Just How Big Will Guild Wars 2 Really Be? An article by XPhiler

[Bella]

I don't know about you but if you didn't already have enough reasons to give GW2 a look-see, XPhiler lists quite a few here that should definitely peak your interest! From world size to world vs world, boss fights to dynamic events, XPhiler touches on many of (the known) GW2 highlights.

GW2 is going to be so much more than just another pretty game with a few tricks up its sleeve. It has been lovingly crafted into a living world by a passionate team of players just like you and me and will promote a community-based player experience. It is EXACTLY what I have been missing in every mmo I've played and I for one cannot wait for GW2 to be released!

You can find XPhiler's original article here.

For those that perfer to stay on page:

Just how big can Guild Wars 2 really be?

I have been seeing so much material of the upcoming Guild Wars 2 that sometimes I fear I might finish it without actually playing it. Or I would if it weren't that often I end up seeing a video / interview of some new aspect I did not even know about.

Today for example thanks to a post by RainySunnyDay I discovered Jumping Puzzles.

The amount of content in this game seems Out of this world!

We have 5 races with their own storyline. Granted we do not know to what extend these intersect but considering that stories branch even based on your profession, based on your background choices and choices you make in-game I would expect at least the major race stories will seem fresh on every play-through.

We have World vs World which from what I saw so far could be its own game quite easily. Huge continent battle ground with dynamic events, NPC factions which you can befriend and have join your side, under water PVP, siege weapons, persistent with 2 week long battles of 1500+ players giving boons to all players of the winning server.

Amazing detail in the world. Starting cities are huge and by huge I mean huge! and as MikeB noticed designers did not even save themselves some work by reusing models, in the Norn starting area for example he noticed that every single bed had its own unique model something in other MMOs you definitely would not expect to see.

Dynamic events which basically means content will never really run out. Of course to be completely honest I do worry it might get old doing the same things repeatedly but with 1500 different dynamic events at launch, some with multiple chain of events there is no need to repeat the same event over and over again, there might be enough variety to keep you going for quite a while if you choose too.

We also know of at least 2 Unique Languages, New Kyrtan and a Mysterious language yet to be announced, with their own alphabets for players to discover and translate!

A Hybrid combat system that is both target based and non-target based where all MMOs generally focus on just one of them! The combat system is so indepeth that it takes a whole blog on itself to explain.

Activities in every major city because well you know there was not enough gameplay to go around already so why not put a few mini-games in cities such as Archery, Shooting Range, Snowball fights and Bar brawls to mention a few.

We have voice overs, 60 feature film length of voice, that is a lot of voices and in multiple languages too! We know voices will be localized also in french and German making that 180 feature films of voice. Mind blowing

We have achievements, which are split into Long Term, Monthly and Daily

Impressive art style which is highly detailed

Dnyamic Living Cities, one reviewer commented how he kept walking around waiting to find repeating conversations by npc characters but never actually managed to!

Classes are really varied, they do not just get different skills but they play differently with even unique mechanics to each.

Every race has its own unique religion and background story

Guild Wars 2 has so many new ideas and different way of implementing game mechanics that it must have been a feat of epic proportions to design this game. Things that are out of the norm include:

- Designing every Class to be able to be effective in every role thus removing the trinity
- Making a Skill System that is weapon based
- Allowing players to switch weapons mid battle (remember weapons = skills = role)
- Dropping quest system in favor of dynamic events
- The hybrid combat system
- Chaining dynamic events that branch out depending on outcome of that event
- You can actually fail for real, without simply being able restart the quest just failed
- Content scaling depending on player number and which area you travel too
- Casting while moving
- The downed state
- Everyone is like partied with everyone else with the result that you're actually rewarded for playing an MMO like an MMO rather then penalized
- Side-kicking, you can play with a friend who joins the game after you're high level without having to start a new character and with both of you having fun
- Multiple Guilds, cant really express how brilliant this is!
- Dungeons, with branching story lines and also you're not forced to replay them ad infinitum waiting for ladyluck to give you that one item you're looking for
- Cross profession combos
- The Sylvari, who to my knowledge are quite a new race in MMOs unlike any other
- Scale, some of the bosses are truly huge and epic
- Boss fights at level 1! which ties into end game starts when the game starts
- A whole Underwater world
- Environmental weapons

I am going to stop here, I did not list all the content there is even with this huge list but I already wrote too much would not want to drive people away with too much text.

I wanna close by saying that I am really excited for this game. Its so huge I doubt I will ever play all the content it is going to provide, but I will try and make sure I enjoy doing it to the max!

We here at GW2 Stratics would like to thank XPhiler for sharing his thoughts and opinions with the GW2 players.