Guild Wars 2 Interview
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You'll see old as well as new areas in Guild Wars 2. One of the new tourist attractions is a complete continent under water, on which you can explore the oceans as well as the ocean floors. Lead designer Eric Flannum:"In a lot of games, water is a hostile environment where you constantly have to look out for running out of breath. We want to encourage fun and exploration underwater, however." (IT-3) In fact, creasing the kinks out of this continent is one of the main reasons why it's taking so long for Guild Wars 2 to be finished. Another design decision that's slurping up a lot of time is the change from instanced to a persistent game world. This change leads to Guild Wars 2 not having conventional quests, but what the developers call 'Events'. These are group-oriented activities which are meant to encourage the player to explore the world. With this new event system, you can stumble upon a castle only to find it under attack by centaurs. You can then choose to help the inhabitants of the castle to repel the attack. If you're a half an hour too late, you'll have to start an army with other players to send the centaurs home to their mommies. Or, when you walk down a familiar road for the hundredth time, suddenly a caravan shows up, which you can protect from bandits. However; even though the world is persistent now and this new event system will be implemented, the story won't fall to the background; it will be told with a combination of instanced and persistent areas, of which the instanced areas will give the same heavily plotdriven experience Guild Wars 1 delivered.
