Guild Wars 2 MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 made a large impact once again at gamescom this year. Fans were clamouring everywhere for a bit of hands-on with the game or any new nugget of information they could take home with them. Ten Ton Hammer got a chance to sit down with the developers of the popular game for a one hour presentation. Colin Johanson, Lead Content Designer and Matthew Moore, QA Lead walked us through some of the newly-announced features of the hot title.

Competitive PvP

ArenaNet wants to get the message across that competitive PvP in Guild Wars 2 should be taken very seriously. The PvP side of the game got a lot of attention from CounterStrike, Team Fortress 2 and other online FPS players throughout gamescom.

“That is our target audience. We want competitive gamers from just about any type of game. We want to get StarCraft players, we want to get CounterStrike players; all of them should be checking out Guild Wars 2’s competitive PvP. We want this to be a giant e-sport game.”

To join a structured PvP match in Guild Wars 2, you open up a server browser that lists all current matches, including the current and total number of players in each game. This works similar to online FPS games in that you’ll be able to pick from games on the list and enter them rather than being placed randomly into a team.

As soon as one game ends, another one starts up with the same people that were in the previous match. At this point it remakes the teams based on the individual player’s scores from the previous game.

The first map shown at gamescom was called the Battle of Khylo. This map contains three capture points: the windmill, the clock tower, and the mansion. As long as you hold a capture point, it will continue to give points to your team. You also get points for every kill you get. Then the first team to get to 500 points is the winner.

Another key component on the map is the trebuchet, one of the various secondary objectives players can get. Using the trebuchet lets you use skills 1 and 3 to rotate it, and skill 2 fires the weapon. The longer you hold down skill 2, the further the projectile will fire. One way this can be used is to change the terrain of the map which opens up new paths for players to use. In the demo, the roof of the clock tower was blown off, opening up a new path in to where the capture point is located.

Other examples of how additional paths through a map can be opened up include barrels that can be exploded to open holes in walls, or destructible windows that can be broken and leapt through. Likewise, there will be environmental objects that can serve as cover until destroyed by player attacks.

The trebuchet also opens up other tactical options. If you blow up the other team’s trebuchet, they can go out and try to find the repair kit to try and get it operational again. In the midst of that, they will also need to continue attempting to capture and hold objectives if they want to win the match.

There is also ranked, tournament-based PvP that players can sign up to participate in with a team. These can range from smaller 4v4 tournaments, up to huge tournaments involving multiple teams.

The other type of PvP in the game is World vs. World vs. World. It was not being shown in the current demo at gamescom, but it is giant, open world PvP with hundreds or thousands of players in a map fighting over huge keeps and castles, including the use of siege weapons.

In WvWvW, a server will be matched up against two other servers in a two-week long PvP battle. At the end of the two weeks, whichever server has the most points is the winner and will then be matched up against two new servers based on how well you did in those two weeks to try to keep the gameplay balanced.

Playable Races and Character Customization

The show floor demo at gamescom included all five playable races for the first time, including the norn starting experience, the asura, and the sylvari.

ArenaNet has also added character appearance customization which includes detailed adjustments for facial features, and also integrates the in-game dye system. Armor pieces have three dye channels that you can customize, and your selections will then be applied to any armor you equip. You will be able to dye your armor at any point and will discover new dyes throughout the game.

For charr characters, you will be able to choose different fur patterns, and then adjust the colors of them as well. Along with body type and facial appearance options, charr characters will also be able to select from different types of horns. The current demo version of character customization is still a work in progress, so you can expect to see even more detail to customization options in the future.