Guild Wars 2 Interview
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Strategy Informer: One particular quest sees your character putting out a flaming village with water buckets. Such interactions are rare in MMORPGs will we see a lot more of them?
Eric Flannum: Absolutely. First of all, that was a dynamic event which is different from what you think of as a quest. Our dynamic event system is designed to be very multiplayer friendly as it gives players shared goals in an area. One of the things we try to do in those is really change up the MMORPG formula and not fall into particular patterns. Instead we try to look at each situation and decide to add something cool that would feasibly happen. Logically if pirates attack a town we'd think (what are they here for?) and (what are they trying to do?) Okay, they're trying to burn it down and steal all the treasure; in that case you have the water buckets.
Another example is the trees you can interact with. There's a character who wants apples and you interact with the trees to knock them out. We also have dams that are bursting that you can plug holes in, farm animals that need to be fed; we wanted the world to have a lot different interactions.
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Strategy Informer: You've pledged the keep the series free of subscription costs but will we see any form of micro-transactions implemented?
Eric Flannum: Micro-transactions are something that we've had for quite some time in Guild Wars 1 and we plan on using them and the price of the game to pay for Guild Wars 2. Our theory behind them is that we don't want them to be necessary to play the game. A lot of micro-transaction games have hideously slow levelling curves and the only way you can really advance in the game in a reasonable amount of time is to buy certain micro-transactions.
We're looking to avoid those sorts of things while still giving players options with micro-transactions to make their experience more fun. Our philosophy is that we're not looking to screw our players over for not buying our micro-transactions, we really look at them as an extra level of fun or coolness that we can add to the game.
Jon Peters: They're a lot cooler when they're something you want and not something you need.
Eric Flannum: Yeah. It also allows players to vote with their wallets as far as what they want to see. If you're paying a subscription fee you're kind of at the mercy of what the developers choose to give you for your monthly fee. Sometimes in some games what they give you is well worth it but a lot of the time it's not. We feel like if we put out items and they sell real well then that's obviously a signal from our players that they really like it and that they want more of it, and it's very important to us to stay in touch with what our players want in the game.
