Guild Wars 2

This is not a discussion of whether duelling should be added to the game. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how it ended up.

There’s a number of places in the PvE maps where NPCs are duelling or sparring. The best known is probably The Bane in the Black Citadel but there’s also the Butcher’s Yard in Diessa Plateau, Edenvar’s Homestead (which actually features in a norn personal story arc as a brawl location, Vollym’s Battle Pit and others I’m sure I’ve come across. And of course the novel Edge of Destiny features an arena in LA, although that never made it into the game.

The dialogue from the NPCs, especially at the Butcher’s Yard has often given me the impression that these were intended to be places players as well as NPCs could come to spar, either in the open-world or in an instanced version. (A bit like the old PvP arenas that were dotted around the world in GW1.)

But then I never saw anything like this mentioned during development, so I don’t know if I’m just misinterpreting it.

Yeah I dunno about that, I don’t think that was ever in their design philosophy. The sparring NPC’s are surely just for ambiance, although I’d be curious to see which dialogue you are referring to.

As someone who followed the game since it was first announce, I’ve never heard Anet say anything about it. Consider the setting for a second – of course there will be arenas. It doesn’t mean that they were intended for us.

Annoyingly it’s not on the wiki. There’s an NPC at the Butcher’s Yard who gives you a lot of detail on how combat there works, the limitations and the types of rules that are typically applied to fights.

I don’t remember the exact wording but it’s a lot more than I’d expect for simple flavour text and exactly the sort of thing I’d expect as an in-character introduction to an activity players can participate in.

The only quote I could find about dueling was this one: http://www.junkiesnation.com/2012/06/07/reddit-ama-distilled-developer-chat-all-of-your-questions-answered/

Re: “Can we, or are you planning on implementing – a way for players to duel each other?”

“We intend to have dueling post release, but when will depend on how demanded it is and how easy it is for us to get it into the game. ECHO!
Jon P”
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Maybe the places like the Bane were made as possible place holders if they got PvE dueling set up.

I’m pretty sure I read something awhile back that they want to add dueling into the game, but it wasn’t close to a priority.