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Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's post-feature pack experience
On April 15th Guild Wars 2 got its first feature pack, as packed with features as advertised. After the first day or so of trying to figure out where our town clothes disappeared to, it's becoming clear how much has changed: There's a lot more to take in and adjust to than might be immediately apparent. The experience for new GW2 characters has changed so much that I rolled up yet another alt post-patch to try it out. That was my plan all along, and I didn't do it because I just bought another character slot and didn't have an Asura yet. I chose a profession that's known for being less fun without traits, so I could see what it's like to not have them before level 30. It was not because I wanted another Engineer and already have two Necromancers, two Guardians, and two Mesmers. It was also necessary to use a total makeover kit for legitimate data-gathering purposes. Aww, look how cute he is! I can use all of my unlocked dyes on him, and dress him up in outfits, and -- right, down to business.
Guild Wars 2's Tournament of Legends expands
ArenaNet has made some changes to Guild Wars 2's upcoming Tournament of Legends PvP event due to an "overwhelming turnout." The tourney will now feature 64 teams per region instead of the original 16, and two additional rounds have been added as a result. The EU region tournament begins on April 26th, while the North American edition starts May 3rd. Additional details including start times, prizes, and the scheduled map rotation are available at the GW2 website.
Classic Guild Wars' ninth anniversary celebration is underway
If you're not too busy checking out the new feature pack in Guild Wars 2's version of Tyria, you might be interested to know that the more classic edition of the game world is celebrating its ninth birthday this month. Also, it has Cantha. Just saying. Yes, Guild Wars 1 is having a party, and you're invited. Though the anniversary update was originally scheduled to begin on April 22nd, a note from Joe Kimmes on the official wiki mentions that a fortuitous typo led to the event's partial stealth-implementation on April 2nd instead, so while you'll have to wait until next week for the complete event, players are reporting that bonus items have been dropping all month and that some of the minigames are underway as of today. The official site is silent about the anniversary so far, but the login screen announces the festivities: The party is on for the anniversary of Guild Wars! Starting April 22nd at Noon Pacific (-7 GMT), we open Shing Jea Boardwalk, Dragon Arena, and the Rollerbeetle Races. In addition, Birthday Cupcakes and many other special items will drop all throughout this weeklong event.
Guild Wars 2's megaserver update and patch primer [Updated]
If you're still reeling from playing dress-up and retraiting your stable of characters thanks to Guild Wars 2's feature pack launch yesterday, then friend of Massively Richie "Bogotter" Procopio has just the video for you. He's put together a patch primer that walks current and returning players through the new wardrobe system, dye system, and trait system. He also gives a few more obscure tips that aren't obvious from the patch notes. Meanwhile, ArenaNet has posted that the patch's promised megaserver tech is slowly rolling out to key zones. Here's what's been activated so far: The Grove, Heart of the Mist, Black Citadel, Timberline Falls, Southsun Cove, Rata Sum, Straits of Devastation, Fields of Ruin, Brisban Wildlands, Hoelbrak, Iron Marches, Blazeridge Steppes, and Dredgehaunt Cliffs. [Update: Lion's Arch, Lornar's Pass, Kessex Hills, Diessa Plateau, and Metrica Province were just converted this afternoon, according to the official site.] Enjoy the primer video after the break!
PAX East 2014: Guild Wars 2 on the Feature Pack and beyond
If you're a Guild Wars 2 fan, we all know what you're excited about today. After a year(ish) of small incremental patches and living story, the game is rolling out a big patch full of features appropriately dubbed the Feature Pack. It's not new content, but it's a lot of big bonuses and improvements to the ways that players already play the game's existing content. And we got to see a bit of it in action at PAX East. Some of the information about how these features will work has already been discussed, but not everything, and seeing all of the improvements in action definitely gave a sense of tangible change not visible in development blogs. It's part of a shift in ethos for the development team, as well; rather than trying to roll out changes along with Living Story updates, ArenaNet is implementing a big set of improvements at once to make the whole update feel meatier.
Make your own kind of music in Guild Wars 2
You could be forgiven for overlooking the new drum in Guild Wars 2's cash shop -- it's just a cosmetic thing for roleplayers who stand around town, right? Well, not exactly, and a developer diary from ArenaNet audio programmer Aaron McLeran aims to explain why you should care (and buy all the things). The drum actually allows players to select from two modes: a pre-set groove mode, which lets you auto-play several drum tracks solo or in time with other players' tracks, and user groove mode, which starts to travel into Lord of the Rings Online territory. Says McLeran, The first five skill buttons have five unique drum sounds respectively. Each sample can be triggered individually so the drum can perform like our previous instruments in free-play mode. The only difference is the drum will quantize beat events so that they always sound good to you – and in rhythm. If you push the sixth or seventh skill slot, you put the drum into "loop-record" mode. If this is the first time you've pushed it, you'll hear a nice little click-track (that only you can hear!) that gives you an idea of where the "global" pulse is. Think of it like a count off: "A one, a two, a one two three four!" Then, when you push the drum sample set skill buttons again, they'll actually loop back on themselves. You can build up ever more complicated and funky grooves. We just have one question: Where's our Bard class?
ANet answers community questions on GW2 Feature Pack livestream
If you've got questions about Guild Wars 2's April Feature Pack, ArenaNet has answers. In fact, it's already published a few of them via a livestream that happened yesterday and is now archived on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Associate game director John Corpening, gameplay programmer Ryan Diederich, and UI designer Kate Welch are your hosts, and they spend about 17 minutes powering through community-generated queries collected from forums and social media. See for yourself after the break!
Flameseeker Chronicles: Customization and playing together in Guild Wars 2's feature pack
As of last week, ArenaNet has revealed all of the major features Guild Wars 2 players can expect to see in April 15th's highly anticipated feature pack. When I say "highly anticipated," I mean that a large part of the playerbase is collectively vibrating and may soon gain enough momentum to will April 15th into arriving immediately. If they don't manage it, at least we've only got a week to wait. Until then, we've got plenty of GW2 discussion to tide us over. Most of the feature pack announcements have been well-received, and there's a lot to look forward to, but I still have a few minor nits to pick. Blame it on nits being easier to find when everyone's head is 200% bigger.
Guild Wars 2 encourages patch mystery and player speculation
Death to Guild Wars 2 patch notes? ArenaNet might not be going that far, but it may be getting a lot more secretive about them in the coming months. In an interview on IGN today, Lead Developer Colin Johanson said that the team learned a lot from the first season of GW2's living world, especially how much the players loved to speculate and discover patch additions organically. He said that the team observed players becoming more engaged when ArenaNet dropped in content that wasn't spelled out in the patch notes. Johanson said this trend will continue: "You don't know what's going to happen and you don't know what you're going to find. Every week you want to search every corner of the world because the next hint for the living world could be hidden anywhere." Johanson talked about the great changes to the world, especially in regard to the team nuking the city of Lion's Arch. He mentioned a player who predicted that the event would occur back in January: "It was really interesting for us to see that, and to be able to point back at him and say, 'Hey man, you nailed it!' and to be able to call that out was really cool."
Guild Wars 2 offers 50% off sale on digital editions
Guild Wars 2 is ramping up for its feature-pack patch due out in less than two weeks with what ArenaNet is calling an "unprecedented" worldwide sale. From today until April 13th, the subscription-free, buy-to-play game is 50% off its usual price. According to the studio, Players can get access to one of the most popular MMO games of all time at the unprecedented discount of 50 percent off, and get all of the exciting content ArenaNet has planned for 2014 and beyond without ever paying a subscription fee. The offer applies only to the Digital Heroic Edition, now available for $24.99 (€ 19.99 / £ 17.49), and the Digital Deluxe Edition, now available for $34.99 (€ 29.99 / £ 24.99), when purchased through the official Guild Wars 2 online store from April 3 at 12pm Pacific Time through April 13 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. If you've been on the fence about the game, it's a good time to pick it up... if you aren't, you know, playing The Elder Scrolls Online this weekend. [Source: ArenaNet press release]
How Guild Wars 2 megaservers affect guilds, WvW, events, and world bosses
Yesterday, ArenaNet announced that it will soon begin to roll out megaserver technology for Guild Wars 2 in order to eliminate overflow and underpopulated servers. Today, it has delivered a pair of blog posts intended to clarify those plans. The first post tackles guilds and WvW. ArenaNet aims to unify guild chapters split across home-worlds so that all members contribute to and benefit from the same version of the guild. But the studio does note that WvW won't be negatively affected by megaservers and will continue to be based on competition between worlds. The second and more meaty entry focuses on world bosses and events. The API governing boss timers on individual worlds will be replaced by a more consistent schedule such that world boss events will start at the same time across the entire game. There's even a 24-hour proposed schedule ready to go.
ArenaNet rolls out the Megaserver for Guild Wars 2
As part of what ArenaNet calls "just the beginning of our new approach to enhancing the in-game social environment," the Guild Wars 2 developer is announcing a new Megaserver technology that will allow similar players to play together more easily and more frequently. Launching with the April 2014 Feature Pack on April 15th, the Megaserver System will introduce a new metric that will restructure the way servers will work. According to the studio, this system will place players on servers that have more of your friends and guildmates, and more players who speak the same language as you. It hopes to eliminate overflow servers and dead shards. The Megaserver System will start out as a test on the level 1-15 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby. The team hopes to roll the technology out to the entire game by the end of the year, if all goes well.
Guild Wars 2 inflates your character's head
So everyone thought that Guild Wars 2 was just going to do Super Adventure Box again. But no, this year is going a different route. After all, you're super important in the game, aren't you? So why not let all of that importance go straight to your cranium? The designers have turned on the game's big head mode, and it's probably going to significantly improve your experience within the game as a whole. Maybe. Who knows, it could happen. The point is that the super adventure is now in your skull, which is greatly engorged, and you can log into the game right now to start playing with the biggest head your character has ever had in Tyria. Bigger even than Trahearne's head! Check out the full infographic on the update just past the break (click for a larger version) and enjoy the new visuals as you head into battle. [Source: ArenaNet press release]
Guild Wars 2 reworks PvP with its major April update
As of April 15th, Guild Wars 2 will have no more PvP gear. None. Your appearance in PvP will be the same as it is in WvW and PvE, and you'll enjoy complete statistical parity with everyone else on the battlefield. That's one of the biggest takeaways from the game's latest development blog, but it's hardly the only one. PvP is seeing a major overhaul like everything else, and it ties directly into more rewarding experiences via the new reward tracks. The reward tracks set down a series of objectives for players to accomplish by taking part in PvP, with several smaller rewards along the way and a big bonus at the end. There are also rotating dungeon reward tracks, allowing players to unlock dungeon skins and rewards by taking part in PvP challenges, ensuring that you can unlock what you want through the game mode that you like the most. For more details, as well as a look at the upcoming PvP build interface and other changes, take a gander at the full development blog.
Working As Intended: What Guild Wars 2 got right
I returned to Guild Wars 2 recently after months away and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. No, there was nothing earth-shatteringly new, and no, I'm not going to praise the latest installment of the plot, but I realized that I'd forgotten just how much Guild Wars 2 managed to get right. I have many complaints about the game ranging from the way group combat in dungeons flopped to how the economy tanked to the fact that the living story bores me to tears. But Guild Wars 2 has some true nuggets of brilliance all the same, even if it doesn't have (I'm gonna say it) Cantha. Let's talk about them.
Guild Wars 2 signals end of armor repair costs
The latest developments in Guild Wars 2's upcoming April feature pack will improve the quality of life around Tyria, as the game will be ending armor repair and sharing gear and WvW XP across accounts. The team said that it feels as though the loss of time is enough of a death penalty that it will be removing the costs for armor repair when the patch lands. Because this will take out a goldsink, the team is also reducing the coin dropped by champion loot bags. Legendary gear, ascended items, and World vs. World XP will become account-bound rather than character-bound come April as well. This means that players can character hop and retain their progression and expensive items instead of getting them individually.
Guild Wars 2 improving guild and LFG systems in April
The last few announcements about Guild Wars 2 changes have been big. And with good cause, as roughly no one should be unhappy about the final destruction of the much-maligned town clothes mechanic. But there are smaller significant changes coming along as well, as detailed in a new post outlining a few changes coming to both the game's LFG tools as well as guild management systems. They won't rewrite the game, but they should make it a little easier. Guild leaders, for instance, will be able to see when members last logged in. The LFG tool will allow filtering via language and for WvW groups, making it that much easier to find a group that you can communicate with and has the same goals as you. There are also improved mechanics for guild-based groups in the system. Sure, it's not a complete trait overhaul, but if you're enjoying your time in Tyria every little improvement is a good one.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Looking forward to Guild Wars 2's feature pack
The dust has barely settled on the Battle for Lion's Arch: Aftermath release, but ArenaNet is already releasing blog posts to discuss Guild Wars 2's April 15th feature pack. What's a feature pack? Well, it's exactly what it says on the tin: We'll be getting a big chunk of gameplay updates, quality-of-life improvements, and balance tweaks that don't fit into the living world or have story components. I usually refer to this stuff as "stuff," but "feature pack" definitely sounds more classy. As I write this, we've gotten posts on three of the topics locked up in the official feature pack site's nifty little sidebar doodad: one covering updates to the trait system; another to outline balance changes for runes, sigils and professions; and another to talk about swapping critical damage percentage for a new attribute called Ferocity. I have a lot to say about traits, but I'm also going to spend some time speculating on the next two blog posts in the lineup. There's nothing I love more than making half-baked predictions.
Guild Wars 2 unveils new account-wide wardrobe system
The latest ingredient in Guild Wars 2's April 2014 feature pack has just been announced, and it's a delight for those of us who like to play dress-up in our MMOs. Yes, it's quite literally a wardrobe, an "account-wide system that allows players to collect every skin in the game." Says ArenaNet, "Currently, it can be a little overwhelming to try to sort through it all and customize your character exactly how you'd like to. Our answer to that is the Wardrobe, which makes it easy for players to change their look at any time and to share cosmetic items across all the characters on [their] account." In other words, a skin unlock for one character will work for alts too, and players will use transmutation charges to swap their looks as part of the new simplified transmutation system. ANet launched a brand new dev blog, video, and gallery today to toast the new feature. Enjoy!
Guild Wars 2's Tournament of Legends begins April 26th
Yesterday evening, ArenaNet community coordinator Allie Murdock announced Guild Wars 2's first-ever Tournament of Legends, debuting on April 26-27 in Europe and May 3-4 in North America. The tournament format is a best-of-three single-elimination style for the prelims and best-of-five for the finals. Prizes include legendary weapons, legendary components, Black Lion weapon tickets, and gems; participants and stream viewers alike have a chance at walking away with some sweet goodies. Registration begins April 4th. Sixteen teams per region will be selected.
