Preview: Guild Wars - Quick Q&A17th April 2005During our Guild Wars preview, we asked ArenaNet a few burning questions we were particularly curious about. Xequted: In relative terms, how large is the game world and explorable areas? ArenaNet: The world is very large. But you know, it's really content that matters, not geography. It's not the size of the world, but how densely it's designed for gameplay. Running over miles and miles of endless paths doesn't make for the most interesting gaming experience. In Guild Wars the world is packed with adventure and gameplay opportunities for every type of player. As a gamer, you have to ask yourself, "How much is there for me to do in this game? Is the world interesting? Are the missions and quests challenging?" From the beginning it's been our objective to not just offer a large world, but to make sure that whatever you see is cool, and that whatever you're doing is fun. Some of the explorable areas extend for a long range in all directions, and a single mission map can take upwards of an hour for travel, combat, and completion. It's hard to make a direct comparison to other games, though, as far as mileage. After all, do you convert pixels to meters? Do you count footsteps? I guess the best answer is to say that, playing in the game world -- undertaking the missions, fighting through the Arena and the multi-level Tombs of Primeval Kings, traveling across the explorable areas -- the world feels as large as any in which I've played and considerably larger than most. Xequted: Roughly how long would it take to run across the entire map? ArenaNet: It would take well over 100 hours to see every location in Guild Wars. And that's just the cooperative missions and the explorable regions. Add to that the wide variety of PvP options: The arena, the multi-level tournament, and the guild versus guild opportunities. Then, don't forget to consider that we'll be streaming in content - new missions, quests, and PvP opportunities -- with our free updates. The bottom line is that there is an opportunity for many hundreds of hours of gameplay based on the significant amount of content in the first chapter of Guild Wars. Xequted: What is the total number of available quests throughout the game? ArenaNet: There are hundreds of quests in Guild Wars. But just as it is content that is more important that geography, it is quest content that is more significant than raw numbers. The truth is, the design team keeps coming up with great ideas, and adding in "just one more quest." So it's difficult to nail a number down to anything more specific than an answer that gives "in the hundreds" as a range, with more coming every day, and after we launch, too. Do keep in mind that the quests in Guild Wars are not of the usual "Bring me an apple" and "Fetch me a glass of water" types of quests. There may be some "take this to Whosit" questing, but if so, the quest will involve something more meaningful than merely porting things from Point A to Point B, or what we call FedEx quests. Quests are optional, but the completion of quests can literally change the world in which you play, a factor that is determined by our dynamic quest system. For instance, if you do not save a certain NPC during one of the missions, the world may develop differently than if you are successful in saving that character's life. If you obtain certain quest items, you may be given more quests, or different rewards, based on how well you completed the previous quests. You truly do have the opportunity to change the world in Guild Wars. Many thanks to the development team at Arenanet, and Debi at BHPR for executing the answering of the questions. |
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