World of Guildcraft 2

I don't know what to make of the facts that are dripping out of the gamescom footage from Guild Wars 2. First there was the "damage in the thousands" silliness. Then today I learn via Ravious of some more bizarre design decisions.

Example the first: "using a skill will no longer automatically put the character in range of the enemy. Instead the spell will cast as normal, fly towards the enemy as normal, and then fall short. As it falls short it then tells the player “out of range.”

I don't know what the rationale for this is. Yes it's more "realistic". It also sounds like a pain in the arse and a good way to completely waste mana/cooldowns.

Speaking of which: Elite skills apparently have a recharge time of 720 seconds. You may recall me harping on about how revolutionary the short cooldowns of Guild Wars are a while ago. Now they're doing a 180 on this as though their initial success was just a coincidence.

Could it be that ArenaNet are not the game design prodigees I've been talking them up to be? Or maybe the people who made the smart decisions on the first game aren't with the company anymore? Or has ArenaNet been infiltrated by the Zerg mastermind that rules over Blizzard? Tune in next time for answers to these and other questions readers, same fail time, same fail channel...