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Celebrating Guild Wars' 8th anniversary
Today is Guild Wars' eighth anniversary. Depending on which tradition you follow, I should be getting the game either bronze, salt, linens, or lace as a gift. Since I don't happen to have any of those handy, I'd like to reflect upon the rich life that Guild Wars has led so far. The game didn't start out with all of the neato features that it has now, so I'd like to look a bit at its evolution over time. I can't hit every update ever, but I thought we'd take a stroll down memory lane and look at some of the key moments in the game's life.
Guild Wars video preview shows off The Zaishen Menagerie
As Guild Wars approaches its four year anniversary this April 28th, they plan to kick off some birthday festivities a bit early, starting on April 23rd and running through the 29th. The Guild Wars 4 Year Anniversary Celebration will include rewards for long-time players such as miniatures, plus special items tied in with the event and festivities held at the Shing Jea Boardwalk.NCSoft has also mentioned The Zaishen Menagerie, a new Asian-themed area, replete with torii-inspired arches, red bridges, and a picturesque backdrop. NCSoft gives this description of The Zaishen Menagerie: "In a beautiful, lush new explorable area in the Battle Isles, the Zaishen Order runs a tight business breeding and training all the common and prestige pets from around the world for their clientele. There are a few ways you can start your own collection in the Menagerie. Bring any pet with you or your Heroes to the Tamer in the Menagerie Grounds. The Tamer will check your pet's evolution and unlock that tier and any lower tiers. Adding charmed pets to the Menagerie is absolutely free. You can also use Balthazar Faction or pay with Zaishen Coins and gold to have the Zaishen Order unlock and train evolutions of pets for you. This way, you've got several choices for unlocking all your pets."There's also a Pet Unlock Pack that Guild Wars players can buy for $10 which will unlock all common pets in the Menagerie. We've got a video embed of The Zaishen Menagerie preview for you below the cut:
Changes in rules come to the Guild Wars tournament series
Those of you who are highly interested in the competitive tournaments of Guild Wars might like to know that ArenaNet has recently posted a new version of the tournament series rules on their website.The tournament series are the monthly tournaments that take place in Guild Wars between eight member guild teams as well as one versus one battles. The tournaments not only pay out with recognition as being one of the best players or being a member of one of the best guilds in the game, but also with tangible rewards from the Zaishen faction. Some of the rewards include titles as well as special emotes and potions.The full list of rules can be found on the main Guild Wars site, under the competitive section. It's a long read, but a necessary one for anyone interested in participating in this year's tournament series.
Guild Wars update adds new Zaishen reward and more
Yesterday's skill balance and update for Guild Wars brought with it some large changes for arguably overpowered skills, bug fixes and the addition of the newest Zaishen Reward tonic for September. Despite the creepy appearance of that new Macabre Tonic creature, the main topic on everyone's mind is the change to the Unyielding Aura Elite skill.This skill had previously been the cornerstone for what's known as Ghost Running, where players could take advantage of what could best be described as an exploit. This also worked for many popular farming runs as well. With this new patch, Unyielding Aura now only works "within spell casting range", eliminating the way characters could rez from across the map. Of course many players don't like this fix, but as any veteran Guild Wars player knows, it doesn't take ArenaNet long to remedy unbalanced skills.
Guild Wars PvP: A new perspective
Sure, we've shown you how to get into Guild Wars PvP if you're strictly a PvE player, but what about putting that knowledge into practice? What about reading a first-hand account from someone who writes exceptionally well? Luckily, Van Hemlock has done the dirty work for you by telling us his story of how he finally made the plunge into GW PvP, and how much he's actually enjoying it.He starts out by describing his team's adventure in the Zaishen Challenge arenas, and eventually moves on to the craziness that is Alliance Battles. This team, affectionately named the Tuesday N00b Club, was recently joined by Scott from Pumping Irony. The beauty of this blog post is the way Van Hemlock describes so much of his initial PvP experiences from a perspective that many veteran players might take for granted. The best part is, it ends on a positive note.
New Guild Wars Zaishen rewards announced
Now that the April 2008 Zaishen Tournament is over, commemorating the third anniversary of ArenaNet's Guild Wars, we look forward to a completely revamped tournament system with new rewards, in-game prizes, items and a shiny new Zaishen title track.The way this new system works, whenever you use a Zaishen Key on a Zaishen Chest, you get 5 Zaishen Reputation Points which accumulate towards this new title track. Each rank of this title track, from 1 to 12, has its own unique name. In addition, you'll receive infinite-use Transmogrifier Tonics that will change for each month of the tournament, and special rank emotes which will be progressively more impressive the higher they get from rank 1 to rank 7. Be sure to check out the Guild Wars website for complete information on these rewards and a video of the rank 7 emote in action!
