Guild Wars II

Hey all, I've been recently looking at videos of the Crysis game coming out next year, and starting thinking how amazing Guild Wars would look using the Crytek engine. When the original Guild Wars was released, its engine suppassed that of most mmo's, but is now getting a little outdated compared to new mmo's such as Vanguard, Aion, etc.

Here's a link to some Crysis videos, watch "Trailer and CryEngine 2" and "Tech Demo" to get an idea of the engine used for the game's graphics and environment interaction: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/694/694190/vids_4.html

Jeff Strain said something about Nightfall being the game that ties together the ends of Prophecies and Factions, which could've implied a new Guild Wars coming out next year. If so, ANet could use the Crytek engine to enhance not only graphics, but gameplay, with the possibility of allowing players to interact with the environment. For example, a ranger with Ignite Arrows could start a small fire that spreads a meter or two from the enemy target.

Naming it Guild Wars II would be appropriate to imply the chronology from the original Guild Wars to the new version. (Similar to World War I and World War II). If ANet could then bring current Guild Wars characters to the new game, with all of our items, armor, gold, etc, completely revised with the new engine, it would be a great experience.

Doing all this would most likely cost ANet, endorsing the new engine, recreating character models, environment, etc, getting new servers, but I strongly believe that a game like Guild Wars with the graphics and environment interaction of the Crytek engine has the potential to double the sales of the original Guild Wars, and win over a few WoW players.

Flame on.

(you might wanna take away the flame part....they put my post away for writing that)

Back to topic, what you just said is absoloutly the best thing for guild wars to do, if they want to keep its people. As we all know Night Fall unfortuantly wasn't as great gameplay wise as we had origanally expected. And it's trully not their fault, it's probably because of the out-of-date engine. If you compare GW current engine to WOW's engine you can trully see the difference. But there is one major part of the statement that could make your whole idea just swiftly and gently wash down the drain in circular motions. Then it would swoop down like a heavy car engine and spits it out into pieces...sry. And that's when you said "It will cost them a lot of money". No duh it will cost them money which I became to believe they don't have. Why? because we need to pay a monthly fee. And that's what everything will boill down too...risk paying so much money and hoping people will endorse guild wars. And burning crusade is coming out too, which could indeed make a HUGE impact on all remaining MMO's if what most people say about it. So in my humble opinion, I think your idea will not happen. They might as well start a whole new game. JUst so complicated.

/unsign
but
/sign
which =
/notsure

i hope they dont my computer can barely run guildwars atm

if this happened, that means all my current characters will not work in the new

guild wars2 with new engine means totally new game and all characters need to rebuild again

not good at all

If you notice, there have been a couple minor upgrades to the graphics engine in the past. But in general, they want even the more low-end systems to be able to handle it.

What experience and knowledge do you have of working with different game engines?

Maybe we should leave it up to Anet to find the best solution, after all, the current engine was great for its time (and still is, imo).

It would be nice if they could atleast add an y-axis to the engine..

well i will put my own opinion about this, the engine that you say it is great for old pcs what excaclty you mean ? i am having problems because i have a P4 2.54GHz, 1 GB RAM, GForce4 Ti4200 64DDR. and many times the graphics throws me falsed textures like green cubes, you know what i mean destroyed area, but when i change the quality of textures to less then suddenly and not all time unstuck so i can play again. Wel i know that my computer cannot stand all time to be online because i don;t close it, but i have change so much windows to close many background services so to keep alive, the problem apears and when i will reset my pc and run GW, about in 3 or 4 hours. I have put force to GW to run only DX8 there is an option for that but i have the same problem again but not often.. So why the GW2 dont be created? I think all we know that technology changes all time .You go to buy something hardware for your pc and you see the next week there is something newest and better with more support etc.So GW must change if you wanna be more better and i think it would be GW2, I belive that will support the old GW chars to tranfesred to new one, All games done this before, like l2 of NCSoft. I think that many people that are saying their opinions and ideas like in my before thread which finally closed there are many with bad ideas or answers. I think that developers must not do anything that saying people "good ideas" , they could read it to see all kinds of thoughts. I would upgrade my pc and everyone else that he loves pcs and technology.

You mean Z-Axis.

I forgot something. Have you heard guys the DirectX10 ? lol ALL NEW GAMES MUST BE ON DIRECTX 10. So see you soon. Well i don't like so much the graphics on WoW its kinda of seeing cartoon or something.. lol. I would prefer to see more serious graphics. Oh i almost forgot it. There is another problem it is about the no fees you say. Look in my opinion again these developer guys they are working alot, you see all time updates, fixes, events, expansion sets and otehrs. So I belive if they want to make a new engine they are not many? or maybe they are not have so much time to do it. I belive that they put some new group to go on this great job, and i am fan of GW that's why i am saying things that must be told. If all people like players telling all time good things developers will see that they are all happy so thgey will leave it to their destiny. I think if we can say sometimes and bad things or problems maybe it will think again and say hmm it is a great idea, or it is bad idea. And one other thing that i would like to say it was on the previous thread that closed is that D&D rules not the game "D&D online" but the type of the RPG if you know about RPGs, its written on books. I think that the NCSoft or ArenaNet will go to this path, because when you create a char you choose what you want to play: A RPG =Role Playing Game? or PvP (doing all time battles ) ? I think if this game want to success maybe must put some "jar on the bread" to eat it more lovely.
And i didn't said that all these things must be in one expansion this is the key of no fees game

In generally i love this game, and i will continue to play this one, because of two things:
1)no fees ( I am telling the true because i am on the opinion that if you buy a game you play, if you don't buy it you don;t play, and no fees all time you buy all time card, this is not an antivirus program or basic program that you need)

2) I love the the scenario of the RPG, its quests, and the sites.


Friendly,

Agreed. I'd happily play GW II if my characters from the first Guild Wars can access all the content of the second too. I've put a lot of time into them, I'd hate to lose that.

A better way to implement this would be for A-Net to go back and redraw everything from Pre-Searing Ascalon in Prophecies onward to work with the new engine, as opposed to making a new game in the Guilds Wars universe and copying characters over. This would maintain a continuous nature between all the seperate nations/games.
There's still, of course, the problem with older PCs and A-Net catering to them, a problem without any real solution.. better graphics and a more complex engine simply put more strain on computers, and you can't really get around that.
I'm happy with the current graphics in Guild Wars, and they don't seem outdated to me, yet. But I have worried what will happen, as that seems likely to change.

Or maybe he meant jumping or flying which would be on the Y.. or something

the concept of Guild wars II implies a new beginning. which if it does happen I hope will be the case. No linking characters from Chapter 1 2 3 into GW II this will allow lots new options for development and advancement beyond level 20 to lev 30, and the possibility of MOBs of level 40 or bosses of lev 50. Possibly even more skill slots, without having to cater to the lowest common factor.

Retire the GW I trilogy as it is at the end of Nightfall and move on to GW II as the next evolution to the game.

I am more for linking existing unlocked skills over to the new title rather then linking forward and backward movement of characters between versions. As long as there is a possibility of taking an improved character back to other games it has no business in a new evolution of the game. It would simply then just be yet another chapter. Not a new book. A new book means starting from scratch folks. face it, Live it Learn it... If you want a more expanded evolution you can NOT bring your characters over and be able to exploit that in previous games.

Imagine GW II
Max lev 30
Max Atrib points 300
Max skills 10 => 8 signet rings + pendant skill + buckle skill.
Max armor 100
2 handed weapon fighting.
Rifles (2 handed) and pistols (1 handed) as weapons.
Lev 30 Pet with armor options, and controls.
Lev 30 Heroes.

Now they allow linking back to GW I??? NO WAY that will ever happen.

Link accounts to bring your unlocks over and that's it... Not characters.

Then make a new character with access to your unlocks and build from there for a new book. Otherwise its just a new chapter again, and no extra benefit to character growth could exist. A New book is the only way to get these kinds of options...

Personally I'm OK with the way the chapters have been progressing, but people are always complaining on the current cap and such, so after a few chapters I can see this as an option, but I am not really for it myself. This just represents the only way it COULD happen.

Ive never heard of this Crysis, but if its got a really demanding graphics engine and it would need a very powerfull computer to run it then....


/notsigned


...one thing I love about GWs is that it can run on virtually any machine.

It looks gorgeous on my desktop PC, but it can still run fine on lower settings on my laptop.

Thats one of its major selling points.

If it was to use a more demanding engine then you would be isolating alot of the market and alot of users who cant afford to upgrade their PCs.

[edit]

I just checked that link out and I can see it would require alot of graphics power. As gorgeous as it would look, I can see it going down the whole LOTR2 route.

And not able to run on lower spec pcs.

Depsite my high-end laptop, some games still suffer (like F.E.A.R on full whack) because of the apparently insane resolution of my widescreen display. I don't exactly get the best framerate in GW either, so GW in the Crysis engine would kill my precious comp!

/not signed, no way, not ever!


As for the X,Y,Z axis discussion: In 3D when you move horizontally (forward, backward, left and right) along a flat floor, you are moving along the X- and Z-axes. Moving vertically (up and down) is along the Y- axis.

So Sith is right.

Yes, I know it means they will have to recreate all character models, and such, but they can take the environment textures and such from previous games that use the same engine, such as Crysis. Anyways, if Guild Wars II is the next chapter, after Nightfall, ANet won't have to recreate all the mission, places, and areas of the first three chapters, just continue on with the story.

The only thing they'll have to recreate to transfer our current characters is armor, items, and looks.


If there are flaws with the ability to allow characters to travel between Guild Wars II and the first three chapters, then ANet could simply give players the option to permenantly move all characters and items over to the new GW, thus making your old GW character slots empty, but you could still create new characters on the old GW.

I am not saying there needs to be interaction between the new and old GW, as that is almost impossible like =HT=Ingram said. But being able to move your current characters and items to a new game, completely recreate, ANet would just need to record what you currently have at the time of transfer, and give you those items back in a completely new game.

If all fails on transfering characters over, I would agree with =HT=Ingram to just end the current GW trilogy, and just start the next one clean, which could give new players a fair start, and veterans a fresh new "pre-searing-start" feeling. =HT=Ingram's idea of raising the lvl cap to 30 and increasing attribute points and number of skills on the skill bar would also make the PvE world much more diverse and further allow players to interact with the environment.

i still think GW looks great...

And the level cap shall always be level 20. Those who think it should be raised don't understand the game at all.

Q4T

GW to me, as simple as it is made, is one of the best looking "MMOs" out there today. I don't think the sacrifice would be worth upgrading to the Crytek engine. And it would harsh for people that dont have computers built for fps.

I agree that there should be a new GW, simply because there are alot of ways to improve the game which may be difficult without a new installment.

But here are my issues. First of all, if you can transfer exsisting characters to the new game, it would have to work retro actively, because if you transfer your character out of GW (original) permenantly, you effectively kill support for the old GW. Secondly, if they are going to totally redo the game, than they should include alot of new elements to the game which are not in GW, including replacement elements which work differently, this means that porting over old characters would not work because all of thier equipment and functions don't apply to the new GW, if they are just going to improve the graphics on future chapters, add a Z axis, and add a few new features, they may as well improve the exsisting engine, a true sequel should work differently, with a resounding improvement to all functions at the least, if they even use the same functions. Lastly, if they are going to make a new game which cannot be accessed with GW (original) characters, than they may as well make a totaly different game. Making a Sequel to a still popular game which doesn't allow you to return to previous content will just kill GW and split thier fans between those who want to continue what they are already playing, and those who want to play something new, essentially gaining only half the support of their fans in the new version, which is basicly the Everquest scenario, people are too attached to the original to support the new version.

Anet does good work, I think they should make a new game with a different background with the same style of interest. A more action based strategy rpg which involves console action adventure style combat instead of old point and click mechanics. But GW is not dead, it is still enjoyable, and if they get creative, they can make 2 or 3 revolutionary chapters which are widely popular and enjoyable. If they are just going to add more of the same, like another Factions, than they should just quit now and start something new, but if they are willing to add more original content (like most everything I suggest frankly), than it could grow into an even more outstanding game.

there is no Guild Wars II so forget that.

it was officially announced some time ago that chapter 4 (four) is already 6 months underway and progressing well.

^^^ They could always do it after 4...

nope.

chapter 5 is already getting started on the release of Nightfall.

give GW II up as they can upgrade this engine at will/as needed to keep looking good.

and forget jumping already

Something I can agree on. Just because the next generation is close/already here, doesn't mean ANet should cut off the majority of its players by creating an engine on the same or a similar level of insanity as Crytek's latest.

Crytek2 engine is an advanced game engine that not only a 3D engine but also a physics engine and a physics engine is something Guild Wars doesn't need.

Now this is important...

Crytek2 is an engine so advanced, that X360 can't even run it. Not even today's most advanced PC can run it

HOORAY 2 more fastfood expansion packs that offer little-to-0 new content except more killing and more bosses. Frankly this is NOT what I want, I might as well head back to world of noobs at least they take 2 years to make an expansion pack.

The current engine is great, graphics-wise. Runs perfectly and renders the beautiful environments crafted by the art team appropriately. The only thing missing, in my opinion, is the Z axis, and then again it's far from being crucial.

I had a friend by my house this afternoon... she was bugged that she bought NWN2 and couldnt play it because of the steep requirements (her fault for not reading the box, but anyway...) I showed her NWN2 running on my PC (15fps with most graphic options maxed), and then I presented her to guild wars. She thought GW looked WAY better, which I too agree. The expansive environments, the character and world visuals and the amazing art direction make NWN2 feel simply tiny, ugly, drab, heavy and clumsy. Which isn't to say NWN2 is a bad game, but it's showing that GW beats it hands down graphically, despite being less "advanced", and it also runs on any middle-range computer perfectly. (I'm not even going to say a word about WoW's graphics, he, he, he)

But yes, I do believe they will release a followup to GW, but just not yet. And certainly not next year running on in cry-engine 2. Simply because Online RPGs are made to be as accessible as possible, since they need to reach a large audience to remain online. Few people will be able to run cry-engine 2 games until technology required reaches mainstream, which might not happen in the next two years. There's also the fact that many people are still developing characters in the GW world and it's way too soon to kill that now.

Good graphics are not so much the result of a good engine but the vision of the artists making the game, using the engine. As long as Anet's artists feel they're not being held back by the current engine too much with what they want to create, then there's no real point as far as graphics go, to change the engine.

Also, this is very important, guildwars is still being targetted for the casual gamers market, despite many of the people on this board not being casual gamers, so it might be hard to imagine, but it's still true. The low lvl cap, no monthly fee, no grinds, etc. Casual gamers aren't going to have cutting edge pc's like hardcore gamers do, so if you have the basic concept of a casual gamer semi mmorpg and you make it run on a pc far out of reach of the casual gamer's budget (or what they're prepared to spend on a game they will just play a little), they won't buy it en masse like they do now.

Besides, the current engine gets improvements too, we're seeing all kinds of neat new effects we didn't see in chapter 1. Most of the problems with guildwars have nothing to do with the engine anyway.

I don't constantly want to bring WOW up but, still wow does show how important the z-axis is. The whole world of guildwars feels so liniar and "out-planned" it simply becomes like a fast food game. If you catch my drift. I am not a WOW fanboy but I know how it is and I love playing all the games and make a self-review on them. Graphic wise guild wars is more than fine...I mean why do you need better graphics anyway. But because we don't have a z-axis, there are a lot of fun things that can't happen. Guild Wars is really meant for you too look at something and say "wow.....beautiful". Like these castle places in Instan island. But can you actually go inside it and explore??? no you cannot. It's these kinds of things that guild wars must inprove on not graphics...I want gameplay! that's the MAIN reason WOW is so succesful.

Right, not only could that improve exploration but also combat. Imagine if flying creatures could actually fly? Although I don't think the player should be able to fly.

While the Guild Wars engine might look a tad dated, I'd be surprised if Chapter 4 was actually a whole new game. I expect they'll try to milk the current setup for a couple more years before starting over from scratch with Guild Wars II (or whatever new project they decide to start on).

If they did make a GW II, it certainly should not run on the crytek engine. It should run on an upgraded version of the current one.

As KSS said, they are constently upgrading the GW engine, latly the water is at a higher resolution / reflection, and the models are more ..... polygonated.

Anyone can be right, depending on how you define the axis. I think the most used one for vertical movement is the Z-axis. Both can be right though.

* Chapter 4 is already six months ahead in progress, just delete that?

* Gameplay > Realism, Guild Wars don't need physics engine.

* ANet will NEVER raise the level cap, if you think it's a good idea, you don't understand the game philosofy.

* Guild Wars graphics is not outdated.

* Gameplay > Graphics.

* Remaking of all models, terrain, every single effect, maps?

* Don't assume everyone didn't like Nightfall, i think most people love it.

* More people isn't nessecary better. Most people are idiots, I don't want more people converting from standard MMOs to GW.

This comment reminds me of the fact that one of the reasons gamespot cited for giving Nightfall a lower score was using the same sound effects from the previous games >_<

The fools!

Ok...

An engine is just an engine. That's it. It doesn't mean squat. How a developer utilises an engine is what counts. Most of what the Crytec guys are doing can be reproduced elsewhere (though I dare say not as impressively showcased as their efforts ). Some systems use 'y' (3dsmax etc), everyone else uses 'z'(Directx, the world, etc.). There's no real difference.

From what Anet (Jeff Strain) have said, their engine is scalable. Therefore graphical upgrades will happen as time goes on. As they have already been happening (Yay! GW has normal maps. For all the good it did the game). You'll see nothing like Crysis however. That's an FPS. Those game-types are almost made to show-off hardware and software performance. Doesn't mean the visuals could be used successfully (or even be beneficial) in other game types. Theres no reason to suggest that GW couldn't benefit from some of the effects within Crytek's new toy however (The lighting model for instance.)

In all honesty, a GW 2 is far too much work for too little gain. Anet either update everything they have already done, or they create a brand new game. Both ridiculous prospects.
They either spend the next 2-3 years updating 3 games worth of content, or they start from scratch and lose more or less everything they have already established.
Who would care to start all thier accounts again? Not enough people to justify the cost.
Implementation for just the Pvp guys wouldn't be too difficult, but then competition would degrade due to the inevitable plague of hardware, and thus performance issues, while all the Pve guys bitch endlessly.
Plus the business model would take a swift kick in the face (Unless they charge 300 bucks for the game and force existing players to sign contracts to ensure they buy the thing when it arrives somwhere in the next 3-20 years).

Only fix things when they (are about to) break...

You summed up everything nicely. EXCEPT for that last point.

Traditional MMOs won't go away so don't expect many to convert over in any circumstance other than if GW was to ever to become a traditional MMO.

GW has very beautiful graphics already and don't need any better.
A new engine means more lag and then gw won't be as fun as it was..
Anet updates the graphics from time to time and that is enough for me..
But since they added that shader quality to the graphic options my gw has lagged (and i didnt notice any differences with the graphics either)

Eventually they will make gw support directX 10 and those with a new card will have nicer graphics. Like they did with directX 9.

Btw GW II FTL!!!!!!!!!!!
If you want to play GW II maybe u shouldn't play gw at all..

While I agree a GW II would be nice, I don't forsee it happening for at least another 3 years. Only when GW gets truely dated and Crytek2's engine can be "run on most machines" like GW will a.net do this. After all, a.nets main market is people who can't afford, don't have a good enough system to run, or don't want to pay monthly fees. They'd lose out a huge chuck of their market if they used a high end engine because people who would want to play GW just because it doesn't have a monthly fee (which was the original reason I bought it, but after playing it I obviously have found other reasons to stick around) wouldn't be able to play it because they often wouldn't have the system to run it.