Guild Wars 2 at gamescom 2010

Last week marked the first time that gamers could actually get their hands on the controls of Guild Wars 2 during the 4 day long gamescom 2010 event in Cologne, Germany. And it didn’t fail to impress as it proved to be the talk of the show and went on to win the Best Online Game of Show award.

But much more importantly for us eager fans who didn’t travel down to Germany, this also resulted in a torrent of new gameplay information and countless gameplay videos all over the internet. I’ve tried to distill some order in this flood of new information and extracted the new and interesting bits for an enormous list of all things new and cool in Guild Wars 2 since gamescom 2010.

Read on for an organized list of a majority of the new information that was revealed at this year’s gamescom. I may have missed a few things, but most of the important stuff is there and that’s already a lot. And I’ve even included links to some particularly interesting videos and the excellent Guild Wars 2 Guru forum topic that includes links to practically all Guild Wars 2 related content resulting from gamescom including dozens of gameplay videos and video interviews.

Also be sure to check back later today for the official reveal of the Necromancer profession. Stay tuned to GameDrone for that and more regular updates on Guild Wars 2. Also keep an eye on the on the official Guild Wars 2 website and ArenaNet company blog for the latest information and media.

Character Creation (Human)

• The game starts with character creation where the first choice is race, in this demo charr (45-50) or human (1-10).
• After picking a race it goes into gender and then class (warrior, elementalist, ranger or necromancer in the demo).
• Ordinarily it then heads into adjusting the character’s looks, but that’s disabled in the demo and replaced by a few default looks to pick from.
• Then the biography is up, which starts with picking a class-specific item that the character identifies with.
• Elementalists choose a circlet they wear on their head, which demonstrates their elemental preference for Air, Water, Fire or Earth.
• Necromancers choose a mask that symbolizes either a trickster demon, a skull or a ghostly wraith.
• Rangers choose which pet they’d like to start with.
• Warriors choose a headgear.
• Personality choice is next and offers the options of charm, dignity or ferocity.
• Background involves choosing between a street rat, commoner or nobility. This also impacts the clothing that the character wears.
• A greatest regret needs to be picked and the options are: never joined the circus, never searched for true parents or never recovered dead sister’s body.
• The final biography question involves picking a god to worship. These 6 are Balthazar, Dwayna, Grenth, Melandru, Lyssa and Kormir. The latter being a nice touch for the fans.
• It ends with an overview of the character’s biography that needs to be signed with the character’s name.
• The name must be between 3 and 19 characters and spaces are allowed. This is very similar to Guild Wars.

Progression and Gear

• New characters start with a heal skill and 2 weapons skills. More skill slots are unlocked as the character levels up.
• Characters already know a few weapon skills for each weapon they can use, but more weapon skills can be bought at skill trainers.
• Attributes can be changed on the fly in Guild Wars 2, much like in the original game.
• Players can reach up to level 80, but experience scaling cuts out at level 30. This means it takes as much experience to level from 31 to 32 as it does from 71 to 72. It does scale in the beginning to offer a more exciting and fast-paced start, while slowly ramping up to require a little more effort.
• Guild Wars 2 should be interesting and fun to play right from the start, not only after hitting the level cap. They seem to be on the right track with epic battles and huge boss encounters right at the very beginning. Shown at gamescom were a huge earth elemental at level 1, a massive swamp behemoth at level 15 and an enormous dragon lieutenant at level 45.
• Leveling up results in an explosion around the player that simultaneously damages nearby opponents, knocks them down and heals the player back to full health.
• Armor is shared by all professions within a certain category. Elementalists and necromancers are both light professions, so they can wear the same armor.
• There are armors that look better on certain professions than others.
• There will not be any form of item durability in Guild Wars 2.
• Equipment will have more impact than in the original game in terms of statistics. It’s likely that this will not negatively affect the competitive PvP mode since that mode requires the creation of a PvP specific character and ArenaNet can simply limit the equipment selection.
• Players start with a basic set of dye colors and can unlock more as they progress through the game. This removes the expensive dye bottles from the original. Also removed is dye mixing, which has been replaced with a much greater variety of base colors. All armor pieces have three ‘dye slots’ that correspond to specific portions of that piece of armor. Seen in action here. Note that that’s not the starter dye kit and there will be even more dyes in the final game.

Skills

• Skills are purchased from skill trainers, earned as quest rewards or found as loot in the form of skill books.
• Skills are tied in to levels like in most MMORPGs. This means that skills can only be learned at specific levels, but players can purchase future skills in advance and have them converted to skill books in their inventory, similar to Aion. Skills purchased for the player’s current level are automatically learned.
• Elite skills apparently have a recharge time of 720 seconds, but are insanely powerful. Elementalists can turn into tornados, rangers can send their pets into a frenzy and necromancers can turn into plague clouds, for example.
• Racial skills are intended to add flavor, but ArenaNet is taking special care to prevent these from making certain classes more powerful. Racial skills will not make charr warriors more capable than asura warriors, for example. There are roughly 10 racial skills per race and these are exclusive to the right skillbar with its slottable heal, utility and elite skills.
• A two-handed weapon takes up all five weapon skills, whereas two single-handed weapons provide 3 and 2 skills respectively in the left skillbar.
• The loadout of the five skills in the right skillbar can be altered any time the character is out of combat. This can even be done in between mobs.
• Skill templates will almost certainly make a return, but it looks like they won’t be implemented in the launch version. This method of saving and sharing skill loadouts will likely return in some form in a post-launch update.

Human Gameplay

• The demo starts with a cutscene that introduces the state of the world and the human race. Neither is faring very well.
• It then loads into the village of Shaemoor which functions as the tutorial area for human characters.
• Centaurs are attacking the village and a character comes running up and tells you to rally the survivors in a nearby inn.
• Logan Thackeray joins in the fray and summons players to defend the local keep. This starts with defending it from waves of centaurs, but then moves into a boss fight against a centaur shaman. He runs away, but only to lure the humans into a trap. He summons an enormous earth elemental.
• The earth elemental is flinging spells at players while centaurs attack as well. Meanwhile the players need to destroy the hands stabilizing this elemental creature. When destabilized the elemental explodes and this leads into another cutscene.
• After the cutscene the player is in an inn outside of Divinity’s Reach. This is where the world opens up to the player.
• A scout is stationed just outside the inn and informs the player of possible activities in the outlying farmlands. The scout actually opens up your map and highlights each area as he talks about it. There will be more such scouts in other regions of the world.
• Dynamic events are occurring left and right in the farmsteads. A watermelon farm suffers from a rabbit infestation, so players need to pick these up and bring them to the farmer before all the watermelons are destroyed. Success results in experience, gold, karma and the farmer selling watermelons to players which provide a temporary buff.
• Some of the other events nearby include bandits torching bales of hay, a giant worm infestation, cows needing feeding and plants needing watering. The water buckets can also be used on other players.
• The home instance in Divinity’s Reach includes a local tavern. Humans with a commoner background find a rival and his gang, which quickly results in a bar brawl. This area takes up roughly 1/8th of the city.

Charr Gameplay

• This part of the demo takes place in the Ascalonian regions controlled by the charr and covers levels 45-50. It focuses primarily on showcasing dynamic events.
• A dynamic event involves a fight against the Shatterer. This is not an elder dragon, but a smaller and less powerful dragon lieutenant. It still towers over the players.
• It takes dozens of players to overcome the Shatterer and there are multiple ways to contribute. Some players fight the dragon directly, but others hold off its minions, revive allies, free allies from crystal prisons, or man siege weaponry located on a nearby ridge.
• These siege weapons can be destroyed by the dragon’s minions. That will then spawn another event where materials are brought in from a nearby outpost in order to repair the siege weapons.

Gameplay

• Combat is dynamic and involves a lot of movement. Some skills actually move the player in a direction and many others have knockback and knock down effects that can actually send players flying. This mobility is also illustrated in the extensive strafing and dodging that occurs in the live demos. It’s possible to dodge many ranged attacks or targetted spells by rolling out of their way, for example. This is done by double-tapping movement keys.
• Battles are interactive in a way not really seen before. The Shatterer in the charr demo can actually freeze players in crystals and drain their life force, but these characters can be freed by other players. Similarly the regular Oakheart monsters can root characters in place, but these roots are attackable objects and players can be freed from them.
• There seems to be no standard auto-attack. Instead players right click a skill for the auto-attack slot which then becomes their auto-attack.
• Players are not automatically put in range of opponents when casting spells. So a ranged attack can fall short of the target if they’re out of range.
• An indicator above the heads of hostile targets seems to indicate whether they can be damaged. It greys out when they’re out of range or invulnerable and turns red when they’re close enough to attack.
• There are a lot of different ways to earn experience. This includes participating in dynamic events, dungeons and completing personal story missions. The activities pointed out by local scouts also provide experience rewards, as well as generally reviving other players and killing mobs.
• Any player who participates in killing a monster gains loot and experience. There is no competition for mobs or loot even when you’re not in a party.
• There is no skill requirement for reviving other players, pets and NPCs. This can be done by any player without the need for special skills.
• There are benefits to partying in Guild Wars 2, which mainly come in the form of communication. This includes health and location indicators for each party member, drawing and pinging on the mini-map and of course the fan favorite target calling feature makes a return as well.
• Parties will be limited to 5 players.
• Players of different levels can play together with a sidekick system. A level 50 players can boost a new players up to their level and go through high level content, but it’s also possible for the new players to reduce the other player’s level and to then go adventuring in lower level zones.
• No hard mode in Guild Wars 2. Players looking for a challenge can fight monsters above their level or enter areas above their level.
• Instanced dungeons are specifically designed to offer a great challenge beyond regular world encounters. There will be different modes to these dungeons to make them repeatable without getting overly repetitive. None of these were actually shown in action at gamescom.
• Energy is handled completely differently from the original game. It now regenerates slowly outside of combat and potions can be used to speed up this process. These potions have cooldowns which are short out of combat and quite long during combat. Energy potions are also cheap and regularly drop from mobs.
• There are no health potions!
• There will be a lot of emotes in Guild Wars 2 and they’re trying to tie in voice acting to emotes. So player characters will actually talk when using specific emotes.
• If a player interacts with an object in the world, like a bucket or a plant, then it disappears for them. It does not disappear for any other player, so all players can use the same objects and resource nodes without respawn timers or anything.

PvP

• It will be possible to ignore PvE content altogether and play exclusively in World vs World or the hardcore PvP mode.
• World vs World is a three way server vs server vs server battle with huge numbers of players. This is designed to be open to players of all levels with varying objectives.
• In World vs World a large castle siege may be going on, but simultaneously a smaller group of players can assault a nearby copper mine and a solo player might attack a caravan that’s sending resources from that copper mine.
• PvE and PvP skills will be balanced separately.
• The World vs World open PvP mode will likely use the PvE version of skills, because the PvE character is used in this PvP mode. So characters participate with their regular level, equipment and skill set and can even gain experience in World vs World PvP.

This should bring back some memories for Guild Wars Beta Weekend Event players!

Dynamic Events

• What’s great about events is that there’s no need to talk to NPCs before joining in. If bandits are attacking a farmer then you can jump right to the rescue. The objectives will automatically pop up and the game will track your success to determine your experience, loot and karma reward.
• Some events require a large group of people to succeed. The Shadow Behemoth (swamp boss) in the human demo and the Shatterer (dragon) in the charr demo are such events.
• These boss events also scale according to player counts. So the Shatterer event will become more difficult as more players join in.
• Boss encounters have different triggers, so some are timer-based while others only appear towards the end of an event chain.
• Event chains can span large chunks of a map and several different events. Some can even go through as much as 20 events.
• All players receive loot, experience and karma when participating in a dynamic event. A rare item drop will be shared by all solid participants.
• Karma is a sort of secondary type of money that can be used to buy items and buffs from specific NPCs. This is tied in heavily with dynamic events.
• There are different levels of success in events. Gold level appears to be the highest, followed by Silver.
• It seems as if these success levels determine the amount of experience, karma and loot the player earns for their event participation. The level of the event also plays a part in this.
• Dynamic events have a persistent influence on the game world. If centaurs manage to take control over an outpost, then they’ll remain in control until they’re ousted by players in another event.
• They’re currently estimating 1500 dynamic events in the final version.

Personal Story

• Two different types of cutscenes are used to progress the story. The first demonstrates beautifully animated artwork with narration, like the introduction. The second is full character models appearing in screen and talking to the player with artwork in the background. These cutscenes can be skipped.
• Only parts of the personal story will be instanced, while other objectives will be out in the open, persistent, world.
• Decisions made during the personal story will branch into different directions.
• Some character you meet during your personal story can actually move into your home instance.
• The home instance is currently intended as a reflection of player choices and the characters they meet during their personal story. But ArenaNet is interested in adding in some form of more directly controlled player housing in the future, sort of like in Lord of the Rings Online, so that might be implemented at a later date if they can get it up to a high quality standard.
• The dialogue for NPCs in your home instance will change depending on your progress.

Elementalist

• Elementalists have an effect surrounding their hands which indicates their current elemental attunement. Fire will result in flaming hands, for example.
• An elite elementalist skill turns the user into a tornado. There are similar skills for other classes, so Necromancers can turn into floating plague clouds, for example.

Rangers

• Rangers with a short bow can fire while moving and some of their skills are also usable while moving.
• Each race has different starting pets. The charr have devourers, while humans can choose between a moa and a bear. Of course many more pets can be tamed later on.
• Tameable underwater pets include the offensively oriented shark, defensively oriented armorfish and the supportive jellyfish.
• There will be some form of pet storage in addition to the three that can be used by the player at any time.
• A small pet control interface is located above the left skill bar. This includes a health bar, pet skill bar and icon to go into advanced pet control.
• The pet panel allows for changing the pets name, viewing their statistics, changing their skill loadout and viewing their attributes.
• Rangers are also capable melee combatants. They can use swords and actually deal a fair amount of damage with their sword skills.

Interface

• Current objectives are displayed in the top right. These include both personal story objectives (green) and those for nearby dynamic events (orange).
• NPCs tied in to currently active personal story events have green icons floating over their heads.
• The minimap in the bottom right also points out currently active objectives with arrows indicating the correct destination.
• An experience bar spans the width of the screen and is located below the skill bar.
• The skill bar is divided into two parts, with the left part containing weapon skills and the right containing customizable skills.
• The right bar starts with a heal skill, then three utility skills and ends with an elite skill slot.
• Separating these two skill bars is a large red orb that indicates the character’s current health.
• Above the left skill bar is a class-specific attribute. Warriors have adrenaline bars, Elementalists have elemental attunement, Rangers have their pet skill bar and Necromancers have a death shroud bar.
• An icon to the left of the skill bar is used to drop currently equipped environmental objects.
• Above the right skill bar is the energy bar and to the right of that is an energy potion icon.
• Selected enemies pop up in the top center with an icon, name, health bar and current skill activity.
• Selected characters get colored highlights indicating their status. Friendly NPCs are green, hostile centaurs are red, etc.
• This context sensitivite interface also extends to the use key (F) which changes function when near a corpse, NPC, usable item, etc. Tooltips indicate the current function.
• The screen gains a red outline if the character starts to get low on health.
• More such tooltips function as the actual tutorial elements in the early gameplay segments.
• NPC dialogue occurs in two different ways: chat bubbles similar to Guild Wars or full-on dialogue screens with a 3D NPC head shot and various dialogue options.
• All of this dialogue is also voiced, including the chat bubbles.
• The map zooms out of the game world into a local area map and then up into a world map. The effect is similar to Supreme Commander’s zoom function.
• In the beginning most of the map is covered in a sort of fog of war, this goes away as you explore the areas. This is pretty much identical to Guild Wars.
• The inventory is based on bags, like in Guild Wars. Characters start with a single 20 slot bag, but can carry up to 5 bags.
• The character pane shows the character, currently equipped items, current personality indicators and attributes.
• Tabs on the character pane lead in to personal story, achievements and traits.
• There is much more variety in character equipment. The main armor is head, shoulders, body, bracers, legs and feet. There are additional smaller slots which appear to be trinkets of some sort, possibly jewelry.
• There are two weapon sets for each character which can be altered on the character pane and switched between on the fly.
• Keyboard controls are quite similar to Guild Wars. C targets the closest hostile, Tab cycles through them, I opens the inventory, etc.

Game World and Lore

• Areas seem to be built around event hot spots similar to the quest hot spots of regular MMORPGs. But these are obviously dynamic in nature.
• Most of the game world seems to be open without any portals or loading screens between regions.
• Loading screens will be presented as players travel between certain areas and from instanced into open world portions and vice versa.
• Instance boundaries and other transition areas are indicated by swirling portals identical to those in Guild Wars.
• While traveling through the world players will unlock waypoints. These can be used for fast travel via the map.
• Environments in Guild Wars 2 are wide open and have a huge sense of scale. In certain areas it’s possible to climb walls, mountains or buildings to get a great top-down view of the surrounding land. This is very different from the very restricted world design of the original game.
• There will be throwbacks to the original game. Recognizable monsters and areas will make a return, such as the Temple of the Ages.
• The town of Beetletun is now a lot larger than it used to be with a massive wall surrounding it and a mansion rising up above the rest of the town.
• That mansion will be the site of one of the dungeons in Guild Wars 2.
• The different races aren’t stricly separated. There are charr, norn, sylvari and asuran NPCs to be found in Divinity’s Reach, for example.

General

• There are clothing physics in Guild Wars 2, so clothing reacts properly to character’s movements. A charr tail or a weapon does not stick through capes and the like!
• Characters also walk realistically on each surface. Their feet are actually placed on stairs, rather than floating above them. When walking uphill they lean forward a bit and look to be walking uphill. This is mere perception and does not influence movement speed.
• Run speeds change dependant on whether weapons are drawn or put away. Charr actually go on four legs after putting weapons away, but humans also gain a movement buff by holstering weapons.
• Another interesting detail is that the character’s head turns to look at whichever object or character the player selects.
• The plan to provide rewards for achievements in the Hall of Monuments (Guild Wars: Eye of the North) is still a go. But no specifics at this time.
• There will be closed and open beta tests for Guild Wars 2. Much like the final release date, there’s no timeframe on these yet.
• Guild Wars 2 is very much a work-in-progress. There are no guarantees that everything will stay the same leading up to release.
• There is 3D support in Guild Wars 2. This was also demonstrated at gamescom.
• Guild Wars 2 will be financed through both expansion packs (not chapters) and micro-transactions. The contents of the in-game store will be entirely optional.
• Apparently Guild Wars (all of its chapters) has now sold more than 6 million copies.

Videos and More Information

The above may seem like a very in-depth look at all the new information that came out of gamescom 2010 and certainly took a long time to compile. But it’s really only scratching the surface of what’s out there. I may actually update this with even more information later today.

The good guys and girls over at Guild Wars 2 Guru have teamed up to get all the available information and videos compiled into one giant thread on their forums. So visit that link for tons of gameplay footage, analysis and further information. I also covered some charr gameplay last week, so you can look into that as well. And the Necromancer class should see an official reveal later today so stay tuned for that!

ArenaNet received a lot of praise for their gamescom presentation and Guild Wars 2 was easily the main attraction of the show. It deservedly won the award for Best Online Game of Show, as it turned out to be the most talked about game even in the face of heavy competition from the likes of BioShock: Infinite, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and especially The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

If you’d like to know more about some of those other games shown at this year’s gamescom, then I’ve got impressions, trailers and gameplay footage up here and here.

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, the warrior profession and traits system #1 & #2, the ranger profession #1 & #2 & #3, dynamic events system #1 & #2, the personal story system, player personalities, death and healing, dialogue, leveling, non-combat activities #1 and #2 and activities and travel in Tyria.

Related Posts:

• August 25, 2010 -- Guild Wars 2 Necromancer covered in detail (0)
• August 18, 2010 -- Guild Wars 2 seen in action at last! (0)
• August 12, 2010 -- Dialogue gets spunk and voice in Guild Wars 2 (0)
• August 4, 2010 -- Guild Wars 2 is putting the RP ‘back’ in MMORPG! (0)
• August 1, 2010 -- ArenaNet favors content over leveling for Guild Wars 2 (0)