Guild Wars 2 Interview

MMORPG.com caught up with Guild Wars 2 lead designer Eric Flannum, world designer Ree Soesbee, and environment art lead Dave Beetlestone for a discussion about the sequel’s five playable races, instancing usage, new locales, and more.

The biggest question on everyone’s mind is how will Guild Wars 2 be different from Guild Wars?

Eric Flannum: Almost too many things to mention! Most if not all of the same philosophies behind the design of Guild Wars 1 were maintained for Guild Wars 2. However, once you take into account the major differences between the two games and start applying those philosophies, things tend to diverge quite a bit. The biggest differences include a fully persistent world, fully 3D engine, a less complex combat system with fewer overall skills, multiple playable races, and separate world servers. Each of these differences has an enormous impact on every decision we make from there.

One example of this was how the decision to have multiple playable races impacted the way we created armor for the game. In Guild Wars 1, every single profession had armor and animations that were specific to that profession. Multiplying the number of professions with the number of races in the game made it next to impossible for us to maintain the same armor system in Guild Wars 2. Because of this, we went to a much simpler armor system where professions use light, medium, or heavy armor. This has allowed us to provide each profession with a lot more diversity in what they can choose to wear. For example, in the past Rangers had to wear armor that tended to have a long coat and mask. They can still choose to wear an outfit that looks like that, but they now also have a much greater diversity of appearances to choose from.