Amidst the hustle and bustle of gamescom 2011, I had the pleasure of interviewing Colin Johanson from ArenaNet. Colin is the Lead Content Designer for Guild Wars 2, and is passionate about delivering an engaging MMO experience that will hopefully surpass fans’ expectations and delight newcomers to the Guild Wars series.

Given the success of Guild Wars 1, it must have been a daunting task to design a successor. Colin shared that the first two years of design on Guild Wars 2 had been nerve racking. In order to deliver the gaming experience they wanted to achieve, it meant taking the key success factors from Guild Wars 1 forward and building the rest of the experience from the ground up. This was a risk on their part, moving away from a tried and tested formula, however in my opinion it’s shaping up to offer something special in the MMO space.

Colin was the perfect host and took the time to answer my questions:

El33tonline Has it been challenging trying to reinvent Guild Wars yet keep the essence of the original’s success?

Colin explained it is an ongoing design challenge in which they have to constantly remind themselves of their key goals. Namely they are endeavouring to widen the Guild Wars 2 audience by making it more accessible and appealing, yet providing sufficient layering to appeal to advanced players. It is a challenge in taking those key aspects which made Guild Wars 1 the success it is today, forward in a positive direction with Guild Wars 2 in a way that will bring existing fans along and new fans into the series.

El33tonline Are you concerned this shift away from Guild Wars 1 and traditional MMO approaches will alienate players?

Colin put my fears at ease through his explanation of their focus on innovation and layering complexity into Guild Wars 2. If you are new to MMOs you will be slowly introduced to techniques to manage your skills and weapons. You can choose to ignore these teachings and continue without consequence far into the game. For seasoned veterans of MMOs the new interface is slick and intuative so within no time you’ll have adapted to the changes and be well on your way.

El33tonline What are you most proud of in Guild Wars 2?

Colin is very pleased with the way dynamic events have worked out and thinks they are key to delivering the social, interactive experience they are aiming for. With dynamic events you are engaging with your environment naturally rather than seeking out quests from NPCs. They offer a layer of submersion into the world and encourage natural participation.

El33tonline What are some of the challenges still on the design table?

The current design challenges the team are grappling with are the PvP and World vs World modes. The PvP mode just got released to the gamescom 2011 show floor and the Word vs World modes are still in development. Both these modes pose significant design challenges to get them just right. The technical implications alone of supporting hundreds, if not thousands of gamers are sufficiently daunting, before one considers the game mechanics themselves. Rest assured though, there are no show stoppers preventing these from going ahead and ArenaNet certainly have the experience to figure it out.

El33tonline What will make Guild Wars 2 a success by your standards?

Colin didn’t have to think too long to answer this question. For him, and arguably the rest of the ArenaNet team, they want people to love Guild Wars 2. The game has been in development for five years now and with that much personal investment you want people to just love playing it at the end of the day.

El33tonline How will Guild Wars 2 support social networking?

There is a phone application to allow friends to see where their friends are within the game. You can even text chat from the phone application to the player in the game world. Deeper integration into social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter don’t appear to be on the cards at this stage, or Colin was using his poker face to keep the good stuff hidden.

El33tonline The focus is on PC, but what about the consoles for Guild Wars 2?

The team is focusing all resources on making Guild Wars 2 for the PC. Some work has been done in the past to evaluate a console option, however, nothing is actively being worked on presently. Personally I hope once Guild Wars 2 is out the door and the team have spent some time catching up with family, that they apply themselves to developing a console version. Build it and they will come.

El33tonline Will there be any character transfer for Guild Wars 1 players?

The Guild Wars 2 rewards are based on the achievements and honours accumulated by your Guild Wars character in the Hall of Monuments, which is only available in Guild Wars: Eye of the North. All the details can be found online here.

For the fans ArenaNet are keeping a core team releasing new content on Guild Wars 1 for the foreseeable future. It is heartening to witness a company supporting their gaming community in this manner and is to be commended.

El33tonline Where did the requirement for a fully featured character design functionality come from?

Colin took me through ArenaNet’s approach which involves extensive usability testing. They bring in these play testers who play the game for hours on end. Where do I sign up? These fortunate people are then observed like lab rats and quizzed on all things gaming to extract feedback to refine design directions. So in short they received feedback from multiple testers, feedback showed that in order to identify with their character they wanted to be able to customize them.

El33tonline When can we expect news on a release date?

There is a closed alpha now and that will be followed by a closed beta. Colin could not confirm timing as the team just does not know as it all depends on how the remaining development proceeds.

Thank you Colin for your enthusiasm and continued dedication to taking MMOs into an exciting new space with Guild Wars 2. El33tonline wishes you and your team success.