Category: Guild Wars

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Reverse Collector’s Edition

Like any good subject, Blizzard’s latest online purchase for World of Warcraft, the Celestial Steed (i.e., the Sparklepony) created a lot of back and forth commentary around the blogosphere.  Thankfully, some clarity poked through the clouds.  Guild Wars also released another buyable costume set for the War in Kryta chapter of Guild Wars Beyond.  Parallel discussions of item-worth, self-worth, happiness, and greed occurred on all affected forums.

Yet, when a collector’s edition for an untried, over-hyped (read: untrue) MMO drops for $30 more than the commoner’s edition, there is barely a peep.  It seems that collector’s editions can contain nearly any in-game bonus, and unless it provides game breaking balance issues, the bonuses are merely seen as value added to the collector’s edition.

Continue reading Reverse Collector’s Edition

Guild Wars Beyond

Gamespot has a good interview with the Guild Wars Live Team’s Linsey Murdock.  While the updates have been rolling in for awhile now, the interview helps to re-focus what is actually going on.  And, what is actually going on?  A new campaign has started titled ‘Guild Wars Beyond.’  This campaign will start to wrap up, and also advance, much of the lore of the original Guild Wars to set the stage for Guild Wars 2 with ongoing updates throughout the year.  It starts, obviously, by looking at the human side of things because in Guild Wars 2 the human nation is Kryta and the human hero is Logan Thackeray.  This first chapter gives some good answers as to how we get there about 250 years later.

It is important to note that anybody that wants to wait, for whatever silly reason, should be able to experience all these additions as well when they chose to join in.  In other words, these additions are not merely temporary stemming from some passing event.

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Guild Wars – War in Kryta

The haze has cleared leaving us with the upcoming content – War in Kryta.  Yet, calling it upcoming is not really the best word because it has started coming now.  It really started in-game with Mr. Thackeray’s attempt to sweep the ice queen Gwen off her feet.  Players that have completed the Eye of the North or done specific Wintersday quests are able to collect items from across the lands to prepare a picnic where possibly Thackeray could propose.  Players can get pretty good gifts in exchange for helping Thackeray out.

Last night there was an update that added the Trial of Zinn and the White Mantle Peacekeepers.  The Trial of Zinn follows the aftermath of Zinn’s Task.  Zinn, a rival golemancer to the main story’s Oola, accidentally sent out a few golem in Zinn’s Task to assassinate world leaders.  Players are tasked with stopping these rogue golems.  Now, in the Trial of Zinn, Zinn must stand before the Arcane [Asuran] Council for his crimes.  The White Mantle Peacekeepers are bandits hired by the White Mantle to maintain peace.  This posse comitatus (wink at Tipa) of course are antagonistic to players allying with the Shining Blade, which is about all of them.

It is pretty cool that instead of a big, honkin’ drop of content and goodies at the 5th Anniversary, which is what I believe most people were expecting, ArenaNet is choosing instead to ramp up.  It seems that a lot of players are dusting off their accounts to come back to the free updates.  The other weeknight, Fort Aspenwood, which is my go to for casual PvP, was absolutely hopping.  I’ve also seen a lot of Tweets from people coming back.  Guild Wars birthday is April 28th, and with the pace that has been set, I think we will see a few more truffle bites before the birthday cake comes.

–Ravious
deficient in the cognitive facilities requisite to fully comprehend the truth

Leaderboard Prejudice

Sanya Weathers, an blogger of exponential blogs, has started writing over at the community manager watering hole, Metaverse Mod Squad.  In the latest post she discusses the fiscal responsibility of the community management team (not without comparison to another department), but the crux of the post is on Leaderboards.  Sanya writes that “achievement, respect, and a sense that time spent on your product is not time wasted can all be checked off with leaderboards, or whatever you want to call your comparative ranking system.”  Dan Gray at his blog echoes Sanya’s thoughts by saying “it’s free content, it’s recognition, and it’s a fantastic tool for your community.”

There is a dark side though.  A darkness that harms community.  We shall name it “elitism.”

Continue reading Leaderboard Prejudice

Guild Wars – War in Kryta Recap

Day by day the viral campaign for Guild Wars and believably its 5th Anniversary is bringing life to the Guild Wars community.  Almost every weekday it seems some small piece of the puzzle drops even if its an image that just becomes slightly less blurred.  I can barely keep up with it, and I definitely seem unable to tell the story here.  But, other people can.  Neo Nugget and Borx at Guild Wars 2 Guru forum have put together an excellent recap walking all late-comers step by step through what we have found in the viral marketing campaign.  The thread covers everything from the webpages that were discovered to the Facebook status updates for each faction.

Continue reading Guild Wars – War in Kryta Recap

Guild Wars – Shining Blade Camp

The ongoing Guild Wars viral campaign has reached a culmination, but likely not the culmination. The community was able to come up with two more hidden websites (/neeuqsiamlas/ and /stnarytothtaed/) each showing one word in the Tyrian alphabet. When combined it gave “Blade Camp” which lead to a site showing an in-game screenshot of the Shining Blade’s supposed camp after the Henge of Denravi fell to the White Mantle.

The camp turned out to be Dakutu Village in the Talmark Wilderness explorable area, which I believe is currently unoccupied.  The Blade Camp image also contained another hidden link sending people to an extremely blurry War in Kryta link.  What this means is anybody’s guess, but the viral campaign is marching on both in-game and out.  Big thanks to everyone working very hard to crack all the codes.

–Ravious
the poetry of war

EDIT: Also be sure to check out the on-going courtship between Gwen and Thackeray.

Guild Wars – Bad, Bad Mr. Mantle

The Guild Wars viral campaign leading up to… something is creating a playful rift in the community.  Playful, so far, I should say.  As soon as the links to the White Mantle and the Shining Blade, two NPC organizations in Guild Wars, people started using hashtags to proclaim allegiance to a certain side.  I bet ArenaNet was absolutely gleeful at the response considering all they did at that point was put up a poster for each adversarial organization.  It was pretty fun, but what is most amazing to me is that people are actually siding with the White Mantle.

Let me put this into perspective.  You go to a Super Bowl or World Cup party.  There are too many available members of the opposite sex to really watch the game (even though you want to) so you flirt, eat, and talk while the game runs in the background.  You leave to go home, without having watched much of the game at all, but you do catch the final score.  Your team gets pummeled.  So what do you do?  You go home to where you recorded the game, sit down with a fresh pint and some nachos, and start cheering for your team like some madman who believes that by yelling at the TV you are actually giving your team energy.  This is what it’s like to be proclaiming allegiance to the White Mantle right now.

Continue reading Guild Wars – Bad, Bad Mr. Mantle

Guild Wars 2 Alliance Necessity

There is a lot of talk regarding the mechanics leap between Guild Wars 1 and its successor.  We already know that Guild Wars 2 is changing the series in a big way with the inclusion of large persistent zones and the lack of exclamation point-type quests.  There are so many other mechanics questions remaining unanswered.  Will our skill bar be as limited as it was in the original Guild Wars?  How will professions work across all the races? How will we find events, which seem to replace quests? Ad infinitum.  These questions are all important to the enjoyability of the game and the feeling of Guild Wars.  I feel there is another far more consequential mechanic that should be duplicated to Guild Wars 2. That mechanic is alliances.   Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Alliance Necessity

Guild Wars 2 Stuff (3/22)

It’s been awhile since my last Guild Wars news post, but I think that ArenaNet slowed down quite a bit for the explosion of awesome we are expecting on Guild Wars 5th Anniversary (April 28).  Hopefully the engines will begin to pick up more speed in the coming weeks.

ArenaNet’s Daniel Dociu gave a presentation at GDC.  Unlike the many bullet-pointed presentations at the con, Docui’s presentation was filled with tons of concept art from the Guild Wars series.  It even had a few 2.5d animations like the kind shown in the first Guild Wars 2 video (my favorite parts).  Fans kindly asked – as kindly as any rabid, starving weasel can – for the presentation to be uploaded.  The Community Managers pushed to get the presentation out to fans, which I believe was not originally planned.  The presentation was slowed down with a few sounds and Guild Wars 1 music added so that all could see in high quality.  The first two parts of four have been released so far, and I expect the last two parts to be released by the 5th Anniversary.

At GDC and ECCC (another small con), the Community Managers handed out some interesting flyers.  The flyers had a picture of either a White Mantle guy with the word “Obey” or a hand holding the Shining Blade-iconic sword with the word “Dismantle.”  Each picture also had a 2d bar code, which gave the URL to a site showing the flyers pictures.  Here is the link to the White Mantle flyer and the link to the Shining Blade flyer. 

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Stuff (3/22)