Before I begin with Guild Wars 2 news, be sure to check out the huge skill balancing update to Guild Wars 1. A lot of people worked very hard on balancing extremely popular (and therefore touchy) farming skills, buffing entire lines of skills, and working on the balance across the PvP formats a bit more. Then Linsey Murdock of the Guild Wars Live Team hints on Facebook that the next big patch will be a content patch, and she will have to kill people off. My guess is she might be planning to push forward with the timeline in Guild Wars. Now, on to the future.
Archive for the 'Guild Wars 2' Category
I am a monogamistic bloke when it comes to joining a guild for an MMO. I dislike playing alts to begin with, but being a member in two guilds for one game seems even more like alting. It seems discordant with my usual MMO goal of making human connections across the electronic ether.
My first MMO, A Tale in the Desert, doesn’t count because my one character could belong to as many guilds as I desired, which to me makes more sense than anything else. Yet, it was a smaller community to begin with. I’ll skip World of Warcraft where I mostly soloed and PUG’d anyway even if I did belong to the guild. (I still feel guilty for taking a gold, way back in the day, to buy a guild tabard I never wore.) Then I played Guild Wars.
The ArenaNet community managers are using an interesting tactic over at the Guild Wars 2 unofficial forum where they take the gist of a thread and quickly interview the devs themselves. I really like that they are opening up a tad more communication, but the quick hits can get lost in the middle of a 20-page thread. So, every week or so I’ll try and pull them from the water and comment on them here (especially since JR is slacking on the front GW2G page). Continue reading ‘Guild Wars 2 Stuff (2/4)’
Mondes Persistants was able to interview the Guild Wars Live Team, and there are some pretty interesting answers (HT: Fril Estelin @ Guild Wars Guru) . The most interesting answer to a pretty common question regarding future content additions / events was:
Yes, we have a lot of ideas on our minds, probably more than we will be able to implement. We love the game and always try to come up with new things we hope players will enjoy. Who knows, maybe players will bear witness to some of the cataclysmic events that transform Tyria prior to Guild Wars 2?
ArenaNet keeps mildly hinting at using Guild Wars as a platform to introduce some Guild Wars 2 lore, but that is an overly candid response to an easily shunted question. We know that skill balance is a top priority, but we haven’t heard anything about upcoming features or content. Hopefully after the dust from the skill balances clears, the Live Team can preview what else they are working on.
The second is that the popular Guild Wars fansite Guild Wars Guru was hacked, and the hacker was able to obtain some personal information. Read about it here, but the bottom line is to change your passwords to Guild Wars Guru and Guild Wars 2 Guru (and Auction Site). I would also watch any other sites / games where you combo your email, username, and/or current Guru password.
The third is I have to say with one of my last controversial posts on Guild Wars, I had the weirdest pingback ever. We are breaking grounds with the MMO genre people! (And go River Rats!)
–Ravious
remember two things
The holy trinity is well known. The DPS fight the mobs with damage. The Healer fights the damage from the mobs. And, the Tank fights the agro from the DPS and Healer. In World of Warcraft the formula is pretty well set for easy gameplay. Lord of the Rings gets a bit hazier with their use of hybrid classes, range tanking, and tank swapping, but for the most part it follows the doctrine of the holy trinity.
Guild Wars came very close to shirking the entire thing. Agro does not really exist like it does in World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. Each battle with PvE mobs is reminiscent of a PvP battle. Players have 8 bodies against the team of enemies to kill. Because PvE can feel so much like PvP (especially in comparison to the stark contrast of PvE/PvP in World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online), ArenaNet moved away from the holy trinity to a more enlightened trinity: the three lines.
And now on a lighter, less philosophical note, ArenaNet has just released a second trailer for Guild Wars 2 on the Races of Tyria! Such a beautiful thing (HD link). What a great treat right before the weekend. I really like the mechani-Spartan Charr, but all the races seem very cool. In other games, there are definitely ones that feel less cool. Cold, if you will. This game might make me a racial altoholic, in the best sense.
–Ravious
most adaptable to change
EDIT: Oh, and Felicia Day voices Zojja the Asuran. That’s pretty cool. I like their voice actors.
I feel sorry for Jaeho Lee sometimes. The man heads up the English-speaking conference call for Korean-based NCSoft. Last time NCSoft at the conference call spoke substantively about Guild Wars 2’s possible release date it caused enough commotion that the ArenaNet’s brass had to respond. Of course it can’t be helped, Guild Wars 1 was a success in what was considered a DOA-business model. More people than rabid fans like me want to know about the sequel to ArenaNet’s first game. Continue reading ‘Guild Wars 2 Release Date Flashbang’
A feel good moment. I am always blown away by MMO fans. They are truly some top notch people, and their creativity is apparent in things like Halloween art contests. It’s tough competition for developers to actually compete with the masters of their games, but they can and do. ArenaNet worked with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to give one of their fans, Emily, a tour of the offices and a chance to play Guild Wars 2. Things like this make me all fuzzy on an overcast rainy day.
–Ravious
the candy man can
My first 3D exploration in an MMO was in World of Warcraft. There were some delicious herbs to be found off of Westfall’s shores. Stranglekelp was found amidst roaming Murlocs, and when the herb was smoothee’d with some Blackmouth fish oil, my priest could be underwater for in-game hours checking out wreckages, looking for pearls, and generally enjoying the freedom of the z-axis. There was one area, if I recall correctly, in Stranglethorn Vale where some elite Murlocs were guarding a sunken ruins. I played an interesting game of agro-Operation trying to swim down to the bottom without alerting the bug-eyed fish-lizards to my presence. It took a few tries, but I remember being so proud and feeling so clever. The quest suggested a group of people after all. Continue reading ‘Under Da Sea’
Thanks to Naoroji at Guild Wars 2 Guru we received a translation from an interview from a Dutch magazine regarding Guild Wars 2. There are a lot of good tidbits from Naoroji’s post on racial abilities and underwater exploration, but the best cut is on World PvP. Continue reading ‘Guild Wars 2 RTS’
