Arenanet has published another dev blog, but this time in the form of Video! Keep reading to watch the videos, or you can find them on Anet’s dev blog page.

Earlier in the development of Guild Wars 2 we released our MMO Manifesto video, a high-level look at the philosophy behind the design of the game. As we approach the launch date, now is the perfect time to talk about the outcome of that design philosophy with a look at the core ideas that the game is built on: personal story, dynamic events, combat, and PvP.

The only video missing is for WvW! But Anet is promising that is coming soon.

Today, TenTon Hammer released their latest beta article, and this time they are talking about Dynamic Events.

Most of the times I entered the swamp the on-screen status for the area stated, “The swamp lies dormant.” When you see that kind of thing you’ll know that a much larger event is likely to happen in the area, so it’s a good idea to start poking around and completing any smaller nearby events.

For Godslost swamp, the meta event is called Secrets in the Swamp. In the image to the right you can see how the area status changed to indicate that a major event was about to occur, followed by another status change once the massive Shadow Behemoth erupted out of the swamp.

You should really follow up with the article and discover the author’s first hand account of the epic adventure to be found in the Godslost Swamp.

Dynamic Events and the Shadow Behemoth

Over the last 10-15 years players have seen little evolution in MMORPGs.  Classes, combat, and quest systems generally are extremely similar even across the usual sub-genres; fantasy, sci-fi, and horror.  Due to  most releases up to this point reusing the same foundations with slightly different graphics the  experience playing them is nearly identical across the board.  This is partially why every game is called a “WoW clone”  even though World of Warcraft was an Everquest clone which was a DIKU mud clone and so on.  Guild Wars 2 seems to be trying to break the mold in many ways, most notably the dynamic event system at the heart of their game.