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Have they said anything about the design of the world map?
Neanderthal
Member RarePosts: 1,861
in Guild Wars 2
Maybe one of you who has been following this closely could tell me. What I'm wondering about is how open the map will be. In the first GW it was mostly narrow canyons leading from one town to the next. Have they said anything about how the map will differ in GW2?
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It's not quite fair or accurate to say GW was all narrow canyons leading from town to town. There were/are areas that are restrictive in movement possibilities, but typical zones are rather large and fully explorable and playable. If they weren't it sure would have been much quicker to get Grandmaster Cartography on my chars. The storylines did lead the player on a path, but that's not unusual.
As for GW2 they haven't said more than it's "enormous" and persistent, as well as having very substantial underwater content. Add into that the z-axis and jumping which are also a part of it and it should be even more freely explorable world.
Im am hoping that the world will have buildings that you can actually enter. I really was dissapointed everytime i saw a door to a 'house" which i could not enter in GW1
One thing i always wanted to do was go through houses in cantha near the city... it would be awesome if they were all interconnected. They could have done so much more with it, although they really did an excellent job with showing how poor of a city it was. I'm not sure if anet is planning on putting anything of this sort in GW2, but just a thought.
I don't know if you watching the first trailer that was release, nor if it will help. But they did have a fly through of a few places and some pans of other places. For the most part it seemed wide open.
yes it made me mad that thier was large portions of the map that you couldnt get to namely right outside crystal desert around the tomb of the primeval kings i think and around the eye of the north area just a huge land mass that you couldnt get to or uncover and out in the jade sea that was a really cool looking place but you couldnt go to alot of the map could only follow the path essentially
As of right now I have not seen any current info. However back when I was playing GW and GW2 was first annoced they said they were going for a more persistant type enviroment. I am expecting something similar to typical MMO server setups that you pick a server and stay on that server with the expection of their World vrs World pvp events.
However, it seemed to me they were going to an open type world. (Ala Wow or AO), though I do suspect that some instancing will take place for their various storyline(missions) type places. I might be wrong and be some combination we are not aware of. They have hinted in forming 'groups' to down monsters or tackle their spoteanous event content with other players. So a far less instanced world is least required with that.
I do believe that the other lands will be isolated and we will only be dealing with the mainland of the orignal expansion. Though it will be greatly altered after the 250 years and whatever devestation that has been wrought.
Its all been announced mate...
The main world will be wide open either like WoW or like EQ2 ...
Instanced will be used for Dungeons....
Instances of parts of the open world will be used for storytelling....
You better start your quest for finding more info on GW2 on the web... a lot is allready available in all the developer interviews.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Thanks for the replies guys.
Considering that they are going with more of a traditional world shard set up I would expect the the geography to be more open but I've been wrong about things before. The consensus here seems to be that it will be more open so that's good.
The seperate continents aren't going to be a feature in 2
Travel is restricted due to the dragons re-awakening ... So there won't be as much of the world available to play in, so i guess they are going to focus on enhancing the little 'bit' that you can run around in.
It may of changed since then ... it was about a year ago i read the above info.
I just hope the zones are not rigidly level-dependent. There is nothing i hate more and which i find more immersion breaking then when you have this linear progression through zones.. 1-5, 5-10... or whatever..
Ideally I'd like to see all levels freely mixed in zones - so you have say the road which is relatively safe for all levels, this forest is 10-20, the mountains a bit further up is 20-30, a graveyard for 1-10 and a crypt in it for say 50+.. This gives the world a much more lively atmosphere and makes veterans hang out with noobs more. I really detest the linear level-stratification which bacame the norm in today's games. It makes me feel like I'm pulled by the nose from one room to another. Ugh, it reminds me of old platformers where you moved through levels.. totally immersion breaking, at least for me. Surefire way to kill the illusion of a living "real" world. I couldn't stand Aion because of this - I felt like I'm playing Super Mario Bros reskinned with something called "experience" that is for some reason required to open up new levels rather than actually living in and exploring a true virtual world.
i have a feeling they will do something similar with gw2 with the whole adding new continents things in expansions because just like eotn they found a way to reuse space that had already been added and what not so i can see them charging for an exzpansion down the road that alloiws access to factions and nightfall or something