Guild Wars 2 Articles

[Morreion]

That's a MUCH better video than the official trailer.

The Gathering Economy (Kill Ten Rats)

We have a gathering economy in Guild Wars 2 with market efficiency aimed at the materials. The market does not care about the product, and this is where laziness comes enters the equation. This is the opposite of most conventional MMO economies. It is also why a crafted scepter that might have a market value in raw materials at say 15 silver will be sold on the trading post for a small fraction of that. Players are already rewarded for gathering and crafting so throwing the scepter away at a loss does not feel like one.

A good article, recommended reading.

Guild Wars 2 Point-Counterpoint - Questing and Playable Races (Ten Ton Hammer)

GW2's own uniqueness can have a divisive effect on players. The things ArenaNet has done differently can generate either a love or hate reaction, or sometimes a little of both. This is also true among Ten Ton Hammer writers - while we do attempt to maintain objectivity, we are humans and we do have our own opinions and biases. As proof, we have Gunky and Shayalyn debating the pros and cons of the dynamic questing system, game immersion and playable races.

Toys, Toys, Toys (Kill Ten Rats)

So what have I bought? No gold. I am still too much of a miser to go that route given the current exchange rate. I have bought quite a few miniatures. So far against the market it’s been a fool’s game. Out of 6 packs, I’ve received one rare (no exotics). So for about 70-90 silver (300 gems) per pack at six packs, I have maybe a gold’s worth of miniatures. Much like my other gaming hobby, Magic the Gathering, it appears that buying singles is the way to go. I was hoping to pull one exotic, but I am loping down the road of gambler’s fallacies now.

World Versus Me (Hunter's Insight)

I spent my time outside the wall targeting people trying to cast spells from the ramparts. My pistols do AoE damage, and if I can manage to hit one player, I can hit others, and make small groups back away from their viable range. Even if my shots were obstructed by the wall, my AoE still goes off and I sometimes am still able to do damage. This worked really well for the people attacking the door. Wall defenders rushed back and forth along the wall never able to focus on one player. I ended up using this tactic quite a bit.

Mike Ferguson on the Current State of the World (vs. World) (GW2 Website)

Another thing that is fairly constant across all worlds is that Eternal Battlegrounds (the central map in WvW) is by far the most popular map for people to queue for. You may help lower your wait time by queuing up for a borderlands map first, then entering the Eternal Battlegrounds queue once you are in the borderlands.

The Story So Far (GW2Hub)

Some lore background.

Account Security in Guild Wars 2 (GW2Hub)

Ultimately, we the gamers need to strive to keep our accounts secure against things that we can control. Using the same password across multiple sites that isn’t secure to begin with will never, ever, keep our accounts from being hacked. We have to be vigilant in creating passwords that the ner’do’wells can’t guess, can’t find in a database, and can’t have.

Mike O’Brien on Account Security (GW2 Website)

The basic truth is this: hackers steal game accounts because they already know the account name and password. They know them because they stole them (via security breaches or spyware) from another game or site where the person used the same account name and password.

GW2 Dungeons in a nutshell (Keen & Graev)

Have you ever been doing a dungeon (probably in a pug), had your tank die, and suddenly the mobs are all over your healer or DPS and people just start running around trying to “dodge” the mobs but instead constantly die? Yeah, that’s Guild Wars 2 dungeons, but all the time.

This seems to be a growing concern.

ArenaNet addresses balance in Guild Wars 2 (Massively)

If you see something that is really strong please try and find counters to it before assuming it is overpowered. We have put a lot of hours into the game already and there are still many things we are learning about the depth of the combat and the balance. There are also finally enough players consistently playing that we can actually gather metrics on skills and make some more informed decisions about what is too weak/strong.

ArenaNet talks Guild Wars 2 dungeon difficulty (Massively)

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.

ArenaNet celebrates concept artists, sheds light on WvW queues [Updated] (Massively)

In other Guild Wars 2 news, Mike Ferguson has been busy updating players about World vs World queue numbers. About 30% of Guild Wars 2 players queued up for WvW on the day that his data was taken, and about 3% of the players who were queued up didn't get in during that time. Ferguson says that the team is "looking at a number of short term and long term solutions" to help get more people playing and fewer people queuing.

Guild Wars 2 players suffer a server outage (Massively)

It was an hour long- missed it!

Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 dungeons and dungeon talk (Massively)

The way that boss creatures telegraph their moves has an interesting side-effect in dungeons: Trash mobs can often feel more difficult than bosses. Now, that's certainly not the case if you're unaware of what you're getting into when you go into an encounter with a boss, but once you're in the know, it's a great deal easier to react to the telegraphed moves from a single boss than from less well-announced blows from multiple "easier" mobs. I don't think that telegraphing makes boss fights boring; instead, it rewards clever play. It is odd, though, to be more likely to have your backside handed to you by three rangers you meet on your way to meet Ranger Nente than by the good Master Ranger himself.

Black Lion Underground - 20 September 2012 (GW2Hub)

At the time of writing, Gold Ore is selling for around 33c per piece (on Buy Offers) with Iron Ore around 8c. Selling all of it to Buy Offers (I’m really not one to wait around for a marginally higher sale) and after listing deductions, I received a total of 40s 64c. Not bad for a few minutes work.

[Morreion]

The High Cost of Travel (GW2Hub)

The cost of waypoints is too damn high. I’m level sixty on one of my characters and it feels like I need to start walking everywhere or face a loss of wealth so major that it feels like we’re being taxed in the Middle Ages. That’s not to say it isn’t fair for us to pay a little for travel, but at the same time it becomes a big hindrance to enjoyment at higher levels. The cost to go somewhere is fine, but the cost to return to a major city is what gets you.

Quiet Places (Kill Ten Rats)

Many of the mid-level zones have been quieter for a while now. First off, a character has a choice of roughly three zones every 5 levels, and given the high leveling speed of Guild Wars 2, skipping many mid-level zones is just going to happen. Even my first character who I was trying to explore heavily with (“smell the roses”) did not make it to the eastern side of Tyria until I decided I wanted to take down the Shatterer. That’s the interesting part. The Shatterer event brings people to the normally quiet zone because, as I’ve heard it crudely called, it is a loot piñata. The same can be said for the Tequatl event as well.

The sticky part for ArenaNet is that they have already committed a large number of resources to all these quiet zones. Are they going to continue to give reason to re-explore these zones, or will they become silent speed bumps as alts and new players pass through on their way to Orr or the cold north? I am pretty sure we’ll get good stuff with the Halloween celebration and new zones/expansions are pretty much expected further down the road, but I hope ArenaNet can share what their goals are with regard to the current content sooner.

Dungeons and Drag Ass (Hunters Insight)

There’s a lot of weird inconsistent moments in these dungeons. You go from extremely hard trash mobs to a relatively easy boss to an easy trash mob encounter to an extremely difficult boss. I’m not saying that that’s necessarily bad, it’s certainly forcing me to keep my wits about me, but it just feels off kilter.

Guild Wars 2 patches up dungeon rewards and difficulty (Massively)

Players now receive dungeon tokens by reaching the end of an explorable chain rather than via individual boss kills, which prevents players from farming the first boss that drops tokens. To help increase the overall rewards from a single run, the chains will offer 20 tokens on completion and an additional 40 the first time you clear one in a given day.

Pink Day in LA is coming to a Lion's Arch near you (Massively)

It's October, and you know what that means! The time for Pink Day in LA is almost upon us! The Gaming World Entertainment Network's annual Guild Wars fundraiser for the fight against breast cancer will be held on Saturday, October 20th.

Flameseeker Chronicles: My Guild Wars 2 wishlist (Massively)

I'd like a camera that doesn't make me play worse than I already do

I don't need help being bad at this game.

So when I'm in an underground tunnel and I switch to tornado form and spend almost the entirety of the transformation staring at what I'm assuming was the floor of the level above me, I tend to get crabby. When I'm in a tight corner -- you know, the kind that fills up the majority of jumping puzzles -- and can no longer receive useful visual information, I tend to get a mite frustrated. When I'm navigating a closed space in PvP and may as well be running through fog for all the visibility I get, I tend to start hoping there's a camera fix on the way.

ArenaNet offers explanation for Guild Wars 2's diminishing returns mechanics (Massively)

ArenaNet game designer Jon Peters has explained the reasoning behind the diminishing returns karma mechanics that many Guild Wars 2 players have complained about in recent weeks.

"These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren't there to deal with the offender," Peters says in a post on the GW2 forums.

Colin Johanson Outlines Guild Wars 2 Live Game Development (GW2 official site)

To meet our goal, rather than have one small live team as is normally provided in traditional MMOs, we have formed multiple live teams focused on expanding Guild Wars 2 in the long term. I’ll cover the teams in broad terms below to give you an idea of the kind of support to expect. As our teams update the game, they will give you more specifics in the form of update notes, media interviews, and blog posts like this one.

Guild Wars 2 video and dev blog explain legendary weapons (Massively)

Hopeful wielders will need to obtain a rare exotic base weapon as well as scour the countryside and complete dungeons to get the materials needed to forge their weapons. Players also need to find gifts to present to the powerful djinn, Zommoros.

The Pirate's Guide to Magic Find Gear (GW2Hub)

One of the ways to increase your chances of obtaining the shiniest loot possible for your efforts is through items, consumables, or temporary buffs that provide an increase to Magic Find. There is a tradeoff, however, as Magic Find found on accessories, armor, or weapons will replace a more vital combat attribute.

In this guide we’ll go over your different options for putting together a cost effective set of magic find gear, outline the various types of consumables and buffs that enhance it even further, and explain how it impacts your chances of obtaining higher quality loot.

Structured Player vs. Player: The Iceberg (GW2 official site)

Structured Player vs. Player (sPvP) is a core feature in Guild Wars 2, and it’s quite massive. The features we want to add to sPvP, to use an analogy, are like an iceberg…It’s more than we’ve been able to say so far. And like all our other game types, we talk about sPvP features when they’re ready. We shipped the game with some key features, but a lot of features we wanted to show at release simply weren’t ready. So now we’d like to start talking about some coming features that, until now, have been beneath the surface of the ocean on our metaphorical iceberg.

Comparing DAoC to GW2 (GW2Hub)

One of the things I like is that the best parts of RvR came over to GW2 and the worst parts took a hike. As mentioned above, getting back to the action is much quicker in GW2 than in DAoC. Another example is that structures are a bit more balanced. You can’t ram rush a keep and take it, but you can take a tower or keep with a smaller number of players if it isn’t defended.

Another thing is the dynamic level adjustment. In RvR anyone could walk into it, even a level 1 if they so dared. It didn’t create problems, but it made it where you had to spend the months and months reaching level 50 in order to play the most fun part (in my opinion) of the game. If you weren’t level 50, you would be pretty much one shot and the day called.

EB Games Expo 2012: Guild Wars 2 interview (Massively)

Dan and David discuss the game's scope, painterly art styles, jumping puzzles, and community before answering the ultimate question: Asura or Norn?!

Flameseeker Chronicles: Environmental weapons in Guild Wars 2 (Massively)

I've very rarely found environmental weapons in the open world to be tremendously useful. The more common place ones, like boulders, I very rarely pick up (and when I do, it's on my Elementalist so I can target a critter standing right next to a friend and send a meteor hurling down on his head). Some places have weapons that are a little cooler. While defending Steeleye Span in the Brand, I was able to use a flamethrower that was lying on the ground, and that was kind of cool. It's not that the skills were exceptionally great, but it was something different from what I was running around with, and since the event was fairly straightforward, I felt as if I could goof around with different skills.

Guild Wars 2: Now with two-factor authentication (Massively)

ArenaNet is using Google's authenticator, which is available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and players will use this authenticator to verify devices rather than the previous email authentication system. The team is advising people that this is currently a beta feature, and already has two changes planned for the near future. Soon, unlinking the mobile authentication system will require additional codes, and users will have an option to remember current networks rather than having to authenticate every login.

GDC Online 2012: ArenaNet's Cameron Dunn on programming the next generation online world (Massively)

Dunn broke down ArenaNet's system design into three areas: server infrastructure, client metrics, and content tools. He started off by explaining the patch system, which allows anyone on the team to do a build at any time. That was extremely helpful during beta, and while there are limitations on who can put forth a build now that the game is live, patching is a smooth process because of what was learned during beta. He showed a graph illustrating the wave-like peaks and valleys of players logged in and asked us if we could spot the moment on the graph when the team launched a new patch. It wasn't until the next slide, which zoomed in on one of the peaks, that you could spot a small dip in the users, which immediately shot back up to where it had previously been. He explained that players get a window of time before they need to patch, so if a player is out in the world, he might get a few minutes, whereas if he's in a dungeon, he'll get a longer grace period. In short, patches can be done more regularly, yet they're less disruptive to gameplay.

[Loendal]

Necroposting.... A passtime that's fun for the whole family!

Guild Wars 2 has gone F2P; and I'm currently prowling around in there.

Saw a Ragnarr and a Jenna, are those Far Journey's Ragnarr and Jenna?

[Morreion]

Not me! Morreion & Jaema used to play there, it's been a while...then again, we could always go back.

[Loendal]

I must have confused the names or something.

I'm enjoying my time so far, it's a beautiful game (A new PC helps!) though the combat seems a bit slow. Perhaps I'm just not used to it yet.

If anyone does decide to go back and sees a husky Norn hunter named Narrou Wyrmsson, say hello

[Morreion]

GW2 looks really good, that stylized artwork. And leveling back down to the zones you've outleveled is genius. Some of the cities are breathtaking.

Make sure you try the jumping puzzles and vistas. There's lots of good stuff in that game.

farjourneys.proboards.com/thread/1718/first-forging-guild-event-20

[Rakul]

I'm in GW2 as well. What server are you on? I'm on Tarnished Coast.

[3aplus63jedge]

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[Rakul]

I believe we just got the ol' "<b></b>"!

[Regolyth]

Nuttin' worse than gettin' "<b></b>"! Why, I remember a day when you ne'er heard such a thing. Kids these days...