Fresh out of the rumor mill: World PvP in the upcoming Guild Wars 2 might feature certain elements of real-time strategy (RTS) games. Actually, the rumored PvP resembles a cross between Warhammer Online's objective-taking and World of Warcraft's Alterac Valley, according to this post at KillTenRats.com. The blog post contains translated material from an interview with ArenaNet in a Dutch magazine; you can find the original forum post with the full translated text here. Most important is this bit of information, gleaned from the interview:

"The World PvP Maps bear a resemblance to RTS-maps and give you a chance to play different roles. You can conquer stone mines, which will then deliver stone by caravan to your catapults, you can attack and cut off caravans of the enemy, you can operate as a scout and inform the rest of hostile movement, you can man watchtowers and defend, or you can just run up to a lost PvP’er and teach him a lesson. All these actions will earn you experience."

As the original poster at KillTenRats, Ravious, points out, an open-world PvP system like the one described would have to be coupled with solid, underlying game mechanics to perform as intended. He mentions that instanced PvP zones like Alterac Valley usually work because they have player caps, but an open PvP scenario lends itself to all sorts of problems. Lack of players during off-hours means night owls could go hours without seeing much action, and population imbalances might result in frustrating zerg-fests. Still, it's too early to draw speculative conclusions; we'll have to wait to see how things play out later down the road in development. In the mean time, let us know what you think of this news regarding Guild Wars 2's world PvP.