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Catch up on Guild Wars 2's first act with a new video and developer blog
Whether you love the villainous Scarlet Briar or want to dangle her off the edge of the Zephyr Sanctum by her spiky pigtails, it's hard to deny that she's done a bang-up job of getting her fingerprints all over Guild Wars 2's living world. Game director Colin Johanson has penned a developer blog which provides a recap of 2013's major plot points -- as well as confirmation that the worst of Scarlet's (usually literal) machinations is yet to be revealed. The next GW2 content release will go live on January 21st, and promises to be the beginning of the end of the first living story arc. ArenaNet has also released a brand new video to refresh players on the story so far, so if you're looking to get caught up -- or you're searching for hints about the upcoming content -- be sure to click past the break and check it out!
Diving into Guild Wars 2's Fractals of the Mists changes with ArenaNet
Last November, the Lost Shores content patch brought the Fractals of the Mists, a set of bite-sized dungeon scenarios that increase in difficulty as more are completed, to Guild Wars 2. As the anniversary of FotM rolls around, ArenaNet is adding brand spanking new Fractals to the rotational lineup as well as making changes to bring the content further in line with the developers' vision for the future of the game. We were invited to attend a conference call with Game Director Colin Johanson and content designer Anthony Ordon, where they gave us some insight into the design behind the new Fractals, the updated reward structure, and where FotM will head from here.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Cultivating positive growth in Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars 2's Tower of Nightmares release has been with us for the past week, transforming formerly beautiful (if centaur-populated) Kessex Hills into a toxic wasteland. The source of the devastation is a massive, thistle-topped structure in Viathan Lake, which was built and defended by the Krait and Nightmare Court. A whole lot of mystery is tied up in that thing, from Krait religion to Nightmare ambitions to the involvement of Scarlet Briar, but Marjory Delaqua and her partner Kasmeer Meade are on the case. The Pact has also gotten involved by aiding with research and demolishing the tower plant's offshoots, which are spreading on the wind like dandelions, only I wouldn't recommend adding them to salads, and they're not fluffy. The ArenaNet team responsible for this release has made some praiseworthy improvements over previous releases, which supports the idea that GW2's living world is still a work in progress with lots of room to grow. Combined with some interesting developer responses from the collaborative development initiative, I think it paints a promising picture of where the story is going in the upcoming months.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Ain't no party like a Guild Wars 2 party 'cause a GW2 party don't stop
There's something in the water, and it's rising. Word travels along the shore of Sparkfly Fen in terrified whispers, and the names of the beast that stalks the Splintered Coast are on every tongue: Tequila the Sunrise. Taco the Soft Shell. Loot Piñata. At the very least, poor Tequatl the Sunless will hopefully be shedding the last nickname with the upcoming Tequatl Rising content patch for Guild Wars 2. That one's kind of mean; the others are just affectionate. You know, as affectionate as we can be toward an undead servant of Zhaitan bent on subjugating all life. ArenaNet previewed the new and improved Tequatl fight mechanics at PAX Prime, but apart from that (and the new LFG tool and the new World vs. World mechanics), this latest GW2 release seems a little bit...quiet. I'm OK with that. In fact, it may be exactly what we need.
Guild Wars 2 interview picks Colin Johanson's brain
If you could corner a developer and ask any question that popped into your mind, what would it be? Matt Visual attempts to cover all of the burning questions that many players have about Guild Wars 2 in his piece with Colin Johanson from PAX Prime. The half-hour interview covers a wide range of topics including gear progression, dungeon hard modes, legendary items, a new wardrobe system, housing, and dueling. One interesting tidbit is that the devs have been working on cloaks but have had some issues with the animations. Check out the full video after the break and see if your burning question gets quenched.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's living story and the Orrian menace
The cleansing of Orr has long been a popular source of speculation in the community, which is why I asked Colin Johanson about the possibility of it happening in the course of Guild Wars 2's living story when I interviewed him in July. Although I understood his reasoning, I was still disappointed by the answer: that it'd be very difficult to change Orr due to its intersection with the personal story but that in future chapters ArenaNet will do its best to make sure no areas end up locked in time. In a recent Q&A session, our own Richie Procopio asked ArenaNet president Mike O'Brien a similar question and got a somewhat different response. According to O'Brien, the studio's original intent was to steer away from content that could impact the personal story in the interest of simplicity; however, ArenaNet wants to make sure that nothing is off limits to the living story overall. I'm trying not to read too much into that, since it could just be a different way of phrasing what Johanson said, but given a little hope to cling to I'd like to discuss why it's so important that ArenaNet not establish any existing content as off-limits -- especially not Orr.
PAX Prime 2013: Guild Wars 2's story, boss revamps, LFG, and the next big update
Not many MMOs can say that they've done as much in their first year as Guild Wars 2. The team at ArenaNet is rightly proud of what it's accomplished over the past 365 days, but the devs also know that all of what's come before is just a drop in the bucket compared to their plans for the future. At PAX Prime yesterday, Lead Game Designer Colin Johanson brought us in for an overview on Guild Wars 2's progress and upcoming direction. It's not just living story, although there is a lot of that; the team has ambitious plans that are only beginning to be revealed to the playerbase after months of preparation and build up. We've got the full scoop on where the game's headed in both PvE and PvP (or WvW if you're nasty). You know you want to know. Go ahead. Click. Let's do this.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 election postmortem
We were young. We were trusting. We didn't understand the power we wielded. When the voting booths closed and the last ballots were cast, a dark portal yawned wide in Lion's Arch, unleashing the terrible titan version of candidate Ellen Kiel upon the unsuspecting Guild Wars 2 playerbase. ArenaNet didn't see fit to warn us of the true consequences of the Cutthroat Politics update, but at least we can take some comfort in the fact that Evon Gnashblade didn't win the election. He's got claws. And really pointy teeth. Fortunately, the citizens of Tyria have been distracted from their inevitable doom by the current Queen's Jubilee patch, which is showering us with loot in the manner of a quenching summer rain. I'm the kind of person who will happily farm for multiple hours if given the opportunity, but I'm going to try to drag my hollow eyes from the slaughter long enough to talk about how the previous living story chapter was a great experiment in evolving the world of GW2 -- and how it didn't quite hit the mark.
Guild Wars 2's Johanson hints at the game's anniversary plans
Have you gotten Guild Wars 2 a present yet? It's celebrating its first birthday in just under three weeks, so it'd be rude if you didn't get it anything. Even if you're not getting the game a present, director Colin Johanson has dropped some hints about the presents that characters and players will be getting from the game, including a promise that characters will receive annual gifts as seen in Guild Wars. Johanson is adamant that the update on the anniversary will change the world forever and will bring together all of the stories that have been in motion over the past year. He goes on to explain that the changes will help give players a hint as to where the game is heading in the future. Exactly what the changes will be and how well several disconnected stories will tie together remains to be seen, but fans have to wait until August 28th to see what goes down on the one-year mark.
Guild Wars 2: Living story to get more serious, more permanent, and more personal
An interview on US Gamer with ArenaNet Game Director Colin Johanson serves as an interesting follow-up to his Guild Wars 2 planning post from earlier this month. In it he addresses the direction that the living story is taking as well as his intention to overhaul many of the game's dungeons. Johanson said that the team is responding to feedback by working to make GW2's living story matter more to the player with more serious stories that will "blend" with the player's own personal story. He reiterated that ArenaNet has great plans to use the living story to shape the game's future: "There is now, and certainly will be a lot larger focus on ensuring that the content we're building is creating experiences that people can permanently have when they come back two years later. Instead of saying, 'I see something that happened two years ago but I can't experience it,', we want players to say, 'I'm playing this and I'm playing it as a result of something that happened two years ago.'" The game's dungeons are also fair game for shaping. Johanson confirmed that the team will be revisiting most of its dungeons to make them "more exciting, more fun, more compelling, and also more rewarding." He even mentioned the possibility of "blowing up" dull dungeons to replace with something better.
Guild Wars 2's Colin Johanson outlines big plans and 'course correction' for the game
The past two weeks have seen a veritable flood of information about ArenaNet's plans for the immediate future of Guild Wars 2, but are you ready for even more details about the long-term goals for the title? Well, ready or not, it's comin' at you: Game Director Colin Johanson published a blog post today that outlines some of the features and changes players can expect to see in the latter half of the year. Curious about ANet's answer to character progression after the release of Ascended gear? The blog post has it covered. Tired of beating up Champion enemies for their lunch money, only to find that their moms packed them nothing but pairs of blue-quality trousers? Read up on how ANet plans to make them worth smacking around. Do you spend your days weeping softly over that 600 gold precursor that is the absolute last thing you need to complete your Legendary weapon? Boy oh boy, today is your lucky day. That's not all; Johanson's mammoth blog post also discusses the expansion of the crafting system, plans to add new Legendary gear and player-crafted Ascended items, improvements to structured PvP and World vs. World, and more. He was also kind enough to take the time to answer our questions about ArenaNet's vision for GW2's future, so be sure to check out our interview summary after the break!
Guild Wars 2 developer livestream chat discusses the fine art of world improvement
ArenaNet's Game Director Colin Johanson sat down with Community Manager Martin Kerstein to talk about the future of Guild Wars 2 and answer some questions from the community in the latest developer livestream. Johanson confirmed that while players won't be confronting another Elder Dragon this year, there will be three new Fractals of the Mists joining the lineup: fractalized versions of the popular living story dungeons Molten Weapons Facility and Aetherblade Retreat, as well as one of two brand new scenarios to be chosen for development based on the outcome of the upcoming Cutthroat Politics content. However, he warned that Lion's Arch politics aren't necessarily a straightforwardly democratic process; this is a pirate election, and pirates are known for playing dirty. Johanson further discussed the evolution of GW2's living story and the reception of temporary content, and explained some of the difficulties the team faced when the living story was in its beginning stages. While he admitted that the beginning of the year was too heavy on temporary events, the formation of four living world teams will help them deliver more permanent changes to the game. He added that some temporary events, such as trade with the Zephyr Sanctum and popular game-within-the-game Super Adventure Box are likely to return periodically.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's living whirl
Hi there! I'm Anatoli Ingram, and starting today I'll be your friendly neighborhood Flameseeker Chronicles columnist. Some of you probably know me from my previous life as commenter RingBonefield, but thanks to the kindness and pure heart power of the Massively lead editors, I've evolved into my final form: a guy who not only won't shut up about Guild Wars 2 but gets paid to not shut up about Guild Wars 2. If you're anywhere near as easily distracted as I am by shiny objects placed tantalizingly out of reach, it's probably been difficult to tear yourself away from the Zephyr Sanctum. But GW2 fans have recently gotten huge chunks of information regarding the future of the game -- biweekly content updates, big plans for upcoming content, a possible lack of expansions, holy cats! -- and there's been no shortage of player concern and controversy to go along with them. Join me after the break, where I'll take a breather from dashing around as an ethereal being of light and wind to talk about what all of this potentially means for GW2's living world.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Revamping rewards in Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet has improved the reward systems in Guild Wars 2 this year by adding new features such as world vs. world skill trees, laurel and guild merit vendors, and better loot for world boss encounters. However, many players still feel that there should be more tangible incentives urging them to log in each day and engage in the content that they enjoy. Fortunately, Colin Johanson agrees and has taken to the forums several times to tease an upcoming reward revamp for all areas of the game. This redesign involves adding rewards for hitting certain thresholds of achievement points, creating more uses for blue and green items, and making fighting champion-level creatures more worthwhile. This month, we should expect to hear more about ArenaNet's plans for the second half of 2013, akin to the road map laid out back in January. While we wait for the official word, check out the video edition of the Flameseeker Chronicles for some loot-themed speculation.
Guild Wars 2 developers share APIs, hopes for the future
This morning, ArenaNet dropped the price point of Guild Wars 2 by $10 across all available editions. In a follow-up chat about some of the decisions behind that move, Game Director Colin Johanson talked a bit about community support, the game's regular update cadence, and the company's hopes for bringing Guild Wars 2 into new markets. While a $10 price drop is not an extreme move, Johanson is confident that the change will bring Guild Wars 2 to new people. The company seems to be currently focused on building up community support. Just yesterday, some APIs were made available to the public for the first time. We've already seen them put to use in real-time WvW tracking and event monitors. Johanson also talked about recent efforts to shore up the support for sPvP and how the additions of custom arenas and spectator mode has led to viewers for sPvP streams "more than doubling" in the last few weeks. The game appears to be moving towards a twice-monthly update schedule. Johanson said that while ArenaNet has "not ruled out" the idea of future expansions, the company is committed to the idea of the living story. Johanson mentioned that Guild Wars 2 is sitting solidly at "well over 3,000,000 copies sold" without tapping into the Chinese market. He added that the game just had its first closed beta test in China and that the team is optimistic. ArenaNet hopes to make the Chinese version of the game as similar as possible to the existing one. [Source: ArenaNet conference call]
ArenaNet not currently working on Guild Wars 2 expansions or sequels
ArenaNet isn't going to develop a traditional expansion for Guild Wars 2 any time soon. "Expansions are definitely something that we'll potentially look at in the future," game director Colin Johanson told IGN. "We don't have a timetable on it. We're open to it, but I think our major focus as a studio is making the living world concept as strong as we possibly can for the players that we've got." When the possibility of Guild Wars 3 was broached, Johanson deemed it unlikely, at least for now. "We want to be able to have teams that are literally developing new, innovative features that change the way that you play our game and grow that experience so it literally feels like you don't leave Guild Wars 2," he explained. "Guild Wars 2 becomes Guild Wars 2.5 or Guild Wars 3 and it continues to grow."
Guild Wars 2 WvW changes delayed until March
For those of you anxiously awaiting the upcoming WvW changes slotted for this month, Guild Wars 2's Game Director Colin Johanson jumped into the forums today to let players know that the update will come in March instead. But the good news is that we get a significant glimpse into the crystal ball of GW2's development as Colin details upcoming improvements such as the continual optimization of game models and data compression to reduce performance problems plus ways to draw more people in to the WvW feature. Be sure to read Colin's entire post over at the GW2 community forums.
ArenaNet sells three million copies of Guild Wars 2, looks to the future
We've got a whole passel of Guild Wars 2 news for you today, courtesy of ArenaNet Game Director Colin Johanson, who took to the company's blog to talk about some of the game plan for 2013. Johanson kicked things off by nonchalantly dropping the fact that Guild Wars 2 has now surpassed three million copies sold. (The last million milestone was hit in early September.) He then moved on to goals for 2013 -- specifically, to "build on areas of the game that were successful in 2012" and to "learn and apply lessons from things that didn't work as well." ArenaNet has plans to add more events (since more events means fewer repeats all around), build new storylines, and give players of all levels a good reason to go back and re-examine content. Some of those good reasons will come in the form of tokens for achievements (which can be traded in for stuff like ascended gear and infusions), re-imagined daily achievements (and eventually, the option to complete only a certain subset of dailies to get the reward), and more vanity items. Guilds will be getting more love with some new types of content, due "in early 2013," which will allow members to go on missions together. Over time, that system will be expanded with new rewards, missions, and tools to strengthen the importance of guilds within the Guild Wars 2 community. World vs. World will be seeing a lot of the same tweaks as the rest of the game, with the addition of improvements to culling and the introduction of paid server transfers. PvP will also be getting some polish. Revamped reward systems, matchmaking based on skill, the ability to observe other matches, custom arenas, and leaderboards have all been listed as part of the plan. In case that's not enough for the first half of the year, there are also plans to improve the looking for group tool, fix up the Fractals dungeon, set up leaderboards on the website, redesign world and dungeon boss encounters, continue the war on bots, and otherwise tighten up the game as we know it. Skip below the cut to let Johanson speak for himself.
Flameseeker Chronicles: There's something in the water in Guild Wars 2
October is gone, and with it went the Mad King. He's returned to his realm, and if the number of his slippers I have piled up in the corners of my bank vault is any indication, he's ill-prepared to deal with any sudden drops in temperature. On the first day of November, Lion's Arch citizens marveled at the sudden disappearance of all the festive decorations, applauded the continuity of the lion statue's still being absent from the Piazza, and set about life as normal. Until they saw the whales.
ArenaNet talks Guild Wars 2 dungeon difficulty
ArenaNet has already taken the stance of waiting for players to adjust to the current state of the game before making big changes to skills and overall balance in Guild Wars 2. That mindset, as laid out by Game Director Colin Johanson in a forum post, is also being applied to dungeon difficulty. Rather than rushing to adjust to initial player feedback, ArenaNet devs are taking the long view and waiting for players to get used to the game and its difficulty. They took a similar approach with the original Guild Wars' dungeons and elite areas, to eventual success. Johanson talked about player outcry when the Domain of Anguish was first introduced and how just months later, without real balance changes, "people viewed it as the most fun thing in the game." He went on to explain: We're actively monitoring every dungeon and working on balancing issues we encounter appropriately. We'll be keeping an eye on bosses we think don't have enough varied mechanics to warrant their large health pools and updating them over time to make them more varied/interesting fights. We'll be monitoring, and continually tweaking/adding to dungeon rewards over time and of course balancing where we see the need. And of course, we'll be looking at adding more dungeons as well! All of that being said, the game is VERY new for most of our players, and I can absolutely promise with more knowledge of the game and advanced player skill, the explorable dungeons can all be overcome by being skilled groups. We've seen many groups do it just fine in our internal alpha test once they had time to learn how to play the game well. Just like Domain of Anguish in [Guild Wars], it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that's exactly the kind of players they are designed for.
