More on Guild Wars 2 personal stories, with another article from the Lore and Continuity Designer, Ree Soesbee on IGN.
“The personal storyline starts at the very beginning,” Soesbee tells us. “The minute you create your character, you’re faced with questions about your history, your personality, the hopes your character has. As you play through the game, your answers to those questions unlock stories that you will encounter and be able to play through.” The idea is to, from the very start, give your character a reason to adventure through the world that synchronizes with the character you endeavored to create, and for the story to feed off of your choices throughout. “By the time you’ve reached the end of the game and are fighting the epic villains you have a personal reason to be there – personal things that you are protecting or vengeance that you’re seeking – that have come about as a result of this personal story.”
Check out the rest of that article (and some fantastic screenshots) here, and add your comment in the forum: Creating Your Story
The next big update is here! This time it’s focused on the personal stories behind our characters. ArenaNet’s Ree Soesbee, the Lore & Continuity Designer for Guild Wars 2, lays it all out for us:
“One of the challenges of a massively-multiplayer game is that in being inclusive to a vast number of people, it loses a lot of the personal interaction that makes single-player RPGs so much fun. When you’re looking at the games on the store shelf, it seems you have only two options – a game that you can play with your friends, or a game that has a satisfying personal story. The Guild Wars 2 design team believes that a game should have both.”
A Guild Wars 2 triple-header today, with three more loads of Dynamic Events System info released yesterday.
Eric Flannum answers popular questions on the ArenaNet Blog, and than added some more insight over on KillTenRats.
“One of our testers, upon seeing a huddle of sick villagers standing around a poisoned well, made the comment, “I feel like someone is trying to tell me something.” She ran down into the valley and noticed that the irrigation towers that water the fields were pumping out a green noxious liquid and that the fields were being overrun with grubs living off of the poisoned water. When she reached a giant water reservoir brimming over with noxious poison, she said, “Ah, this is where my peeps are being poisoned.” She immediately looked around the area for some solution to the crisis, found a waterworks worker who knew how to remedy the solution, and helped him do it. Once the reservoir had been cleansed, the villagers got better, the irrigators stopped spewing poison, and the grubs started to die. She received a nice reward of XP, gold, and karma for helping out.”
Our very own Sabre Wolf is doing a series of videos, condensing all of the information we’ve been getting over the past few days into key points. Whether you’re new to following Guild Wars 2 or have been around for months this is a great way to ensure you haven’t missed anything important.
If you have any comments or suggestions feel free to post them over in his forum thread: GW2 Info Video Series
Been away for a while, and missed some interviews? Perhaps you only recently started following Guild Wars 2? Maybe you have read everything you can get your hands on, but your memory is as bad as mine?
Either way, Nox of iloveGuildWars can help you out. He has written up a huge compendium of the tidbits we know so far (including sources, for the sceptical), which you can find here.
I suggest you all immediately head over to his forum thread, and thank him for the hard work!
The folks over at ZAM have finally put up the much awaited part 2 of their Q&A with ArenaNet’s Mike O’Brien, Daniel Dociu and Jeff Grubb. Click here to check it out.
Want to share your thoughts or speculation? Head over to Shew’s thread, where he was kind enough to pick out some of the most interesting bits of information:
- The world is zoned.
- Instances are used for story-telling, but the outposts and environment are persistent.
- After dealing with individual conflicts, the races come together and eventually fight in Orr.
- The story is broken down into acts.
- PvP will have some sort of ranking system.
- GW2 will use the Havoc physics engine.
If you have yet to read part 1, see that story here. Thanks to Shew and Sabre Wolf for bringing this to our attention.
Will there be a subscription fee for Guild Wars 2?
Nope. Like the original Guild Wars, there will be no subscription fee for Guild Wars 2. You just buy the game and play it online without paying a monthly fee.
Will Guild Wars 2 be an MMO?
Yes. Guild Wars 2 provides a massive, online persistent world.
How is Guild Wars 2 different from other MMOs?
While Guild Wars 2 adds a persistent world, it retains the unique nature of the original game including a strong narrative, extensive instanced gameplay, an anti-grind design philosophy, and strong support for competitive play.
