Guild Wars 2

It seems that any more, "endgame" is the buzzword whispered by players as they peruse upcoming MMOs…or maybe it's loudly crowed from the rooftops. In his weekly Guild Wars 2 column, MMORPG.com's David North takes a look at the endgame and the amount of content that Guild Wars 2 will feature. Read on!

Ah yes, the endgame. The time when the player has completed the story line of the game and now gets to have some fun, whether it’s finding treasures, or just seeking out personal glory for some bragging rights. Every MMO has an endgame, some more than others, and that is exactly what I would like to talk about today. What can we expect from ArenaNet in terms of endgame?

Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: The End is Only the Beginning.

The Arena.Net team has posted a collaborative effort in the latest Guild Wars 2 blog. Several team members chime in on how the Battle of Kyhlo was designed from a lore perspective, level design, programming, voice acting and more. It's a terrific look at how intricate the design of the games we love truly is.

So then we put it all together and make it hawt! We play the map every day, looking for things that may be frustrating for players. Are we able to navigate the map well? Do we get lost anywhere? Are there distinct and interesting spaces around the map that play differently from one another? And then we iterate, anywhere and everywhere.

While we’re doing this, we also set up play sessions so that we can see how other people in the company respond to the map. We ask people from all disciplines to play in what we call “all calls.” Everyone from the company jumps in, and we get feedback from all departments. We then take that information and try to get it to the correct person who can fix the problem. We do this over, and over, and over, and over, iterating on any issues that arise.

Read the full blog post on More >

ArenaNet's Jon Peters has just posted a developer blog over at Guild Wars 2's official site detailing some of the many ways in which their game will be continuing the tradition of competitive gameplay that Guild Wars made so popular. 

For Guild Wars 2, we wanted to organize the PvP formats more clearly and simply. For pickup play, we've created a single place where all pickup players can play. It's a server browser where "hot join" games are constantly running. We've also created a single, central place for competitive play in the form of automatic tournaments. These two play styles—pickup and competitive—share a lot of gameplay similarities, which allows players to easily transition from casual to more organized play. This is important, because both pickup and tournament play are independent of "world" choice. In other words, all Guild Wars 2 PvP players are in the same PvP games and are not segregated.

Read the rest of Jon Peters' look at Guild Wars 2's PVP.

In a new blog post on the Guild Wars 2 site, ArenaNet's Jon Peters talks about the new Gamescom demo and what players may find while trying it out. Specifically, Peters outlines changes made to several systems in the game since the last demo. Skills no longer cost energy. Skills are used to help players 'learn the game'. All races are now playable. Customization has undergone a change and much much more.

The acquisition of skills is changing. Why? Because it wasn’t helping teach people the game, it didn’t fit with how skills actually worked, and it didn’t carry over the fun collection element that made the original Guild Wars unique.

A weapon’s skills are now learned by fighting with that weapon. Because weapon skills are tied to weapon use, there is no reason to visit a trainer and make choices about which ones to unlock. Instead, it makes more sense to learn how to use the weapon by, you know, actually using it.

Read more on the Guild Wars 2 blog.

The Guild Wars 2 site continues Sylvari Week with a look at "Writing the Sylvari". As with other races profiled on the official blog, the text comes complete with the sounds of Sylvari life as well. The post takes readers through the creative process of creating Sylvari society and the keystones of Sylvari culture.

Sylvari arrive in the world fully grown. They emerge from pods that grow on the Pale Tree: a magical, sentient tree with its roots deep in Tyria and its branches in the Dream. They leave the Dream—a mystical place where sylvari memories are collected—and incubate in their pods, then emerge into the world. They bring with them a spectator’s understanding of how the world works, having witnessed aspects of it while in the Dream. Their first few days in the world are critical, and they’re met by mentors and other newly awakened who help them find their way.

Read more about writing the Sylvari on the Guild Wars 2 blog.