Guild Wars 2 Interview

“Playing with friends” appears to have been the guiding principle behind ArenaNet’s design decisions for Guild Wars 2, at least judging by this short interview from PC Gamer with lead game designer Eric Flannum, which tackles subjects such as the mechanics behind server switching. Here’s a snippet:

PCG: It’s really kind of surprising that most MMOs make it so difficult to play with your friends. Do you think every MMO can, and should, implement these sorts of features?

EF: Our guesting system is something that’s unique to the way we set up our servers, so I’m not certain how other MMOs would be able to do the same things that we do. That being said, I would personally love to see more MMOs play around with different ways of structuring servers.

PCG: So I can get to my friend’s server. That’s great. But what if we’re different levels? How will rewards work when high-level players are grouping with low-level characters in low-level areas?

EF: High level characters who are playing in low level areas still receive rewards appropriate to their (real) level. The rate at which they gain these rewards is lower in the lower level area than if they’d been playing in an area that was equal to their own level. This reward system works on a sliding scale so that extreme level differences are much less efficient than slight level differences. For example, a level 80 player going to a level 10 area would earn rewards less efficiently than a level 40 player going to that same area. We are always tweaking this number but we generally want to find a sweet spot where players feel rewarded without it being open to exploit.