Hi, I'm Dr. X.
How can anyone live without being crazy? Just hold it hard, if you don't flip it, it's equal to working in vain!
I don't know if for all the friends who have to go to work normally on Chinese New Year's Eve, have you ever fantasized about blowing up this bastard's world for a moment?
In fact, as an individual, he has a tendency to self-destructive, but the vast majority of people also think about it in their hearts, and few people will put it into practice.
But for the Arenanet studio in 2023, they have really done a god-level operation comparable to the end of the whole world, and most of the old designs and routines of the game "Guild Wars 2" have been "blown up".
Key point 1: The most rebellious MMO in 2023, "crazy" to overthrow all the old designs
The ultimate villain or the ultimate goal, for MMO online games, just like cats eat fish, dogs eat meat, and Ultraman fights little monsters, it is not only the basic law that maintains the existence of the virtual world, but also the "end of the adventure" that our players tirelessly want to explore.
However, in order to make an MMO online game operate for a long time, designers often continue to add drama to this ultimate villain and even "eat books", and are unwilling to completely overturn or end an important setting.
Take "World of Warcraft" as an example, in 2004, when you first entered the pit, you were fighting the villain Elder Gods, and it turned out to be November 2024Version 0, you're still playing the Gods of the Ancients. Do you guess it's because the Elder Gods are too difficult to beat, or is it because Blizzard is afraid that players will burn out after reaching a certain ultimate goal, which will affect the online game's revenue?
There are also ancient gods behind the ancient gods, which is already the basic operation of Blizzard).
But the Arenanet studio in 2023 is so ruthless, gritting its teeth, it will end the dragon cycle that has entangled the series "Guild Wars" for nearly twenty years (PS: "Guild Wars 1" and "Guild Wars 2" share the world view)!
This operation is no less than Gotham's Batman completely caught the Joker, Zelda's Link successfully rescued the princess, and it belongs to the final chapter of the story, which is almost over and says goodbye.
For players, it's cool to see that the story you've been chasing for nearly two decades has finally come to an end, but for an MMO that can't be finished, we can't help but ask:What is the future of your travel?
In this regard, the solution given by "Guild Wars 2" in 2023 is relatively novel, and they did not follow the idea of the sequel to the usual game, and began to push forward the original independent story line, but carried out a wave of excavation of the "witcher" story, which is also "filling the hole" in our popular sense.
In addition, after entering a new era, Guild Wars 2, which has always been designed with "subversion" as its design element, has also opened the road of self-innovation.
Celestial Mysteries, as the first new DLC in the post-dragon cycle era, has just subverted many of the settings of Guild Wars 2 since ancient times。For example, ** is no longer bound to skill specialization, rune effects are no longer bound to attributes, daily and weekly task objectives have a custom operation space, and so on.
From a certain point of view, Celestial Mystery can be regarded as giving Guild Wars 2 a space to examine the design of the past from the present, and its appearance replaces a lot of "traditional ideas" with more and more interesting gameplay mechanics, which is crazy enough. It's also bold enough.
Of course, it's easy to get caught when you take a big step, and the "Celestial Mystery", a new DLC, is controversial among players in terms of new plots and new map updates.
But for an expansion film with the significance of connecting the past and the next, "Mystery of the Heavenly Realm" has indeed propped up the window period of "the dragon's absence", opening up a lot of operating space for subsequent subversive designs.
Point 2: Players' tastes are also changing? After ten years of operation, a new server was opened
It is worth noting that as a veteran MMO online game that has been in operation for more than ten years, Guild Wars 2 will still have the energy to open 6 sets of new servers in 2023, and 2 groups will return to the server, which is quite surprising.
Not to mention anything else, at least the popularity that should have been there has increased significantly this year.
This aspect has to do with the many new changes that Guild Wars 2 has made in the post-dragon cycle era that we talked about earlierOn the other hand, it can also show that the tastes of MMO players are changing, and the traditional MMO era of selling data every second has been submerged under the tide of the development of the times.
But after a large number of new entrants, the number of players willing to stay in Guild Wars 2 also needs to be questioned.
Compared with the traditional online game multi-task, multi-dungeon, and multi-material collection development mode, Guild Wars 2 has always adhered to mechanisms such as a fixed level of 80 and a maximum limit of equipment attributes that will never be updated, encouraging players to take the initiative to socialize.
As many Guild Wars 2 veteran players said, part of the gameplay design of this game is still ahead of its time, and if you insist on playing with the mentality of catching up with values, it is difficult to stay.
Of course, after the mushrooming of new MMO online games and new open-world games in the market, the advanced design concept of Guild Wars 2 is also being accepted by more and more players.
Summary after class:
Looking back at the game update of "Guild Wars 2" in 2023, it can probably be described by the eight big characters of "Lao Ji is in the bush, aiming for a thousand miles".
For an MMO online game, it is not easy to draw a perfect end to a 20-year-long epic plot line, and what is more valuable is that "Guild Wars 2" still retains the original intention of "subversion", constantly optimizing old routines and opening up new gameplay.