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Guild Wars: Guild Wars 2: James Phinney Dev Diary
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
James Phinney, lead designer on Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet has written an informative developer diary about the direction they'll be taking on Guild Wars 2.
For the team at ArenaNet, the idea of making Guild Wars 2 started with a single conversation about all the things we wanted to do in the next Guild Wars campaign. Very quickly it became clear that we could move the game forward by leaps and bounds... but only if we were willing to rebuild it from the ground up. Here's what we thought we could accomplish:
- Give players immense freedom of movement. The underlying systems in Guild Wars allowed us to make a very responsive, yet hack-proof game, but they also prevented us from giving players the ability to jump and swim and explore their environment freely. We’ll still keep movement hack-proof, but we want players in Guild Wars 2 to simply enjoy moving around.
- Allow players to encounter each other in common, persistent areas. The instancing of Guild Wars gave us a ton of story-telling and gameplay advantages over our competitors, but instanced areas and persistent areas each have their strengths and weaknesses. We want to give players the best of both worlds.
- Let players choose from multiple playable races (including our own unique addition to the fantasy genre, the Charr). Our team takes a lot of pride in the look and feel of each of the professions in the game, but some of the early technical choices we made for them prevented us from even considering introducing playable races. Now we have a chance to make new choices that give players more options.
Read more here.
Comments
that sounds wicked
These guys have it so right..Guild Wars was a great game...two can only be better...
Cheers!
Sounds awesome...Can't wait to see more on this!
that's kind of disapointing to hear that they haven't already stated a release date.
CURRENTLY PLAYING SHAIYA
two words
F*** YEAH
well cos they barely started, all i remember is there wil be a beta in the start of 2008 so most likley the end of next year they might release it
I can't wait for them to start releasing info on it to see how the game looks like, and plays like.
I'm happy they want to keep insta travel system and cross acount storage.. I miss those things in other mmos.
I really can't wait for some screnshots =P I love how GW looks like and expect GW2 to be the best looking mmo of it's time =P
I am looking forward to playing 2.
SOL, online mmorpg
I hear other people say around 2099 release but I wouldn't be surprised if they release it at the end of 2008. I have a feeling this won't be a disappointment as Anet don't make promises they can't deliver.
Playing now: Cities: Skyline / Ori and the Blind Forest / Banished
Sign me up.. X DAOC player here who would like to see some real pro's do rvr.
I like GW, and I like what I hear about 2
BUT...
I am curious as to how they expect to pay for server bandwidth, and colo things by not charging a monthly fee. With GW it was no big deal as it was not a persistent environment. All of the instances were p-p (I believe) and the only thing they worried about were the gathering areas. To have a persistent world, and give the players the freedom to move around as they wish, you need something more then they have now.
I just hope they don't go the in-game advertising route.
-Raenz-
Apparently through new programming they've found a way to minimize bandwidth needs and as a result can now have a free persistent world
all i know is GW was a great game and GW2 will also be very good, im hoping they add some crafting into the game but i am not too bothered lol...
definatly looking forward t this game my fav MMO of all time IMO
Map travel still blows me away! Beats any other travel scheme in any other game right now. And account-wide storage is awesome, too. Can't imagine that other MMOs don't have something so useful. In City of Heroes (unless you have City of Villains with the base option) you STILL have to transfer influence to an alt through a third party, a.k.a. another player. And if you don't know anyone, you're pretty much taking a huge risk!
Account-wide storage has always been one of those "little things" in GW that has always made the game awesome.
Map travel still blows me away! Beats any other travel scheme in any other game right now. And account-wide storage is awesome, too. Can't imagine that other MMOs don't have something so useful. In City of Heroes (unless you have City of Villains with the base option) you STILL have to transfer influence to an alt through a third party, a.k.a. another player. And if you don't know anyone, you're pretty much taking a huge risk!
Account-wide storage has always been one of those "little things" in GW that has always made the game awesome.
I beg to differ...as long as your the same alignment...EQ2 has a shared storage system. As long as you throw boxes in there, you get WAY more storage space than GW...but money...ah well, that is another story...and that sucks,,,SHARE MY MONEY SOE!
As to map travel...yup, GW beats EVERY games travel timesink...cause that is all it is...otherwise, you would finish these other MMO's in a total of a month...kinda like GW...lol...(ps: no hate..I LOVE GW, and it took me much longer to finish the game the first time through...8 months actually...too my time...lol)
Cheers!
It sounds awesome, ive been pleased with all expansion packs. This company ranks up there with Blizzard when it comes to there marketing and there success in there game and while GW at first got off at a rough start they are doing well with last month reporting 4 million players and that is just remarkable and they arent a Pay to play. They have made there expansion cross into the other games and so on. I have nothing bad to say about GW and i think GW II will be awesome! Iam glad to here that they arent going to start from scratch and that they are going to work with what they have and keep alot of the things like someone mentioned the cross storage usage for your characters.
Thats pretty much everything that keeps me from playing GW. Im now looking forward to trying GW2, thanks for the heads up on this. ^^
~HappyGaming
Most of GW2 sounds pretty good so far.
The greater number of persistent areas has me a bit worried though. "Persistent" can mean more griefing, more crossing paths with morons with idiotic names, more kill stilling, etc. If I want that I can just play WoW. In GW, you can "get away from it all" any time you like. I also think instanced areas allow you to do neat things with the storyline--like the attacks on Tsumei Village in Factions. Instancing makes for a more immersive gaming experience, imho.
I also hope the present "soloability" of Guild Wars will be retained. I absolutely hate the fact that in many, if not most MMOs, you are in effect forced to group with other players to complete an instance or mission. In GW you have henches/heroes. You can find a team of PCs or work with the henches, or a combination of both, whichever you prefer, and still move forward in the game.
What the GW2 Devs do in this regard I will be most interested to see.
I beg to differ with your first point. In the real world people come across your path all the time, so when in instances I personally feel a little unimmersed sometimes. The devs have stated that they in no way plan on removing instances, so there will be plenty of instanced content while the world will be more of a social experience.
They also plan on introducing a sidekick system like the current henchmen. Apparently it closely relates to City of X's sidekick system.
I hope they add more things to do in the game...not just go and do quests I mean like go in a tavern and get drunk and play music or something....fun little details like that is what i'd want to see
There is ONE point here that I just HAVE to call BS on. That last one. Am I the only one that thinks the Charr are basically slightly reskinned Gnolls? Add a little bit of shamanism and bam. Charr.
Definitely interested in seeing how this is going to pan out, I am not expected too much from it but if they can get everything right that they are talking about and keep the good points of GW this MIGHT turn out to be a great game. Then again, when was the last time anyone in the gaming industry got everything right that they said they were going to get right or even just completely delivered what they said they were going to deliver. Well, I guess that is all a matter of opinion though, because right for me is probably not going to be right for everyone or for that matter anyone else. But I guess only time will tell. Anywho, I am patiently awaiting this one as well.
... - ..-. ..-
"I beg to differ with your first point. In the real world people come across your path all the time, so when in instances I personally feel a little unimmersed sometimes. The devs have stated that they in no way plan on removing instances, so there will be plenty of instanced content while the world will be more of a social experience."
I dunno about that, VIOL@ATION. In the real world, people do not have goofy names like "Bonnie Bazooka"; or whatever.
That's hardly what I'd call "immersive". Or running into a group of players rescuing an NPC that you will have to "rescue again" once they are done. Or waiting for a boss to respawn because another guy just killed it.
Things like this, to me, are jarring reminders that this is an MMO rather than an adventure to get sucked into.
Moreover, that kind of persistent world playstyle is available in dozens of other online games. GW was always unique (and in my opinion better) for its instancing design. I hate to see it go. But from what I have read, it's hard to tell yet what the pesistent vs. instanced ratio on the content is actually going to be. But if GW2 ends up looking WoW-ish on this point, I think that would be unfortunate.
Charr here I come. Will I yipe when someone steps on my paw?
Even better graphics?
Some persistent areas while keeping the GW instance feel in other areas?
Sounds great -- almost to good to be true.
I will definitely be keeping my eye on this one.