Guild Wars Mini-Interview #17

ArenaNet has answered another small batch of questions about their upcoming Guild Wars, and this time the interview is over at Guild-Wars.info. An excerpt to follow:

Q: Currently most of the events are optimized for American players, but recently the All Call for Europeans was added. How will you handle this after release? Will events be done twice (with 9 hours time-difference or something) to comfort non-US players? Will there maybe even be events in different languages like French, German or Italian? (Sorry to all the US-Players who don’t really need this question, but for the rest of the world it might be quite important.)

A: The Guild Wars world will be active 24/7. There will be tournaments running around the clock, and you’ll always be able to find someone with whom to play, no matter your level or your interest. If you want some random PvP action, head into one of the arenas, where you’ll be placed on a random team. If you want to do a little solo monster bashing, take to the Hunting Grounds. Is questing more your pleasure? Choose an outpost, click, and meet up with a group of players thinking along the very same lines. And if you want to see how far and how well you can do in a round-robin tournament, round up your party and visit the tournament outpost to take on those of a similar level in head-to-head gameplay.

Right now, all the functions I’ve mentioned above are fully active every hour of every day, but with the modest number of alpha testers, naturally we don’t find dozens of teams in the tournament area at the present time. The Mid-Day Alpha Testing Sessions have been very popular, and were designed specifically with European gamers in mind, so that they could enjoy the larger testing sessions more and contribute more meaningfully to the test. But every All Call Session evening or mid-day is just the tiniest miniature of what the game will be like on release. During the World Preview Event, you can be sure that you will be able to find all the PvP and PvM options available to you any time you choose. And for the large-scale tournaments that cross national or even continental lines, arrangements will be made to accommodate the different time zones so that everyone has a fair opportunity to participate at the highest levels.

As you know, Guild Wars will be offered in several languages. You will set your language choice when you create your account, and behind-the-scenes technology will place you amongst players who speak the same language. The beauty of this is that you will be able to then form or join a team with those who do speak your language and with whom you can take part in the world tournament.