Arena Net (Anet) is working on a sequel to Guild Wars which if it lives up to all the hype may just be the best multiplayer online role playing game ever.

They haven't given a release date although they have said first public demo of the game will be August 19-22 2010 in Cologne Germany at gamescom, followed by public demos at PAX Prime in Seattle, Washington September 3-5.

You can see what they have said about the game at http://guildwars2.com and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

The original Guild Wars is limited to human only player characters, Guild Wars 2 however will have 5 playable races, with 8 professions.

Guybrush

Will there be a monthly fee?

No monthly fee. If its like GW1 they'll make money on extra character slots, extra storage space, stuff like that.

Lets see if I can stir up some interest in Guild Wars 2 here.

Guild Wars 2 is a sequel to Guild Wars. Guild Wars 2 is still in production. The developers have said that they are producing a game that can be enjoyed both by those who have played the original Guild Wars (like me) and those who have not. From what I've read it seems the mechanics of Guild Wars 2 will be very different from Guild Wars 1 so players of the first game will not have any advantage over people totally new to Guild Wars. Apparently Guild Wars players will be able to reserve their Guild Wars character names for use in Guild Wars 2 but the characters themselves will NOT be converted two Guild Wars 2 characters, the systems are too different (besides 250 years have passed, the original Guild Wars characters are long dead by the time of Guild Wars 2).

Guild Wars 1 has only one playable race, human and 10 professions.Guild Wars 2 will have 5 playable races and 8 professions. The five playable races are human, charr, asura, norn and sylvari. So far only three professions have been revealed: elementalist, warrior and ranger. Guild Wars 1 had secondary professions. After playing with your primary profession for awhile you chose a secondary profession, allowing you to use most of the skills of that new profession as well. Guild Wars 2 will not have secondary professions.


THE STORY:
250 years have passed since the events of Guild Wars: Eye of the North. Much has changed. The most drastic and devastating changes were caused by the Elder Dragons. Long forgotten, these ancient creatures, older even then the gods, have awoken from their long sleep. Once every 50 years a different Elder Dragon appeared. First was Primordus. Even while he slept his minions, the Destroyers, drove the asura from their underground world to the surface world. Once he awoke the asura had no hope of returning home. Most of the dwarves, having been turned into creatures of living stone, rushed underground to do battle with Primordus' minions, creatures of stone and earth. (Its for this reason that dwarf is not a playable race). Next was Jormag, breaking through the ice of Drakkar Lake, this Elder Dragon drove the norn from their homeland. Fifty years later Zhaitan (the main protagonist of Guild Wars 2) arose from the bottom of the sea, bringing the lost continent of Orr with it. The coastline of Tyria was flooded (destroying the Battle Iles home of the Zaishen Order, servents of Balthazar, god of war and of fire, and devestating Lion's Arch, former capital of Kryta). Those killed were raised as undead slaves to Zhaitan. Zhaitan and his horde of undead have isolated Tyria making it impossible to travel to Cantha (home of the ironically named Dragon Empire) as anyone attempting it adds to the dragon's undead forces. Fifty years after Zhaitan another deep sea dragon awoke. At this time its name is not known. It created monstrous tentacles which appeared in lakes and rivers. Between this Elder Dragon and the next one the sylvari appear on Tyria, believing it is their destiny to fight the dragons. Finally, the Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik awakes in the charr homelands flying south across Ascalon corrupting everything in its flightpath. The presence of Kralkatorrik in the Crystal Desert keeps all but the Order of Whispers from traveling between Tyria and Elona. So with Elder Dragons controlling the seas and the desert, Tyria is cut of from the continents of Cantha and Elona. As if the Elder Dragons were not enough, Cantha was last known to be ruled by a ruthless dictatorship which drove the other intelligent races out and Elona had fallen to the undead warlord Palawa Joko. How humans are doing in Cantha and Elona is mostly unknown.

The five major races of Tyria are realizing that not one of them alone can stand against the Elder Dragons, they must put aside old hatreds and work together for their survival.


THE RACES:
In combat race will mostly be cosmetic, no race will be better or worse at any of the professions. Arena Net wants to encourage trying all races in all professions not discourage experimentation. There will be some racial only skills but they will actually be less effective than profession skills and no racial skill will be more powerful than any other. Guild Wars 2 will feature a personal story line for each character in which race will play an important part. For example, race will determine where your character's home is. Your home is safe place where you cannot be attacked.

humans - self explanatory. The last 250 years has not been kind to mankind. Of the three great human nations only Kryta remains and even it has been reduced to one major city, Divinity's Reach. Most humans believe in the six "true gods" and human racial skills will apparently be named for their deities.

charr - a race of war loving felines, the charr have been the greatest enemy of humanity for centuries. In the original Guild Wars the charr attempted to conquer the three great human empires of Tyria: Ascalon, Orr and Kryta. The charr succeeded only in conquering Ascalon. They were stopped in their attempt to conquer Orr by powerful, ancient magic which caused the entire content of Orr to sink into the sea, killing both the citizens of Orr and the charr invaders. The invasion of Kryta was stopped by the Mursaat, powerful magic users worshiped by a group of humans known as the White Mantle. The Mursaat and the White Mantle were ultimately defeated by other humans but by then the charr had their own troubles. In the time of Guild Wars 1 the charr worship the Titans, creatures from another dimension. But when the humans defeated the titans the idea that "their are no gods for the charr" spread quickly and in the time of Guild Wars 2 most of the charr are essentially atheists. I admit to being prejudice against the charr, who where the enemies of my Guild Wars characters and I have no desire to play a charr. Their existence is the one thing I don't like about Guild Wars 2. Since I don't play other role playing type games I have no idea what to compare the charr to.

asura - small but highly intelligent the asura consider themselves superior to the other four races, which they look upon as servants or guinea pigs for their experiments, expendable in either case. The sylvari are particularly weary of the asura after the first sylvari had a bad experience with them. Asura could be compatible to gnomes I guess. The asura were introduced in Guild Wars: Eye of the North as a race whose help the dwarfs needed in battling the Destroyers.

norn - nine feet tall, shape shifters who are fiercely independent, because of this independence each tried to fight the Elder Dragon's minions alone instead of forming an army. Norn and charr respect each others strength and neither has tried to invade the others territory. the norn were introduced in Guild Wars: Eye of the North, assisting humans, dwarfs and asura in the battle against the Great Destroyer.

sylvari - the sylvari are new race only existing on Tyria for 25 years. there are no sylvari in the original Guild Wars. The sylvari all sprouted from the same tree, so they are basically intelligent mobile plants. The sylvari believe it is their destiny to fight the elder dragons. While some compare the sylvari to elves (which are actually Germanic) the sylvari are actually based on celtic myths so they are more like fairy folk.

When creating a character there will be a series of questions which set up your character's personal story. Some questions will be asked of all characters, some will specific to the races. For example for a human you will chose whether your character is a native of Kryta or a refugee from Ascalon, Cantha or Elona and what your character's social status is. For a sylvari you will choose what time of day your character was "born" and this will relate it to a season. Dawn=spring, day=summer, twilight=autumn and night=winter.

PROFESSIONS:
As of this date only 3 of the 8 professions have been released. We do know that the professions will be divided into three groups: scholars (light armor), adventurers (medium armor) and soldiers (heavy armor). There are 3 scholar professions, 3 adventurer professions and 2 soldier professions.

scholars: elementalist, unknown, unknown
adventurers: ranger, unknown, unknown
soldiers: warrior, unknown

In the original Guild Wars armor was specific to profession, ie an elmentalist could only wear elementalist armor. In Guild Wars 2 armor will apparently be limited only by type. So any scholar can wear any light armor, any adventurer can wear any medium armor and any solider any heavy armor. No longer will you be able too look at a characters armor and say "oh that's a ranger".


elementalist - a spell caster which uses magic related to the elements of air, earth, fire and water. once in combat an elementalist cannot change weapons but can change "atunement". attuning to an element determines what skills the weapons will provide the elementalist as well as providing some kind of environmental effect. attuning to air causes the elementalist to give off sparks damaging nearby enemies, attuning to earth gives elementalist extra magical protection, attuning to fire causes damage to any enemy who touches the elementalist, attuning to water provides healing to allies
weapons:
two handed: staff
main handed: scepter, dagger
off hand: focus, dagger

warrior - a master of weaponry using adrenaline to increase the damage done. a warrior can switch between two different weapon sets while in combat.
weapons:
two handed: great sword, hammer, long bow, rifle
main hand: axe, sword, mace
off hand: shield, war horn, axe, sword, mace

ranger - atuned with nature the ranger commands pets, plants traps and summons nature spirits. like a warrior a ranger can switch between two weapon sets while in combat. a ranger can have up to 3 pets. pets in Guild Wars 2 are divided into terrestrial (land only), amphibian (land and water) and aquatic (water only). as much of Tyria is underwater in Guild Wars 2 a pet shark or jellyfish will come in handy. pets will share the rangers level but will have their own skill bar of four skills. a ranger can order his pet to "attack", "heel" or "stay". Normally a ranger has only one pet active at a time but the elite skill "Alpha Strike" will cause all 3 pets to appear and fight for a short time (that is if they are able, a shark won't appear on dry land or a wolf underwater). different pets will have different functions, for example a bear can absorb lots of damage while a snow leopard cannot take as much damage but it does more damage, and a moa bird is a lower damage dealing pet but it's squawks buff the ranger and allies. In Guild Wars 2 having a pet does not take up a skill slot, it did in the original Guild Wars. Pets are more important to Guild Wars 2 rangers than to Guild Wars 1 rangers, in fact Anet has gone so far as to say that if you want to use a bow but don't want a pet you should play a warrior instead of a ranger. They have also said other professions will have pets but they wont be pets that can be named or customized like ranger pets. In Guild Wars 1 a ranger did not start out with a pet but had to find a charmable animal and charm it. In Guild Wars 2 the ranger's first pet will be chosen at creation. Each race will have different set of first pets to chose from. Other pets will be found in the wild and charmed. In Guild Wars 2 the charming skill will not take up a skill slot but will just appear if the ranger has an open pet slot.
weapons:
two handed: long bow, short bow, great sword
main hand: sword, axe (thrown)
off hand: torch, war horn, dagger, axe


COMBAT:
In Guild Wars 2 a playable character has a skill bar of ten skills, however the first 5 skills are determined by profession and equipped weapon or weapon and offhand. One of the other 5 skills has to be a healing skill and one skill slot is reserved for an elite skill. If a character is equipped with a two-handed weapon than all 5 of the first skills will come from the weapon, if equipped with a one-handed weapon and an off-hand weapon then the first 3 skills come from the main hand weapon while the 4th and 5th come from the offhand. Some professions can dual wield, that is equip two of the same weapon.

Several professions in Guild Wars 2 may use the same weapons but they will use them in different ways so the warriors long bow skills are not the same as a ranger's and by the same token a ranger's sword or axe skills are not the same as a warrior's. For example: the long bow in a warriors hands does fire damage while in the hands of a ranger it does things like barrage: sending a shower of arrows hitting multiple targets. While a warrior uses an axe in melee, a ranger throws it. A warrior uses the war horn to buff his allies. The ranger uses it to summon animals (not his pets) to attack his enemies.

Some professions can change weapons during combat (warrior, ranger), some professions cannot (elementalist). All professions can change weapons and skills when not in combat without having to return to a town or outpost (this is different from Guild Wars 1 in which all professions could swap between four weapon sets but could only change skills in towns or outposts or guildhall).

Rifles and pistols are totally new to Guild Wars 2. So far we know that the warrior can use a rifle but not a pistol and ranger cannot use firearms at all. We don't know yet what profession(s) can use a pistol. The two-handed great sword is also new, all swords being single handed weapons in the original Guild Wars. There will not be ammunition, the developers did not want some professions to have to spend money just to make their skills work, so bows and guns will never run out of arrows or bullets and rangers will never run out of axes to throw.

DEATH:
Player characters cannot be killed in Guild Wars 2 (although monsters still die). Instead when all your health is gone your character goes into a "downed" state during which all skills are changed to a set of 4 weaker skills. One skill calls for help and makes your character temporarily invulnerable. The other 3 skills allow your character to attempt to kill an enemy. Should your characters succeed in killing an enemy your character will rally, returning to full health and regaining original skills, without penalty. The downed skills are determined by profession. Examples of downed skills: "Vengeance" allows a warrior to stand up and resume fighting for a short period after which the warrior is instantly defeated and unable to use any other downed skills; "Grasping Earth" allows elementalist to lock an enemy in place so it can't melee or "Vapor Form" which turns the elementalist into a slow moving mist in an attempt to flee the combat zone. The down state is timed. Further damage to your character will reduce the down time. Should your character fail to rally it will be "defeated". A defeated character can take no action (except to map out). You have to wait for an ally to come "revive" you or map out to a known point to be automatically revived. There will be a small fee for this mapping out. If you have no money on you or in storage the fee will be waived. Each time your character has to be revived the time needed to revive is increased. This is the only death penalty in Guild Wars 2. All characters have the ability to revive a fallen character by just interacting with it, this ability does not take up a skill slot. However there are other reviving skills available that do take up a skill slot. For example the warrior skill "I Will Avenge You" will instantly revive all fallen allies if the warrior succeeds in killing an enemy. Pets do not have a downed state they go right to defeated and have to be revived. In Guild Wars 1 the death of pet caused a ranger's skills to all be temporarily disabled, this does not happen in Guild Wars 2. Being temporarily without the pet is the only penalty. A ranger mapping out to revive himself will also revive a defeated pet at the ranger's new location. In PVP characters will gain a melee skill which takes a few seconds to activate but once it hits it instantly defeats a downed enemy. It's melee and takes time to activate so the downed character still has a chance to down the character trying to defeat them.



SPECULATION:
Most of us watching probably assume that necromancer or mesmer will be revealed next as those are two core professions from the original Guild Wars. Anet has already revealed that there will NOT be a dedicated healer class,every character will have its own healing ability so monk is not likely. Based solely on concept art some people think assassin will return but I think the new ability of rangers to use melee weapons (great sword and daggers) makes assassin redundant. I also don't expect the return of paragon (no spears in Guild Wars 2), dervish (no scythes in Guild Wars 2) or ritualist. With 8 professions instead of 10 and Anet stating that there would be new professions (meaning at least two) some old professions have to be dropped. They've also mentioned recently that some professions will be merged. Again I think assassin and ranger got merged. Possible that necromancer and ritualist will be merged into single class as well. Many people think monk and paragon will get merged into the second soldier profession. I think another profession that has pets will be necromancer with minions, although in Guild Wars 1 minions were not considered pets.

EVENTS
Unlike Guild Wars which is instanced, Guild Wars 2 will be mostly persistant. In the original game you could only meet people in a town or out post, form your team there then move out to an explorable area or enter a mission. Once in an explorable area or mission you team was in its own world. In Guild Wars 2 you can still form teams but you don't have to.

Missions are replaced by events each of which will have different triggers and have the ability to spawn other events. You're out exploring when suddenly you hear an explosion and see smoke. You rush forward to see what happened. A village is under attack. You can do nothing, in which case its conquered or you can fight the invaders. Other players see whats going on and can join in. The game will automatically scale up the event if many more people join in or scale it down if bunches leave. Also if high level characters enter a low level area they will be debuffed so they can't just finish the event quickly leaving the low level player characters nothing to do.

Every player who takes part in the event will be rewarded. The reward will be determined by success or failure. For example, you may fail to save a village and now have to take it back from the invaders, a new event.

PERSONAL STORY
Every player character will have its own personal story. The personal story is shaped by a series of questions asked at creation. Some questions every character will be asked, others will be race specific. For example: humans will be asked to select ancestry and social status, asura which of three colleges they are members of and what their first invention was, charr which of the 3 legions they belong to, norn their animal totem (bear, wolf, raven or snow leopard) and sylvari the time of day they were born. These and other questions will not affect character skills only the personal story.

The personal story will unfold as the player plays the game. There will be personal quests which will advance the story. Only the character who's personal story it is can make the decisions that effect the outcome of the quests but friends can be invited to join in and get some kind of reward for doing so.

HOME
Every character will have a home instance which will be shaped by the personal story. You help one of the lesser races, you may gain a merchant who sells items unique to their culture.

For the asura their home is in the city of Rata Sum. For the charr its in their capital city the Black Citadel. A human's home is in Divinity's Reach. Norn its in Hoelbrak. And sylvari makes its home where it was "born" in The Grove of the Pale Tree.

A group leader may take other player characters into his home instance. The home instance will take up about 10% of city, 90% being persistent and available to everyone on the same server.

ORDERS
Eventually player characters will be given the chance to join one of three multiracial orders, each of which has a different idea of how to defeat the Elder Dragons.

The Order of Whispers is an ancient organization originally tasked with protecting Elona against the undead lord Palawa Joko, the order is the only group (other than the now missing dwarves) to have known in advance that the Elder Dragons would awaken. The order believes the Elder Dragons cannot be defeated by weapons or ordinary magic. They believe the Elder Dragons can only be put back to sleep. Somehow the Order is still able to access Elona when no one else can.

The Durmand Priory an order of monks which safe guard documents rescued from the flooding of Lion's Arch, by the Order of Whispers. The Durmand Priory believes the secret to defeating the Elder Dragons can be found in ancient forgotten knowledge, they just have to find it.

The Vigil sees itself as a force for light in an ever darkening world. The Vigil believes in direct action against the Elder Dragons. They believe time is not on their side, the longer it takes to face the Elder Dragons the more powerful these creatures become.

To advance their personal story a player character MUST join one of these groups. Its possible, though apparently difficult, to leave the first group of your choice in order to switch to another, but trying out all three groups on one character is apparently not possible.

GUILDS
We have no details on guilds in Guild Wars 2 at this time. We do know that unlike the original game guilds will be character based not account based. So theoretically each of your characters could join a different guild. This has me wondering if players will form profession specific guilds, which would be more like historical guilds.

DESTINY'S EDGE
This famous group of adventures used to travel across Tyria together, but something lead to the group disbanding. It will be your characters duty to get the group back together. They'll be needed, along with the Orders, to defeat Zhaitan.

The story of Destiny's Edge will be told in the second Guild Wars 2 novel Edge of Destiny.

The group consisted of:

Caithe, one of the First Born of the sylvari, a very mysterious figure who pops up from time to time with useful information. Even the actress voicing Caithe is not certain whether she's good or evil.

Eir Stegalkin, a norn, apparently a ranger as she has a pet wolf.

Logan Thackeray, a Knight Errant and commander in the Seraph Guard of Divinity's Reach. He's a decedent of Ascalonian heroes (from Guild Wars: Eye of the North) Lt. Keiran Thackeray and Gwen, founders of the fortresses Ebonhawke. Since he resides in Divnity's Reach I'm guessing he's had a falling out with the branch of the family which still battles the charr.

Rytlock Brimstone, male charr, Tribune of the Blood Legion.

Zojja, female asura, memeber of the College of Synergetics, a golemancer.

Guybrush

I love this "so bows and guns will never run out of arrows or bullets and rangers will never run out of axes to throw."

The personal story sounds intriguing.

Not only will the personal story lead to some npcs having different attitudes toward different characters, ie if you saved a group of grawl then whenever you meet grawl they'll remember this and be friendly but its also possible for players to choose from different reactions to some npcs thus determining your reputation. For example its going to be possible to get angry and punch an npc in the nose thus gaining a reputation as a barbarian.


EVIL GROUPS
Where as the Elder Dragons threaten all live on Tyria each of the 5 major races has its only evil group to deal with.

The Asura believe in a higher purose they calll the Great Alchemy. The Inquest believe the Great Alchamey is a machine which they can control and carry out unethical experiments to gain control of the world.

The charr are divided into four legions, Ash, Iron, Blood and Fire (Gold). It was the fire legion shamans who led the charr into believing the titans where gods and used the power of the titans to conquer Ascalon 250 years ago. When the other three legions became atheistic and rebeled against the fire they renamed the fourth legion the Gold legion, as an insult, gold is a soft and weak metal. The fire legion still schemes to regain control of all charr.

For the humans the evil group is the White Mantle. Yes 250 years after the war in Kryta the decendants of the losers still plot against the winners.

The norn have no deities instead they revrence but dont worship nature spirits, the primary spirits being bear, raven, snow leopard and wolf. There are other lesser spirits. Some norn, known as the Sons of Svanir (named after a norn corrupted by the still sleeping Jormag in Guild Wars 1) serve the elder dragon Jormag instead of following the nature spirits.

All sylvari share their Dream of Dreams. Not all dreams are pleasant however and some sylvari have turned to the darker side of nightmares. The Nightmare Court seeks to corrupt the Pale Tree thus turning all sylvari to their point of view.

Some events or personal story line quests may place player characters in conflict with these evil groups.

ENVIRONMENTAL WEAPONS
In edition to the standard weapons available to the professions things found in the environment can be used as a weapon. For example: if a stone elemental throws a boulder at you and misses you can pick it up, gaining a new set of skills. The elementalist skill Conjure Flame creates a fireball which the elementalist can use as a weapon or let some other character pick it up. In barroom brawls you can pick up a mug of ale and get a set of skills which includes drinking the ale to gain a new ability or hitting someone over the head with the mug. If you hit someone with a bar stool and it breaks you'll get a chair leg to use as a club.

UNDERWATER COMBAT
We have no details yet but apparently going underwater will have an effect on your skills since for example, conjuring fire balls or shooting arrows shouldn't work well underwater.

More pets will be amphibious in Guild Wars 2 then would be in reality. For example bears and wildcats can apparently go underwater. A few pets will still be land only (spiders for example) and a few water only (shark or jellyfish for example) but most will be able to function onland and underwater. Anet wants to err on the side of fun.

SPECIAL MECHANIC
Each profession will have a special mechanic that makes it unique. For the elementalist its the attunements. For warrior its adreniline. For ranger its pets.

In Guild Wars 1 a warrior had to build up adrenaline by hitting and being hit, adrenaline only lasted for a limited amount of time. In Guild Wars 2 adrenaline will last until used. Some skills will use variable amounts of adrenaline, the more adrenaline you use the more damage the skill will do.

CONDITIONS
Deep wound, dazed and diseased will not be returning (but see below). Bleed, blind, burning, crippled, poison, weakness will return. New conditions are fear, frozen, immobilized, vulnerability. Bleed will now stack. Blind apparently now causes one attack to miss instead lasting for a time and causing multiple attacks to miss. Fear is apparently limited to a necromancer skill, target runs away from necromancer for a time (2-5 seconds in PVE, 2 seconds in PVP). No details on other conditions.

Upate: Daze is is now an effect of some skills. When dazed you cannot use skills for a time. Other known effects are Knock Down, Knockback, Launch and Stun.

Known Down - similar to GW1, character is unable to move or attack for short period.
Knockback - character is bushed back.
Launch - character tossed into the air.
Stun - character temporarily immobilized and incapacitated.

Unlike conditions, effects cannot be removed they simply have to wear off. There will however be some traits which can reduce or eliminate some effects.

Guybrush, is Guildwars all player vs environment?

Guild Wars has player vs environment (role paying) and player vs player. Anet hasn't said a lot about Guild Wars 2's PVP. In the original Guild Wars you chose at character creation whether you want a role playing character (PVE) which starts at level 1 or Player Verses Player character which is level 20 with max armor and max damage weapon. A RPG or PVE character can also do PVP but a PVP character cannot do PVE.

Apparently in Guild Wars 2 there will not be PVP only characters. There's going to be PVP that you play at your characters current level and PVP that sets you at max level temporarily.

PVP in both games is teams oriented.

Guild Wars 1 PVP:
Random Arenas -- two randomly-selected teams of four compete in a deathmatch
Fort Aspenwood/Jade Quarry -- two random teams compete in a mini-mission
Alliance Battles -- six organized teams of four, allied three-three against each other and randomly matched up compete for capture points
Codex Arena -- two organized teams of four compete using only a limited pool of skills; the Codex.
Heroes' Ascent -- two organized teams of eight compete in a variety of trials, ending in the Hall of Heroes
Guild Battles -- two organized teams of eight attempt to kill each other's Guild Lord

Low Level PVP accessible by PVE characters:
Ascalon Arena in Ascalon City - Level 1 to 10 only.
Shiverpeak Arena in Yak's Bend - Level 1 to 15 only.
Shing Jea Arena from Shing Jea Monastery - Level 1 to 10 only.
Sunspear Arena from Kamadan - Level 1 to 10 only.

Guild Wars 2 PVP:
Structured PvP - apparently the PVP for the more series PVPers

World PvP - a more casual form of PVP. Players can join in the middle. Will be server vs server.

Then there are activities which will place players vs player in different ways. Bar brawl will be a free for all, no teams. There's going to be some kind of shooting gallery. Norn "basketball" will use loaded kegs. Snowball fights which are only in available in original Guildwars during the Wintersday holiday (December-January) and Wintersday in July will be available all year round in Guild Wars 2.

Been brought to my intention that I should credit sources:

For Guild Wars:
wiki.guildwars.com

For Guild Wars 2:
guildwars2.com
wiki.guildwars2.com
guildwars2guru.com

Anet usually has something to announce weekly, big news like professions less frequently.

Thanks Guybrush.....I'll have to check with my neighbor and see if he is still playing Guildwars....

The first of three Guild Wars 2 novels is due out Tuesday (July 27), some stores may already have it. The title is "Ghosts of Ascalon". Its set 1 year before Guild Wars 2 and deals with the truce between humans and charr. My copy is in transit from Amazon. Second book, "Edge of Destiny" is due end of the year. Its about the group Destiny's Edge. Nothing has been revealed about the third book.

If you goto www.guildwars2.com you can find the first chapter of the first book there.

Arena Net will be at a con in Germany showing off a game demo. Designer Jeff Grubb has just let it be known that fourth profession will be reveled before then, that's early August. Most likely on a Wednesday, though they have revealed stuff on other days its mostly Wednesdays.

Hi,
This game sounds very similar to one I played a few years ago. It was either in beta or was FTP before it went under. I really enjoyed it but can't recall the name. So many of the new chars coming out and the skills and classes are the same I am wondering if the Guild War people were a part of this game or bought it out. There were rumors it was going retail after a major overhaul. Wish I could recall the name but I uninstalled it. I will have to do some better searches.
I think I would really like GW2 when is it coming out? You have written so much about the game here I have to go back and continue. Thank you for all your work ...sometimes the game sites overwhelm you with info that it becomes a chore to read or even worse cannot clearly define their own game for casual gamers.
Hopefully I will see you in GW2.
Patty

I just finished reading the first book, Ghosts of Ascalon, Anet has said that the main character will appear in the game. Seems they changed the book based on changes they made to the game and changed the game sometimes because of the book. They were just about to okay the final copy of the book when they changed something in the game and had to change the book again, didn't say what it was. And they recognize that if they change anything in the game from how it is in the book they'll have to have a good explanation for it.

Two former Destiny's Edge members make brief appearances in the book. The rest are mentioned by name. The group is refereed to as a guild.

The book features the first female charr we've ever met (two of them), are none in Guild Wars 1. The book explains why.

Turns out the Vigil was formed by a charr, one of the first to recognize that the charr are no match for the Elder Dragons and that charr need to make peace with humans.

One of the characters is a necromancer and the existence of mesmers is mentioned. Strangely none of the characters are elementalists, though those too are mentioned. The other characters are warrior types, armed with sword, axe or hammer. Besides carrying weapons charr have sharp claws they can to damage with, I don't see that happening in game though as Anet doesn't want to imbalance the races.

We learn that sylvari have golden pollen dropping off them and that if wounded their blood is also golden. We also learn they are carnivorous, some plants are. They tend to be painfully honest, sometimes unintentionally offending others. They consider that they have a family (all other sylvari) but no parents (since they come from a tree). They are not telepathic but what one sylvari has learned may find its way into the Dream and thus into the next generation of sylvari born from the Pale Tree. Few have experienced death.

Like NPCs in Guild Wars, some characters in the book die and stay dead.

That sounds really cool. I'll have to check the library.

I was going to say no news this week, then a new blog entry was made on the official GW2 site: http://www.arena.net/blog/progression-and-leveling-in-guild-wars-2

BTW a Guild Wars villain is named after this guy

Guybrush

I'm with him....I love to catch a level

Anet talks a little more about player character personality and its effect on the game: http://www.arena.net/blog/personality-in-guild-wars-2

Another interview: http://gw2.univers-virtuels.net/arti...-Virtuels.html

Blog entry on sound in Guild Wars 2, including a couple of samples: http://www.arena.net/blog/talking-heads-vo-and-dialogue-in-gw2

Anet's Guild Wars schedule at Gamescom: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/wall-to-wall-gamescom-coverage.html

New video http://www.guildwars2.com/en/media/videos/#gw2-video-manifesto

New blog entry http://www.arena.net/blog/walking-the-walk

Interview: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guildwars2/news.html?sid=6273004&mode=previews

I'm still hoping for a profession release this week since they said they would announce one more before the convention in Germany next week.

Guybrush, that video is amazing and the description of the play sounds intriguing. It will be good to see it all in action.

Couple more blog entries:
http://www.arena.net/blog/the-road-to-gamescom-assuring-quality

http://www.arena.net/blog/mmo-manifesto-reactions

Somebody leaked a video that shows game developers controlling characters. I'm not going to provide a link. Its not an official release, it was filmed by somebody's hand held camera and it just an equipment test. The developers had used a cheat code to make their characters invisible to the monsters so they could beat up on monsters that couldn't fight back. This video confused a lot of people. So if you stumble across a video reported to be from gamescom, don't make the mistake of thinking the game will actually be like the video, is just a developers demo in test mode, the game won't be like that. When they actually run the video at the con there will be dialogue explaining whats going on.


Edit: another leaked video shows character creation screen which has 4 of the 8 professions available: elementalist, warrior, ranger and necromancer. Anet has not as this hour officially announced necromancer yet though.

Thanks Guybrush...it's too bad folks can't play by the rules.

The character creation video shows person using a single word name. Glad to see that.

I'm mad at Anet. They said in one the interviews that they would reveal the 4th profession BEFORE Gamescom and now they've revealed it AT Gamescom. Also they told us not to watch any videos attendees make because they'd be of poor quality but have not released any official high quality videos but instead are letting those poor quality videos be used to give out information.