If youâve been playing Guild Wars 2 at all, then youâve probably seen people talking about jumping. Dancing is cool too, and actually, standing in one place is pretty neat as well, but the thing people love to do most is jump.
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âSo, that just came, when we were sitting down going, âOkay, what are we going to do for Guild Wars 2âŠ. well, jumping.â Cartwright laughed. âIt was probably the number one thing that people brought up from Guild Wars 1: âYeah, itâs great⊠you canât jump.â Everyone just kind of knew that about the game, so itâs a big thing for us.â
One of the most unexpected but enjoyable elements of Guild Wars 2 is the fact that there are actually jumping puzzles in the game. The MMO stops being about casting spells and blasting monsters and becomes something of a platformer. I asked Cartwright how that evolvedâwas it a sort of winking joke? You know: âOh, so you wanted jumping? Well here, have some platforming sections!â
âNo,â Cartwright said, though he seemed to enjoy the idea of punitive platforming. âThat actually kind of just came about as the map artists were playing around, saying âHereâs a fun little jumping puzzle,â and then weâd think⊠letâs put a reward at the end of that! That looks fun! Once the map artists started doing one or the other, they [started saying]. âCheck out my puzzle,â and they started competing, and then we had a billion of them.â
âItâs sort of this joy of movement. Itâs fun to move around,â Cartwright said. Thatâs why he and the team decided to make it possible to perform actions while jumping and rolling around. âWe were like, âOkay, if itâs this fun to move around, why do you have to stop to use skills? Why is combat not more fun?'â
Cartwright said he understands why not all games allow you to move and jump while performing actions. âItâs a lot of work; there are a lot of aspects to it. Figuring out how to make the animations move around between each other, and all that kind of stuff, but in the end, when you succeed at it, itâs hard to go back. And I think that the reason jumping was such a big thing is that people play games with jumping, and itâs hard to play a game without jumping [after that]. The more fun, interesting movement we have in the game, the more fun and interesting it is.â
Cartwright and I talked about a range of different topics; check back for more from our interview soon.
