The subject of this post is a part of a well-known joke, as much as one can call a bloody, mush of hamburger on the ground in the barest form of a beaten horse a joke. The joke goes that vacationers go to paradise and bring back as a small token of affection a gift to the chumps left behind in the form of a t-shirt emblazoned with “My parents / kids / ex-friends / I went to [paradise] and all I got was this t-shirt.” Transcending the joke, the t-shirt acts as an achievement notification to others. Clearly, someone went to the place on the t-shirt, and now the foreign object is being worn for all to see. MMOs have a similar article in the form of exclusive appearance items.
Category: Guild Wars
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.Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon – Excerpt
You can read an excerpt from the upcoming “Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon” book by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb here. Small excerpt of the excerpt here:
The sylvari set her chin and concentrated on a patch of the bones lining the left side of the passage. She swung her arms and fingers in a complex pattern and spoke words that made Dougal’s head ache slightly. A greenish glow formed in the wall of bones and coalesced around a human-sized set of remains.
As Dougal watched, the bones detached from the surrounding patch and assembled themselves into a coherent skeleton. The deep-green glow, rather than sinew and tendons, held it together. The right side of its skull had been bashed in, and its jaw was missing, as was the lower part of its right arm, which terminated in a pair of jagged breaks. It stood before them like a servant presenting itself to its betters.
– Ethic
The Black Norn
There has been an interesting thread over at Guild Wars 2 Guru on whether we will be able to play as a dark-skinned norn in Guild Wars 2. The norn race in Guild Wars 1 were introduced in the Eye of the North expansion as being a race of giant humanoids living in the Far Shiverpeak mountains. They were based off a real world Norse-type mythology with a splash of Celtic tattoos. Now, in Guild Wars 2, which is 250 years later could there be non-light skinned norn? I am not talking about norns with rockin’ beach tans. I mean has their melanin caught up with the climates some may live in?
My unofficial answer: the shift-eyed asura already have ways to recombobulate DNA and shift for humans in the time of Guild Wars 1. No reason a fair-skinned norn would not want to hire the Anatomical Engineer’s services because he is sick of being sunburned. I know where I would get my inspiration for a black norn. But, this is all kind of shirking the big issue. Should character-based online games allow players of any skin color to replicate their skin (and hair!) color in game for any race (and by race we really mean species)?Â
Guild Wars on the Front
The Dragon Festival is coming this holiday weekend in Guild Wars. Massively has a pretty comprehensive overview of the whole thing. I love that the re-occurring festival is actually a reenactment of the first one, where one of Abaddon’s generals, The Fury, tried to assassinate the Emperor during the Dragon Festival. Now they hire actors to recreate the quests, and use large pinwheels to recreate rifts from beyond. I have very little time to attend this year’s festivities, but you can bet I am going to get in my 25o Victory Tokens because this year’s mask is “is inspired by the great dragons of legend.” A Zhaitan mask would be pretty awesome.
With the aftershock of E3, there has not been much in the way of Guild Wars 2 news. There was a pretty cool article for lore nerds, like me, about the alphabets of Tyria, and how they will be a larger lore puzzle than in Guild Wars 1. I don’t know what we are getting this week, but we are promised an upcoming article on Guild Wars 2 extensive voice work. Going to be interesting to see what they have to say above and beyond their voice actor video based on the trailers.
Otherwise, Guild Wars has been at the top of my gaming charts. I have been happily assassinating the remnants of the mursaat race and various White Mantle allies in the War in Kryta updates. We seem to be getting close to a culmination, and I am very interested to see where they take the Guild Wars Beyond campaign. I am also coming extremely close to beating all the missions in the Prophecies campaign on Hard Mode. My goal is to hit 20 max titles by the time they announce the Halls of Monuments rewards for Guild Wars 2. Going to be a tough one on my end though.
–Ravious
were the stuff of legend
Content Drip
I am very used to a content explosion. The devs have been silent for months on an upcoming patch or expansion, and then CKZABOOM! we get new zones, quests, skills, etc., etc., etc. One shift I am really starting to notice is a more agile content presentation. With the current MMO direction in terms of business model, casual play, and, in my opinion, market saturation, perhaps a more frequent content drip is in order.
Surely the marketing people understand the gravitational pull of a content explosion. Everybody has already got World of Warcraft’s next expansion on the radar even if they don’t play. Even the MMO whipping boy du jour, Age of Conan, received a lot of positive attention from across the board with its latest expansion. Yet, I wonder now having a library of MMOs, where no sub is necessary, if such a content explosion is necessary or even the best option. To get subs back, a content explosion’s gravity might be necessary to overcome the activation energy required to pull out a credit card and resubscribe, but what if the player could simply log in.
Guildcast’d
Our friends over at Massively, Shawn and Rubi, run yet another MMO podcast in their free time. Unlike Massively Speaking which has discussion across the MMO genre, GuildCast is dedicated to Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. I guested in Episode 3 where we cover quite a few topics in our short time (well it feels short when we three fanatics could have easily done a 5-hour episode). We discuss recent interviews, updates to the War in Kryta, and the first public demo of Guild Wars 2. Check it out!
–Ravious
were I as tedious as a king
War in Explorables
The Guild Wars Beyond “campaign” set in the War in Kryta theatre has been continuously plugging along since the culmination of Guild Wars 5th Anniversary. A lot of it has been “cut scenes” and pings just inside what I consider core Guild Wars PvE gameplay, but that is starting to change. The War in Kryta has been maturing in to a full fledged slice of Guild Wars.
Guild Wars RNG Birthday
For every 12 months of age, a character in Guild Wars receives a small token, a miniature. There are sets for each birthday, up to the current 5 years, and the sets each contain commons (white), uncommons (purples), rares (golds), and really rares (green). For the first time in 5 years, my main character finally received a birthday miniature that was not a mere common! I reached in to the shiny 5th birthday box to pull out a miniature Oola!Â
I had to share it with someone, so I poked my wife sitting next to me to look at the new shiny. “The little creature?” she said. I let that remark hang, while I started loading linguistic bullets in to my Sparklepony .45 regarding her hummingbird pet on that Fairy MMO. “That’s cool,” she finally shrugged, and I put my metaphorical gun down.
Yet, I am still unsure as to whether I should sell the miniature Oola. She will never be worth more now than ever again, and I am getting pretty loaded with miniatures likely not destined for the Hall of Monuments. I am hoping that with the Guild Wars 2 news forthcoming we get the Hall of Monuments guidelines regarding how many miniatures we will have to load up to get whatever prize in Guild Wars 2. I have a mule just loaded with the tiny toys.
–Ravious
tired of experimenting with silly puppets
Guild Wars 5th Anniversary Pre-Party
Yesterday the celebration for the 5th Anniversary of Guild Wars began to start off the week-long celebration. The festivities ramp up with prized Birthday Cupcakes dropping from mobs at the start, and today the Shing Jea Boardwalk opens up for all those waiting to stand in one of nine rings and drink booze. Also, some lucky few will get their 5th Birthday gifts today. I am pretty sure my main guy will be getting his Monday or Tuesday, and after four years of common gifts, he deserves a rare.
I want to call it a pre-party though not only because April 28th is the actual anniversary for Guild Wars but I believe there will be more to come. The interesting thing is no one really knows for sure. When the prelude to the 4th Anniversary hit we were given a massive list of content updates. The current celebration site gives no hint of “and more to come next week!” or anything like that. At the very least, I thought the War in Kryta might culminate to some point around the 5th Anniversary. The Community Managers have been tight-lipped with regard to any possible event that might occur next week.
Interview with ArenaNet’s Chris Lye
I had the chance to ask ArenaNet’s Global Brand Director, Chris Lye, a few questions about marketing in MMOs. Chris talked about dreams, demons, and marketing the Guild Wars series, and he was kind enough to drop a nice big Guild Wars 2 bite. Check out the full interview after the break!
At gamer events, how do you describe your job to people?
Basically “Marketing Guy†gets the point across. Alas, people seem to have a very narrow (and dim) view of marketing – usually they think it’s just the ads. However, to do marketing right, especially for an MMO, it’s about building customer relationships – so I’m also responsible for ArenaNet’s website and the community team. Continue reading Interview with ArenaNet’s Chris Lye