The world of Guild Wars 2 is stunning and full of life

Guild Wars 2 is the upcoming sequel to the long running MMO Guild Wars with an unusual release date of "When it's ready". The developers ArenaNet do not want to put a release date on their game as they don't want to rush getting it out if it isn't finished by the deadline. While this is reassuring for fans to know that the game will be completed properly and contain as much finished content as possible, it may peeve others for having no indication when it will be released.

Though the only reason to be irate would be reading about the exciting and various features they're putting into Guild Wars 2 to make it stand out from the normal grind of MMOs. The articles that have long been up on their website go into detail about certain things. For starters, are you annoyed when you lose your health then have to respawn at the nearest town, lose experience or have to run from a resurrection shrine back to your body? Worry no longer, ArenaNet understand that it's bad enough losing all your health without having other such demoralising attributes. In Guild Wars 2, upon losing all your health, your character will go down on their knees and still be able to use weakened attacks. If you kill an enemy you get up, if someone in your party comes over to you, they can also help you stand up.

Going on from this, usually if you die you may blame your healer for not healing or the tank for not controlling the attacks of the enemy or the DPS for not killing fast enough. ArenaNet has also done away with the DPS>Tank>Healer triangle and wants people to play the class they want to play without fear of not getting into parties or feeling they have a weak profession. All classes are being made diverse to avoid feeling like another, with specific purposes and utilities to help out the other party members. Every class can now heal or buff themselves or party members in some way meaning there is no longer a dedicated healing class and making everyone helpful.

If we go on to talk about weapons and skills, there are a variety of weapons in the game that are spread out across the classes. Every class can only use 4-5 of the weapon categories in the game but this helps in balancing weapons for a specific class. Your skills are now based upon which weapons you have equipped at the time. For example; a warrior using a sword and shield will gain 3 attack skills from the sword and 2 defensive skills from his shield for a total of 5. If he changed to his 2handed sword (easily done thanks to being able to hotkey weapon sets) his skills would change into 5 heavy damage dealing skills. The other 5 skills on your hotkey bar will remain constant with 1 being a healing skill for you or the party, 3 for utilities (buffs, defences etc) and an Elite Skill that has a long cool down but is very powerful and will easily change the tide of battle.

“This is all lovely but what do I do when I play?” I hear you say. Like the original Guild Wars, you will have your usual main story and side quests that pop up from NPCs. No need to worry as there are no ‘Kill x for y amounts of item z’ quests and you don’t even have to grind to achieve the max level. Guild Wars 1 max level was 20 (which you reached within a third of the story) and from then on the game was based around your control and equipped skills with enemies varying from level 20-30. Guild Wars 2 has a max level of 80 but 20-21 takes the same experience as 79-80 so once again it is all about your skills and control. Control comes from switching your equipped weapon to have the right skills, your place on the battlefield, buffing and healing team mates and being able to attack while moving at the same time unlike other MMOs.

Seems a bit bad to leave it until last but the main meat and gameplay from the game comes from the “Dynamic Events System” which makes certain events happen randomly throughout the world with the number of these events around 1000 to choose from. Of course they will add more as the game lives on (Guild Wars is still active 6 years after its release, with a large patch within the last two weeks).

The main example they always use is that a group of Centaurs will charge towards a city in order to take it over. No NPC will tell you this but you will see the Centaurs charging towards the city and begin attacking. NPCs will now run over and beg for your help. There are no lengthy paragraphs to read and no accept button to click. What happens then? Everyone in the area will be put together in a group to collectively stop this invasion. The amount of Centaurs and their level will increase with the amount of people partaking in the event. Do not fret about people stealing your kills or loot as everyone helping to kill a monster gets 100% of the exp and everyone gets some loot.

From there, if you succeed in defeating the Centaurs, the villagers will continue to live peacefully and you might get a quest to eliminate the Centaur base to stop them attacking again in future. If you fail, the Centaurs will take over the village and use it as an outpost. The longer they stay in the village, the more fortified and harder to attack it becomes. If they are still left in the village, they will move on to attack other outposts. This is one example of hundreds.

If you seek more info such as classes or races in Guild Wars 2 go to www.guildwars2.com

The Centaurs attacking a village in a Dynamic Event