OnlineWelten Artikel zum Onlinespiel Guild Wars 2

Onlinewelten: You have confirmed the elementalist class. Will it play similar to the existing class in Guild Wars and what purpose will it have in a group?

Eric Flannum: In Guild Wars 2 an elementalist can attune to one of the four elements. The attunement they are in combines with their choice of weapon to change the first five skills on their bar. For example an elementalist attuned to fire and wielding a staff will have access to five skills including the Fireball skill. An elementalist attuned to fire and wielding a scepter and focus will have access to a completely different set of five skills including Dragon’s Breath. When that elementalist attunes to water he has five new skills.

Attuning to the different elements will also provide the elementalist with an ongoing passive effect. Fire attunement will damage any foes striking the elementalist. Water will heal nearby allies. Earth will protect the elementalist giving him additional armor. Air attunement will cause bolts of lightning to randomly strike nearby enemies. Elementalists in Guild Wars 2 can be extremely versatile, able to go from a support character to a damage dealer in the blink of an eye. Because of this an elementalist will always be welcome in a group.



Onlinewelten: You are talking about a living world and dynamic events. What will be the interval between different events? Will there be more than one at the same time?

Eric Flannum: The interval between different events can vary greatly. Some events are initiated by player action, some by the success or failure of a previous event, some events rely on the day and night cycle of the game for their timing, there are many different ways that events can start.

There are always multiple events going on at any given time within a map. Events also scale dynamically to take the current player population into account. For example I was playing through our starting human area and wandered up to an area where a giant water pumping station pumps water through pipes towards Divinity’s Reach. Usually this pump station is working like clockwork but bandits had attacked it in an earlier event and succeeded in destroying the pipes. This shut off the flow of water to the city and workers were working furiously to repair the damage. The bandits of course were trying to kill the workers to stop them from completing the repairs. There were already a small handful of players defending the area so I joined in and helped them. As more and more players joined in the defense the number of bandits attacking increased and soon we had an epic struggle between players and bandits that ended with us emerging victorious over the bandit menace. Event timing, density, and dynamic scaling combine to make exploring the world of Guild wars an exciting experience where you never quite know what’s lurking around the next corner.
Onlinewelten: How do you plan to avoid kill- and loot stealing?

Eric Flannum: One of our primary goals for Guild Wars 2 is to make it a fantastic cooperative experience. We want to eliminate that feeling in most persistent world game where you view other players as pests or obstacles to your fun. Why play a multi-player game if you aren’t going to play with other players? We accomplish our goals in a couple ways.

Events give players shared goals. In the water pump example it didn’t really matter how many bandits I killed in relation to another player what mattered was that I participated in the defense of the workers and that we succeeded as a group. We also do things in our loot and experience distribution system to encourage players to play with each other and not to covet monsters like they were precious resources. Our formula can be a little complicated but it basically works like this; once a low threshold of damage has been reached by a player on a monster that player gets credit for the kill and will receive full experience and loot for killing that monster. This means that as long as I’m actually trying to kill something I’ll receive credit no matter who lands the killing blow.

All of this combines to encourage players to play with and help each other. A player can log into Guild Wars 2, never join a party with other players, never speak to another player, and still feel like they are playing in a cooperative multiplayer game.

Onlinewelten: Will you implement a strict separation between different regions? In Guild Wars Europeans were not able to play in American districts and vice versa.

Eric Flannum: We don’t have the concept of districts in Guild Wars 2. We ask players to join different worlds, what you might call servers or shards in another game. We’ll have some worlds that are based in different territories but at this time we have no plans to restrict what worlds players can or can’t join.