Guild Wars Beyond – Winds of Change

MMO blog Kill Ten Rats has recently spent some time to write a preview blog entry to give us a taste of what the next event in the ongoing Guild Wars Beyond campaign – which should help tying the lore with the upcoming Guild Wars 2 – “Winds of Change”, will entail for players of ArenaNet’s MMO. Here’s a sampling:

Winds of Change is the next chapter in Guild Wars Beyond, which attempts to tie up some loose ends as the lore shifts 250 years towards Guild Wars 2. We played a (spoil-free) portion of the first of three sequences where we joined the Ministry of Purity to cleanse the remaining Afflicted in the slums of Kaineng City. The Live Team had given us pre-made characters and a (generous) array of consumables so we could basically rock our way through Afflicted death explosions like heroes in a Michael Bay movie. It was a nice change of pace from the previous engagements of the day because it was so comfortable to play the game I had been a fan of for the better half of a decade.

In the two quests we played, we are tasked with cleaning up parts of Kaineng City by the newly formed Ministry of Purity. We took out swarms of Afflicted and their Am Fah (human) counterparts. I was allowed to take a few pictures (actually Moore took them while I played) of the new armor art for the Ministry of Purity NPCs as well as a neat dragon armor for another new NPC. Sorry they are so fuzzy, but hopefully some of their beauty shines through.

What I am really enjoying about the design goals for Winds of Change is that the Live Team has put a lot of heart in to making a player’s impact on the world actually seen. For example, players can apparently rid the explorable areas of Afflicted (their spawns will be replaced by (something else)). They have also hidden quite a number of scenes in the explorable areas, which are used to respond to characters completing quests. For my made-up example, a player could stumble upon a scene of Cantha citizens discussing the Ministry of Purity’s response to that (something else.) I have been wanting this level of impact ever since ArenaNet discussed having a persistently destroyed bridge in the explorable areas.