Guild Wars 2 at PAX 2009

[Foeslayr]

All this new Sylvari information makes me so jittery!!!!!

[Kyo]

Treahearn thingy looks awesome =D *picturing a male sylvari necromancer*

[Iorek Byrnison]

this is what i thought of when i heard Seasons with Sylvari, guess which game that is:

[patrickvp]

Heya, figured I might as well cross post over here.

Does it explicitly say "Sylvari Necro"?

Yup. It says specifically "Sylvari necromancers like Traehearne revel in the life-and-death cycle of nature." There is a costume picture right next to that text of a female Sylvari wearing a black/dark purple outfit. Not sure if that's supposed to be Traehearne, but it seems kind of set up to be. (p. 67)

Do you have an official source that confirms it's GW2 concept art?

Yup, its in the book. The undead one a few pages later is also from the book. This one.

As for the whole seasons thing, there's obviously no mention of character creation. It just says their "season" is determined by the time of day of their birth. How this is linked to character creation is unknown, or if you can manually choose a season (most likely, imo).

[Shew]

Originally Posted by patrickvp

Heya, figured I might as well cross post over here.


Yup. It says specifically "Sylvari necromancers like Traehearne revel in the life-and-death cycle of nature." There is a costume picture right next to that text of a female Sylvari wearing a black/dark purple outfit. Not sure if that's supposed to be Traehearne, but it seems kind of set up to be. (p. 67)


Yup, its in the book. The undead one a few pages later is also from the book. This one.

As for the whole seasons thing, there's obviously no mention of character creation. It just says their "season" is determined by the time of day of their birth. How this is linked to character creation is unknown, or if you can manually choose a season (most likely, imo).

Yeah...right now we're just speculating on how the season-alignment may be incorporated.

Thanks for keeping us informed!

[Cereal]

Originally Posted by Iorek Byrnison

this is what i thought of when i heard Seasons with Sylvari, guess which game that is:

Thanks for that image, it's now stuck in my mind for all eternity.

[Iorek Byrnison]

Originally Posted by Cereal

Thanks for that image, it's now stuck in my mind for all eternity.

you're welcome.

[Agar]

Great work guys! Thank you soooo much for all the info! Keep up the good work

[Joandir]

Lot of infos from the PAX! This make me think that ArenaNet is at a Good point for GW2...it isn't only an eternal tease

[Gigashadow]

Spent a few hours at the meet and greet tonight and talked to various people including Matt Forbeck, Regina and Lindsey. Actually spent at least 90 minutes talking to Matt Forbeck, almost entirely about writing, RPGs (he has a huge history in the industry), favorite books and authors, and some personal stories of his involving his getting into fights -- he certainly has a great storytelling ability in person (maybe helped by his downing a lot of booze!).

On the GW2 front, Matt mentioned that he had got the chance to run around in GW2 at ANet's offices to more directly experience the various locations. He said the graphics were breathtaking. So I asked "Have you played Aion at all?" and he responded that yes, he had. I followed up with, "So does GW2 look better than Aion?" and he responded "Yes, oh god yes."

With Lindsey we talked about sealed deck and skills such as Mind Blast, Immolate, and Distortion. She said she likes that elementalists actually deal damage, and have a role where they are a good stand and split character, and they don't want to nerf the ele back into the role where it's a blind bitch or a runner. If they nerfed Mind Blast (already tried last year, which killed it), there are other characters often used today that would just do the sort of thing that ele does, so attacking Mind Blast doesn't really address the problem. Immolate and Distortion will likely see nerfs, so I asked whether Distortion is going to at least be viable for Mesmers to use, maybe at high illusion (or fast casting), because it is a mesmer skill. She said that some skills aren't actually intended to be used by the primary class; for example, warriors don't use balanced stance, but monks do. We reminisced about past GvG metas, and I mentioned that it's annoying that blood spike is still around. She said "not for long!"

On the sealed deck front, adding the rated ladder stuff is apparently a lot of work. I was curious as to how they would manage to do the UI for sealed deck, given people want quick games (and wouldn't switching characters be inconvenient?), and you don't want to fight over a skill with your party members. The process is being made very PUG friendly. Apparently each class will get a certain number of skills chosen at random (so e.g. it won't turn out that you can't play mesmers this week because there's nothing to work with), and everyone in the party can use the skill. However, there is a max 1 of each class in a team, to prevent overloading on degenerate or overpowered characters for the current meta.

I also overheard someone nearby asking one of the developers about the skill system where skills do different things if you are running or jumping. Apparently that idea has been scrapped, due to some combination of latency concerns and it feeling more like a fighting game than what people are looking for in an MMO. However, there are skill combos in the game, as Jeff Grubb mentioned it on Friday.

Also, everyone at the meet and greet got a cool GW2 t-shirt, which is cooler looking than the one you see ArenaNet employees wearing, white-shirt, big GW2 logo on a concept art black city background. Hopefully they will be available for sale, they are really really cool. I will post a picture of it when I sort out some camera software device driver issues.

[Wraithmare]

Originally Posted by semantic

Asurans might be aligned with elements. Perhaps ore type elements (gold, sulphur, quicksilver, i dunno) or the fundamental elements (earth, air, fire, water).

I think Asura players would probably choose a "krewe" if anything, as each Krewe we see in GW1 had a set focus (i.e. Weapon Krewe, Sky Krewe, etc.)

I do like the idea of different focused groups within each race affecting racial abilities, in fact now that we know about the sylvari seasons it does seem each race has several set up: Sylvari->Seasons; Humans->Gods; Norn->Spirits; Asura->Krewe; Charr-> Legion

[KallyX]

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

Spent a few hours at the meet and greet tonight and talked to various people including Matt Forbeck, Regina and Lindsey. Actually spent at least 90 minutes talking to Matt Forbeck, almost entirely about writing, RPGs (he has a huge history in the industry), favorite books and authors, and some personal stories of his involving his getting into fights -- he certainly has a great storytelling ability in person (maybe helped by his downing a lot of booze!).

On the GW2 front, Matt mentioned that he had got the chance to run around in GW2 at ANet's offices to more directly experience the various locations. He said the graphics were breathtaking. So I asked "Have you played Aion at all?" and he responded that yes, he had. I followed up with, "So does GW2 look better than Aion?" and he responded "Yes, oh god yes."

Leet info, thanks mate.

I'm guessing Aug 28 / Oct 26 release date
The sub-races sound nice, as long as they balance any possible bonuses correctly... it could create a nice amount of character differentiation.

[Tr0n]

Thx Gigashadow, keep it coming. Finally some "real" info.

[Huginn]

ok, I know that some people is on pax all weekend, and maby stays thre in a hotel or sometihng (I have no clue onestly), but isn't there anyone that were on pax friday or saturday that got a copy of the art book and went home?

so why we don't get any pics is prob:

1, you need the artbook

2, you need a computer, with internet

3, you need a scaner or a camera that you can uplode pics to the computer

4, don't care about copyrights

I don't know how many artbooks they've given out, but isn't there anyone that got all 4 things you need?

hopefully, we'll see scans today or tomorrow...

why do I want the scans so badly? cuz I'm 99% sure that this book woun't get to sweden, and that just sux

[pumpkin pie]

I think imho, regarding sylvari and season. my speculation is that your sylvari character changes accordingly when the season changes.

[Konig Des Todes]

The Seasons thing sound like a Sylvary-style guild system, but where you're forced into it (in lore - in game mechanics, it probably is based on looks).

In that trailer, we see this:



Imo, from left to right it is summer-winter-spring. Or something of the like.

Originally Posted by Huginn

why do I want the scans so badly? cuz I'm 99% sure that this book woun't get to sweden, and that just sux

Already said it will be available via online. You'll be able to buy it, I'm sure.

[Tr0n]

12. There is one odd picture in the Ascalon/Charr section. It looks like a lunar/mars rover actually. Its a wheeled vehicle, hinged in the middle for turning, and with either a crane or some kind of torch arm. Remote controlled flamethrower maybe?

This sounds like it could be that unique twist on weapons official FAQ is talking about.

[The Legend]

Ah, shower me with Information ^^!!!

[Garreth MacLeod]

Take a few days off and WOW! Some great info. Thanks to the folks getting said info and to Inde and krewe for organizing it here.

The art book sounds wonderful. Wish PAX wasn't so far from where I live or I might have gone.

So much info to take in all at once but the game is sounding more and more interesting.

[Razon]

GW2 Artbook photos right here!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shiwoo/