Guild Wars 2 Beta Giveaway

Guild Wars 2 Beta Giveaway

Guild Wars 2 Beta Giveaway

General

(technical) There will be no monthly fee associated with Guild Wars 2, keeping up the tradition of the Guild Wars business model. Mike O’Brien has stated that expansions and/or mini-expansions are more likely than standalone campaigns, but a final decision has not been made yet. The game will be on multiple servers or “worlds,” but players will not be bound to a world and may therefore change servers easily. The exact mechanic for this has not been announced. Guild Wars 2 will be designed to run on computers with mid-range gaming specifications, but will have higher requirements than the original Guild Wars.

(story) A teaser trailer, which made its debut at Gamescom 09, is available on the official website along with more recent videos revealing two main characters from each of the five playable races, namely Human and Norn.

(legacy) The original Guild Wars will continue to be supported after the release of Guild Wars 2. This will include continued holiday events and tournaments.

About the Game

A collector’s edition of the game will be released. Although its contents have not been finalized yet, it has been confirmed that collector’s edition will not contain The Art of Guild Wars 2, which was released in fall 2009.

Demo

Players finally got their chance to play the Guild Wars 2 demo at Gamescom (August 19-22, 2010) @Cologne, Germany, PAX Prime (September 3-5, 2010) @Seattle, USA, Paris Games Week (October 27-31, 2010) @Paris, France and CES (January 6-9, 2011) @Las Vegas, USA .

Demo participants were able to play as either a starter level human (about lvl 1) or a higher level charr (about lvl 40) and were able to play one of the four known professions; elementalist, warrior, ranger, or necromancer. The human area was a playable area around Divinity’s Reach (what is now Shaemoor and the surrounding areas) in which players would fight a large earth elemental as the big boss battle. The charr playable area was around what is now the from ruins of Surmia to Serenity Temple and the surrounding areas; the large boss battle was with the Shatterer, a dragon lieutenant. The demo had a time limit of 40 minutes.

Controls

The control & movement system is going to be significantly changed. In particular, mouse movement in the form “click to move” will be removed from the game; however, target locking will still function. Control of combat will be more active; including blocking skills that are “held down”, ground-targeting for spells and attacks, and hit detection that allows one player to block area-based damage from reaching other players. Guild Wars 2 will be a true 3D environment which will allow characters to jump over obstacles as well as swim and dive underwater. New animation coding will allow separate tracks for upper and lower body components, allowing players to activate more skills while running or jumping for smoother combat immersion.

Flight will not be a featured character capability in Guild Wars 2.

Graphics and game engine

The original Guild Wars game engine has been improved upon with support for more detailed environments and models, better lighting and shadows, new animation and effects systems, plus new audio and cinematic engines and a more flexible combat and skill-casting system. James Phinney indicated in his “Imagining Guild Wars 2″ article that polygon counts and texture allowances have been increased so he expects it to look beautiful and “like a whole new game”.

Concept art will be used in the game as a storytelling tool or as wall textures. The trailer, and tutorial cinematic seen during the GDC & PAX demo, are indicators of this.