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Guild Wars 2 plans siege additions for world-vs.-world PvP
As part of its September feature pack rollout, ArenaNet has today discussed the world-vs.-world improvements coming to Guild Wars 2 next month. Specifically, the team is adding a new Siege Golem Mastery ability line, which renders your character "an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction" with super speed, AoE healing effects, and (of course) an ejection seat to amuse your guildies. ArenaNet will also add consumable tricks; the first, called a Siege Disabler, is deployed like a grenade and disables weapons and golems and can be purchased with badges and coins rather than karma. If you aren't into the PvP additions, well, you could always join the folks in Rata Sum protesting the absence of Super Adventure Box. [Thanks, thegirlwiththehair.]
Flameseeker Chronicles: Taking command in Guild Wars 2
Last week, ArenaNet wrapped up Guild Wars 2's two-parter story arc, The Dragon's Reach. It's a doozy, especially since part one of the chapter was, in my opinion, the weakest of the living world story's second season so far. It wasn't bad, mind you; it just didn't leave me staring at my calendar in thwarted anticipation the way previous installments did. Part two brings that feeling back, which is almost too bad since we're going to be waiting until autumn for the story to start up again. In the meantime, we've got a bunch of stuff to talk about, so jump past the cut -- but only if you're cool with spoilers for pretty much everything.
How your Guild Wars 2 class will change in September
When Guild Wars 2's second feature pack crashes down on our heads next month, there will be none of us unscathed from its impact. A new dev diary posted today reveals that the feature pack will contain balance changes for all of the game's classes. Among the changes are a rework of Elementalist and Thief grandmaster traits, love for Engineer kits and elixirs, an improved Spirit Bow ability for the Guardian, a revamp of the mimic skill for the Mesmer, improved survivability for the Necromancer, more flexible pet choices for the Ranger, and tweaks to the Warrior's adrenaline resource. Overall, it all sounds pretty positive, although there could be a nerf or two lurking in the mix.
Guild Wars 2 will let you replace PvP opponents with standardized clones
How you look and move in PvP is sometimes more important than just for cosmetic vanity, which is why Guild Wars 2 is planning to add "model standardization" as an option with the September feature pack. In today's dev diary, ArenaNet explains that since all of the races and classes have different animations for the same skills, it might be difficult for competitive players to identify what's coming at them. By being able to replace all enemy characters with standardized human models, PvPers will be able to clearly identify the class, weapon, and skill animations being used. The team's also finishing up work on two new sets of PvP-exclusive armor that draws inspiration from Guild Wars 1's Hall of Heroes. Players can earn one of those sets of armor by progressing with the new PvP reward track that's also slated for the feature pack update.
Leaderboard: What the heck is Guild Wars 2's Pale Tree?
Since Guild Wars 2's humble beginnings, players have been debating the exact nature of the seemingly benevolent Pale Tree, an entity who has acted as a mother to the playable Sylvari race. Season two of the living world story has been throwing more fuel on this particular fire with almost every chapter, and this week's release of The Dragon's Reach: Part Two is no exception. Since ArenaNet has announced a mid-season break in the story, it seems like a good time to cast our votes once and for all and ensure bragging rights for those of us who turn out to be correct. What's your favorite explanation for the existence of the Pale Tree? Click past the break to vote (but be warned that while this poll is spoiler-free, the comments may not be)!
Gamescom 2014: Guild Wars 2 preps $150k prize pool tourney, feature pack
If you were wondering what ArenaNet has planned for the fall break in Guild Wars 2's living world story content, wonder no more: The studio has just announced the September feature pack, which brings both PvE and PvP upgrades to the game. "Living World Season 2 will be going on break for a while as we count down to the arrival of the [feature pack]," says lead developer Colin Johanson. "You can look forward to the return of Season 2 in autumn, and we'll announce the start date for episode 5 after the feature pack has been released." ArenaNet's attention at Gamescom, however, has been focused on competitive play. In keeping with its e-sports goals, the studio unveiled the World Tournament Series, a Guild Wars 2 competitive championship co-sponsored by Chinese publisher KongZhong. With its $150,000 prize pool, the series will draw qualifying players from the upcoming Tournament of Glory and debut in Beijing this fall. [Source: ArenaNet press release]
Guild Wars 2's living world mid-season finale launches today
Guild Wars 2's latest content update, The Dragon's Reach: Part 2, launches today, opening a brand-new explorable area within Dry Top and adding PvP perks. Says ArenaNet, A historic summit is about to take place in the spreading shadow of Mordremoth's advance, but not all of the world leaders have agreed to attend. Can you convince uneasy allies to come together and cooperate, or will lingering tensions spell Tyria's doom? The launch brings to a close the first half of this current living world season; the storyline will resume "this fall. PSA: If you log in while the story update is active and access the story journal, you can unlock the content for your account permanently."
Gamescom 2014: Guild Wars 2 outlines convention plans
Are you ready for a week of gaming news from Germany? Of course you are. Were you worried that Guild Wars 2 might not be part of the festivities? Of course it is. Yes, ArenaNet has gone to Gamescom 2014, complete with chances for fans to win plushies, shirts, and Collector's Editions of the game. The Gamescom events will also include the All-Stars Tournament event. If you're not attending the convention in person, you can still watch the matches on Twitch and follow the developers on Twitter to get in on the giveaway action, assuming you're not too busy with the latest part of Living Story content to notice.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The curse of Guild Wars 2's precursor weapons
My wife doesn't play Guild Wars 2 any more. She hasn't exactly made a deliberate choice to leave the game and never come back, but she used to play every day. Some time around the end of season one of the living world story, she started logging in only every week or so, and then finally not at all. She dips in for a few seconds to unlock the new story chapters, but only because I remind her that they're out. This is the first time the two of us have been seriously invested in different MMOs. When she stopped playing GW2 as often, she dived headfirst into Final Fantasy XIV, which is totally understandable because it's a great game and I play it casually myself. Normally I wouldn't consider this development to be article material because people drift away from games they used to love and find new ones all the time, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. But this wasn't a natural split: When I told her about all of the cool story stuff happening in season two, my wife's response was, "That sounds neat. Has ArenaNet implemented precursor crafting yet?"
Part two of Guild Wars 2's Dragon's Reach lands on August 12th
Ready to dive further into Dry Top in Guild Wars 2? You'll be able to do so in a week. ArenaNet has just put out a new teaser video announcing the next part of Season 2's Living Story, The Dragon's Reach: Part 2. It goes live on August 12th, and while the Elder Dragon Mordremoth advances, not all of the leaders of Tyria's factions are willing to work together to fight this threat. Of course, we know you're here to analyze what you can from the trailer. So jump on past the cut and do just that. It promises plant-based hijinks, but let's be honest: You probably guessed that. But there's a bit more going on, and you... well, you'll see. We'd hate to spoil the whole surprise, after all.
Guild Wars 2 launches part one of The Dragon's Reach today
It's Tuesday, so you know what that means: Another installment of Guild Wars 2's living story is here. Today, ArenaNet releases The Dragon's Reach: Part 1. "The third episode in this second season of Living World sees the whole of Tyria now threatened by the Elder Dragon Mordremoth," says the studio. "Attacks by Mordremoth's minions have stretched ever-farther, from the arid Maguuma wastes to the Timberline Falls and the heart of Kryta. [...] Now the threat is making itself felt in the far reaches of Ascalon. The charr in the Iron Marches have witnessed an outbreak of Mordremoth's corruptive power, and they're in need of your aid!" Massively's GW2 expert Anatoli Ingram wrote in-depth about the lore behind this episode last week, and we've included some new screenshots and the trailer below.
Working As Intended: It's not the journey or the destination
If you play MMORPGs, you've no doubt been told, hundreds of times, "Slow down! Don't rush! Stop to smell the flowers! It's the journey, not the destination!" Typically, you're being told to slow down in an MMO whose focus is the destination: the endgame. All the good stuff is at the end. The best dungeons are there. The best gear is there. The best PvP content and titles and achievements are there. The players the devs cater to are there. Patches and expansions provide new content there. In fact, the only reason to play the rest of the game is to level up to get there. The midgame is a hindrance, a barrier to the "real" game, and it's usually neglected by developers once most players are through it. So if games themselves reward you only for arriving at the destination, why on earth should you feel bad for not savoring the journey?
Flameseeker Chronicles: Introducing Guild Wars 2's Dragon's Reach
Today's edition of the Flameseeker Chronicles is a little bit special. We've got the teaser trailer for Guild Wars 2's next living world release, The Dragon's Reach: Part One. We've got some sweet screenshots provided by ArenaNet to feast your peepers on: aw, yeah. And if that's not enough, I got the chance to chat with Associate Game Director Steven Waller about next week's episode. Check out the video, and then read on!
EVE Evolved: Stepping through the EVE Gate
Though EVE Online is often lauded for its rich decade-long player history full of wars and complex political dealings, the NPC storyline and New Eden's ancient backstory have always held my fascination. I started playing in early 2004 after reading dozens of fiction chronicles and mock scientific articles on the EVE website that painted the picture of a real living universe where incredible things could happen. Sure enough, my first years of play were punctuated with compelling live events and storyline arcs like the Crielere research project that led to the development of cloaking devices, the theft of a Federation Navy titan by Serpentis pirates, and the Blood Raiders taking over Delve. CCP has frequently stated that its goal with EVE is to create the ultimate sci-fi simulator, and the core of a compelling sci-fi setting is a living universe that grows and changes. The best sci-fi TV shows are those with a constant cycle of revealing compelling mysteries and then solving them and of encountering escalating challenges to be overcome. EVE has done this extremely well a few times in its life, such as with the release of wormholes or when the Sansha incursions events were kicking off, and each time the concurrent player numbers have spiked. Guild Wars 2 has shown the power of an evolving living storyline to get people into the game and keep them actively playing in the long term, something that should be the norm for MMOs and that EVE Online could take much greater advantage of. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at some of the big NPC mysteries revealed in EVE Online's decade-long history and ask why they were abandoned and where they could go now.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The true nature of Guild Wars 2's Sylvari
Remember last week, when I made a comment about how neat the little touches in Guild Wars 2's Gates of Maguuma release are? Stuff like a vine poking at a waypoint in Dry Top and making it spark? Hey, it was actually kind of cute! Aww, the big fella probably doesn't know what a waypoint is. Maybe he's hungry. Those aren't for snacking on, you silly vine. Right. Well, hide your Miracle-Gro because more vines are now spreading eastward across the waypoint network. As of this writing they've gotten as far as Lion's Arch, which as we all know hasn't seen enough trouble lately. Some of them have even fully entangled the floating waypoint doodlehoppers, growing larger in the process. So I may have been right about the snack part, but that doesn't exactly bode well. What exactly is going on?
Guild Wars 2 launches Entanglement today
Guild Wars 2 fans, prepare yourselves for some tangly living world action today as ArenaNet launches Entanglement, episode two of the ongoing second season of the game's story content. Players will continue the established plot arc that has them joining a now-familiar cast of NPCs in the newly opened zone in the Maguuma Wastes. The lethal, fast-growing vines that have plagued the Brisban Wildlands have begun to spread. Word reaches you of trouble in the town of Prosperity, where the asuran prodigy Taimi was left alone to research the threat. Get back to Prosperity, meet up with Braham, and check in on Taimi. [...] There are secrets hidden within the newly revealed area of Dry Top, just waiting to be discovered. Learn more about the mysterious denizens lurking beyond Prospect Valley and come face-to-face with never-before-seen foes. Follow the trail you picked up in the last release and continue your search for the ley line hub. Stay wary! In Dry Top, danger and discovery go hand in hand. Don't forget that if you can't play the episode in the next two weeks, you can log into the game and save the episode for a later date. ArenaNet has also released new screenshots for the event's launch; enjoy them below.
Star Wars Galaxies lead designer passes away
Massively is saddened by the news that veteran MMO designer Ben Hanson has passed away, according to a recent tweet by friend and fellow designer Raph Koster. Koster and Hanson worked together on Star Wars Galaxies's Jump to Lightspeed expansion, on which Hanson was the lead content designer. In addition to working at SOE, Hanson worked with Simutronics, Origin, ArenaNet, and Digital Anvil during his long career. Our deepest condolences go out to Ben Hanson's family and friends.
Vote for your Guild Wars 2 International All-Stars tourney reps
ArenaNet and Twitch are joining forces to bring you the "first-ever truly global" Guild Wars 2 competition. It's going down at Gamescom 2014 and it's called the Guild Wars 2 International All-Stars Tournament since it matches players from North America, Europe, and China. Fans can choose their regional representatives via a voting drive that starts today, and the winners will receive all-expenses paid trips to Germany to compete.
Guild Wars 2 selling well in China [Updated]
Chinese MMO players love Guild Wars 2, according to an NCsoft census that was translated on Reddit. The two-year old fantasy MMO has eclipsed 3.8 million Chinese users, which indicates far faster growth than the game has exhibited in the rest of the world. The title launched in August of 2012 and topped the 3.5 million sales mark a year later. China's 3.8 million sales happened in just two months. GamesIndustry.biz posits that GW2's Chinese success is an indication of a lucrative and untapped market for Western developers as well as evidence that buy-to-play business models can succeed in an area dominated by F2P. [Thanks 7BitBrian!] [Update: ArenaNet has disavowed these numbers as of July 11th. "We'd like to clarify recent news of GW2 China sales: it's inaccurate, from a Chinese fansite, and they could be estimating characters," the studio said via Twitter. Thanks to Martin for the tip.]
Global Chat: Being the bad guy
As an MMO enthusiast blog, Massively has always had a special appreciation of the dedicated (and unpaid!) writing that gamers put out on their own blogs every day. Every week there are dozens if not hundreds of terrific posts on MMOs out there, and since I'm the resident loon here who reads pretty much all of them, I decided to start up a biweekly column to point you in the direction of some of the best discussions going on in the blogosphere. We'll see posts on specific games and general topics, geeky gushings and zany rantings. For our inagural edition of Global Chat (yes, I'm recycling the name from a long-dormant feature on this site), we'll take a look at how outfits tie into identity, surviving MMOs as a chicken, a requiem for a gold farmer, and so much more!
