Fansite Friday/Espanol

Fansite: Guild Wars en Español (site no longer operating)

Date: 4 March 2005

Number: 35

Q&A

Question: When asking about what the preferred feature of Guild Wars is and what the worst thing might be, everybody comments that Guild Wars need an improvement in the trading mechanism. You have commented that will be ready soon. Would it be available for the next BWE? Can you explain how it works? Will it be available an option to interchange objects among your own characters?

Answer: I believe that we will see the new trade mechanism soon, but probably not in the March Beta Weekend Event. The team may roll it out in time for the event, of course. But from what I'm seeing, there are a lot of different areas of focus that are being added, expanded, and polished, and so far I've not heard that we will be have the planned new system implemented for the March BWE.

Because it's a work in progress, I can't give details on how the trade interface will function. But I'm not declining to give details because we're being all secretive about it. ;) The fact is, at this point I've not yet experienced the interface changes, and I think there are still many proposals on the board for how it will function, what will make the final cut for implementation, and so forth. Now as to trading within your personal account - I don't believe the trade interface would be the key for sending items between your various characters. For instance, if your Mesmer finds a great item for your Elementalist, you probably will not use the trade interface to pass it from one character to the other. For as you know, we've discussed the fact that at some point we intend to have a shared inventory across your characters, and I believe that the shared inventory will be separate from the trade interface.

If I were going to take a wild guess, I would estimate that the trade interface will be in place for the April Beta Weekend Event. But hey, I don't set the work or design schedules, so we'll just have to see on that one. :)

Question: Guild Wars impressive graphics quality and fame statistics are a great attraction for roleplaying gamers. Do you plan some kind of features, scenarios or a world for roleplayers?

Answer: You are right about the interest amongst roleplaying gamers. Judging from questions I've spotted in various fan forums, it's clear that there is a lot of interest in playing Guild Wars in full roleplaying fashion. There have been suggestions that we offer a completely separate roleplaying world or set aside an area of the existing world for roleplayers only. I'm not sure what percentage of players would choose such a world; it could quite a large number would enjoy investing themselves into the roleplaying experience and that such an opportunity would be very popular. I do not believe that we'll have a separate world for such players. But I think those who suggest that we need a separate server or a different world may not completely understand one of the great benefits of the instanced missions of Guild Wars.

With instanced or private missions, you and your party can choose to engage in the roleplaying experience to any degree that you desire. With instanced missions, you pick your party. This means that you can choose to invite only guild members or only roleplayers to go on the missions and undertake the quests. Based on how you form your party or your guild, you can set all sorts of standards of dress, speech, gameplay, etc. The world in which you live in your mission is your world alone. If you choose to speak in Chaucerian English or Medieval French or Yi-Dynasty Korean, if you want to use strict naming conventions or modes of dress or gameplay, the choice is up to you.

Now, it's true that you will need to visit towns and outposts between missions. But it occurred to me that it is possible that by the time Guild Wars is released, or soon thereafter, there may be a means to squelch those not in your party and to carry on all game playing within private chat mode. The use of the Party or Guild Chat feature would keep the focus on that roleplaying theme. This broad squelching isn't something I've asked about. It's simply an idea that seems to meld nicely with the concept of the roleplaying illusion, and it could help avoid 'breaking the mood' by keeping all player interaction in the appropriate mode. So with instanced missions, and particularly with the possibility of chat interface selections, roleplaying should be easily sustained within Guild Wars.

I wanted to share a new bit of information about guilds, and I believe that this will be of particular interest to roleplaying guilds, which can have a lot of members: We have raised the guild cap for Guild Wars to 100. This should allow more flexibility in party formation, and will surely be good news to all kinds of guilds! :)

Question: Some of the newbies on the web complain about and even abandoned the game because they were alone, nobody joined them and they were lost. The Ascalon scenario has improved this experience but do you plan some changes for newcomers in the BWE?

Answer: The idea behind the new region of the Kingdom of Ascalon is to give players a "soft landing" or gentle introduction to Guild Wars. We realized a while back that the process that brought new players into the game wasn't as welcoming as it should be. Let's face it: Going through a short tutorial mission and then ending up in the hubbub of Lion's Arch or Ascalon City could be pretty overwhelming to newcomers! As a matter of fact, the notion of providing a more welcoming introduction to the game developed as the result of player feedback. We felt that investing the time to build something new to address this concern was very worthwhile, and we set to work to create a new region that is visually stunning and emotionally involving, and which provides valuable information about the gameplay mechanics that players need to know.

Most of what we're working on until release will benefit the newcomers to Guild Wars, you bet! Anything that we do to allow you to make Guild Wars your own will help you fall in love with the game all the more easily. For instance, if you're a player who likes hotkeys set a certain way, the new customization feature is very helpful to you. If you want to have your character stats in a specific placement, or to hide some of the information that you don't really use, you don't need to learn how to play our way, you just need to set Guild Wars to function your way. If you like roaming around and exploring a region, the Kingdom of Ascalon provides that. If you want to power through and not stop to smell the roses, you're welcome to do that, as well. If you want a lot of quests and the rewards that go with them, you'll learn about the questing system of Guild Wars right there, in the Kingdom of Ascalon.

And remember, we still have a bit more than seven weeks to go before the game ships worldwide. In that period of time, we'll be tying together the dynamic quest system in such a way that the newcomers will understand the process and be empowered to make decisions about how their character progresses. We'll add more information about the early game, and include more options for character customization and for item drops, as well. And as always, we will continue to read forum posts with suggestions and feedback on Guild Wars.

Wow, I just read that: Less than eight weeks until release! We're all looking forward to playing the game with you!

Muchos gracias a Guild Wars Español!