GW2 Updates

 
The progression of Guild Wars 2 is quite astounding. Going from nothing more than rumors that it was happening to a still image stylized story synopsis; then nothing for a while but some class information, and suddenly in Germany- a huge game play reveal!

When the game was shown, people were blown away. Arenanet kept their lips tight about almost every aspect of the game, and here they were showing the actual game, barely filtered and ready for analysis. People began to notice things that were never said or seen before. No auto attacking was present in the game like in the first- every attack corresponded to a skill on the player's skill bar. This means the removal of the standard, weak auto attack- which for most came in the form of a colored ball flying towards the enemy. Instead, players will be able to right click a skill to set it to auto attack instead. Although it may seem similar, such a feature is a bit of an advancement from the previous title. It was also revealed just how much more player interaction will affect the combat this time around. Spells were shown being cast while the player runs around. In the original Guild Wars, players had to stand still to cast most spells. Should they move while the progress bar was charging, the skill would be canceled. Changed for good reason, this new facet goes hand in with a player's ability to jump, roll out of the way, and in general move around more while in battle. No longer are players limited to standing around spamming attack/buff skills to defeat an enemy. What this gives is more chance for a player to interact with the game. Finally, Guild Wars will allow players to distinguish themselves through their skill as a video game player.

The scale of battles in GW2 has gone epic

Not much has flowed out since that live demo until now. Katy Kristen Perry recently wrote up a post chronicling and explaining the new system for dying armor in GW2. No longer will there be dye mixing :'( which players have mostly enjoyed. Instead of having the base colors as drops that are available for mixing, colors will now be premixed for unlocking. Turquoise will be a new color rather than having to mix a blue and a green dye. There were 254 colors available at the last game play demo, but Kristen hopes to expand that number some more before release. So how am I supposed to carry 254 colors around with me for future armor sets? I'm not- as I mentioned before, colors will now be unlocked instead of found. What this means for players is that they now have an extra 10 slots available in their item storage. Color unlocks will most likely be a reward for different parts of the game and could also be randomly discovered. A set of colors will be unlocked for players at the start of the game determined by what town the player comes from and what race they are. Colors can now be applied to 3-4 sections of the armor giving each piece a unique quality to that player. Finally, armors will no longer start out a dreary gray; instead, they will be the color the materials would naturally be providing an acceptable look right off the armor smith (or drop).

Leather now looks like leather, metal like metal, and cloth like cloth! Goodbye gray.

Even more recently, another post has gone out outlining the loot of Guild Wars 2. If you know what it was like in the first game, you won't be lost in the second. The monster drops are assigned to players who participated in the battle, and at the end of dungeons each player gets an item (or several even) from the chest. Something interesting and new, however, is the fact that each dungeon will have a unique set of armor that players can earn. Unless this game is tiny compared to the first, that means quite a lot of variations on armor.  The article's author, John Hargrove, makes note that the armor will reflect what the player experienced in that particular dungeon. To allow players to stay truly unique, a transmutation system has been implemented so that players can take their favorite looking armor along with the armor that has the best stats and combine them into their most astonishing piece.

The demo and these updates really convey to a Guild Wars player that the team at Arenanet have been listening to players and, as with the first game, are continuing to try to keep this MMORPG different (and better) than others. I was never much for mixing. If I wanted a dark blue, it always was painful to mix a blue dye with a black one (last worth 8k). And yes, it was quite a burden on my storage chest to collect colors.