Eric Flannum: Skills are purchased from a trainer or can be handed out as content rewards, much like they were in Guild Wars. We won’t see a return of the signet of capture system in Guild Wars 2, as not all monsters use player skills. We made this choice for many reasons.

The primary reason was that it placed an undue burden on our creature spawning team to have to spawn creatures according to a skill progression chart instead of placing them where they would logically fit into the world. We also have a lot fewer skills in Guild Wars 2, many of which are very specific to certain profession mechanics. We didn’t want every monster to have to fit into a profession archetype.

With our new creature system we have a lot more freedom to give each monster a unique and fun mechanic with abilities that really fit their character