Retro, what was your thoughts on the Bazaar and arena net design as a whole and how it ties into the theme of taking the game at your own pace?
I'll try not to mega-post, but it will be hard as I think the Bazaar is easily the best Living Story update.
I guess to start, I have to mention the competition, if only to point out why they aren't my favorite (even though I think they're very
very good). For example, the first Super Adventure Box update is
fantastic, but it is done in a bouncy, completely-out-of-tone way that feels like the April Fools joke we all thought it was. I also adore the SAB weapon skins, but god damn if they don't stick out in a kind of unpleasant way in the game now. SAB holds more appeal to me than most, I would guess, but I still think it's fantastic in a "I can't believe this exists and is actually so much damn fun" way.
Both Lion's Arch updates have been good, but after you complete the story mission and a few of the side objectives, it's more or less some achievement hunting. The fact that all of it is happening in
OUR Lion's Arch is insane, and just wandering around in the once-familiar area that is now almost alien is thrilling enough I don't mind. So it goes for all but a few updates (Halloween and Wintersday 2013, Dragon Bash); everything has been better than what came immediately before, and you can literally see ArenaNet experimenting, learning, and reiterating over the space of the last year. The one-time cosmetic items, various chunks of loot and achievement points are okay, but the
real reward has been watching Guild Wars 2 evolve every two weeks into what is turning out to be one hell of an ambitious game, from what is quickly turning into a beast of a developer (only their PR efforts have been weak, especially merchandising because we know quaggan-anything = license to print money). I have a feeling that with a few upcoming games trying very hard to act as completion, along with the distracting qualities of launching in China wrapping up shortly and a full year of Living Story lessons to put to use, Season 2 represents a good point for ArenaNet to blow the doors off the damn thing. I mean that 2014 is going to be the year where Guild Wars 2 stops being
just a really good MMO.
But I digress. Everything else has been good, but I think if there's one unifying factor here it's that most updates don't feel
complete. The Bazaar of the Four Winds, on the other hand, does everything right and in deceptively larger quantities than I think most remember.
It's a new zone, which everyone wanted and the game honestly needed, even if it was only temporary. More importantly, it is a
gorgeous zone with visuals that layer on top of each other while always giving you a glimpse through the whole affair. There's the rock spires and waterfalls set behind the lived-in shanty-town that clings to them, which are a canvas for colorful murals, lively vendor stalls and bamboo
somethings everywhere. And over everything are billowing sails, cloth streamers and banners flapping in the wind. The architecture is clearly meant to look cobbled together, but it's still Asian in style and so remains composed mostly of lines and right angles, but in a hap-hazardly sort of way that feels like a Mondrian painting grew up out of a Southeast Asian slum. All softly warmed by bursts of sunlight peaking through the layers by day and the glow paper lanterns by night. It's just so damn
exotic, like nothing else anywhere in the game.
It is also absurdly vertical, to the point that I have a hard time thinking of anything else in gaming besides the final battle in Shadow of the Colossus that can compare to just the overwhelming sense of height. You start off on a little boat and there's a neat little dock. The water is a crystal turquoise shade and there's bamboo groves and cool rocks and spires everywhere, which is all kind of neat. Then you look up. And up. And up. And
holy fuck, there's
still more "up" way up there. And right in front of you is a ramp that twists off and, of course,
up, beckoning you and suggesting that yes, all of that? You're headed up there.
Which is all well and good, but having a huge, vertical space to climb up only gets you so far and it can get boring incredibly quick (hello, Metal Gear Solid's communication tower), even if it looks as good as the Bazaar and has all sorts of little nooks and crannies and visual elements and interesting NPC chatter. What makes the Bazaar great are the Zephyrite abilities. It turns all that vertical ground into a vertical
playground where the rules of Guild Wars 2 are suspended for the sake of sheer joyful movement. There hasn't been anything like this in any MMO I've ever played, where the game's rules are put on pause to do something cool and uniquely different from everything else. The only thing that comes even slightly close are the on-rail bombing quests in The Burning Crusade, and those are more like the game's well-worn flight paths with something to do instead of alt tab (they're also over too quickly and completely broken by the presence of other players).
Sun-dashing nicely speeds up the flat areas and, more importantly, the ramps that are needed to gain all that height. Lightning-riding is useful, and that it was automated in sections where you're just trying to travel over the terrain is a brilliant move that keeps it from being tedious, but still allows it to be a playful tool. I'd like more context-sensitive skills in the future. But the best of the three is easily the wind-jumping, especially when you get a feel for the height and how much control you have. Then Guild Wars 2 becomes "
Crouching Charr, Hidden Quaggan" and you're practically
flying in this huge, perilously high space without a safety net (but plenty of waypoints, so there's at least little pain in falling). All three together, and the area you're given to explore, makes the whole zone feel, from a gameplay perspective, like a Mario game. In an MMO! I think even more than Super Adventure Box (which really only looked and sounded the part), the Bazaar plays like a completely different game tucked neatly into an MMO's shell, and unlike SAB feels like it's a natural part of the GW2 world, its movement and gameplay.
That'd all be really cool but pointless except for the crystal scavenger hunt, the master stroke of the whole affair. One of my favorite memories in GW2 is Jira and I getting on right after it went live, grouping up and looking all over for these things and then bouncing, dashing, leaping and falling to try and reach them. They're tucked in places that are clearly visible but difficult to reach, and a lot of them felt like mini jumping puzzles. In fact, I think that would be the best way to describe Bazaar of the Four Winds from a gameplay perspective:
52 mini jumping puzzles in Cantha Lite.
All of that alone would be enough. Throw in an aspect-themed Mario Kart-esque footrace (still my favorite activity and the only one I will do for the daily), a drinking mini-game, and, why not, a fucking Quaggan doing a magic/comedy routine that was cute
genuinely kinda funny, without feeling all tacky and laden with pop-culture references like you get in other MMOs. Even something like having all sorts of cooking ingredient vendors hanging out in once place was perfect. The setting, music, visuals, chatter, movement... everything felt
imported from another world, which was obviously the goal.
I'm leaving out the second half of the "Bazaar-themed" update, Cutthroat Politics, which threw in two more excellent mini-games (Aspect Area was a blast and made me want to see a class that uses Zephyr abilities and Southsun Survivor is neat, though neither are anywhere close to Sanctum Sprint), the horde-mode like Candidate Trials and the sheer novelty of voting that people actually really got into (and still hold grudges over to this day). All of that is there and happening
in the Bazaar, but were added afterwords so I'm not sure they really count. If they do, they only make an already amazing update that much better.
I'm also skipping over the lore, which is presented in such a sideways manner that at first it wasn't even obvious there was any. You literally had to pay attention to NPC chatter and tease the story elements out from
song lyrics. It was mysterious in a way that was interesting and made people want to scour the wiki for clues, a nice break from the "things are happening that might be connected but there's no logical reason why" that was going on just as Scarlet was about to be introduced. That the story they're telling is also completely outside Guild Wars 2's established lore only adds to the feel of strangers from distant lands with strange stories to tell, and you could literally hear Guild Wars 1 players
squee with delight (well, those who were able to understand Guild Wars 2 was never going to just be a remake of the original). I really hope we get to circle back and find out if they were just name-dropping references to Guild Wars 1 or if something is actually going to come of it.
Oh, look at that, a Mega Post. Well, we all knew it was going to happen.
