Guild Wars 2 Q&A
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Q: Speaking of loot and XP, there were a lot of questions about XP distribution among players who participate in a dynamic event in Guild Wars 2. Will this system reward leeches? How do you determine whether someone gets credit for participating in an event?
Eric: Because all events are different, each event has its own criteria for determining participation that gauges who actually made a decent effort at participating. It's designed to give no credit or lower credit to players who were AFK during an event or just did a fly-by, using only a few skills and moved on.
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Q: Can you comment on the (companion) system that we discussed very early in the development of Guild Wars 2?
Eric: Early in the development stage, we worked on the concept of a single (companion) NPC who would accompany the player, but we soon determined that it wasn't necessary. We've developed Guild Wars 2 so that it's a completely soloable experience due to our profession design, dynamically scaling content, and the social approach to events. And, since Guild Wars 2 is a persistent world, we can't really let each character run around with a full party of NPCs in tow.
We've designed the eight professions to be self-sufficient; everyone has some form of self-healing and they all have a wide range of skills that allow them to play solo. Our events scale dynamically, so we can accommodate solo play as well as a multiple parties who want to participate in the same content. Plus, the social framework of the game encourages group play and casual grouping.
Because of these factors, we decided that we didn't need the companion system and could focus our efforts on making the professions that do use pets very distinctive and cool. We'll be talking more about that as we further reveal the GW2 professions.
