Guild Wars 2 Interview
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What are the most common new feature requests you receive from the Guild Wars 2 community?
"One thing I've learned over the years is that everybody wants something different. The biggest thing for us is looking at what makes sense for Guild Wars 2, and there are a couple of major focuses for us. One of them is building on this concept of a living world. We want to add the experience for our players that you log into your favorite role-playing game and every time you log in you can experience something.
"The world is constantly changing around you. There's a map you recognize, and you come back and a bridge may have been destroyed and enemies have completely taken over that area. The map is constantly changing every month, so it really feels like you're playing inside an incredible TV show or movie experience that is constantly changing.
"That's a big focus for us and we've had feedback from our players saying they would like to see more permanent changes to the world. We've recently kicked off what we call or 'Living Storyline' - a narrative that plays out kind of like your favorite TV show, literally driving the story forward so the plot of our game is constantly changing and evolving as we go forwards.
"We think that's really compelling. We don't know anyone else on the market who is offering anything like that. You're playing your favorite RPG, and you get to continuing playing the storyline as it develops over months and years, and you get to be a part of that world and watch it change."
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Do you think the game have a bright future in eSports?
"I definitely do. When we first showed the PvP at gamescom a couple of years ago, we set it up over in the eSports section and we did that intentionally because we really wanted to send the message that this game will be a serious online sport at some point. The response we got was overwhelming. We had six-hour-long lines at one point, and a lot of the best PvP players from around the world turned up to play it and gave really positive feedback.
"Where we're at with that right now is we are trying to build the core base of the PvP experience in Guild Wars 2 and make sure that is really solid to provide a strong fundamental experience for our core players. As we get that in place and we are satisfied with it, we are going to start rolling out additional steps to be building on that base, building on the eSports elements and then backing that up with major competitions and tournaments.
"If you look at the MMO space in particular and RPGs, there really isn't anything out there that offers that competitive experience that gamers are looking for. Primarily, there are more mobile games, first-person shooters, and RTS. There's really a place for us in that environment. I think we were pretty successful with Guild Wars 1. Our ambitions for Guild Wars 2 are huge for what we want to do with PvP in the future, and we think we are going to carve out a very large place for us in that environment."
