From the earliest days of development, we knew that we wanted to include some form of large-scale PvP combat in Guild Wars 2, but how would it work? We knew right away that we wanted three teams fighting against one another on a series of huge maps in the Mists (our world vs. world battleground) and that each team would be composed of an entire server full of players. Including three forces in world vs. world acts as an excellent balancing factor, preventing one team from growing too powerful and ruining the competitive balance of the game. Two teams can gang up to counter a more dominant third team, a dynamic that simply isn’t possible with only two opposing factions.

We dreamed of a game where players could work together to capture objectives on the battlefield, like keeps and towers, claiming them for their guilds, then fortifications before defending them against hordes of attackers. With players from three different servers fighting each other, we knew that we would need a lot of different areas for them to fight over, and we wanted to have plenty of locations for guilds of all sizes to claim as their own. With this in mind, we created a number of different objectives that are designed to be captured and contested by large groups, small groups, or even just a few players.

To provide enough area to hold all these objectives and a wide variety of terrain, we needed to make some absolutely gigantic maps—four of them.

We gave each of the three teams a home map called the Borderlands, where they would have some advantage as the home team. We also created a fourth, central map called the Eternal Battlegrounds that has its own unique features, including a massive central keep. These are the largest maps we can make in Guild Wars 2, and we use as much space as we possibly can in order to accommodate over a hundred people from each server fighting on every map.

Each objective on a map is worth points for the team that captures it. We periodically tally the point total for each server and add that total to their War Score, which accumulates over the length of a persistent two-week battle.

Every Guild Wars 2 server competes in battles in the Mists.

At the end of each battle, every team is given a new ranking. Once a battle ends and team rankings are updated, servers are matched up based on their new ranking and a new battle commences. Downtime between these epic battles lasts only a few minutes—just long enough for us to tally the final scores, update the server rankings, and create new matches—so there’s almost always a battle for the Mists going on.

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tenkly posted:

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APB will be awesome!!!

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tenkly posted:

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Rift will be awesome!!!

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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GW2 has been making all the right noises. The question is if they can deliver.

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Scarne posted:

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http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-on-guild-wars-2-world-vs-world

We dreamed of a game where players could once again play the awesomeness that is DAoC, and we could profit!
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Eager_Igraine posted:

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Scarne posted:

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http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-on-guild-wars-2-world-vs-world

We dreamed of a game where players could once again play the awesomeness that is DAoC, and we could profit!
...

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Phlegm573 posted:

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Eager_Igraine posted:

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Scarne posted:

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http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-on-guild-wars-2-world-vs-world

We dreamed of a game where players could once again play the awesomeness that is DAoC, and we could profit!
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Hey, if they are actually able to deliver, I for one would love to help them profit.

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Lyken-P posted:

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DAoC 2!

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Jorrdan posted:

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I'm getting kind of nervous that Yuki seems to like it (even if only on paper right now). The world seems....off.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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I read the whole article and it really is a carbon copy of the daoc frontiers, even down to the presence of relics.

Which is a good thing. Daoc had a great overall pvp concept. It was just bad at the details.

Hopefully GW2 will take the same concept and deliver on it more competently.

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tenkly posted:

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GW2 will be awesome!!!

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Jorrdan posted:

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I'm getting kind of nervous that Yuki seems to like it (even if only on paper right now). The world seems....off.

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__Bonk__ posted:

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Jorrdan posted:

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I'm getting kind of nervous that Yuki seems to like it (even if only on paper right now). The world seems....off.

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Phlegm573 posted:

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Eager_Igraine posted:

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Scarne posted:

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http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-on-guild-wars-2-world-vs-world

We dreamed of a game where players could once again play the awesomeness that is DAoC, and we could profit!
...

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Hey, if they are actually able to deliver, I for one would love to help them profit.

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__Bonk__ posted:

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When is the beta for this game?

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NuEM posted:

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There's too much I heard about GW2 that I don't like. Lack of dedicated healer classes and arcadefication of combat are two examples.

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NuEM posted:

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There's too much I heard about GW2 that I don't like. Lack of dedicated healer classes and arcadefication of combat are two examples.

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__Bonk__ posted:

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Everyone try to get into beta. I dont like the cripplefight name. The best name is Outpost. Its us baby!

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Phlegm573 posted:

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Bad news: GW2 may be coming to the consoles.

This means that the PC interface will likely suck balls since everything will be dumbed down for the Xbox untermenschen. And they will be tempted to scale back the graphics dramatically to make it more compatible with the obsolete technology of the 360/PS3.

It also means that us of the PC master race must play with said untermenschen.

http://kotaku.com/5885566/guild-wars-2-is-almost-certainly-coming-to-consoles

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oxydendrum_meatwad posted:

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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oxydendrum_meatwad posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Tell us what server you play on muffin so we can be sure to roll on a rival server.

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Scarne posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Tell us what server you play on muffin so we can be sure to roll on a rival server.

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The sets of rival servers change every 2 weeks.

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tenkly posted:

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NuEM posted:

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There's too much I heard about GW2 that I don't like. Lack of dedicated healer classes and arcadefication of combat are two examples.

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You mean being able to dodge attacks and not everything being able to hit you like homing missiles is a bad thing ? since when ?

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Corky_Aloof posted:

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The class selection for GW2 is quite limited. I hope they make up for it with various skilltrees within each class via Rift.

Class versatility is of the utmost importance to me.

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Eager_Igraine posted:

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Having tons of options and skill trees in only as good as those options provide multiple ways of being effective. I'm always curious to see how the frenetic min/maxers find the breaks in the trees and quickly demonstrate why the majority of options suck and there is only one or two actually most effective path. Gogogo Earth Wizards!!

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Vydor posted:

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I never paid GW much mind, cuz I wasn't thrilled with it's design. GW2 looks kinda interesting though. How much different is it from GW?

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Walker_ID posted:

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i don't see all the excitement about capture the flag/location humping events.....it's the same thing that is in ever other fail wow clone game ...except now...you can have more than 5 people

adding more people to the same stupid "capture and hold" the whatever objects is not going to magically make it fun

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Rhint posted:

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Walker_ID posted:

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i don't see all the excitement about capture the flag/location humping events.....it's the same thing that is in ever other fail wow clone game ...except now...you can have more than 5 people

adding more people to the same stupid "capture and hold" the whatever objects is not going to magically make it fun

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Ok, so the same can be said for DAoC.

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Eager_Igraine posted:

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I'm curious about their selling point that it will be easy for people to learn because they have the same ten buttons to mash from level 7 to the endgame. I'm not entirely sure that sounds as awesome as they think it does, but at least I can assume those ten buttons will be fairly important skills.

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Scarne posted:

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Eager_Igraine posted:

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I'm curious about their selling point that it will be easy for people to learn because they have the same ten buttons to mash from level 7 to the endgame. I'm not entirely sure that sounds as awesome as they think it does, but at least I can assume those ten buttons will be fairly important skills.

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The 10 skills aren't locked down, you just have a choice of 10 skills at any one time that you can switch when you are not in combat.

Even during combat, while you do have 10 skills at once, characters have a weapon swap between two weapon sets (or attunement swap for elementalists) to let them switch out the first 5 skills on demand. There are also cases where some classes have skills to do the same (such as flamethrower for engineers or steal for thief).

Picking out the 10 skills that is bested suited for the upcoming situation is important.

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