This is an excellent post on what makes Guild Wars 2 revolutionary when it comes to the “massively multiplayer” part of MMORPGs. I’m quoting it here in full because it captures a sense that I’d had about the game, but couldn’t quite articulate.

SUBJECT: GW2 is the revolution casuals and soloers have waited for.

No, casual doesn’t mean “easy,” and solo doesn’t mean “never plays with others,” and that is something that Anet has, shockingly, really understood and taken to heart.

Without saying a word to other players, I was involved in one group or raid-quality event after another. I could log in, and log out, and go AFK as I wished, and play as good or as bad as I was able, with no grief or guilt, without putting anyone else at risk or ruining anyone else’s game. I could figure out what combination of skills and weapons I personally liked to use, and use that to my heart’s content, and nobody could disinvite me or prevent me from participating.

Yes, I do enjoy talking to others, and I do enjoy playing as best I can; I just don’t like being excluded from top end content and rewards because some 14 yr old e-Napoleon doesn’t think I’m professional enough. I also don’t like putting other people at risk because I don’t play the most efficient, min-max character possible.

The game mechanics itself told me what my contribution level was, and I didn’t have to beg someone else, or play to their liking, to get my rewards. Nobody could grief me, ninja-loot, steal my kill, or jump in and ruin content. If I was halfway through a quest and felt like doing something else, I could wander off and not get textually assaulted for it. I could jump in and help other players, and they could do the same for me, freely. If I like an area, I can just stay there to my heart’s content. The game doesn’t tell me to “get out” of an by reducing my rewards to zero.

Yes, this game is revolutionary, but that won’t be fully recognized by many until a few months down the road as casual players and soloers start draining away from games unfriendly to their playstyle and filling up GW2 servers, and as people who have either never played or have left the genre realize GW2 is exactly what they’ve been looking/waiting for.

This is brilliant, genre-altering game design. It’s not readily apparent; because the true differences are deep in the structural bones, not in the superficial activities, which are much like other games. When people realize there really is no reason to rush through the game because the same thing is available from the very beginning, and when people realize they can play this game any way they want and not suffer from lack of inclusion in content, that’s when the enormity of what Anet has created here will become apparent.

—originally posted by Meleagar

Some impressions of Guild Wars 2 from the first public beta weekend.

1. The Downed State. In GW2, when you “die” you don’t immediately die, but go into a Downed State, where you can throw rocks at enemies to continue damaging them, bandage yourself, etc. If you can kill an enemy before your Consciousness Bar runs out—or bandage your “consciousness” back to full health, whether by yourself or with the aid of other players—you’ll revive. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s awesome in PVE—no longer will you find yourself dying in the middle of the Forest of Fuckall to a mob that has 5 HP left.

   In PVP, however, the Downed State is incredibly annoying. It rarely feels like you’re actually “killing” other players, because people are constantly reviving at the brink of death and then instantly healing to full. When an enemy player goes into a Downed State, you can perform a Finishing Move to execute them—but all this does is pop up a channeling bar, and you stand there praying your channeling bar fills before the downed player revives. It makes PVP feel like whack-a-mole and takes away the impact of killing/dying. When PVP becomes a game of attrition, the team or player with staying power is the default victor. I’m hoping the Downed mechanic gets removed from PVP entirely; it feels so alien and antithetical to the flow of combat.

2. PVP is an AOE spamfest. The combat is loose, sloppy, and fun, more like a modern 3D action game than the precision and finesse of the first Guild Wars. It’s definitely the most fun MMORPG combat system I’ve ever seen, but the skill bar is set far lower than GW1. When you can faceroll your keyboard and still be effective in PVP, somethin’ ain’t quite right.
3. Range > melee. Ranged classes have a totally skewed risk-to-reward ratio: they can kite all day and do wtfdamage while continually moving and dodging. My warrior, meanwhile, gets rooted when she uses her most powerful skills (which are easily dodged), and gap closers like the leap attack are bugged. Warrior feels like a misfiring cannon while Ranger is an orbiting satellite precision-nuking people from space. And because there’s so much AOE spam, melee classes are at a double disadvantage: having to wade into the vortex of whirling blades and chain lightning and such should result in a higher payoff.
4. Too much knockdown/knockback. Please, please don’t make the same mistake Mythic did with Warhammer Online and turn this into a knockbackfest. #1 Thing Players Hate In PVP: Not being able to control their character. The CC has no apparent diminishing returns—an Elementalist in tornado form was able to chain-knockdown me. What’s up with that?
5. Trash mobs that snare/knockdown. Seriously, why? Just take it out. That shit is fine on bosses, but if the trash mobs I’m grinding for Farmer Billy Bob constantly knock me down, I’m going to tell Farmer Billy Bob where he can stick his hoe.
6. No mounts, but tons of waypoints to warp to. I kind of like this system, actually. The capital cities are ridiculously huge, but they also have tons of waypoints that you can freely warp to. There’s an epic sense of scale in GW2. Even the world bosses are as large as towns.
7. No quest log. All quests are dynamic, public events that anyone can participate in. Borrowing from Warhammer and Rift, GW2 guides you loosely around the map to static events (Help Farmer Billy Bob Get Rid of the Pesky Knockdown Mobs) to dynamic events that trigger based on player presence (Kill the Marauding Centaur Warlord Before It Stomps On All the Corn!). Questing is no longer an anal retentive’s wet dream of ticking off points on a checklist, but rather is imbued with a sense of adventure and exploration. No matter where you go in the world, there’s some public event happening, and dynamic events pop often to spice things up.

I’m surprised at how different GW2 feels from GW1. This is a far more PVE/casual-oriented game than its predecessor, which will obviously disappoint and enrage hardcore GW1 fanboys. But the reality is that casual gameplay appeals to a broader audience, and MMOs are in the business of making money. For a game with no subscription fee that relies on box sales and microtransactions, this direction was inevitable, I think.