The Catacombs of Ascalon

I'm always the last guy to the party, it seems. Take Star Wars: The Old Republic for example. I've done several interviews with the team from Bioware, been in rooms filled with computers featuring the game, and never had the time to actually sit down and play. At E3 this year I got to click one button, pointed out to me by a happy Daniel Erickson, which summoned a vehicle. That's it. What's a MMO-loving games journalist to do when our schedules are usually so packed that we have no time to play the games on display?

For the longest time, it was the same with Guild Wars 2. Bengt visited ArenaNet back in February to interview the developers and play the game and I'm not even sure he even knows what terms like "DPS" or "DOT" mean (or I'm just being grumpy, but that's besides the point). How many times can I interview the developers without getting to play one of the hottest MMOs on the horizon? Many, obviously. So when NCsoft invited us to Hamburg for an extended hands-on and another opportunity to interview the guys behind the game, I jumped at the opportunity.

Following the fan-event ArenaNet held in the US last week, the main part of the event in Hamburg revolved around dungeons. This suited me perfectly. One of the things that I've been sceptical of since Guild Wars 2 was announced was the statement that the game aimed to kill off the "Holy Trinity" of DPS (Bengt?), tank and healer that is the standard in almost all modern MMOs. Dungeons, encounters and monsters are usually designed around this particular group-setup that the idea of abandoning the concept seems almost impossible. In short, it's easy to talk about, but at the end of the day you'll need to put your money where your mouth is and actually deliver.

After a brief introduction, where we more or less were set free to roam through the starting area of the Norn race (which Bengt already covered on GRTV after his visit to ArenaNet), it was time to gather around the dungeon entrance. I picked a female human Elementalist as my class of choice, mostly because you can never go wrong with fireballs. I had been playing around with the Engineer, the latest profession to be revealed, and had a lot of fun with it - giggling inside every time I fired of a shot so powerful that my Charr was thrown back several meters - but I ditched it for some classic magical powers instead.

Dungeons in Guild Wars 2 will come with two different modes. The first one is the story mode, which thematically follows up on the story told in the Guild Wars 2-book Edge of Destiny and delves into the lives and destinies of its main characters (which the developers refer to as the races' "iconic characters"). Writer Jeff Grubb pointed out that since the dungeons aren't mandatory in any way, their stories are separate from the personal story that every player will go through while still important for the overarching storyline of Tyria.

The difficulty level of the Story mode is tuned so that a "pick-up group of five players should be able to complete it." In short, the dungeons are not made to be a stumbling block for players on their way to the level cap. One likeness that the developers in Hamburg seemed to enjoy was that Story mode is like "a book where at the end of every chapter you have to fight a bear." Now, I don't know about the bears in Seattle, but in Sweden they are pretty big and nasty and would tear me apart in two seconds flat. Of course, bears in MMOs are notoriously wimpy (some of them even miss paws, ears and internal organs*) so they might of course have had them in mind.

The second mode dungeons come with is Exploration mode. Similar to Heroic (World of Warcraft) and Export modes (Rift), Exploration is a tougher mode aimed to the end-game crowd, especially the players that enjoy running a certain dungeon several times (and let's face it, MMO-players tend to). Exploration are meant to give players a proper challenge, demanding team work and co-ordination from the group. But as the name implies, Exploration will feature more randomized events and different parts of the dungeon - some not available in Story mode - can open up.

Story mode was on the menu for the day, though, even if I caught a glimpse of the devs playing through an Exploration dungeon towards the end of the event (they were one player short and got swarmed by monsters, better luck next time!). One of the developers joined the four attending journalists and into the darkness of the Catacombs we went, chasing after the Norn Eir that had decided to brave the depths to find the sword of the old king of Ascalon. Of course, the ghosts living down there aren't too happy about that idea; they are kind of upset after having had their city razed by the Charr and their king killing them all, as seen during the introduction of the first Guild Wars-campaign.

After an initial, and very pretty, cutscene (included at the bottom of this article) we were let loose in the dungeon. As you'd expect, the first thing I noticed was the visual, which looked just a great as the rest of the game. It's a pretty typical ruined catacomb, as the name of the place implies, but it has a nice epic feel to it, with beautiful statues lining the rooms and cramped corridors to be ambushed in. The map design, at least in Story mode, felt linear and I never felt lost - the whole romp through the dungeon was a fairly straightforward affair.

One of the things I really enjoyed was the fact that it wasn't filled with enemies. Looking back at dungeons in games like World of Warcraft, they are usually filled to the brim with groups of enemies that needs to be pulled and killed. Anyone remember Sethekk Halls from The Burning Crusade, or Drak'Tharon Keep from Wrath of the Lich King, just to mention two out of the whole bunch? Group upon group of what is usually referred to as trash mobs that need to be burned through before getting to the bosses. And we all know that MMO players go into dungeons mostly to punch the loot pinatas.