While the internet collectively recovers from the new Guild Wars 2 trailer, released during GamesCom earlier this month, we jumped at the chance to interview the creative geniuses behind the upcoming title. ArenaNet's Eric Flannum, Lead Designer, Ree Soesbee, World Designer/Writer and Will McDermott, Writer all answered our barrage of questions.

Follow along after the jump to learn more about the GW2 business model, evil Sylvari, plans to have multiple servers and much more!

Massively: With GamesCom and PAX only a week apart, why the decision to release the GW2 trailer in Germany instead of your home base of Seattle at PAX?

Eric Flannum: Europe is a huge market for us and we felt that we really needed to have a strong GW2 presence at a major European trade show. The timing of GamesCom and PAX was such that we ended up premiering the trailer at GamesCom. That being said we always have and always will regard PAX as a major show for us both because of its proximity as well as the fact that it's a great format for us to interact with and meet our fans.

250 years is a long time, if you consider how far a country like the US has progressed in that same amount of time. Some of the concept art shows a "colonial" feel to the game. Is it safe to say that Guild Wars 2 will not be a traditional medieval-fantasy setting?

Eric Flannum: While we've never considered Guild Wars to take place in a traditional medieval setting it is especially true of Guild Wars 2. We have advanced the world both technologically and culturally to a point that we thought was fitting for 250 years. Humanity for example has a parliamentary form of government while the Charr are on the verge of some very significant technological breakthroughs. Some of the more obvious gameplay impact these advances will have are in the use of rifles and pistols by some of our professions. We have also tried to reflect these advances in a lot of our clothing and armor designs as well.

We're intrigued by the concept of evil Silvari, called the Nightmare Court. What all can you tell us about them?

Ree Soesbee: The Nightmare Court are Sylvari who have embraced the darkest parts of the dream; a terrifying nightmare that contains as much horror as the dream contains inspiration. Those who choose this path are evil, cold, emotionless, cruel creatures who enjoy propagating evil. They want to burn out their emotions, forcing their converts to do horrible things in order to destroy all the sympathy, empathy, or compassion they might possess. They seek to purely understand the depths of Nightmare – and feed yet more horror to the dream. Their Dark Vigils are things of legend, filled with regal depravity; twisted courtliness and sadistic tournaments that pervert Sylvari chivalry. Their greatest ambition: to turn the Pale Tree herself to the Nightmare, and envelop the world in cruelty and bedlam.

We're also very excited about playing with our characters underwater. Will this be throughout the game world, or only in places like Orr and Ascalon?

Eric Flannum: Just about every area in the game has some form of underwater play space. We've got underwater cities, ruins, caverns, new underwater enemies and friendly races as well. We have attempted to make a setting that both looks and plays a bit different from our above water areas but is at the same time fully featured and easily accessible as well.

Will we have mounts in Guild Wars 2? Flying mounts, perhaps?

Eric Flannum: Unfortunately we aren't speaking about specific game mechanics until sometime early next year.

Will we see any timeline shifts that your character can not return to, such as with pre-searing Ascalon in GW1?

Eric Flannum: Pre-searing had a lot of very positive effects on Guild Wars 1 and we are very aware that some people were huge fans of the mechanic but with our 5 races and our desire to allow friends to play together as quickly as possible we didn't think it was practical to do something exactly like that in Guild Wars 2.

The FAQ on the official Guild Wars 2 site asks the question of a raised level cap, but doesn't really answer it. Another question on the FAQ states that there will be a "maximum level". So will you retain the level 20 cap?

Eric Flannum: We will not be retaining the level 20 cap. We will announce the exact nature and level of the Guild Wars 2 level cap early next year but let me state that our philosophy of allowing players to play the game without grinding their life away is something that is unchanged from Guild Wars 1.

The trilogy of novels will be released before GW2 is launched. Is there a schedule for these that we can anticipate?

Will McDermott: The first book will be published in the first half of 2010. The other two will follow. We do not have definitive dates for any of them at this point.

Will you retain the dual-class system that practically defines the current Guild Wars?

Eric Flannum: Unfortunately we aren't speaking about specific game mechanics until sometime early next year.

There's been talk of PvP involving different servers. Does this mean that GW2 will be on separate servers, much as you find in WoW, Warhammer, etc?

Eric Flannum: Yes, Guild Wars 2 will have different servers like many other games. We decided to make this change to help foster a sense of community amongst smaller groups of players. At the same time it is also very easy for us to allow players to transfer between servers. We have not announced specifics on how we will let players transfer but we want it to be easier than in other online games.

At a recent Guild Wars panel at Dragon*Con, attendees discussed the fact that they love how your Heroes are part of the storyline in Nightfall and Eye of the North, and having them in your party is a requirement. Is this something we'll see again in GW2?

Eric Flannum: Guild Wars 2 won't have the same Hero or Henchman systems that we had in Guild Wars 1. That being said having heroic characters to interact with is a huge part of telling a compelling story so players will have NPC heroes who are very much part of their stories.

Will GW2 see chapter content eventually, as GW1 originally did?

Eric Flannum: Guild Wars 2 will retain the same business model as GW1. That is to say you'll pay for the game but there's no monthly subscription fee, and we plan to release paid content after launch

Source: www.massively.com/2009/09/17/massivelys-interview-with-arenanet-lets-talk-guild-wars-2/#continued

ouch different serves !  why go away from one off the best feature that GW1 had . That i always could meet and play with everyone i know! I am not sure that is a wise move at all

Originally posted by jondifool

ouch different serves !  why go away from one off the best feature that GW1 had . That i always could meet and play with everyone i know! I am not sure that is a wise move at all

 

The game will not follow the typical server system of other MMO's, as said in some of their earlier interviews, it will be not unlike the servers of the original Guild Wars, where one can click through America 1,2,3 etc. in a matter of seconds.

 oh men the server idea is a bad one tho,no more world wide event etc 

Originally posted by drbaltazar

 oh men the server idea is a bad one tho,no more world wide event etc 

 

Ive read somewhere also in an interview that you are only locked to a server to a given point or level for balance,

then after that you are as free to hop shards as in gw1.

And events happend in all shards in gw1 too though so

 i do hope its has easy as in gw1 to fight say a korean ,or a russian or an indian etc

its whatr made this game big ,the fact that you often went to war against somebody that doesnt speak one word of your

language,that added some spice to fight ,most team would go all out just because of that they  would like 

those guys are gona get it 

hell at one point most team had from 4 to 8 team build

to make sure the foes didnt have it too easy to counter you and win 

the point is the basic of what made guild wars great should stay there like 

the possibility of fighting team from around the globe is a big important thing to keep

if they can also the in game 30 minute delay stream if its needed they should keep that or better yet 

have a partner that could put the stream online not just in the game 

like ufragtv(great bandwith)

or ustream,or xfire lol

there are so many 

the idea is to show it to as many people as possible not just in game 

its  one of teir best asset in gw wich im sorry to say is hidden since its only ingame

Ok addressing the idea that people think the different servers is a bad thing, ANet knows that what we liked from GW1 and they know that there game needs to evolve. That being said there will be different servers that you can join but as stated in this very interview...

"Eric Flannum: Yes, Guild Wars 2 will have different servers like many other games. We decided to make this change to help foster a sense of community amongst smaller groups of players. At the same time it is also very easy for us to allow players to transfer between servers. We have not announced specifics on how we will let players transfer but we want it to be easier than in other online games."

that being said without actual knowledge of the system they will be using it is probably safe to assume that switching servers will be as simple as switching districts in GW1...I hope lol.

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Originally posted by Leucrotta

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Originally posted by drbaltazar

 oh men the server idea is a bad one tho,no more world wide event etc 
 

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Ive read somewhere also in an interview that you are only locked to a server to a given point or level for balance,
then after that you are as free to hop shards as in gw1.
 
And events happend in all shards in gw1 too though so

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I liked the district system better. Seperate servers was such a turn off for me when I left Guild Wars for other games. Made the game feel divided and smaller for some reason. When it comes down to it the districts were pretty much dividing population too but it did it in a more friendly way as you could choose any district at anytime. When you got servers with their own names that you cant leave or have to do lots of crap to leave them then it just breaks the illusion that your in one big game. I mean im playing BF2 on seperate servers, is that a mmo?

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Originally posted by bigtime102

 

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Originally posted by Leucrotta

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Originally posted by drbaltazar
 
 oh men the server idea is a bad one tho,no more world wide event etc 
 

---

 
Ive read somewhere also in an interview that you are only locked to a server to a given point or level for balance,
then after that you are as free to hop shards as in gw1.
 
And events happend in all shards in gw1 too though so

---

 

I liked the district system better. Seperate servers was such a turn off for me when I left Guild Wars for other games. Made the game feel divided and smaller for some reason. When it comes down to it the districts were pretty much dividing population too but it did it in a more friendly way as you could choose any district at anytime. When you got servers with their own names that you cant leave or have to do lots of crap to leave them then it just breaks the illusion that your in one big game. I mean im playing BF2 on seperate servers, is that a mmo?

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i totally agree that if ANET follows what other MMOs are doing of separate servers, its a bad idea and a total departure of what made GW1 great
the server architecture of GW1 is so great for us players cuz it takes less than 10 seconds for us to login to the game
and with that architecture, GW1 has probably the lowest amount of server downtime of any game
and i hear the horrors of hour l0ng queues in AION
i dont want to see anything remotely close to that