Eric Flannum on Races & Professions

ArenaNet’s Martin Kerstein has passed us information from Eric Flannum, Lead Designer for Guild Wars 2, about the criteria for new races and professions:

There are a lot of decisions that we have to make when we add new races and professions to the game. The evaluation process goes something like this for races:

Is the race visually and culturally interesting (are they cool enough to be a playable race)?

Do they provide us with a different sort of archetype that is currently not in the game?

How difficult would it be to implement the new race from an art/animation standpoint?

Can we write a compelling story for them? What is the lore impact on making them playable?

Does the new race provide us with the opportunity to make cool skills and abilities?

For professions, the evaluation process would be very similar but in a slightly different order of importance:

Does it provide us with a different sort of archetype that is currently not in the game?

Does the profession provide us with the opportunity to make cool skills and abilities?

Will those skills and abilities work well with existing professions, or will they unbalance things?

How difficult would it be to implement from an art/animation standpoint?

How do they fit into the lore of the game?

With professions, we’re much more concerned with how they interact with the current balance and whether they provide a different play experience. With races, their overall look and feel is generally the most important thing.Of course, this is because while race does have some impact on how a character performs in combat, it’s nowhere near as important as profession in that regard. Likewise, a character’s personal story is impacted greatly by race and only very minimally by profession.