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"In the words of Bob Dylan, "The Times They are a-Changin'...". That's the way I feel about the MMORPG genre as a whole. For a long time things have been pretty much set as far as how MMORPG games are designed. However, I feel that with the release of Guild Wars 2 things will begin to change. Now before you write me off as some crazy Guild Wars 2 fanboy I ask that you finish the article, you may be surprised.

Let me start with explaining my thoughts on where I believe the current genre stands. Although World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMORPG to do most of the things in the current design build for MMO's, it was the game that popularized it. They took what was out there tweaked it a bit and made it user friendly. They gave us static quest, dungeons/raids, epic loot, powers and skill trees among other things all of which you will find in most MMO's today. Now there have been MMO's that have tried to break away from this structured design but developing new ideas like Warhammer Online adding in public quest, or Age of Conan having a combo fighting system. Both are unique ideas that bring something new to the genre. The rest of the game however was just like every other MMO. They just didn't change enough to in their games to bring the genre to a place where people expect more of what they offered with newly developed MMOs.

This is where Guild Wars 2 comes into the mix. With all of the different content that is being added by GW2 on ground breaking levels I can feel a shift coming to a new breed of MMOs. One that has evolved into so much more than just questing, grinding mobs, and choosing a cookie cutter skill. The age of every class looking the exact same with the same armor on, using the same skills and talents will be over. There will be so much more diversity in future games after ArenaNet releases GW2 and everyone sees what game design companies are capable of delivering and will expect nothing less.

One of the ideas I think post GW2 games will take advantage of will be the great dynamic questing system. I mean the ability to completely change the environment and social aspect of everything around you by choosing to help someone in need as opposed to just running around looking for a yellow exclamation point is just amazing to think about. Another great thing GW2 has to offer that I think future games will take advantage of will be your skills changing based on your weapon selection. I think that the customization that this has to offer for each individual class is just too much for game makers to turn down. Making the game play have no dependency on specific classes being involved is another great design that will be something gamers are looking for in games after the release of GW2. Now these aren't the only ideas, just a few I could think of off the top of my head that offer a great blueprint for future developers to build with.

Now I'm not saying that Guild Wars 2 is going to kill all other MMO's and take the title for most popular game in the world. Although I do think it will put a major hurt on the subscriber base of some of the larger MMO's out there and will definitely be one of the top games for a long time. I am saying however that I feel with the release of Guild Wars 2, when gamers see what a company can do with a game giving you the diversity to look how you want to look, play how you want to play and have a world that revolves around decisions that you make in the game all with no monthly subscription.... This is the way of the future... Times they are a changing."

-abStractDeath

GW2Fans is searching for newswriters & moderators, if you are interested in one of the following, feel free to PM Laida. We do not have a limit on the amount of people that we will accept this time.


Website Moderators' tasks:Newsposter's tasks:If you'd like, you can combine different tasks or only do a few! You may help where you want! Together with any task, you'll get more "power" on the site & forums, you'll get a shiny user title and lots more respect!

If you want to help out, there are a few requirements that need to be met


Requirements:As you see we don't ask much in terms of activity and how frequent you'll need to perform your tasks. We hope to expand our team with quite a few people who all do a bit of the work. If anyone wants to spam our site with content and moderate 24/7, that can be done, but it's not a requirement. We'd like to keep it enjoyable and relaxed for our administrators as well :)

Keep in mind that we don't have an opening 'just' to moderate the forums (edit & delete threads). We are searching for people that truly want to contribute in getting GW2 news out there.

If you are interested in helping out, send me a PM and we'll talk about it. Don't be shy, please!

Thursday I had the chance of going to GamesCom in Cologne to play the first public demo of Guild Wars 2. It was a wonderful experience and I am very pleased with what I saw and got to know of the game. Thanks to the lively atmosphere at the booth, no demo station was left unmanned. It taken quite some time before I was able to play, I had to stand in line for about 2h but for a demo lasting over 30 minutes it was well worth the wait. When it was my time to play, a presentation started which I did miss, but luckily it would take place again later that day.

The person playing before me only shown me things I did not want to see. It seemed he did not understand how to play an MMO as he only walked around the same small building for 30 minutes killing centaurs for ages. At the end of his game time he was close to dieing, showing the Necromancer's downed skills. This made me want to pick a Necromancer as a character as well.

Game time over, my turn! Darn I was excited, I told my friend to have his camera ready to take pictures of menus and to film certain parts of the game. First thing I had to do was choose a name and gender: Laida and female, next up a profession: Necromancer it is. After this, a screen showing some information on the character customization appeared, which unfortunately wasn't available in the demo. Next were a couple of questions which will influence my personal story throughout the game, it included questions like "your greatest regret, strongest personality trait, your upbring, ..." . A cool fact was, that depending on what you chosen here some personal story "events" will adapt to these choices, some NPC's will interact differently with you and you'll be seeing some specific scenarios unfold in your presence. Once done choosing your background, the introduction cinematic started, which I skipped to save time. First things first, I wanted to see Divinity's reach, though I could not enter until I had done my first quest which was completed quickly. So right away I went into the gates of Divinity's Reach, I was shown a short loading screen. Once inside, I opened my map and saw the borders of Divinity's reach unexplored, first I walked around in the town's center (The Upper City) and was pleased by how it looked, it felt quite alive, massive and the sound was great. On route I checked out some NPC vendor's inventory and interacted with some locals. After walking around for a few minutes (it is quite large!) I took a portal to take me to the places around Divinity's Reach. A fun note was that when you discovered a new place, you'll get a small amount of XP. I walked via "Melandru High Road" to "Plaza of Melandru" and onwards to a place with a fantastic view "The Great Collapse". Looking upwards will give you a great sense of the magnitude of the city. Yep, I was very pleased with the beauty of the game!

I felt I've walked around enough, I continued questing after buying some skillbooks from the Necromancer's profession trainer. I gave a few copper, I received a few books.

The quests were really easy to follow, there was a quest tracker at the top-right corner of your screen saying what you need to do. On the map we will also find the specific locations on where to advance in this quest, just like the original Guild Wars. The map was very clear, and very detailed to work with. While walking to a quest NPC, a message on my screen appeared "A new Event started nearby", so I looked around and found some nasty bandits attacking some poor farmers. Seeing as I was nearby I had lent them a hand and saved the farmers' fields. I had been given karma points for helping, which I found a NPC for to trade it for some goods, though nothing especially fancy could be bought at this NPC in this region. Besides karma I had been getting XP and trash loot from slaying the bandits, I did not notice (or just simply forgot) if there were other rewards besides this.

When I turned into a different direction another event was happening, I helped out saving a farmer's watermelons from rabbits. Once done, I was able to buy the watermelons and eat them for a small stat-buff. Helping out will surely enable a lot of these small game features, and what's even cooler is that one event can lead to a next one, other players can enter your event chain when they are near. Great stuff!

The rest of the demo I continued on the quest line, like most of you seen at a given point we had to defend a castle from centaurs and in due time giant hands were summoned from the ground up which we needed to defeat. It was a very short and easy fight though it looked amazing and "epic" for such an early quest in the game. The person playing next to me was on the same quest as me and we completed it together. There is no need for anyone to wait for the invasion to start over or mobs to respawn. If it is happening, you can help and complete your quest.

While fighting, the combat system became very clear to me. It is very action & positional-based, which I do like. Skills can even be casted while running! Many skills also use targeting, so you will need to use your aiming and positioning very well.

Some people told me that the outline/glow on targeted NPC's and monsters bothered them. I could relate to this when I only saw the videos online, after playing the game you understand it is needed to have, as at given points you will be overwhelmed by mobs and NPC's that it would be hard to notice who you are targeting. Even when fighting bigger monsters it did not bother me that much, you get used to it fast. I am unsure if this feature could be disabled in the options as I did not search for it and a part of the menu was not in the demo anyway.

Since my time was almost up, I rushed to a cliff to fall down from to see what would happen. Unfortunatly I did not dare to jump from a high place so I only received a little fall damage from jumping off a rock. I spotted water nearby so in my last few minutes I wanted to experience underwater combat. But once in the water, I was shown a message "Water combat is not in the demo, please return to the surface", though I fought a monster in the water and it felt well done apart from some glitchy monster animations. A breath-indicator was not included and I did not take damage from being underwater too long. But seeing as they put such a clear message on the screen about underwater gameplay, I am sure nothing I experienced there is to be taken as finished. Other than this I spent some time looking at the UI. To me, everything seems clear and well placed. To conclude this short review of my playtime, I'll add some screenshots of the UI below.

Before diving into reviewing the demo, I'd like to give you all a better idea on how the NCsoft stand stood out from any other booth at GamesCom. While other stands added sexy booth babes to promote their product, NCsoft added sheer ambience to make them feel more unique than other crowds. "When I say NC you say SOFT, NC ... SOFT, NC ... SOFT!" It was fun screaming along with the host, he did a wonderful job getting us pumped up. Heck, even now when my brother says "mama", I say "papa". The only stand that came somewhat close to this amount of screaming was THQ, but I feel the people at NCsoft's stand were so excitedly screaming for the game and not the free T-shirts unlike their stand.

Besides the overly hyped up crowd, NCsoft did well in stage-building. The stage was well designed with just enough space to fit the audience during liveshows. Alongsides the audience were all the demo stations placed, so it didn't feel as anything was in the way, excluding the audience if you wanted to get out of there! The fact they placed their hand-out booth at the side of the stage was great as well, it reduced the amount of pushing seen in other stands and it felt nicer to be waiting there. I enjoyed my time waiting to play the demo as from all angles you could see other fans playing the game. Even after standing in line for nearly 2 hours, I did not feel bored or gotten the urge to get out of there.

Another great moment was when we gotten a visit by the Charr Rytlock Brimstone, a tribune of the Blood Legion, and Caithe, a Firstborn sylvari. Caithe was friendly and beautiful, but Rytlock tried to cut me! I'm pleased to have a picture taken with them, as their costumes were by far the best seen on GamesCom. The runner up in best costume would be this lady from the game Rift. Other booths mainly had babes just looking half naked in bikini's, the common police uniforms, race outfits and anything else that can be labeled as "standard sexy". I was glad to see NCsoft not giving in into this phenomenon and made Caithe look beautiful and sexy by giving her real Guild Wars 2 clothing! Heck, you were sexy too Rytlock!


Oh, and not to forget, NCsoft was one of the most generous when handing out freebies. From T-shirts, "klatshers" (poster-like-foldable-noise-makers) to cards, tattoos and much more. But the most notable thing on GamesCom was that almost everyone was walking around with an NCsoft bag showing Aion and Guild Wars 2 in large. Great publicity for the game, and I felt proud being a close follower of Guild Wars 2.

Yes, I was pleased with what I saw, it was great to be a part of the first hands-on demo of Guild Wars 2, which I will review later on. NCsoft and ArenaNet both are doing a wonderful job at GamesCom, I am very glad they are putting such a great effort into presenting the game to us. Thank you NCsoft, thank you ArenaNet and anyone that participated in making Guild Wars 2 stand out!

*EDIT: A preview of the fansite listing can be seen here. All fansites used in those listings are for testing purposes only. We will contact the owners to ask for permission to display them.

Ever since GW2Fans started its development, we decided to become the most complete fansite on Guild Wars 2. In order to do this, it is natural we would try to include anything related to the big Guild Wars 2 community.

Adding a directory to list all available fansites, blogs, podcasts, etc... could not be forgotten. The creators of such fansites need to get more credit for their work, and the people wanting to visit those fansites should be given a clear view on what is available on the net without searching for it theirselves.

A fansite directory seemed a perfect opportunity to help the community grow and to get more publicity for the people creating the fansites as they well deserve it.

To ensure a user friendly environment for both the fansite owner as the fansite visitor, we will create alphabetic, categorized directories with a short description of each fansite. You will find every available fansite on one single page! While clicking on a fansite's name, you will be shown an extended description of said fansite.

In the future, we will allow fansite owners to "bump" their fansite. Whenever the owner adds more content, you can mention this on your fansite page. Like a normal forum thread, your fansite will be shown as a "new post". It is still unsure if we will restrict this to the owner alone, or if we would let the whole community comment on the fansites.

On top of that, we plan to interview the most promissing fansites, and giving them a spot on top of the fansite directory for a period of time. If that was not enough, we will also add a "random fansite" module to display fansites randomly on top of the listings, in due time every fansite will get their minutes of fame.

We won't exclude the fact we will add more features to this, if you have any suggestions, do not refrain from telling us!

By that date, we would like to ask the fansite owners to submit their fansite by filling out the Fansite Form. Without doing so we can not make a directory. And if, by any chance, you would be able to spread the word we would highly appreciate you doing so. The more fansites we can list, the more it expands and links the community!

If anyone has any remarks on the fansite form, send Laida a PM. It is possible we have forgotten some questions or valuable information we might need to add.

Go ahead and submit your fansite now!

Introduction
GW2Fans.com is a fansite based on Guild Wars 2. The website started its development on 18th of May 2010 by "Laida" (Global Administrator) and "iko" (News Administrator). After 2 weeks of hard work GW2Fans was ready to receive its audience and aims to become a leading Guild Wars 2 Fansite in the near future.


Specialties of GW2Fans.com
We pride ourselves on bringing you all the information out there on Guild Wars 2 as fast as possible and include our personal view on these newsposts. From time to time we will include special, exclusive coverage on various GW2 content in the form of video reviews or text articles. We aim to be the most complete source for GW2 so there will be no need to visit any other website.

Besides swift and complete news coverage, GW2Fans will offer dedicated Guild Listings. All guild admins are able to submit their guild to our website, which we will advertise and include in an amazing global guild listing. It has never before been easier to put your guild in the spotlight. Players searching for a new guild will also be delighted to see such complete information packages on every guild out there. The listings are easy to browse and kept fully up-to-date thanks to our dedicated administration team.

If Guild Listings weren't enough, all guilds are also possible candidates in becoming featured on our website. Being featured includes having your guild's crest or banner on our website's homepage and having an extensive article written about your guild. We will personaly interview the guild and make sure we fully advertise all their best qualities in a great article which will make you famous amongst GW2Fans!

Besides the Guild Listings, we've recently started listing all noteworthy fansites of Guild Wars 2. A fansite directory seemed a perfect opportunity to help the community grow and to get more publicity for the people creating the fansites as they well deserve it.

To ensure a user friendly environment for both the fansite owner as the fansite visitor, we will create alphabetic, categorized directories with a short description of each fansite. You will find every available fansite on one single page! While clicking on a fansite's name, you will be shown an extended description of said fansite.


The community
A fansite would be nothing without its community, for that reason we will spend extra attention to what YOU would like from us. For starters, we will provide a very active, well monitored and homely forum for your entertainment. On top of that, our website provides full media libraries for you to include all your favorite pictures and videos to share with your friends on GW2Fans.

If blogging is more your style, feel free to keep that Blogs tab bookmarked!

All of our website is linked to Facebook, so you can easily authenticate on GW2Fans with your Facebook account. You can post anything you do here directly on your Facebook wall to share with your closest friends.

GW2Fans is represented on various social networks for example Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. We have also included a full write-up on how you can support us besides hanging around on our own website. We appreciate all your help in making us known all over the world!


The administrators
GW2Fans' administrators are all experienced gamers and are well known with the world of MMO's and fansites. Each administrator is responsible for its own domain, which will always be the domain he has most affinity and interest for. This way they will love doing their job, as they do it best!

At the time of writing our administrator pool is fairly limited, so we are sure to enlarge it in the near future.


Additional Information & Links
If you might have any questions about GW2Fans.com or if you just want to contact us about anything, have a look at our contacts page. There you will find a full list of ways to contact us.

As a notable fansite it is important to have a decent ruleset for all our users to follow. We expect all our registered users and passing visitors to abide by our rules to keep GW2Fans a healthy environment for young and old.