This week in Guild Wars 2

Written by  //  May 25, 2012  //  Editorials  //  1 Comment

As we reported earlier this week, ArenaNet let us all know that there would not be a Beta event this weekend. Some folks have been less-than-accepting of the announcement and have shown a remarkable degree of entitlement complex — if you’re on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve probably seen plenty of whining and complaining from the usual suspects. What I hope most people understand is that this is actually a good thing: ArenaNet is still trying to produce a great playing experience even in the BWEs and stress tests. If in their expert opinion the player experience will be better if we wait a bit longer, they’re almost certainly right.

Remember all those bug reports we all filed? Some of them will be an easy fix: a change to a value in a data file or a minor revision to a map. Some of them will be “too hard” — not fixable in a short period of time due to the amount of coding/testing/graphic change required, and some will be near impossible to track down (the ones that only occur under extremely rare conditions and therefore take disproportionally long to reproduce before they can be addressed).

The message from ArenaNet has always been “when it’s ready”, and that clearly applies to the BWE as well as to the final release. While I’ve never worked for a gaming company, I’ve spent most of my career in the software business … and far too often, companies release the product before it’s really ready (for accounting reasons, or for contractual reasons, for media reasons, etc.) and the clients are rarely happy with buggy code and broken features. ArenaNet wants happy customers, and that means stomping as many bugs as humanly possible before letting the customers in to play. We may be unhappy at the wait, but we’ll be much happier with the final result.

We’ve had a couple of “leaks” reported this week: extensive patch notes showed up on Reddit, and a number of screenshots were posted on Reddit and shared on many fan sites. I’m linking these because they’re widely disseminated, although I don’t want to encourage this sort of thing in general — ArenaNet has been quite generous with information over the last several months, but they could decide to become as secretive as some other gaming companies are. I don’t think that would be good for Guild Wars 2 or the community at large.

There’s not as much footage from BWE1 showing up this week, but I’ve once again flagged items specific to the April event with this notation: BWE.

Official Guild Wars 2 news

  • On the official Guild Wars 2 Facebook page: “We’re going to adhere to a monthly schedule as much as feedback and development allow, so it may be a little more or a little less each time, depending on how things progress. For now, we will have more information on upcoming Beta Weekend Events and stress tests as soon as we’re able, and we thank each of you for being an important part of the creation of Guild Wars 2″
  • The Verge — Guild Wars 2 on rifts, Waterworld and putting a nail in the coffin of quests. “Walk down the road for long enough and you’ll hear the dulcet tones of six guys lighting bales of hay on fire in a rural nook of Guild Wars 2. A loose-knit group of bandits is in the area, characters tell us under hushed breath. They come out of the woodwork to steal Moa birds from farmyards or to burn down the odd orphanage. Sometimes they’ll appear suddenly in packs in the middle of a dale, a collection of wild yokel arsonists that can only be stopped by the firm hand of a few player vigilantes. It’s 9:05 p.m. when we first notice them. One minute we’re clearing out giant Wurms in the patchy outskirts of a dairy farm, then the next thing you know the Elementalist next to me puts down his staff and stares solemnly southward.”
  • Gamasutra — Is Guild Wars 2 the answer to stagnant MMO design? “While the MMO genre has been set in its post-World of Warcraft ways since Blizzard released its market-leading online game 2004, ArenaNet is trying to go its own way with Guild Wars 2. “We’re finally seeing a point where companies realize that they’re not going to create the next great MMO by just copying what’s come before,” said Christopher Lye, global brand director at ArenaNet, who believes the definition of an MMO has come to mean games that follow a similar quest and combat structure to World of Warcraft.”
  • Venture Beat — ArenaNet president discusses careful monetization of Guild Wars 2, the least greedy Western MMO. “While it may seem trivial now in the age of free-to-play MMOs, Facebook games, and iPhone apps, Guild Wars was revolutionary for its time. ArenaNet’s long-awaited sequel, Guild Wars 2, is slated to released sometime later this year, so GamesBeat sat down with studio president Mike O’Brien to talk about keeping the game relevant (and financially sustainable) in a drastically different market than the one its predecessor inhabited.”
  • On the official Guild Wars 2 Facebook page: “Many of you have been asking about when we will have our second Beta Weekend Event. As we are approaching a long weekend in many parts of the world, we understand that some of you want to make plans for that. To help you with that we can confirm that we will NOT be running BWE2 this coming weekend. “
  • ArenaNet blog — What’s in a Name? Annie VanderMeer Mitsoda on Naming Tyria. “Salutations, readers! I’m Annie VanderMeer Mitsoda, a content designer here at ArenaNet, and I’d like to give you a little background on exactly what goes on in the process of naming things in Guild Wars 2. The world of Tyria has a vast amount of creatures, locations, and items, and though wrangling the names of so many different things over such a huge scale is a daunting task, ArenaNet has developed an excellent system to manage them.”

Recent GuildMag posts

  • Age of Deceit – Kanaxai’s Destiny. “Kanaxai ran as fast as he could in the direction of the rising pillar of smoke. From afar he already felt the smell of burning wood and flesh. His lungs were getting full of the poisonous smoke as he was drawing closer to the source of the fume, but he just ran and ran… until he arrived at the horrid sight.”
  • Teachings of Owl. “When Jormag rose and forced the norn south, three Spirits of the Wild remained behind: Ox, Wolverine, and Owl. The fates of Ox and Wolverine are unknown, but all norn know what happened to Owl. As the three spirits battled Jormag, Owl was beaten down. She was not a strong spirit like Bear or Wolf, and she was of no match to Jormag. As the Ice Dragon battered her down, she remained steadfast for if she retreated, Jormag could go after the norn who fled beneath.”

Fan articles and blog posts

  • Reddit — Patch Notes after last beta. “Leaked patch notes with some useful information.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — GW2 Profession Weapons Range Graphs. “Fighting an enemy in PvP and interested in knowing his weapons’ range capabilities? Want to synergize your weapon sets? I’ve got the graphs for the occasion. Compiled below are charts for all of the professions and their weapon skills’ ranges and put them into 8 easily digestible morsels.”
  • BWE Malefic Incantations — I Swung An Axe [Necromancer PvE, Part I]. “During the April 27th beta weekend and this week’s stress test, I predominantly played a human female necromancer and reached Level 20. I spent all of that time doing PvE renown hearts and dynamic events while attempting to find a top that didn’t expose my character’s back and midriff (I had only temporary success with that last past, but that’s a separate article.) I was originally going to write one long-form post of my PvE impressions, but when I got up to 600 words about the axe, main-hand dagger, and warhorn alone, I decided making a series of posts is more reasonable for you to read and me to write.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Time Lapsed Tyria. “One Guild Wars 2 fan has a really cool site up that compares side-by-side the differences in the world of Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2 called Project Tyria. For instance most of Guild Wars 2 charr country is built directly upon key locations in Guild Wars Prophecies pre- and post-Searing.”
  • Under the Pale Tree — Gamer tested, kid approved! “So, as it so happens to be, I am part of a family of gamers. I started at the wee age of not-quite-three when my parents got an NES for Christmas, and the rest is history. My siblings all quite enjoy video games as well; my brother is the one that got me interested in Guild Wars in the first place!”
  • Nerdy bookahs and their travel guide — Guild Wars 2: Stress Test Fun in WvW. “On May 14, ArenaNet had a second stress test for Guild Wars 2. After being in the loading screen, stuck at 95%, for about 10 – 15 minutes, I got into the game and didn’t have any problems at all anymore. Weird. ;) But maybe Monday evening wasn’t the perfect time for a stress test because lots of people have to work and can’t devote time to that. Saturday could have been a better choice or even Friday. At least, if they wanted to test the login servers. Either that or they have managed to improve their systems greatly (I certainly wouldn’t mind that ^^). Nevertheless, I was really tired and didn’t stay long in the game.”
  • GW2 WvW — How to Beat a Zerg – Part 2. “So now that we all know about squads, and have formed a squad of our own, what allows a squad that is technically outnumbered (but not overpowered), to beat a larger force? The short answer: Mobility.”
  • TalkTyria.net — Why Play the Engineer? “Coming out of the first Beta Weekend Event and Stress Test, many of us got the chance to finally try the professions we wanted to. Some of us, undoubtedly, still have no clue what we’re playing, whereas some of us immediately knew what profession we were going to play as soon as we got through the tutorial. I plan to play the Engineer, a steampunk-inspired, gadget-wielding, elixir-chugging daredevil whose archetype is fairly untapped by the MMO genre. Below is my list of 5 reasons to play the Engineer:”
  • Hunter’s Insight — Largos. “I am by no means a lore expert or the first person to see a race of people in the Guild Wars 2 beta called the Largos. But I did happen by an event in Snowden Drifts that involved one and I’m intrigued. They have (it looks like) wings, are bent on deadly challenges, and disappear without a trace.”
  • GW2GM — Attacking and Defending Dolyak Supply Caravans. “While playing Guild Wars 2 I often found myself attacking or defending the Dolyak Caravans which transport supplies to Castles. It was fun to run around with a couple of my buddies and get a change of pace from the massive zerg fights that occur in WvW. Supplies are pretty important in WvW since without them you cannot construct, repair or upgrade your Castle’s defense or construct offensive structures. This does not only apply to walls and gates but siege weapons as well, great for attacking and defending your territory with extra power. Small groups can make a big impact on the outcome of a match just by focusing on dolyak caravans and diminishing enemy supplies.”
  • GW2 WvW — What do I do in WvW? – A Guide for New Players. “So, let’s real quick talk about what’s going to be happening when you’re joining into WvW. First, you have to take an asura gate to get to WvW. You pick which of the four maps you want to join. If the map is full, you enter a queue to get in. Or, you can simply pick one of the other three maps, unless they’re all full. This means you can easily join in with a bunch of your friends in a group to go do stuff. So once you’re in, what can you do?”
  • GW2 WvW — WvW General Build Guide. “When you’re going in by yourself or in small groups to ransack supply camps, the same builds you’d use in Structured PvP should cover the job. Go with something like this SPvP team build I wrote on my blog a while back”
  • Massively — Flameseeker Chronicles: Touring the Snowden Drifts. “I pretty much went all Norn for the stress test last week. Alone (like a true Norn), I ventured to the highest, loneliest peaks of Snowden Drifts, swam in the darkest ice caves, and faced the largest metric crap-ton of Sons of Svanir imaginable. As my Necromancer slid what felt like the nine hundredth Son off of her dagger blades, I took the time to look around soak up the view; there’s nothing quite like rallying three times in a fight against a whole passel of renegade Norn to make a girl really appreciate the scenery.”
  • The Centaur’s Satchel — You mess with the minotaur, you get the horns! “I’m pretty fed up with people spreading misinformation and just being generally entitled about Guild Wars 2. Where is this coming from? Well it’s been building up for a while. The proverbial straw today was when GW2 posted on their Facebook that they won’t be having a Beta Weekend Event this weekend. The butthurt and rage that people are expressing on the Facebook page is amazing. There’s a lot of entitlement issues in the community (at least the Facebook part of the community, the Twitter part is amazeballs). One of the most frequent ones is that Anet “ruined” people’s weekend. Or people “paid 60 dollars for the prepurchase so they are ‘entitled’ to the beta weekends to happen every month”. The one that broke me though was a comment that was made about how ArenaNet are “disconnected from their playerbase”.”
  • GW2 WvW — The Pincer and The Split. “In some ways, WvW can be compared to games in the RTS genre. For example, in Starcraft 2, each player controls a race in a 1v1 or 2v2 match. The goal of the battle is to destroy the other team. In strategy games such as these, organization, timing, control, and most importantly, knowledge, is how the player wins the game.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Better Living through Inventory Management. “Obtaining piles of shiny loot can be awesome, but figuring out what to do with the spoils of war after the fact can be a total drag. In fact, the most common MMOG inventory management systems could easily go by the alias D.R.A.G. – Doesn’t Respect the Average Gamer.” [Raphia: A very good overview for the packrats among us ... like me.]
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Mesmer: Delusions of Grandeur. “Mesmers were the last class revealed in Guild Wars 2 and also one of the most anticipated when it was revealed. This was because Mesmers in Guild Wars 1 had a prestigious position as the most technical and interesting class to play. The Mesmer reveal video showed many interesting new mechanics such as illusions, group invisibility, blinks and showed unconventional weapon choice for a caster such as greatsword, swords and pistols. Now that the beta is upon us, let’s take a look at the Mesmer class and find out how exactly it works and plays. Obviously since this is an early beta phase, all of this is subject to change in the coming weeks/months until and even after release.”
  • BWE GWOnline.net — A Weekend in World vs World. “World vs World vs World (WvWvW), shortened to WvW, is ArenaNet’s version of large-scale war. I spent all my playable time this last BWE to try it and report on it. And I loved it. I’m still a PvE player at heart, but I will be returning to WvW quite a bit.”
  • GW2 WvW — For Great Justice – The “Runner”. ““For Great Justice” is the GW2WvW Warrior column/guide section we’ll continue to expand upon as we get closer to launch and into Live. With my history of typically playing “Tanks” in MMORPGs, I figured I’d start my adventure in Guild Wars 2 with the Warrior, as it was a natural fit for my “usual” playstyle.”
  • The Tyrian Times — The renewed Tyrian Times. “The Tyrian Times are back and they are so renewed as they have never been before. Today, we’ll conduct a small presentation of the changes that took place, while having a quick peek on what lies ahead.”
  • Hunter’s Insight — Loreclaw Expanse. “I should mention I played through most of the stress test last week. It was good times except the part where I was scrambling to take some screenshots I had forgotten I wanted. Screenshots of jumping puzzles. And with time ticking down I went to the one jumping puzzle I really wanted to talk about. The puzzle in southeast Plains of Ashford.”
  • Yoshi’s Guild Wars 2 Hub — All Eggs in the Defensive Basket. “Last week, I talked about the value or lack of value of balancing offense and defense in your SPvP builds to begin this series. This week, it’s time to start talking about how to build all-defensive, all-offensive, and balanced builds. I thought I’d start us off with a defensive build this week. In all of the SPvP I did throughout the weekend, I saw a lot of offensive and balanced builds, but no one seemed to be running defensive builds. I’ll admit, it doesn’t feel as rewarding as killing foes all match long. But, it’s nice looking at that victory screen and knowing you’re such a big part of that lead in points.”
  • Malefic Incantations — No beta this weekend, a sound plan. “If I would ever get around to updating my about page, you’d know that I’m a software developer in real life. Since games are ultimately an expression of art through the medium of software, I feel like my job gives me a (very) limited capacity to speculate on what ArenaNet’s doing. I’m not a prophet or an insider, so don’t take any of this as gospel. The stated reason of deploying more servers will keep the ops team busy while buying a bunch of other teams — artists, writers, programmers, designers, QA — some more time to do their respective things for at least another week.”
  • Killabytes Online — Guild Wars 2, Tab Targetting vs E-Sports & PvP (GW2 BWE Journal #11). “From my experiences thus far in the beta testing periods my main thoughts on PvP game play post experience can be summed up with certain words such as fun, strategic and tactful. All very good but there is still one glaring omission however — skillful. This may make some people unhappy — it even makes me unhappy that this is the case, and while there is still a very significant level of skill the issue comes from the age old problem of MMO’s vying for a shot at e-sport stardom — tab targeting.”
  • Tyrian Stories — Over the Edge in the GW2 Stress Test. “The first thing I did after logging into the stress test was take my engineer Miriam to Lions arch. Looking neither right nor left I made my way to the secret area behind the waterfall. I was on a mission; I was going to jump off the edge of the world.”
  • GW2 WvW — “Suck Harder” “Last week, Zeeyaz graced us all with his take on why MMORPGs Suck. He wanted an opportunity to address some of the comments on Reddit, so here we are.”
  • GW2 WvW — 400 Shades of Awesome. “Variety is the spice of life. Even though GW2’s armour looks promising in terms of offering players a wide variety of style to choose from, a little customisation never goes amiss — and the ability to tweak the look of our characters strengthens that link between us and our little pixel avatar; makes us feel that it’s some extension of ourselves running around on the battlefield hitting bad guys over the head with fantastically mean-looking swords.”
  • The Feral Engineer — Games Are Hard. “Lets talk about difficulty. Its one of those things that tends to be a very touchy subject when it comes to games. Some people will argue that games have gotten significantly easier over the years compared to games like Donkey Kong or the original Mario Brothers. Some will argue that games are just as difficult as they were in the past, and lastly, some will argue that the reason why games are so “easy” is because we have gotten used to them (especially those who grew up playing video games). And in all actuality, all of these claims are true and for different reasons. I have my own reasons which I will keep a secret till we get there. So lets begin.”
  • Under the Pale Tree — New Dynamic Event: Centaurs invade the Underworld! “So a few nights ago, a few friends (TriggerSad, Sharn_Vendeta, and damagedself) decided to try an Underworld run the other night. We ultimately didn’t succeed (damn you Talhkora and your over-aggroing ways), but we did have a lot of fun. A lot of the chat we had on skype was about Guild Wars 2 and things from it we missed — such as the fact that we couldn’t jump (would have been very helpful at some points) and couldn’t dodge.”
  • The Tyrian Times — Video-Games24.com: Dragon Season. “A couple of days ago I gave an interview on the Greek website Video-Games24.com. The subject was mainly focused on who’s behind Dragon Season and what we can expect from ArenaNet’s upcoming MMO, called Guild Wars 2. I decided to repost the whole thing here so that it can be easily accessible to the International community. Lots of props to Hyperion who was kind enough to help with the translation.”
  • TalkTyria.net — Exploring Tyria; where no games have gone before. “Guild Wars 2 has some breathtaking sceneries. From cities to charred fields, even the sewers under Lion’s Arch offer a great view, so much so that you can actually smell those Oozes attacking you. Yuck. But did you know that you can also see what stood in those places, 250 years ago? I’m talking about Guild Wars 1, of course.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Five Tips to Help You Master the Cooking Discipline. “Last week, we discussions at length about how cooking will be my tradeskill of choice in Guild Wars 2. Based on feedback that I received, I know there are plenty of you who are looking very seriously at also making this your crafting discipline as well. Here are five tips to help you master the cooking discipline. “
  • BWE Malefic Incantations — Feast of Corruption [Necromancer PvE, Part II] “Out of all of the weapon combinations and play styles I tried, there was nothing quite as satisfying as loading a foe with up to a dozen condition stacks and unleashing a skill which does tons of damage plus bonus damage for each condition that foe has. Afflicted with a deadly cocktail of bleeding, poison, vulnerability, and weakness on top of being crippled or chilled, my foes were all but helpless as I sent them to Grenth. The tactics I’m describing are made possible by the necromancer’s scepter, and it was my favorite weapon in the beta by far. Read on for my thoughts on the weapons I did not cover last time.”
  • GW2 Camp — Leaked Screenshots of the Asura. “Here’s a quick post regarding a bunch of leaked screenshots. I found them all on Reddit, but I have no idea where they’re from. I’m assuming these are internal leaks from ArenaNet or screenshots taken by press members that have now found their way to the public.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — To Market, To Market. “If a games success is now based on selling millions of units and a subscription based product is gauged on active subscribers, how are we to assess ArenaNet’s inevitable success? With no subscriptions, would selling 1 million copies or less be seen as a failure? Or are expectations even higher?”

Videos and podcasts

Fanfic

  • Boons & Conditions — Story Corner: The Siege of Igna. “Estelle was panting, the last wave of destroyers was a lot harder than she expected. Lann, the asura thief that had gotten them into this mess, wasn’t doing too well either.”
  • Chronicles of Tyria — Chapter 2: Firstborn Son. ““Are you sure you’ve got him?” Juno had her arm around that unfathomable Charr, trying to keep him upright as we walked through the snowy paths of Hoelbrak. The hunter’s moon shone brightly above us, bathing us all in her radiant glory. With the light of torches illuminating the way, our world had descended into a gold and silver twilight under the watchful gaze of an eternity of stars. I hope that I am allowed to write whatever tales may be sung of me. I hope that I become worthy of those tales.”

Community Events

    No community events were submitted this week.

This section is intended to help you to publicize your guild or alliance event, and as long as your event is open to the whole Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 community, we’ll list it here. Send us the details at community@guildmag.com and we’ll get it out to the fan community (given that we only do a weekly wrap-up, try to send the information at least a week in advance).