Curse

Sub Frost · Apr 06, 2007, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Rob Purchese from eurogamer.net had an opportunity to talk to game designers Ben Miller and Eric Flannum about Guild Wars and the upcoming Guild Wars 2. Here's some interesting parts taken from that interview:

Quote:

Eurogamer: You've mentioned that Guild Wars 2 will be more "persistent" than the first game, perhaps offering less instanced content. How is exactly is it all going to work?

Ben Miller: So in Guild Wars 2 we want to have a big "persistent world" where you're out running into other people as you play. You could be fighting a dragon attacking a tower for instance, and other players will choose to come to your aid, rather than having you shut off from other players in your own instance of the world. Although some elements of the game will remain instanced - like in Guild Wars - such as dungeons, because it's cool and natural for them to be.

But when the world becomes persistent like that, then obviously you don't want everybody in the same instance of the world. If you've got hundreds of thousands of people online, you don't want them all standing in the same valley and tripping over each other.

So Guild Wars 2 will have different "persistent worlds", different servers so to speak, where you can build up a reputation and run into the same people over and over, naturally making friends by bumping into and adventuring with other people.

But what we can do is unify them with our single unified database from Guild Wars, which will allow people to move from server to server, right across worlds.

Quote:

Eurogamer: In the first game you had the option of filling your group with NPC henchmen if you had gaps in your line-up or simply didn't want to wait for real life players to fill your party. How will this work in Guild Wars 2, will we see the return of the henchmen?

Erik Flannum: So one of the things we're planning on doing is developing a companion system, where every character of every class has - if they want it - a companion they can develop, much like our Heroes. However, these companions don't take up a party slot, they're assumed to be a part of your character. These will allow you to potentially fill in weaknesses that your character may have.

For example, you might have a character who's a mage-type that doesn't have a lot of armour and doesn't want people to get up and really smack him. So he might take the companion that's a very heavily armoured "tank" character, which will allow him to more effectively solo. But it will still allow the mage to feel like he's got that vulnerable low armour thing going on at the same time.

We're also going to offer some sort of buff for players who prefer not to deal with companions, which will make up for the loss of power in not having a companion with them.

Quote:

Eurogamer: Guild Wars only featured one race, the humans, and steadily added more playable classes to the original line-up. What sort of choice will we have in Guild Wars 2?

Erik Flannum: Right now we've got five races announced, and we're not saying exactly how many, but that's not the total amount that we'll have, we're going to have more in the future.

Full Interview @ eurogamer.net

Lonesamurai · Apr 06, 2007, 03:31 PM // 15:31

good interview, but just more of what we already know

Milennin · Apr 06, 2007, 05:33 PM // 17:33

What the hell:

Quote:

So people who like playing as warriors are going to get a lot of variety out of choosing whether they want to be a Norn, a Surrow, or Human warrior - as those are all going to feel very different.

What is a Surrow?!o____O
They said they have announced five races so far, Human, Charr, Sylvari, Azura & Norn, so that means the 'Surrow' is the sixth race...?

Mordakai · Apr 06, 2007, 05:38 PM // 17:38

Surrow Possibilities:

Could have been misquoted.

Could be new race.

Could be an old name for Sylvari or Asura, and the game designers mis-stated it.

Good catch, though!

(Surrow reminds me of Dwarves for some reason... oh, that's why. Dwarrow was Tolkien's original name for Dwarves!)

"The emendation dwarrow is probably Tolkien`s own construction. The English word is related to old Norse dvergr, which, in the other case, would have had the form dvorgr. But this word was never recorded, and the f/g-emendation (English/Norse) dates further back in language history." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(Middle-earth) under Trivia

Demilikos · Apr 06, 2007, 07:25 PM // 19:25

Hmm... good catch indeed.

Inde · Apr 06, 2007, 10:43 PM // 22:43

Could have been typed out wrong. If he were to say "... a Norn, a Asura, or Human Warrior..." I could see how that might have turned into "... a Norn, a Surrow, or Human Warrior...".

Sir Skullcrasher · Apr 06, 2007, 10:48 PM // 22:48

I can't wait to try out the new races.

Sectus · Apr 06, 2007, 11:03 PM // 23:03

That is a pretty good interview which explains in detail about the level, persistent and companion system. Although this just confirms my worries. His explanation of the levelling and persistent world systems are near identical to all other MMORPGs. The only notable difference is that PvP chars will still start at max level. As a player who mostly cares about PvE, this definitely seems like proof for me to ignore GW2.