Guild Wars Preview

IGN PC has dished up a three-page preview of ArenaNet’s Guild Wars, based upon some recent hands-on experience with the MMORPG. Here’s a little something to get you started:

Technically, the game is using all kinds of goodies to bring the characters and world to life. The simple things, such as shoreline rushes of water, that nice bloom lighting effect (think Prince of Persia), fabric waving in the breeze, and specular highlights for metal armor all make the world sing. The tools sitting at the fingertips of the developers only help the situation. Environments are created with a powerful tool set that can change the look of an environment with little effort. They can even easily create pockets inside zones that when crossed into by a player, completely change the look of the environment on the fly. For instance, one of the level designers quickly added a circle inside of a tropical paradise that when crossed into by a player, would turn to a dark and foreboding sky and mist coming in the shoreline. This should make for some creative levels as far as pacing and mood. This combined with their updates on the fly way of including new content for the game will allow designers to change the environment quickly to fit with story or fancy.