We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. A couple times a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

Early on during headstart, I noticed quite a few players questioning their order choice (you know, that whole Vigil, Durmand Priory, or Order of Whispers choice). The decision comes fairly early in the personal story quest line, and interestingly enough, affects a large portion of the nature of the story quests that follow the decision.

Durmand Priory characters, for example, are given some quests that require the player to make use of gadgets while continuing the storyline. Vigil characters, naturally, are given quests that follow the whole “shoot first– ask questions later” philosophy. Order of Whispers characters follow a more sneaky route, but still get the job done. The three orders also gain access to different armor sets.

Moments ago a new Dev Blog was posted, this time by Lief Chappelle Game Designer working on Guild Wars 2. Lief goes into detail on the design behind the personal story line system. For any game replay value is a very important aspect players look at. Playing an alt in a MMO can often become a boring task. One which we dredge through to get to the max level where usually “the game really starts”. Now the story for each alt can be unique, providing to some extent a unique experience for each.

To start with, let’s talk about the numbers involved. Each of our five playable races begins with its own starting area—this is where your story commences. You likely know about the biography in character creation, where choosing one of several options translates into a different story for your character. This three-way split exists for all five races. Furthermore, each of those three stories contains decisions you must make that further affect how the story plays out. This means that, to experience every potential storyline being told from level 1 to 10, you’d need to play the game 30 times (5 races times 3 initial stories times 2 internal branches in each storyline)…

This lengthy post is yet more proof on how amazing Guild Wars 2 is going to be. Many people who have hated alts may find themselves altaholics when the game ships later this year.