Written By: Nelson K. Thachuk

Penny Arcade Exposition 2004

Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington was the stage for Penny Arcade Exposition (PAX) 2004. PAX is an event which is new to the gaming world, and like any first timer there were many unexpected issues and some cases of disorganization. But with an amazing 1337 pre-registered guests (a “leet” coincidence - I think not) and an attendance of over 2,500 people the event was a great success. Although not yet official, I think it’s safe to say that there will be a PAX 2005.

Guild Wars at PAX ‘04

ArenaNet, the developers of Guild Wars (based in Bellevue), was very proud to show off their game on home turf. With the ArenaNet offices only being a stone’s throw away it wasn’t a surprise to see many of their staff attending the exposition. Each member had many contributing remarks and was more than happy to give everyone a go at the product they have been working on for so long. But, unlike most of the exhibitors at PAX, ArenaNet was giving players more than what we saw at E3 – in fact we were treated to Guild Wars as it has never publicly been seen before.

Characters
Primary and Secondary Classes

Players are given the choice between six classes - Elementalist, Mesmer, Monk, Necromancer, Warrior and Ranger - to choose as their primary class. This class dictates your character’s physical appearance, unique skills, hit-points, power pool, and allowed equipment. The secondary class of a character simply gives you the ability to use that class’ non-unique skills. Quite interestingly enough, pumping points into your attributes for you secondary class is just as effective as your primary– thus making your character more dynamic.

Attributes

Attributes are general skill sets that directly effect skills under that set. As players advance their characters they will be given attribute points to distribute among their primary and secondary class attributes. The choice of how to divide attribute points is entirely up to the player, but don’t worry about making a bad decision because ArenaNet has you covered. In the event you’d like to try something different, or aren’t happy with the way you divided your points than you can spend attribute refund points to rebuild your character’s attributes. Attribute refund points can be acquired at any time during the game, even after acquiring the maximum attainable level, thus giving players the ability to rebuild their character an infinite amount of times if they so choose.

Skills

Acquiring skills in Guild Wars will not be an easy task, but it will be a worthwhile one. In order to gain skills players will need to venture into the world and defeat “boss” mobs. Dependant on the difficulty of the mission, players may receive many skills – or they may receive very few. Only skills from a character’s primary and secondary class can be learned. Being able to learn from a mere two classes won’t be very limiting though since characters can learn 150 skills per class (that’s 300 total skills per character). But even with such a massive array of skills, players can only actively use eight skills per mission; your choice of skills will be crucial to your success.

Levels

Gaining levels in Guild Wars will be an important part to every character’s initial advancement in the game; however, it will not be a major focus. ArenaNet wants players to acquire the maximum level (20) relatively fast as a basic tutorial to the game and introduction to the story of Guild Wars. As often preached, the folks at ArenaNet want you the play the game – not spend time preparing the play the game. So instead of grinding away at levels, players can work on finding new equipment, reworking attributes, acquiring skills, and mastering combinations of skills that ArenaNet hasn’t even considered!

Level Progression

Unfortunately all characters were capped at level 20 for the purpose of the demonstration at PAX, but level progression will definitely be a feature during the World Premiere event in late October! But don’t expect to start at level 1 – everyone will be starting at level 15 because ArenaNet isn’t quite ready to give away the story of Guild Wars which is primarily discovered during the leveling progress of levels 1 through 15. Rest assured though, the leveling process between 15 and 20 promises to give players a chance to understand the progression and attribute systems.

Crafting

Player crafting is not a feature of Guild Wars, but there are established NPC crafters in the world that will upgrade and customize your equipment. Many questions have been posed about the crafting system, and although I can’t divulge much I can give you a basic run-down of the primary functions:

Upgrade

Each piece of equipment will have a set amount of components that can be used as upgrades to enhance a player’s equipment. These components can be acquired from enemy mobs and through purchases from your local vendor. When a crafter is given the requirement components your equipment will be enhanced.

Customize

If a player chooses to customize equipment then they will be limiting that equipment to their own personal use. Once customized, equipment can only be equipped by the character that the item was customized for. This may be limiting in the sense that your items cannot be used by other players, but your customized equipment will be more powerful than if you were to upgrade it.

Guild Features

Guilds have indeed been implemented in Guild Wars, but as a young system under development there are definitely limited amounts of features. By release there will be in-game forums, announcements, history, guild banners, and a guild ranking system. Some of these features are already in the game:

Guild Banners

The guild banners system is fairly similar to that of Dark Age of Camelot . When creating a guild banner, the Guild Leader selects the basic design, primary color, secondary color, emblem, and emblem color. Your character will be equipped with your guild’s banner once you join a guild or if you create a guild. Whether banners can be disabled is currently unknown, but I’m sure it’s something that ArenaNet is putting some serious thought into its functionality.

Other Features

When players create a guild they choose the name of the guild and a three character acronym. During this process the Guild Leader also selects the guild’s banner. Other great features include announcements and a ranking system. Although the ranking system doesn’t apply the individual members within a guild, it does apply to a guild as a whole. If a guild’s rank is high enough than their banner may be displayed throughout an entire town, or they may receive discounts on products being sold by vendors in a certain region. One thing is certain – guilds will indeed be warring to boost their rank!

The World

Much of the world remained hidden during PAX, but one new area – the Temple of Tolerance – was available in limited supply. Unfortunately much of the area was closed off, but the visual representation was definitely unique from what I’d seen during E3. You can look forward to seeing the Coastal Region and The Wilds, along with past sections of the world, during the World Preview.

Thank You and Goodnight

Special thanks go out to Penny Arcade and the entire team at ArenaNet for such a great time! I’m looking forward to attending next year, and hopefully you’ll all be hearing more about Guild Wars from me after ArenaNet’s next community day!

Thanks again,
Nelson K. Thachuk

World Preview Event

ArenaNet and NCsoft will be hosting another public Guild Wars event from October 29th – 31st. If you’d like to play Guild Wars during that time or would like more information on the event than please visit this page.

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