Guild Wars Updated Impressions - More Content and Pets

ArenaNet and NCsoft show off what's new in their upcoming online action role-playing game.

Guild Wars is "definitely in the home run stretch," ArenaNet cofounder Jeff Strain told us at a recent press event. The online action role-playing game has been in development for several years, but Guild Wars is finally nearing completion, though it's still at least a few months away. We had a chance to get an updated look at Guild Wars to check out many of the new features that have been added since we last saw it.

We were shown the latest version of the game, and ArenaNet mustered a number of its European beta testers to help show off some of the latest player-versus-player and player-versus-environment gameplay online. In ArenaNet, your character will adventure with others as you explore the world and pursue a wide variety of quests against monsters and other computer-generated enemies, as well as engage in player-versus-player group combat in the arena.

At this point, ArenaNet is polishing Guild Wars, generating final content to flesh out the world a bit more and balancing the approximately 400 skills that will ship with the game. As a result, the world looks more lush and organic than it previously did, and it's still hard to believe that practically the entire game streams to your hard drive over the Internet. Some of the new content will allow you to customize your character's appearance even further, as there are new faces, hairstyles, items, and weapons being added to the game.

We also got to see some of the game's "pet" companions in action. Ranger class characters can learn the charm animal skill, and each geographic region of the game has three ambient types of creatures that you can use the skill on. You can only have one pet at a time in the game, but that pet becomes something of a life companion, and it will assist you in battles. The pet will also gain experience levels with you, so it becomes a more useful and valuable companion. ArenaNet is still experimenting with the pet parameters, but a recent concession made due to beta tester complaints is that if a pet dies, death is no longer permanent. You can now resurrect the pet, or, if you don't have that ability, you can travel to a town or outpost and it will be resurrected automatically.

The combat and group dynamics look sharp, but ArenaNet plans to keep on polishing for a while. The "E3 for Everyone" event that the developer held in May drew more than 200,000 users to try the early version of the game for free, according to Strain, and the company hopes to attract more than a million users to an upcoming October event in which it will open the game to the public for three days. Immediately after that event, ArenaNet will launch the beta test of the game, and it sounds like it will last for at least a couple of months. At that rate, don't expect to see Guild Wars' official "launch" until next year, but it looks like all the polishing will be worth it.