Category: Guild Wars

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Stuck on the Train

It seems that most cool things happen on the internet, when I am disconnected from it.  Yesterday, three things rocked Guild Wars’ small corner of the internet, most of which happened while I was on the train home.

The first was the USK’s certification of a Guild Wars 2 (gamescom – Trailer).  ArenaNet will have a good presence at the convention (Jeff Grubb would be my personal target to stalk), but they will not have a booth.  The certification has since publicly been taken down.  Although I would love to see any Guild Wars 2 trailer sooner, PAX would be a much better convention to present it because ArenaNet will have a booth and very strong presence there.  I am excited about the possibility of a CG trailer because the Guild Wars Factions trailer is one of my all time favorite video game trailers.

Then Jeff Strain, one of ArenaNet’s co-founders, amicablyleft NCSoft as President of Product Development.  The public is not really sure as to the reasons of the departure only about a month before the NA/EU launch of Aion Online.  Strain is an MMO giant, and I hope one day to be able to chat with him.  Hopefully someday, somehow he will be back in our little niche market.  Regardless, Mike O’Brien, one of the other ArenaNet co-founders and current executive producer of Guild Wars 2, has the best thoughts, especially with regard to Guild Wars 2:

Jeff is a personal friend of mine. We worked together very closely from the time he joined Blizzard in 1996, through our founding of ArenaNet in 2000, until he left ArenaNet to join NCsoft West in 2008. I’m sad to see him leaving NCsoft now. We remain good friends and I wish him great success in his next endeavor.

It’s important to understand that ArenaNet is a separate and self-contained development studio. Jeff hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day development of Guild Wars 2since he left ArenaNet more than a year ago, and I don’t expect his departure to have a direct impact on our studio or on Guild Wars 2. I continue to lead ArenaNet, and I’m not going anywhere.

The final bit of news is the application process for the Guild Wars Test Krewe is now almost open.  The application went up and down most of last night because there were backend issues that prevented actual submission of the application.  It seems like it is currently down, but should be re-opened sometime in the west coast morning.  The application asks for beta experience, age of your favorite Guild Wars character, and a very open-ended “what would you bring to the Test Krewe.”  If you want to help Guild Wars Live Team development, with a possible jump to get into Guild Wars 2 testing, check it out.  I highly recommend reading this wisdom before submitting an application.

I finally logged off last night, and XKCD, as usual, knew exactly how I felt.

–Ravious
sleep tight in your cot

Guild Wars Market Speculation

We have been told multiple times that Guild Wars 2 news is coming by the end of the year.  One of the biggest questions and possible news releases by the end of the year is on the use of the Hall of Monuments – an eternal filing cabinet for achievements.  The Hall of Monuments was created, in part, to give Guild Wars 1 players some recognition when entering the world of Guild Wars 2 a quarter of a millennium later.  Linsey Murdock, Live Team Leader, has been pushing for fixed decisions on the Hall of Monuments because once the reward scheme is released maximizing one’s Hall of Monuments for Guild Wars 2 is going to be an extreme focal point of Guild Wars 1 players.  It’d be nice for the caretakers of Guild Wars 1 to have the heads up as to where rabid AKES will be frothing.

Continue reading Guild Wars Market Speculation

Shallow Thoughts by Ravious

PC gaming is just starting to pick up again.  The Ravious Conglomerate moved from a being-foreclosed-on apartment condo to a nice, shiny townhome in order to give Daughter #2 her own room.  I love that Daughter #1 can now dance, skip, and sing all she wants without a crabby, lonely lady banging on her ceiling below us.  I hated yelling at Daughter #1 to not do what a young kid should always be allowed to do.  With the move and ensuing chaos, the past few weeks have been gaming light, but forsooth, I say, there was gaming nonetheless!  It was all just in bite-size form.

Guild Wars: Oh how I love your little Dibs of enjoyment.  The small amounts of farming and bartering at the weekly Traveler’s Market to get the precious gifts are nice quick hits, and I am forever in love with Fort Aspenwood.  It lets me jump in to some fun, casual PvP instantly.  Deathmatch gets old for me, but objective based PvP seems to always be fun (95% of my TF2 time is payload maps).  I put up the build I always play in Fort Aspenwood here. 

Wizard 101: I hit a stopping point because the evil overlord in charge of the Conglomerate’s accounting (read: wife) says I can’t spend any more money because of the move, security deposit, and feeding/clothing children costs.  I am right at the end of Kroktopia too!  Don’t overlords understand gameplay flow?  The lightning cave in Karanahn Barracks was seriously breathtaking.  I stood upon rocky platforms while a silent lightning storm occurred below; I logged there in quiet contemplation.  Great artistic direction for that one.  Fortunately, a bonus check is headed my way so Mass Effect and a bajillion Wizard 101 crowns will soon be mine.

Lord of the Rings Online: I don’t know how I managed to sneak this one in given the higher activation energy to play, but I did.  Two kinnies and I started on Volume 2, Book 8.  We entered the Hall of Mirrors with nary a walkthrough, and had a blast figuring the puzzles out (even with a 600 silver repair bill each).  Hall of Mirrors is a three-man dungeon with a dungeon-long puzzle of repairing reflecting mirrors to send light to Moria below.  It is fantastically designed and just challenging enough.  Hall of Mirrors and developer blogs get me very excited about where Lord of the Rings Online is headed.  Unfortunately a serious bug at the Defiler/Mistress encounter wiped us to the point where a full, tactical retreat was required.  We are armed with better knowledge (of the instance and bug workaround), and are all excited to return.  Once I have time.

–Ravious
Repent, Harlequin!

Interview with Guild Wars Guru’s Inde

For many MMO fans, a large part of the hobby comes from communication outside of the actual game. Fansites and their forums are one of the best places to get the latest news, interact with devs, and discuss the game down to its base mechanics. Inde is the site administrator of Guild Wars Guru, which has one of the most active Guild Wars forums. She, along with a cadre of other moderators, keeps the site and community in good condition. Inde agreed to let me ask her a few questions on running an MMO fansite with an active community.

Continue reading Interview with Guild Wars Guru’s Inde

Guild Wars Book Titles

Time for a lore lesson.  Guild Wars 2 occurs 250 years beyond the happenings in Guild Wars 1.  In between this time, a lot will undoubtedly happen in Tyria (and beyond).  I would guess that we will learn a lot of the changes in-game.  ArenaNet likes to leave a lot of crumbs so lore-happy fans can piece together things like civilizations, cultures, metaphysics, history, etc.  They are also releasing three novels via a deal with Pocket Books that will give vignettes of the changes that occurred across a quarter millennium. Continue reading Guild Wars Book Titles

Facebook ArenaNet

ArenaNet’s Community Managers have been very busy as of late (well always, but this is business we can see).  Their two big pushes this late Spring have been with the alternative gaming communities: Twitter and Facebook.  ArenaNet has had accounts there for quite some time, but the push has been trying to make them very active.  The Community Managers are hoping for 1000 fans on Facebook (as of writing this it is at 894). Continue reading Facebook ArenaNet

Needless Buttons, or On Skill Wrongdoings

We become attached to skills, especially the ones that are used less.  We become masters of knowing when to pull at that situational godsend.  Then the developers take it away, or muddle it to the point where our mastery becomes nothing.  Skill balances like this happen all the time, but there are things far worse… and they just happened, again.

ArenaNet made the genius move of splitting skills in PvE and PvP.  Before they did that it was a complete mess.  They would balance the skill, and it would get abused in Guild vs. Guild.  Then they would nerf it to stop the spamming in PvP only to find that they ruined a few PvE builds.  Consequently, boss X became impossible.  It was a balance-puzzle they could never win, especially when nearly each year players got a massive glut of more skills from the new campaigns and expansions.  So great, skills are split.  Now something closer to balance is achieved in both PvE and PvP more easily.  A greater problem occurs when balance cannot be achieved, even with the split, with how the skill can maintain functionality.

Continue reading Needless Buttons, or On Skill Wrongdoings

Arena.Net: Set my people free

I’ve been revisiting Guild Wars lately (btw, the Zaishen quests seemed to reactivate things somewhat, so kudos there). If you’ve been reading these pages for a while, you know GW has a special place in my heart. No, I’m not married to it, it’s not even my girlfriend or a crush or anything like that. But it’s been a good friend, and we had a lot of fun together over the years.

Nobody’s perfect, though. However, just as in real life, you glance over other people’s imperfections just to maintain your sanity and play well with others. The problem with GW-as-a-friend is, to put it quite simply, it’s a very bossy friend. It’s a good friend, no doubt about it, fun to be with, special and entertaining. But there’s no escaping its rails; most of the time you do things the way GW wants you to do them, and may God help you.

With GW2 around the corner (ha!) maybe there’s still time for Arena.Net to take a look at the new friend they’re building up, and maybe make it a little bit more accomodating. The dynamics, I think, definitely need to change and players need to be given more freedoms.

Continue reading Arena.Net: Set my people free

Guild Wars Goblin Market

After the big 4th Anniversary Update, the Guild Wars community is still trying to figure out exactly how the market was affected by the addition of the purchasable items through Zaishen Coins.  The Zaishen Coins are untradable, but the items that are bartered with the Zaishen Coins are definitely salable.  The more interesting market change comes from the roaming market created by Nicholas the Traveler.

Once a week, Nicholas the Traveler moves to a new location and requests a barter item.  So far, three of these barter items will net the player one Gift of the Traveler.  An account can get up to five Gifts of the Traveler per week.  When the Gifts are opened they can net simple things like candy or alcohol, but the Gifts can also net very, very expensive miniatures, pets, weapons, and tonics that can only be found in the Gifts of the Traveler boxes.

This past week, Nicholas the Traveler required three Branches of Juni Berries per Gift, and he was found in the Bukdek Byway.  First thing of note, this was the first week that required two different Campaigns in order to get the Gift.  The second thing was that Branches of Juni Berries could only be gained by completing a repeatable mini-game style quest, which involved a guard-dog crocodile-beast eating weakened enemies.  (I used minions plus Verata’s Aura plus Contemplation of Purity for a ton of hostile easy to kill minions.)  For some people getting the Branches of Juni Berries was a grind and a pain.  For others it was serious fun and profit.

Anyway, this supply of barter items and Gifts and demand of barter items and Gifts’ items creates this type of floating market.  Prices fluctuate dramatically (especially for the barter items), and by the time the market can be said to “stabilize” – mostly due to a sheer drop in demand – Nicholas the Traveler moves off to a new location.  I find this dynamic very interesting, and apart from the Zaishen Quests and title grind, the weekly market gives very good reason to sign on for a few hours every week.

–Ravious
all of your memories before you were three

True Buddy Gaming

My buddy and I started really hitting Guild Wars pretty hard again after the update.  It goes hand in hand with us taking a small break from Lord of the Rings Online.  The thing is my guild is pretty dead (my alliance has a low pulse).  His guild has been dead from the start, nearly.  So except for all the intelligent PUG players, it’s just us.  And, it’s wonderful.

The concept of “buddy gaming” embodies the veritable no-man’s land between solo play and full-on group play.  In many EQ-style MMOs, having a buddy to group up with to make things more efficient (read: kill/heal faster) has been around for a long time, but that’s not exactly buddy gaming.  Buddy gaming is more aimed at content designed for a party of 2-3 players than just doing content designed for solo players faster.

Continue reading True Buddy Gaming