Over the last two days, Guild Wars 2 Hub published a great two-part interview they had with Guild Wars 2′s Lead Content Designer, Colin Johanson. In it, he discusses some behind-the-scenes design details about the beta weekend events, renown events, the difficulty of the game, the impact of player feedback, the goals of the design team, and the atmosphere at the office. Good stuff!

Here’s one of the questions that was asked, with an answer that hits close to home for many MMO gamers:

Lewis B: Something that many people continued to say to me during the first Beta Weekend Event was that they couldn’t believe how polished the game was, that it could undoubtedly be launched tomorrow. Do you think this is a fair assertion? Where are you in terms of your overall timeline and assessment on the products level of “finish”?

Colin: First, let me say that we’ve seen that comment a lot, too, and it makes us, in particular our QA team, extremely proud of the hard work everyone has been doing. In an age where new-game releases have been ripe with bugs and unfinished products, one of our goals is to try to buck that trend and release a truly finished game that is as bug free as possible. We’re all gamers first at ArenaNet, and honestly we’re sick of paying for released games that aren’t ready to be released—it drives us nuts and we don’t want to do that to our fans. Quite frankly, we wouldn’t want to play our own game if it wasn’t ready for release either.

Make sure and check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the full interview!

Today we received news that we’ll be able to finally play as the asura and sylvari races in the next beta weekend event, which runs from July 20th to July 22nd. Along with the news, we also got a sneak peek at some screenshots and details about the lush landscapes these two races call home.

For asura players, this means beginning your tale in Metrica Province, a vivid, exotic jungle area full of high-tech laboratories, quirky golems, and competing krewes of mad scientists. Nearby, the massive monoliths of the asuran capital Rata Sum hum with technomagical power. These diminutive geniuses may seem cute at first glance, but never underestimate an asura…

Sylvari players begin their story in the Grove, a luminous living city nestled in the shade of the Pale Tree, the “mother” of every member of this young race of plant humanoids. The sylvari are an enigmatic race of chivalrous explorers who are driven by an insatiable curiosity and guided by a collective Dream.

The two starting areas sound amazing. Make sure and check out the full developer blog and the accompanying screenshots!

Oh, and if you’re curious about some in-game asura footage, check out this Gamespot video.

GW2 Hub has published a great interview with Jon Peters in regards to class balance and the overall balance of the game. There are some interesting tidbits for everyone. One point that stood out was an update on the Engineers:

Lewis B: I was enjoying the engineer over the last few phases as it’s so fun to play, but have developed a list of concerns or issues, especially around kits, the tool belt, and trait line synergy. I think out of all the professions in the game it needs some tweaks at the moment. Can we expect any changes or significant improvements over the next few patches? I noticed their traits have had a tidy up…

Jon: The engineer is the first profession we have addressed since the last BWE. Changes have been made to many skills and to the trait lines as well. The previous list of traits contained many holdovers from the old trait system that did not fit into the new tier paradigm.

Read the rest of the interview at GW2Hub.

Today brings another Dev Blog from Ben Miller, a Game Designer for Arenanet. In this blog Ben goes over almost every aspect of designing a game. He talks about MMO combat, UIs a sense of character development and much much more and provides a really great insight in the mind of a game designer.

Some developers might wish there was a secret recipe book for designing an online world—some big ol’ Betty Crocker-style book with chapters like “Combat System” and “Interactive Story Telling,” containing recipes for “Melee Weapons” and “Compelling Main Characters.” And they’d wish all you had to do was add in the particulars specified and work on each bit for the required amount of time.

The truth is that designing an online world is a lot like the real world. It’s messy business. It’s organic. It’s chaotic. The mental space in which you are creating is different from moment to moment with assumptions and extrapolations piling into a confusing tangle that only your gut has time to sort out. It’s like a turbulent ocean storm of ideas, processes, people, and collaboration.

Source: The Golden Rules of Guild Wars 2

A clarification from Arenanet on the head start date: 8/25/2012 which is a Saturday.

SEATTLE – June 28, 2012: NCsoft®, the world’s premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), and ArenaNet™, developer of the renowned Guild Wars franchise, today announce that Guild Wars 2, the most anticipated game of 2012, will launch in both Europe and North America on August 28, 2012.

Building on sales of more than seven million units of the original game, Guild Wars 2 redefines massively multiplayer online roleplaying games with visceral, action-oriented combat; a gorgeous, living world full of constantly evolving dynamic events; customizable personal storylines that are unique to each player; intense Player vs. Player combat between small teams or massive armies; and most importantly, a shared online world where players work together as allies instead of as rivals — all with no monthly subscription fee.

“We’re offering gamers an experience that delivers on the promise of online gaming with a truly social experience in an immense, shared world,” said Mike O’Brien, president and co-founder of ArenaNet. “After five years of creation, development, and polish, announcing the launch date of Guild Wars 2 is a huge milestone for us, but the thing we’re most looking forward to is seeing gamers from all over the globe explore this world and begin creating their own stories.”
As they prepare for launch, ArenaNet will focus on polishing Guild Wars 2 to ensure the highest quality experience on launch day, which includes hosting a final Beta Weekend Event July 20-22, 2012.

One of our favorite vidcasts, Tales of Tyria, put out a new episode yesterday.

This week we pull back the curtain to show everyone out there exactly how we make the show. What hardware do you need? What software? How much bandwidth is used? How do you get started streaming or recording GW2 to post on Youtube? But first we go over this week’s news and feedback from last week. Stay tuned at the tail end, because after the show we spend another 45 minutes talking about release date speculation and board games.

Hit us after the break for the full episode.

For those of you who don’t work during the day, get ready for the next Stress Test!

We were very pleased with how our servers performed during our second Beta Weekend Event, but we want to gather additional data on how they operate under load before the next one.

That’s where you come in.

All players who have pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 are invited to participate in our upcoming stress test. This four-hour test event will run on Wednesday, June 27th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).

We won’t wipe characters for this event, so if you played in our previous betas, you can pick up right where you left off. All we need you to do is log in and have fun—leave the stress to us!

Source: http://www.arena.net/blog/help-us-stress-our-servers-on-june-27

A new developer’s blog was published today that talked about how ArenaNet measures success. In a game that will have no subscription numbers to go by, how will Anet measure their success?

When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?

How do you measure fun? Well, get the answer from Colin Johanson and read the full dev blog over on the official website.

Tales of Tyria‘s episode 36 goes over their experience with BWE2 including sPVP and other class issues.

The regular co-hosts have the night off this week, as Bridger invites 4 members of the Team Legacy Structured PvP team on the show to discuss the status of SPvP as of Beta Weekend Event #2. We talk overall impressions, responsivness, balance, builds, and much more.

Continue reading to watch the episode.

Following in the tradition of other Junkies Nation sites, such as Rift Junkies and Guildwars2 Junkies, TES Junkies is a premiere fansite, run by hardcore fans for all fans. We will be dedicated to bringing you all the guides, news, and up-to-date happenings of The Elder Scrolls Online. The Elder Scrolls Online just began their media campaign and has finally come under public light. The game is set to launch some time in 2013 and we’ll be here to make sure you know all about the game as we find out more about it.

TESJunkies is brought to you by Ryan Raplee and Jason Dodge, owners of Rerollz Media LLC. Rerollz Media is the owner of Junkies Nation and it’s affiliated network of fansites including RiftJunkies.com, GuildWars2Junkies.com, ForceJunkies.com, DefianceJunkies.com.

Link: WWW.TESJUNKIES.COM

Tales of Tyria‘s episode 35 goes over their experience with BWE2 including W3!

This week we take the opportunity to discuss our experiences from BWE #2 while it’s fresh in our minds. We start with WvW and make our way through Structured PvP over to PvE, Crafting, and the Finale event. We also spoke at length about the market system in GW2, and how you can take advantage of it and stop giving Freelancer money

Continue reading to watch the episode.

Originally posted by Lindsey Murdock (Source)

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The way leveling XP gain works in crafting is this: For leveling a discipline from 0-400, you will gain 10 levels along the way. By maxing out all 8 disciplines, you will gain 80 levels. That means you could dedicate a character to crafting, feed it all the mats you get on other characters and level it all the way to 80 without ever needing to kill a thing. As hardcore crafters, we think that is pretty cool.

A new developer blog has been posted detailing some of the changes to WvW by Mike Ferguson. Along with some updates to squads and seige work, there is a WvW scoreboard from last BWE1. How did your server fare?

On Squads:

The commander system is another area where we’ve spent some significant time. We’ve made it easier to join squads, as you can now right-click on someone’s name in chat and choose to join their squad. And squad chat now works both ways, allowing members to talk to their commander. In another improvement, commanders can now check the followers tab in their contacts panel to see a list of people who are in their squad.

Check out the rest over at Arenanet’s website.

Arenanet has posted a short video interview going over a preview of what to expect for this weekend’s BWE2.

Marketing Coordinator, David Campbell, is joined by Guild Wars 2 Lead Producer, Chris Whiteside to give a preview of the next Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event.

Keep reading to watch the video.