Guild Wars Interview

We tracked down the guys at ArenaNet to talk about their upcoming MMORPG (with no monthly fee!), Guild Wars. Here are the questions we asked and the answers we received:

GB: First of all, how is Guild Wars coming along? Can you give us a quick summary of where you stand in the development cycle?

ArenaNet: Guild Wars is progressing really well! In the early days, we were very focused on the technical aspects of the game because we had to start by building the global gaming network to support the game. At the same time, we were also creating our 3D engine and toolsets. Now that the infrastructure is complete, we’re adding a ton of new content on a regular basis, and will continue to do so until ship.

GB: What would you say is your primary design goal with Guild Wars?

ArenaNet: Our primary goal is to create an online RPG that supports truly meaningful competitive gameplay. We are making a role playing game that offers you a full range of gaming choices: competitive play in one-on-one duels, team play and in massive group battles; cooperative play; and single player gaming. We plan to offer this on a global network that will allow true world championships, and most importantly, we intend to provide all this without a monthly fee.

GB: Since the game will stream updates to a player’s client instantly, how do you intend to test some of the updates before they go live?

ArenaNet: We update on the fly, working with live builds, every day. This has been our internal procedure since Day One, and we have been involving the public in testing this process since early in 2002. You see, changes and updates and additions to Guild Wars are developed by the design team, and are then uploaded to the live server. We avoid (patch paralysis) with a process that is almost organic, that makes the fixes immediate and worldwide. We don’t have a separate (test server.) This allows us to avoid time lost in waiting for the next evolution of the game. It also helps us prevent getting reports about a game build that has already been replaced.

Streaming our content means that the players have the most recent and best build of the game whenever they play. What is changed within the game world is live to all of us the design team and the alpha testers alike and this process works! We are currently producing an average of five live game updates a day in the alpha test, and updates in the final game will be streamed live as well. Eventually, during the beta and after release, we’ll have a (sandbox) where we send the updates to be play-tested for a short period to verify them. But our updates will go live in a very short period of time rather than weeks or months.

GB: Your website states that there will be no monthly charge to North American players. How do you plan on continually updating the game with new content without having a steady stream of income?

ArenaNet: We founded this company to create online role playing games, and we’ve designed Guild Wars around network technology that is very efficient in terms of bandwidth and hardware utilization. In addition to lower operating cost, we believe that we can sell a lot more copies of Guild Wars by not charging a monthly fee. We believe that not charging monthly fees allows larger communities of gamers to enjoy the online role playing game experience. The money earned from game sales will be turned right back to support the game and to develop the expansions. And because we will keep developing expansion packs for Guild Wars, we are highly motivated to keep our customers happy and keep them coming back for more. If they like what they’ve experienced, they will want to buy an expansion pack when it comes along.

Eight or ten years ago, no one believed that you could offer a gaming network for free, but Battle.net proved that you could offer a free gaming network and remain financially successful. Our new goal is to prove that you can offer an excellent online game with full support without a monthly subscription fee.

GB: Tell us how the game allows for skill experimentation but doesn’t allow a player to “ruin” their character?

ArenaNet: We’ve put a lot of thought into character creation, because we want to avoid those ruined characters. We’ve all had the sort of game experience where you place attribute points or choose a skill for your character, only to learn later sometimes after investing hundreds of hours into the character that you made a bad decision and the character is permanently flawed, or (gimped.) With Guild Wars, we never ask you to make permanent decisions about your character until you have all the information you need to make good choices. The only thing we ask you to decide when you start out is appearance, such as hair colour, gender, height, etc. Any choices you make that affect gameplay are made after you have enough knowledge to make good decisions.

ArenaNet: We don’t plan to have player housing, but we’ll handle many of the needs that player housing addresses with our Guild Halls.

GB: Can you explain how the leveling system will work in the game? Is there a maximum character level? Will lower level characters stand a chance against higher level characters in PvP?

ArenaNet: The leveling system is something that most RPG players will be familiar with. As you complete quests and slay monsters, you gain experience points and acquire gold. The experience points and gold can then be used to obtain skills.

But here is where there is a difference between Guild Wars and many other games: The skills that you obtain are not variations on a few basic abilities, and do not grow ever more powerful as your levels rise. You won’t find a (Level 15 Fire Blast) in our game. Instead of higher levels, you’ll have access to many more unique skills. This means that as a lower level character you won’t be weaker, you will just have fewer skills from which to draw. If you use good strategy and play skillfully, you may be able to defeat a higher-level character.

Guild Wars supports dual professions, and there will be a ceiling on character levels. Currently we believe that Level 50 is the appropriate maximum, but that may change during development. You will be able to achieve the maximum character level faster in Guild Wars than you do in most other RPG’s.

GB: How do you intend to deal with massive amounts of “player-killing”? Will there be “safe” zones for those players that do not want to participate in Player-versus-Player games?

ArenaNet: Guild Wars is designed first and foremost as a competitive online role playing game. Nobody complains about player killing in StarCraft or chess, because those games are created to be competitive. Of course, as we’ve said before, Guild Wars will offer you the choice of competitive or cooperative games. You will make that choice simply by choosing the type of mission you want to play. Some quests or missions will be competitive, and in those, player-versus-player gaming and player-killing can be part of and maybe even the entire objective of the game. Those sorts of games would include the traditional PvP games, such as (Capture the Flag) or (King of the Hill.) Other quests or missions will be designated as strictly cooperative, and in those missions it will not be possible to kill other players.

GB: Will there be multiple phases to the public beta? Have you decided on a time period of when a first phase might begin?

ArenaNet: Yes, there will be two phases to the public beta consisting of the Closed Beta and the Open Beta. The Closed Beta will involve a limited number of people and the Open Beta will be opened to the public. We haven’t set the exact time period yet, but the Closed Beta will start around 3 to 4 months before the final release date.

GB: To conclude, what would you say differentiates Guild Wars from the other online games on the market? What will it offer that other games don’t?

ArenaNet: There are a few things that really set Guild Wars apart from other games:

• Guild Wars is a fully hosted and supported online game without a monthly subscription fee, which we will continue to support and expand with free content and with regular purchasable expansion sets.
• Guild Wars is a mission-based game, which increases the fun while taking out the tedium that is sometimes associated with MMORPG’s.
• Guild Wars is designed for competitive play, but offers many styles of playing: competitive, cooperative, and single-player.
• With our (no servers, no shards) technology, gamers can compete against or play with anyone, anywhere, at any time, with no artificial boundaries between players or game worlds. Using this technology, Guild Wars players can unequivocally answer the question of (Who is the world champion?)

We’d like to issue our thanks to everyone at ArenaNet for taking the time to answer our questions!