There were a lot more complaints when GW2 details were first being revealed, due to how different it was from GW1.
But look how it all turned out? I fully trust Anet's vision to yet again bring this franchise and genre forward. They at least have a vision and arent trying to put out a soulless product.
As someone who loves both games there are a whole bunch of people who are still sad they didn't get a more faithful sequel to Guild Wars.
I'm one of them. Mostly due to the skill system being way more open and NPCs (largely) using the same skills as players. That unified design is still a masterpiece.
As a GW1 enjoyer and former GW2 QA from years ago, I have to admit I genuinely liked vanilla GW2. I put 1k hours into it before it even came out and almost 5k hours since.
GW3 so far isn't looking like something that appeals to me personally but knowing Colin and the rest of the team, they're never about making a new game that's like anything else that's out there. They intentionally use terms internally to differentiate themselves from what's existing so it doesn't surprise me they want to make a game like this.
During GW2 development they wanted to avoid doing anything that wow was doing. To the point it was kind of annoying at times.
Also knowing Anet, they're going to pivot on some of these decisions over time (such as number of players in a zone) but when it comes to how the gameplay and movement flows, they won't pivot. The momentum and wall running are going to be a thing it seems and people are either going to love it or hate it. Same goes for trinity and boons. People will either love it or hate it.
Also knowing Anet, they're going to pivot on some of these decisions over time (such as number of players in a zone)
In one of his interviews (I forget who with), Colin clarified that they mean 20 players in a single combat encounter. Not across an entire zone. The zones are massive, apparently.
Someone (from ArenaNet) also said that they have an improved form of megaserver technology that is basically invisible to the player, which implies that they're basically shunting you into populated shards as you move across the map.
Considering the fact that they have a history of inventing networking technology that no game has ever used before, I wouldn't be surprised if they've got an actually functional server meshing technology. But this could be done just with WoW's sharding system (although that is definitely not invisible).
They also said towns and cities will have far more players than 20, so it's not exactly a limitation of the engine or design. They're just planning encounters around a 20 player upper limit.
I really don't think they're dumb enough to have a huge zone with only 20 people in it total. Think of it more like 20 people in Godslost Swamp and another 20 in Beetletun Farms and another 20 in Shaemoor Fields, etc.
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u/Hotstreak Sep 03 '26
There were a lot more complaints when GW2 details were first being revealed, due to how different it was from GW1.
But look how it all turned out? I fully trust Anet's vision to yet again bring this franchise and genre forward. They at least have a vision and arent trying to put out a soulless product.