Only yesterday we were introduced to combat, death and healing in Guild Wars 2, which carried a few hefty shockers to say the least. Now ArenaNet follows up by having two of its designers, John Stumme and Ben Miller, answer several community questions on the topics of activities, maps and travel in Guild Wars 2. It may not be quite so surprising as yesterday’s article, but these two designers do share a few interesting new tidbits such as the thematic division of cities into sections and the size of the game world which apparently surpasses Guild Wars.
Should you have missed out on the wealth of Guild Wars 2 information that’s been made public already, then you may wish to read up on the design manifesto, combat system and elementalist profession, dynamic events system #1 & #2, the personal story system, the warrior profession and traits system #1 & #2 and the recent pieces on non-combat activities #1 and #2.
Skip on to the overview below for a concise overview of all the new information revealed today. You may also want to keep an eye on the ArenaNet blog and the official Guild Wars 2 website for any new information that comes out. It’s also possible to subscribe to GameDrone to be informed of the latest new Guild Wars 2 information in the same concise format.
Activities
- There will be mini-games (activities) that use balls or substitutes for balls. An example comes in the form of a Norn activity in their capitol city of Hoelbrak that’s inspired by basketball with passing, shooting, etc. It doesn’t actually use a ball, but that’s because they’ve replaced it with a heavy keg of ale.
- The snowball fight activity that was previously mentioned will be a year round activity, so this Guild Wars 2 variant is not limited to Wintersday events like it currently is in Guild Wars.
- Polymock might make a return, but not definitely confirmed. It was noted that should the mini-game return then it’d be a more fully realized version of the original game. Guild Wars was too limited to present the full turn-based game that the Polymock designer envisioned, but it is possible to properly implement this in Guild Wars 2.
- Earlier indications of a musical activity seemed to have been misconstrued as a player-driven music system similar to Lord of the Rings Online. Instead this will be a “One-Man Band” available in the human capitol of Divinity’s Reach, which plays songs on request. It’s not possible to manually play instruments in Guild Wars 2 at the moment and it likely never will be.
Dvinity's Reach will be a grand city separated into many different sections
Travel
- It’s possible to travel to waypoints on your map without dying. This will be the new map travel system.
- There’s a minor fee on waypoint travel in order to keep the instant teleporting in check in a game that isn’t nearly as fragmented and instanced as Guild Wars.
- The minor fee also presents a minor money sink, similar to fast travel in other MMORPGs like Aion, Lord of the Rings Online and World of WarCraft.
- Waypoints are currently located in all the major cities and several story-related areas.
- There are currently 10-20 waypoints per map.
- Cities are very big and divided into several thematic areas. Some of these areas are instanced, whereas others are public.
- The human city of Divinity’s Reach consists of sections that reflect the different social groups, sections devoted to the six human gods, a large carnival area, an instanced Queen’s Palace area, and an instanced headquarters of the Seraph area, amongst others regions. This seems to indicate a much larger city than you might be used to from other MMORPGs such as Aion, Guild Wars, LotRO or WoW.
The average area in Guild Wars 2 is larger than you're used to from Guild Wars
General
- The holiday events you’ve come to know and love from Guild Wars will make some sort of return in Guild Wars 2. They’re not being replaced by year-round activities and mini-games.
- The fact that there are 10-20 waypoints for each normal map seems to indicate there being multiple such maps. This would imply that there are several major areas that are separated in some way, perhaps continents such as Tyria and Orr.
- Most maps in Guild Wars 2 are larger than those found in Guild Wars.
- Accordingly, the game world in Guild Wars 2 is also larger than that of Guild Wars.
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