There are those times when you experience something epic: your senses tune in; your breathing slows; and the goosebumps start to rise on your skin. I encountered such a phenomenon at gamescom whilst checking out Guild Wars 2 from ArenaNet. Whether you have played Guild Wars 1 before, or any other MMO for that matter, you’ll be hard pressed not to come away feeling changed by the experience. It is a combination of many elements that results in these golden moments, that come about only through the thousands of hours of creativity and sheer effort put into games this big and imaginative by the dedicated teams. Be it the mind-blowing artwork, the emotive music and sound effects or the innovative game mechanics, you simply can’t help but be impressed with what you are seeing. I spent some time with Chris Lye, the Global Brand Director for ArenaNet, as he took me through the latest showing of Guild Wars 2.

Building on the seven million copies success of Guild Wars 1 is certainly no easy feat for ArenaNet. You can’t simply release the same game, and yet you need to retain the essence of Guild Wars 1 that resulted in the almost cult-like following it still enjoys today. During my demo time with Chris, and later during my interview with Colin Johanson from ArenaNet, I learnt of the risks the design team took for the survival of the Guild Wars franchise. You can read my interview with Colin for more insight into those aspects.

My demo with Chris started out with a video of Guild Wars 2 playing on a crisp panel with a sweet sound system hooked up. So loud in fact that we were interrupted during the demo and asked to turn it down. Gasp! I have always relished a good cut-scene and have forgone sleep to play just one more level in Blizzard titles to get my cut-scene fix. ArenaNet are now officially on my cut-scene hit-list, and for good reason. Watching the superbly paced video, with soft piano music, emotive slow motion shots of enchanted lands, and then building up in a crescendo with a dragon, acrobatic fighting and a raging storm, I was blown away, and that was just the start.

Chris was very proud to share that ArenaNet have achieved their goal of creating a fully persistent online MMO. It’s so easy to say in a single sentence, yet the technical and design challenges that needed to be overcome to reach this goal have been considerable. It would be very interesting to one day read or watch a making of Guild Wars 2 and learn about the trials and tribulations the team faced in the realization of such an ambitious goal. For now we just want them to focus every waking minute on finishing it so we can start experiencing it.

Guild Wars 2 has many areas of improvement, however, the three major areas of innovation relate to dynamic events, the combat system and the personal story experience.

The ArenaNet team toiled long and hard to ensure that your in-game choices and actions have a real and personal effect on the world around you. With the dynamic events you are not seeking out non-playable characters for quests, but are really just stumbling along events as they unfold. When you notice some action going down you can choose to ignore it or jump in and experience it. As people engage in the event it automatically scales the difficulty and the loot accordingly. It is no longer about reading reams of text, but rather more important to experience the story through the events you witness and participate in. The dynamic event feature really appeals to me, and is one of the ways in which ArenaNet are innovating within the MMO genre and trying to expand the appeal to a wider audience of gamers.

The user interface itself is worth a mention as it looks clean and uncluttered. You get a clear indication on the top right of the dynamic events. Your cool downs are clearly shown and the camera adjusts dynamically to keep you clearly focused on the action.

Next up is the completely overhauled dynamic combat system, which looked like a lot of fun. It was fluid with an impressive array of fighting combos being pulled off. Coupled with the eye candy characters and beautiful environments, and it was art in motion more than war. Chris was quick to point out Guild Wars 2 is by no means a ‘twitch game’ so don’t fear that the innovation has gone too far. By the looks of things they have got the balance just right. I was very impressed with the ability to dodge projectiles in order to evade damage and I can’t wait to try it myself. You can wield two weapons at any time and your weapons ‘level’ through use. So what tends to happen is you favour particular weapons due to your fighting style and those weapons improve with use. So you’ll be able to get by sticking with your favourite weapons, but know that some weapons will perform better against certain enemies and then you need to delve into inventry management and weapon statistics.

Immersive personal story was a key design goal for the ArenaNet team when planning Guild Wars 2. Now in the hour I had with Chris it is difficult to grasp how well realized this aspect is, however, there are some encouraging signs from what I did see. For instance, there is a deep level of character customization to allow you to create that character down to the level of detail you just have to have. Tweak the size, physique, clothing, angle of eyes, distance apart and so on. It is overwhelming for me, and thankfully ArenaNet included a set of default options to allow players like myself to skip this portion of the player creation. With eight professions and the five races of the humans, charr, sylvari, norn and asura to choose from, getting started is half the battle. Then you start making choices, with each choice subtly molding your personal story experience.

I don’t want to spoil anything you should experience yourself for the first time, but know your choices have consequences so choose wisely. Your character has a home instance, or neighborhood if you prefer. In this within this area that the people you choose to interact with during dynamic events and such can end up. This is one way in which the personal choices you make come back to affect you in the long run.

There are many more layers of complexity to keep hardcore players involved, but thankfully you are introduced to concepts slowly, building up your capabilities. In keeping with the goal of widening the audience, Guild Wars 2 is built to grab your attention quickly with action and accessible control. Then it introduces concepts through your dynamic experiences, which furthers your immersion in the world.

The goosebumps went into overdrive with the arrival of Tequatl the Sunless, an undead dragon who pretty much is going to smack you back to the playground unless you think smart. When engaging in battles such as these strategy is important so look around for environmental weapons, enemy patterns and weak points. In this battle you really need to fire the Mega Laser to do the damage you require for a victory, however, it can be blocked by bone wall fingers which you need to destroy first. Of course all levels of chaos are happening whilst you are trying to do all of this. I just wanted to jump right into the action it was so appealing.

Two aspects that really stood out for me where the loot and healing systems. If you arrive at the dynamic event at the start you quality for a gold medal, and so it goes to silver and bronze depending on when you started participating. This controls the rewards you get from completing in the event. Secondly, while it may be an outcry to some, there is no dedicated healer role in Guild Wars 2. Any player can revive a fallen player and every single player can self-heal to some extent. This is a bold move, but right on the money in my humble opinion. It is very satisfying to be able to revive a comrade yet not many people want to be solely dedicated to that role.

Anybody knows you can’t breathe underwater, and in most games you get an oxygen meter and need to plan water diving carefully. ArenaNet give all characters breathing apparatus as they want to encourage you to explore the underwater environment rather than shy away from it. To this end I witnessed stunning looking underwater areas and combat that is really interesting. Given you are underwater there are a whole host of new fighting mechanics. One that I fancied is the ‘concrete boots’ attachment that latches onto a players foot and makes them sink faster. Your weapons switch out automatically from land based to water based which is a nice touch.

What MMO would be complete without a robust player vs player experience? Guild Wars 2 features not one but two PvP experiences. You can join in world vs world warfare in epic two week long battles or take on other players in the PvP arenas. I saw some very appealing PvP team action in the demo. Players were able to just drop into the action rather than waiting for a new game to start. The map was very well conceived, with multiple layers of depth and destructible environments. Using the trebuchet to open up the environment looked like a key strategy in order to control the three control points. The action looked intense with a real sense of urgency and something where skill was more important, as each player joins with the standard characters rather than super leveled up characters. If you are looking for an experience where you can take your super level character into PvP action then the world vs world experience is for you.

There is so much to take in with Guild Wars 2 that you really need to digest it in small chunks. Overwhelmed is what I felt, yet excited and yearning for more at the same time. If any of this has tickled your fancy then check back for updates in the future and follow the build up to the eventual release when it is polished and ready for us to immerse ourselves in and experience our own personal story.

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