Pro Lessons for Guild Wars 2. Pro Gamer Training and Coaching

Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG under development by the Bellevue, Washington-based ArenaNet studio, a subsidiary of NCSoft corporation. Announced in late March 2007, it is the sequel to the original Guild Wars series and will continue the original Guild Wars tradition of no subscription fees. No release dates have been announced. A public beta test announced for late 2008 did not go ahead and will be rescheduled closer to the game's release.

Players of the current Guild Wars campaigns and the expansion will be allowed to "port" achievements obtained in the original series into Guild Wars 2 via the Hall of Monuments location in the Eye of the North expansion which will also be present in Guild Wars 2. Player character names will be reserved from the original series for their owners to use in Guild Wars 2; however, the characters themselves will not be transferable from the original series.

Guild Wars 2 will offer four new playable races in addition to the humans from Guild Wars 1: the Charr, sentient bipedal cat-like creatures originally introduced in the Prophecies campaign; the Norn, tall solitary humanoids who excel in armed combat introduced in the Eye of the North expansion; the Asura, short bipedal creatures with high intelligence and advanced mastery of magic also introduced in Eye of the North; and the Sylvari, hive-minded creatures born from a magical plant that share a common Dream of Dreams.

Guild Wars 2 will change a number of gameplay elements of the original series. Early interviews revealed that Guild Wars 2 will have a much higher maximum character level than 20, the maximum level of player characters in the original series. One of the major developer concerns is "to avoid forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap." To accomplish this Guild Wars 2 to will give players "a strong sidekicking system, similar to that used in City of Heroes"; that is, high-level characters will be able to transfer their powers to lower-level friendly characters in the same party.

Guild Wars 2 will feature a global persistent game-world instead of the instanced zones of Guild Wars 1, although several aspects of the game, including its main plotline, will use instances. The players' choices will impact the world as a whole, triggering or disabling quests based on their in-game actions and those of their fellow players. In-game events will allow player characters of different levels to interact continually in the persistent game-world. An NPC companion system will be implemented to help keep the game solo friendly, but characters will be proportionally rewarded if they choose not to use this system.

Player versus player (PvP) combat will also change significantly from the original series. The popular guild vs. guild matches from the original series will continue to be available, but Guild Wars 2 will introduce large scale world vs. world matches in the in-game setting called the Mists. Players will be able to join this world-wide PvP battle in a variety of roles, with rewards commensurate with their success. In a stark departure from the original series, there will be no separation between role-playing and PvP characters in Guild Wars 2; instead, competitive skills and equipment will be freely available in the PvP areas and all characters will have the same power level there.