GW2: What We Know

I have compiled almost 20 recent interviews and articles. This should give you an overview of what we know for certain about Guild Wars 2; no fan speculation is included at all. Read the full article!

Introduction

This is not an essay, and it’s not a wiki entry. All information in this post is sourced from interviews, but it’s a bit like a soup – in the process of throwing everything into the pot I haven’t kept track of where each tiny bit came from, and no way in hell am I going to provide inline citations or exact references. My sources are listed at the very end. If you would like to discuss any points, please feel free to do so in the comments. Enjoy  :)

Quick-jump

• Making a clean break
• The jump from GW1 to GW2
• Subscription-free business model
• Personalized stories
• Tyria: bigger and better
• Explore & combat in exciting new ways
• Customize your Characters
• Play as 5 different races
• No split into racial factions (i.e. Alliance vs. Horde)
• Professions are not restricted to certain races
• Racial differences
• Racial flavour
• Racial abilities
• Advance to new levels
• Crafting, or, how to not have fun
• Solo your way to the top
• Your friends as sidekicks
• Companions
• Persistent and Instanced; best of both worlds
• Dynamic Event System
• Two PvP Game Types
• Take your character to RPG & PvP
• World-versus-World
• Strategy wins the day
• Guild-versus-Guild
• A living, interactive world
• Locations
• Skills – quality, not quantity
• Equipment
• My guns – they’ll get ya!
• GO RED ENGINE
• Music
• Beta testing
• Release Date
• More information
• Novel release
• Sources

Making a clean break

• ArenaNet are building a new Guild Wars from the ground up.
• GW2 will stay true to the original intentions of GW1, and be the game ArenaNet always wanted it to be.
• Much like GW1, GW2 is a very different game to what’s out there, with a different approach to role-playing. It has its genesis in the Magic: The Gathering tradition rather than Dungeons and Dragons.
• GW2 is the ultimate game for Guild Wars players.
• GW2 is a whole new game with different professions and races, new technology, and expanded gameplay.
• Core Philosophies
  • People shouldn’t have to pay a monthly fee to play the game.
  • The player should be able to play a game casually if he wants to and that he doesn’t have to belong to a group or guild to grind his life away in order to be competitive.
  • Storytelling that will make the player feel that he is a part of the Guild Wars world.

The jump from GW1 to GW2

• It is not possible to directly use an original GW character in GW2.
• Original Guild Wars character names will be reserved for your use in Guild Wars 2.
• The Hall of Monuments recognises the accomplishments commemorated by your Guild Wars characters and provides you with unique rewards to showcase those achievements. The exact benefits and functionality of the Hall of Monuments will be revealed closer to the launch of the game.
• Guild Wars will be supported for as long as people are playing it.
• You can keep playing your GW1 players even after GW2 launches.

Subscription-free business model

• Guild Wars 2 will retain the same business model as GW1. That is to say you’ll pay for the game and play it online, but there’s no monthly subscription fee, and we plan to release paid content after launch.
• As soon as the game is available, ArenaNet will begin working on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, they don’t know yet.

Personalized stories

There will be a focus on storytelling, with personalised, unique experiences for players based on choices made along the path, rather than solely based on profession or race. This will allow much more growth of the player character.

Tyria: bigger and better

The world is gigantic, dwarfing Tyria as we know it. It contains much more playable space, and is more densely packed with interesting things to do and see. You will be able to travel much longer between zone boundaries.

Explore & combat in exciting new ways

Swim to the dark depths of Orr and jump to your heart’s content in the new, living world of Guild Wars 2.

• Players can now jump and swim.
• Players are not able to fly.
• Underwater exploration will be easy and accessible for all players; it won’t be hostile environment seen in many other games. A long-lasting and easily-acquired consumable item allows players to breathe underwater, so you won’t have to worry about drowning.
• Underwater areas make a fun change of pace, and encourage players to explore. Almost all dungeons and explorable areas have underwater zones, and some have a significant amount of underwater exploration. These zones open up exciting new possibilities and greatly expand the explorable areas in GW2.
• There are underwater cities, ruins, caverns, new enemies, and friendly races.
• Freedom of movement makes combat more dynamic and visually engaging, and encourages exploration of the new, living world.

Customize your Characters

• Multiple characters on one account.
• Create, customise, and play a variety of non-human races.
• Every Asura fan will find a face that they would be proud to call their own.

Play as 5 different races

There are 5 playable races in the initial release, all of which have male/female variants:

• Human
• Charr
• Norn
• Asura
• Sylvari

No split into racial factions (i.e. Alliance vs. Horde)

• There is no good-versus-evil or Alliance/Horde fracture in the player base; you will not be fighting players of other races (except in consensual PvP).
• Players can play together regardless of which character race they choose.
• Guilds will be multi-racial.

Professions are not restricted to certain races

There are no restrictions on professions based on race. An Asura warrior will be just as effective as a Norn warrior.

Racial differences

• Different starting areas
  There are racial starting areas. For example, Humans start in Divinity’s Reach, and Asura start in Rata Sum.
• Personal stories
  There will be a slightly different story for each race. At the beginning races will be fighting alone, and players will face the conflicts of their race. Later the player will unite the races to fight the Elder Dragons threatening the world.

Racial flavour

Each race has a number of factors that will change their personal story, and are very relevant to the character, although no powers are granted:

• Sylvari: Season of birth
• Human: Racial heritage
• Norn: Animal totem of choice
• Charr: Legion affiliation
• Asura: College of magical thought

Racial abilities

Each race has special skills, including a primary ability that distinguishes it from all other races, such as Norn shapeshifting. These abilities have a large impact on how a character plays and feels.

• Norn can shapeshift into mighty bestial forms, such as a bear, for a huge boost in combat. Another form is the Raven. These are more like half-Norn/half-animal forms. The Kodan (polar bears in the trailer) are not Norn, and cannot shapeshift.
• Charr have war machines, and consider the use of magic to be a sign of weakness.
• Asura have powerful golems to fight for them.
• Sylvari share a common dream and an empathic sense, which will have an impact on the game for players.

Advance to new levels

• There is a maximum level, and it is higher than level 20.
• You won’t be forced into grind-based gameplay to reach the level cap.
• GW2 will have the kind of extensive character advancement appropriate to a persistent-world RPG.

Crafting, or, how to not have fun

There will be crafting, as well as a few other things that are going to provide players with things to do besides combat.

Solo your way to the top

• The game will be solo-able; that is, you will be able to play Guild Wars 2 on your own.
• You will be able to advance to the maximum level without ever joining a group if you so desire. Most content will be designed in a solo-friendly way, though often with mechanisms for scaling up in difficulty when more players are involved.
• Content is being designed so that it scales in difficulty. Some areas will still require many players to band together.

Your friends as sidekicks

• Play together with your friends, even if they are at a much higher (or lower) level.
• This sidekick system is similar to that used in City of Heroes.

Companions

• This is a very active area of development; don’t assume that articles published in 2007 are still accurate.
• Comparable to “Heroes” in GW1, except that a companion doesn’t take up a party slot, which means that there’s more room for real players.
• GW2 won’t have the same Hero or Henchman systems that were in GW1.
• Some heroic characters will interact with the player. NPC heroes are a huge part of the player’s story.

Persistent and Instanced; best of both worlds

• Find existing friends and make new ones in a persistent, fully-populated world, more like those in conventional MMOs. Persistent areas are a part of the world where everybody gets to come together and share gamespace.
• Guild Wars 2 will have different servers (known as “Worlds”) like many other games.
• Easily transfer between servers.
• Your story will take place through a combination of instanced and persistent areas. Be prepared for some things, especially with narrative, that you haven’t seen before in an MMO.
• Instancing is used for quests, dungeons, and raids – especially high-end adventuring.
• The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online game.
• Players are not going to be player-killing you as you’re trying to complete a quest; PvP has always been consensual in Guild Wars.

Dynamic Event System

• Events are group-orientated activities. They encourage the player to explore the world, because you never quite know what you’re going to see.
• You might start walking along a road you’ve walked a hundred times, and suddenly there’s a caravan travelling along that road that you may not have seen, and you can go help that caravan out.
• For example, if players raid a centaur camp and clear out the centaurs, then there won’t be a centaur attack on the garrison. But if the players let the centaur population get out of control, then the centaurs will become emboldened and start doing raids.
  NPCs at the garrison react to a centaur column approaching, blasting horns to alert players, shutting the gates and ordering archers onto the walls. The centaurs batter at the gates with axes while clearing defending archers from the walls. They fire catapults overhead. If you win, you are poised to launch a counterattack on the trading post where the centaurs came from.
  If you fail, centaurs overtake the garrison, killing the merchants, then they’ll hold it as a centaur garrison until the players can put together an attack force and successfully reclaim it. Some NPC soldiers will pour in from the nearby town and attempt to retake the fortress. Once it is reclaimed, it becomes a human garrison again, and the NPCs move back in.
• The event system is a feature that had its beginnings in the unreleased campaign, Guild Wars: Utopia.
• Something that no-one else has done before in a game.
• The world will literally be changing around you as you’re playing.
• The traditional RPG/MMO quest system has been completely overhauled; you won’t see a single exclamation mark floating above character’s heads.
• Not schedule-driven, and not on a fixed schedule. Events respond to what players are doing in the world.
• Players are never punished for playing the game, killing monsters, or winning events. There’s nothing you can get from losing to centaurs that you can’t get by winning.
• Designed to give players shared goals, so they should always feel that working together on a problem is the best option available to them.
• All over the world there will be something happening!

Two PvP Game Types

There are two different modes of PvP:

• World-versus-World
• Team-versus-Team

This split is the best way to accommodate the broadest range of players, making PvP more approachable for casual players, and more of an e-sport for the hard core. Combat is always consensual; there will be no “player-killing”.

In GW1, the 15 or so game types meant that every skill balance had a ripple effect. In GW2, the number of game types has been kept to a manageable level, enabling more effective skill balances to make everybody happy.

Take your character to RPG & PvP

The RPG/PvP-only character types from Guild Wars 1 has been simplified. You now have only one type of character, who is able to play both roleplaying and PvP content with no disadvantage.

World-versus-World

• The persistent world means that there are servers, called “Worlds”. An area known as “the Mists” is a large, persistent area shared by multiple worlds.
• Compete against players from different Worlds.
• Take control of resources that benefit your entire World.
• Don’t worry about finding a team – you’re always on the same team as everyone else in your World. You’ll find teams of 200, 300 and beyond; the more the merrier.
• It’s not race-versus-race.
• It’s casual PvP that is easy to engage in.
• Bring along your PvE characters
• Play with characters and equipment gained in PvE.
• Gain experience and levels by competing.
• Participants will not have automatic access to the same skills and gear.

Strategy wins the day

• Fight strategically to control more and more of the map.
• Take on different roles:
  • Conquer stone mines, which will then deliver stone by caravan to your siege catapults.
  • Attack and cut off caravans of the enemy.
  • Operate as a scout and inform the rest of hostile movement.
  • Man the watchtowers and defend the castle.
  • Run up to a lost player and teach him a lesson.

Guild-versus-Guild

Join guilds and engage in Guild-versus-Guild (GvG) combat – high-end, team-on-team, ultra-competitive, skill-based PvP.

• Level playing field
  Character properties, including abilities and equipment, are adjusted so that all players are the same power level and have access to the same skills and equipment.
• Skill-based
  Completely open from the beginning, granting every player access to every skill and item in the game. It will be a player’s skill in making and executing a character build that wins the day.

A living, interactive world

• Day / Night cycle
  Day and night will not run on a 24-hour cycle. Many things, including events, cue off the day and night cycle.
• Weather effects
  Weather effects will definitely play a part in making the world feel interactive and alive.

Locations

• Set in Tyria, with some familiar locales.
• Lion’s Arch is no longer a part of Kryta, and is no longer beholden to the human throne.
• Ascalon has been conquered by, and is now homeland of, the Charr.
• The Maguuma forests are populated by the Sylvari.
• Elona and Cantha are lost, unreachable. They will not be explorable in the initial release.
• The nation of Kryta, led by its Queen Jennah, stands as a bastion of human civilisation. Their last great city, Divinity’s Reach, shelters humanity from total destruction.
• The Norn have settled in the Shiverpeaks. Their greatest settlement is Hoelbrak.
• One of the key features is the Asura gates, which are portals that players can use to get from place to place. These link different areas of Tyria together and make map travel possible.

Skills – quality, not quantity

• Takes the unique skill deck system of GW1 and makes it more comprehensible, with a focus on quality of skills instead of quantity.
• Less skills, but more diversity.
• It has the same feel of the Guild Wars skill system.
• Jumping will not have an effect on a skill.
• The Charr we see at the end of the trailer is a member of the Flame Legion and is using a skill that players don’t have access to. That being said, players will have access to skills that are just as flashy as the one he’s using.

Equipment

• Equipment is a lot more important in Guild Wars 2.
• You will be able to find a lot of cool items that will help with character development.

My guns – they’ll get ya!

• In the 250 years since GW1, magical and physical technology has advanced.
• Charr lead the revolution of physical technology – guns, explosives and war machines.
• Some professions use rifles and pistols; think old-fashioned muskets rather than machine guns; but with a unique twist.

GO RED ENGINE

A radically revamped engine has been developed, with new advancements and additions including:

• Persistent world
• Free-form movement and exploration
• Day/night cycles
• Cutting-edge support for dungeons and interior environments
• Numerous graphical advancements including support for more detailed environments and models, better lighting and shadows, new animation and effects systems
• New audio and cinematic engines
• More flexible combat and skill-casting system
• New terrain system
• Fully 3D instead of 2.5-D
• Runs Havoc on the client and server; there are destructible items, objects, waterfalls that distort vision, and more.
• Runs great on mainstream/mid-range gaming PCs, just like the original Guild Wars does. Beauty is created through the expressiveness of their art, not simply by pushing more polygons than competitors.
• The whole design/development tool chain has been rebuilt, allowing the faster production of higher-quality content.
• The default camera position will be closer to the character.

Music

Jeremy Soule will be providing music again.

Beta testing

• Unlike the original Guild Wars, GW2 won’t be going into beta-testing until much nearer its release.
• They want players to be absolutely blown away by the game the first time they experience it.

Release Date

• No release date has been announced.
• Some fans are predicting a release date around late 2010 to early 2011.

More information

• Late 2009: Lore and races
• Early 2010: Professions, level caps, and gameplay

Novel release

The first book will be published in the first half of 2010.

Sources

• “The Future of Tyria: An Exclusive Guild Wars 2 Interview” – Ten Ton Hammer – 2009-09-08
  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74119
• “Guild Wars 2 Exclusive: A Few Questions with Mike O’Brien” – Pause.com – 2009-08-21
  http://www.pause.com/index.php/guild-wars-2-exclusive-a-few-questions-with-mike-obrien
• “Guild Wars 2 Preview” – Eurogamer.com – 2009-08-20
  http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/guild-wars-2-preview_4
• “GC 2009: Guild Wars 2 – First Details and Q&A” – IGN.com – 2009-08-20
  http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1015971p1.html
• Guild Wars 2 Official Site – 2009-11-07
  http://www.guildwars2.com
• “ArenaNet Interview” (1) – Onlinewelten – 2009-10-06
  http://www.onlinewelten.com/games/articles/interviews/4633-guild-wars-2-arenanet-im-interview-teil-1/
• “ArenaNet Interview” (2) – Onlinewelten – 2009-10-09
  http://www.onlinewelten.com/games/articles/interviews/4666-guild-wars-2-arenanet-im-interview-teil-2/
• “Guild Wars 2 Features Preview, Races, PvE, PvP, and More…” – MMOSite – 2009-10-13 – MOSTLY USELESS!
  http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-10-13/20091013033028808,1.shtml
• “Guild Wars 2 Interview” – Kill Ten Rats – 2009-09-02
  http://www.killtenrats.com/2009/09/02/guild-wars-2-interview
• PCGameplay (Dutch) – Translated by Naoroji at GW2Guru – 2009-10-05
  http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/pcgameplay-article-guildwars-2-t1447.html
• Video Interview with Colin Johannsen – Game Zombie – 2009-10-01
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWkbUx5dhdM
• An exclusive interview for GW2 – Mondes Persistants – Translated by Dutch Sunshine at GW2Guru – 2009-09-29
  http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/30-minutes-de-guild-wars-t1388.html
  http://gw2.mondespersistants.com/?article=25
• “Guild Wars 2: The Status Quo” – PCGames  (German) – Translated by Guild Wars Wiki community – 2008-07-07
  http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_The_Status_Quo
  http://www.pcgames.de/aid,650247/Guild-Wars-2-Der-Status-Quo-10-Fakten-auf-einen-Blick-Interview/PC/Vorschau/
• “Guild Wars Evolution: An Interview with ArenaNet” – ZAM – 2009-09-19
  http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=19763
• “Guild Wars Interview” – Kill Ten Rats – 2009-09-17
  http://www.killtenrats.com/2009/09/17/guild-wars-interview
• “Massively’s Interview with ArenaNet: Let’s talk Guild Wars 2″ – Massively – 2009-09-17
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/17/massivelys-interview-with-arenanet-lets-talk-guild-wars-2/
• “Guild Wars 2: Preview Interview” – MMORPG – 2009-09-14
  http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?game=473&feature=3504&bhcp=1&page=1
• “PAX 09: Guild Wars 2 Revealed” – IGN – 2009-09-08
  http://pc.ign.com/articles/102/1022360p1.html
• “A Letter to Our Fans” – Guild Wars Official Site
  http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/letter_to_our_fans.php