We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a month or so I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!
I think a lot of us were blown away when ArenaNet turned their April Fool’s Day gag– Super Adventure Box– and turned it into a full-fledged event complete with its own story, 8-bit world and system, novelty items, and rewards. For those of us who grew up in the 8-bit era, the whole thing is a bittersweet trip down nostalgia lane, and ArenaNet, frankly, did an awesome job integrating an 8-bit world into the Guild Wars 2 world we’re already familiar with it. It was a taste of the odd, a taste of the fun, and for most of us, it was refreshing to have a mini-game that gave us so many completely different options to explore. Yes, I will break all those pots and bounce around collecting shinies, thank you very much.
The potential problem with this awesome mini-game distraction, however, is the fact that at the end of the day, Super Adventure Box is still a game within a game. It’s a fun little adventure that distracts us from what we’d normally take part in during our time spent in the game. Distraction can be fun, but at some point, many of us kind of find ourselves stepping back and wondering, “okay, now what?” Can you ever have too many shinies and mini-games within a game?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved Super Adventure Box. I’m also well aware that, for the most part, Guild Wars 2 fans have loved the content as much as I have. There are a number of people, however, who have wondered why ArenaNet is spending time developing fun, fluffy content that isn’t actually part of the Guild Wars 2 world instead of content that is and does improve our time spent within the non 8-bit version of the game. I have to admit these folks kinda have a point.
The PR-filled, simple answer might be that the teams developing future content are separated based upon the type of content being added and that the future “meaty” content development team hasn’t been affected in the slightest by Super Adventure Box, but the truth of the matter is that the team, overall, has to have been affected in some way, even if it’s down to copywriters and game testers.
I’ve been a bit critical in the past about how ArenaNet tends to try and make Guild Wars 2 desirable for too many gaming audiences at the same time, which slightly slims the amount of development time spent on the content updates that go into each portion of the game. I still think that’s what the team is kind of doing here. While the new content is fun for those of us who enjoy 8-bit adventures, what about players who bought Guild Wars 2 hoping for plenty of dynamic content updates, dungeon updates, main story updates, or PvP updates? What about WvW? Sure, WvWers recently got an update of sorts, but I think it’s safe to say that most WvWers definitely hoped for something other than more reasons to follow a zerg around.
I’m not saying ArenaNet isn’t working on all of the necessary aspects of the game, but it does seem that the development team is very split at times.
How about you? What do you think? Is Super Adventure Box far too awesome to ever be negative (a valid viewpoint, I might add!) or should the development team refocus their energy a bit after this month is over? Sound off in the comments section below.
