Guild Wars Interview

Eurogamer interviewed the guys of ArenaNet about Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, and Guild Wars 2.
Tons to keep a Guild Wars fan satisfied for quite some time, then; but Eye of the North also serves a second, more subtle purpose. Strain describes it as a "bridge to Guild Wars 2", and the expansion pack will feature a large number of features which are designed to ease the transition of existing players to the new game.

Primary among those is the Hall of Monuments - a system which is designed to allow players to carry their "legacy" forward to a new Guild Wars 2 character. The Hall is unique to each player, and contains statues representing all of your Guild Wars achievements - epic armour, top-ranked weapons, Heroes you've partnered with, Pets you've tamed, titles, victories, and every other imaginable MMOG achievement.

When you create a Guild Wars 2 character, you'll be able to link them to this Hall of Monuments, and each statue will correspond to a special item in GW2 - be it armour, an appearance, a pet, or whatever. Those items won't be hugely powerful, but they'll look cool, and will only be available to existing GW players. "We've got millions of players who have invested thousands of hours into Guild Wars," Strain explains. "We don't want to tell those guys that they can't carry anything over into GW2."