Guild Wars Mini-Interview #25
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 968
Q: Do you plan to have any extra-rare items in the game? Something every player would desire, but there would be only a very few pieces of this item in the world of GuildWars. Also, some players speak about "Cradle of Secrets", a secret location hidden somewhere in the mountains, does this location really exist? (We were searching for it three hours, but we haven't found anything.)
A: I understand this question and the interest behind it, because I'm one of those (collector) sorts myself, and I love rare and unusual items. I'm currently using a shield that is lower than many I've found simply because it's a unique item and has the fancy gold lettering on the description.
There will definitely be exceptional items in Guild Wars, those sorts of things that are the talk of a guild and the envy of townsfolk throughout Tyria. The reason that you may not have seen too many of those items yet is that we've not opened up the high-end missions that will offer the greater level of remarkable drops. If you recall our recent revelations about the concept that we're calling (Worlds at War,) you'll remember that this system provides an opportunity for a guild holding the Hall of Heroes to open up new maps for everyone in their world. These maps will feature new quests and objectives, and upon participating in these challenging tasks you may earn the reward of a special item drop or two.
It's important to the core design philosophy of Guild Wars that items not unbalance the professions. We certainly do not want to offer one item that everyone (needs) to have in order to be successful. We want to assure a fairness factor, and we want to avoid items that displace strategy as the greater factor in victory. And of course we would like to avoid cookie cutter characters who, despite the wide variety of choices in Guild Wars, might all look alike due to those certain few uber items. The bottom line is that we are developing exceptional items and we'll incorporate them in a way that makes them fun and challenging to obtain and very exciting to own.
