By Staci Krause

While at E3, we got some time with Jeff Strain as he showed us the upcoming Guild Wars expansion, Eye of the North. This expansion, which will not be a stand-alone like their previous ones, will serve as a bridge between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. In order to play the expansion, players must have at least one of the previous Guild Wars titles.

The purpose of this expansion was two-fold. First, they wanted to give more things for their existing player base to do. Second, they wanted to take a trip back to where the first Guild Wars title was set and show what is going on now, which will be not long before Guild Wars 2 begins. They did not add more professions, but instead added more items and quests for high level players to enjoy.

One of the themes of this expansion is dungeon crawls. There will be 18 multi-level dungeons for players to explore. It won't just be about killing the mobs they encounter, though, as there will be puzzle elements to it. The map has been revamped just for the dungeons as well, so players can see where in the dungeon that critical key they need to find is. Every dungeon will have a boss as well.

In addition to dungeons, there will be 150 new skills, many of which will only be usable in PvE situations. They were created specifically for the dungeon crawls, so they would have no use at all in a PvP situation. There will be 40 new armors available as well as 10 new heroes. The heroes were an interesting bit, because some of them will be playable in Guild Wars 2. For example, the Asura, a little goblin-like creature that traditionally lives underground but was chased out of their homes by the Destroyers, is one of the available heroes players can unlock and will also be a playable character in Guild Wars 2. The Charr, which maybe will remember fondly as the enemy in the first released version of Guild Wars, are also a hero type that can be discovered within the new content of this expansion and also will be playable in Guild Wars 2.

A new area we were shown is the home of the Norn, a Viking-flavored race. Along with this area, we were introduced to the idea of mini-games, which are being added with this expansion. One such mini-game is a Norn fighting tournament, which will allow players to gain favor with the Norn and be able to get quests and items from them, but the tournament won't be the only way to gain favor, just one of many. Another little mini-game involved the Asura and was a strategy/combat game where picking the right pieces makes all the difference.

Another tie-in between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 that is introduction in Eye of the North is the Hall of Monuments, a place where players will be able to see all they have unlocked in the game, from the special armors to the heroes to their titles. This will apparently also be viewable in the sequel. All in all, we were mighty impressed by what we saw and we know that existing Guild Wars players will be chomping at the bit to get into all the high-level content this title will have to offer.