From PAX this weekend, it's ArenaNet

Ok so there were two things I was really following at PAX this weekend. One was Star Wars: The Old Republic... which didn't do much of anything. The other was Guild Wars 2, which if you follow them on twitter you will realize they had a lot to say. I had a hard time digesting it all, but I will try to here and sort of give you the low down.

First of all they gave away the 128 page GW2 concept art book. Woot! this book was packed with concept art from the game as well as lore. If any of you haven't seen the GW2 concept art head on over to GuildWars2.com and check it out. It amazing and beautiful. They are still getting a count on how many they gave away, but it was close to several thousand they said.

Other then the art book, they also had several Q&A panels, all of which they promise will be posted on youtube. ArenaNetOfficial is the channel there. Nothing yet, but when they have it up I will post. These Q&A session can be divided into three parts: Guild Wars 2 info, Guild Wars Live Test Krewe info, and Fall of Ascalon book info.

Although they all sort of tie in together, the info was quite different between these three sections. The Test Krewe is talking about how they are going to re-balance the Original Guild Wars. They are going to do this by assembling a team from the community of players, that means us. To do preparation testing on updated before they go live. They are going to start with PvP, changing up PvP oriented skills and re-balancing that. After they get the PvP re-balance done, or if they get it done *cough* then they will move onto PvE. PvE I think will be a little easier. They also mentioned the possibility of doing more small updates, via the Test Krewe, for GW lore. I think this will be in response to the FoA book as well as GW2. So probably a ways off at this point.

The Fall of Ascalon (FoA) book will be the first of three GW based books to be released. They will not be a trilogy, they will be independent novels written by different people, based on different characters and different time frames through the game. FoA is slated for release next spring, however an unofficial date of Feb 23rd has been said. The book will not mention game mechanics and will be a fantasy novel. Not a game book.

Guild Wars 2 will not carry over mechanics from the original GW, lore will trickle down; but the mechanics will be quite different. Which to me is bitter sweet. There are some mechanics I would like to see make the jump, some I would like to see altered slightly, and some new mechanics I would like to see entirely. GW2 is expected to have more frequent, but smaller game updates then the OGW. The event system will be the main form of questing in the game, but there will also be personalized quests which are designed around a specific characters story. There will be running, and jumping, and swimming! Not only that "huge" underwater zones that will be just as legitimate as the above ground zones. Now one thing that worries me is what they said about water. It was something to the extent of 'don't worry about drowning, just explore'... no breath system? That seems bad, not a game breaker, but a dislike. GW2 will be bigger and better then the OGW. Oh and the Charr will have guns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, etc... not sure how I feel about that. And they wanted to make perfectly clear that Asurans are NOT steampunk, there technology stems from magic. Think SG-1. The Charr however will have large war factories for stuff like weapons... and I assume tanks, like the seige devourers.

GamerDNA may cut me off so stopping there for now. Check out ArenaNet's twitter for more info.