The World of Tyria is Your Oyster (Guild Wars 2) – Part 4

Part 4

PLEASE NOTE: SOME OF THE LINKS BELOW MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS.

In the last article we talked about combat and the skills and traits you make use of with your character (Read Part 3 Here). This time we’re going to talk about play balance.

Multiplayer vs. Solo

This game is intended to be a multiplayer experience. It fully embraces the community of the gameworld. To this end it has made it actually rewarding to group up with total strangers in the game. The events all scale to the number of people that are participating. This means that you can be assured that if you wander into an event alone, you can still manage it, but if other players happen to show up, more enemies will as well, so that things don’t feel too easy.

Retrieved from Wide Wallpapers.net

The drop system was created to reward everyone, and not just the best players. If you participate, you get a reward. The loot dropped is already assigned to your player, and quest items drop for each player, so nobody is left having to try to kill something multiple times to get their turn. ArenaNet has taken all the conflict between players out of the game, and made it beneficial to work together.

Still not into multiplayer? Because of the event scaling I mentioned earlier, it’s completely possible to wander the world solo and not be overwhelmed. If you want to pretend the other players are just extra bodies, and go your own way, the game won’t punish you for that. You may be a bit challenged in the five person dungeons that way, as they are instanced, but they WILL let you in.

Scaling

The events aren’t the only things that scale. There’s no more walking through starting zones one-shotting everything in sight. Your level 80 character, if they go back into n00bland, will find themselves scaled down to the zone’s level. Those monsters are just as dangerous to a level 80 character as they are to a level 10. Sure you have better weapons and more skills and traits, which gives you a slight edge, but you can’t just stroll through like you own the place. This ensures continual challenge and keeps exploring from getting boring. It also allows you to explore the starting areas of the other races without feeling like you have no challenges.

Demographics

Guild Wars 2 has a ton of variety, something for everyone. To give you an idea of what the people playing the game are most fond of, here’s a chart put up by the ArenaNet developers on the distribution of gender, race, class, and profession in the game.

Retrieved from: GuildWars2.com

All of the Symbols on the image above can be found here with descriptions.

As you can see, when you mix and match these categories, Guild Wars 2 is filled with a wealth of player characters. It’s a game for all styles of play and all players.

Next Time

Next time we’ll talk about the last major choice in the game, your character’s crafting profession.

Article is written by Tami Olsen (Keilantra) : Portfolio

Continue onto Part 5 of our Guild Wars 2 extended review.