Bring Out Your Dead

Gaile posted a developer update today outlining how they’re going to make Razah easier to obtain. Briefly, they’re going to be removing the gem requirements, and offering a quest to get a gem refund for those people who have already completed the existing quest.

Jeff talks a bit more about GW:EN and GW2 – how they decided to do GW2, a bit more about how the persistent features of GW2 might work with a couple of examples, and some about how GW:EN connects GW to GW2:

Jeff Strain Interview

They also have some screenshots and concept art from GW:EN at the bottom of the interview.

The promised information on Hard Mode finally got posted to the fansites this morning:

Gaile’s Hard Mode post on GW Guru

I’m really happy to see they went with revamped and improved skillbars and AI instead of making it a DoA style environmental effect and massive damage fest.

The May issue of PC Gamer also arrived in at least a few subscriber’s mailboxes today:

PC Gamer summary on GW Guru

The article confirmed that pretty much all of the information from the Inquirer article from a couple of weeks ago was true. The next release is indeed going to be an expansion, with all level-20 content and no new classes, and is going to be the last of the Guild Wars line, followed by a stream of smaller free updates. Beta testing for Guild Wars 2 is scheduled to start next year.

Characters won’t directly transfer between the games, but there will be a Hall of Monuments in Guild Wars 2 where the Guild Wars characters will be memorialized. In addition, it sounds like you will be able to have a mini-pet version of your Guild Wars characters for your characters in Guild Wars 2.