How many people play MMORPGs as a solo experience? I know I spent more than 80% of my time in Star Wars: The Old Republic as a solo, mowing down monsters and leveling in the wastelands. It wasn't a nice sight to see someone else run up to kill the monsters I was busy farming for some sidequest.
When I asked the developers at ArenaNet about that experience and they way they were going to out perform their competitors in Guild Wars 2, they replied with a singular vision across several systems.
Many MMOs aren't truly cooperative. You're playing alongside each other more than you're playing together, so we tried to fix that by answering the question "How is this person going to negatively affect my gameplay?"
One method is that every player attacking the same mob will get the same experience and reward they'd get for killing a monster solo. Johanson also said that Guild Wars 2 will empower every class as a solo, so that groups aren't so reliant on one character to get them through tough spots. You don't need a healer, or a tank, because classes can heal themselves and fulfill several roles on the field as necessary.
Even Jeff Grubb, Lead Story, Lore, and Continuity designer detailed how players will be able to interact with each other without having the world or the story come between them.
There's a lot of variety in the world and we've pushed ourselves to be creatively fearless. That means allowing players to join into a sidequest or a world event when it's already been triggered by another player.
Experiencing that first hand meant entering an area and having to defend an engineer as he repaired irrigation pipes from marauders. A player in the area already was there when those same pipes were being attacked. Finding himself short handed, the marauders succeeded, but together we managed to push back the bandits and save the town.
I'm not so angry when someone walks up to me while I'm playing and killing mobs. I'm not so relieved when I find a spawn point where no one else is.
Isaiah Cartwright summed up exactly what solo players are looking for in an MMO. As a systems lead in Guild Wars 2, he saw the raw numbers that could push players together, rather than pull them apart.
We'll continue to bring you more Guild Wars 2 coverage in the lead up to it's first major beta weekend. Be sure to check out our time with Guild Wars 2's Thief and our ArenaNet studio tour.
