How long does an asura live? We got some hints on GW:EN that an asura could live for centuries...

Ree Soesbee: Asura live for slightly longer than a human – perhaps 5-10% longer (an exceptional lifespan for an asura might be 120 years). They do not live for centuries – but asura inventions often continue to operate long after the original architect has become no more than a facet in the Eternal Alchemy.

Is Vekk still alive?

Ree Soesbee: In GW2? No, I’m afraid not. But as to what happened to him in the end… well, let’s just say physics choked back.

While there are guns in GW2, will characters still have the choice of keeping the primitive weapons like bows?

Eric: Weapon use in Guild Wars 2 is restricted by profession.  There are indeed professions that use guns, bows, or both, as well as some professions that can use neither. If a player wants to wield a bow they will certainly have multiple professions to choose from.

What have you learned from GW1 in terms of management of an online community and about how to structure a game in general?

Eric Flannum: After releasing three full games and an expansion, we’ve learned a lot about community management and game structure. For example, one of the things that seemed like a great idea to us when we first started making GW1 was the unified server for all players. On the surface this seems preferable since it allows people the greatest amount of flexibility when playing with their friends. In practice it means that player community is much harder to build. When playing in a world with hundreds of thousands of players you hardly ever encounter the same people on a regular basis (our heavy use of instancing also had a huge effect on this). Some players also use the large number of players as an excuse to act in a rude manner, knowing that they can’t really gain a negative reputation or ever have to be held accountable by the community for their actions. Of course, breaking things into different servers isn’t magically going to make these issues go away or solve all of our problems, but online games are ultimately all about player communities.  Anything we can do to foster healthy and active player communities is a big win for us.

Do you intend to make PvP a strong enough game on its own for it to be viewed as a competitive game (E-sport)?

Jon Peters: We’re building our PvP from the ground up as a separate experience. Players will take a character to PvP to retain their name, race, and profession. After that, they will be limited by skill alone. After that, we’ve taken a lot of cues from the first-person shooter genre, to make Guild Wars 2 feel more like an E-sport. Public games will be hot-joinable. We will track player statistics, generate rankings to let players see how they compare to their peers, and hold a variety of tournaments, both large and small, to let the most competitive players duke it out for the bragging rights to be called the best Guild Wars 2 players in the world.

The word "Guild" in the Guild Wars franchise has always suggested the central role guilds would play in the game. As you have stated, Guild Wars 2 will in many ways be improvements to what you wished you could have done in GW1. In this regard, could you tell us what lessons you have learned from GW1? How will guild-related features be different from GW1?

Curtis Johnson: When we made GW1 we knew that guilds and community were essential parts of the online role play experience, so we made it easy to start a guild very early in the game and for players to keep those relationships going by including all their characters in the same guilds. 

For Guild Wars 2 we’re keeping that same focus on early connections. We’re making it easy to keep all your characters in one guild, but for GW2 we decided that more friends means more fun, so it will be possible to have different characters in different guilds.  We also wanted to give guilds more common purpose, so we’re including guild achievements, and placement in the world including guilds holding keeps in World vs World. We also want to make it easier to stay connected with your guild mates, so we’re introducing features like a guild calendar to make meeting and coordinating across time zones easier, and participating in guild chat from any web browser so you can stay in touch even when you can’t play.

If you're interested in Guild Wars and GuildWars 2, make sure you drop by the IncGamers Guild Wars channel for all the latest news and information on the games and join in the community discussion. The site has just re-launched so do pop by.

Comment

Add a comment using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google or OpenID accounts.
blog comments powered by Disqus