Posted over at IGN they touch upon some of the news of late that has come out of ArenaNet the past few days.
A little snippet from the article....
Everyone at IGN who's had a chance to play has been
extremely impressed with what
ArenaNet is working on, from the art style to the flexible combat systems to the questing mechanics.
This is great news and will be more exciting for all the players that are hoping to get into the beta the next couple of months.
Our staff would like to thank IGN for putting this information up for the Guild Wars 2 player base and fans to see.
Link:
Worlds Collide in Guild Wars 2 - PC News at IGN
For the click link impaired:
Worlds Collide in Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet provides more reasons to look forward to its next MMO.
February 16, 2012
2012 is going to be an especially big year for MMOs, and Guild Wars is one of the major reasons why. Everyone at IGN who's had a chance to play has been extremely impressed with what ArenaNet is working on, from the art style to the flexible combat systems to the questing mechanics. Most recently, ArenaNet systems designer Mike Ferguson talked in detail about another aspect of the game, world versus world combat, which pits hundreds of players against each other in team-based PvP combat.
The World versus World (WvW) battles will set three teams against each other, with each team representing an entire server, which Ferguson claims "acts as an excellent balancing factor, preventing one team from growing too powerful and ruining the competitive balance of the game. Two teams can gang up to counter a more dominant third team, a dynamic that simply isn't possible with only two opposing factions." The teams will fight over multiple objectives on each map, separated from the main game world, and gain points for capturing. At the end of each two week long battle, your team is ranked, which determines your opponents in future WvW fights
Across each of the gigantic combat maps will be plenty of different objectives. Sprawling keeps will be protected by NPC soldiers and require teamwork to conquer. Keep assaults will take place in stages, requiring you to first break through the front gates and eventually try to take down the governing keep lord. You'll fight underwater against enemies to get to reach an island objective or climb mountains to access and capture towers. Camps will be scattered across maps to provide your team with resources, which can then be turned into siege weaponry like trebuchets, arrow carts, catapults, ballistae and golems to make keep assaults easier, or used to repair and buy upgrades.
Perhaps most importantly, Ferguson notes that you don't need to worry about level grinding to get into the WvW. "You can just hop into the battle using your normal PvE character, regardless of what level you are… In the Mists, players all fight at the same level. Any character below level 80 will be adjusted so they are roughly equivalent in power to what they would be at level 80. This makes combat among characters of any level not only possible, but actually fun."
Participating in WvW combat also gets you loot in experience. If you kill another player, they'll drop loot just like AI-controlled mobs, and the gear will scale to your actual character level so you can use it back in the PvE game. Though all levels can participate, Ferguson notes there are still limitations, "The level-adjustment system won't let a level 1 character go head-to-head against a level 80 character with much chance of victory—a level 80 character is still going to have more bonuses on their gear and access to a full complement of utility and elite skills that players just don't have at lower levels. This is not to say that the high-level character will one-shot the level 1 player, but they will have a clear advantage."
If your server's team happens to do well, you'll see rewards even if you didn't actively participate in the battle. That way, everyone on a server should have an interest in the battle going well.
Ferguson provides a lot more detail over on ArenaNet's blog. For more information on how Guild Wars 2 plays, check back on February 20 for coverage on the ongoing closed beta testing.
