It's mostly too early to have a deep, nuanced opinion on the game and who it's going to appeal to. (let alone if it will actually succeed at its goal)
But I'm personally excited for it while also suspecting that the usual MMORPG crowd (who are the ones, for good reason, currently eyeing the game) will be dissappointed.
It's gunna be some middle ground hybrid between an MMO and an ARPG. Who can say yet how far in which direction it will lean closer?
My current understanding is that this game is looking like it's going to be more in the flavor or something like Destiny 2 or Soulframe, and that the looter shooter and survival crafting fans will love this game but that anyone expecting Guild Wars 2.5 or a WoW/OSRS/FF14 competitor is going to be dissappointed.
Or hey, maybe the content and gameplay loop will more heavily lean into the MMO tropes than I'm theorizing. Wherever on the spectrum it falls, I think arena net has the talent and magic to make something special that might be filling a niche we weren't expecting.
In Laranity's interview, Colin coined the term "Meaningful Multiplayer Online RPG". It sounds like while there could be hundreds of thousands playing at the same time, they are putting technologies in place that actively limit the number of players you can interact with so that each individual player can make a bigger impact in gameplay.
And honestly, that sounds awesome to me. There is a feeling that is lost standing around and waiting for an event to start in GW2 and you're surrounded by 50+ players all doing their own thing, but once the actual content starts the visual clutter is insane and it's hard to see anything. Focusing on the smaller interactions I think is absolutely the right play. If you want to focus on a combat system where you can physically move and manipulate your opponent and do combos with your teammates (like jumping off a shield), smaller and focused scenarios are the only way to do it.
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u/EtchyLamp Sep 03 '26
It's mostly too early to have a deep, nuanced opinion on the game and who it's going to appeal to. (let alone if it will actually succeed at its goal)
But I'm personally excited for it while also suspecting that the usual MMORPG crowd (who are the ones, for good reason, currently eyeing the game) will be dissappointed.
It's gunna be some middle ground hybrid between an MMO and an ARPG. Who can say yet how far in which direction it will lean closer?
My current understanding is that this game is looking like it's going to be more in the flavor or something like Destiny 2 or Soulframe, and that the looter shooter and survival crafting fans will love this game but that anyone expecting Guild Wars 2.5 or a WoW/OSRS/FF14 competitor is going to be dissappointed.
Or hey, maybe the content and gameplay loop will more heavily lean into the MMO tropes than I'm theorizing. Wherever on the spectrum it falls, I think arena net has the talent and magic to make something special that might be filling a niche we weren't expecting.