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Guild Wars 2 News - Games Within the Game
Posted by Suzie Ford on Jul 01, 2010 | 37 comments in our forums
A new blog post penned by ArenaNet's content designer, John Stumme, has popped up on the official Guild Wars 2 site. Entitled "Games Within the Game", the article focuses on a series of new and innovative mini-games that will be included in Guild Wars 2.
Each of the five playable races will have its own capital city and within that city, opportunities will be provided for players to try out other ways to enjoy Guild Wars 2 outside of the "go out and slay the monsters" part of the game. What sets these activities apart from the norm is that all players play them on equal footing. They are not level-based and provide folks with a lot of fun irrespective of their character's level.
One of the first mini-games players can take part in is the bar brawl. As its name implies, it's a drink 'til you nearly drop then bash the guy next to you with your bottle type game. The beer imbibed gives players various effects as well. Drink too much Grenth's Grog and get the ability to gas out your foes with a noxious belch plume. Bar Brawl isn't just limited to beer swilling either. Fisticuffs, kicking, hair pulling...ok maybe not hair pulling...are all included in a no-holds barred fight to the finish.
Bar Brawl isn't the only game in town either. For those who are less combative, perhaps an arcade style mini-game sounds like more fun. Or maybe something like the time honored Guild Wars tradition of snowball fights?
Perhaps you’re in the mood for some good, clean (occasionally yellow-tinged) fun? Then you might enjoy revisiting a time-honored Guild Wars tradition, the snowball fight! A Tyrian tradition for over 250 years, snowball fights just goes to show you that even the looming threat of the Elder Dragons isn’t enough to break the spirit of the people. Just remember: if you let go of the precious little joys in life, you’re letting the dragons win.
It sounds like ArenaNet has a lot in store for players and are continuing to defy the 'standard' MMO type experience. Read the rest of the blog.
This is the only MMO that seems like its actually trying, as far as MMOs that are in-developement.
I'm looking forward to GW2 a hell of a lto more than that crapfest SW:TOR.
The good just keeps piling on.....
Ok. Wow.
Just read the whole post and the thing to impress me the most would be the fact they insist content must present itself truthfully and subsequently not appeal to some. This integrity that you CANNOT please everyone with all the content gets this game high mark on my end. It's been some time since I've seen mechanics not watered down in favor of immersive and engaging gameplay. Besides, the Bar Brawl description sounds like more fun than most raids I've heard about.
First there is this information on a website and everyone goes nice..
And then there allways is a followup blog on the same topic and everyone goes Ooooooh....
These blogs are the best advertisement campaign any game ever had..... period.
I'm telling you guildwars 2 is looking better and better each new blog. This MMO might become my main after all.
It is a good read. Not only do they understand that some content isn't going to appeal to every player, but they make a serious effort to provide a variety of content in an effort to provide something for everyone.
I only disagree with your interpretation of immersion and engaging game play. It seems like they are trying to provide a fairly immersive and engaging environment for everyone in the game in some way or another.
One of the things I love about Guild Wars despite the instanced content and limited skills is how engaging and immersive their environement is.
"As soon as one begins to compromise integrity for accessibility, you run a very real risk of watering down content and creating bland, unengaging activities."
this may be the sole reason why GW2 will bring more to the table then any game before it. A Dev team with the guts to tell us that the game is not built for everyone so everyone may not enjoy everything in the game. what MMOs in the past 5 years has toted around their mini games as a major piece of content?
I'm uncertain as to whether seasonal minigames will have the same sparkle if they were playable more often. Not that the post implies whether they will be either way, just saying.
Preach it!
Everything I have read about GW2 just makes me all the more excited about the game. I really hope ArenaNet can deliver.
Much as I like what I read, a crafty marketing person can simply tell us that "well yes, we talked about that feature, but we did not promise it at launch". Ask age of Conan and the bar brawling content.
So, while I am optimistic if they do all they claim in this blog, it is still just a blog.
So basically they stealing AOC bar room brawling, which wa spenned for Aoc years ago, but neevr made it to release?, Nice. Wow your can snowball fight, this is an amazing concept, now why havnt all mmo games got snowball fighting, oh wait i can throw snowballs at soemone in wow all day long if i wished.
ArenaNet implemented a LOT of mini-games in the original Guild Wars. And they were really nice too.
I'm sure mini-games in GW2 will be very cool too.
The other thing they seem to get is that they provide multiple 'golden paths' to good stuff and shinies. It's not like you have to spend a lot of time doing stuff you hate just to get junk you want. I hope they continue that with Guild Wars 2.
ITs kinda funny, areanet can make the worst sitiuation into something splended. Bar games, lol who cares about mini bar games, but areanet some how makes it sound exciting. Guildwars holiday events are some of the best though so if this is any indication to what those are, then they will be fun none the less.
I got a quote for you......
"Alright. Because I was thinking about, you brought up the bar brawl, for example Funcom had something like that planned for Age of Conan, and I'm not sure that made it in at launch. Is there any risk that something similar would happen to the activities? Or is it an integral part of the game experience in itself?
Eric Flannum: One of the things I can say is that we tend to, you know, we were pretty tight-lipped about the game for a long time and we tend not to talk about things unless they are actually in the game. So when we talk about activities, like when we talk about the bar brawl, or the shooting gallery, because they are actually in the game you can go in and experience them right now. And so there is actually very little chance that most things we talk about are not going to make it into the game just because we run out of time or anything like that. Because, as I said, we tend not to talk about things unless we're very, very certain that we can do them. Certain as in they are in already."
http://www.gamereactor.eu/articles/4160/Guild+Wars+2+interview
ddo had bar room brawls before age of connan. :)
Another wonderful blog post. I must correct the author of this news post, this particular blog was NOT written by Eric Flannum. It was posted by John Stumme, an ArenaNet Content Designer.
http://www.arena.net/blog/author/jstumme
While I did indeed see John's name on the post, the information we received from ArenaNet told us that the author was Eric Flannum. I'll see if I can get some clarification. :)
Thanks for pointing that out to me and reminding me that I still needed to do that.
Guild Wars 2 is just gonna be BIG, like WOW BIG I reckon. And that's a good thing, because this is the freshest MMO I've seen in a long long time.
That line jumped out at me as well.
Time will tell if his words manifest themselves in the game itself... or if they're just "more words". However, if more developers thought like that, rather than "No, we have to make this as accessible to as many players as possible!", there would likely be far fewer crap games on the market that fall short of what they could be.
Perhaps ArenaNet has been able to keep the bean counters out of the design process, and so the game will be driven by what the designers know is ultimately best for the game and best for the players; not only what the suits think is best for their "bottom line".
Developers with more integrity is what the MMO genre needs, badly, right now.
Age of Conan still doesn't have bar brawls.
The GW2 minigames sound interesting!
Awesome. On top of all the other great things they're doing and innovatiions they're making they actually care about giving us alternative methods to have lots of fun that dont revolve around things like grinding for levels/gear/gold. Don't know what sort of rewards there might be for winning in these mini-games but the addition of anything fyun and different will be a huge plus.
Agree with some of you as well who have pointed out their goals in not watering down content and being controlled by the suits. As the devs have said before, they're gamers who have a goal of making the best MMORPG ever, not a bunch of suits worrying about maximizing profit. They genuinely care about making a fun and interesting game, not just sticking to the standard practices like most other devs.
There is a really lengthy interview on the subject here too: http://www.gamereactor.eu/articles/4160/Guild+Wars+2+interview/
for anyone interested
Corrected the author's name to John Stumme per NCSoft. Thanks for the heads up, folks! :)
Still looking forward to this. I'm excited. I hope to get the option to Beta Test this.
i hope that a collectable card game can make it in the game, or the return of Polymock
would rather have polymock...TBH i havent played any game in which in a cad game was in place...and while polymock was basically the same system, IT never felt like a card game, it felt like battling with pets
something akin to Pazaak from KOTOR, or the Triple Triad card game in FF8
I would love to see polymock come back. I would especially love to see them bring back rollerbeatle races. I could do that for days. Oh and dwarven boxing (despite the lack of dwarves now, well the norn seemed to like it).
Agree completely-well said!
This 100 times over!
I'm extremely happy just to see a dev team acknowledge this at last. This is probably one of the biggest contributors to why recent MMOs have been so uninspiring...
Guildwars 2 is literally going to empty the players out of quite, if not most, of the existing fantasy MMOs out there. I think this may partly explain the recent F2P trend, coz this game is gonna hit hard.
I think there are a few other good games due to release soon though, but I think GW2 is the only one that ticks all the boxes.
Thats not the same. Snowball fighting is a competitive game in GW. With its own skills on your skillbar. Every profession even has a skill unique to their profession for it. So its already more fleshed out then in other MMO's where you just throw snowballs.
GW1 has more of these minigames. Like bareknuckle brawling and Polymock games.
First, huge GW fan here, still play daily in a small guild of adults. Second, I'm also a person who loves to game. Finally I have one word when it comes to marketing campaigns, SPORE!
All that said, ArenaNet as a company has a huge problem with this game and it's marketing. They have an installed base of millions anticipating the release of this game. They cannot play games with expectations. Granted, many people are on the sidelines since they felt that GW1 didn't 'do it for them', however their are still large numbers playing the game, knowing that they might not come back if GW2 is as engrossing as the first game. If they mess up the development or marketing of this game it would be a huge fail. However, we have all seen huge fails of games in similar situations.
To all you nattering naybobs of negativity, take note. The devs/managers have stated in a few articles, they do not discuss publicly anything that hasn't been through in house game play and qa testing, so yes they are actually playing this game as it's being developed. That is why in all cases of statements about actions, skills, etc. I have to give them a lot more credibility than a 'normal' release of vaporware.
But as much as I ooo and ahhh over the gameplay vids and artwork, I still remember the game that was supposed to be a scientific sandbox to look at the evolution of critters and remember with a foul taste in my mouth how that one worked out for me.
Balance in everything!
i shall buy guild wars2 i decided this a long long time ago. and Junstinelike needs to burn in hell. u can piss off with gold selling b/s.
But can throw a snowball with a rock hidden inside it? http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hidden_Rock
Hearing the word mini-game in an mmo really scares me, but these sound like they might just blend into the world in the right way.