9:58 am, October 2, 2013
240
Guild Wars 2 and Progression
The recent fiasco on Ascended items has prompted me to pop out of lurking, so I typed up a lengthy blurb on the state of progression in Guild Wars 2. Hopefully this can spiral into some meaningful and civil discussion about how Guild Wars 2 can move forwards in the future.
Progression in Guild Wars 2 - What Happened?
Before we even begin talking about the current reactions of players in Guild Wars 2 in regards to progression, it's first necessary to consolidate information about what progression actually means. Progression in any MMORPG essentially consists of the growing and/or strengthening of a character over time, to improve their abilities and add a sense of advancement and, well, progress to the gameplay. It doesn't necessarily have to be becoming stronger in flatly numerical terms, but oftentimes that's what it amounts to. But since there's a thousand ideas of what progression should be in particular in Guild Wars 2, it's therefore a better idea to look to two other games that are closely related and often compared to Guild Wars 2: the original Guild Wars, and World of Warcraft.
Hopefully, by doing so, we can come to a nuanced conclusion that explains why players are upset about the current state of progression in Guild Wars 2, how it compares to other games, and what can be done about it going forwards.
World of Warcraft: Vertical Progression
Almost everyone that has experience in MMORPGs knows or has heard of World of Warcraft's approach to adding in progression. In World of Warcraft, if you aren't level grinding, you're gear grinding. An ever-increasing amount of numbers is what progression in World of Warcraft embodies, at its heart. Once you've spent three months gaining max level, you then spend three months gaining the best gear possible to end up grinding your way into the best raid groups, and be able to dominate the most in the PvP that exists - only to repeat the process in the next expansion.
This works spectacularly in World of Warcraft, because all of the most devoted players realize that advancements are going to be ephemeral and there will always be something new to work towards. And for the most part, it's pulled off flawlessly. For all of the game's faults, Blizzard did an incredile job at creating a very real sense of advancement and increasing power - indicated by the game surviving and being popular as long as it has. And it's also important to note that the "raid subculture" that's spawned here (usually) does not mind the carrot-on-a-stick marketing, because it's what keeps them interested.
At the same time, however, there's a small issue: this very heavy "cliff" of progression can scare away many less devoted fans of the game from experiencing much of the content if not balanced perfectly, and the raid subculture of these games is oftentimes loath to give up what they consider to be their hard-earned work. It functions as a "badge" for them that they worked to get there. But this leads to two problems: one, there can often be a great deal of animosity between them and more casual players, since the hardcore players feel the casuals want the gear they worked for, without working for it. Second, if by any occasion they find themselves dissatisfied with the game, they're very unwilling to leave all of their virtual belongings behind - it's like abandoning your Purple Heart and going to another battlefield to earn it all over again. Yes it's an honor, and yes you're damn proud of it, but would you really earn it all over again?
And it's also important to note that in many cases, no, they wouldn't. I think this is a fairly big reason why many so-called "WoW clones" fail - simply because they can't attract the hardcore fanbase in quite the same way, or in the same numbers, that WoW did. But that's besides the point.
Guild Wars: Lateral Progression
Here's where it gets interesting.
In comparison to World of Warcraft, where progression was much like scaling a cliff, in Guild Wars 1 progression was much more akin to a zone of influence. After the very short grind of getting your character to max level and getting the best armor you could (which got even shorter after the release of Factions), your character would never get "better" in terms of stats. However, there was still a sense of progression because even if the digits on your health bar didn't increase, what you could do with the stats did.
There were thousands of skills in Guild Wars, all of which were usable by any character and all of which had to be gained slowly but surely. There was always a sense of achievement in earning another skill, even if you'd never use it, because the scope of what you could do and what you could accomplish had broadened. And by adding in various prestigious armor tiers that cost huge amounts of platinum to buy, ArenaNet was able to lure in many subsectors of the hardcore crowd as well by giving them an incentive to work for a "badge," too.
In many ways this was an ingenious solution to progression. Casuals could still get by with more limited options; hardcore players looked way better and had a lot more skills on their fingertips but still were on a broadly equal playing field. And since no new "tiers" of progression were added, yet more skills and armor sets were, both casuals and hardcores were pleased, avoiding the issues with the vertical progression system entirely. Even the storyline did this very well, since completing quests and missions ended up unlocking new areas in PvE to explore, and the areas were just hard enough to give a very real sense of progression without alienating players.
This even worked wonders in the PvP metagame! Even though both casuals and hardcore players had the exact same tools at their disposal, additional familiarity with what skills did could greatly aid hardcore players, and they would be better able to use their own options as well - thus leading to a relatively skill-based, strategic PvP system where fights were often fluid and required a large amount of clever tactics to win.
Guild Wars 1 wasn't a perfect game by any means: skill imbalance lead to the PvP often being lead by a hugely dedicated "meta" who figured out the most imbalanced and powerful builds, before being countered by another equally imbalanced build; the PvE content was oftentimes a bit repetitive (especially in regards to title grinding) and got way worse after both heroes and some of the more infamous PvE builds; and some of the classes, especially Dervishes and Paragons, got utterly shafted since they never got any skills to replace the ones they missed out on earlier. In many ways, it was a game with a fantastic concept and a quality of content just good enough to do it justice, even if it could be improved - and due to this all, it developed a "cult" of loyal players who utterly loved it.
Which leads into the third game...
Guild Wars 2: Progression?
Let's be very honest here.
In Guild Wars 2, after the slog to max level and obtaining all of your exotics, there isn't a whole lot left to do that leads to any discernible improvement to your character.
At least before the infamous Ascended patch, progression in Guild Wars 2 was generally unsatisfying and half-baked. The slog up to level 80 was somewhere inbetween the short breeze to get to level 20 in Guild Wars and the gigantic upwind gale to 60/70/80/85 of World of Warcraft; but afterwards, all you had to get was your Exotic items, which for most people was simply a weeks' worth of grinding in Cursed Shore. Class skills, which were once a huge thing in Guild Wars, are now relatively static and uninteresting: each class has an incredibly modest selection of weapon skills to choose from, coupled alongside three generally-situational utility skills, out of a pool of about 8 usable ones per class. All in all a character usually has access to most, if not all, of their decent options by level 50.
The issue with Guild Wars 2 is that the highly lateral progression of Guild Wars 1 was completely abandoned, and it wasn't replaced. Developers seemed to want players to invariably come to the conclusion that going towards a Legendary was an end-goal: but some players, myself among them, looked at the legendaries and paused before going what the hell is this? In spite of their hugely prestigious reputation, some of the legendaries looked ugly as sin: I wouldn't be caught dead using the Meteorlogicus on my Necromancer, for instance, and due to many of the "common" skins looking even better than some legendaries, many players didn't bother.
This has also affected the PvP poorly - as most or all choices ingame are so homogenous, there's not a huge amount of time before all players learn what all skills do, and due to the limited amount of tools at players' disposal, most PvP instances are or will become become very generic, consisting of the same few general builds ad infinitum, using the same tactics against each other, in the same arenas - because 70% of a fight in Guild Wars 2 is decided before the battle has even begun, and there are so few choices, everyone ends up with something pretty damn similar to everyone else.
So then the issue becomes both relatively obvious, and two-pronged: there is a lack of real progression at the endgame in Guild Wars 2, and the "badges of honor" don't appeal to a great deal of the playerbase. The latter is easily fixable, the former... not so much.
ArenaNet's response to this: add in Ascended items, and promise more Legendaries in the months to come.
Ascended Items
After the introduction of Ascended items, there has been a definite shift in terms of Guild Wars 2's progression philosophy, slanted towards the vertical school. Issue is, in its current state, this hasn't been executed terribly well.
A vertical progression scheme necessitates a "gear treadmill" a la the World of Warcraft example to sustain itself. In a vertical system there always has to be some drive forwards to keep getting more stats - the treadmill can't just slide off after a certain point. The endgame right now in Guild Wars 2 is an example of why this is: after the vertical treadmill is over, many players sit at the end and wonder what they're even working towards. However, be this as it may, Ascended items were a very poor misstep in even promoting vertical progression, as right now they require a very specific method of allocation that can and will annoy many casuals and WvW-centric players. Not to mention the Infusion slot, which is hideously expensive to fill and only affects PvErs - the least likely to be annoyed about Ascended items to begin with!
That aside - at the moment, all that Ascended items do is give a short extension of about 2-3 months on the current "progression wall" until many players start catching up, at which point it's back to square 1. And the new "badges" promised in more Legendary items do little to alleviate this, as 1) the players who already hugely wanted a Legendary have already got one, and 2) thus they're less likely to work towards yet another, leaving the people who were probably lukewarm on legendaries to begin with. If ArenaNet is truly dedicated to promoting a vertical progression system in Guild Wars 2, then almost by necessity, they will have to introduce another item tier after Ascended items.
So what are ArenaNet's options?
The Future of Vertical Progression
This is the reason why so many people are incensed by the Ascended items.
The future of Guild Wars 2 in terms of vertical progression would mean a focus on stronger gear, more grinding, and more dungeon content over other aspects of the game: but the gearless PvP in Guild Wars 2 is incompatible with this system as they aren't affected whatsoever by these changes - slightly alienating them despite ANet's insistence at making PvP an e-sport. At the same time, casual players - who came to Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 in droves to escape the gear treadmills in World of Warcraft and other similar MMORPGs - now find that their older progress is rendered obsolete as the wheels keep turning. And even the hardcores would be a bit miffed, due to ArenaNet's standard policy of punishing overgrinding - see diminishing returns in Guild Wars 1, and the continual rebalancing of loot, especially regarding tokens, in dungeons.
At the same time, the development team is rushed to create new content - much of which would likely be similarly buggy to the Southsun Cove event - but on the plus side, the new gear is trivial to create, as all it involves is modifying a few digits. The hardcore crowd and the dev team's sanity are the only real winners in this regard, but again - trying to cater heavily to the more hardcore crowd is usually a losing prospect, because if you've earned a Purple Heart you usually wouldn't start over and earn it again.
Not to say this future would be all bad - but it's certainly not what was promised.
The Future of Lateral Progression
Lateral progression isn't exactly what the developers promised before the game came out, but it's a hell of a lot closer.
An increase in focus on lateral progression would focus on new skills being developed for classes, an increase in the types of stats on gear rather than the amounts (think Apothecary's), older areas being retooled to be relevant even at level 80, more depth added to the PvP, and new game mechanics. This approach has its own faults too, of course - the dev team can't exactly **** out hundreds of skills in the matter of months without an immense amount of bugs, it may require complete changes to fundamental aspects of the game like the weapons system, it'd violate their statements saying they wanted to avoid the "feature bloat" in Guild Wars 1, new game mechanics could range from highly praised to widely reviled, and retooling of older areas may result in extremely unsteady progression if not done perfectly.
On the plus side, if it's done right, Guild Wars 2 could again reach Guild Wars 1's ideal of appealing to casuals, hardcores, and everything inbetween. If done wrong, Guild Wars 2 could become a buggy, broken, bloated mess filled with everything good and bad except players.
The real cause of the issue
None of this changes the fact that Guild Wars 2 was, for better or worse, released without a true progression philosophy, and thus it's not going to be optimized for either vertical or lateral progression. However, it's much easier to tweak a few numbers here and there, and then throw the "new" armor and weapons out into the game at ludicrous prices, than it is to end up introducing new skills, new mechanics, and a broader scope of goals that increase options rather than power.
In hindsight, the largest cause of this was probably the dev team's insistence that "the game is the endgame." While it's good to introduce content that is relevant at all levels, the issue is that not every part of the game is going to appeal to everyone so you can't simply make the endgame PvE or WvW or PvP, and on top of this you still need to add something to keep peoples' attention. MMOs run on the carrot-on-a-stick philosophy on a incredibly deep and nearly defining level. You can't just take away the carrot and leave the stick if you want to make an immersive game that will continue to grasp people's attention - it's just not how modern MMOs operate.
The end perspective
I think that we'll most likely be seeing a future prospect similar to the vertical future, with possibly some minor aspects of the lateral future mixed in. Simply put, it's far less demanding on a dev team that's already overtaxed fixing god-knows-how-many bugs and desperately flailing to keep the servers operational and the game running smoothly.
And on a qualified level, I agree that there will be more gear tiers beyond Ascended items. It's simply necessary if you're going to adopt a vertical scheme - and even though Ascended items are meant to buy time to make more new content, I think it's still pretty certain that said new content is going to be the content that can actually be bug-tested and released in two to three months. And that means more vertical progression.
Guild Wars 2, most of all, will be held back by the lack of any real progression philosophy upon release. And while implementing one is more or less necessary at this point, alienating at least one player group is going to be inevitable. I just hope that ArenaNet makes the right decision, whatever it may be, that will allow the playerbase to remain involved and intact; the dev team not overworked to ***** and back; and that will give a true sense of progression in the game.
But regardless of what the right decision is, I've already earned one Purple Heart by getting to the top. I don't know if I could stand to work towards another.
Progression in Guild Wars 2 - What Happened?
Before we even begin talking about the current reactions of players in Guild Wars 2 in regards to progression, it's first necessary to consolidate information about what progression actually means. Progression in any MMORPG essentially consists of the growing and/or strengthening of a character over time, to improve their abilities and add a sense of advancement and, well, progress to the gameplay. It doesn't necessarily have to be becoming stronger in flatly numerical terms, but oftentimes that's what it amounts to. But since there's a thousand ideas of what progression should be in particular in Guild Wars 2, it's therefore a better idea to look to two other games that are closely related and often compared to Guild Wars 2: the original Guild Wars, and World of Warcraft.
Hopefully, by doing so, we can come to a nuanced conclusion that explains why players are upset about the current state of progression in Guild Wars 2, how it compares to other games, and what can be done about it going forwards.
World of Warcraft: Vertical Progression
Almost everyone that has experience in MMORPGs knows or has heard of World of Warcraft's approach to adding in progression. In World of Warcraft, if you aren't level grinding, you're gear grinding. An ever-increasing amount of numbers is what progression in World of Warcraft embodies, at its heart. Once you've spent three months gaining max level, you then spend three months gaining the best gear possible to end up grinding your way into the best raid groups, and be able to dominate the most in the PvP that exists - only to repeat the process in the next expansion.
This works spectacularly in World of Warcraft, because all of the most devoted players realize that advancements are going to be ephemeral and there will always be something new to work towards. And for the most part, it's pulled off flawlessly. For all of the game's faults, Blizzard did an incredile job at creating a very real sense of advancement and increasing power - indicated by the game surviving and being popular as long as it has. And it's also important to note that the "raid subculture" that's spawned here (usually) does not mind the carrot-on-a-stick marketing, because it's what keeps them interested.
At the same time, however, there's a small issue: this very heavy "cliff" of progression can scare away many less devoted fans of the game from experiencing much of the content if not balanced perfectly, and the raid subculture of these games is oftentimes loath to give up what they consider to be their hard-earned work. It functions as a "badge" for them that they worked to get there. But this leads to two problems: one, there can often be a great deal of animosity between them and more casual players, since the hardcore players feel the casuals want the gear they worked for, without working for it. Second, if by any occasion they find themselves dissatisfied with the game, they're very unwilling to leave all of their virtual belongings behind - it's like abandoning your Purple Heart and going to another battlefield to earn it all over again. Yes it's an honor, and yes you're damn proud of it, but would you really earn it all over again?
And it's also important to note that in many cases, no, they wouldn't. I think this is a fairly big reason why many so-called "WoW clones" fail - simply because they can't attract the hardcore fanbase in quite the same way, or in the same numbers, that WoW did. But that's besides the point.
Guild Wars: Lateral Progression
Here's where it gets interesting.
In comparison to World of Warcraft, where progression was much like scaling a cliff, in Guild Wars 1 progression was much more akin to a zone of influence. After the very short grind of getting your character to max level and getting the best armor you could (which got even shorter after the release of Factions), your character would never get "better" in terms of stats. However, there was still a sense of progression because even if the digits on your health bar didn't increase, what you could do with the stats did.
There were thousands of skills in Guild Wars, all of which were usable by any character and all of which had to be gained slowly but surely. There was always a sense of achievement in earning another skill, even if you'd never use it, because the scope of what you could do and what you could accomplish had broadened. And by adding in various prestigious armor tiers that cost huge amounts of platinum to buy, ArenaNet was able to lure in many subsectors of the hardcore crowd as well by giving them an incentive to work for a "badge," too.
In many ways this was an ingenious solution to progression. Casuals could still get by with more limited options; hardcore players looked way better and had a lot more skills on their fingertips but still were on a broadly equal playing field. And since no new "tiers" of progression were added, yet more skills and armor sets were, both casuals and hardcores were pleased, avoiding the issues with the vertical progression system entirely. Even the storyline did this very well, since completing quests and missions ended up unlocking new areas in PvE to explore, and the areas were just hard enough to give a very real sense of progression without alienating players.
This even worked wonders in the PvP metagame! Even though both casuals and hardcore players had the exact same tools at their disposal, additional familiarity with what skills did could greatly aid hardcore players, and they would be better able to use their own options as well - thus leading to a relatively skill-based, strategic PvP system where fights were often fluid and required a large amount of clever tactics to win.
Guild Wars 1 wasn't a perfect game by any means: skill imbalance lead to the PvP often being lead by a hugely dedicated "meta" who figured out the most imbalanced and powerful builds, before being countered by another equally imbalanced build; the PvE content was oftentimes a bit repetitive (especially in regards to title grinding) and got way worse after both heroes and some of the more infamous PvE builds; and some of the classes, especially Dervishes and Paragons, got utterly shafted since they never got any skills to replace the ones they missed out on earlier. In many ways, it was a game with a fantastic concept and a quality of content just good enough to do it justice, even if it could be improved - and due to this all, it developed a "cult" of loyal players who utterly loved it.
Which leads into the third game...
Guild Wars 2: Progression?
Let's be very honest here.
In Guild Wars 2, after the slog to max level and obtaining all of your exotics, there isn't a whole lot left to do that leads to any discernible improvement to your character.
At least before the infamous Ascended patch, progression in Guild Wars 2 was generally unsatisfying and half-baked. The slog up to level 80 was somewhere inbetween the short breeze to get to level 20 in Guild Wars and the gigantic upwind gale to 60/70/80/85 of World of Warcraft; but afterwards, all you had to get was your Exotic items, which for most people was simply a weeks' worth of grinding in Cursed Shore. Class skills, which were once a huge thing in Guild Wars, are now relatively static and uninteresting: each class has an incredibly modest selection of weapon skills to choose from, coupled alongside three generally-situational utility skills, out of a pool of about 8 usable ones per class. All in all a character usually has access to most, if not all, of their decent options by level 50.
The issue with Guild Wars 2 is that the highly lateral progression of Guild Wars 1 was completely abandoned, and it wasn't replaced. Developers seemed to want players to invariably come to the conclusion that going towards a Legendary was an end-goal: but some players, myself among them, looked at the legendaries and paused before going what the hell is this? In spite of their hugely prestigious reputation, some of the legendaries looked ugly as sin: I wouldn't be caught dead using the Meteorlogicus on my Necromancer, for instance, and due to many of the "common" skins looking even better than some legendaries, many players didn't bother.
This has also affected the PvP poorly - as most or all choices ingame are so homogenous, there's not a huge amount of time before all players learn what all skills do, and due to the limited amount of tools at players' disposal, most PvP instances are or will become become very generic, consisting of the same few general builds ad infinitum, using the same tactics against each other, in the same arenas - because 70% of a fight in Guild Wars 2 is decided before the battle has even begun, and there are so few choices, everyone ends up with something pretty damn similar to everyone else.
So then the issue becomes both relatively obvious, and two-pronged: there is a lack of real progression at the endgame in Guild Wars 2, and the "badges of honor" don't appeal to a great deal of the playerbase. The latter is easily fixable, the former... not so much.
ArenaNet's response to this: add in Ascended items, and promise more Legendaries in the months to come.
Ascended Items
After the introduction of Ascended items, there has been a definite shift in terms of Guild Wars 2's progression philosophy, slanted towards the vertical school. Issue is, in its current state, this hasn't been executed terribly well.
A vertical progression scheme necessitates a "gear treadmill" a la the World of Warcraft example to sustain itself. In a vertical system there always has to be some drive forwards to keep getting more stats - the treadmill can't just slide off after a certain point. The endgame right now in Guild Wars 2 is an example of why this is: after the vertical treadmill is over, many players sit at the end and wonder what they're even working towards. However, be this as it may, Ascended items were a very poor misstep in even promoting vertical progression, as right now they require a very specific method of allocation that can and will annoy many casuals and WvW-centric players. Not to mention the Infusion slot, which is hideously expensive to fill and only affects PvErs - the least likely to be annoyed about Ascended items to begin with!
That aside - at the moment, all that Ascended items do is give a short extension of about 2-3 months on the current "progression wall" until many players start catching up, at which point it's back to square 1. And the new "badges" promised in more Legendary items do little to alleviate this, as 1) the players who already hugely wanted a Legendary have already got one, and 2) thus they're less likely to work towards yet another, leaving the people who were probably lukewarm on legendaries to begin with. If ArenaNet is truly dedicated to promoting a vertical progression system in Guild Wars 2, then almost by necessity, they will have to introduce another item tier after Ascended items.
So what are ArenaNet's options?
The Future of Vertical Progression
This is the reason why so many people are incensed by the Ascended items.
The future of Guild Wars 2 in terms of vertical progression would mean a focus on stronger gear, more grinding, and more dungeon content over other aspects of the game: but the gearless PvP in Guild Wars 2 is incompatible with this system as they aren't affected whatsoever by these changes - slightly alienating them despite ANet's insistence at making PvP an e-sport. At the same time, casual players - who came to Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 in droves to escape the gear treadmills in World of Warcraft and other similar MMORPGs - now find that their older progress is rendered obsolete as the wheels keep turning. And even the hardcores would be a bit miffed, due to ArenaNet's standard policy of punishing overgrinding - see diminishing returns in Guild Wars 1, and the continual rebalancing of loot, especially regarding tokens, in dungeons.
At the same time, the development team is rushed to create new content - much of which would likely be similarly buggy to the Southsun Cove event - but on the plus side, the new gear is trivial to create, as all it involves is modifying a few digits. The hardcore crowd and the dev team's sanity are the only real winners in this regard, but again - trying to cater heavily to the more hardcore crowd is usually a losing prospect, because if you've earned a Purple Heart you usually wouldn't start over and earn it again.
Not to say this future would be all bad - but it's certainly not what was promised.
The Future of Lateral Progression
Lateral progression isn't exactly what the developers promised before the game came out, but it's a hell of a lot closer.
An increase in focus on lateral progression would focus on new skills being developed for classes, an increase in the types of stats on gear rather than the amounts (think Apothecary's), older areas being retooled to be relevant even at level 80, more depth added to the PvP, and new game mechanics. This approach has its own faults too, of course - the dev team can't exactly **** out hundreds of skills in the matter of months without an immense amount of bugs, it may require complete changes to fundamental aspects of the game like the weapons system, it'd violate their statements saying they wanted to avoid the "feature bloat" in Guild Wars 1, new game mechanics could range from highly praised to widely reviled, and retooling of older areas may result in extremely unsteady progression if not done perfectly.
On the plus side, if it's done right, Guild Wars 2 could again reach Guild Wars 1's ideal of appealing to casuals, hardcores, and everything inbetween. If done wrong, Guild Wars 2 could become a buggy, broken, bloated mess filled with everything good and bad except players.
The real cause of the issue
None of this changes the fact that Guild Wars 2 was, for better or worse, released without a true progression philosophy, and thus it's not going to be optimized for either vertical or lateral progression. However, it's much easier to tweak a few numbers here and there, and then throw the "new" armor and weapons out into the game at ludicrous prices, than it is to end up introducing new skills, new mechanics, and a broader scope of goals that increase options rather than power.
In hindsight, the largest cause of this was probably the dev team's insistence that "the game is the endgame." While it's good to introduce content that is relevant at all levels, the issue is that not every part of the game is going to appeal to everyone so you can't simply make the endgame PvE or WvW or PvP, and on top of this you still need to add something to keep peoples' attention. MMOs run on the carrot-on-a-stick philosophy on a incredibly deep and nearly defining level. You can't just take away the carrot and leave the stick if you want to make an immersive game that will continue to grasp people's attention - it's just not how modern MMOs operate.
The end perspective
I think that we'll most likely be seeing a future prospect similar to the vertical future, with possibly some minor aspects of the lateral future mixed in. Simply put, it's far less demanding on a dev team that's already overtaxed fixing god-knows-how-many bugs and desperately flailing to keep the servers operational and the game running smoothly.
And on a qualified level, I agree that there will be more gear tiers beyond Ascended items. It's simply necessary if you're going to adopt a vertical scheme - and even though Ascended items are meant to buy time to make more new content, I think it's still pretty certain that said new content is going to be the content that can actually be bug-tested and released in two to three months. And that means more vertical progression.
Guild Wars 2, most of all, will be held back by the lack of any real progression philosophy upon release. And while implementing one is more or less necessary at this point, alienating at least one player group is going to be inevitable. I just hope that ArenaNet makes the right decision, whatever it may be, that will allow the playerbase to remain involved and intact; the dev team not overworked to ***** and back; and that will give a true sense of progression in the game.
But regardless of what the right decision is, I've already earned one Purple Heart by getting to the top. I don't know if I could stand to work towards another.
