As we looked at all the articles the bunch of us have posted over the year or so about Guild Wars 2, we realized we put a lot of stuff out there. Covering topics as important as death/leveling to as miniscule as the dye system. All of this we have covered and found out great information about the game. Most of this stuff still gets viewed on a daily basis, but we feel that the time has come that we organize it all in a nice article and allow you to refer back to it at any point. So if you get into a nerd debate, you can pull up the facts and tell them to stfu.
RACES
1. Divinity’s Reach is the Human starting point.
2. Humans are now the minority. The other races are stronger and more advanced than them and humans are now placed on the bottom of the food chain.
3. Norn respect Charr for their strength and military prowess, and they tolerate humans.
4. The Norn are proud, but they’re not stupid. They don’t follow leaders, but they will follow heroes, and even a hero needs help sometimes.
5. Norn become as strong as they can, and they surround themselves with others who are just as strong or stronger. The strong deserve respect, and the weak are useless.
6. A group of Norn called the Sons of Svanir worship the dragon Jormag that has forced the Norn from their homeland. They believe because he is the ultimate predator he should be worshipped as the greatest.
7. Norn characters start out in Wayfarer Hills.
8. Norn revere the four great totem animals—Bear, Raven, Snow Leopard, and Wolf. They believe in living large and being as epic as possible.
9. Charr characters will start in the Village of Smokestead.
10. The Charr have almost completely pushed humanity out of what was once Ascalon, and successfully built a capital city stronghold on the ruins of Rin.
11. Humanity has taken a beating for the 250 years between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.
PROFESSIONS
1. The warrior class uses adrenaline only for burst skill. Adrenaline also gives a passive damage bonus.
2. Warriors will be able to use rifles and long bows along with the standard armaments.
3. Along with the warrior being there to deal close combat damage they are also able to perform SHOUT skills which buff allies and may hurt enemies. They are also able to drop banners that buff allies.
4. When a warrior handles a banner, it acts as an offhand item that can be carried around and planted in the ground. He can also pick it up, use certain skills while carrying it with him, and plant it somewhere to offer an advantage to his allies. The buff offered by the banner is permanent (well, until it is destroyed by an enemy). Shouts, on the other hand, will affect allies for a particular duration after the shout is used.
5. For some warrior skills you will be able to charge them up more so you can choose to use the skill when it is two times stronger than normal or wait for it to max out at four times stronger and unleash upon an enemy.
6. The things defining the ranger will be its reliance on nature and their ability to have pets that are used in combat.
7. To obtain a pet as a Ranger, you need to tame it in the wild and once done you are able to level it up along with yourself making it stronger.
8. Depending on the race you choose as a Ranger, the options you have for pets will change.
9. Not every profession features chain skills like the warrior does. The elementalist, for example, does not currently have any chain skills.
10. The necromancer is a practitioner of the dark arts who summons the dead, wields the power of lost souls, and literally sucks the lifeblood of the enemy. A necromancer feeds on life force, which he can use to cheat death or bring allies back from the brink.
11. Minions in Guild Wars 2 are not raised from corpses, so the type of minion created is determined by the skill used.
12. Minions do not currently regenerate health. They don’t have the “natural” hp regeneration, but a trait can be obtained to have it. They also don’t suffer from health degeneration.
13. The level of the minion is based upon the level of the necromancer that created it. They do not vary based upon life force.
14.The guardian is a devoted fighter who calls upon powerful virtues to smite enemies and protect allies.
15. The guardian is equally strong with a staff or sword.
16. The guardian can pass powers to allies.
17. From level 1, every profession has the ability to revive everyone else.
18. Professions won’t be visually distinct like in the original. This refers to armor-types not being unique for each class, you will still be able to tell what type of characters are around you thanks to skill color tonality. For Example, the Guardian skills tend to be blue, the ranger green, etc.
19. Thieves can disappear into the shadows. This allows them to become invisible to enemy players and to ignore aggro. When in Stealth mode, the thief can still be damaged, which temporarily reveals them. When a thief is hidden, attacking will break the deception.
20. Initiative is the thief’s resource mechanic. A thief has ten points of Initiative that refill at a rate of one point per second both in and out of combat. Skill 1 on their bar is always free, but the other thief weapon skills all cost Initiative instead of having recharge. Thief Heal, Utility, and Elite skills do not cost Initiative and still have a recharge cost.
21. All thieves have a special skill called Steal that can be used on enemies. It does not actually steal a real item from an opponent, but rather generates an appropriate environmental weapon based on the target.
22. A video we took from PAX East with Arenanet walking us through the Norn starting experience.
23. Mike’s hands-on impressions with the Thief.
24. Players will be able to combine their skills with other players to create combination effects. For example, an elementalist can create a wall of fire, and then a ranger can then fire arrows through it, catching them ablaze, and sending them towards the enemy.
FEATURES
1. Events dynamically scale, so the more players who show up and participate in the event, the more enemies show up to fight them. If a bunch of players leave the event, it will dynamically scale back down so it can be completed by the people who are still there playing it.
2. Arenanet has hidden hundreds of events all over the world that require interaction with the game world. This helps give an extra sense of reward and discovery for those who seek to explore the entire world.
3. The level cap for the game is set at 80.
4. The time between levels is rather short. Instead of taking longer and longer to reach each level, it takes about the same time to go through each level.
5. How you respond to other characters (NPCs) develops and changes your personality over time, letting you affect how the game treats you.
6. Your biography at character creation sets your starting personality, but almost immediately you will start refining your choice in dialogue with NPCs.
7. Players will be able to draw and click on the map like they did in Guild Wars.
8. If you have a condition on you like bleeding, if you have it on five times then a condition removal skill that removes one will remove them all as it removes the stack.
9. World vs. World is a PvP match that is really about three vast groups of players fighting each others over a variety of objectives, so that their world can obtain certain advantages.
10. They have items that act differently at night versus during the day.
11. They are exploring features that allow out-of-game friends to help in-game friends by locating places or items. Basically you can become Batman’s Oracle by pinpointing locations i.e. making waypoints for your friend while you are in class and he is knee deep in Charr corpses.
12. Users will be able to select a piece of equipment and retrieve information about where that item came from: a location, an event, a certain boss, or even a portion of that player’s personal story.
13. When you get to the end of a big dungeon with your group, you each get to individually open the chest and receive your own personal reward. It is unclear if it will work like the original Guild Wars where everyone gets to click on the chest and receive a drop, or if you will receive a token which can be redeemed for a piece of equipment.
14. When you gather materials from things like ore nodes, plants, and the like, you use that resource up for yourself, but not for others.
15. Each of their dungeons have, at a bare minimum, one complete, visually unique reward set that includes a full set of light armor, a full set of medium armor, a full set of heavy armor, as well as one entire set of weaponry that is unique to that dungeon. With all of the new eye candy to obtain, you can literally play in any given dungeon until you come out as an entirely different looking character.
16. Transmutation(a new system), you take two items of the same type, pick one that is the most visually appealing to you, one that is the most statistically appealing to you, and then you simply combine the two items into what will hopefully become your perfect piece of armor or weaponry.
17. Everyone has a dedicated slot on their skill bar where they must place a healing skill.
18. The downed system is a new addition that puts players who are defeated in combat in a “downed” state where they can still play a role.
19. There are no skills that specifically target allies. Everything must be done using positioning, ground targeting or other unconventional methods.
20. You can dodge arrows and double tap dodge roll all by real movement of your character rather than a “dice roll” deciding if you are hit or not.
21. The attribute system is actively being improved, currently their are four attributes: Power, Precision, Vitality, Toughness.
Power—increased attack damage.
Precision—increased critical strike chance.
Vitality—increased health.
Toughness—increased defense/armor
CUSTOMIZATION
1. There is no more mixing dyes to create colors.
2. They have over 400 colors available for dyeing.
3. Dye will be unlocked in various ways inside and outside the game. Once unlocked it will be unlocked for the entire account.
4. You can place up to 3 different dye colors on each individual piece of armor, because the armor will have 3 different spots to color the armor so you can make your armor metal gauntlets silver and then put a gold trim on the sides and then add a light tint of blood red across the whole thing if you want.
5. Guild Wars 2 will have face customization that lets you modify your features and a body-shape system that gives you control over your character’s proportions.
6. They are dividing up the appearance by weight class. For instance, if you’re a warrior, you share the heavy armor class with the guardian (so far). The advantage to this approach is that you have access to all the heavy armors instead of just one branch. The slight drawback is that you won’t have as unique a look for your profession. The armor variety may be smaller, but the customization of your character especially with 400 dyes will allow you to remain unique.
7. They are also introducing the ability to have one piece of armor replace multiple pieces. For example, if your human warrior has an elaborate coat with built-in shoulders and helmet, this is available as one piece and replaces the three pieces on your body.
8. Personality choices are entirely designed to customize the experience and have the world echo your personality but not to block you from content.
CRAFTING
1. There are eight crafting disciplines players can choose from.
Weaponsmith – Weaponsmiths craft melee weapons, such as swords, axes and hammers.
Huntsman – Huntsmen craft ranged weapons like bows and pistol, as well as torches and warhorns.
Artificer– Artificers craft magical weapons such as staves and scepters
Armorsmith – Armorsmiths craft heavy armor pieces.
Leatherworker – Leatherworkers craft medium armor pieces.
Tailor – Tailors craft light armor pieces.
Jewelcrafter – Jewelcrafters craft jewelry, such as rings and necklaces.
Cook – Cooks can prepare food which characters can eat for temporary combat buffs. 2. most crafters can create upgrades for their gear. For instance, a weaponsmith can craft a handle which can be attached to melee weapons to give them a chance to poison enemies.
2. Characters can be proficient in up to two crafting disciplines at a time.
3. Although a character can only have two disciplines at a time, they can change their crafting disciplines by visiting the master craftsmen NPC that can be found in all major cities.
4. There are three ways you can obtain crafting materials.
Salvaging kits— Available from merchants, salvaging kits allow you to salvage crafting materials out of old or unwanted items.
Looting—You have a chance of finding appropriate crafting materials like hides or trophies when you loot slain enemies. Harvesting—Ore veins, plants, and trees can be found around the world and harvested for materials.
5. Characters can gather all types of crafting materials.
6. When interacting with a crafting station, you are presented with an interface through which you can combine up to four types of materials. When the correct items for crafting an item are added to the interface, the resulting item can be crafted. If you haven’t previously crafted that item, you discover the recipe for that item, allowing you to easily view the correct combination to recreate the item. Some basic recipes are automatically learned by characters, but the recipes for most items must be discovered by the crafter.
7. Leveling up your crafting skill uses an experience system—each item you craft is worth an amount of experience. There are 400 skill points in each discipline, though crafting items will often give multiple points worth of experience.
OTHER FACTS
1. The game will not force you to read through paragraphs of text to do a quest. You’ll experience it by seeing/hearing it.
2. If a character tells you ogres are coming to destroy a house, they will really come and smash down the house if you don’t stop them, not just tell you to kill 10 ogres.
3. The event system allows the world to dynamically change based on actions and decisions made by the players.
4. Other games event systems reset and start again and really don’t change the world, dynamic events chain and cascade across a zone and leave persistent effects in the game world after the event has ended in Guild Wars 2.
5. All players that fully participate in an event are rewarded for doing so; everyone who helps kill a monster or blow up an enemy catapult will get credit for doing so. There is no kill stealing and no quest camping. Everyone works together towards the common goal of the event and everyone is rewarded for doing so.
6. Guild Wars 2 is way more than just leveling. They have achievements, trait collection, crafting, dungeons, skill collection, items, and much more.
7. They are voicing the equivalent of more than 60 feature-length films.
8. You won’t be absorbing most of this dialogue through traditional cinematics. Instead, They are evenly distributing story bits, lore, gameplay information, and ambience over hundreds of hours of play.
9. They developed a sound throttling system so you won’t hear the same combat chatter repeated over and over again during fights.
10. They are cutting back on the stereotypical ye olde English speak in favor of tighter dialogue in active voice.
11. After a short tutorial experience, players will be able to join friends by using an asura gate to travel to any of the major racial cities. That way, it will be easy and convenient for everyone to play with their friends, whatever their race is.
12. Your actions will sometimes allow you special responses or interactions with the world. Barbaric characters, for example, can occasionally just cut to the end of a conversation with a punch to the face.
13. Users have the ability to chat instantly with anyone on their friends list on their mobile devices.
14. Players can use Mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad and have a map of Tyria where you can find your friends and watch them travel through the world of Tyria.
15. The dye system will take into account the material you are dying so leathers and metals will color differently.
16. You will not have to carry around bottles of dye in your inventory.
17. The professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because they built a combat system that doesn’t allow it.
18. The armor is divided into six interchangeable parts: helmet/headgear, shoulders, coat, legs, gloves, and boots.
19. They will be conducting small closed alpha and beta tests in 2011. The feedback from these tests will determine when they will do public beta tests and ship the game. Guild Wars 2 is a very large and ambitious game, and Guild Wars players rightfully have very high expectations. They want players to be absolutely blown away by the game the first time they experience it.
