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One Shots: Ignore physics and jump already!
Out of all of the reality-bending game mechanics that we deal with in MMOs on a regular basis, I'd have to say that my immersion is the most broken when I jump from fantastic heights and walk away with nary a crushed spine to show for it. And this particular diving board in Guild Wars 2 that's like 300 feet above the water? Yeah, diving goggles aren't going to help you with squat. But jump anyway! Reader Mike took the plunge: "While playing my Norn Warrior, I found something I never saw before. Just above one of the waypoints in Lion's Arch is a diving platform! The kind people at ArenaNet even had goggles and a swimsuit for you to put on before you take that massive dive into the cold waters below. It was so funny I just had to send it to you." Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots!
One Shots: Grim Raider
"Here's my Guild Wars 2 Necromancer haunting the countryside of Divinity's Reach, bleeding and poisoning souls to fuel his demonic rituals and Necromancing zealotry," Russel announced, as if that was the sort of thing that you can say in polite society. Actually, as a fellow Necro, I have to say that I agree with looking the part. You got to have a skulls motif; there's no way around it. Way to commit to the role! Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots!
One Shots: A prince among men
Trust me, we're getting somewhere with putting out all of these neglected screenshot submissions from earlier this year! Today's attractive One Shot comes from reader Skorry, who can't help but look amazing anywhere he goes. "I took a break from adventuring to admire the artwork inside the Central Plaza in Divinity's Reach with my elementalist, Mirka Wallace," Skorry writes. "I swung my camera around and, through the oddities of Guild Wars 2's third-person view, found I had randomly struck a fantastic view of him standing in front of the Royal Palace. Massive screenshotting ensued. In my opinion, this was the best of the lot, just a pretty noble boy posing regal in the symbol of Krytan majesty." Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots!
One Shots: Mandy the Christmas Whale
Last year in our household we started up a new tradition, the legend of Mandy the Christmas Whale. Mandy, I told my children, was a green-and-red whale with lights on her tail that would swim through the first snow of the year to deliver cookies to the bedsides of good little boys and girls. Sometimes she even brought a snowsuit (an actual suit of snow) when it came to houses in warmer climes. Maybe reader James' Guild Wars 2 picture here isn't of Mandy, but one never knows what she might look like in disguise during the other days of the year. Have you been good enough to deserve cookies lately? Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots!
Flameseeker Chronicles: Crafting up a storm in Guild Wars 2
Merry Wintersday! Guild Wars 2's non-denominational twinkly winter celebration is in full swing. Despite earlier reports from ArenaNet that we'd get pure repeats of both Halloween and Wintersday, this year has added some new quests and a thematically appropriate relocation to Divinity's Reach. I was wrong last week about the sad Dickensian atmosphere of ruined Lion's Arch decorated with snowflakes, but there are still plenty of unfortunate children, so it all evens out. As your resident Scrooge, I'm going to skirt around the topic of candy canes and jumping puzzles to talk about a game feature that's much closer to my heart: crafting. However, I come to lob snowballs at GW2's crafting system, not to praise it.
Win part of a $50,000 pool at Guild Wars 2's PAX East tournament
Fancy yourself a not-half-bad PvP player? Are you keen on the notion of winning enough money to avoid work or school for a year so that you can concentrate on MMO gaming? Then step right up to Guild Wars 2's World Tournament Series Championship at PAX East next spring, where the winners will dip into a $50,000 prize pool. The tournament will take place on March 7th, 2015, at the gaming convention in Boston. Players from several countries are welcome to face off against each other, although teams will have to compete and win in earlier qualifiers to make it to the championship. You'll have to be at least 18 and from the US, Canada, Mexico, or the EU to participate. A cool perk of making it to the championship is that ArenaNet will foot the bill for teams' airfare, hotel, and a per diem.
Guild Wars 2 kicks off Wintersday events
The event avalanche of Guild Wars 2's Wintersday has gotten up to full speed and is currently roaring down upon the game's population. Today's update activates the previous years' Wintersday content as well as a few new additions. There's the Wondrous Workshop to explore, jumping puzzles, bell choir minigames, the Snowball Mayhem battle royale, and a quest to track down Grawnk to get a Wintersday tree for home instances. The patch also activates a couple of PvP events, new Wintersday-themed cash shop cosmetics, the daily login rewards, and the latest overhaul of the daily achievement system.
Guild Wars 2 celebrates the holidays with a player murder spree
Don't get too comfy and cozy with that hot cocoa and crackling fire; Guild Wars 2 is calling all fighters to arms for epic PvP conflict over the next month. Today, the team posted details for the game's two upcoming PvP events, both starting tomorrow and ending on January 13th. The fun and casualties begin with the WvW Sneak Attack event, which will change some of the established rules for this setting to make it harder to see who is attacking what and give a bonus to experience and rewards earned. Then the team is testing out a PvP ladder season, with prizes such as mini llamas and glorious hero's armor pieces to those who kick and claw their way up the rankings.
Perfect Ten: Looking back at the biggest MMO news of 2014
Well, my chums, here we are at the tail-end of 2014, having achieved all of our goals and new year's resolutions. Even better, we've survived what's turned out to be one of the wildest, rockiest, and most exciting years of MMO news in recent memory. This was the year of high-profile game launches, even more popular expansions, layoffs, and some epic-level studio face-palming decisions. It's easy to sit here and say that we predicted everything that was going to happen this year, but c'mon, you have to admit that you were surprised by at least one or two events in this industry. It's incredibly difficult to sum up the biggest news of the year without coming to grips with the fact that many stories aren't one-and-done; a lot of what I'm going to be talking about in this list happened over the course of weeks or months and still may not be fully over. That's how news stories are sometimes!
Guild Wars 2 is revamping dailies... again
ArenaNet has just announced that it's revamping Guild Wars 2's daily achievements... again. "We want to give players the opportunity to try things they may not normally experience and feel like the rewards they earn for doing so mean something," says the studio. "Rather than [give] a generic reward for all achievements, each one will give players something that is thematically tied to the content they're playing." Completing dailies will allow players to earn everything from achievement points to fractal relics and badges of honor, depending on the daily's difficulty and type (PvE, PvP, WvW). The studio is also rolling out a new achievement track that replaces the old monthlies system and rewards players just for logging in. "One way to think of this is like a holiday calendar that gives you a new present from ArenaNet each day," the devs write. "There are 28 individual rewards on the track, each one building toward an epic chest containing a permanent 1% increase to account gold find and your choice of either ascended crafting materials, materials necessary for crafting your legendary weapon (including mystic clovers), an additional sum of laurels, or tomes of knowledge." Yesterday, the studio revealed that the ongoing season two plotline will be on hiatus through the holidays, being replaced by Wintersday. Season two resumes on January 13th.
Guild Wars 2 season 2 to continue on January 13th
The living world episodes for Guild Wars 2 are taking a month off for the holiday season, as ArenaNet announced today that Season 2 will reconvene on January 13th for "moments that will forever change the course of Tyria." That doesn't mean that Guild Wars 2 will go silent during this time, however. Wintersday is scheduled to return on December 16th, although this time it will take place in Divinity's Reach. ArenaNet is also hosting a test of its ladder season from December 16th through January 13th, allowing players to compete for various rewards, and a WvW Sneak Attack event during this same period. Finally, there will be the game's "first-ever" ESL monthly championship on December 10th.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Planting the seeds of memory in Guild Wars 2
They say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I don't know who "they" are, but I don't think that particular truism was ever meant to cover a literal repeat of history. Guild Wars 2's latest living world content release has players doing exactly that: planting memory seeds, taking an uncomfortably invasive peek into Caithe's past, and trying to figure out exactly what might have led her to abscond with Glint's egg in the previous chapter. This stroll down memory lane technically takes place over 20 years in GW2's history, but it's new information to us, and so the statute of limitations on spoilers hasn't expired. You'll probably want to play the content before reading any further, unless you think my writing is improved by a lack of context (if that's the case, don't tell me).
The Daily Grind: Who's your favorite child NPC?
This might be a difficult topic because in truth we have not seen an over-abundance of children NPCs in MMOs, nevermind ones that speak or are part of missions. I'm mostly reminded of the tag-along I had in World of Warcraft's Children Week when I think of young characters. However, I'm most impressed with the handling of Taimi in Guild Wars 2's storyline. She's easily the best character of the group, and somewhat unique in being very young and also partially disabled. I love that those two characteristics don't define who she is, but instead her vivacious and sometimes reckless genius does. So who is your favorite child NPC in an MMO? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Guild Wars 2 launches Seeds of Truth today
Oh, that darn Caithe, running off with that MacGuffin dragon egg at the end of the last Guild Wars 2 story update! Someone should go after her. And while someone's going after her, someone should probably collect more armor set pieces and explore more of the Silverwastes. If you haven't guessed by now, that someone is going to be you. The latest update to the game, Seeds of Truth, is live today, and you'll need to... well, you read all of that up above, yes? Aside from salad-based antics, the update features some major PvP changes, including reworked matchmaking and the test season for organized league play. So if you're there more for the mechanics than the story, that may be more of your speed. If you're there for the story, though, get ready to start retracing Caithe's memories, figure out what happened, and dealing with the fallout of that stolen egg. [Source: ArenaNet press release]
One Shots: Female fashion show
Every once in a while I issue a screenshot challenge that lights a fire under the community here, and my call to show off female armor that wasn't chainmail bikinis did exactly that. So today we're going to have a fashion show, starting with Ralph the Wonder Llama! "If battleframes were cars, I think recon battleframes would be the hot little sports coupes of the Firefall universe," Mr. Llama writes. "Here my ARES pilot shows off the sleek, bold lines of the Raptor battleframe as she gazes down upon Sunken Harbor. It gets good gas mileage too: sporty, fun to drive, and economical!"
Guild Wars 2's Leah Hoyer discusses the importance of story
It's fair to say that Guild Wars 2 sells its story pretty highly, as living world progress and story updates are a major part of its content strategy. Head of narrative Leah Hoyer stated in a recent interview that this is one of the core things that games as a whole need to embrace: Story is important in getting players invested. Hoyer went on to say that while story lacks the central importance in games that it has in media like television, it's still an important element of player investment. Still, she argues, it's harder to tell a good story in a game than it is in a television show, simply because the latter is focused only on story while the former cannot be. This doesn't mean that it's less important, nor does Hoyer feel that it justifies using lore and background as an excuse for not telling a story; a good story requires immediacy. While she believes that lore is highly important, it should help support storytelling rather than replace it. There's a lot of interesting thoughts in the full interview, so whether you like Guild Wars 2's take on story or not, it's well worth a look.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Navigating Guild Wars 2's Tangled Paths release
I was late playing Guild Wars 2's latest update, Tangled Paths, because I was on an airplane when it went live. That might be a better excuse than "the dog ate my homework," but I don't have one for "a dog ate my character," which is exactly what happened as soon as I got home and logged in. Read on for the reason I actually welcome our vicious new dog overlords, as well as why Caithe and I need to have a long talk. You'll also find an exclusive photograph of Bellevue, Washington, taken from the roof of ArenaNet's studio, which is exciting primarily because I got the Seattle skyline in the very same shot without it coming out blurry, even on my awful camera phone. I'm proud of that and nobody can take it from me. As usual, spoiler warnings apply!
Guild Wars 2 teases next week's Seeds of Truth release with a new trailer
Are you up to speed on Guild Wars 2's episodic living world content releases? If not, you might want to stop reading because there could be spoilers ahead. Last time around, players watched as Caithe made off with a fabled dragon egg that could be the key to defeating Mordremoth. In the newest episode, you'll have to catch Caithe, but first you can catch a preview of the release by clicking past the cut. [Source: ArenaNet press release]
Guild Wars 2 streamlines PvP queuing, adds map voting
How can Guild Wars 2's PvP experience be improved? By streamlining the flow, baby! A new dev diary posted today talks about how ArenaNet is working to improve match flow, starting with the elimination of PvP rosters and simply allowing players to queue solo or with a party. Other significant changes include replacing AFK players before matches begin, group voting on favorite maps, and using the dishonor system to ding those who leave or go AFK during matches. To get into PvP matches, players will now be required to go to the Heart of the Mists, which is being outfitted with additional core services so that it can be a fun social hub between games.
The Daily Grind: Do special currencies in MMOs annoy you?
A reader discussion in a past Guild Wars 2 update article made me realize, once again, how much I loathe special event currencies. You know the type: It's patch day, and here's an event, and if you want the rewards, you have to grind a shiny new currency to get them! Never mind that you already have a pile of gold (and in Guild Wars 2's case, karma and gems) earned through your adventures up until now; those credits are mysteriously useless at the new reward vendors, who accept only some new currency. Commenters rightly pointed out that if modern devs did what old timey devs did, players would just rush in and buy everything on day one and not do the grind. But so what? Why should it bother us that people get to actually use the currency they've already earned and banked? That's the whole point of gathering money in MMOs in the first place. And if there's so much existing currency in the world that everyone could buy everything without additional grind, that's the studio's problem for providing insufficient sinks and a poor economy in the first place, not ours. In fact, special events themselves could be an awesome gold sink! Instead, event currencies signal to players that their existing achievements and savings matter not at all and that the event isn't really going to be much fun on its own merits. What do you think? Are you also sick of special currencies in MMOs? What would you prefer to see in their stead? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
