This week in Guild Wars 2

Written by  //  June 15, 2012  //  Editorials  //  1 Comment

Sorry for the late posting of last week’s column. I’d promised to get it online early enough so that it would give you, our patient readers, something to do while waiting for the beta event to start. I finalized the content and let Dutch know it was ready for an editorial pass, but we didn’t co-ordinate from that point and it fell between the cracks for a few extra hours … just long enough that the beta servers were online before we posted.

A common theme among many of the blog posts this week is sadness that the event is over and longing for the next one. We’re all having withdrawal symptoms (I keep trying to dodge and cast on the move in Factions). As we all saw last weekend, the game is still not ready, but it’s getting closer to being ready every time we see it again. There’s some speculation that a release date is going to be announced soon, and we know from last week’s Reddit AMA that there will definitely be at least one more Beta Weekend Event. If there’s only one more BWE, that might indicate a release date in September or October. If there are two more BWEs, then October is probably the earliest date we could hope for.

As usual, anything directly related to the beta event are marked like this: BWE2.

Official Guild Wars 2 news

Recent GuildMag posts

  • GuildMag Livestream page. “GuildMag is always looking for new ways to help you enjoy all aspects of Guild Wars 2, through the mediums of text, voice and video. Our slogan ‘by the community, for the community’ shows how much we value the effect the community has on everything Guild Wars 2, even before the actual release! While the page you’re currently looking at is a work on progress, we figured it was about time we displayed the fresh new look we’ve been working hard on. We feel that it’s important to give an opportunity for everyone to be involved in what we, as a fansite, are doing every day — something this new design will help us achieve. We want to help people understand Guild Wars 2 better, get them thinking deeper about the game and provide another dimension to the MMO experience.”
  • BWE2 Raphia’s BWE2 Journal: Day One. “Even before the event started, I knew I had to do a few things right at the start. The first item was to finally remember to open a bank account! I may or may not do any serious crafting during this event, but it is a good idea to have the extra storage space for the raw materials I’ve been schlepping around the landscape during BWE1 and the stress test. It’s kinda hard to do any crafting without the components.”
  • BWE2 Raphia’s BWE2 Journal: Day Two. “I’d switched back on to my ranger at the end of the day to do some crafting, but when I went to the Huntsman crafting station, there was no Master Huntsman in Lion’s Arch … and I hadn’t bothered to take that as one of my crafting disciplines, so there was no point in trying to use the facilities. When I logged in again on Saturday morning, there was still no Master Huntsman NPC, so I moved on. My regular teammate from BWE1 and the stress test managed to track me down again so I had someone to keep reviving me after I forgot to dodge that last attack…”
  • BWE2 Raphia’s BWE2 Journal: Day Three. “Have I mentioned how much I’m loving both the Trading Post itself and the ease of putting things up for auction? Between that, and the ability to put raw materials and ingredients directly into storage from anywhere in the world, it’s almost completely solved my packrat-induced storage challenges. In Guild Wars, inventory management is a constant pain as I collect too much stuff and need to clean out my inventory frequently while playing. In Guild Wars 2, however, except for pausing for a minute to dispose of unwanted items and stash things in storage, inventory is really not a problem.”
  • BWE2 Episode 2: BWE2: What’s Changed? “The second episode of Dynamically Spoken is here! I’m Rohan (AKA Valiant) and I’m joined once again by Steven (AKA GettCouped) who’s become our second permanent host, as well as Ally, our guest speaker.”

Fan articles and blog posts

  • BWE2 Demajen — 7 UI Improvements for BWE2 (+ Some Mystic Chest Info). “I’m sure anybody who has read ANet’s Beta Weekend Preview post noticed that UI changes have taken place — shape of the minimap and moving the dodge bar so that it curves around the health orb are the ones show. But that’s not all that has been changed. Here are seven less-noticable UI changes.”
  • Reddit — Dyes no longer Account-Wide. “Crystin Cox.2613 said: There was a time when the dye system was very different and at that time dye unlocks were account based, but we have since changed the dyes system and we really feel that character based is the right way to go and the system we have now is the best one for the game. Customized dye should be something that denotes your characters progress, like better looking, more elaborate gear. As you spend more time on your character, they grow and gain access to more customization options. If we make dyes account based, this progression will only happen on one character. We wanted character customization to remain tied to the character but we felt that one-time-use dyes discouraged players from customizing as often as they would like, that is how we arrived at the current system.”
  • BWE2 Nerdy Bookahs — Guild Wars 2: Black Citadel in all its glory. “The last time, I went sight-seeing in Lion’s Arch. For this BWE, I chose Black Citadel because I haven’t seen or heard that much about this place so far. [...] As you can see, there isn’t too much information about Black Citadel. Most notable is that it is built above the ruins of Rin which was the capital of Ascalon once in a time, and you can still see the Great Northern Wall on one side of it. You do not even have to look at closely to spot the ruins as they are everywhere in the charr’s city. What surprised me, partly because I obviously had not paid attention to it prior to this BWE, is that the Black Citadel is not the capital of the charr. It is the headquarters of the Iron Legion, which explains the look of the place.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — AETA: The Top 5 Things Engineers Need to Fix. “Last week, I revealed my thoughts on why I choose to be the greatest possible profession that I could have picked in all of Tyria. I did the same the week before that. We’ve all made a good choice, becoming members of the AETA, but it can also be good to look at what might be if we had the choice and opportunity to influence change. Being an Engineer is a heck of a lot of fun, but there are some major kinks to work out before we’re allowed to rampage across the land freely, blowing up chickens and statues and whatnot.” [Raphia: Now that I've had a bit of experience as an engineer, I found myself nodding along with just about every point made in this article.]
  • BWE2 GWOnline.net — BWE2 – What I Did This Weekend – Gorani. “First of all, I decided to create a Thief to find another back-up profession to my main. I chose a Norn and went out to explore the “starter world”. I had done the “heart quests” before, so nothing really new caught my attention in the Foothills. My personal story wrapped around Eir and a weapon smith that needed Deldrimor steel to forge a heroic weapon.”
  • Hunter’s Insight — Where To Find Jumping Puzzles. “I really like jumping puzzles but one thing that sometimes bugs me (and sometimes I find pretty fun) is finding them. There is a time for exploration and then there is a time for just doing the puzzle, so I thought people might like a hand in being pointed in the right direction.”
  • BWE2 Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Black Lion Trading Company: The Updated Gem Store. “The Gem Store has seen a facelift of sorts since the first beta weekend event. This past weekend, we saw its new version, now known as the Black Lion Trading Company. A good amount of the items are the same, but there have been a couple significant changes.”
  • BWE2 Kill Ten Rats — Wandering, Geographically and Mechanically. “I really enjoyed my evening with Guild Wars 2: Beta Week Event 2. [...] I was moving through settled territory, so it was not exactly testing the cutting edge, but it was nice to see how some items had changed since BWE1; “Dat Effin’ Shaman” was retooled, although “Dat Effin’ Effigy” was carving a path through the soloers until it reached a concentration of players.”
  • BWE2 Guild Wars Insider — BWE2 Finale: Rytlock, The Shatterer, and Corruption, Oh My! “Guild Wars 2′s second Beta Weekend Event, scheduled for June 8-10, 2012, ended with players flooding Charr starting area Plains of Ashford as a mysterious, branding corruption took over waypoints, players and creatures – and a unique look at a rare, mysterious dragon surrounding Guild Wars 2 lore.”
  • BWE2 Under the Pale Tree — BWE2 – A Success! “So, the second beta weekend event for Guild Wars 2 has come and gone. How did it go? Well, overall, things felt a lot more polished than they did the last time around. It was obvious that they put in a lot of work over the past few weeks since the previous BWE, and really, it paid off. There were still bugs and server crashes, but as a whole things seemed a lot smoother.”
  • BWE2 Kill Ten Rats — Experiment in Real Time. “I basically missed this beta weekend in Guild Wars 2. It was unavoidable due to real-life circumstances that basically made sure a gaming rig was not available. I read as much as I could. I still enjoyed watching Twitter, Reddit, and hearing tales of play here and there. On Saturday night I lucked out with a single hour of play. Instead of worrying about the server quagmire and guilds issue from last Beta Weekend Event, I just decided to jump in and play. It was an experiment.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Playing with the Elements: Up Close and Personal. “After taking Wilfinlock’s tips for general Elementalist play into action over the weekend, I’ve decided to come back with something more…specific. This week, I want to present a double-daggers build for my finger-wiggling compatriots, with the intent that there be a little more stabby-stabby and a little less wiggle-wiggle.”
  • BWE2 Divinity’s Reach — Dismal Science: DRAGON ZOMBIES. “Seriously guys, this happened. I’ve played in many betas, but I think this was the first time I found myself beset by giant armies of crystal-dragon-zombie-players. Also, side by side with Eir and Rytlock.”
  • BWE2 Far Beyond My Capacity — Guild Wars 2 – First Beta Impressions. “I was aware of some of the mechanics (such as the dynamic public events system, the lack of combat roles, and the pvp system that seems similar to the as-yet-unbeaten Dark Age of Camelot Realm vs Realm system) and the fact there is a lot of hype, with many claiming the game to be the saviour of MMOs. However, I knew little of the lore or how the rest of the game would play. I should also point out that I disliked the original Guild Wars for several reasons.”
  • BWE2 Raging Monkey’s — An altered questing experience. “Maybe the most profound impression this last beta weekend has left me with, is the questing experience in Guild Wars 2. I am reluctant to even call it “questing”, so overused is this term ever since World of Warcraft and so heavy with negative meaning. What I’ve experienced instead in GW2 is adventuring in the truest sense: being a traveler on an unknown road, inquisitive and curious, ready for chance meetings and whatever the world may present me with.”
  • BWE2 Divinity’s Reach — BWE 2: Overarching Impressions. “Before I start diving into individual articles on various topics at length, I wanted to provide a convenient view of an array of overarching aspects of gameplay from this Beta Weekend. Pull up a chair, it’s time for some long, whimsical, sometimes even philosophical views of Entombed, the human thief.”
  • LevelCapped — Can We Handle Different? “We’ve had almost 15 years of the “modern MMO” under our belts, and we’ve all gotten to be pretty much pros at navigating them. We’re all armed with a mental check-list of what a game offers simply by reading bullet points off the back of the box (remember when we bought box copies?). We may even chaff at having to go through a tutorial. “Yeah yeah,” we sigh. “Talk to the dude with the ! on his head, skip the flavor text, kill X of Y, return, repeat. I could do this in my sleep.” And it’s true. We know the tropes of the modern MMO like the backs of our mouse-and-WASD-hands, and a lot of the time that familiarity truly breeds contempt.”
  • BWE2 The World of Richie Stacker — Becoming the Berk. “It’s quiet around here, isn’t it? Sorry about that, I’ve been stomping around the land of Tyria slapping dragon worshippers upside the head with my incredibly long braided beard all weekend.”
  • BWE2 Twitter — @Luckyman_TaDa. “Found a humpback whale in the ‪#GuildWars2‬ ‪#BWE‬ so I decided to check it out up close! Very cool :) “
  • BWE2 Guild Wars 2 Hub — A Necromancer’s BWE2 Post-Mortem Part One. “Another Guild Wars 2 beta weekend has successfully wrapped up, not unlike an early Christmas present from ArenaNet. There were a lot of fixes, changes, and improvements across the board, and the game just keeps getting better through each iterative pass.” [Raphia: I loved this remark from later in the post: "In fact – and people will no doubt scoff at me for this - the zombified state I was in from sensory overload and travel put me in the perfect mindset to spend most of Saturday in World v. World. I have a lot to say about the different functions of players in WvW, but for now just note that no matter how organized your world may be, the majority of players will always amount to mindless cattle who are expected to follow the orders of those who feel they deserve to function as the main tacticians for hundreds of players at a time."]
  • BWE2 Killabytes Online — GW2 – BWE #02 Impressions. “The following is a brief summary of the impressions I had of BWE02 for Guild Wars 2, as a beta, compared to the previous BWE, and in consideration of how far along the game is as well as how well its living up to the features advertised for the game.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Guild Wars 2 Dye Tab – Look At All the Pretty Colors. “One of the greatest things about Guild Wars 2 when it comes to character customization is the dye system. Not only can you change colors on the fly, there is a wide variety of colors to choose from; once you collect all of them of course.”
  • BWE2 Demajen — Dye System Disappointments. “When I paid for my Guild Wars 2 prepurchase, I did so under certain assumptions: that we would have 8 professions, dynamic events, personal story, a cash shop with convenience and cosmetic items, and an accumulation of almost seven years of iterative game design. We would finally move to a more account-based MMORPG solution, so that those of us who like playing many different characters would not feel tied down. As you can tell from this blog’s title, the ‘new’ dye system is, I feel, a step in entirely the wrong direction.”
  • BWE2 Guild Wars Insider — Death Becomes You: What Beta Changes Mean For Necros. “Last weekend brought a number of changes for the Necromancer profession: some (nerfs) were inevitable, and some changes caused a stir in the dark brother and sisterhood.”
  • Massively — Flameseeker Chronicles: Professions are like onions. “We’ve previously talked about the fun results of interaction between Guild Wars 2‘s relatively simple elements. Emergent complexity is a driving force behind a lot of the depth in Guild Wars 2, as we examined in both the skill and dynamic event systems. This layered complexity also works to benefit professions: There are enough options and tools for fine-tuning your character that incredibly divergent uses of the same profession are possible.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Mystic Vendor: Skill Points As Currency. “There were a lot of things to be excited about headed into this past weekend’s Beta Weekend Event. There was a new zone to explore in Gandarren Fields. There was Explorable Mode Ascalonian Catacombs. There were even structured PvP tournaments! But the one that caught my eye the most was The Mystic Forge.”
  • GW2 Codex. [Raphia: A Guild Wars 2 equivalent to PvXWiki's build database. You can find builds for particular tasks, builds by profession, and builds by popularity. It includes weapons, skills, and traits.]
  • BWE2 Divinity’s Reach — BWE 2: Day 2 at a Glance. “Amazing. Overnight, ArenaNet managed to squash all of the bugs I mentioned yesterday and solved any latency woes our sever was having. I explored the new zone, Gendarren Fields, and instantly loved it. Pirates, the Vigil Headquarters, a glorious mansion. What more could you ask for? One sequence of events around a mansion in the area stands out specifically in my mind, and in-game it felt like I was watching a story unfold. My realm, Crystal Desert, remained absolutely dominant today against two other servers. And by dominant, I mean all places on every map, for almost the entire day. Any tower or keep another team captured, was recaptured within 15 minutes. There were even some ArenaNet staff on one of the realms, but even their glorious logo could not save them from our blood-stained hands.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Cooking Ingredient “Farms” in GW2. “YSBT and a few others posted an excellent list of areas with a surplus of ingredients used for cooking that you should remember come next BWE. These “farms” are areas scattered throughout Tyria that consist of 8 close-together collection nodes for a particular cooking material.”
  • BWE2 MMORPG.com — Guild Wars 2 Column: Progress Shown this Beta Weekend. “For those of us who participated in the most recent Guild Wars 2 BWE, this weekend was a blast! ArenaNet was kind enough to add in some extra content that we haven’t seen yet. There were also some game play changes as well. Some were good, and a few others I’m still on the fence about. Overall I think it’s great that we are seeing changes to the game.”
  • GW2 WvW — Gameronomist’s Guide to PvP Part 1: Learning. “Here begins my grand idea of trying to put into words a string of ideas, concepts, and mental training that can allow anyone to better themselves at whatever they do. For our purposes, it will mainly be for PvP in MMOs, but the concepts apply generally to anything in life. For these guides, I’ll be trying to say what I’m talking about, then tell a story, or give an example of what I mean, for better understanding. The stories and examples will come from everywhere, but mostly they will come from Tennis and Video Games, as those are the things I compete in the most.”
  • The Vigilant — “Best laid plans” of GW2. “Having had a chance to play in both Beta Weekend Events and the Stress test, I now have some actual playing time on which to base my observations and comments. The first thing I want to talk about though, is what a difference actually playing the game makes!”
  • BWE2 Flame Throwing — Tiers and How I Got a Battering Ram. “The skill hunting isn’t the same sense as the first one where you have to find the right boss and take one of his skills. But it’s the same feel. You need to go find some skill points and accomplish something to gather the skills you want. This beta weekend I made it up to level 21 so I had a lot more points to work with. To unlock the second tier I picked up the Personal Battering Ram. It’s a pretty funny little gadget.”
  • BWE2 Guild Wars Insider — Group Describes Catacombs Explorable Mode And The Ghastly Sword. “This past weekend, Zeno Akoop’s group composed of an elementalist, warrior, ranger, mesmer, and thief made 3 successful runs through the Ascalonian Catacombs in explorable mode.”
  • GW2 WvW — Classroom of Immaculate Siege Dominance – The Ballista. “Good morning, Class! I’m afraid the Trebuchet demonstrator had a fatal accident involving a misfire of fast food. While he takes an indefinite trip to the triage tent, I will be taking over as the teacher. Open the book of Armaments to chapter 74, verses 9 to 15.”
  • BWE2 Guild Wars Insider — Dungeons: Tips and Tricks for AC30. “I know that a whole bunch of us got to do a couple runs through the Ascalonian Catacombs last weekend. Most of everyone I’ve seen have either said it’s great fun, or way too hard. Now, this really depends on A) if you’re talking about the Story or explorable mode, and B) which path on explorable mode you went down.”
  • BWE2 Raging Monkey’s — Pacing and experience points. “As more and more feedback on this past GW2 beta weekend is surfacing on blogs and official forums, it gets apparent how different players experienced certain aspects of the game, such as the events, personal story, pacing and leveling process. What becomes all too clear too is that while there are still issues in these departments, many players struggle more with their own mindset, habits and internal “MMO programming” than the game itself. They ask for the kind of guided ride and road to success that is characteristic of WoW‘s questing model where it’s hard to go wrong and the game will always tell you where to go next.”
  • Epic Guild Wars 2 Forums — A Loveless Guide to Crafting. “Hello everyone :) this guide is finally presentable after so long… Crafting in MMOs has always been one of my hobbies, but this is my first try doing something like this, and I hope you find it useful! After spending a majority of my first two days of BWE trying out most of the stuff related to crafting, here’s some info I have gathered. As this will be a long post, I will try to include screenshots and videos i took during my gameplay to make it easier to read. Ok, let’s get on to the good stuff”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Lore School: Elder Dragons. “This week in Lore School we’re going to talk about the Elder Dragons, AKA The Reason Guild Wars 2 is a Thing. Okay, so Guild Wars 2 would probably exist without the Elder Dragons, but they’re the key driver for the storyline of Guild Wars 2. They’re the big baddies that we’re all going to find against to save the world. So we should probably get to know them a little bit.”
  • BWE2 Chronicles of Tyria — Another batch of player submitted New Krytan Deciphering! “There are signs. And then, there are signs. I’ve received an e-mail from Jesse S. recently, with screenshots from the last BWE. I was amazed at what I saw when I looked at the several pictures he sent, showing a Lighthouse with multiple, glowing signs carved on it. I thought to myself “Grab a coffee, Val, this is going to take all night!” But… I was wrong!”
  • BWE2 Reborn Reality — Accept That You Suck (so you can become amazing) “”Look in the mirror…and accept that you are ugly,” Mere Image. Truer words have never been spoken by someone no more famous than I (considering that I am the one who said it). If you put on an ugly performance in sPvP or WvW in the last two Beta Weekends, don’t worry — I’m here to make sure you sparkle in the next one. The key to being good at anything competitive is realization. You must accept that you are complete and utter shit before I can sculpt you into the beautiful warrior god or goddess that you are. So let us begin…”
  • Guild Wars Insider — The Vanguard: A Tale of Tiers. “Last week, I provided you with a comprehensive overview of our profession, and while the information there is still viable, battlefield conditions can change very quickly. Today we’ll cover a change that had a significant impact on us, one which has created a bit of controversy across all professions: the tiered trait system.”
  • TalkTyria.net — Belenos’ Engineering How To: Item Transmutation. “Greetings fellow Tyrians! It has been a little while since I have chimed in on a subject, but I had the opportunity to play around with this particular game mechanic in the recent BWE2, during June 8-10, and came away impressed. The mechanic I am referring to is, of course, item transmutation.”
  • BWE2 Divinity’s Reach — Eternal Battlegrounds Jumping Puzzle. “So, I have briefly talked about this puzzle in previous articles, but I haven’t seen anyone really take the time to explain the beauty of this place. It was called a mini-dungeon in the preview to this BWE, but let’s be honest, this zone is gigantic. I ran it twice over the weekend, the second time was to guide a friend. The dungeon can be overwhelming at first, there are just so many areas to explore, and it’s hard to find the exact place to start. I spent probably thirty minutes before I found the “real” path, and was walking from end-to-end trying to find it. If you didn’t get a chance to try the dungeon this BWE, I highly recommend making time for it. It’s large, intricate, resource-node rich, terrifying, frustrating, and hilariously fun.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Making The Most of Being The Underdog In WvW. “Many players however may still find WvW daunting and overwhelming with the sheer sense of scale and possibilities it imposes, so to help with that Guild Wars 2 player “Slamz” wrote up a brief but concise set of points to help you make the most of being on the “downed” side. These points may be of use for any small group of players looking to do their part for their server as well.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — The Gathering Progression. “Even in my absence through most of the last Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event, I still lurked on plenty of community sites where I could. The two most prominent complaints I saw were about progression, namely weapon skill unlocking and major trait tiers. We’ve already covered weapon skill unlocks, and I think the most elegant change would be to change it to skill usage instead of critter death. It will be interesting to see the iteration that Jon Peters, ArenaNet dev, hints at. So, that leaves us with major trait tiers.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Lock & Key: Theoretical Thievery. “I have to admit something. Up until last Friday, I’d never actually tried to do any kind of theory crafting. Whenever I sat down with a calculator, pen and paper or talent generator, something always felt wrong. I was playing a game, not taking a math test. I knew that lots of people liked it, and said that it was useful, and that it could even make me a better player. But it still felt like someone was thrusting another responsibility into my arms.”
  • PC Games N — Guild Wars 2 Preview: The Messiah Complex. “There’s always been something of the saviour about Guild Wars 2. False prophets have come and gone, and each time the thronging masses of the gaming public has held their collective breaths, wondering if perhaps this would be the one to free them of the tyrannical, all encompassing rule of World of Warcraft. Whether this would be the one to break past the first few million subscribers and cast them free of those heavy shackles that they must bear. The thronging masses of the gaming public always were prone to melodrama.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Brutal Honesty: sPvP in Guild Wars 2 (Part-1). “Player vs. Player is always a hot topic when a new game comes out. Arenanet has been talking about their player vs player in Guild Wars 2 for quite sometime and I decided to dive in and start to poke around their matchmaking competitive systems. In Guild Wars 2 all inter-player battle takes place in a special realm called the Mists. Ironically enough, based on some lore digging and NPC chatter, the Mists are also the after-life (uh-oh). There are two ways to take part in player vs player while in the Mists. They are as separate and distinct from one another as PvP and PvE.”
  • Killabytes Online — qq & pewpew: A compilation of useful GW2 tips from Reddit. “There’s currently a thread going on Reddit that discusses useful tips about the game that might not be apparent. Instead of everyone having to read through all the comments, I figured I’d make a post about them here for the Tumblr community.”
  • BWE2 qq & pewpew — Thoughts on BWE2 for GW2. “My first thought is: This game needs to be out already. I’m now in full on withdrawal and no other game compares. I get bored after about 5 minutes. I find myself wanting so desperately to click on the GW2 icon and just hope they somehow forgot to turn the servers off.”
  • GW2 WvW — Builds For Learning in SPvP. “Another week, another column for The Structure! So, I made a fair number of builds over the weekend. Some worked out alright, some of them worked really well, and some of them I got ROFLstomped every time I saw another player. They can’t all be zingers. Anyway, as I was looking at some of the talents and some build possibilities, I had a few ideas about how to make a build that really facilitates learning the gist of SPvP and combat better than others. This time around, we’re going to look at one.”
  • GW2 Guru — Guild Wars 2 Database Updates! “Hey everyone! Today we have pushed out some changes to the Guild Wars 2 Database. Not only are the skills, traits and items all up-to-date, but our devs have been hard at work bringing us new and exciting things to play with as well!”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Guest Editorial: Itemization in Guild Wars 2. “Guild Wars 2 is unique in many ways and breaking ground in others. While most of the game can be compared to any other MMO out there, there are plenty of differences that make this game stand out among the masses.”
  • GW2 Fans — Exploring the Catacombs: the Good, the Glorious & the Endless Pain-train. “I started off writing a short article with no spoilers, detailing the weekend affair between the AC Explorable Mode Dungeon and me, but it was shaping to be a GW2 puff piece without much substance. So here’s the deal – ahead is a wall of text, built on top of spoilers and held by together by blood, sweat and editor’s tears. I know it’s intimidating, but the view from the top might just be worth it.”
  • Train of Thoughts — Things #GuildWars2 isn’t doing superb in PvE. “As much as I fanboi about Guild Wars 2, something that is very easily done if you, like me, play primarily PvE, there are a few things I don’t love.
    How many of these are beta? Honestly I don’t know, and although I read a lot of the news coming out, I miss a lot of them as well. But enough disclaimer, here is a list without any specific order.”

Videos and podcasts

Fanfic

  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Diary Of – Entry 7: Into The Depths. “Staring at the giant beam of purple light that’s illuminating a path somewhere to the left of where I’m stood, it dawns on me the sheer scale of the dungeon ahead. Stone pillars and gantries stretch mazelike high into the ceiling. The walkways are suspended atop vast columns and are crumbling at the edges. Time has not been kind to this place and my mind wanders about what it would have looked like when first built, in all its glory.”

Community Events

No new community events 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).