Guild Wars 2: Pre-Release Discussion

[notorious bum]

As a PBJ connoisseur, I agree. Use some damn preserves atleast.

[tol]

This game is going to set a new standard in MMOs, I haven't seen anything yet that proves otherwise.

I just find this a bit bold considering the game isn't even in Beta. I'm not saying that the game doesn't have the potential, but I think giving GW2 this much credit will probably lead to dissapointment rather than nirvana.

[Takiwaki]

I think that what the game has shown already and the fact that its not even in beta says more to support that statement than not though

[tol]

How so? I haven't seen any groundbreaking alterations to the landscape of MMORPG's yet. Have they tweaked things to make it more friendly/engaging/"fun" ? Yes, I'll say they appeared to have made great strides in those respects. I haven't seen anything yet that makes me feel like this game is going in a new direction. So you have a video of someone fighting a huge boss at level 1, then you realize you fight another huge boss at level 5, and 10, and 15 and then you're in a zone where all the regular mobs are as big as the first boss mob in the level 1 zone and you fight an even bigger boss and so on. I don't think thats incredibly groundbreaking? It feels like the same stagnant shit that is plaguing the MMO genre.

I want to make it clear that I'm not saying GW won't be a big game changer, but I just haven't seen what has got you guys frothing at the mouth already.

[Takiwaki]

That was just one video. most of the videos have not been posted here, nor half of the interviews as we really do not have much of a following here at bg. I mean bosses will be bigger and badder as we level, thats just progression, there is only so much one can use to show that. i think the entire dynamic event system and the way it is implemented is by itself groundbreaking, its the immersion and the actually combat system that gets me. we have yet to see underwater areas, dungeons and pvp.

The shatterer fight was pre alpha footage of only a mid level event. note its not an instance there is no claiming and anyone there can take part and reap full rewards, you do not need take a quest from anywhere, get a tag at a counter etc etc. you can be out running around exploring or getting exp or heading to the next town for the story missions and encounter endless events that u can take part in without having to try. also the profession system does away with the entire tank healer dd dynamic, this is true and honestly no other mmo has done this, every job can be control (tank) (kite) support (buff) (heal) and dmg, so i think its groundbreaking. Yes I do think the game is being way too underplayed here .

You can run around and actually see things happening like for example. if an npc says bandits are attacking you see bandits attacking not standing in a certain area to be grinded on, they attack and kill npcs and burn the crops.
u look at the fields in the distance and the watering system is spraying green liquid instead of water, you run down and find poison worms in the system. what mmo has done this? I remember someone in the 14 forums talking about how stale the quest system was and that it made no sense.

I will say this, all of the crap I have had to deal with in 11 and 14, wow, aion that I hated, this game has found a way to try and get rid of or fix. I am a fan of the original guild wars and seeing what they have done does indeed excite me.

[notorious bum]

I can already tell at this point, I won't be disappointed when it comes out because the bar has been set so low and for so long in the MMO genre. Even if the launch is plagued with bugs, balancing issues, etc. it will still be leagues above anything out right now due to its strong foundation built on dynamic principles and the tons of user-friendly features built into its interface.

[Vimes]

I want to make it clear that I'm not saying GW won't be a big game changer, but I just haven't seen what has got you guys frothing at the mouth already.

I think it has a lot to do with the devs. They're very enthusiastic and passionate about the game and the stuff they're showing us. They seem to understand some of what MMOs need right now to be fun again. That makes it hard not to share that same enthusiasm, especially if you've played and loved GW1 and the team that made it.

So, yea, dev loyalty or fanboyism, call it what you will. Plus the fact that the devs are at least aware of the things that currently plague MMOs. If they can change it for the better, remains to be seen. For me, it was really the Arenanet retrospective video that made them stand out.

That said, there's not really any way right now to know this game won't suck @ release.

[Dragir]

...it still carries a lot of the "MMO" standards. In the opening part of the video he states that "We don't want to do a standard tutorial with 'go collect 5 wolf skins' so we put you into the action and you are asked by a guard to go 'collect 3 villagers'." Now I agree that the setting/fashion of the task seems more much exciting or fresh, but the player is still being asked to go "collect" something.

Since this wasn't addressed yet, one of the game designers has said that some of the "old form features" are a part of the tutorial portion of the game to add a familiarity factor for new players. In pre-alpha testing, "test groups" initially said they weren't sure of what to do because they weren't guided in a familiar way. Baaa~baaa. Am I right?

How so? I haven't seen any groundbreaking alterations to the landscape of MMORPG's yet.

Then you never played Guild Wars 1 and you aren't familiar with ArenaNet's honesty. They do what they say they will and the construction of the game is closely guided by advice from the players... but after years of being scorned by Square-Enix (I'm guessing here) like myself, I can understand your (our) position. lol.

[Shuichi]

I have to say, I was not really even paying much attention to this game until recently. But, after reading more and more about it, I think it's going to be pretty fun. The worst that could happen is I end up spending $60 and getting a few days or so playtime out of it (though I'm thinking it will be more). Since there's no monthly fees there's really no harm in picking this game up and giving it a try. This game could easily co-exist with any other MMO I may decide to play with a monthly fee.

[Crizto]

Yeah I see nothing wrong with picking it up. Maybe I won't uninstall it like that other F2P MMO that came out in the fall.... dot dot dot

[tol]

Don't get me wrong, I'll definitely buy this game. I'm just kind of laughing that it's being heralded as the MMO that's going to change the future of MMO's already. That's like some MJ shit right there.

[Rulke]

Since this wasn't addressed yet, one of the game designers has said that some of the "old form features" are a part of the tutorial portion of the game to add a familiarity factor for new players. In pre-alpha testing, "test groups" initially said they weren't sure of what to do because they weren't guided in a familiar way. Baaa~baaa. Am I right?

Coming from FFXI as my first MMO and having to find NPCs/Locations etc from often obscure NPC dialogue, then going to the "follow the arrow" standard for the first time was like "holy shit, amazing". However this really gimps the players' thought process and just turns a lot of a game into mindless "X marks the spot". A blend of the two ideas would be nice, perhaps less specific arrow pointing or some new, less direct but not overly obsure way to progress through a game.

[Dragir]

Coming from FFXI as my first MMO and having to find NPCs/Locations etc from often obscure NPC dialogue, then going to the "follow the arrow" standard for the first time was like "holy shit, amazing". However this really gimps the players' thought process and just turns a lot of a game into mindless "X marks the spot". A blend of the two ideas would be nice, perhaps less specific arrow pointing or some new, less direct but not overly obsure way to progress through a game.

ArenaNet devs can read your mind -- all the way from Seattle. :O



In case that seems a little non-descript...
Guild Wars 2: Changing How You Quest for Good
How ArenaNet plans to do away with quest text.

[Dragir]

IncGamers’ Guild Wars 2 Interview
Posted 14 May 2011 by Rushster (link)

IncGamers caught up with ArenaNet’s Eric Flannum, lead designer of Guild Wars 2 and game designer John Peters to find out how development was going and also get some answers on specific game mechanics. This is the first part of our lengthy interview, part 2 will follow shortly.

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How is the character customisation coming along? What will players be able to tweak and change? You have said it will be extensive but players are wanting to know exactly what they will be able to tweak.

Our character customisation is something we are working on right now and it’s going pretty well. It will be a lot more extensive that in GW1. You’ll be able to alter, depending on your race, different things. Obviously a Charr has very, very different things you would alter than a human does. Depending on your race there’s all kind of options.

You can do different body types, I think we’ve mentioned this, but one of the benefits we’ve gained from NCSoft is that we looked at the AION character creation and we thought it was pretty spectacular so we are using their technology as the basis for ours. So we can do a lot of the same things they do. You’ll be able to tweak a lot more than GW1. At the same time we want our character creation to be easy to use and you don’t have to be an artist yourself to come up with a cool looking character. So you can expect a hybrid between a system something like where you can tweak every detail and something more simple like GW1 where you had presets. It’s somewhere in between those two things. We think it should give our fans who really like to customise their character more than enough options to keep them happy.

How is the item system going to differ with regards to crafting from the original Guild Wars?

One big difference is crafting in the original GW was you salvage stuff and you brought it to an NPC and he crafted it for you. In GW2 we have a number of different ways to get materials. One is from drops, another from salvaging and also from gather nodes in the world. For crafting your character chooses crafting professions and you are going to be doing the crafting and you find a crafting table where you take your raw material. You then craft the items

What this does for us, it creates a more social experience, it’s a little more traditional but it gives the chance for players to interact a lot more with each other.

So that basically opens up more opportunities for auctioning and becoming a key player in your particular crafting profession?

Yes absolutely, players are going to have learned recipes and crafted items they are going to want to trade with other players. These games are very social, and in every way, Guild Wars 2 is trying to build a community and its definitely going to play a part.

Will the environment play much of a role in combat? Can it be utilised to a player’s advantage?

Absolutely. In number of different ways. First of all there’s jumping in the game. So if someone is chasing you and you jump over something and they decide not to they have to go around the object. On top of that, everything is very physics based, so if you’re higher up than someone your projectile will go further. If there is a rock in front of you and someone shoots an arrow at you it’s going to hit the rock. There’s a lot of physics going on there

There are also environmental weapons so there might be a situation where you turn the corner and there’s a rock and an elemental picks it up and drops a meteor on you.

You mention that if you fire a projectile and you hit a rock. Would the arrow just strop dead or could it ricochet off the rock depending on where it hit the rock?

We do stop them dead on purpose so it doesn’t get too crazy. We do some ricocheting with players. For example if you’re a Ranger and you have an axe in your off-hand and you use a skill called Whirlwind Defense, stuff that’s coming at you can ricochet back at enemies. We try not to do stuff where it bounces off the environment because it can become chaotic

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What sort of security measures are going in place for player accounts? This is always a huge concern for players.

I‘ll start off by saying security is very, very important to us. One of the things that we’ve done is we have a team who looks at that stuff and we have a lot of features that we think will help out with security. We’re not quite ready to talk exactly what those things are, but yes, security is a big, big priority for us.

We understand having operated GW and seeing all the account theft that has happened. Obviously we’re hoping to shoot for accounts never being stolen, but there’s only so much you can do. At the moment though we’re not quite ready to talk about exactly what we’re doing.

What can you tell us about the guild features such as moving guilds from one server to another?

This is one of those things we are still developing and we can’t really say anything about it right now. But I want to explain why we can’t talk about this stuff .You develop these things along the way and they change or they never work out the way you thought. It’s the sort of thing where we really want to make sure that anything we talk about the is definitely in the game and is working in a way that we like. Guild features are one of those things that we’re currently working on. We’ve got some exciting stuff planned but we’re just not ready to talk about it quite yet.

Will players be region locked on servers or can US players join EU server etc?

We’re still trying to make decision on this so I can’t say one way or the other yet.

You have mentioned that dungeons will be playable once you have completed the personal story version of the dungeon and that they will have several branches and paths. How exactly is this going to work?

There’s not really a personal story versions of the dungeon. The Dungeon has as story version but it’s not really your story it’s the story of a group of characters that are important characters In Guild Wars that you encounter in the world during the personal story. However the dungeons are more their story.

What happens is once you finish the story part of the dungeon, there’s an explorable mode you can go into. Each dungeon is very different so there’s no standard way that the branching works. One of our philosophies is we don’t want to fall into patterns too much as it can make the content feel very predictable.

So it’s not the case you finish the dungeon and the explorable mode has three paths because this is not always the case. Sometimes this is true but sometimes there’s one path and then it will branch and then branch again. Sometimes there are different ways to accomplish the same thing and it varies from dungeon to dungeon.

One example is, there’s particular lab that you demolish and you have to beat the main antagonist in story mode but you go back into the dungeon in exploreable mode and clean up the aftermath, the mess you made. First time you went in and took out the Commander but you didn’t take care of the entire lab and you have to go back. What happens is you get teleported down and get a number of options on how to deal with going through the dungeon again. That’s one example of the way the branching works but it will work very differently depending on the dungeon you are in.

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More recently we have seen other developers make game data available to players so the community can be creative, Are ArenaNet planning anything like this?

We know that if we didn’t give you damage numbers for weapons all that means is players are going to go out and do experimentation and try to find out how much damage a particular weapons does. So we try to put all the stats for a particular skill or weapons in the game. We try to be very transparent with giving players the info they need so they can evaluate whether one skill is better than another. We don’t really have a lot of hidden data that we would need to give.

Doing things like giving a big XML dump or something of all these stats for all the items in the game , we have certain players that like to tinker with wikis and we have always supported the GW1 wiki and we’ll continue to do that for the GW2. We think there’s a community that’s like to collect data. We don’t want to hinder those guys but we don’t want do the fun things they like to do for them.

Will there be built in statistical means of tracking character progress apart from character level, like overall gear level or damage meters or publicly viewable achievements that show dungeon experience?

I’m not sure we want to include damage meters or things like that. I think they maybe tend to focus on the wrong things with everybody concerned about min/maxing things. There are lots of things you just can’t measure, like the DPS somebody is doing, are they helping towns players get back up and that sort of thing. We want to avoid DPS meters.

We have an achievement system that you can gain titles with and a lot of your different types of tough dungeons have very unique visual rewards. It’s not that they are statistically better than the other stuff you can get in the game, it’s just the only way to get a particular set of armours to finish the dungeons several times in explorable mode. A lot of times you can tell what a person likes to do based on how they look and what titles they are displaying.

How many zones does the game have? How many zones perfectly match your level as you progress through them? Is there more than one ‘intended’ route through the game or just a single zone for a certain level-range making it feel linear?

For any given level there are definitely multiple zones that you could be in. We walk the line with making the game feel to linear and unnecessarily spreading you player base out. We try to have at least two options for players at any given particular level. Even at level 80, the max level, there are multiple zones that you could be in. There’s also multiple dungeons you could be in.

Depending on what you want to do at any given time, no matter what level you are, there’s multiple types of content for you to experience. Personal stories, events, dungeons, WvW, there’s always a lot of different things to do.

We have already seen that skills of your team mates can affect each other. When there are many people playing together or against each other in PvP and PvE, is there an easy to way tell if ground effects are for your team or against? How can players tell the difference?

The whole system for this has just gone in, what it does is, we take certain skills and we look at whether it’s a skill that people actually. For example Fireball, you throw it out and it lands and explodes, but it doesn’t need to show you what it does because its already exploded, you don’t have a choice. We take a look at what skills it does matter with. You mentioned the Firewall and the Meteor Shower, so what we did was create rings and boxes that go on the ground or around the skills.

If you are on my team and I cast a Firewall, you will see a white ring around it that shows that ‘yes this is a friendly’. If it’s an enemy one you will see a red box around it. Then we also do things with skills like Healing Rain . Enemies see Healing rain as white so white generally means it doesn’t affect me either way and the allies see healing rain as a blue ring around it indicating there’s positive benefits to going into it.

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With the amount of skill the game is supposed to require with the active combat, have you seen any cases in testing to where a much smaller group is able to defeat a much larger group in PvP with enough skill?

Absolutely, a small group can defeat a larger group when fighting each other. We have a few players that are quite good at the game right now, generally now my reaction when I see them is to turn and run, even with an ally or two with me. There’s definitely a lot of is skill involved in the game.

We introduced some new players to our PvP environment recently and when they first started playing, not their very first game, a couple of games in when they had a grasp of the basics, we had a player who was beating people, he would kill like nine players in a row. Eventually as time progressed a lot of the players who were getting beaten by him are now as good as him, maybe even better. There’s definitely that sort of skill and learning how to play the game.

Everyone thought the profession he was playing was completely broken and then he switched to another one and they were saying that one was now broken.

How much will your abilities differ in WvW compared to organized Arena PvP? Will the abilities just take on different effects or will you have completely different abilities in use for them?

We are not 100% sure, but right now we think the abilities are going to be pretty much the same abilities but that is all subject to change obviously.

In WvW with the way grouping features are, how will we keep track of Guild members outside our group? Will there be a way to link up with them and see them on the map?

We want members if your guild to be very visible so there will be ways to keep track of them, whether they are on the map or if they are close to you. You will see where they are, you’ll be able to communicate with them through Guild chat and see what they are currently doing on the guild roster and that sort of thing.

It is known that in organized competitive PvP everyone will have the same sort of gear so that skill is the only deciding factor. Yet, for those who are more partial to open world combat, how much will gear play a role in the WvW PvP?

I don’t want to say just gear but the character and character progression will play a role. From what skills you have, to what gear you have, to what traits you have found and are using, so WvW characters are your characters, there is nothing that you just get.

If you bring a character at level one, you‘ll have the level one skills. You won’t have equipment that does a lot of cool things, you’ll get side-kicked up so you’ll be able to, uhmm, not die. You won’t die in one second or be unable to inflict any damage on higher level players. Higher level players in a 1v1 will have a significant advantage.

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In WvW, at some objectives, how much will PvE play a role in taking the objectives? I know the assumptions have been that there will be NPC’s guarding some of these areas, but will it be so much that it becomes bothersome while trying to defeat players as well? What is the best recollection you have so far of a battle that featured groups fighting from?

Definitely, they play a role, but the guards are not there to kill you, the guards are there to slow you down so defenders can get there to help defend, what you’re really fighting there is the other players. While we have the guards it’s not like we have them there to kill you.

You would never for example, where you have a player and a guard coming at you, you should never choose to attack the guard instead of the player. The guard can eventually wear you down, but it’s more the guard holds you up and you have to get through the guards. They are more defensive than they are offensive.

Of all the classes you have played, which one is currently your personal favorite profession and why?

I think Ranger for me, I always like ranged professions. I like professions with nature type of feel. That plus I love ranged combat, so Rangers.

Warrior. Because I like smashing people in the face. *laugh*

Regarding the game’s music, how is the process for that coming along and have we any ballpark figure of the amount of music that’s being created for the game?. Will the music be made available as a standalone CD?

In answer to the last question is, I’m not entirely sure. I think if we see demand for it then we’ll probably look at releasing it.

The main things we want to try to do is get the music complete, there’s a lot of it, I’m pretty sure it’s almost as big as the amount of music we had in the entire first run of Guild Wars. We need to have different themes for all the areas, the combat, special moments in the story. So it’s pretty extensive and we’re still developing and working on.

So it’s pretty dynamic then? Changing in different situations?

Yes we have the ability change it based on a number of different factors. We have a day and night cycle where it can change in that period of time. Sound effects also, so when you’re walking through the world when it becomes dusk, if you’re in a forest you might hear wolves howling, and as it becomes night, the crickets will turn up a little more. So the music changes to reflect some of that mood. We also have music for particular events that happen in world. There’s a lot of different influences in the music.

In a recent interview there was discussion about localisation in Europe, are you using well known actors from each region to play the roles?

What we do in our localisation process is we wait until we have all the English recorded and we use that for the basis of all of our localised voiceover. I don’t think we’ve cast any of the roles yet for localisation. I think we’re going to see who auditions and use the best people. So no names as yet.

To help span the time between now and the release of the game, many of our fans have been reading the books released. What can you tell us about the third book? Is it done yet? Do you have an estimate when the book will be released?

It’s not done yet. We’re not talking to much about it yet as we’re still finalizing some things but you will have an announcement when we can. We have an outside publisher to consider so we can’t announce anything just yet. There will definitely be a 3rd book but we can’t give you any details

What is Anet currently focusing their efforts on?

We’re currently focusing our efforts on a lot of social features, under water combat is big for us right now. The last two remaining professions, overall balance, PvP. Almost everything in a way. One of the nice things is I think we have a handle on what our content in the game is like and it’s just a matter of making sure we implement it and polish it., With our content systems we’re pretty happy with stuff. Underwater combat and social features are a big deal for us right now.

Beta release still on target for this year?

We are definitely on target for a Closed Beta this year. We’re going to do a closed Alpha and Beta test and we’re totally on target for those things. Whether there’s more than that? We’ll announce that stuff when we get closer. We’ve said we will have an open Beta at some point but we’re not going to know when we’re ready for that until we’re much closer to it. Things are looking good for closed Alpha and beta this year for sure.

Thanks to John and Eric for taking the time to answer the questions and watch out for more big Guild Wars 2 news on Thursday 19th May.

[Dragir]

Someone needs to make a slightly better version of this video. It's already hilarious... but it could be so much more.

[Arximiro]

Yeah that was terrible... Needs quite a lot of work to go viral.

[Dragir]

PC Gamer Guild Wars 2 preview
Tim Edwards at 10:00am May 15 2011


About this video (1)
About this video (2)

Art director Daniel Dociu is talking me through a flyby of a new prototype area in Guild Wars 2. We’re hunched around the monitor of an artist as he drives the camera across a stunning azure port. Merchants, tables, chairs and bunting line the wooden walkways. The water beneath the jetties ripples and gleams. Above it all is a giant brass globe, across which sheets of electrical energy crackle. It is gorgeous.

“This is where we let our novice artists learn our methods.”

It’s hard to tear my eyes away from the screen. This prototype port is one of the most beautiful fake places I’ve ever seen. My eyes settle on an animator quietly working away at the far side of the room. He’s working on a flag, ensuring that it ripples and flaps in the wind. This prototype flag is one of the most beautiful pieces of fake heraldry I’ve ever seen. I look away again, and my gaze settles on a texture artist who is carefully scratching and damaging a chest of drawers, ensuring the grain in the wood is just so. This fake chest of drawers is… You get the picture.

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If nothing else, Guild Wars 2 will be a beautiful fantasy MMORPG. Better than that, having played it, I can say that I think it’s a step forward for MMO games. Guild Wars 2 is advancing the very fundamentals of the genre. It is bravely ditching the fetch, carry, kill and collect style of questing that has kept us entertained/ sedated for years. It is pinning its second-by-second interactions on a combat style that is fast, frantic and unpredictable. Oh: and there’s no subscription fee to pay. Once you’ve bought Guild Wars 2, you’ll be able to play it forever.

Ruh roh. Guild Wars 2 is taking huge risks. With those risks come potentially huge pratfalls.

Let’s talk quests.

Quests don’t exist in Guild Wars as we know them. In Guild Wars, you don’t bounce from exclamation mark to exclamation mark, ferrying llama skins. You explore, and as you explore, you stumble across events.

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(Skills come with violent visual effects.)

I was exploring a low-level forest when I came across a small village of trolls. The troll village was a problem, because they’d started to arm themselves with machinegun towers. An event started: disable the machineguns, and get this many reward points. Around me were four, maybe five other players, and they’d already pitched in. An elementalist was laying down fireballs and firewalls. A warrior was slicing and dicing trolls with his axe. At the back, I, as a ranger, swapped between bow and gun, firing and then retreating, weaving in and out of range.

The players fighting the machinegunners and trolls weren’t formally grouped, but that didn’t really matter. All of us gained credit for our kills and accomplishments, all of us received fair recompense for holding the line. By the time we’d disabled the three main towers, we’d started to develop tactics. Elementalists laying down walls of flame to light my arrows. Warriors spotting the incoming big hits and ducking behind their shield walls. The necromancer raising corpse after corpse to throw back at the attackers. It worked.

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(I always wanted to be a Thundercat.)

Group quests, public quests, rifts… what Guild Wars 2 is attempting with this event-based play isn’t strictly new. Warhammer Online experimented with public quests years ago. In the recently released Rift, the rifts themselves offer the same smart ad-hoc grouping.

But none of these games commit so heavily to public shared events as Guild Wars 2. They’re everywhere, cascading from one objective to the other. Arrive at a castle and you’ll need to chase away occupying forces. Rout them, and you’ve got a minute to prepare for a counterattack – a timed event that sees you defending wave after wave of increasingly powerful invaders. Complete that, and it’s off to attack the bads at the source, sneaking into their camps and demolishing siege engines and catapults, all with the same loose band of friends you made when you arrived.

The pace at which you get through objectives is surprising. As is the reward you feel from exploring, and then achieving. When playing Guild Wars, I never really felt breadcrumbed – I explored the world, and had experiences. I didn’t bounce from exclam to exclam, searching for the next objective.

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(Watching the spell flares is key to effective fighting.)

Sometimes that exploration landed me in trouble. Eventually I found myself facing a troublesome pirate, way out of the level range of the impromptu group I had formed to fight him. He smashed our faces off, again and again, and it took a developer to step in and help before we could progress any further.

ArenaNet’s founder, Mike O’Brien, knows that devoting their overworld entirely to these events, rather than quests, is a risk. But, he says, it’s a risk worth taking. “Starting this project, we spent some time thinking back to the dawn of MMO gaming, back to what we were all hoping MMOs would be. What we all hoped, and what everyone hopes today, is that MMOs are really a world, and that the things you do in that world have an impact. If you come across a town and the people are running around screaming ‘the centaurs are attacking,’ you want to see the centaurs attacking. You want to drive them back. You want to put out the fires. And then you want to help them rebuild the town. That’s the starting vision for Guild Wars 2: let’s make a world we all inhabit together.”

The payoff for this approach, Mike points out, is in making other games look stupid. “MMOs are supposed to be social games, yet too often everybody in an MMO is doing their own thing. There are the NPCs who you have to cure from being poisoned, but right after curing them, they lie back down to wait for someone else to bring them the antidote. There’s the basics of kills: players not having the same motivation to cooperate, maybe stealing a kill and the associated loot and XP.”

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(Here is a Lion throwing a fireball. Games are brilliant.) ed: It's a Guardian wielding a scepter.

Mike talks a good talk. But one of the strange things about playing and enjoying games is that good arguments and strong design doesn’t necessarily translate into fun. Our brains are rarely logical when it comes to how they are entertained. My chief objection to the original Guild Wars was that the game felt over-designed; that the combat, progression and social systems made sense for a designer, but rarely captured the imagination of players. Combat in Guild Wars 1 was about changing the rate in which your enemy’s health decayed or recharged, distorting how quickly they refilled, killing through calculus. The combat system let players pick, mix and match 1,100 skills – but all of those skills relied on tedious text descriptions rather than letting players instinctively feel the impact they were having. And with free respecs and little gear progression, your character felt throwaway.

Guild Wars 2 fixes some of this. The combat system is interesting in itself – it’s immediately far more physical, with animations that convey impact, knockbacks flying all over the place, and sound effects that carry a deeper bass crunch. There’s no auto-attack, and combat is far more dynamic: most classes can swap weapon sets on the fly.

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(Hero crafting! That's how you make a copper hook.)

Each weapon set carries its own abilities. As a thief, I charged into fights with two swords, slicing and dicing, before landing a stun. Then I’d swap to two pistols and dance out of range, constantly shooting as they chased after me. It felt closer to a third-person action game than an EverQuest or World of Warcraft clone. Not quite Devil May Cry with persistent characters, but pretty close.

Character progression still relies on skills, but it’s allied to the concept of a ‘personal story’. When you create a character, you’re offered roleplaying choices: do you pick the Ferocious trait, or Peaceful? These choices play into the dialogue and quests that you’ll experience.

“We want Guild Wars 2 to be a really good RPG,” Mike says. “A great RPG in addition to being an MMO. We want your character to feel like they had a past, that they have aspirations. That they were more than just a profession and a race.”

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(Everyone looks gorgeous in Guild Wars 2. Even the Norn.)

As a Norn, for example, [shapeshifting warrior people – Lore Ed] what’s most important is not your birth or societal class, but how much of a hero you are. The game asks you: “What qualities should a hero possess? Is it strength, cunning, or instinct? What animal do you most identify with? Bears? Leopards? Ravens?” Mike assures me that each choice will have a direct impact on your character’s experiences. (The answer, by the way, is a cunning bear.)

The final risk ArenaNet are taking is financial. There’s no doubt that they could charge a monthly subscription for Guild Wars 2 – this is as fully featured an MMO as World of Warcraft, Rift or The Old Republic. But they have chosen not to. Instead, ArenaNet are placing all their faith on players enjoying the game so much that they’ll be willing to buy in-game items. And, I speculate, on them buying sidegrade expansion packs such as Guild Wars: Factions or Guild Wars: Prophecies released at a rapid pace.

“We sold around seven million copies of Guild Wars 1,” Mike says, “and have been really successful. You see a lot of people launch as a subscription MMO and discover that it’s really hard to compete with WoW as a second subscription. We’ve seen it time and time again – you get to the end of your 30-day trial period and ‘PSHOOOM’… your playerbase drops through the floor.”

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(The thief class requires serious keyboard bashing.) ed: No, that doesn't mean button-mashing is an effective play style.

ArenaNet have still to show how their endgame will work, nor have they shown the PvP systems that will keep competitive players entertained (although it’s easy to spot half the developers scrapping in GW2 arenas on a beta server during their lunchbreak). There’s still a lot to come. A lot of risk. A lot of innovation. But GW2 already plays extremely well and I can’t wait to come back to play more.

There’s simply a lot to like.

Even if it all goes to pot, there’s always the sheer beauty of Guild Wars 2’s world. I take a moment to take in the gorgeous grasslands we’ve been fighting across. It is the most beautiful meadow I’ve ever battled in. Seriously.

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(The rockworm gets a kicking early on.)

Mike is bullish on the potential of his game. “We can make the highest quality MMO ever released. We can be the number one MMO in the world. We don’t have to settle. And we’re not going to release this until it’s done.”

[Dragir]

Guild Wars 2 beta coming “in the second half of this year”, 2012 release likely
Tom Senior (PC Gamer) at 05:14pm May 18 2011

NCSoft chief financial officer, Jaeho Lee, has announced that “Guild Wars 2 will go into beta testing stage in the second half of this year,” confirming a statement that appeared in the FAQ section of the Guild Wars 2 web site a couple of months ago. Lee also dropped heavy hints that Guild Wars 2 is heading for a 2012 release.

Eurogamer picked up the comments in a recent investors conference call, in which Lee said that “starting from year 2012, we believe substantial growth will be driven by new blockbuster titles like Blade & Soul and Guild Wars 2,” suggesting that the game will come out next year.

Back in January, ArenaNet’s Regina Buenaobra said that “the release date continues to be 'when the game is ready.'” The game’s been in development since 2007, but it looks as though we’ll have to wait a little while longer.

We saw it recently, and it’s shaping up very nicely indeed. Find out more in our Guild Wars 2 preview, and check out the recent fly-through trailer showing off the City of Lion’s Arch.

There’s currently no way to sign up for a beta. We’ll let you know when sign-ups begin.

[Qalbert]

oh shit
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/05...-the-engineer/

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 fans, did you love the Commando class? Were you disappointed that it was all an elaborate joke? Did you love the idea of detonating bombs, flinging grenades, and setting mines in Guild Wars 2?

Well, this is going to be a good day for you, because ArenaNet has announced the seventh profession: the Engineer. While it's not the Commando class per se, the Engineer is described as "a master of mechanical mayhem" and looks to be the class that will fulfill all of your most explosive gameplay wishes.

Ready to check it out in depth? We've got five skill videos right in a row and a rundown of the Engineer's abilities, so follow along after the jump and let's take a look!


Let's start with the video, which shows five skills one after the other: Rifle Turret, Glue Shot, Jump Shot, Grenade Satchel, and Absorb. They look great, but even more importantly they illustrate the versatility of the class. Whether you want to snare, defend, get the jump on a pack of unsuspecting foes, or simply deal a ton of damage, there's something in the Engineer's arsenal to do just that.

The Engineer looks to have more cool -- and deadly -- toys than Batman and a skill set designed to make the most of them. He can wield a rifle, dual pistols, or a pistol/shield combination, but that only skims the surface of his bag of tricks.

Fans who have been following GW2 development will remember that player skills are partially dictated by the weapon the player is currently wielding. If you're wielding a rifle, for example, you'll have five rifle-based skills. Engineers are going to take this a step further thanks to Backpack Kits: "When activated, these special utility kits equip a backpack on the engineer's back, which replaces the engineer's current weapon skills with skills from the backpack kit. For example, a bomb kit will put a bomb backpack on the engineer, allowing [him] to deploy a variety of bombs including smoke, concussion, and fire." There are five types of backpack kits to suit your playstyle, including a med kit for heals.

What if slinging bombs isn't quite your thing? Fear not, because the Engineer's pretty versatile. Weapon Kits are another new element -- they're utility skills that equip a new weapon (and set of weapon skills) when activated. Flamethrower, anyone? That's right, the Engineer can equip a flamethrower as a short-range AoE weapon, and it comes with a pretty impressive set of weapon skills. AoE-flee is less of an issue thanks to the Backdraft skill, which sucks fleeing enemies back into range. Air Blast is another handy skill, one that will deflect incoming ranged attacks.

Want to take more of a stationary or support role? Bring on the turrets! Turrets are exactly what you're imagining: "a variety of immobile allied devices that will help defend and control area." Turrets are stationary, but make no mistake: They're no less useful. Turrets can damage, snare, and even heal depending on which type you use. There are five kinds of turrets: Rifle, Thumper, Net, Flame, and Healing.

But wait, there's more! When you deploy a turret, "the slot for that turret toggles into an overcharge skill. The Thumper Turret, for example, is a turret that does AoE damage but can be overcharged to do a big thump attack that knocks down nearby enemies." Finally, turrets can be packed up, moved, and re-deployed as a battle moves and progresses, so you're not left behind.

Since Engineers' smarts don't begin and end with machinery, elixirs are part of the class' lineup. Engineers have a talent for alchemy and a mastery potions of that can heal, buff, and more. Even better, you can fire them into the battlefield or to your allies with a gun. What's not to love?

There's a wild card involved here, though. Alchemy by its very nature can be a little unpredictable, so you'll have to expect the unexpected: "Elixirs all have some random component to them. For example, Elixir X is an unstable formula that when consumed gives the engineer a random Elite power from another profession."

All in all, the Engineer sounds like an incredibly versatile and formidable class -- arguably even more so than some we've seen for Guild Wars 2 previously. Want to see more? Check out the gallery below of the Engineer's arsenal, and keep an eye out for our exclusive interview with ArenaNet on the Engineer!

video at link

[Lucavi]

"Gotta move that gear up!" TF2 just met RPG.