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

what that giga shadow guy just said reminded me that its probably for the best anet hasnt said anything about when the game will be released. heres hoping they dont get stomped by blizzard changing their release date to rape anet out of the market because i know i would prefer a lot more people to play guild wars 2 than those who played guild wars 1. GW had to compete with world of warcraft kinda otherwise i think the playerbase would have been a lot larger.

This is the first 'news' of Guild Wars 2 I've seen in awhile. Thanks for this big update.

I must be incredibly slow if I didn't know that ArenaNet had Twitter.

I agree with the post above and stated this a long time ago also..on Aions release

If you look at the interview with Jeff Strain in April 2007 a little sprinkle appears also as a few things are in Aion also that jeff quoted then...

Just google guild wars interviews and have a look at some things that where to be included in GW2.

Similar things are being implented in Aion and also Blade and Soul there other game in development.

So is there a link? have a read and decide.

Come December we may get some info forthcoming after a 1st quarter of Aions release

Guild Wars is not only a very unique and solid franchise, it's also something new.

It is very doubtful later release date would hinder sales of GW2 by upcoming titles such as DIII, which are long-established franchises. GW was out when WOW was out also, but WOW is p2p game while GW is b2p, plus, they are completely different.

To put it short, I don't really see any competition for GW2 in upcoming year, in it's strict CORPG genre and specific game structure, which will get improved and more open to wide audience, but certainly won't come out as a lowly substitute of typical mmo games.

Guild Wars is already a franchise which will be more or less successfully copied by other companies, but just like nobody 'copied' Diablo or Warcraft universe, it's not happening with Guild Wars either.

From playing Aion on both Chinese retail and NA Beta I can tell you they have taken very little advice from anything in Jeff Strain's speech, and if anything have done the opposite. Onerous death penalties. Heavy, heavy grinding for Abyss points (think of the original WoW honor system, where you had to pay 12 hours a day for Grand Marshall; it's like that, except a lot worse, because you can go backwards). Heavy dependence on gear and time spent for PvP. Crafting failures are random (e.g. socket 1 gem and it can trash the rest in your armor -- randomly, so nothing you can do about it), and later on you can can even wreck your armor when upgrading it. The game is heavily RNG based; there are many skills (particularly on the ranger) that normally do low damage, but can occasionally do ludicrously high damage. Aion is not innovative in any way shape or form, it's Lineage 2 with wings, beautiful graphics, and a character creator you can easily spend 3 hours on. But the graphics and comparatively pleasant 1-20 experience seems to have people fooled so far.

Man, some great and very interesting news. Good to see 'things' are happening in the background.

Can't wait to hear more official news, but until that happens, thanks for posting.

Must be a REAL slow news day at Massively.

CRAP! From Factions? Oh dear oh dear, we got some bad voice acting in there.... who did he voice act? This might be trouble for our ears. What if he voiced Danika!

/sarcasm off

HARATHI CENTAUR! Harathi is the name of the Maguuma Pride I bet!

Which means we have all Centaur pride names: Shiverpeak=Modniir, Losaru, Velderunner, and finally Harathi.

^_^

Slowerpoke, I think your name contradicts yourself personally.

Not sure about the trademark and voice actor stuff. This is new to me.

But seriously, the amount of "new GW2 info!" titled threads when it's not new and just from some fan-made livejournal who gets the information from other Guru threads is rather annoying.

Guild Wars: Blighted Empires?

With what we know of GW2, it doesn't sound right. Even if it was just Blighted Empires.

blight
  /blaɪt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [blahyt] Show IPA
Use blighted in a Sentence
–noun
1. Plant Pathology.
a. the rapid and extensive discoloration, wilting, and death of plant tissues.
b. a disease so characterized.
2. any cause of impairment, destruction, ruin, or frustration: Extravagance was the blight of the family.
3. the state or result of being blighted or deteriorated; dilapidation; decay: urban blight.
–verb (used with object)
4. to cause to wither or decay; blast: Frost blighted the crops.
5. to destroy; ruin; frustrate: Illness blighted his hopes.

Of what we know of the "empires" in the initial GW2 - they are non-existant in Tyria (continent). Kryta is all that is left for human. I wouldn't call the Charr area an Empire, nor the Norn or Dredge or Sylvari. Asura wouldn't be an Empire either.

Decayed Empires just... doesn't really fit imo. Unless, like Guild Wars, the name focuses on past events of importance (Guild Wars was named after the multiple wars between guilds throughout Tyria - Blighted Empires, if the actual name, could be named after the fall of Orr and Ascalon and the ruin of human rule over Elona, still seems unlikely though).

They will always be up against something. There will always be an MMO or some other big fantasy release, no matter which quarter GW2 will come out.

Bethesda (now with id software graphics and netcode!), Bioware, ArenaNet and Blizzard are already on a collision course, they basically all cater to the same segment. Bethesda still lacks the multiplayer part, Bioware still needs a lot of time to put all the pieces together, ArenaNet plays catchup with Bioware's presentation, and Blizzard is rather unpredictable when they release, if at all (SC:Ghost).

Every NC press release starts with:
but I doubt if you asked gamers on a convention they would really come up with that answer. NC or ArenaNet are not the classic examples that come up when some podcast is wondering "what are those guys doing?" The brand presence is not where is could be.

I seriously doubt Blizzard cares in any substantial way about what NCSoft and ANET do with Guild Wars 2. Starcraft 2 and Diablo III are going to be enormous sellers unless they release a brick-in-a-box. And require that the clerk chuck it at your face when you buy it. And then mail you a dead rate with a thank-you note stapled on its forehead.

And even then I bet each sells a million copies or more.

Blizzard is to ANET as a water buffalo is to a horsefly. ANET may be an annoyance, but they're nothing close to any sort of threat.

Whaaaaa?

I couldn't count on all my fingers and toes the Diablo rip-offs that came out after D2. And if you think online game developers don't look deeply into WoW for inspiration, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in.

To be fair to them, there's not much interesting happening in the MMO world right now. Blizzard's not doing anything that we're aware of, nothing particularly interesting has been announced recently, and ANET isn't doing anything.

To be fair to ANET and NCSoft, ANET did only make one game and NCSoft only has major brand awareness in Asia. To be poignant with ANET and NCSoft, maybe somebody should have thought about that before they slid a cryptic note under the door about a sequel to Guild Wars and then vanished off the face of the planet for two and a half years, providing no new information and leaving their only existing connection to actual customers to wither and die.

Not sure if "Blighted Empires" was a placeholder name or what, but it's gone now.

So, all we have is known info about some voicework...

and next time OP, reference the original killtenrats article this was sourced from.

Massively can't even get their linked articles updated fast enough.

http://www.killtenrats.com/2009/07/2...-dust-bunnies/

(By the way, 4thVariety is a poster here, good job!)

Thanks for this. I LOLed.

I don't get why they are all over Blighted Empire now. I posted it originally TWO years ago. Ben Miller gave an interview to ArsTechnica indicating that ArenaNet was working on "something else".

Source:http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2...-the-north.ars

So I fired up my Total Internet Awareness Tool and tracked Blighted Empires down to one trademark registration and a NC email (since deleted) on gamedev.meetup.com. The rest is our interpretation, although I supped we would really all like to know what Blighted Empires was supposed to be.

At the same time we could ask:
What is the project Carbine Studios is creating for ArenaNet? http://www.carbinestudios.com/
What happened to PS3 development?

Although I already know the answer to those questions, "no comment" followed by a sudden burst of enthusiasm "have you seen Aion?".

I think they do care. Look what happened with Warhammer Online; about 1 week after Warhammer Online announced its release date, Blizzard announced WoTLK's release date to be 3 months later. WoTLK was rushed, and ended up shipping with zones like Crystalsong that didn't even have any content in them. After WAR's release, Blizzard came out publicly about how they were looking at implementing certain features (which WAR had) such as queueing for BGs from anywhere. The lead WoW designer also talked about some of his poor experiences in WAR regarding grouping, pvp, and public quests. After WoTLK released they also made public statements about how people who had given the reason: Warhammer as leaving for WoW, had mostly returned to WoW. Previously they had never commented about competing games, yet suddenly there was this huge burst of commentary about WAR.

When WAR released in ~August, about 3 days after I canceled my WoW account for reason: Warhammer Online (they did bother to put that option available in the Why You Quit survey), I received an invitation to the WoTLK beta. I don't think that was a coincidence.

While they're not going to come out publicly and say "We're really afraid about competitor X", of course Blizzard cares about other games competing in the same genre, they are potential threats to their business. It would be stupid not to. It's not like they know for sure if a potential competitor's game is going to catch on or not.

Speaking of WoW, has losing half their "subscribers" in China hurt them at all?

They are relaunching WoW in china with all the govt regulation alternations done. Basically it's going to be WoW without any "dead" references.

.........World of Whatcraft?

From what I understand, Blizzard don't get much money from the China subscribers. The9, which ran things over there, took most of the risk and got most of the money (which wasn't that much anyway). Blizzard negotiated a better deal for themselves with the new company, and of course things are in legal limbo now.

Also: No, the dead references thing is a red herring, and that was done a long time ago anyway, long before WoTLK (for example, corpses are gravestones instead). They already removed the DK class from WoTLK for China, and that wasn't enough to let them release it. It has nothing to do with dead references, today's Chinese don't actually care about that at all, it is pure protectionism at this point.

It is going to be a pain for gamers if they have to choose between The Old Republic, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 if they all release around the same time. I If was Arenanet the day after Aion releases I would start giving Guild Wars 2 some major marketing time.

I am sure D3 and GW2 will go along nicely. Neither has monthly fees and most people do not care that much about grinding. The only question is really which one you buy first.

The Old Republic is a tougher decision though. It's all about how many hours is that game storywise and how many months of subscription does that translate to. Again, grinding it is not as compelling. Hopefully it does not end up being a super-expensive solo RPG in which you may ignore the fact that the other things on the screen are real people. Bioware will have to prove first that they not only can enter the MMO space, but also create compelling co-op play. Something ArenaNet has the edge on both competitors.

D3's edge is the franchise name among hardcore gamers and the easy to handle gameplay.
GW2's edge is the co-op play and the competitive costs.
Old Republic's edge is Bioware's story telling abilities and the franchise name among everybody.

Lineage, City of Heroes, Guild Wars...

those are some pretty big names. And since SoE is kinda dead, the only other really well know MMORPG distributer is Activision Blizzard. (Which is kind of a shell game anyway, how many gamers know that Vivendi Universal is the parent company, and how many know what else Vivendi owns? They also own NBC, I didn't know that!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivendi