ArenaNet wants to make sure Guild wars 2 characters won’t run out of things to do for a very long time, it revealed at gamescom.

“We’re looking at having around 1500 events happen, so its going to take people a long time to get through all of them,” lead content designer Colin Johansen told Lazygamer.

“As for variation, we want each quest to be unique, so that’s why you’ll have specific objectives and tools with which to complete them.”

Dynamic events – quests and challenges which occur naturally rather than being introduced by text and set quest givers – in Guild Wars 2 can occur at any time, and while some can be discovered and triggered while exploring, others will take you by surprise.

The MMORPG is also set to feature variable difficulty, but not just by adjusting a few numbers. Depending on the size and strength of your party, you may have to approach quests in entirely different ways.

“It will still be challenging, but players wont be able to cheat their way through in a numbers game,” Johansen said.

“For instance, if you fight the Pirate Queen at her stronghold, with a small party, you’ll face off against her small army of undead skeletons. But if you want to gather a group of hundreds of players, then you’ll need to storm her base from the front, take down her towers and board a ship that has magical cannons that you can fire at her base, before taking on her army.”

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The general difficulty of environments will adjust too, depending on player actions. In the example above, fewer undead pirates will wander the landscape once their leadership has been dispatched.

Guild Wars 2 is expected to go into beta soon. The PC-exclusive MMORPG will utilise the same subscription-free model of its precursor, relying on a one-time purchase rather than micro-transactions. See some simply lovely assets from gamescom here.