Gamer’s Domain: A revolutionary MMORPG

The weekend of June 8 to 10 was an exciting one for the over 1 million players that got to experience the second official Beta Weekend Event for Guild Wars 2.

Developed by a small Washington state company called ArenaNet, GW2 is gaining massive leverage in the gaming community, as it has successfully achieved its goal of redefining the modern MMO. Usually, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games feature cartoony graphics, repetitive quest design and knock-offs of other MMOs. Guild Wars 2 is different because it doesn’t aim to be a copy-and-paste of the most successful MMO at the moment, World of Warcraft. Instead, GW2 takes everything that made WoW successful and improves it tenfold, while removing everything that has made WoW lose millions of subscribers over the last few months.

In addition to the gigantic overhaul of improvements to the MMORPG formula set standard by WoW, GW2 offers innovations that are unmatched by other games. These improvements have rocketed the game to the front of PC players’ radar, as well as that of game critics everywhere. GW2 is receiving all sorts of buzz that reinforces the fact that it has truly met its goal of redefining the genre. And this is before the game has even come out!

One of the aspects that set GW2 apart from other games is its attention to detail. I can honestly say this is the most gorgeous game I have ever played, and the graphics still aren’t at their full potential! I played on max settings, which was captivating enough, but the game is still in beta so some of the graphics options were disabled. In fact, the game ran on DirectX 9 and only used my CPU to render. Imagine what it will be like when it fully utilizes DX11 and my graphics card! I can’t wait.

Last weekend, players that pre-purchased the game (which doesn’t have an official release date) got to take part in a downloadable, almost complete form of the game. This is called a beta, and it was met with stellar reviews just like the previous weekend beta back in April. People love the different play style of GW2, from the dynamic events questing system, to the (once again) revolutionary graphics. Not to mention the newly-introduced concept of weapon switching; this constantly keeps combating players on-edge and never produces a dull moment. You just can’t find these features anywhere else.

I loved all of my time spent with GW2. With both weekends added up, I’ve accumulated about 40 hours with the game and can’t get enough. It will release this year, with another Beta Weekend Event expected every month until launch. It truly is the next generation of gaming.