GW2: Question about the open world

[ponies]

for those of you that have played guild wars or have a better knowledge of guild wars 2, i have a question that i'd like answered.

Is the guild wars 2 game going to be full open world or is it instanced from one zone to the other.
Will everyone be able to log in and just hang out in major cities like we do in org and sw or is it something different?

[Fernling306]

Yes you can hang out in cities just like WoW.
The big thing here is that there are loading screens at the entrances to the cities and between zones/regions. I don't like to call it an "open world", because the world isn't really open, it is persistent, but not open. Going from one zone/region to another you will be herded into the narrow path that is a big swirly portal.
On a super positive note, Anet is great with load times between the portals(like a second or two in the demos even).
The game will be instanced through your personal story, dungeons and structured PvP only.

[omlech]

Fully open world and persistent with instanced dungeons, instanced competitive PvP, and 3 server WvWvW world pvp across 4 maps with 2,000 people at a time.

From what we know you only have to go through a portal to go into a city or inbetween regions. Think of regions like changing continents in WoW, except there will be about 5-6 gigantic zones per region.

[Deleted]

for those of you that have played guild wars or have a better knowledge of guild wars 2, i have a question that i'd like answered.

Is the guild wars 2 game going to be full open world or is it instanced from one zone to the other.
Will everyone be able to log in and just hang out in major cities like we do in org and sw or is it something different?

As above comments said, but please man. Check out the " Sticky: Guild Wars 2 - Mass info for the uninitiated" before you ask something, it becomes way to many new topics with everyone asking new things. Though it's great that you're asking anyway so you aren't missinformed!

[Maarius]

for those of you that have played guild wars or have a better knowledge of guild wars 2, i have a question that i'd like answered.

Is the guild wars 2 game going to be full open world or is it instanced from one zone to the other.
Will everyone be able to log in and just hang out in major cities like we do in org and sw or is it something different?

you might want to look at these:




and more of those here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-friends/page3

[lordbaldric]

Holy crap that looks amazing!

[Deleted]

Yes you can hang out in cities just like WoW.
The big thing here is that there are loading screens at the entrances to the cities and between zones/regions. I don't like to call it an "open world", because the world isn't really open, it is persistent, but not open. Going from one zone/region to another you will be herded into the narrow path that is a big swirly portal.

I think it is a open and persistent world but not seamless like WoW.

[Maarius]

I think it is a open and persistent world but not seamless like WoW.

most of us think it's as seamless as wow, if you don't mention the city portals. WoW had loading times between the continents and even in the zones (ghostlands - eastern plaquelands). The portals we saw could have been only for demopurposes to restrict the people to the demo-zone. We'll have to wait and see.

zones in GW2 are huge

[Borzo]

Yeah, I agree with Cad... I'd call it open and persistent, but not seamless.

That said, load screens are usually put in to reduce lag and improve performance... so I actually prefer to have them than not have them.

[Zeek Daniels]

Basically Guild Wars 2 is an Open instanced world while Guild Wars 1 was a private instanced world. The open world zones wont be small either but you will have to travel through a portal to get to the next zone or even into a city. i dont know how big the zones will feel but watching a few videos lots of people that showed the map never showed the full map or they never even discovered half the map in their play time.

So i expect a epic sized open world map and you will never feel like its just a bunch of small instanced maps will players running through to get to the next map. like some F2P mmo's ive played.

[ponies]

thank you guys for answering my question, i just have a little side question and my mind will be clear,
lets say for example im in the human starting, will i see all the other people on the same server that are in that zone?

[Borzo]

thank you guys for answering my question, i just have a little side question and my mind will be clear,
lets say for example im in the human starting, will i see all the other people on the same server that are in that zone?

Probably. There might be a cap on the number of people you see... but since zones are designed to have 100+ simultaneous players, you'll probably have plenty. I'd say at least 200. Will they instance a new copy of the zone if there's 500 players? I dunno. Their PVP zone is designed for over 600 players... so I'd imagine it could handle quite a few people.

Don't think I've heard anything specific from arena.net though.

[omlech]

If you notice here

Skip to 3:10



In this video he moves from the region of Kryta into the Shiverpeaks region.

He moves from the Human zone into another zone entirely, zero load screens or portals. So this is some proof that you will probably only need to go through a portal to reach other regions (regions are probably ~5-6 gigantic zones). As you could see above in that video Maarius posted, that Human starting area is GIGANTIC and in 45 min they didn't even explore much at all. Now while yeah you'll have to go through a portal to get into cities, it's understandable because I do think ANet have created the largest cities in an MMO to date.



---------- Post added 2012-01-20 at 09:48 AM ----------

thank you guys for answering my question, i just have a little side question and my mind will be clear,
lets say for example im in the human starting, will i see all the other people on the same server that are in that zone?

Yes, because elite content can scale to 100 people and WvWvW can handle over 600 per map, there's no reason to believe they will do any form of instancing or sharding. This is also a reason why they made their cities so big, they'll have areas in the city where you can use the same services that you can in other parts of the city, but this also breaks up the population so that performance stays high due to less congestion in a single area.

[Fernling306]

I think it is a open and persistent world but not seamless like WoW.

According to wiki, it has to be free of artificial barriers, which GW2 is certainly not, to be considered an open world.

[Valeron]

According to wiki, it has to be free of artificial barriers, which GW2 is certainly not, to be considered an open world.

Well then, according to the wiki definition I struggle to think of even one mmo that fits that description.

[omlech]

Well then, according to the wiki definition I struggle to think of even one mmo that fits that description.

Indeed, even UO and EQ have transitions between areas.

[Fernling306]

Well then, according to the wiki definition I struggle to think of even one mmo that fits that description.

It almost feels as if you are being herded into narrow pathways in GW2 just to get to the load screen so you can move on to the next zone.
Also WoW is pretty darn open, especially after flying mounts.

[Deleted]

If you notice here

Skip to 3:10

<snip, video>.

Thanks for showing me this! Awesome to know

[Blznsmri]

Yes you can hang out in cities just like WoW.
The big thing here is that there are loading screens at the entrances to the cities and between zones/regions.

Instances between cities and regions. Each region is made up of several zones (4+). Traveling from zone to zone is a fluid as flying from Durotar to Barrens

[Deleted]

I thought it was 25 zones divided into 4 regions and there are portals between each region.