Guild Wars 2

Druid certainly is. Will the others reflect some aspect of Maguuma?

Well since we’re all developers in this subforum…

Druid certainly is, as you said. They basically even said as much when they introduced it, saying something along the lines of “the jungle has a rich Druidic history”. But the others we’ve seen so far are Engineer with a hammer and little hovering drones and Mesmer with a shield and what appears to be time based abilities (at least the ability itself creates a clock). And neither of those seem to have anything to do with anything we’ve seen of the expansion. We’ve also heard about Necromancers getting Greatsword, but beyond that and Marjory we haven’t seen or heard much about that, so guesses as to what the theme of that weapon would even be aren’t even really possible.

Its still completely possible they’ll all tie in and we just haven’t seen anything of the tie-in yet. I suppose maybe the Mursaat could be related to the time magic and maybe there’s some crazy inventor in the jungle that’s going to teach us to make drones, who knows. I do hope that the process of learning specializations has some sort of story behind it and we don’t just do some random skill challenge and suddenly specialization out of nowhere.

But its also possible that they chose Druid specifically because it tied in to the theme of Heart of Thorns, and the rest won’t do so.

It’s impossible to say yet since Druid is the only one officially announced, but I’d certainly bet that the Specializations will all be themed to something currently relevant to the story, even if it isn’t Maguuma Jungle specifically. Also note that the popular Mesmer guess, Chronomancer, was originally going to be a profession in a GW1 campaign set in the same part of the world, so a lore connection is more than likely.

It makes sense if you think about it. The GW2 classes are all a lot more archetypal than their equivalents in GW1. If Specializations are themed, then it will be a great way to give us something that really makes us feel immersed in the current expansion’s region without having to justify whole new classes every time like in GW1.

I don’t think it will neccessarily be maguuma-themed. Of course it has to be somehow related to the expansion, as to why we suddenly unlock those specializations.
The rumored mesmer-chronomancer may rely on old knowledge from the Mursaat(or what the glowy allies in the trailer might be).
Maybe the warrior will be trained by a white mantle greatmaster, full of knowledge that only survived in the bandit-strongholds we now conquer in the Silverwastes.
The Revenants spec is most likely half mists half ancient knowledge, I’d guess.
In the end we can only speculate so far.

I don’t know. Is Chronomancer Meguuma themed?

It most certainly is

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_Utopia

We’re guessing you’re wondering what we’re wondering: Why mess with success? It’s not as though Guild Wars isn’t a financial triumph, despite its unusual business model (it’s the only major MMO without a monthly subscription fee). It’s hardly lacking in depth (more than 1,000 skills support 10 professions, and each character has a primary and secondary profession); aesthetic appeal (lush settings recall African savannahs, ancient Asian temples, and posh Arabian castles, among other gorgeous environs); or ways for players to spend their time (ArenaNet says a “shockingly large” number of GW players have logged more than 2,000 hours of playtime). And, given that the development team has aimed to release a new campaign every six months or so (despite missing that deadline by six months for the second campaign), one might assume that every Guild Wars designer’s wildest ideas have found a home somewhere between the lands of Tyria and Elona.
But, in fact, the restrictions of the every-six-months model meant the team found itself perpetually wistful over what didn’t make it into the game.
“We sat down to discuss what was going to go into Campaign 4 and realized we couldn’t do all the things we wanted,” says Game Designer Eric Flannum. “Why? Partly because we’d need more time [than six months], and partly because some ideas wouldn’t work well with things we’d done before.”
At that point, there were still no plans to fix a system that didn’t seem broken. But ArenaNet Co-Founder Jeff Strain decided to let everyone “freestyle a little bit,” he says. “And the more we talked, the more excited we got about what we could be doing.”
What the team felt it couldn’t do was implement its exciting new ideas in the game’s current campaign-every-six-months plan. While the promise of fresh standalone content twice a year sounds great to players, its requirements have actually caused Guild Wars to become somewhat convoluted from a game-design perspective.
“With each new campaign, we’ve been trying to introduce brand-new mechanics that change how the game plays. That’s led to the need for larger and larger tutorials to explain the new mechanics, and it’s made each campaign’s beginning experience much more bloated,” explains Flannum. “And since every new campaign was aiming to bring in new players—thus requiring bigger and bigger tutorials—plus aiming to give stuff to older players, the list of skills just kept growing.” Each campaign that’s been added to the Guild Wars world—three in total—has added another layer of design that, in the name of making things easier for new players, has actually ended up creating barriers to entry as they try to sort through multiple training areas, increasingly intricate tutorials, and an ever-ballooning list of skills.
“We’re battling against complexity,” Strain adds. “We don’t want to make complicated games. We want to make fun, easy-to-grasp games that are easy to get into and not frontloaded with complexity.”
As the team considered its situation – how to uncomplicate the current campaign model and add new, cool features without making the game any more Byzantine – what began as a brainstorm about Campaign 4 evolved into the blueprint for a completely new game.
“We kept changing the scope of what we were doing, until it became Guild Wars 2,” Flannum says with a shrug and a smile.
ArenaNet’s abrupt about-face is a shock, but not necessarily an unpleasant one. When a dev team with a track record of doing great stuff announces it wants to focus on doing more great stuff, there’s little to complain about-except that Guild Wars 2 won’t be coming out in six months, or even six months after that. (More like two years, says ArenaNet—expect a beta sometime in 2008.)

Some might be? But not all I believe. At least for Necromancer.

Necromancer using Greatsword is an art that is currently developed at least by Marjory. So I am sure there will be lore background, but not all Maguuma-themed.

Geomancer for Elementalists, perhaps. Learned from the Maguuma centaurs.

I’m going to guess no. Being specialized, only in the Deep Jungle, wouldn’t make any sense as far as progression. If you can complete new masteries in the core game, you should also be able to progress specialization in the core game.

That’s like saying a priest is only a priest in the church, but at night he roams the streets as a superhero hooker.

While charming, it wouldn’t go over well either. And I sincerely hope specialization of any class isn’t restricted to the jungle.

That would be just stupid.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I’m going to guess no. Being specialized, only in the Deep Jungle, wouldn’t make any sense as far as progression. If you can complete new masteries in the core game, you should also be able to progress specialization in the core game.

That’s like saying a priest is only a priest in the church, but at night he roams the streets as a superhero hooker.

While charming, it wouldn’t go over well either. And I sincerely hope specialization of any class isn’t restricted to the jungle.

That would be just stupid.

That’s not what this thread is about. A druid will still use druid skills outside of the jungle, but they will all start there. However, a mesmer may learn new illusion skills based on the flora or fauna of the area. A necromancer might be able to summon undead plants as new minions (which would be a little strange). That’s what the question asked is.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I’m going to guess no. Being specialized, only in the Deep Jungle, wouldn’t make any sense as far as progression. If you can complete new masteries in the core game, you should also be able to progress specialization in the core game.

That’s like saying a priest is only a priest in the church, but at night he roams the streets as a superhero hooker.

While charming, it wouldn’t go over well either. And I sincerely hope specialization of any class isn’t restricted to the jungle.

That would be just stupid.

Themed, bro. Themed.

Oh. My bad. In that case, probably. But do you consider the new class jungle-themed? Maybe, maybe not.

Hope not.

The new profession is Mists themed. So nope, no jungle there.

ErickDntn.1847:

Some might be? But not all I believe. At least for Necromancer.

Necromancer using Greatsword is an art that is currently developed at least by Marjory. So I am sure there will be lore background, but not all Maguuma-themed.

Don’t forget Trahern

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

ErickDntn.1847:

Some might be? But not all I believe. At least for Necromancer.

Necromancer using Greatsword is an art that is currently developed at least by Marjory. So I am sure there will be lore background, but not all Maguuma-themed.

Don’t forget Trahern

Oh yeah. Had not thought of that.