ArenaNet’s first hints at the big Guild Wars 2 celebration have dropped out. I hope we get a few more blog posts or interviews next week, but there’s a decent amount of information in the teaser. Things I found most interesting:
Permanent Features
As if simply having a rockin’ tale of Halloween told in “four acts” isn’t enough, ArenaNet appears to be adding permanent features to the game during the Shadow of the Mad King event. PvP players will be happy to know that paid tournaments are going to be added, which gives PvP players a sort of ante-prize pool system to fight over. ArenaNet is also adding new content across a variety of maps in the form of “new events, jumping puzzles, bosses, mini-dungeons, and achievements”.
I would think they meant that the Halloween event would have this new content, but ArenaNet seems to want to separate this additional content in to it’s own “Tyria Evolving” section of the teaser. I find this incredible that new permanent, world content would be hidden in the Halloween event. As if there won’t be enough to do at Halloween! Pft. Perhaps, like Colin Johanson said, ArenaNet is striving to have the best MMO service possible in terms of new content delivery. Adding a crush of content instead of stringing it along has been a tried and true method (see expansions). I am still a little amazed that they wouldn’t “save” the permanent content for slower times. I must be getting a little cynical in my old age.
Gem-for Adornments
The other really interesting thing is that Costume Brawl appears to be a gem-costed event. The Black Lion Trading Co. (I’ve started calling it BLi[gh]T Co. in my head) will be selling Halloween costumes and transforms (tonics?) to participate in Costume Brawl. I do think this is a tad bittersweet, but it is way more sweet than bitter. I’ve bought Guild Wars costumes in the past, and I received no “toy” changing my skills. I think this is a nice addition, but I do imagine some of the “sour grapes”-ilk will not be happy at Costume Brawl being behind a velvet rope.
I share Markco’s concern that little or nothing has been said about items tradable in the economy, and he is going for a dollar-cost averaging investment of gems. I agree with Markco that the gem exchange rate will likely skyrocket during events. I expect he has more gold than he knows what to do with, but with my small change, I think keeping to flipping goods is a smarter, although more hands-on, investment approach for Halloween because of the huge middle-man cost involved with flipping gems. Regardless, if you envision playing Costume Brawl at all, I would drop a few gold in to gems now. Either way (gems or money), I think more value will be had now than later.
I’ve already soothsayed that events are a great opportunity for ArenaNet to work on some of the slower moving or over-supplied parts of the economy. I hope there will be a blog post by John Smith or someone else involved with crafting next week to discuss the upcoming event’s impact on crafting and/or the economy.
In just over a week the event will start. I am very excited, and I think this will be a treat for any Guild Wars 2 player that has not yet experienced an ArenaNet Halloween.
–Ravious
Annoyingly I am unlikely to be able to play GW2 during most of the period the event is on.
It’s interesting how we read things, too. I took the announcement to say that we were getting a large content update, part of which would be a seasonal holiday event, rather than that we were getting a large seasonal holiday event that also contained some general updates.
Making Costume Brawl only available for gems, as it appears right now, is a huge let down. I had a blast with Guild Wars’ Costume Brawl year after year, and normally, I’d hope for a blast in Guild Wars 2 as well. But having to buy my right to participate in it is something I will certainly not do.
The “right” to participate in the Costume Brawl will be voted on in the Kryta assembly this coming winter. It is item 17, proposed by Sir Vonpoofyports. Please ensure you contact your assemblyman and voice you concerns over the right to dress like death, cultists, marmots or any number of ethereal beings!
It’s GW2 bro-a business, not a government.
First of all, I’m not your bro in any way. Please cut that crap. Neither that kind of speech nor that stupid first part of your post makes you cool however one looks at it.
Of course ArenaNet is running a business. Still that does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that cutting game features in slices and selling them bit by bit is a smart tactic and has to be used. With the current general playerbase, which obviously contains enough retards that pay a fourth of the full price of a game for a one-hour-DLC that was obviously taken out before release for that exact purpose, that might be a profitable tactic. But it won’t make a lot of happy customers. Many will still pay up, but it won’t raise ArenaNets reputation in their eyes.
Especially Guild Wars 2 has a lot to lose in this regard. They have to be careful that the businessmodel they’re boasting, buy to play with an unobtrusive, not-pay-to-win ingame store, does not become ridiculed by having too many game features over time. If Guild Wars 2 get’s the reputation of being just a skeleton, where you have to buy dozens of game features in the store to have the full experience, it probably wouldn’t do the franchise a big favour.
It would have to go anorexic to a huge degree to get the “reputation of being just a skeleton”. Let’s not go to polar extremes over one Halloween activity, which, I might add, we don’t really know how it works… just that it has ties or is based on the gem store. You have to take in to account all the features in that same article that seemed to have no ties to the gem store too.
You do realize that you can buy gems with gold right…. and you can make gold fairly easily without any kind of market manipulation. Sooooo new content takes a while to unlock because you need to make gold first. Sounds like every other MMO ever, only difference is we get awesome content that doesn’t need to be unlocked as well. Though it is yet to be seen whether or not the events are good or not. Hope they will be though!!
sPvP works a lot like GW1’s costume brawl in many ways, and that’s still free. Making a fixed-weapon tonic version of it cost gold (in the form of gems) is not so terrible.