I'm always a big fan of when game developers share philosophies and general development methodologies behind the games that they are working on. This week, Mike Ferguson -- of the Guild Wars 2 development team at ArenaNet -- took a lofty chunk of time to discuss the large-scale Player vs. Player that will be seen in Guild Wars 2.
When I say "large scale," I mean it. One of the first things mentioned is the size of the encounters. Instead of the usual setup of pretty much every other game, Guild Wars 2 will have a three-sided conflict. The three teams are promised to be massive in scale, with each team referred to as being "composed of an entire server full of players." Because of this, Ferguson mentions that they call it "World vs. World" as opposed to merely "Player vs. Player."
Those are just the basics. There was a lot of information shared, such as decisions behind including a third team, accommodating three servers' worth of players, the PvP affecting a player's progression, objectives within the mode, as well as other unique aspects. It sounds even RTS inspired at times; resources are spread about that can be used to hire NPCs to help players attack or defend objectives. There are even massive siege weapons that can further be built to swing a conflict to one team's favor.
It all sounds like something that will be really amazing if it works as intended. Our very own Jonathan Ross has gotten a chance to play in the closed beta for Guild Wars 2, and will be back on Monday with his own impressions.
Contest:
10:00 PM on 02.18.2012 | 
Anyway. I could honestly afford to expend the time to delve further into this, but I just hope that they do not port, or waste time trying to port "Guild Wars2" over to the consoles. Even if it means more sales - all it will mean in the end if more griping, and complaining from all ends. I'm not some PC elitist. I'm a realist. It's just too much effort in trying to port a title like that, and expect it to run as it should (then again. I doubt I'll be heard even. I mean publishers, and developers have been porting, and avoiding responsibility for years now.)
Need all the cheerleaders =D
I'm all for this. GW1 did some great things with PvP. If there is any RPG I trust to do large-scale PvP well, it's Guild Wars 2.
@AncientPsychicTandemWarElephant Dark Age of Camelot did it for a long time before WoW. Forget WoW - they never did PvP right.
Hasn't someone from the team say this will be an evolution of DAoC? If it's true..it makes me moist.
SWTOR never promised anything like that, and WAR "RvR" was just normal Faction vs Faction PvP but zones were tied together(I guess the idea was that the whole realm participated) - which is somewhat similar to GW2 concept. The problem with WAR is they tried to appeal to a crowd of WoW players who were never going to be sticking around anyway, lol.
And what AceFlibble said, its the GW players who will make the community. Therell be a bunch of WoWers come over and then leave after the first month sure, but nobody in the GW community will give a shit.