Factions Interview - Let your voice be heard

Good day all. I'm the host of VGM Daily. We're a 30 min audio show on the world of video games.

Whenever we do industry interviews we like to ask the players of the games for their questions. This is very last minute, but coming up tomorrow at 2 EST we have a scheduled interview with someone working on the game.

Any questions you'd like to see asked feel free to post them here, and we'll do our best to try and ask them tomorrow.

Lates

Which came first, PvE or PvP, in thier planning/creating of Guild Wars Factions?

Is platemail done for? (its obsolete armour stats)

What higher level areas will be available in factions?

1)Will Ascended GWP characters who travel to Cantha need to buy every Faction only skills with skill points and gold (1k each) or will quest skill be open to them to gain some faction exclusive skills should we link both Chapters. Similar question the other way around?

2)What does GW Factions mean to small guilds/Alliances or causal players who will likely unable to ever see Elite missions without having to significantly change their playstyles to do so? Will Factions introduce the element of grind such that time spent playing is more important than skills which the original installation of guildwars promised otherwise?

3)Is Town control by Alliances in Factions the GWP equal to favor of the gods? (which is heavily debated) Such that only 55 towns can be owned by Alliances worldwide cross regional servers and how will this affect the overall population in GW since this means Elite missions will even be harder to access than UW/FOW in GWP? Is Anet truely discouraging small guilds of causal players as oppose to large guilds by introducing Factions?

4)Does Factions honestly have a better and more vast storyline than the oringinal GW installation boasting more PvE missions and quests or less than the last installment?

5)Does ANET recognise that PvE players may not really want PvP to be part of their gameplay and will their gaming experience be compromised for reasons of balancing for PvP game play?

6)Will Chapter 3 be more of the same thing despite being boasted to run a different system, if not what will be revolutionary that it offers that other MMO games doesnt offer other than the lack of monthly fees?

Thank you.

Edit for spelling.

I want to know about buying extra slots. Is there any time table for it? I heard they are considering it.

Why were elementalists billed as the "damage dealing class" when they're actually one of the worst? Why do their spells cost so much and why do they take so long to cast and recharge? Is there any chance that Energy Storage will be replaced with a better primary? Is there any hope that elementalists will be rebalanced or are they forever doomed to be Blinding Flash and Gale spammers?

What is being done in Guild Wars: Factions to increase the speed of unlocking PvP content and decrease the time it takes for a new player to enter into the competitive side of the game?

This question is the most important on my mind, and I would greatly appreciate it if you asked.

~Thanks

Will there be a way for us to have Voice comm ingame?

will we be able to listen to youre interview anywhere online ?

1. What about customers outside EU, Americas and Australia ?

Will there be Neutral Quests for those who don't decide to join the Luxons or Kurzicks?

Besides the 12v12 battles, are there anymore new pvp modes?

There has been so much talk about aliances and yet so very little information from guildwars on how this will work.

An example is a statement from Gaile on Saturday 4-15-06 that even though a guild member chooses one faction over another there are methods set in place that will not affect the guild choice of faction.

Exactly how is this going to work as my guild has had to expand once already and we are still unsure about picking aliance guilds aside from our secondary guild.

I still don't see how this will be fair to the smaller guilds with 10-20 members being able to get into the elite areas without being able to be aligned with a powerful guild.

Good job VGM, they help asked most of the hardball questions i had concerns about. My faith has been restored partially....

Didn't know this show exist. Quite nice.

* nice download speed. thumbs up.
* not bad interview, good in-depth. In other words, I heard some things new for a change. Could have pushed for more clearer non-standard answers here and there, but still a fine interview.

Since the one I heard is show 2 of 3, I try to add some questions for interview 3.

- for a PvP player, having as much options is important. Having more options, IS a competitive advantage, no matter how you twist it. How does ANet see the the entrance barriere for new pvp players in the future, say after 5 chapters have come out?
Sure one can have the skills of a core proffession, but one would miss the skills of the Chapters 1-5 of that proffession. Since 25 new skills were designed for Factions, and counting that each Chapter will have around 25 new skills, a core proffession character made in Chapter 6 by a new player would miss 5*25 skills = 125 skills.
That's a lot of skills to miss for a pvp player for a single proffession.

- What is the reasoning behind having a PvP created toon only have 2 weaponslots [on creation, one can transport PvE items to it] and 1 possible armorset as opposed to a PvE character?
[more general question then Factions specific, but still like to know]

- Will the Skillquests in Prophecies campaign offer ritualist and assassin skills for those 2 proffessions that travel to Tyria and do those quests?

I wish there was a transcript.

Yea, what are they going to do about the PvP grind is a very good question. PvE obviosuly they made skill points more readilu available, skills shared among different chars in an account, more caps, whathaveyou. What about PvP players who have to invest ridiculous amounts of time to stay competitive. What of new PvP players? UAX is pretty much required for PvP, where am I gonna get the faction to UAX my 4 fav classes... I'm not even going to ask for UAS.

For Thurdays Brodcast, how about some sneak peeks about what is coming up for the Role Players out there?

-More personalization of armor and appearance?

-Pesonal Mounts? (no jokes you know what I mean).

-Player Housing districts?

-An Easier methode of buying and selling to cut down on spam? (Auction House?)

-Something besides capes to display guild emblems? Like tabards, or a crest on sheilds, for example. (We hate the capes. Did you get the memo?)

-More player charcater races? Everyone being human is boring.

RPG fans love this kind of thing, and it is important to us to have a world that feels "Finished" and "Whole". Overall we are very excited with the progress of the game Devs! Well Done guys!

Also simple interface issue like:

-Being able to reorder the party without leaving.

-Asigning leadership to a new member of a party if you need to go AFK, without leaving the party.

-A way to save builds to cut down on respec times.

-A "ready" button so party leaders can easily see who is ready to start Missions or PvP battles.

-In game Guild searches with officer contacts, so people can find guild to join that better suit them. Or to find guilds interested in GvG with them.

These types of things?

You will have to listen to the most part of the interview in part 1. However at the start of Part 2 Guildwars is the first segment of the broadcast. Once part 3 is tomarrow.


Part 2:

Program:
0:00 – Intro
1:40 – We answer some Guild Wars Forum members feedback
4:04 – The Oblivion Segment: Newsflash! The Orrery “mod” sucks too!
5:52 – Dell has a new gaming laptop XPS M1710
6:32 – New version of Nintendogs coming to Europe! Dalmation and Friends! woohoo!
7:41 – For North America, it looks like Ceramic White is pretty much gauranteed for us!
9:08 – Break
11:08 – Interview: Jeff Strain, Co-Founder of Arena.net, with the 2nd part of our Guild Wars: Factions interview… talks about disconnections during gameplay.. amoung other things like new skills etc.
19:36 – Break
22:22 – Interview Continued: Jeff talks about balancing between the core classes and the new classes, and much much more!
29:28 – Outro
Complete running time: 30:55
Size: 12.4 MB

http://www.vgmfusion.com/get.php?web..._Daily_E47.mp3

Part 1:

Program:
0:00 – Intro
3:09 – Ensemble (makers of Age of Empires) looks like they’re hiring for a MMO dev… an AoE MMO?? That sounds fantastic.
4:16 – GirlsofCS.com are back in the news, because apparently, Us, and others seem to have said some things that didn’t really please some of the site’s owners. Hmm… we’re sorry?
6:45 – Games releasing this week—Final Fantasy XI gets an expansion pack, and Brain Age finally gets its North American release.
9:27 – Break
11:27 – Interview: Jeff Strain, Co-Founder of ArenaNet, and he joins us today to give us the full dirt on Guild Wars: Factions
20:22 – Break
22:22 – Interview Continued: Jeff talks about the characters and the new world of Cantha in Factions.
23:58 – We get to talk to Eric Flannum, one of the key designers in Factions, he lets us know about the new crafting materials that are available.
25:20 – We get some new dirt on improved Henchmen in Factions.
27:20 – Jeff announces that ArenaNet will be releasing 2 separate “chapters” a year for Guild Wars going forward. When? Well, probably Spring and Winter of each year. Each campaign will get a full year of development.
30:52 – Outro
Complete running time: 31:57
Size: 12.8 MB

http://www.vgmfusion.com/get.php?web..._Daily_E46.mp3

Enjoy
-Nas

Theres mpg and other formats free for download if you dont have itunes which is also a free download.

Most of the questions posted here are answered in the first 2 segments though.

Back on topic please. This isn't the PvE vs. PvP debate or <insert character class> sucks thread.


EDIT: OK, maybe you didn't hear (er, read) me. This is the thread about asking questions for the VGM interviews. Keep it that way.

Also,since nearly everyone in pvp uses TS and vent will they ever add in-game voice chat? Btw,will we ever get to see the land North of Tyria as,say,the Charr? Last question,are there any ideas to make the world go from Day to Night and for there to be seasons?

You know,there are seasons mentioned and yet we never see them in-game.

Am I too late to ask a question? Here it goes:

What are the dev team's future intentions in providing new PvP players with premade characters? Will these premades always remain as they currently are? If you intend to change them, will the new premades reflect fundamental, general PvP roles, or will more specialized builds be constantly rotated in and out to reflect new build trends?

The interview was done in a one off session, not on a day by day basis. meaning any questions posted after the first pod cast came live wont get in the list. The pod cast was merely split into 3 parts after editing due to program length constrains post production.

Nice job with this interview ^_^
It cleared many many many things that were little bit mystery.

Thanks Thallandor. I didn't realize it was over. I'll be closing this now.