Guild Wars 2 Preview

PC Gamer has slapped up a hands-on preview of Guild Wars 2, the contents of which continue to reassure me that the subscription-free MMORPG sequel is going to be one of the biggest releases of 2011.
Unlike the original game where players could cherry-pick skills from a massive pool of options the skills that you have on your bar in GW2 are now determined by your class and the weapons you have equipped.

A warrior who equips a shield will see two tanking skills appear on his bar, for example, and if he equips a mace in his main hand, he'll be given three additional skills to stun and attack his opponents. Each player will have 10 skills on their bar: the first three determined by what's in their main hand, the next two determined by what's in their off hand (a two-handed weapon will determine all five), and the last five skills will be chosen by the player within categories one self-healing skill, three utility skills, and one elite skill, which is very powerful but has a long cooldown.

Weapon restrictions will follow common sense logic Elementalists won't be able to equip shields (although Flannum told me that he ran a five-man group filled with Elementalists that fared pretty well in dungeons, such as the two revealed in tomorrow's feature), and different classes will utilize the same type of weapon differently. For example, both the Warrior and the Ranger can equip a longbow, but the Warrior will use it for spray-and-pray AoE attacks while the Ranger will utilize it more elegantly as a long-range, single-target sniping weapon.