Guild Wars developer ArenaNet has explained it's not its intention to chase after World of Warcraft, or indeed other games in the genre, with its sequel Guild Wars 2.

Speaking to us in a recent interview, ArenaNet founder Jeff Strain described Guild Wars 2 as "a very different kind of game to World of Warcraft," saying that it's not the developer's goal to offer things above and beyond the Blizzard behemoth - rather, it's about delivering an experience unique in the MMOG space.

"We're pursuing a design mechanic that's unique to the Guild Wars franchise," Strain said. "It's certainly not our intention to go and chase after any other MMO on the market. We think that those players that enjoy those kinds of games are probably going to enjoy World of Warcraft and we think that Guild Wars will continue to be a unique experience. So it'll stand up on its own and have it's own set of features and own design direction," he added.

In the interview, he also cleared up any confusion surrounding the inclusion of Guild Wars' instance dynamic in the sequel.

"...it's one of the most powerful features of Guild Wars 1 and one of the features we think really makes it stand out. So that will still be a core foundation of Guild Wars 2," Strain told us. But we want to use the addition of persistent world to also explore other types of gameplay... it's absolutely not the case that we're dropping instancing technology, we'll continue to carry that forward because we think it's one of the foundational pillars of Guild Wars."

April 3, 2007