Allakhazam scored a long and funny interview with ArenaNet's Creative Director Daniel Dociu, who talked about Guild Wars, the future look of MMOs, his role in Valve's Half-Life 2, while dodging all Guild Wars 2 questions:

Tamat: Let's talk more about some of the work that you did on Guild Wars. What were your main focuses on the project and what would you say some of your biggest achievements were?

Daniel: A big part, the central focus or contribution to the game, was building a team and building an art culture that is based on a solid foundation and traditional art skills that are based on values that I believe in as far as fashion and healthy work ethics. We built this art team from a handful of people to somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty people now. They have been more or less hand picked from the best talent pool that the industry had to offer. It's a team that I'm personally proud of and very protective of and that's what I would consider that my main contribution to the game. Of course, on a day to day basis I work in a traditional art direction which is very hands on. I do a lot of concept art myself as well as running around and overseeing the implementation of the vision into the game.

Tamat: Now, from an artistic standpoint, what do you think sets the Guild Wars universe apart from other MMOs? What gives it its individual character?

Daniel: It's our goal to have Guild Wars stand out artistically, primarily through the hand crafted qualities that we want the game to have. We want to make sure that we're not going the route of photo realism which most of the other developers are pursuing. We'd much rather go our own way and adopt an art direction that is style centric and based on traditional artistic values and that carries through certain hand crafted qualities. So the craftsmanship and the passion for detail, richness, textures and the memorable visuals are what we're striving for.

Tamat: So is it safe to say that you're going for the same kind of thing with newer projects that you're working on? As you said, a lot of the games go for photo realism where the consumer's hardware is barely able to run the game smoothly. Would you say that you're going to be pursuing something that continues with the art focus that you had in the original Guild Wars?

Daniel: *laughs * Now that was very clever! Of course we're sticking to our guns and we'll be continuing the same quality and artistic integrity that we did with the first game and trying to build upon that to hopefully bring it to the next level. I don't think we're giving away much of a secret here by stating our ambition to deliver visually powerful and high quality games.

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