• No Monthly Fee – ArenaNet is offering up a fully-fledged MMO with all of the polish, features, and support that you expect from a true AAA title, all with no monthly fees.
• No Pay To Win – Players can use either cash or in-game gold to purchase a currency called Gems. With Gems, players can buy cosmetic items or account services such as extra character slots and storage. There are no items that grant gameplay advantages over another character.
• No Holy Trinity – Defined traditional MMO roles are gone. It’s not fun to wait for that one person to log in so that you can actually play the game. You can take your friends with you regardless of profession and succeed in content based on skill alone.
• Play Together, Not Separately – You don’t have to worry about people taking an enemy from you. Any number of players can attack the same enemy and receive XP and loot for the kill if they meet a minimum damage threshold. No Ninja Looting here.
• Dynamic Content – Gone are the days of totally relying on a symbol above an NPC's head to tell you exactly where to go just as everyone else has before you. There’s no massive blocks of quest text - instead, the NPCs in the world will run up to you and request your help through voice overs. Content can be dictated by the Dynamic Event system: events that change the world in realtime based on your action or inaction.
• Personal Story – Each player has a distinctive storyline that changes based on choices made during character creation and beyond. These story segments play in an instanced version of the world, including a large instanced section of their home city. Players can invite their friends along to assist in their heroic exploits; they still gain rewards while doing so.
• Level Scaling – Leveling with your friends is easy; the game scales you down based on where you’re at in the world. No longer do you have to try to catch up to your friends, nor they have to wait for you to level up to them.
• No Waiting In Line – As long as the login servers are up, you will be able to play due to Overflow servers. There’s no giant hour-spanning server login queues.
• Less Downtime – When a new build is released, the game will notify you and give you 5 minutes to logout. Once you logout, the launcher will restart and it will download the new build. It may take a few minutes for the server to recognize the new build and update itself. No more 12+ hour patch maintenance. In the past 7 years, the original Guild Wars has had a total of 32 hours of downtime, 24 of which was to physically move data centers.
• Active Combat – No standing around trading blows in whack-a-mole style combat. Damage in the game is avoidable; if an enemy is lining up a big attack, you can dodge away and keep fighting. Positioning relative to your enemy and your allies will be a key factor during combat, among other factors such as terrain and line of sight. Combine skills between professions through a unique combo system.
• World Versus World (WvW) – It’s us versus them: This mode consists of three servers fighting against each other in a two week battle over different objectives on 4 huge maps. After two weeks, the servers get matched again based off of points accumulated; making every new round a fight for survival.
• Structured PvP (sPVP) – Engage in casual larger groups, or tournament-style smaller groups in the most competitive mode Guild Wars 2 offers. If you’re into e-sports, this mode is made for you.
• Underwater Matters – There’s no breath meter and with movement being truly fluid, you can freely explore the extensive aquatic content at your leisure. Underwater combat takes advantage of all three dimensions, with specific weapons built for fighting in the dark depths.
• Leveling Curve – There’s no exponential curve. Leveling is linear and plateaus quickly. The amount of time it takes to go from 79-80 is the same as 30-31. Grind is nonexistent, with the amount of various ways you can level through any activity.
ELEMENTALIST | WARRIOR | THIEF | RANGER |
NECROMANCER | MESMER | ENGINEER | GUARDIAN |
HUMAN | SYLVARI | CHARR | ASURA | NORN
Active combat requires you to dodge, swap weapons and pay attention to your enemy, other players and the environment. Dodging uses Endurance, which is displayed just above your health gauge. Enemies often indicate when they are about to deliver a powerful attack, so watch your foes and not the UI!
Swapping weapons is an essential part of combat, and the first half of your action bar is determined by your weapons. Six professions can swap between two different weapon sets, allowing you to change your playstyle on the fly. The other two have special mechanics to make up for this change. Two-hand weapons determine all five slots, while main-hand weapons determine the first three and off-hand weapons the final two. Each profession’s skills are unique between the various ones. The second half of your action bar contains Healing, Utility and Elite skills. These skills are your choice, and each profession has access to a wide variety to choose from.
You and your fellow players can also execute cross-profession combos with skills designated as combo starters or finishers. Arrows shot through a wall of fire will become flaming arrows, for example. Any time a player’s health is reduced to zero, they enter a “Downed State” instead of immediately dying. While downed, you can “fight back to life”. If you defeat the enemy before they finish you off, you’ll rally and jump back into action. Any other player, regardless of profession, can attempt to revive you as well.
What's Your Style? | Combat | Combat Wiki | Underwater Combat
In place of the usual MMO questing system, these events can occur anytime, player or no player, letting all in the general area participate to complete the objective. The game rewards based on how much you participate. Events often lead into one another and can be failed, creating chains of events that cascade out across the zone based on your action or inaction.
In addition to Dynamic Events, there are several renown regions scattered across each zone, marked with a heart symbol on the map. Once you’ve assisted these NPCs there, they will sell you a variety of items for Karma. Renown Regions cannot be repeated, and can easily be found by speaking to a Scout NPC (represented by a telescope icon).
Dynamic Events | Overview | Dynamic Events Wiki
Your choices during character creation set the overall tone and storyline going forward. Options at the beginning include choice of lifestyle, background, and personal attire: a piece of armor you can choose to keep your entire character’s lifetime if you wish. Knowing Guild Wars lore will enhance your experience, but it isn’t necessary. Your character’s story is a piece in the puzzle of the over-arching story of Guild Wars 2. Eventually, all desire the same goal: The defeat of the Elder Dragons, starting with the undead Zhaitan.
Decisions are a big part of your story; each choice leads to different objectives, playstyle, or outcomes. It’s your choice. One of the biggest decisions your character will make will involve the three Orders: The Vigil, Durmand Priory, and the Order of Whispers. It’s up to you which fits you or your character. An instanced section of your hometown is just for you: your deeds, your NPCs, your storyline path will be reflected here. Some of the people you’ve interacted with through your story could choose to stay in your town section. It is a monument to your ongoing crusade against the Dragons.
Personal Story | Narrative | Personality | Telling Stories | Personal Story Wiki
Customizing is easy. In addition to the usual face and hair options, you’ll find detailed sliders for facial features, height and build with some race-specific options included (the Sylvari, for example, have bioluminescence on their hair and body that glows at night). More than 400 dyes can be applied to individual parts of each armor piece and you can use Transmutation Stones to modify the appearance of your weapons and armor.
As you level, you unlock trait points, which you spend in five profession-specific trait lines. As you select your traits, you will gain relevant stat boosts and unlock both major and minor traits that can drastically affect how your character plays. You can customize your weapons, armor and accessories with sigils, runes and jewels. These upgrades grant stat boosts, trait-like bonuses and even special attacks. Runes function similarly to armor set bonuses found in other MMOs; if you use the same rune repeatedly, you will unlock additional effects unique to that rune.
Customization | A Rewarding Experience | Traits | Progression and Leveling
Guild Wars 2 offers dungeons you can experience in either Story mode or Explorable mode. In Story Mode, the dungeon is laid out for you in a lore-expanding fashion; treating you to the history of the dungeon and advancing the story with a moderate challenge. In Explorable Mode, you come across more dangerous paths, puzzles, and enemies. These are meant to be the “raid wings” of the dungeons - much harder content designed for those who want a challenge. These parts of the dungeon will usually take you more time to complete than Story Mode.
You needn’t worry about bringing X class to Y dungeon. Bring who you want, not what you need. It’s all about managing the skill of the encounter. Dungeons can be run at any level - the level-scaling you’ll get used to in the overworld is used here; meaning that in the future, even low-level dungeons will still present you with a great challenge, regardless if you are max level or not.
Dungeons | Designing Dungeons | Dungeon Wiki
Structured PvP
You can jump into The Mists as soon as you complete the tutorial, where you’ll automatically be leveled to 80 and given a set of the best armor and weapons. Different weapons can be purchased from vendors, but you must buy Runes, Sigils, Accessories, and Jewels to customize your character’s stats.
Glory is sPVP-exclusive XP gained by killing other players, capturing, neutralizing, defending points, and completing matches. You can spend your accumulated Glory on three different tiers of chests that grant more awesome looking loot and consumable items. Increasing your Rank level lets you get ever increasingly awesome looking gear, but in looks only. Conquest is where players fight over 3 capture points inside of a map. The first team to 500 points will win the match, but the secondary mechanics can turn the tide of battle in mere seconds.
The first mode is called Hot Join for 8 vs 8, where you can simply pick a server from a list and hop in. The second is Tournament play which is built for 5 vs 5 where you can form a roster of players to compete for supremacy. If your team wins a Tournament, you’re each given a chest with unique items. There’s Daily, Monthly, and Yearly Tournaments. Daily grants qualifying points that will grant your team access to Monthly, and with those qualifying points, Yearly. Yearly Tournaments will see the best teams in the world compete against each other for cash prizes.
WvW
World versus World is an epic two week long battle for server supremacy between three servers. You'll be fighting over various structures such as Supply Camps, Towers, Keeps, and an absolutely massive Castle. These structures are held within four gigantic maps where hundreds of players from each server fight for eternal glory inside The Mists.
To capture a structure, you'll want to make smart use of the various kinds of siege weaponry. These weapons range from an arrow cart, to a trebuchet, to a flaming ram, to a siege golem that you can control, and even a massive mortar. As a player, you’ll need to grab supply whenever you head into supply posts - these are needed in keeps and towers to upgrade defenses and guards that are there. Keep this on-hand as much as possible, as you will use it all the time. This is important and necessary for success in WvW.
The unique part about WvW is that you gain experience for doing it - capturing points, taking down NPCs, taking down players, and doing the unique Dynamic Events that compose the whole entirety of some areas of the map. You can even step in and not even set foot in the PVE section of the game right after the tutorial, if you so choose. One of the major goals is to capture an Orb of Power held at the other server’s main keep - acquiring this item will give players a large boost of health, XP, and various other rewards. You can even claim locations for your guild’s banner to show gloriously. The aim of WvW is to achieve a higher war score than the opposing worlds by the end of the two-week battle.
sPvP | sPvP Wiki | WvW | WvW Wiki
Crafting is useful throughout the entire game. With two crafting disciplines at once, you can change them at any time for a small amount of coin and fully retain all levels and recipes you’ve obtained. You simply buy the three different gathering tools from a vendor and get to it. Gathering nodes throughout the world are yours alone, no one can steal them from you. Unlike crafting in other MMOs, you gain XP for all parts of this process. It’s even possible to level entirely to max through crafting by reaching level 400 for each discipline.
You can take all of your crafting materials and move them right into a special material storage bank from anywhere in the world with two clicks, and you’re able to access both your regular bank and material storage from any crafting station without requiring you to run back and forth. The time it takes to craft items will actually decrease the more items you make so you can churn out 50 items within seconds.
Crafting uses a system called “Discovery” where the game gives you some base recipes when you hit certain milestones, but otherwise you need to combine different materials to find new recipes. This uses a system that locks out other items that are incompatible with your experimenting, so it’s easy to tell what can and can’t be used. What this means for you is that you can apply whatever type of stats you want to a piece of gear that fits your build or playstyle rather than it being pre-defined by the developers.
As you discover new recipes, you’ll get bonus crafting experience and when you get a critical bonus on a recipe, you’ll either get more XP or some of your materials back. This really goes a long way in making crafting a streamlined experience where you can create useful items, reach max level very quickly, and create unique skins and items that can’t be obtained anywhere else.
Crafting | Crafting Wiki
During your travels through Tyria, you’ll come across a wide variety of content - it’s not all about combat. There can be benefits to exploring: for example, the longer an enemy is alive (AI or player), the more bonus XP you get for killing them.
Jumping Puzzles are in most cases are very well hidden. They reward you with a chest full of loot and an achievement upon completion. Vistas are a lot like mini jumping puzzles, which provide cinematic views. Cities offer varied mini-games and activities such as Keg Brawl (Rugby), Target Shootout, a Diving Board, and RC Golems (chess). and are spread throughout every zone in the game (including cities).
The Trading Post is Tyria’s Stock Exchange. You’re able to buy or sell items from anywhere in the game world; the “Buy Order” system allows you to choose exactly how much you want to pay for an item and post it. If it happens to be the highest Buy Order, it will be filled if they choose to sell their item right away. To pick up, go to a specific NPC that is in every city or every zone. The Trading Post also tracks data such as Top Traded, Top Sold, Top Demanded, and Top Supplied items as well as individual metrics for every item.
Activities | Vistas Wiki | Jumping Puzzle Wiki | Trading Post Wiki
ArenaNet will be splitting their team of ~280 down the middle to create a live content team and an expansion content team. ANet has said that the live content team has plans on dropping content into the world without telling us. Their future expansions will use a traditional expansion model rather than the campaign model that Guild Wars 1 used. Balance changes will come quickly without the need to wait for larger patches.
Expansions could lead to new continents, weapons, professions, races, and a lot more.
92% with 28 reviews - http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/guild-wars-2
I really have to thank tachiSama for the absolutely beautiful artwork in this thread. They deserve far more credit than I do as they did most of the work. Without them this OT would have been very ugly and lacking in substance. I'd also like to thank Retro and Maxrpg for helping write, proofread, and gather materials for the OT. They really saved my ass because I love to procrastinate.
For a far more detailed version of this thread:
http://goo.gl/Ipt1a
