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Hi, my name is Isaiah Cartwright (Izzy, as some like to call me), and I’m a Game Designer for Guild Wars 2. Today I’d like to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart: character progression in Guild Wars 2.

You know that point in other MMOs when, after playing for a few hours, you look down at your experience bar and wonder, “WTF? Has my experience bar even moved at all?” Nobody enjoys feeling like they haven’t made any progress even though they’ve been playing their character all day. We hate it as much as you do; it drives us insane!

Our goal with Guild Wars 2 is to flatten out the leveling curve, keeping progression simple and straightforward. We expect everyone to make a reasonable amount of progression with each play session. It shouldn’t take days of playing before you feel like you have made any progress, and you definitely shouldn’t have to kill a bunch of creatures or do a bunch of repetitive tasks just to see what’s over that next hill. We want our progression to keep up with your play style. If you’re a causal gamer who plays for a few hours here and there, why should you feel like it’s going to take you a decade to finish your character? If you’re a hardcore player, why shouldn’t you be able to blast through the game with skill and speed, trying to experience every last bit of content?

So how did we accomplish our goals, you ask? Good question! First off, we set the level cap for the game at 80, but we made the time between levels rather short. Instead of taking longer and longer to reach each level, it takes about the same time to go through each level. It’s pretty simple; if we expect you to level up every few hours, then why shouldn’t it be that way all through the game?

To better illustrate this, here’s a chart of a typical game’s leveling curve compared to the Guild Wars 2 leveling curve:

As you can see, our leveling curve is pretty simple. Now, keep in mind that we haven’t finished everything and we’re still working out a lot of the details, but progression in Guild Wars 2 is way more than just leveling. We have achievements, trait collection, crafting, dungeons, skill collection, items, and much more.

Overall, we expect our content to be the driving force behind how long it takes to do things in-game. Anyone can increase the length of an experience bar and call it content, but our world is filled with an almost endless stream of things to do. We expect content—not long, grindy progression—to be the deciding factor that keeps people playing our game. We want everyone to stick with Guild Wars 2 because our content is fun and enjoyable, not out of some dogged determination to slowly, slowly advance. And because our world is ever-changing and dynamic, you can play our content again and again! Two characters journeying through the game will have two different experiences, which means the game will remain fresh for all you out there who enjoy making a million characters.

So, if you’re tired of the size of your experience bar controlling the pace of your progression, and you’re looking for a simple, content-focused progression system with endless potential for enjoyment, Guild Wars 2 is for you.

I hope you’re as excited about progression in Guild Wars 2 as I am; it’s just one of the many awesome ways this game will challenge conventional MMO thinking.

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[Merketh]

Now that's a leveling curve i like :P

[Estylon]

yeah me too!
Can't wait for GW2 and some GvG!

[Alox]

Estylon, on 30 July 2010 - 08:19 AM, said:

yeah me too!
Can't wait for GW2 and some GvG!

They are aiming for about 45 minutes per level.

[tazzbe]

That sounds very good to me...same amount of time for each lvl :)

The more i read about GW2..the more i'm starting to like it hehe

[Alox]

I was at a lecture with some of the designers where they told us a crap load of the event system. The event system is just awesome, but lots of info on that on the net now.

In the QA we asked about pvp, and they told us they were going to make a battle ground with keeps and stuff and have 3 factions. To populate the factions they will use 3 servers, so it is basicly a server vs server in a 3 faction way. Also they want the pvp to offer targets for solo, group and zerg. So you can choose your target depending on group size. The solo content could be to attack resource caravans that could be transporting stone from the mine to the keep (in order to resupply siege ammo). They did at some point mention Daoc during these questions. ;)

Also there will be raid content in the form of dungeons, but the rewards will be more in "looking cool" rather than having much higher stats than the rest of the players.

[McFlury]

As I understand it right now the Event system is sort of the Public Quest system from Warhammer Online. I liked that so nice :)

3 faction PvP would be nice, but I want to see it first. Also, might be hard to see from a distance who is foe and friend if all factions have same classes and races, but whatever :) I already liked the guild vs guild arena fights GW1 had, so I'm pretty sure they won't screw up PvP this time either :)

Dungeons just for looking cool is sweet. Finally we wo't have to grind endlessly just to be able to compete, unless you're competing in a beauty contest ofcourse. :)

[Alox]

Btw... the 3D will blow your mind. It is simply great. I am going to get myself a 3d kit for this. Biggest hurdle is the monitor that needs to have 120hz refresh rate.

[Valaka]

Merketh, on 30 July 2010 - 07:16 AM, said:

Now that's a leveling curve i like :P

I second that! *.* I wish Tera was like this as well!