Guild Wars 2 Catch All

An interview over here - http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/g...

One of the responses I found most interesting:

Strategy Informer: Graphically the game looks incredible but will it require high system requirements as a result?

Eric Flannum: Our philosophy in the original game which has stayed true in Guild Wars 2 is that we want the game to be accessible to as many people as possible so we’ve always tended to have pretty generous system requirements. We know what they’re generally going to be but we haven’t released them yet.

The one thing I will say is that to ensure the game always in a playable state is that we tend to develop on low end machines. We’re having a hard time finding the video card we’re developing on in stores now, so the minimum video card requirements are very low.

The videos we shoot are on pretty good systems so the game scales well, but it’s very playable on low end machines.

That is an interesting tidbit. Good to see them aiming for the lower spec machines. I hope it's also bandwidth light.

Beta this year and 2012 launch looking likely.

The Guild Wars 2 beta will begin in the second half of 2011, NCsoft has announced.

During a conference call, chief financial officer Jaeho Lee also heavily hinted at a 2012 release for the game.

"Starting from year 2012, we believe substantial growth will be driven by new blockbuster titles like [Blade & Soul] and Guild Wars 2," announced Lee to investors.

"Also, Guild Wars 2 will go into beta testing stage in the second half of this year," he added.

And the first part of an interview over at RPS.

From the eurogamer comments, a link to http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/... - which has a comment by an ArenaNet CM.

Regina Buenaobra wrote:

All right, everyone. Seems that this investor call got a few people worked up, so I wanted to reiterate information about beta and the business model.

Our release date remains "When it's done" and our current beta timing is still closed alpha/beta this year, with public beta and release to be determined based upon feedback from closed alpha/beta.

The business model remains subscription-free (buy the game, no monthly fees) with microtransactions, which you have long known about. Other games charge a subscription fee to provide ongoing game content. As you know from Rick's posts on the forums, microstransactions in Guild Wars 2 are going to help sustain the game and provide you with ongoing game content.

So, really, the investor call revealed nothing new to fans who have been following the game closely. For investors, the call was informational and provided status updates for them. Unlike fans, investors don't constantly hit F5 on the blog or the Guild Wars 2 website to track every single minute detail.

poop

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Beta this year and 2012 launch looking likely.

The Guild Wars 2 beta will begin in the second half of 2011, NCsoft has announced.

During a conference call, chief financial officer Jaeho Lee also heavily hinted at a 2012 release for the game.

"Starting from year 2012, we believe substantial growth will be driven by new blockbuster titles like [Blade & Soul] and Guild Wars 2," announced Lee to investors.

"Also, Guild Wars 2 will go into beta testing stage in the second half of this year," he added.

And the first part of an interview over at RPS.

I keep trying to console myself that this means more time to play Skyrim and Bioware's TOR. I just hope this game doesn't have to go up against Diablo 3. I'm a huge Anet fanboy but I'm also realistic that Blizzard pretty much crushes everyone else. And like it or not these two games will be in competition as the top "free to play" online rpg.

I'm pretty sure they've said they don't care about competition, they're just making the best game they can. To a certain extent, they're right, you can't plan your every move based on what some other studio may or may not be doing.

Scratched wrote:

I'm pretty sure they've said they don't care about competition, they're just making the best game they can. To a certain extent, they're right, you can't plan your every move based on what some other studio may or may not be doing.

While Diablo 3 is undoubtedly the 800 pound gorilla I thing A.Net has a healthy attitude here. The original game was a slow burn, I'm sure they realise that if they launch in the teeth of Diablo 3 then that will slow their launch somewhat, but not really affect them in the long run. I think they will launch when it's ready and say, 'Screw Blizzard.'

Personally I don't care about Diablo, so I'll be all over GW2 at launch.

Official link. Engineer. As if there was any doubt, Guild Wars is definitely going steampunk.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Official link. Engineer. As if there was any doubt, Guild Wars is definitely going steampunk.

Engineer it is.

I hope they give you 8 character slots, because I want to play all of them.

I hope they give you 20 character slots =P

I am so there on the engineer. Love it 100%

I would love to have a seperate rifle, dual gun, and gun/shield engineer. (and any of the other possible weapon combos)

The only thing I know for sure is that my first character will be a Charr.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

The only thing I know for sure is that my first character will be a Charr.

Q F T

No standalone new campaigns (follow up)- i.e. Nothing like Factions/Nightfall, what they'll have is the base game plus expansion campaigns like EotN, which sounds fine by me. They say this means they're not duplicating the same type of content endlessly, such as a tutorial for each campaign. I hope they keep it so it's a challenging max/high level campaign, but don't raise the cap WoW-style to move where the endgame is, which matters less in GW/GW2, but still.

and The mostly harmless Quaggan

That makes sense. The campaign model was pretty cool, but by Nightfall they had clearly gone as far as they could. Adding Elonia and Cantha back in via more high level content makes more sense.

Underwater combat = teh awesome!

I like that they say there's an in-between land and water when you don't have skills, which hopefully means you don't get combat between the two. No sniping mobs that can't swim, and no running away and glitching water mobs is what it sounds like to me.

The dev blog from the designer of water combat addresses this. He describes a scenario where you can jump off a cliff into the water to escape land enemies. However, you will not be able to attack back. And while on top of the water, you will be able to be attacked by underwater creatures and not attack back until you dive under water.

Seems really cool!

The dungeon stuff sounds great too, less about the trinity, more about just working together with the group.

I'm not sure I like the part about no dungeons til level 35, though. If dungeon content is fun, then it's nice to be able to participate early and often. Blackburrow, Crushbone, Befallen, The Deadmines, Wailing Caverns; they were iconic in their respective games. Would be a shame not to have something comparable in GW2. Oh well.

I guess that might depend on the skills, they might assume a certain threshold of skills to be able to do a dungeon, and with the sidekick system where levels can be adjusted those dungeons can be run by higher level players without having to mess around with the content to account for the extra skills.

GW2's levelling curve is flat as well, and I assume after a certain point of proficiency levels matter less and you can just do content, and beat it on the merits of player skill rather than stats.

Gamepro[/url]]Guild Wars 2 tracks your character’s most recent 100 interactions with NPCs according to whether you acted out of charisma, dignity, or ferocity. Whichever trait wins out determines your personality. The more you lean towards one trait, the more your personality advances, and the more you’ll unlock specific options for future interaction. A consistently ferocious character will progress from scoundrel, to broodish, to barbaric, until he can eventually just punch someone as a special dialogue option.

:p

Necromancy time!

Looking at this and this, why do all of NC Soft's MMOs look the same? Especially the first video might just be a Sorceress blasting through a newly added zone in Aion.

Couldn't you say the same about most fantasy third person camera games? Gameplay footage is always going to be lots of spell effects going off with no context. That's kind of why I want a beta, so I can actually see how it plays.

The second GW2 prelude event has started: Winds of Change

Tagging for greatness.