Arenanet actually attempts new content!!

Guild Wars is turning four. Although this is not a major accomplishment, but combine that with the fact that GW is right now at #3 best selling online game (as far as units) and has sold over 6 million copies of the game, and the success of GW is nothing to look down on.

Guild Wars creates an immersive game environment that works well with it actually feeling like a game (instead of a second life) and the strategy elements of game play. You feel not only like you know the Guild Wars lore, but that you yourself are part of that lore, your history and the events that unfold.

Unfortunately this anniversary doesn't come with any major stories, a few smaller ones, nor does it come with any information about GW lil brother, GW2.

Guild Wars 2, according to Mike O'Brien and NCSofts recent quarterly earning reports will most likely be released some time in 2010 or 2011, this is a mammoth window. Likewise the game is in alpha stages and Arenanet is not willing to release any info on it till they have a polished product... :( We know the races and a general overview of the lore of GW2. But there are some questions, that I'm sure most fans will agree, we want answered.

What we know about GW2: persistent public world, z-axis (jumping), 5 races (Human, Charr, Norn, Sylvari, and the lil grey ones...Asura), 1 remaining free human kingdom (Kryta), Dragons..., 250 years in GW future, HoM to Port achievements, and Orr is rising.

What we would like to know. I think a big question for what we would like to know are classes, what classes will be in GW2 and will we still have a Primary and Secondary class like GW? Obviously I hope that all the current GW classes make into GW2 and that the Primary/Secondary system remains. But I also hope they change how some of the weapons and items work. I would like to see the addition of 2 handed weapons as well the ability to dual wield (and not just daggers).

Will the game have some king of housing system? This has become a major feature in a lot of newer games, and ANet has shown their capability of doing customized areas for individual characters in the past, the best example of which is outside of Sunspear Sanctuary in Elona.

Guild Wars actually felt like a world to me. So many games feel small, not realistic, and I think this is mainly based on perception. In most games an entire content is reveled and the scale size of which is equal to the state of Rhode Island. Guild Wars never revealed the whole continent, you got to see the tip of a continent a small section of a larger land. And the could expand on either side of the revealed regions to give you a greater feeling of how far this world extends. This is well shown in EotN when your view of Tyria is expanded to show Charr country, the Norn territories and even parts of Kryta that were previously not seen before. Is this full scale feeling going to remain in GW2?

What about the strategy element of game play? Guild Wars used 8 skills and varying stats that you controlled. As a player you had to think not only about how your class fit into game play, but how your skills fit into game play, how each of those skills works together, and how you combine them to create the optimum performance for your character. It took me three years and 4 GW games to come up with my Warriors build, and I love it, the way it functions fits the way I play and think, and each skill works in synergy with one another. I spent nights alter one stat at a time, changing out one skill here and tweaking a stat there it get the skills to function together as harmoniously as they do now. There was a thought process a strategy behind builds. Some people exploited them, one of the best known example of exploitation of skill effects and combination is the 55hp monk. That allows a player to reduce the characters hit point to 55 then cap the max dmg they can take to 10% of their health, but keep a regen rate of higher then the dmg being taken.

As well are we going to see some other ideas from other games places into GW2? One of the things I have found lacking in GW is the existence of a tanking mechanic, or a way for players to control who gets agro. This isn't to say that such ideas are foreign to GW, they just weren't heavily expanded upon. Agro in Guild Wars is controlled first by what character the mob sees. Then by how much armor the mob has (the less armor level you have the more likely you are to get agro), and finally by how much dmg your doing. In an attempt to somewhat control armor, a 'tank' in GW (I use the term loosely) will pull a mob over a large area and try to pin them at a corner to prevent them from running past the tank as DPS starts wailing on them and as the monk or rit starts healing. Other strategies in the past include Orro farming in which a 5 man group which consisted of 1 Warrior, 2 Necros, and 2 Monks would use a gear to attract all agro to the gear holder, in this case the warrior while the 1 monk healed and the other sym-bonded the tank and the necros SS and MM. However with the addition of Rit who could summon carrieable items that mechanic was removed and instead the monster avoid the gear carrier because he/she is doing no dmg. An attempt to compensate for this was added later on with the skill "Save Yourselves!" which allows a warrior to increase everyone but their armor by 100. However a single skill lacks finesse. Instead I would like to see an actually tank and agro system introduced. Maybe not as hard core as other gamed like EQ2, but a way to allow the tank to well... tank!

But more generally to all this we the fans simply want to know at what stage the game is at as far as being built. How close are we to seeing a beta, is there any interesting concepts your toying with? We as GW fans, simply want to be involved. We have been left in the dark pretty much since March of 2007, 2 years of not knowing what is going on.

I think that of the games that are coming out over the next couple years there are three that we should keep out eyes on: Champions Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Guild Wars 2.

For me playing which one when is going to be based on when they are released. I will problably be obsessed with TOR... so I hope GW2 comes out first.