Author: Ravious

Last time I ignored crafting in beta, and I vowed that this time around I would make it a focused feature to my press dump. On my human thief I chose to go with cooking and leatherworking as my two active crafting professions. It should be noted that a single character can become persistently skilled in all the crafting professions, but only two can be active at a time. Switching costs gold based on the level of the crafting professions the character is switching to.

Anyway, a thief uses medium armor so leatherworking would tie in well with that, but I really wanted leatherworking for the additional bag space to make it easier to hold the gross of ingredients for cooking. One of the initial recipes a leatherworker gets is an 8-slot bag. Each bag requires 20 leather scrap items, with most of the low-level armors salvaging at 2-3 leather scraps. Getting four 8-slot bags took time and consideration, but I had these 32 extra inventory slots well before I hit level 10. Continue reading [GW2] Crafting in the March Beta

Another fun week of Guild Wars 2 info dumps is headed our way. On my end I played in a much more relaxed manner than the last press beta weekend. I have many stories to tell, and two larger posts on crafting and the personal story. The focused posts should be out later this week. In the meantime here are a few smaller stories and thoughts.

I enjoyed the higher amount of invited players with a few “worlds” up. There was never a queue, but I was in the Queensdale overflow area for a little bit. I was in the middle of stopping some centaurs from stealing wine with two other players when I was asked if I wanted to get to “real” Queensdale. I was having so much fun I said no. (It puts you back in the queue, and I was asked again in a couple minutes.) I don’t think I noticed a difference between the overflow Queensdale and the “real” one that much. It was really nice to not even really notice that I was queued. Continue reading [GW2] The Opening Crush of Closed Beta

A post for GuildMag’s Third Blog Carnival.

There is so much character diversity in Guild Wars 2. Just a while ago one of the ArenaNet devs, Leif Chappelle, was discussing that there are a staggering 30 choices for the first story arc (levels 1-10). I know these aren’t all-roads-lead-to-Rome choices either. A person dies in one player’s story and exists forever in another player’s home instance. Tack on five trait lines per profession, a billion dye combinations for town clothes, anti-clothes, and a million armor combinations and character diversity goes to infinity and beyond.

And it’s all there for you. Just you. Continue reading [GW2] Diversity Solipsism

There is a lot that was said in what will likely be a seminal blog article by ArenaNet’s co-founder Mike O’Brien. Fans are going to point to this piece for years, I would imagine. There are two major encircling themes in the post “philosophy” and “market.” O’Brien does a good job showing how ArenaNet envisions that the two will entwine in Guild Wars 2.

Philosophy

Philosophy is a hard sell. ArenaNet has been in the favor of “showing, not telling” for a long time. they continue to do so by letting press film video and discuss the experiences of Guild Wars 2 during the beta events. It’s tough when they are not ready to show, but feel pressed to tell, as is the case here. Continue reading [GW2] Microtransactions – Philosophy and Market

Congrats to all the lucky Guild Wars 2 beta testers. I will be joining you in the next beta, and ArenaNet was kind enough to extend my press credentials for the next beta. There is one thing I plan on focusing on for sure, crafting. I always diligently craft in MMOs I play, and I was so rushed getting to content or PvP last beta that I had to ignore crafting. Well, this time crafting and trading are priorities.

That leaves profession and race more open, and I am going to open that up to fellow readers. I will likely focus on one character again. What race and profession would you like me to be? Please comment in this post with your picks of two races and one profession. As a bonus if you choose human, charr, or norn as a race, you can pick my first story arc since we know those.

Human: Commoner, nobility, or street rat. Norn: Strength, cunning, or instinct. Charr: Ash Legion, Blood Legion, or Iron Legion.

Poll closes when beta starts.

–Ravious

p.s. Feel free to add any other things you want discussed as well.

The original Guild Wars set a lot of precedent for Guild Wars 2. Some was bad, and it needed to be broken. Yet, there was a lot of good things in Guild Wars that worked. The Collector’s Editions of the campaigns, in my opinion, were one of those things that worked well. Specifically, for this post, the digital items in the Collector’s Editions. They set a pretty good precedent for future ArenaNet games.

Continue reading [GW2] Momentary Deluxe

This skritt is getting real, girls and boys. ArenaNet announced this morning the three editions of their game to purchase. Basic access is $60, which was pretty much expected. A Digital Deluxe edition jumps to $80 and has all the digital extras, while the monstrous Collector’s Edition tops out at $150 and includes a statue of Rytlock, custom prints with a frame, a book on making Guild wars 2, and of course the soundtrack.  Pre- purchase any of these and get beta access, a three-day head start, and a nice little Hero’s Band starter item that gives small buffs to a bunch of stats.  The Buy Guild Wars 2 site has a nice little scroll over feature that describes all the different features to each edition. It looks like the pre-purchase sale date will be April 10th.

It all sounds good. I mean the CE is pretty much a sure buy for me, but I am a little unsure about a buyable elite skill, wich the Digital Deluxe and CE have. Elite skills are locked until level 30, so as far as I know this is not like getting a free elite skill at the start of the original Guild Wars. It is also likely that expansions will have skills available only to those that bought the expansions. I’d personally have preferred a more cosmetic effect, like a special dance than a deluxe skill, especially given that the deluxe edition’s elite skill will likely see much less use than profession-specific elites.

The other interesting thing is that the basic edition is called the “Digital Edition.” This means that if gamers pre-purchase directly from ArenaNet, they get a bunch of cool stuff and a three-day head start. Pre-purchasing from a retailer entitles gamers to a one-day head start, and it seems possibly no beta access or Hero’s Band. Just like Eye of the North, ArenaNet appreciates when consumers help to cut out the middle man.

Anyway time for me to start saving up! I need that soundtrack.

–Ravious

One really interesting piece to come out of the press closed beta test was this map of the content in Guild Wars 2. It appears incomplete not only with the “??-??” zone, but also because it is clearly missing a level 1-15 zone.  ArenaNet’s Martin Kerstein was nice enough to confirm that there will be 5 starting zones corresponding to each race (e.g., Metrica Province for Asura and Caledon Forest for Sylvari). So take these infographs with a grain of salt.

Continue reading [GW2] Level Flow by Numbers

Been busy this morning, but was drafting a post in my head about the trait uproar. Apparently my mind waves were so strong that it was picked up and written over at Under a Pale Tree. They even stole my pun from my brain jelly! (Although I was going to make it Trait-ourous Trappings.)

From a game design perspective, small fees like this serve a two-fold purpose: Helping the game economy, and instilling a sense of worth to your build.  The first part is self-explanatory, but the second: If you can switch your traits at any time, with no repercussions, then do your trait selections really matter?  Who needs to think about it; just drop ‘em in wherever and don’t worry about it until you come up against something too strong.  Then you might as well just pump all those freely “respecc-able” points into whatever trait will maximize your usefulness against that particular mob, and then do it all over again on the next one.

This is the most important part. People feel they can handle infini-selections, but its been proven time and time again that narrowing choice is extremely beneficial. It promotes better decision making, a better feeling of having made the right choice, and, blazow!, it promotes better learning! I know that all the good people raging are 50 IQ smarter than the average MMO player and could easily handle re-traiting in-between mobs and weapon swaps, and don’t need to learn skritt. Still, dumb people like me appreciate that ArenaNet has signaled that traiting is an important decision, and it would be beneficial to take time considering the decision. Maybe I can actually be beneficial on the WuvWuh field?

–Ravious