Fansite Friday/Italia

Fansite:  MMORPG Italia Guild Wars

Date:  25 March 2005

Number:  38

Q&A
Question: In the last BWE we heard a voice telling us the story of Ascalon. Will we hear these voices in the most important missions? Will they be localized in the various languages?

Answer: I'm happy to say that yes, the voices in Guild Wars will be localized into the language options offered in the game itself: English, French, German, Italian, Korean, and Spanish. I would imagine that as we localize the game in other areas of the world - for example in China or Japan - then the voice acting for those versions will also be localized.

Question: In the last BWE we noticed the absence of the charm vendor. Now the only way to acquire a skill is to buy or capture it, there are plans of a change in the way we can learn them?

Answer: A significant change has taken place in how a player gains new skills, this is very true. At one point, in addition to standard methods of gaining skills, you could acquire one via a skill charm given through the generosity of a friend or guild member, or you could purchase a charm from a vendor or a willing seller in town. But we made some changes to the entire skill system that made it advisable to remove skill charms. The most principle change was the ability for you to gain skills and abilities for your PvP-only characters through the completion of missions and quests. PvP'ers are ecstatic about the opportunity, but that ability means that we have had to make some other basic changes, such as the removal of skill charms.

So why did skill charms go away? Well, I pondered that one myself, and instead of taking the time of one of our super-busy designers to ask for an in-depth explanation of the reasoning, thought I'd share my own deductions. Remember that all your PvP-only characters get the skills found by your roleplaying characters. If we left skill charms in the game, then a single player could get a bunch of skills and pass them along to others. He or she could literally fill the skill inventory for a huge number of players, and that would mean not just for one but for all of their PvP-only characters. In other words, if one player could do the missions and quests and then spin off skill charms, lots of players could completely avoid the mission-playing and questing aspects of the game. And avoiding that minimizes a really important part of the Guild Wars experience. If someone could easily purchase skill charms and then pass them to lots of characters every time, then that would be a pretty 'cheesy' way to boost those characters.

One of the principles in our design of Guild Wars is the intention to never devalue those who play strictly roleplaying characters. We never want such a player to experience a negative impact from whatever skill system we have in place. In fact, knowing that after Level 20 and Ascension the Experience Point requirements to gain a new skill grows significantly, one of our efforts in the immediate future is rebalancing the skill point system. This rebalancing is necessary because of that cool new ability to re-roll your character's secondary profession. Those who have played a character a long while and who select a new secondary will be able to do so without really high XP costs, once this review and rebalancing is complete.

All of this stems from our understanding that there will be a lot of different types of gamers playing Guild Wars. We want to show equal consideration and support to all types of players. This means assuring that those players who do undertake the missions and quests are not diminished by in-game mechanics that might make skill acquisition less meaningful. And that actually has benefits for those who play PvP, too. With our skill acquisition process, we hope and expect that there will be a lot of variety between characters. That variety will mean that when you play a tournament or challenge match, you cannot simply assume that each opponent has every skill in the book. There is something extra interesting about a match where there is an element of the unknown; it makes your strategy broader and more varied, and adds excitement and complexity to the play.

Oh, and lastly, here's an additional bit of good news about skills: The majority of skills will be available as quest rewards. This does not mean to say that they will be available only as such a reward, of course; you will still be able to get skills in other ways. But if you go on a quest, you may receive a skill as your reward.

Question: Some players are worried about the guilds in the lower part of the ladder. They are concerned that there should be some sort of reward for them like dividing the ladder into groups so a lower level guild can win and be promoted to the next and more challenging level.

Answer: The way that the Guild Wars ladder is set up, it naturally divides itself based on ratings. Those who are in a lower ratings group definitely have a good opportunity to use victory to rise up the ladder. Your guild is richly rewarded for victory over a higher-ranking opponent, but is only modestly penalized for a loss to such a guild. This makes it worthwhile to take the risk of reaching high for achievement. And it assures that low-rated teams aren't victimized. With our current ladder rating system, a natural divider is formed that makes it worthwhile to play with those of comparable ratings, and perhaps to challenge those significantly higher for the chance of great reward.

Bonus Question: We heard rumors of a Coastal Arena. There are many posts on the forums talking about the PvP part of the game, especially wondering if you are planning to add a new arena with different types of PvP, like the 4 vs 4 with chosen teams.

Answer: We have good news on that! A map that accommodates 4v4 with chosen teams will indeed be part of Guild Wars. It's just off of the Dwarven town of (secret name here) in the area of (secret location here), both of which haven't been revealed yet. :) Hey, I guess this is a pretty good way to prove the fact that there really is a lot of the world that you've not seen, even if you've attended all the Beta Weekend Events. There are towns, outposts, missions, quests, even entire regions waiting to unfold for you on April 28th.

Thanks a lot to MMORPG Italia Guild Wars for the chat!