Fansite Friday/Zhong Guo

Fansite: Guild Wars Zhong Guo (site no longer operating)

Date: 19 August 2005

Number: 55

Hello, Guild Warriors of all of the world!

Welcome to Guild Wars Zhong Guo, the first Guild Wars Fansite in Chinese Language. It's our great pleasure to host this week's Fansite Friday interview. The amused discussion with Gaile Gray, the Community Relations Manager of ArenaNet, focuses on the most exciting game features, the PvP reward system, and the future launching of Guild Wars in China.

We would also like to inform you that recently our website will be renewed into a whole new design!

Q&A

Question: Do you have any plans to extend the top level of the characters, or to increase the new skills even new professions? When the user character have already reached the top level (20) and discovered all the world maps, which feature or factor do you think is the key point for their keeping playing Guild Wars?

Answer: There are number of things that will keep players interested in Guild Wars. For one thing, we have live content that will add new things to the game. Sorrow's Furnace will open very soon, and it will offer new opportunities for exploration and item acquisition, and for lots of fun in the form of new missions. In addition, players who have reached Level 20 and have already fully explored the world usually become interested in PvP combat. PvP combat constantly evolves, because the players themselves evolve. Because Guild Wars offers 450 skills and 30 possible profession combinations, each guild challenge or each arena match is a little different. This keeps PvP play fresh and exciting for a long, long time. And of course an additional, major way in which we will extend the fun for players is through offering them the option of getting into our next chapter,which is due in the first half of 2006.

Question: Will the limit of a PvP team be extended into 10, or more? The recent bonus for the PvP winners seems to be a little.. Is there any plan to increase the bonus again later on?

Answer: Right now we don't see a compelling reason to increase party size. The reasons that we chose 8 per party in the beginning are still legitimate now. You see, we wanted teams to be small enough to use complex and flexible strategies and to communicate well within the group. Large teams are pretty good for things like castle sieges, where the strategy is no more complex than ordering everyone to attack a wall. Smaller parties allow layered strategies. For instance, you might have the Elementalist casting a ranged attack while the Necromancer summons minions, the Mesmer debuffs the enemy, and the Warrior moves in for direct attack. When party sizes are large, it's just not possible to do that sort of elegant team member interaction.

The PvP reward system is definitely under analysis now. The early Faction system was put in place in response to player requests for different PvP rewards. We knew at the time of its incorporation into Guild Wars that we eventually would want to fine-tune the system to bring it more into line with our vision of the game and to better fulfill player expectations and desires. We're currently looking at the PvP system in many ways: skill balance, types of combat, rewards, time required for leveling, and more. It's a sure thing that Faction and other PvP rewards will be modified in a future update.

And for those who want a larger party size, there are other things that could be offered that I think would be as or more exciting. Consider things like alliances! If your party can ally with another, or with several others, you maintain the advantage of small-team strategy within the large-team system. Alliance would offer a "best of both worlds" situation.

Question: When will Guild Wars be released in China? Will Guild Wars also be played without monthly fee in China?

Answer: ArenaNet and NCsoft look at China as a great place to offer Guild Wars. Chinese players enjoy the very type of game that our team has produced, and we're excited about the idea of launching there in the future. As for a release timeline, we have not yet settled on a date for the Chinese release. There are a lot of factors involved in bringing a game to a new part of the world, from localization to team building to selecting distribution partners in that area. We're actively working on these things and will be sure to post on our website when we have more information.

When you ask about costs, the answer is that we want to offer players a number of choices concerning how they play the game and how they pay for it, as well. It has always been our intention to offer Guild Wars without a subscription fee. Once you purchase the game, you can play without an additional fee. In other words, the unique "no subscription fee" model for Guild Wars will carry over to China. However, to appeal to gamers who prefer to play without purchasing the game, we will also include time-cards that will allow a specific number of gameplay hours.

Thanks so much for the visit with our Guild Wars players in China!