Guild Wars Preview

FileFront is offering up a two-page preview for ArenaNet’s Guild Wars, combining previous interview and preview material to provide a summary of what’s known about the game so far. An excerpt, as usual:

The gameplay experience Guild Wars brings has been four years in the making. Before World of Warcraft was even a mention on gamers’ lips and Warcraft III was thriving, Jeff Strain, Mike O’Brien and Patrick Wyatt, who make up the key members of ArenaNet, were all working at Blizzard with new ideas in their heads. Strain was one of the original leads for World of Warcraft, but found that he did not quite want to design just another MMORPG based on the Warcraft series. And O’Brien’s ideas for multiplayer were really motivational.

(The more we talked, the more we found that there was this great game in the middle,) Strain said. (The original goal was [to] make an MMO that is truly unique and avoids the classic design elements that only makes it fun for hardcore players.)