Guild Wars 2: Pre-Release Discussion

[Katlan]

no game is immune to being a launch flop. I need play myself it to determine if its fun or not. If it is then we can talk content.

Oh I agree. The game sounds awesome so far... But I remember the WAR dev's talking about city and fort sieges and breaking down how they work complete w/ pictures / diagrams showing different ways to do stuff. And it looked / sounded fuckin awesome. <[fast forward to game being launched and ppl reaching end game]> Shit stunk worse then XIV's UI lag

[Kaisha]

Christ almighty this game is really starting to shape up. I had zero interest of it back during its launch since I figured it'd just be another GW1, which for me was fun until I beat the campaign. Everyone being able to play some means of a support role alongside their main class definitely looks to change the flow of battle compared to any other MMO on the market.

Visuals look fine to me, hopefully looks to scale back gracefully onto older hardware. Least it doesn't appear to suffer from the tiled-texture/terrain issue which was stupidly prevalent in GW1.

[Alderaan]

New York Post Guild Wars 2 Q&A: no fees is good fees
http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/gamere...TgcqtpP063qkxO

I get irked when NcSoft is mentioned instead of ArenaNet but what ever.

NCSoft's Guild Wars, more a competitive online role playing game (CORPG) than MMORPG, has been wow-ing (pun intended) gamers for years. Hell, over 6 million copies of the game have been sold, and critics agree that it's a great title.

In 2007, the sequel was announced, and fans can't get enough information. Thankfully, the folks over at NCSoft were more than willing to spill the beans when we were given the opportunity to ask them questions about Guild Wars 2.

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Post: In Guild Wars 2, we return to Tyria 250 years after the first game. What has changed in this fantasy world?

Jeff Grubb (World Designer): The greatest change is that the Elder Dragons of Tyria have woken up, rending the world around them. When the dragon Zhaitan awoke, he brought the sunken kingdom of Orr back to surface as an undead empire. When the crystal dragon Kralkatorrik rose, he carved the Dragonbrand across the charr territories of Ascalon. Ultimately, the dragons and their minions will consume the world unless the humans, charr, norn, and other races can unite to stop them.

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Post: Guild Wars 2 boasts five races (Sylvari, Norn, Charr, Asura, Human) and eight professions (only Necromancer, Ranger, Elemenalist & Warrior have been announced). Can you tell me a little about each race, and how the Humans stack up?

Jeff Grubb: We’ve met a lot of these races previously. The charr were major opponents to the humans in the original Guild Wars, and they have conquered a large chunk of the human kingdom of Ascalon. They are a race of warlike cat-men with horns, and are technologically advanced, with gunpowder weapons and clockwork devices.

The norn we have met in Eye of the North: They are a northern race of huge barbarians driven south by the Elder Dragon Jormag. They are a fierce, proud independent race that lives for adventure.

The asura also appeared in Eye of the North, and are a short race of irritating geniuses. They are almost gruesomely cute with round heads, oversized ears, a sharp teeth. Unlike a lot of short inventor races, their achievements are magical in nature as opposed to technological – they create hulking golems and magical gateways across the world.

The sylvari are new, a race of noble plant-people – leaves for hair and branches for bones. They were grown in the fruit of the Pale Tree, and have been only appeared in the last 25 years. They are still discovering the world around them, and have yet to determine what is their place in the world.

Where does this leave the humans? They have stumbled in the past 250 years, but have not fallen. Their former kingdoms have been overrun by newer and more vibrant races, but they continue to hang on. They have the sense of history for the world, and though they have been knocked back, they have not be knocked out.

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Post: Tell us more about the character customization. How unique will my character be? And will he have his own personal story?

Eric Flannum (Lead Game Designer): In addition to robust physical character customization options we also allow players to customize the backgrounds of their characters. We do this with a series of biography questions at the end of character creation. How was your character raised? What are your characters greatest regrets? What equipment has your character inherited or created?

Through the use of these questions we can tell a much more personal story. If your character is a noble then they will find themselves attending parties and delving into conspiracies among the elite. Characters that were raised on the streets will fight for survival among gangs of thieves and murderers.

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We also have key moments during the story where a player can make choices that will affect the story of their character. Do you risk the lives of many strangers to save an old friend? Do you seek evidence by breaking into a house while the owner is at a party or go to that party and try to gather evidence from the other guests?

With these choices and the biography there are literally thousands of different paths that players can take through their own personal story.

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Post: How big is the Guild Wars 2 world?

Eric Flannum: The world is quite large. Depending on the route taken, to walk from one side of the world to the other could take several hours.

Post: Guild Wars 2 has a maximum level cap of 80 -- which is pretty damn high. And with high level caps, there's always a feeling that players need to grind their butts off. Is there anything in place to prevent that urge or need to grind?

Eric Flannum: We regard leveling as a good measure of progress and not as the ultimate goal of the game. There is an amount of time at which a single level becomes useless as a measure of progress because you can’t make significant gains in a single play session. We are continuing to tweak and tune just how long we think that is but we currently put it at around 90 minutes. Since we aren’t interested in leveling as an end goal this allows us to cap our leveling time at around the 90 minute mark. This means that our leveling curve flattens out relatively early in the game. For example it currently takes about the same amount of time to progress from 79 to 80 as it does to go from 49 to 5o. This allows us to avoid the grind often associated with the later levels in an MMO.

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Post: GW2 is using a new version of the Guild Wars engine, allowing for a truer creation of the things we've seen in concept art. How long have you guys worked on the engine? And can you tell us specifically what you've done to beef up the engine's prowess?

Eric Flannum: The Guild Wars 2 engine is an improved version of the engine we used in the first game. We’ve been working on Guild Wars 2 since 2007 so we’ve been working on it for almost 4 years now.

The number of improvements made to the engine is pretty staggering; our programmers have been doing a spectacular job. I’m probably the wrong person to get into technical details but some of the things players will notice include lighting improvements, true z axis, higher resolution textures, higher poly counts on models, a smoother animation system, really the list could keep going and going. Even with all of these improvements it should be noted that we aren’t relying on players having state of the art machines to run the game. As with the first game we want to keep our system requirements modest so that we can reach as broad an audience as possible.

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Post: We know that there will be PvP, PvE and Guild v Guild, but can you explain what World v World (The Mists) combat is?

Eric Flannum: The best way to think of WvW combat is to think of a huge epic strategy game. Forces fight to control resources on the map including towers, fortresses, mines, lumber yards, and supply routes. Each player is one soldier in this massive fight. We do our best to provide a variety of different objectives to keep players involved regardless of whether they prefer going solo or travelling in a group of a hundred.

The three sides consist of three different worlds (what you might call a server in another game) that are matched up at the beginning of the week with one of the worlds emerging victorious.

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Post: Anyone launching a MMORPG now has to compete with World of Warcraft. What about Guild Wars 2 do you think is going to help you pull players from WoW?

Eric Flannum: One of the biggest factors for us is that we don’t feel we have to pull players away from WoW (or any other game for that matter). Since we don’t charge a monthly fee players can go right ahead and play our game alongside any other game (online or offline) that they choose. They can even put our game down for a period of time and pick it back up later, perhaps when we release some expansion content or when we hold one of our holiday events. This is something we’ve seen as pretty common behavior from players of the first game and it suites our business model well.

As far as why a player might play Guild Wars 2 over some other game I could probably go on about specific features but what it’s really about is quality. We want our game to stand out as providing a finely crafted and polished play experience. We want it stand out among not only other MMO’s but among games in general.

[volcanicweather]

Just spent some time catching up on this thread as a former GW1 vet and I'm surprised... it seems like ArenaNet really understands that a great product, not a name keeps people coming back to play. I'll admit I didn't really pay too much attention when I first heard a sequel was coming out but they are making some pretty dramatic changes from GW1 to GW2 and I'll definitely give open beta a shot if they have one.

[Alderaan]

Eric Flannum answers our Guild Wars 2 questions.
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=24059&storypage=1

http://www.zam.com/Im/Image/182533.jpg

ArenaNet has been a little quiet for the last few weeks, leaving Guild Wars 2 fans all over the internet starved for news. Accepting the fact that they weren't ready to break new ground quite yet we decided to revisit a plethora of older topics with Eric Flannum, the Guild Wars 2 design lead.

We cover a lot of familiar ground with WvW, dynamic events, boss fights, and potions, but there's also some very interesting information on a subject we've not heard much about at all: Stealth!

GuildFans: We've experienced something of a plateau in information released recently. Is this just wind down from the hectic convention season, or is there another reason?

Eric: There are many reasons for the plateau of information. You certainly hit on one of them though. It took a lot of effort for us to prepare all of that information for release. A ton of work goes into creating those websites, writing articles, and creating videos and many of the people involved needed to get back to focusing on actually creating the game. The approaching holiday season also factors into this, with many people taking vacation to be with family and friends towards the end of the year there is a limit to the amount of work that we can realistically get done.

The main thing however, is that we don’t have anything ready to announce at this time. When we release information we want to be very certain that everything we talk about is in the game and working up to a basic level such that we believe that we won’t have to make dramatic changes to it. We don’t want to tell you all about our awesome crafting system if we haven’t nailed down the particulars of it since that usually results in some unsatisfying information that is either very vague or flat out untrue. That isn’t to say that we never go back and change things after we’ve talked about them (For example, even though we showed off the Sylvari a year ago we have recently gone back to improve them.) but rather that we want to be as certain as we can be when we talk about things.

That doesn’t mean that we haven’t worked on the remaining four professions, PvP, WvW, crafting, or underwater combat, just that we aren’t quite happy with where they’re at yet.

GuildFans: World vs World is said to be a weekly rotating match up between the three worlds. Does this mean that one of the worlds will have no opponent one week in three? Could you expand a little more on how that system works?

Eric: This means that every week each world (server) will have two different opponents. It is our intention that no world will ever go a week without any opponents. This does of course mean that the number of worlds we support must be divisible by three to ensure that everyone always has a valid matchup. We’ll be able to release more on this when we’ve finalized some of the details.

http://www.zam.com/Im/Image/182630.jpg

GuildFans: How do you measure a players participation in dynamic events, to prevent leeching for rewards or inaccurate scaling?

Eric: Each event has its own criteria for measuring participation and in many cases it is measuring against more than one thing. For example, in the Drake Broodmother event a player can earn participation by damaging either the Broodmother herself or her broodlings. Other events use criteria other than doing damage. The apple orchard event doesn’t award participation for damaging spiders or knocking apples out of trees but instead only looks at whether or not a player has turned in any apples.

GuildFans: We've heard about the addition of a 'town clothes' system. Will this function similarly to costumes in Guild Wars 1, an automatic swap of armor when you enter an outpost, or something else?

Eric: : Yes, the GW2 design has called for a town clothes system from the start. I know everyone out there is tired of hearing this answer from us but we aren’t quite ready to talk specifics about how the system works. As I said before we prefer to avoid releasing information when we aren’t sure about it.

GuildFans: There's been a lot of discussion and concern over the addition of potions, is there anything you would like to clarify about that decision? Maybe expand on some of the design goals and benefits it brings to the table?

Eric: Energy potions provide us with a long term resource. If you think about almost any game, there is always some form of long term resource that allows the game to balance difficulty by causing players to use up more of this resource in tough fights. In many RPG’s this resource is health and energy potions, in many FPS’ this resource is ammo, in many MMO’s they’ll use item durability as well. In any case the long term resource allows the designers more leeway in balancing encounters as well as often providing many secondary benefits.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of conjecture that we went to the energy potion system out of “laziness” or because for some reason we want to make the game “more like WoW”, neither of those things could be farther from the truth. We have actually had many systems in the game and working over the past few years. We’ve tried health potions, temporary power-ups, some forms of ammo for skills and everything in between. The reality of it is we feel like none of those things have been as easy to understand and pain free from a player perspective as energy potions. Energy potions not only act as a good long term resource for us but also serve as a minor gold sink, provide a common loot drop, and help provide a decent attrition mechanic in combat.

Being a complicated issue there is of course a lot more to the argument for and against energy potions and we’re constantly evaluating every aspect of the game looking for better solutions. If we come up with something that serves the game better than energy potions rest assured we’ll implement it.

GuildFans: Stealth has been confirmed as an ability for certain ranger pets, can we also expect to see players using it?

Eric: Yes, in fact rangers have a utility skill that allows them to stealth while they are standing still. I know a lot of people immediately jump to the overpowered version of stealth that they’ve seen in some games when anyone brings it up. I do think however that we’ve got a good handle about how to keep stealth in check. Things like limiting stealth by time, not having professions that destroy everyone when attacking out of stealth, having a lot of ground targeted attacks, and stealth detection skills can keep professions who use stealth in balance with everyone else.

GuildFans: Large boss monsters such as 'The Shatterer' seem to be fairly static during combat. Will they actually give chase if players try to run away? How important is movement in these fights?

Eric: Once a creature reaches a certain size, we have to make them a bit more static to account for how they interact with terrain and players as they move. So you won’t ever see the Shatterer arbitrarily chase someone down while he’s on the ground. There will be other super huge bosses which fly or swim who have a higher degree of freedom as they move around.

We also have a large number of bosses who are much more free with their movement and can roam the world like a standard monster. The Drake Broodmother is one of the smaller examples of that sort of boss. Some of those bosses actually get really large although none are as large as the Shatterer.

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GuildFans: You've put out a number of surveys over the years, most recently the one asking for 'War in Kryta' feedback. Is this something we can expect to see more of, moving forward? How much more valuable is this data, than data you collect from other sources such as forums or blogs?

Eric: Although I couldn’t say exactly when, I think you’ll definitely see more data collection of this type from us. I don’t think this data is inherently more valuable but it is a different kind of data. When it comes down to it the more different types of data you have on which to base decisions the better off you are.

GuildFans: In a recent article on Mondes Persistants, Isaiah Cartwright talked a bit about the 'e-sports' focus of Guild Wars 2. How important will third party tournaments be to you? In what areas are you going to improve the structure for competitive play?

Eric: PvP and tournament play are extremely important to us. Although we do have a lot of plans to improve the structure of our competitive play we’re not quite ready to talk about them yet

GuildFans: Thanks for your time Eric. Apologies for the scattered subject matter!

Eric: No problem at all!

[Alderaan]

Pacing and Combat

In his latest Guild Wars 2 column, MMORPG.com Industry Relations Manager Garrett Fuller takes a look at the pacing and combat coming in the game. As Garrett opines, pacing and combat can make or break an MMO. Many have fallen victim to poor deployment of these two features. See what he's got to say about pacing and combat in Guild Wars 2, then weigh in with your own thoughts below.

Game play is changing in MMOs. Over the last few years action games have stolen a lot of techniques used by MMOs to enhance character advancement, online play, and PvP. Oddly enough, MMOs have not adapted and looked into other areas of gaming where they can make these types of improvements. Guild Wars 2 had a playble demo this summer at several shows. They gave the players a chance to try the game out and test the playability. Like any MMO player I jumped in to check out two important things: the pacing, and the combat. Both of these areas happen to be where MMOs suffer. The Guild Wars 2 playable demo from 2010 will be remembered as one that addressed these two areas very well.

First in pacing, I want to talk about the way MMOs go about playing. You get a quest, you go kill things, you turn in your quest and you gain experience. I know this model has been modified and changed over time; however its core remains the same. Games that stick to this model can be viewed as grinds. It took me a while to figure out what a grind really meant to me and I finally realized it was the pacing. Here is an example: I am an Orc, there is a boar in my backyard. I run up and hit it with my club. It bites me back. I hit it again. It bites me again. Finally on the third hit I score a crit and kill it. It dies. That was painful to write, and I am sure it was painful to read. However, that pacing is what I consider a grind. At low levels even though you are a new warrior or mage, you still should not have to take three to fiver exchanges to kill a simple back yard pest. This sense of pacing has plagued MMOs for a while now.

http://images.mmorpg.com/features/47...ildWars2_t.jpg

Guild Wars 2 moves much faster, as do a host of new MMOs hitting the market. They are starting to play much more like console games with more action. The combat is dynamic and it is something that Guild Wars 2 is working on very well. The demo we played this season allowed for movement and action during a fight. Timers on skills moved faster than we were used too. Also if you got in trouble the whole interface changes to play your desperation moves so you don't die. Just watching this game play as I went through the demo was exciting. It is what made me want to play the game more. As we see the next playable demo available in 2011, and you get the chance to play, ask yourself how the pacing feels. If it feels faster and flows cleanly, then ArenaNet has done their job well. So far they have proven that the pacing works very well for the game.

http://images.mmorpg.com/features/47...ildWars2_t.jpg

Combat goes hand in hand with pacing and this is where I think Guild Wars 2 really shines. The interface gives the players plenty of options. Combat in the demo felt much more dynamic. I did not feel like I was sitting around as I took on monsters. I was moving quickly and staying active. The game felt like it was a long way from the old, pull one monster and hope for the best days. As MMOs move into the new decade, there are definite changes to combat that need to be made. The faster a game is the easy it moves and players can make snap decisions and feel good about them. As a player I love using the right skills at the right moment to avoid disaster. Guild Wars 2's combat system feeds that experience for players. The key to combat and especially PvP combat is balancing the system between classes. The ArenaNet team has said that Guild Wars 2 is taking end game PvP very seriously, so balance is critical. So far the combat moves fast, when players face each other, let's hope the balance is there so it can move even faster.

http://images.mmorpg.com/features/47...dWars2-2_t.jpg

I think Guild Wars 2 made quite a splash at the summer season this year. They are working hard to make the fundamental changes to game play in MMOs that I do believe will become the norm in games coming out over the next decade. For now we can only wait until the show season starts and get ready for the next playable demos to come for 2011.

[Purrrfect]

Sounds like good stuff, they just need to be sure there is content to match a fast pace. Looking forward to our demo (beta xD).

[notorious bum]

My only complaint with the game so far is the horrible-looking treasure trolls they chose to be the dwarf model. So fugly, like a llama crackbaby

[Alderaan]

Some more random vids.

[Purrrfect]

Thats the german video I could never get to load on their site after I watched it once... Been looking for that.

Sure would be nice if Arenanet had some news coming up for gw2.

[Rysa]

Thats the german video I could never get to load on their site after I watched it once... Been looking for that.

Sure would be nice if Arenanet had some news coming up for gw2.

They are supposed to be releasing another class this month.

[Zerocool]

[Shnaklaha]

See, its videos like that that i love....and is also why i think GW2 will ultimately be more enjoyable long-term than gw1.....though after watching this video i'm extremely urged to start saving up for a badass computer with like a 30" screen so I can see EVERYTHING at once @_@.

[Alderaan]

I was waiting for someone to toss that vid on youtube haha, thanks Zero.

[Purrrfect]

Nice. I lol'd at the charr charr charr charr haha. I was planning to make one too... The concept arts shown throughout were nice too.

[volcanicweather]

Pretty sweet video, you can just tell the people at ArenaNet really care about the game and the community of people they have. Doubt many other gaming companies could pull a video like that off with so many people from so many different areas of the company without it feeling phony/cheesy.

[Alderaan]

Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum talk about GW2 stuff for an hour!

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691...Wars-2-Dynamic

[Elvis]

looks really nice so far. excuse the nub question but, (based on what friends are telling me) is GW2 like a tradional mmo or more like log-in-jump-right-into-action sorta gameplay? like some people are telling me they wouldnt really call it an mmo

[Alderaan]

looks really nice so far. excuse the nub question but, (based on what friends are telling me) is GW2 like a tradional mmo or more like log-in-jump-right-into-action sorta gameplay? like some people are telling me they wouldnt really call it an mmo

It's a traditional MMO in the sense that it's an open and dynamic world. It's not straight forward like traditional MMO's in that you don't have to pick up quests at npc's. You basically explore and show up at an area and see bad stuff going down and you're automatically "flagged" for that event, which you help with. Those events are you quests, if you want to call them that.

If you watch the above video, it answers a lot of questions.

[Elvis]

yea, it definitely did. looks awesome. i hope it doesnt take forever to come out ><