《激战2》在这十年中的发展和影响

遗憾的是，行会大厅没有滑翔翼那么漂亮。会馆的核心概念是优秀的。有一个地方可以和行会的人一起闲逛，成为冒险的起点，这是个好主意。然而，ArenaNet担心如果他们让公会大厅变得太有用，玩家将永远不会在城市中闲逛，而那些不能满足公会大厅要求的公会将处于不利地位。因此，公会大厅很快失去了很多光泽，许多人不再使用它们。此外，如果公会的任务也被定期更新，或者根本不更新，公会大厅也会保留更多的有用性。希望ArenaNet能够在未来重新审视这些游戏，并找到一种方法使它们具有吸引力，同时又不会破坏游戏的平衡性，因为它们确实是游戏中最酷和使用最少的方面之一。

火的第二个扩展路径给玩家带来了我所见过的MMO中最好的坐骑实现。为了赋予坐骑独特的移动能力和动画效果，他们付出了巨大的努力，结果，他们比其他MMO中的坐骑感觉更“真实”。因为每个坐骑都有自己独特的移动方式，我可以选择自己想要使用的坐骑，而问题往往是“我想去哪里，我想怎么去”，这有助于保持事情的趣味性。我仍然记得当我第一次坐在我的迅猛龙上，我的角色向前探出身子，轻拍它的脖子时，我是多么的兴奋，就像我拍马一样。那是一个美丽的时刻。

在这些更新之间，我们已经收到了好几季的故事内容，在这几季中，ArenaNet不断提高他们讲故事的质量。从第2季到第4季，再到现在的第5季，这一切都让质量的飞跃变得如此明显。第二季不仅仅是一个不那么集中的故事，而且讲述的方式也不那么巧妙。例如，在第二季中，我从未想过骑在龙背上战斗是可能的。在最近的赛季中，我们也很少能知道发生了什么，更多的是让球员们去体验，去得出他们自己的结论。

虽然《激战2》的发展道路并非一帆风顺，但过去的7年却相当不错。我甚至没有接触到他们多年来所做的所有生活质量更新，yay衣柜和解开你账户上的染料(只是我最喜欢的两个)。虽然《激战2》可能不是每个人都喜欢的MMO，但它们在当前开放和相关的MMO中却稳居前列。ArenaNet，谢谢你过去七年的冒险经历，我迫不及待地想看看你能从这里学到什么。

As I’m sitting here thinking about Guild Wars 2 in this decade and where we are heading with the current story and state of the game, I can’t help but marvel at how much of an impact GW2 has had on me personally and on the larger MMO stage. The MMO landscape back in August 2012 was very different. WoW was getting ready to release MoP, FFXIV was still a year away from launching A Realm Reborn, and SWTOR had struggled in its first year and was preparing for free to play implementation. It was into this landscape GW2 launched, and I didn’t know what to expect from it.

Rift was the first MMO I tried outside of WoW, and I don’t think it held my attention more than a week. I loved SWTOR when it launched, even wrote some guides for it, but as much as I liked the first raids, it just couldn’t keep up when it came to the endgame. As a result, I was a bit hesitant about Guild Wars 2. I had played it during the beta weekends since I had received a code at PAX East that year, so I had some idea of what expect from those limited experiences. I was still not entirely convinced GW2 would be a game I’d enjoy for the long-haul. My two biggest concerns were the fact I had never played the original Guild Wars and I thought I might get bored without quests to point the way.

My concern on the first count turned out to be completely inconsequential. Although knowledge of the history of Tyria would have helped me see more profound implications quickly, the Personal Story was done in such a way that even complete noobs, such as myself, could understand what was going on. Plus, in Guild Wars, everything was told from the Human perspective, which turned out to be, as is often the case, a very slanted view of not only the history of Tyria but also the other races. This did cause some friction with longer-term players who felt everything presented in-game should be exactly how things are actually and not just one perspective. In this regard, I was perhaps a bit better off for not knowing that history.

My fear of being at a loss of what to do due to not having quests per se was also unfounded. The personal story provided enough direction without making me feel like I had to do that and nothing else. Plus, with the way zones scaled, it felt like I had a lot of freedom to go almost anywhere fairly quickly and explore. In fact, GW2 reignited my love of just wandering around and exploring because there was always something interesting to find. The event system, in particular, was enthralling because I’d stumble upon one event and that would lead to another, and before I knew it was 1 – 2 hours later and I had completely forgotten what I had logged on to do in the first place. It didn’t matter though, because I had a blast the whole time.

In 2013 ArenaNet pushed things again when they implemented the “2-week content cycle”. This was honestly the point where I was most involved in the game and played pretty much all of the time. The thing with this cycle was there would be a largeish patch every month and a smaller one, which added a few more things between each big one. Players only had until the next big patch to play through the content before things changed and it went away. This was exciting because the world was changing for the first time since the launch, but there was also a lot of pressure to not miss anything because once it was gone, it was gone. Although this pace ended up being unsustainable and resulted in some uneven storytelling due to having completely separate teams working on each large release, this was one of the most exciting times to play. I’d never seen an MMO pump out so much content at such a regular pace before or since.

2014 brought another exciting innovation when they implemented the megaservers. Previously there’d be multiple copies of maps made as needed depending on how many people were on that map. While this system was generally good, it did have the drawbacks of people having to create characters on the same servers as their friends to be able to play with them, and even then, sometimes getting on the same version of a map as them was a real bear. The megaserver systems always prioritized parties and guilds. Of course, there were issues at first, but they were sorted quickly. While some other games suffered due to the implementation of similar systems, GW2 seems to have thrived with it. Coupled with the fact the world is set-up in such a way that it’s never a bad thing to find other players, megaservers have worked out well.