While I've drifted away from Guild Wars over the years, it's secured a place in my heart, with the proud title of "Only MMO I've Ever Liked". I like to think it wears a sash that says this. The announcement of Guild Wars 3 has since piqued my interest all the way back up again, particularly as it looks like an MMO that actually respects your time. This was highlighted by ArenaNet's studio head, Collin Johanson, who said in an interview with IGN Live that it would be playable "as much or as little" as the players want.
God above, that's pleasant to hear. Look, I'm all for games that you can immerse yourself in, but I'm also in my early 30s and I don't necessarily want games to be all-consuming entities that, like some eldritch abomination, get their hooks in you and siphon time away with repetitive tasks. Sometimes I just want to be able to jump in, play for a while, then come back a week or so later, without feeling like I've lost out on something.
Rise and grind
Guild Wars 2 review: " A refined online experience that frees the player to engage with the game world in the best way yet"
Gamers are perennially fascinated with MMOs. When you're first getting into online gaming, the idea that you can share a living, breathing world with thousands of other players is intoxicating. But far too often, MMOs don't live up to their promise.
Take World of Warcraft, one of the biggest games of all time, but one that I bounced off like a rubber ball. I've been around the MMO block a fair few times, from The Secret World to Dune Awakening, but I can't seem to stick with one for very long. Even Eve Online, which has produced so many incredible stories, just doesn't offer gameplay that I personally find entertaining. There is one exception: Guild Wars 2.
I first entered the world of Tyria back in 2013, and fell in love with its structure. The mix of ongoing, large-scale quests, snack-sized daily objectives and larger monthly ones, immediately gave me the structure that I felt MMOs were lacking. I now knew what I had to do, day in, day out, making hopping on for an hour feel less like a chore and more like an opportunity to see what was new in the world of cat men and plant people. Crucially, it was also free, which was great!
For all of its grindiness, that's something that I feel Warframe does really well. When I hop on with a friend, it's easy to spend a couple hours slicing up Grineer then leave it until a week or so later when we're next free. I don't feel that I miss out on anything significant by doing this, and that's fantastic. Games aren't meant to be a second job, and whether that involves filling out a Battlepass or harvesting endless quantities of vampire gallbladders, that's something that MMOs are often guilty, with malice of forethought, of doing.
It's a choice for, say, World of Warcraft, to be oriented around small dopamine hits that keep you grinding away for dopamine. I don't mean to yuck anyone's yums, but it's not for me.
Get the guild back together
I don't have the time anymore to sink endless hours into an MMO
With Guild Wars 3, ArenaNet plans to avoid "keeping people hostage", as Johanson says, adding that "the MMO genre is ready for something new". That's the handle, right there.
MMOs have barely changed over the decades, and with live-service games, we can see MMO mechanics spreading like wildfire. Consider something like Call of Duty, which has decided that weapon progression and cosmetics aren't enough to keep people playing, and has implemented a battlepass, which introduces FOMO to keep you playing. If you haven't completed a battlepass, can you truly say that the money you spent to get the premium unlocks was worth it? Probably not, right? So keep playing!
Games across all genres can be deeply predatory. Games that I love, even. Yet the best games don't do this. You play those not to unlock content that you've technically already paid for, but because you're interested in what they do, what they have to say, or enjoy the process. I've recently been playing 1000xResist (it's a banger), and I wouldn't have felt more of a draw to complete it if I'd been offered a new Watcher skin for successfully completing 5 communions. Conversely, I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla a few years ago, had completed a ton of the game, then saw a yawning chasm of 50 more hours stretching ahead of me if I wanted to actually finish it, and felt insulted.
We've all got a limited amount of time on this Earth. I don't have the time anymore to sink endless hours into an MMO, and, as more and more people keep playing video games well into their adult lives, that's true for an ever-increasing number of us. If Guild Wars 3 is capable of staying captivating, without chaining you to your desk in pursuit of that next dopamine hit, it may well be a game that I come to love. Maybe Guild Wars 2 needs to get ready to share that sash.
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