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

Over the past month I’ve been chronicling my adventures across Tyria and beyond in a series of second look articles focused on some of the more recent changes to both the PvE and competitive aspects of Guild Wars. While my journey was already leading me in the direction of taking a closer look at how story plays a leading role in Guild Wars for a third installment in the series, I had the golden opportunity to speak with ArenaNet at PAX over the weekend. Looking back at one of the most beloved online RPGs in recent years is always fun if you’re a massive lore nerd like myself, but getting the chance to speak with the likes of Jeff Grubb, Mike O’Brien and Daniel Dociu about Guild Wars 2 was not unlike having a mini rock star experience for a genuine fan of the franchise.

While specific details about the game are still under wraps, throughout the interview we discussed many interesting elements of Guild Wars 2 such as art direction and lore, and even gained some insights as to how competitive play will be handled in the sequel. So if you’re curious about what’s in store for the people of Tyria after the events of Eye of the North and want to learn about the interesting new approach to PvP, read on and enjoy!

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Ten Ton Hammer: You have a new novel in the works titled Fall of Ascalon; Ascalon obviously played a major role in the original Guild Wars and had somewhat fallen to the Char early on, so how will this new novel fit into that aspect of the lore for GW2?

Jeff Grubb: The idea of Fall of Ascalon is a bridging story that happens between Guild Wars and 250 years later which is the time of Guild Wars 2. Ascalon experienced the Searing and was being overrun by the Char in Guild Wars 1, but what happened next was even worse.

Some of the populous escaped over the mountains to Kryta with Rurik, but a lot remained with Adelbern. When the Char made their final push into the city he unleashed a devastation that was worse than the Char itself. Its 250 years later and the humans and the Char have been fighting for 250 years, and now because of outside enemies or outside forces, they’re slowly coming together and we’re seeing the first signs of a tentative truce between the two warring sides.

The novel takes place a year before the start of Guild Wars 2, but within that story there is a lot of other stories as you’re hearing what happened between then and now, and what happened to some of the characters we know from GW2, what happened to the Ebon Vanguard, why do we see female Char now – we’ll be seeing female Char characters in the game but we didn’t see them before – so there’s a story behind that.

What about the coming of the dragons, and how did that effect Ascalon as well? So we’ve been seeing this progression all the way through, and part of the tale is to recover a Char artifact that would make this peace, this initial truce popular. So the Fall of Ascalon in many ways is basically the initial invasion of the Char, which they think of as basically a reclaiming of the lands that the humans drove them out of. Plus, what Adleburn did, what the dragons did and basically how did Ascalon get into the state that it is right now.