Ah yes, more sprinkles of Guild Wars 2 info

by Shawn Schuster Jul 23rd 2009 at 11:00AM


Filed under: Fantasy, Guild Wars, MMO industry, New titles, Guild Wars 2, Rumors



Our friend Ravious at Kill Ten Rats is at it again with some pretty impressive detective work on the current state of Guild Wars 2. To be fair, Ravious is simply gathering the info he finds on the various Guild Wars forums from others who are doing the actual detective work, but it still makes our jobs a whole lot easier. Some of this was already known, some of it is new, but it's all interesting.

In his most recent GW2 post, we get word of a forum member named 4thVariety who has been following the trademark licensing and domain registration habits of ArenaNet's trademark lawyer, Mr. Peter J. Willsey. When GW2 was first announced, Mr. Willsey trademarked BlightedEmpires.com, and has since renewed the domain on March 12th of this year. Speculation, of course, centers around the fact that this may or may not be the name of the highly successful game's sequel.

In addition, some other Guild Wars Guru forum members have been following certain voice actors while they boldly discuss voicing characters for Guild Wars 2. This list of voice actors includes none other than the infamous Gregg Berger, who has an impressively-long resume of work including the 80s cartoons Transformers (as Grimlock) and G.I. Joe (as Spirit). He is no stranger to Guild Wars though, as he did a bit of voice work on GW: Factions himself.

There's also Scott McShane, whose LinkedIn profile shows his recent work to include "Kadatta, Harathi Centaur - Guild Wars 2". We already knew about the involvement of the Centaurs in Guild Wars 2, considering Ventari's importance in the storyline, but this is just that tiniest squeeze of information that gets us more excited for what's to come.

Also, as Ravious points out, voice acting in an MMO is not exactly an early stage of development. "For a poor benchmark, Warhammer Online released a video podcast on adding voice acting in March, 2008. Warhammer Online was released September, 2008." Yet he goes on to point out the flipside of that coin, "On the other hand, The Old Republic has started voice acting for their fully voice acted epic, which may be as far off as November 2010, or farther."

While these tidbits are small, it's still all we really have to go on a game that was announced several years ago with no real official information since then. While many former GW fans speculate on the fact that GW2 may or may not see the light of day, it's good to see some real evidence of its continued development.

And possibly a name?

Source: http://www.massively.com/2009/07/23/...news/#comments

Oooo...Blighted Empires. I like that.

i guess all of that might be news for someone who doesn't read guru.

slowerpoke! I know, I read that article a few hours ago and was going to post it here... except all that info was posted here all ready. That's awesome though that they are spreading the word about the little tidbits of information. I know a lot of gamers will like to see that.

Hey, at least it's something

Thanks for posting this.

really?

Fixed for you

The voice actor stuff is especially interesting. I doubt they're delaying release for Aion's sake, but it does imply that the game is a lot further along than I expected.

Hey, keep up with the internet man. You have to wade through all the bad to get to the good.

If we knew something about the amount of voice acting in GW2, we could say with more confidence how far off release is. SW:tOR had to start recording voice acting much earlier than usual due to the volume.

If GW2 is similar, we could be waiting a while. If not, we could be getting reasonably close to a beta.

its like someone telling you a story who forgot it was you who told them originally

this is what we are reduced to though when it comes to news on gw2.
its left up to users to gather random small scraps of information and add in some speculation.

indeed. Bioware said TOR would have 40 novels worth of script all to be fully voice acted.

If only Anet could confirm GW2 info at PAX or something, I'd be so hyped.

BFD. A renewed website that may (or may not) be attached to GW2 and a few voice actors.

The real story here is:

Speculation and no real official information yet.

The Blighted Empire name you can probably take off as speculation since it is now marked dead by the patent office:

Abandonment Date - December 15, 2008 http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield...4006:90g2b.3.2
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield...4006:90g2b.3.3

Yes I know what the real story is. I'm very disappointed in how they are handling this but oh well, atleast the post is a small something of goodness incase some do not know.

Awwww, that kind of makes me sad.

yup anet do nothing to keep there users hungry...we get more info from MI5 on the tube than we do from these guys.

Thanks for the update, Inde.

ANet built a sound studio in their HQ several months ago, presumably for GW2 voice actors to do the work there.

Also for what it's worth, I was told some time ago that ANet also has plans in the works for post-GW2 projects.

From what I can tell ArenaNet is laying down groundwork for a long term franchise, which in part might be why GW2 is taking so long. In addition, I know they don't want their release to go head to head with other large releases, such as Diablo III.

Given Diablo 3 is likely to show up in late 2010 (with Starcraft 2 looking like end of 2009), I'm really wondering when they're planning on releasing GW2 then. Mid-2010 perhaps? Leaving it until late 2010/early 2011 is just asking to be stomped by Blizzard moving its Diablo 3 date back or forward a couple of months.

I AM LIkIN!!!!
i am so glad that title wasn't misleading

Guys trust me on this Anet is delaying info about GW2 only because of Aion (same parent company remember?) Wait for alot and when i say alot i mean ALOT of info after Aion's release.


Also check this out http://twitter.com/arenanet/status/2744882630