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Well in Guild Wars the game was very story-directed, the world was there to support the story. This gave us the really cool ability to tell a story in a way no other MMO could, by having the instanced world really change in response to it, and that's something we definitely want to keep in Guild Wars 2.

But in Guild Wars we had players who got on a track where the whole purpose of moving forward was to complete the story, and a lot of times the world ended up feeling less like a world and more like a backdrop as players raced as fast as they could through the story.

We want to make Guild Wars 2 feel like you can really have a lot of free-form exploration and discover a lot of things off of the beaten path; really direct your own experience - just hanging out and having fun in the world in addition to following your way through the story.

There will also be no more paving barriers you can't get across. We really want players to explore the world and discover really interesting story elements to immerse themselves in. To discover things at their own pace before moving on to explore another area.

That was obviously one of the very strong things in Guild Wars, our henchmen and later our heroes. But one of the side effects we've seen with that is, because of the way those characters worked, in some ways it discouraged you from grouping with other players.

So one of the things we're planning on doing is developing a companion system, where every character of every class has - if they want it - a companion they can develop, much like our Heroes. However, these companions don't take up a party slot, they're assumed to be a part of your character. These will allow you to potentially fill in weaknesses that your character may have.

For example, you might have a character who's a mage-type that doesn't have a lot of armour and doesn't want people to get up and really smack him. So he might take the companion that's a very heavily armoured "tank" character, which will allow him to more effectively solo. But it will still allow the mage to feel like he's got that vulnerable low armour thing going on at the same time.

We're also going to offer some sort of buff for players who prefer not to deal with companions, which will make up for the loss of power in not having a companion with them.

Right now we've got five races announced, and we're not saying exactly how many, but that's not the total amount that we'll have, we're going to have more in the future.

We want races to really have a pretty big impact on the way characters play. For example, the Norns, who are the big, burly, half-giant Viking guys from up in the North, all have the ability to shape-shift into a were-bear form; giving them more health and making them stronger, that sort of thing.

So a Norn warrior is going to have this were-bear ability, while a Human warrior will have a completely different ability just as significant - though we're still throwing around exactly what it will be.

So people who like playing as warriors are going to get a lot of variety out of choosing whether they want to be a Norn, an Asura, or Human warrior - as those are all going to feel very different.

Yes. Our current plan is to include the primary and secondary professions that we had in the first game.

We're still looking at various systems as far as how many classes we're going to have, which ones we keep around from the old game and how many new ones we want. So we're still trying to work out the particulars, but I think it's pretty safe to say we'll have the primary and secondary professions.

We're definitely looking at all those things, but we haven't announced any of that yet.

You can expect that Guild Wars 2 is going to be an art-style that people love from the first game, but with very upgraded graphical abilities. We are rewriting portions of the engine in order to provide much greater detail in Guild Wars 2 than you saw in Guild Wars.

We are focused on PCs right now. I think consoles remain an interesting opportunity for Guild Wars in the future, but that's not something we've announced any plans for at this time.

Obviously it stands out by having no monthly fees. But beyond that I think Guild Wars is a different kind of game that appeals to some people those other games don't.

We really focus a lot in Guild Wars about just being able to get the player right into the action. A lot of the people who get turned off by the more traditional MMOs really enjoy the fact in Guild Wars that if you have just half an hour at lunch time to sit down and play a game, you can actually really accomplish something, and that's not always the case in other games.

And I think finally, Guild Wars really shines from its competitive aspect, which I think isn't something you see in other games. We have tournaments regularly where people come and they win US$ 100,000 in cash prizes. In what other role-playing game do you see people actually playing the game competitively as a sport?

The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us. We're blown away by the success of the first game. We were three guys with an idea and now we're a 130 person company supporting one of the biggest online role-playing games in the market.

We're certainly not going to turn our back on the business model that got us here. It was really refreshing for players and carved out a niche in the market that is completely unsatisfied by any other games. I think you'll see us do a lot of similar things with Guild Wars 2.

You've seen that with Eye of the North we're focusing on expansion instead of a campaign. The difference being that an expansion really focusses on making the best possible content for the existing player base, instead of making something to get a lot of new players in to the game.

Expansions are really an exciting tweaking direction for us, so that we don't have to keep reinventing the tutorials, low-level content, and new professions to get people into the game. I think what players of Guild Wars really want is to take their existing character that they've worked so hard on and love, and to have lots of new things to do with them.

So Eye of the North will be much more targeted toward our existing fan base and what those people want.

Whether that means Guild Wars 2 will have expansions, or the same kind of release cycle as Guild Wars, or mini-expansions on a more frequent cycle - I don't know the exact answer. But I think we have time here to really find out what works best for the game and for the community.

But the fundamental business model is not going to change. You buy the game once, you can play it for as long as you want. And the new content we introduce in the future you can choose to buy or not to buy.

I view us as the company that puts our money where our mouth is. We think that we'll produce such compelling content and such compelling expansion packs that players will want to buy them, but we won't force them to. If players are happy with what they have, then they can just keep playing the game in that way for as long as they like. That's been a great strength with Guild Wars, and of course we're going to carry that through into Guild Wars 2.