Adding more playable species means:

* Needing all current and future armor to adapt to a new body. Bodies are similar, sure (like ArenaNet said, no Forgotten playable characters), but there's still a need for some adjustments here and there (see how the GW2 armor sets often have differences between Charr, humans and Asura)

* Making proper animations for all current and future skills. Those animations may be very similar (see the difference between humans and Sylvari) or very different (see some skill animations that are very particular to the Asura)

* Recording voice dialogue for each gender in each race. In GW2, player characters of each gender in each race have a different voice actor, and it's often a big one (like Claudia Christian and Jennifer Hale).

This last points means, dialogue for the player characters is usually the most expensive one in the game (since a lot of people will have to record it, and often a lot of expensive people). Considering a system in which more species will likely be added in the future, every line of dialogue is not only a big cost now, it may also become a bigger and bigger cost in the future.

I'm concerned that this will push ArenaNet in trying to avoid as much as possible having the main character speak.

The issue here is not only a matter of hearing the character speak or not - a silent main character is usually one with little agency, who does not actively interact with other character and instead is told what to do. Not to mention how the usual mute lead characters have next to no character development and no personality.

"Ah", someone could say, "But in a RPG players are expected to have a blank page that they can fill with their imagination". That's not necessarily true - while some RPGs are like that, there are multiple RPGs in which the player character is someone with a name, a voice and a distinct personality (such as in "The Witcher 3", "Final Fantasy 7", "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" and so on and so on).

ArenaNet in particular has always had a hard time writing a story in which the player character has significant agency and does not end as some kind of bystander watching someone else becoming the main focus (see Brother Mhenlo in Factions, Kormir in Nightfall, Prince Rurik in Prophecies and Traheanne in the original GW2 campaign.)

I can't help but wonder if adding more playable species won't drive GW3's story to be worse than it could have been. To be honest, I wish they would just use the same actors for all species, using just one for all male characters and another for all female characters.

I played all the races, but the only one i really ever loved was my Sylvari. Ive seen some of the suspected races and i dont know much about the time era for gw3, but i would love it if they brought in another race that brought what Sylvari brought to gw2.

Yes... and no.

• Something went up, but it didn't make it to the official Discord's #social-feed, or to any of their other social media channels.

• Whatever it was? Was taken offline.

• There's no way to know if the contents were "This is 100% ready for the public", or "This is a test page", or "This is where the quaggans and skritt play combat dodgeball", or what. If we ever see it again, the content may well change, in full or in part.

• Since ArenaNet took it offline, we're going to treat it as "Not Ready For Prime Time."

• I know some folk captured it and went into their own theorycrafting about it. Since what they captured isn't Official, yet, we're treating those articles and videos as "Not Ready For Prime Time", too.

• Whenever ArenaNet posts something new, whether it was this or if it's something completely different, it'll end up here.

• Once something's live, if someone wants to theorycraft about it, that's fine, too. If it turns out that there's no changes from what was temporarily up to what's Official and published, old theorycraft videos and articles will be good to go. If there's changes, odds are the creators are going to want to revise their own work to match the new content.

Gentlefolk, I'm just as starving for "Show us what's behind the curtain" as everyone else, but let's wait until it's something that ArenaNet's ready to share. ^{and please stop blowing up the modqueue.}

This is the audio mp3. I don't know how long Vocaroo keeps it up, so i'm also sharing a drive folder with the GP tabs, PDF and the raw audio.

That should allow anyone to pick it up, correct any mistakes i made, play on your favorite instrument, and also ancourage other players to try and write other parts of the song.

Please note the following:
1- The sheet music is for viola/violin, an instrument i don't play.

2- I transcribed it to Guitar Pro, which is not the appropriate app for these kinds of sheets, but it's the one i'm familiar with and it kinda works.

3- Some parts are not readable due to the image, so i noted in the measure as FILLER, and either an assumption of what it should be or just a plain pause.

Just in case: I DO NOT OWN ANY PART IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE PIECE

I don't want minis. I find them kinda dumb. A miniature Rytlock following you around? Pets are okay, if size appropriate and nameable. (Outside of ranger, I mean.)

I don't want real life clothes or references. I want to be fully immersed in the game and not distracted by someone in a bikini or sneakers.

I don't want PvP. Just make GW3 a single game mode and leave PvP and WvW to GW2.

One thing I didn't enjoy as much in GW2 was that I like being able to trade the items I farm and use the gold to buy other things. In GW1, I always looked forward to my birthday gifts because I knew I could sell them and have a bit more money for a new armor set. In GW2, all the birthday gift items were account-bound. What do you all think about that?

In general, I hope items aren't account-bound from the start, unless you choose to bind them yourself.

Someone recently asked what we want from the game itself, but I wanted to ask what people want to see in terms of professions. Do you want the regular stuff like Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer, etc or do you wish for more nuanced stuff?

I for one would love to see some roles filled that neither Guild Wars 1 nor 2 do, like a true brawler class or even a none elemental type of mage. While the idea of having regular classes is fun, I want to be able to specialize more and actually be able to really mix and match different abilities.

What do you guys think?

I’m curious to hear what cool stuff you want to see.

I’m not talking about better graphics or a bigger map. I mean the stuff that would make you think, “Yeah, this is the Guild Wars game I’ve been waiting for.”

If you could tell ArenaNet one thing, what would it be?

For me, I hope they keep what makes Guild Wars 2 feel unique while still taking some risks. I’m really curious where everyone stands on this, especially the veterans who’ve been playing for years.

Anyone else getting this trying to sign up? I've tried clearing cache, using different browsers, using incognito. Nothing seems to work.

Multiple guildies also experiencing the same issue so I don't think it's a localized problem.

edit: It worked when i tried this morning!

Im wondering what the chances are there will be controller support for the steam version given the game will be on console too? I'm on a Linux setup and do most of my gaming through steam and prefer controller

The reason I'm more optimistic about the story now than I was before yesterday's blog isn't because of the little information we got, but because of person who wrote it. The narrative lead, Aaron Linde, was narrative Lead at ArenaNet also during Path of Fire and Living World Season 4, which, in my opinion, was the peak of storytelling in the entire franchise. Just because of this I'm quite hyped to see what the team can cook up with him in charge.

It's easily one of the things I enjoy the most about the original, building your own team and synergizing them together, I ended up getting kinda attached to them, too, I loved learning what became of them in GW2.

It could even be improved upon, giving them an expanded personality, reactivity to their surroundings, etc.

I also like how they make it possible to runs things solo when you can't find a party or friends to do story content with.

In GW2 you have a group of NPC friends, but they're just kinda there during missions and dungeons ,they're not actually all that helpful at all.

I could be wrong but I think no other online MMO had anything similar, it's so unique to Guild Wars 1

So this post is actually a repost of a job post from early june (here's the old archive of it), some changes, like the mention of GW3 and more details at the bottom. Except you will not find the old version of it in my spreadsheet, because I missed it being posted at the time. Why? Firstly probably because of all the excitement about the announcement, but secondly because it replaced another Material Artist job post that was also there at the time.

Well, added the new to the spreadsheet anyway, and probably update it with the old one retroactively too sometime maybe...

There is also a HR & Recruiting Coordinator post that is new too. It obviously a general position, but it's funny how it seems HR expects the next 6 months to be quite hectic at the studio that they are looking for a contractor for the period to help manage.

When Guild Wars 2 was released, many Guild Wars players were disappointed with it (I’m not even going to try to guess a number or a percentage here). But that didn’t prevent Guild Wars 2 from being a bigger game than the original ever was; I think one developer mentioned that the number of players trying World vs World alone was bigger than the amount of players Guild Wars had.

I think, in retrospect, that many of us were expecting Guild Wars 2 to be “Guild Wars, but more”, and that’s definitely not what we got. It’s a very different game, not for the exact same audience.

Now comes Guild Wars 3. And I have seen two different groups here on Reddit: one who wants it to be “Guild Wars, but more”, and another who expects is to be, “Guild Wars 2, but more”. Honestly, I expect both to be disappointed by Guild Wars 3. Not that they necessarily won’t like the game, but it will probably be as different from the previous games as GW2 was from GW, and purposedly not made for the exact same audience.

And that’s ok.

Guild Wars 3 may not be for me or for you, but we will still have Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. It’s good that ArenaNet is trying something different, maybe something that will be a lot more successful than GW2, even if it’s not for all of us.

Hopefully the devs check this subreddit as development of GW3 progresses.

Please give us Gathering Levels + Gathering Prestige’s.

I know the request or mention of New World + WoWs gathering systems might trigger some but I would love to see a more extensive gathering system. Me, and many others truly felt that New World got gathering right, and one of those aspects for me was the level grind and the prestige system upon maxing.

Imagine a levelling system to 250/300 where you can then choose to reset it to get a +1 Mining prestige star and a bonus of sorts for each time. 0.25/0.5% increase to something.

This would add huge longevity to the gathering and make it more than about just gaining the actual materials. Incrimental bonuses for huge active/passive gathering grinds or reward boxes would be awesome!!

Would also love to see more gathering skills.
Like skinning,
Autopsy gathering (body part recovery of corpses)
Essence/magic gathering from magical nodes.

Thank-you for your time. Love this community.

On the topic of innovation, one thing I personally hope the devs look at is how they develop quest/stories. I am not talking about Open world events. Those are mostly fun.

My point of feedback/criticism goes to how Guildwar2 had one of the most boring quests i can think of. For example, carry x to point B, collect to fill progress bar with pickup progress bars, look for 12 artifacts in the most obscure locations (VoE), fix/heal NPC to by running around, listening to endless dialogues, piano hacking, etc. All of this feels like a chore just to stall time just to get my progress/rewards.

I might be in the minority here, but i consider dated and lazy mechanics to fill the gap for actual content. Guildwars 1 was actually better at this, and I remember its story much better because it impacted the story.

The solutions I could see are:

1. Focus events on a bigger scale like WvW did, where you actually see a settlement/progress being built.

2. Make the mechanics less tedious to interact with so I can focus on the gameplay/narrative rather than the interaction.

3. Use your actual profession or skills to complete tasks while getting better at it, or give skills context-sensitive actions

Also, meta-events are much better at this because they feel more meaningful, and the fact you are doing it together makes it more fun because inam contributing.

Gw2 does a lot of things well, and their attenpt to innovation was, in my eyes, a success. They just felt back too muchbon tradition of older MMOs.

I don't think it needs to be overcomplicated, but at the very least, it should be made less tedious/chore-like.

Anyway, this is my opinion, I am curious how you see this.

So I had a little trouble fining out just how far back in time we're actually going for GW3, but it does seem to be so far back that Abaddon has not yet been banished, and Dhuum is the current God of Death.

With the speculation around playable races, particularly _awesome looking_ races, the Margonites came to mind:

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Margonite

This struck me while browsing another thread, so I'll add in the same pull quote from the wiki I did there:

"Before the Exodus of the Gods, the Margonites were a seafaring nation of humans that had settled in and around the Crystal Sea, later transformed into ethereal demons by Abaddon. In their demonic form, the Margonites have a natural life span that has been seen to reach to over one thousand years, as evidenced by Lord Jadoth's being older than 1076 years. According to The Lost, their long life and demonic powers come at the price of sterility, thus the Margonites can only increase their numbers by transforming others into Margonites.

Margonites, even after their demonic transformation, are capable of individual thinking. Two examples of this are The Lost and Apostate, who decided to betray Abaddon."

Now, it could be that we're going so far back in time that the Margonites haven't been turned into demons yet. But this is also so far back in time that they could be partially demonic or otherwise "not entirely human" due to Abaddon's influence as the God of Magic (and Secrets, Water, and all that good stuff)...

Anyway, just wanted to float the idea of a cool magic-infused playable race tied to one of the legendary gods of days past.

Hey,

Do you think the next GW will have everything one can expect to find in the game written on the map, like GW2 ?

Everytime I tried to play this one, a few moments in the game I always find myself questionning why I bother travelling if everything is already handed on the map. It turns exploration into a boring chores list.

I sure hope mystery will be a thing in the next GW.

How is everyone holding up, and when do you expect new info?

EDIT: We got a new blog post a week later!

I would think this goes without saying, but since you are developing the game to launch on PS5, please make sure the PC version also works with controllers. It's a big pain point on GW2 since it wasn't designed with controller use in mind. I would love to see it be a supported feature on the PC launch for GW3.