ArenaNet's own Jeff Strain, co-founder and programmer, was nice enough to sit down and answer some of our questions about the new technology, what it does to make the game better, and how it's going to place Guild Wars a step above the competition.

Guild Wars uses a very unique technology in the MMO genre. Can you give a simple explanation to start out, for those that haven't heard about it yet and how it can use a 90KB file to launch and sustain the game?

Jeff Strain: The Guild War's thin 90 KB client is a launch program that is designed to work with ArenaNet's streaming technology to start and automatically update Guild Wars with minimum input from the player.

The launch client essentially reaches out and establishes communication with an ArenaNet server. Once successful communication has occurred and you have created an account, the server examines the Guild Wars assets on your computer, recognizes where in the game process you are, and builds a file manifest of exactly what assets are needed for you to play the current version of Guild Wars.

If you are just starting, the manifest files are generally related to the art assets for character creation and the initial missions. With the file manifest determined, the prioritized information is streamed down to your hard drive. When you have received the initial startup files, Guild Wars will begin running and you can head into the game while the remaining assets continue to stream to you in the background. Generally, by the time you've created your first character, your system has downloaded the content to start the first mission, so you can continue playing the game without seeing a load screen.


Each time you log into the game or move into a new area, the file assets are checked against the latest file manifest to insure that you have the most recent files. Whenever possible, Guild Wars will try to download the files that you need while you are playing in another area of the game.

Another piece of our technology that makes this streaming of information possible is that each file in the Guild Wars program has an individual revision identifier. So when we make a change, we can tag only the files necessary to create the desired change in the game. When the program auto-updates and checks for new content, only these specific updated files are passed down to you. This is in contrast to current technology that uses a simplified file structure with a limited revision identifier. With this system, a great deal of content must be received and reloaded, potentially to update just a few files.

In summary, our 90KB client file works by determining just the specific assets you need to play Guild Wars, providing those files to you to get you up and playing, and then providing the rest of the content invisibly in the background.

We should note that once you have received the files on your hard drive you will not have to reacquire them unless they are changed. In this way the game's footprint on the computer will grow as the game content grows but you will only download the information you need once.

IGNPC: Can you explain what it means when the client contains only "dumb" assets and how this makes hacking more difficult?

Jeff Strain: While no game is hack-proof, our goal is to provide you a very secure game environment. We accomplish this by developing a game structure that is hard to break and easy to fix. The foundation of our secure gaming environment is our client asset model.

With Guild Wars, all the file assets placed on your computer are assets that are not directly associated with the logic of the game. Hence they are considered "dumb" assets. They include art assets, music files and the like. All of the files related to the logical systems of the game - the "intelligent" assets -- are held only on our secure servers. Limiting access to the intelligent assets of the game makes it more difficult for the game to be corrupted. Most games are designed first as a single-player experience, and the source files are stored on the gamer's computer. Therefore the files have a greater inherent vulnerability to hacking. The design of Guild Wars as an online-only game allows us to maintain our source code in the most secure manner possible, on our servers.

IGNPC: Will any of the technology help with the lag that plagues so many of these types of games?

Jeff Strain: Yes, our technology gives us great tools to address lag. Designing Guild Wars to overcome lag was a core issue for ArenaNet, even more so than it would be for most games, because Guild Wars is a global game and you maybe playing with people from anywhere in the world.

Our team has tremendous experience building low-latency gaming networks. After all, when we built Battle.net, there was no such thing as broadband. However, while it's important to note that bandwidth and lag are somewhat related, they are not completely tied to one another. So it is not enough simply to use small amounts of bandwidth, you also have to design the game interaction model to mask latency introduced by the Internet. With Guild Wars we have designed the game to do both.

One technology Guild Wars uses to reduce lag is its predictive motion model. Rather than the server sending a packet several times per second with absolute positions for every unit, it sends a unit vector (direction and speed) describing its motion. The client and server both model the game in this fashion and the server only needs to communicate with the client when it knows that something in the client world is incorrect. At this point, the server just sends correction information to correct the client model. This greatly reduces perceived latency and bandwidth requirements.

It is important to note that even though both the client and server are modeling the world, the server is always the boss and only provides information to the client when necessary. This reduces exploits such as map hacks that give information to the players before they should know it.

IGNPC: Speaking of bandwidth, Guild Wars has no monthly fee, which will be more than a little appealing to the masses. Assuming the game sells well, how are you preparing for a possible bandwidth onslaught?

Jeff Strain: We expect Guild Wars to do well and we are looking forward to having a large number of players consuming a great deal of bandwidth. So while we are maximizing bandwidth efficiency to make the game run as economically as possible, we are actually more focused on creating a game experience that allows the game to sell itself. In our opinion, the traditional MMO limits itself by charging a monthly fee and making more profit from a limited number of players. Our commitment is to offer a great game experience without a subscription fee, and we feel that having a larger community will balance our bandwidth costs....

Ironically, our preparation to offset bandwidth use and server costs is to create a game that a great number of people can play and enjoy. We feel the larger numbers of players who will purchase Guild Wars will offset bandwidth consumption and online infrastructure.

Plus note I posted a link that gave both for AND against what I was saying.

Each time you log into the game or move into a new area, the file assets are checked against the latest file manifest to insure that you have the most recent files. Whenever possible, Guild Wars will try to download the files that you need while you are playing in another area of the game

In summary, our 90KB client file works by determining just the specific assets you need to play Guild Wars, providing those files to you to get you up and playing, and then providing the rest of the content invisibly in the background.

We should note that once you have received the files on your hard drive you will not have to reacquire them unless they are changed. In this way the game's footprint on the computer will grow as the game content grows but you will only download the information you need once.

all the file assets placed on your computer are assets that are not directly associated with the logic of the game. Hence they are considered "dumb" assets. They include art assets, music files and the like. All of the files related to the logical systems of the game - the "intelligent" assets -- are held only on our secure servers.

Note that I only posted the facts and not fiction or speculation.

Good day.

Note that I only posted the facts and not fiction or speculation.

Good day.

In client/server applications, a client designed to be especially small so that the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server.

A technique for transferring data such that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream. Streaming technologies are becoming increasingly important with the growth of the Internet because most users do not have fast enough access to download large multimedia files quickly. With streaming, the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted.

For streaming to work, the client side receiving the data must be able to collect the data and send it as a steady stream to the application that is processing the data and converting it to sound or pictures. This means that if the streaming client receives the data more quickly than required, it needs to save the excess data in a buffer. If the data doesn't come quickly enough, however, the presentation of the data will not be smooth.

dude....no. It can't run on your local computer

no it was someone from Canada. From near Hudson Bay apparently; 60.0000° LATITUDE and -95.0000° LONGITUDE using Adelphia Cable Communications. hehe.