Dynamic Event system in Guild Wars 2 detailed

ArenaNet has posted news about the new Dynamic Event system in Guild Wars 2 on the official blog. In the game, players will directly experience and affect the world around them and Lead Content Designer Colin Johanson explains the dynamic event system and how it will change the way players will think about quests and content.

"When building an MMO, we had to examine every core piece of accepted content from traditional games in the genre and ask, "How can this be improved?" By looking at the traditional quest system used in basically every MMO ever made, we've come to the conclusion that quests have a lot of areas for improvement. To address these flaws, we've developed our dynamic event system.

Traditional quest systems involve walking up to a character who usually has an exclamation point or question mark hovering over their head and talking to them. From here, you get a massive wall of text hardly anyone reads that describes a horrible or totally mundane thing going on in the world that you need to help with. You run off, complete this task, then return and talk to this character again to receive another wall of text and a reward. Traditional quest systems rely on these blocks of quest text to tell you what is happening in the world; this is just an outdated form of storytelling."

There are some new screenshots to accompany the news.