Ah yes, more sprinkles of Guild Wars 2 news

Our friend Ravious at Kill Ten Rats is at it again with some pretty impressive detective work on the current state of Guild Wars 2. To be fair, Ravious is simply gathering the info he finds on the various Guild Wars forums from others who are doing the actual detective work, but it still makes our jobs a whole lot easier. Some of this was already known, some of it is new, but it's all interesting.

In his most recent GW2 post, we get word of a forum member named 4thVariety who has been following the trademark licensing and domain registration habits of ArenaNet's trademark lawyer, Mr. Peter J. Willsey. When GW2 was first announced, Mr. Willsey trademarked BlightedEmpires.com, and has since renewed the domain on March 12th of this year. Speculation, of course, centers around the fact that this may or may not be the name of the highly successful game's sequel.
In addition, some other Guild Wars Guru forum members have been following certain voice actors while they boldly discuss voicing characters for Guild Wars 2. This list of voice actors includes none other than the infamous Gregg Berger, who has an impressively-long resume of work including the 80s cartoons Transformers (as Grimlock) and G.I. Joe (as Spirit). He is no stranger to Guild Wars though, as he did a bit of voice work on GW: Factions himself.

There's also Scott McShane, whose LinkedIn profile shows his recent work to include "Kadatta, Harathi Centaur - Guild Wars 2". We already knew about the involvement of the Centaurs in Guild Wars 2, considering Ventari's importance in the storyline, but this is just that tiniest squeeze of information that gets us more excited for what's to come.

Also, as Ravious points out, voice acting in an MMO is not exactly an early stage of development. "For a poor benchmark, Warhammer Online released a video podcast on adding voice acting in March, 2008. Warhammer Online was released September, 2008." Yet he goes on to point out the flipside of that coin, "On the other hand, The Old Republic has started voice acting for their fully voice acted epic, which may be as far off as November 2010, or farther."

While these tidbits are small, it's still all we really have to go on a game that was announced several years ago with no real official information since then. While many former GW fans speculate on the fact that GW2 may or may not see the light of day, it's good to see some real evidence of its continued development.

And possibly a name?

Reader Comments (15)

What scares me about this game as I am a huge fan of the series is that if it releases in early 2010 then its going up against KOTOR & then later on Star Trek. Now, I understand that both of those games are Sci-Fi MMOs but both are big brand titles and will undoubtedly get more publicity.
I know they will have my pre-order money on their Collector's Edition but they will be competing for my playing time with those games esp. KOTOR which I like more and more.

I want Guild Wars 2 more than any other game in the next few years - and that's saying a lot considering we have Diablo, Starcraft, KOTOR, FFXIV, etc. all coming up in the next couple of years.

Seems like I always go running back to GW after spending a couple of months with my other MMOs. And whenever I stop playing it's due to a lack of free time, not because I get tired of it.

Good to see some mention of GW2 at least... I want screenshots!

I'm with you on this. I always find myself back in GW after a few months of trying another game. I hope the same is true for GW2. I'm glad to see some tidbits coming out. Gives me hope.

Cool to hear about GW2.

By the way, the first sentence, "Our friend Ravious at Kill Ten Rats is at it again with some pretty impressive detective work"

Just wondering Massively, why aren't you guys doing more detective work? I come here every day, but it seems lately news stories posted here are just passing along information that has already existed on another site for a few days. There are the few cool writers who create original columns - but where is the news??

Where is the Massively scoop? The articles posted because you guys did impressive detective work?

I'm waiting for GW2 too but I'm also waiting/following/hoping for Copernicus + The Old Republic...2010 will be somekind of crowded :-(

Just to update. It seems that further sleuthing has uncovered that the Blighted Empires trademark was abandoned. Still, the voice acting is much more interesting. :)

dear god! speculation speculation speculation! cant yo uget your guys to call their guys and get us a damned exclusive? this IS the biggest MMO news site on the web as far as i know, im sure NC could at least throw you a mouldy half eaten bone!

PLEASE! I IS DESPERATE!

I often remind myself that Massively is just a blog site. And like most blog sites, it is just people at home who read something on the web and either post it exactly, paraphrase the content and post it, or write their opinion about the content and post it.

There is a difference between blogging and news reporting. I know it says "Daily News about MMOs" at on top, but that is not used to mean this is a true news site. I wish it was, I soooo want exclusives and real interviews.

But, assuming that AOL is getting the money here and they are paying their bloggers very little, if any, and the bloggers likely have other jobs to go to every day - then I would say Massively does a great job. When I remind myself that these guys are just bloggers, not reporters, you can't expect much more.

Now, if anyone wants to point me to a site that does true reporting on MMOs. You know, sends their staff to actual game HQs on a regular basis to find the real news. Like if I were editor for a news site like that, I would have sent a person to NetDevil the day I heard Jumpgate was delayed without a new release date to interview someone in person. When Cryptic announced microtransactions on top of subscriptions, I would have also sent a person to their offices, in person, to ask for more details. There is always something about a reporter who camps out at your office, wining and dining the staff, in order to get the real good that is so different from just writing about something that someone already wrote about elsewhere.

Brian's MMO News. Hey, I like the sound of that. Let me know how that money-making machine works out for you too.

*twiddles thumbs*

Sucks that GW is a sinking ship. I guess my entire guild and I are just waiting to jump ship ... and swim over to GW2.

I would pay a small sub if GW2 goes live sooner rather than later.

I wouldn't! That was part of the reason I loved GW - pay once, play as much as you like!

Personally, I too wouldn't mind a small sub for GW2. One of the reasons Guild Wars failed from a PvE standpoint is that it was built as a PvP game and therefore started out with a PvP business model. The pay once, play forever model for GW was created with the though that most players would eventually transition to PvP and they would not have to add PvE content that often, if ever. That, as we know, didn't play out as Anet had planned it, and they decided to start releasing new campaigns twice a year, which was destined to fall apart (like it did) and the money you spent on buying new expansions was hardly any less than a subscription. With its current direction, GW2 would benefit well from a small sub. A sub would keep the servers from sucking less, and give the developers more resources to create and properly test new content (something that didn't really happen in GW, see Nightfall). Some people have speculated that GW2 might go with an item shop system, similar to the things Anet has added to GW recently, but a sub would be more consistent flow of money, and the chances that an item shop might unbalance the game (even in the smallest of ways) would not bode well with the few competitive PvPers GW has left.

Blighted Empires was the name of the NCsoft MMO that was going to come out after Tabula Rasa. Scott Jennings aka Lum was the lead dev on the project at one point, I believe.

Internal testing didn't go well and, in the post-TR wash-up, the title was abandoned.

http://brokentoys.org/2009/01/16/perspectives/

mr fancy pants blog .org?

Ah yes, more sprinkles of Guild Wars 2 news

Reader Comments (15)

Posted: Jul 23rd 2009 11:21AM arnavdesai said

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