We are beta-testing GW2

Simple, as Loki pointed out above, the engine, in it's current form, cannot handle the changes they want to make to the game and as they said in the PCGamer article, if they changed the game engine now, it would destroy GW1...


Besides, why is there a second thread about this article over the one inde posted?

Superficial stuff like shader effects dont make pretty graphics that add to longevity of game. Good artits do. I couldnt care less about zomg a bit better reflection! Anet is sooo lucky to have decent art team. /check out really old screenies of gw pre and post art change. it was same engine, and preart change stuff looked terrible/

And good graphics dont make good game (or at least long lived decend game). Good design does.

I've been thinking the same thing ever since the rollerbeetle race.

"Hey, this could be a test for GW2 controls"

I fully agree with the first part of your answer, but not with the 2nd one: an artist cannot express himself if he doesn't have the tools. Shaders and othe reflection models may seem superfluous, but it is sometimes essential to what is shown. But let's not forget that the two aspects work hand in hand: GW is inherently amazing thanks to great artists that found a fabulous dev team to help them express their art.

I personally hope that GW2 will raise the standard even higher than GW1, still keeping that delicate balance that enable the client to play on all PCs, even the modest ones!

Thats true, but such tools often become abused just to show off thier existance. I guess its to impress people who go all wild on such things. (i.e. such abuse are "new" portal effects - totally out of place and screaming "look, we have shaders!").

If its used correctly, you dont notice that effect being there, it just fits.

Besides, good texture on good model goes a LONG way in implementing artist vision.

(for example, lots of games feature beautifull realistic water, which looks totally unrealistic because rest of game is not compatible with it, should artist have not used effects, it would look much better.)

You are right. But Anet has shown that they are not the kind of company to abuse these things, plus in terms of SW development it does not make much sense if your audience is as wide as the current GW population and you control tighly your budget (shiny graphical effects cost a lot of money and are probably more justifiable on offline games such as Crysis). I think we can agree that in 2005 GW broke from the rule of "more V/RAM for my game" to provide us with a smooth online XP and the various campaigns and EotN have not really added to the HW requirements. But since GW2 happens 3 years after GW, we can expect basic graphics technology, such as Shader v2, to be used. And I was also extremely happy to see the art on the unborn Utopia, which means that 3 years after having started GW, Anet is still strong on the art side of the game. I don't believe one second they will disappoint us with GW2 on this topic.

I would even speculate about another aspect related to this: going one step further than the 2d art, I'm wondering whether Anet will bring 3d art to a new level by introducing these nice "movements" such as jumping, rolling, et caetera. We already have nice emotes with basic movements, just imagine GW2 which would look like dance art (not as a central component of the game of course, similarly to the fact that the current beauty of the graphics do not make GW1). And let's not forget sound and music, they been improving slowly but steadily since GW1 through the 6 other projects.

Beta testing?? well, Yeah. Why wouldn't they. They did say EoTN would give players a taste of GW2.

You can bet those fancy stealth skills Gwen has in the BMP will likely see inclusion in some form in GW2. . .

My only gripe about the article is the Mention of "High" and "Low" levels in the Mists PvP. Suggesting there will be overpowered players in PvP means "That this is an old article as much has changed since this interview was taken. I can hardly wait two years."

Well, if you wanna go half-way there, Titan's Quest had some physics involved in it. But if you're gonna go the way of Oblivion in terms of physics, the internets'll explodith!

In terms of testing the concepts for GW2 (wouldn't say beta-testing), I'd agree. And I haven't seen a whole lot of negative feedback, so that means so far so good!

Just FYI: The interview to which this thread links is old. According to Mike O'Brien, this was a phone interview given back when all the other interviews were being done, around the announcement of GW2 and even GW:EN, well before the release of the Bonus Mission Pack -- likely back in the spring or summer of this year.

Just thought you'd want to know.

Whew, I was actually looking for a date to that article, I'm in high hopes that much is still evolving, has evolved since those announcements and first articles.

Thanks Gaile, good to know. We thought nothing had changed since last time we heard!

Fine. They're building it 'on the GW1 engine'. But if they're re-working it to the extent that the two can't interact (also specifically stated), then it's essentially a whole new thing.

Another thing they're "testing" for GW2 in GW1 could be with the instanced quests we've been doing. Whaddya'll think?

What they were doing was building on to the Guild Wars 1 engine for Guild Wars 2. The problem probably was the overwhelming amount of existing things that would have to be tweaked to recognize this change.

The Guild Wars 2 engine will probably be a more adaptive and stronger version of the Guild Wars 1 engine. Sort of like an evolution of the engine if you ask me.

LMFAO Mizz Gray. The link I provided is on the front page of Guru right now. Is anet, and/or Guru giving outdated info or what?

KANE

In what way is giving an interview to some place and them not printing it till now Anet's or Guru's fault any more than it is yours for giving us the link? As far as I can tell none of the people in the link other than GamersGlobal have any control over when they publish an interview.

Now, if GamersGlobal published the interview ages ago then both Guru and you have some blame, but still I can't see how that would be the fault of Anet.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, but in reality theres lots of evidence to back this up.

I don't find anything wrong with this kind of concept testing - quite the contrary, having a vision for a wonderfully innovative new game is one thing but finding the mechanisms that both flesh out that vision and also entice people to play it is another issue altogether. The really ingenious insight that made GW stand apart from the rest of the MMORPG genre was the proposition that level (and thus grinding) is pretty much inconsequential for the enjoyment of a game. The original GW got it right to a large extent, now these new game modes (EotN buff, Costume Brawl, BMP) that are introduced to test the reactions of the community point to a direction where even the remaining vestiges of off-the-shelf RPG mechanisms are discarded.

I like what you said so much I'm quoting you. I think it is apparent that much of what we see, as new and inovative content, with BMP, EoTN, Updates, Events, are a hinted direction into GW2.

I also think it is wise that Arena Net has not committed themselves fully to the GW2 design direction by releasing solid details on what they plan to do. Until they fully commit, they really should not let slip too many details.

What's impressive is how quickly many players are catching onto the alternate form of player advancement. It was weird when I first started playing GW, but now, I cannot imagine playing it any other way. I'm no longer a Leveling addict, I'm a Title addict, at least titles say something about you, rather than just placing a number above your head. And the fact that they're optional and non-linear is just . . . well it's Brilliant.

plz plz bring vizunah square style missions into gw2. there arent enuff missions determined by a completely random factor. if gw2 isnt instanced as much as gw1, i say more random fail for gw2 lulz.