Guild Wars 2 Interview

MMORPG.com managed to corner ArenaNet’s Eric Flannum, Daniel Jennings, Braeden Shosa, Jon Peters, and Isaiah Cartwright for an exclusive interview about Guild Wars 2. Topics include the sequel’s revised combat system, new races, choices & consequences, and more:

MMORPG.com: What is the biggest lesson you learned from Guild Wars that you are bringing to the sequel?

Daniel Jennings – Programmer: Because changing builds/skillbars in Guild Wars is so easy, players have been able to come up with some pretty crazy skill combinations that we hadn’t really thought of. The problem with these combinations, though, is that the main result is a stack of enchantments and slightly higher damage numbers coming from skills. With Guild Wars 2, we’re trying to not only make it easier to discover these cooperative skill mechanics, but also visually show you what’s going on. The canonical example of this is a player firing an arrow through a fire wall; the arrow catches fire and burns its target when it hits. It’s a mechanic that makes the game cooler, but also rewards players for trying different skill combinations together in a way that makes sense.

Braeden Shosa – Programmer: I think the biggest lesson I learned from Guild Wars is that a ?robust social platform is tantamount to our success and our players’ enjoyment of our games. Gamers socialize today in entirely new ways, and modern games should recognize that friendships persist even after players logs off. We recognize this at ArenaNet, and I’m proud to ?be building GW2 from the ground up to be the ultimate social gaming experience.

Jon Peters – Game Designer: Skills should be simpler. Simpler skills are like building blocks instead of puzzle pieces. It is a lot easier to build something with blocks and you can make a lot more varied and unexpected stuff.

Isaiah Cartwright – Game Designer: PvE and PvP take different things to make them awesome. We tried to smash them together at first in Guild Wars and it really made things hard for us. In Guild Wars 2 we’ve set up a frame work that will make things a lot easier for us this time around and I think both areas of the game are greatly improved as a result.