alt="Guild Wars 2 Community Interview"
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As
much as many of us here at Ten Ton Hammer enjoy getting the
opportunity to speak with AreanNet about the development of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2">Guild
Wars
2
,
we also realize that our community members are equally curious to
learn more details about the upcoming game. In fact, for our latest
exclusive interview we gave our readers the opportunity to submit their
Guild
Wars 2
questions which we made
sure to ask during our recent
discussion with Game Designer Izzy Cartwright.

While certain aspects of the
game remain under wraps for the time
being, we presented as many of our readers’ questions as time
would allow, with a few of our own thrown in for good
measure. Will customizable party hats be the new guild capes? Will
underwater gameplay alter the way our skills function in any way? Read
on to find out the answers to these and many more questions in our
exclusive community interview for Guild
Wars 2
!

alt="Guild Wars 2 at Ten Ton Hammer"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/89593/preview">

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Question
Submitted by Kitsunegirl:

We know that you’ll be
able to jump in Guild Wars 2,
but will players also have the ability to
toggle between running and walking?

Game
Designer Izzy Cartwright:

It’s something we definitely
want but as you can see we have a lot of animation stuff in our game,
and a lot of races and things like that. So it’s something
that we want and are going to look at and evaluate, but I
don’t think
we’ve decided just yet whether we’re going to have
it or not. Right now it’s not a priority since
we’re trying to get combat going and so we’ll see
where that ends up.

We definitely recognize that
it’s something that everyone
really wants to be able to do, but it really comes down to a question
of what are we going to have the time to do.

Question
Submitted by Fatemaster:

Will Alliances make a return in Guild
Wars 2
?

Izzy:
Our guild systems really haven’t been announced.
We’ve mainly been focused on getting this demo out and really
didn’t push to get certain things in for it. You probably saw
we didn’t have parties turned on, because it’s
really hard for anyone just jumping in to be checking all that stuff
out.

We do recognize that
it’s fun to do a lot of those things,
especially since world vs. world PvP is a big part of our game.
It’s something we’re going to have to evaluate when
we get into that aspect of the game, and then we can decide how this
works in Guild Wars 2.
But we recognize that it was a fun aspect of
Guild Wars
and something that everyone likes, but it’s
something we’re not really talking about so we
don’t want to make any commitments one way or the other just
yet.

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Question
Submitted by KM9K:
Will
customizable guild capes return in
Guild Wars 2?

Izzy:
I think capes were a really important part of Guild
Wars 1
. It
was the most iconic piece, so I think whatever we do we’re
going to have to capture that essence somewhere in Guild
Wars 2
.
I’m not exactly sure if it’s going to be capes or
if it’s going to be something else. Like I said it really
hasn’t been our focus so it’s hard for me to even
talk about it, but it’s definitely important to us to capture
that essence and to make sure that, as a guild, you care about
something visually.

I definitely think
we’ll capture that essence one way or the
other. Whether it’s capes or something else, I’m
not too sure.

Ten
Ton Hammer:
Customizable
party hats maybe?

Izzy:
*laughs* It’ll definitely be hard for it to be
something else I’m sure. Capes have a special place in our
hearts just like they have for our fans. Like everything,
we’re looking at and evaluating things to make sure that
everything we do is the right thing for our game.

Question
Submitted by Fatemaster:

Are there going to be places where we
can fall to our deaths? Or falling damage in general?

Izzy:
You can! I mean, we’re pretty liberal about it. We know
jumping is new and it’s fun to jump around the world and jump
off of things, but if you jump off of something really
tall you
will
die. But it would have to be something pretty tall.

alt="Guild Wars 2 Community Interview"
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Question
Submitted by
Fatemaster:

What will be the max party size in
Guild Wars 2?

Izzy:
5 players is our maximum group size. It’s a little
lower than in Guild Wars 1,
and we did that for a bunch of different
reasons. Mainly we really wanted to make it easier for groups to be put
together. We don’t have dedicated healers or that kind of
thing, so it’s a lot easier to just grab any combination of
characters and throw them together.

There are a lot more things
that every character can do, and there are
lots of cross-profession combos and things like that. It gives a lot of
different possibilities, and so our group size is a little smaller this
time.

Ten
Ton Hammer:
Will there be
parts of the game or content types that
expand on that core group size at all?

Izzy:
We’re still working on that so I’m not 100%
sure. But there are things like world PvP where larger amounts of
people can do things.

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Question
Submitted by Annatar:

How
many character slots do you expect
to give to players per account? For example, you have 8 unique
professions in the game, so do you plan on having that many character
slots to allow players to experience each of those?

Izzy:
Again, I’m not 100% sure, but I can’t imagine us
not
doing that type of thing. Our game has got a lot
of potential for
replayability. I made 3 or 4 different human characters, and they all
had different stories. So I’m sure we’re going to
do something along those lines. It’s definitely something we
enjoyed doing in Guild Wars 1
and we enjoy people being able to have
that freedom to create multiple characters.

Question
Submitted by Annatar:
With
the underwater content, are our
actions affected by the aquatic environment (water
resistance’s effect on combat or certain spells being
enhanced (water) or diminished (fire) etc.) or will it just be like
using them on dry land?

Izzy:
We’re still working out all the details, and
that’s one of the big things that I’m working on
right now that my team is really involved in. As such I can’t
really talk about it a ton, because we’re still working out
exactly how it’s all going to work out.

Ten
Ton Hammer:
Would you say
that there’s a fair amount of
underwater content in the game overall? I’d imagine certain
areas like off the coast near Loin’s Arch would represent
good
reasons for there to be underwater content rather than being a random
lake thrown in here or there.

Izzy:
I think our philosophy is that if underwater play is super fun
and interesting and we’re able to make it a powerful thing,
then we’re going to have a bunch of it. All of those kinds of
details are one of the big things we’re working on right
now.

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Question
Submitted by KM9K:
What
happened to the Tengu? Will we see
them in Guild Wars 2?

Izzy:
I’m sure like all races and things in Guild
Wars 2
, 250
years is a lot of story and Jeff Grubb and those guys have probably
done something
with them, but I don’t know exactly what
that might be.

Ten
Ton Hammer:
It may be too
early to talk very in-depth about, but
how will the server structure work for GW2? In the first game, due to
instanced nature of the world it was easier to implement the idea of
simply adding additional districts for a zone as more players logged
on. How will you be approaching that in GW2 with the more open,
persistent world?

Izzy:
Well, with the persistent world, everybody can’t all go
to Divinity’s Reach at the same time because it would just
blow up. So it’s going to have to be divided in some way.
I’m not really sure on the exact structure for that in terms
of whether it will be servers or if it will be other things. We are
going to have a server structure for our World vs. World things, so
it’s probably going to be along those lines but
we’re still working out the exact details.

It will be different than it
was in Guild
Wars 1
because you have to
handle
things a bit differently with a persistent world. But we do want to
keep a lot of our main philosophies of a very contiguous community, so
we’ll see how that’s handled.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2"> alt="Guild Wars 2 Ten Ton Hammer"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/84716/preview">


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Guild Wars 2 Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Reuben "Sardu" Waters has been writing professionally about the MMOG industry for eight years, and is the current Editor-in-Chief and Director of Development for Ten Ton Hammer.

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