ArenaNet Wants You To Play With Friends In Guild Wars 2

Written by: Jason Winter (@winterinformal) | May 9, 2012 1:00 pm

9 Comments

PC Gamer‘s interview with ArenaNet‘s Eric Flannum sums up the state of MMOs pretty much perfectly:

“MMOs often make it too darn hard to play with your friends — a ridiculous state of affairs for the most social genre in all of gamingdom.”

Flannum talks about the role of servers — and server changes — in Guild Wars 2, including the little-known fact that guilds can exist on more than one server:

“Think of each guild as having a distinct “chapter” that exists on any world where guild members make their homes.”

There are plenty of systems in place to prevent people from abusing server changes, from fees to waiting periods before bonuses from WvW kick in.

But at the core of the GW2 experience is the ability to play with your friends, which ArenaNet is very aware of and takes several steps to ensure, such as guesting on friends’ servers and “leveling down” to let high-level players team up with low-level friends.

It’s a refreshing attitude in a genre that often makes it “ridiculous”-ly hard to play with friends. What do you think of the approach ArenaNet’s making?

ArenaNet Wants You To Play With Friends In Guild Wars 2

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Revanhavoc

I know Jason, I wish I had friends too…

(Don’t worry, I’m your friend Revan!)

Shut up, havoc.
Old Ben

The PC Gamer interview is giving a 404. The link is correct, but they seem to have taken it offline.
EvilLaufter

That’s nice. Now call me you come up with a way for friends to actually play together rather than spending hours in overflow purgatory.
- LordNik0n
  
  You do know the game hasn’t launched yet right? Give it time.
SiderFace

I’m glad you guys do this. Arenanet doesn’nt have time right now to calm everyone’s anxiety. So many players read some blip from an interview/forum, and they translate in their own panicked way.

Its nice to have a reasonable translator/speculator
SiderFace

I think the “happy medium” is what they are going for (in regards to exploring/teleporting)

What happened from my experience is that when you go out to explore/quest, you do it consciously and prepared because you don’t yet have the area explored. You also don’t lose time watching a shotty animation of a flying dragon for 30 minutes while your friends on vent say “where you at now?”.
I DO think they could make the teleport cost higher for many reasons. I imagine server stress would be lower if folks weren’t teleproting 4-5 times in between each ONE time that they go out and quest/explore. Also, with overflow system, I imagine its alot more server work if people are porting so much.
James Lecouffe

If they really want you to be able to play with your friends then sick kicking should not just working going down levels but also up. Every one knows you wont be able to do all content with a up-kicked char but being able to run dynamic events should be an option. Maybe its one person thats low level and 4 friends that are higher level. Why must 80% of the team go do content they know over the one team member changing level to go do content with their friends?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Kendrick-Panh-Washington/583384072 Kendrick Panh Washington
  
  I don’t mind having no side kicking up, for the mere fact that you can experience the higher level content like dynamic events, but what are you going to do once you get to the appropriate leve for the content? It’s going to be a tad bit more boring if you get sidekicked up form level 10 to 80 for a few hours. Not to mention you won’t have the skills for it either. Just my opinion on it.
  - James Lecouffe
    
    Like it would be boring for 4 members of a team being forced to do low level content they have done if they want to hang with a friend? I think level up side kicking should be an option as it just gives more options.