heavily, and believe that removing anonymity will automatically reduce the worst excesses with no further policing required from them. Well, it’s a theory.
The folks who labour (very much) behind the scenes of online gaming sometimes manage to hacksaw through the shackles and post about their anguish:
I’m guessing a large portion of our player base has never cracked open The Chicago Manual of Style. I work in a room full of word nerds. We live and breathe this stuff to the point where we agonize over seemingly mundane things like punctuation, capitalization, and phrasing. For years we’ve gnashed our teeth to the gums while capping common nouns and game terms with every release. Our eyes literally hurt when we edited some copy.
Starting with this article, we’re changing Guild Wars 2 house style to conform more closely to CMS rules. Professions are now lowercased except when used in a title. The same goes for playable races, though nationalities and group affiliations will remain uppercase as is consistent with contemporary practice. It may take a few minutes to adjust to the new look, but we’re pretty confident that you’re a savvy bunch. You don’t need every other word capitalized for emphasis. Context will tell you all you need to know about our lore and game mechanics. Existing Guild Wars 2 articles should be updated to reflect this, but if you catch an error, feel free to let us know.1 Existing original Guild Wars articles and in-game text will retain their legacy formatting, however.
99% of the readers won’t know what the heck you’re talking about, Bobby, but I feel your pain.
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For gaming geeks, this will probably be of interest. For everyone else, maybe not. I’ll put it under the fold so it won’t cause too much distress for non-gaming readers.
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