Guild Wars 2 level cap confirmed at 80

It's been a huge question for months: What will be the level cap for Guild Wars 2? Eager fans have grabbed onto every piece of information looking for clues over time, and tonight Isaiah "Izzy" Cartwright, Guild Wars 2 game designer, confirmed it: the level cap will be 80.

No, hold on, there's still no grind. Grind in most games with a high level cap comes in because it takes longer to level the higher you go. In Guild Wars 2, this is not an issue, says Izzy: "Instead of taking longer and longer to reach each level, it takes about the same time to go through each level."

In short, it's still all about the content and the journey, and you won't find yourself stuck at level 60, endlessly grinding the same mob to advance. Check out the newest ArenaNet blog post for all the information.

Reader Comments (49)

Hehe, or, I would translate the chart this way, if it takes killing 100 level 10 mobs to get from level 10-11, then it should take killing 100 level 79 mobs to get from level 79-80. But I'm thinking this corrolation would start after a certain point. I'm sure you wouldn't need to kill 100 mobs to go from 1-2. :)

I'm sure the level structure is the same as most other games, but in level-appropriate areas, mobs and quests will probably drop a LOT more experience to make the time difference more equivalent.

You are ignoring a large part of how XP is obtained i.e. Quests. A large chunk of XP is almost always obtained by doing quests. I am not judging anything at the moment from the level cap mention cause I dont know how consequential it will be. Leveling up in the original GW gave you attribute points which you shifted around to affect your gameplay wildly. I understand that there is more than one factor which affects your skills this time around so leveling up is actually less important than original GW. However, quantitatively how it all comes together is something we have to see and atm I believe even ArenaNet does not know as they are still balancing things out.

The graph is pointless because the very definition of "level" can be molded differently across games. Consider Wow, Aeon, Mabinogi, and GW1. As what already has been said, the important things is to balance the enjoyment of endgame with the enjoyment of getting to the end game. I personally believe MMO should not be about racing to end game and only then the "real fun" begins.

If you strip the process of leveling down to its bones the thing that it does is give the game designer the ability (in a broad way) to control what content the player does first and last. They don't want you solving the problem with the pesky dragon on day one. But how do they stop you, they make the dragon level 80 so if you want to deal with the dragon you have to go through the process of becoming level 80 too.

I like the idea of flatting out the leveling curve but I wonder what that means in terms of content. Usually there is more high level content then there is low level content because you spend a lot less time being low level. In GW2 if you don't spend more time being high level (and I don't mean level capped being level capped has it's own set of issues) does it follow that there is less content for those levels?

It should be interesting to see how it all plays out. I didn't really like GW1 that much but GW2 has peeked my interest.

ANet solves this problem by your having to work your way through the personal storyline, which will take you to the dragon on your epic journey - you won't fight the dragon until you are ready to, whatever your level at that time might be (because the personal storyline scales; although it will probably be well-enough-timed to coincide or follow max level achievment).

As for content, it seems that ANet's plan is to provide this with their world dynamic events, which are continously going on, and which can be accessed even in lower-level areas by "sidekicking" higher-leveled characters to a lower level so as not to steamroll the events. Not to mention that every personal storyline will be different in some way, so as to incentivise rolling alts.

I kind of already said this in a previous post, but no one seems to have paid me any heed... Just because you are level 80 does not mean earlier content is obsolete due to the cap on attribute and stat gain at a certain level... This also means that a lower level character, should S/He group up with friends or be very good at the game, should be able to play in higher level zones as well. So, in a way, it won't really be "Okay I'm level 40, now I have to go to zone X or Y and level to 50 so I can get to zone Z." I'd guess that most people would be able to level in a zone within 15 or so levels in either direction so it takes a lot longer to "outgrow" a zone and it makes less zones obsolete.

There's also the "sidekick" system which has been mentioned a few times, so when one DOES go to a much lower level zone they are downgraded in power, much in the way they do it in Everquest II. Where you still have access to your skills and are more powerful than people who are actually the level to which you have been downgraded to, but still not powerful enough to completely blast through all content.

this is good news to me! GW1's level cap killed all the fun for me because it was so apparent that the content for higher levels was there but players were getting capped early.

you just validated my statement. players stop leveling but the enemies don't.

yeah, I had lots of fun tip toeing around level 37 mundane enemies. after all, the game was primarily was centered around stealth.

there was nothing to do past level 20 outside of get killed, run, and grind for materials so you could craft your e-peen (err I mean "epic") gear.

I hate the idea of a higher level cap. Arguably the biggest thing that set GW1 apart from the grinder garbage mmo's out there was that you hit max level in a weekend, then spent all the rest of the time running in content designed for max level. This allowed guild wars to have 80% of the world be designed for the max level players.(which meant that you had nearly endless epic adventures for your hero to run through once he got "out of training", so to speak.) With a lvl 80 cap, they will have to waste far more precious world space that could be used for max-level-content, on leveling areas instead, screwing the world ratio into a more wow-like setup where there is only a fraction of the world designed for max-lvl content. Which then snowballs into all of your max-level experience being being trapped inside the little max lvl playpen at the end of the leveling world. You cant have much in the playpen without getting into monotonous drudgery, when you waste all your world space like that.

Guild Wars 2 level cap confirmed at 80

Reader Comments (49)

Posted: Jul 30th 2010 9:47AM Ocho said

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