This week in Guild Wars 2

Written by  //  October 5, 2012  //  Community  //  1 Comment

I was getting within spitting distance of the monthly achievement for September, only to discover that ArenaNet thinks October starts a few hours earlier than the calendar indicates. I just needed to rack up some WvW invader kills to complete the month and get the reward, but after a short break for dinner I came back to find that I’d missed the opportunity. I had foolishly assumed that the end of the month would be at midnight Pacific time, not Greenwich time. Lesson learned: I’m not going to wait until the last day to get the October achievement (once we find out what the “???” achievement might be).

The other night, a party from my guild was having trouble finishing a dungeon — not so much because of the difficulty of the task, but because real world issues kept pulling players away from the game. One of the remaining players called for reinforcements from the guild and it was suggested that I should go help (as one of the guild leaders, that’s certainly in my job description). Unfortunately, even though my main character is up to level 77, I hadn’t visited the zone (Mount Maelstrom) yet. The disgusted comment from the guild member was “Where have you been levelling? Under a rock?” Perhaps so: I’m one of those folks afflicted with a strong urge to complete an area once I’ve started, so I’ve not actually visited Orr yet (and the last chapter I tried in my personal story went sideways very quickly, so I haven’t advanced past that point either).

Actually, I think this illustrates one of the greatest strengths of Guild Wars 2: there are so many different ways to play (and level your character) that it’s possible to have a completely different gaming experience than another player — not even counting the personal story — and still have a great time playing.

Some of the more recent links in this week’s round-up are concerning Legendary weapons. They’re starting to appear “in the wild” and we can expect to see more and more of them as players accumulate all the required components to create them. I’m not expecting to be in that race for quite some time: it requires use of the Mystic Forge and my luck with the Forge has been anything but good. For example, last night, I got two things from the forge: pistols. My primary character is a ranger, so pistols are just trading post fodder for me. Except one of the pistols was soulbound on acquiring it: I couldn’t even salvage it for parts.

Official Guild Wars 2 news

  • Guild Wars 2 wiki — Game status updates. “This is the current status of the most important issues we’re tracking with Guild Wars 2 live service. (This page is updated by ArenaNet staff and protected against non-admin editing.)” [Raphia: This page on the wiki should be one you bookmark for reference (I'll continue to list it every week).]
  • GuildWars2.com — Concept Artist Spotlight: Theo Prins. “Concept Artist Theo Prins has worked all over the world, but has now settled at ArenaNet here in Bellevue, WA. I sat down with one of the newest members of the concept art team to discuss his unique approach to his work.”
  • On the official Guild Wars 2 forums, Jon Peters posted on the topic Night Capping and YOU: “I wanted to post a bit on here because I was playing last night at a time where our numbers were dwindling and the influx of enemy players from another region pushed our server back to basically its last tower/supply camp. I spent a good portion of my time split between a few different things.”
  • GuildWars2.com — Update Notes – October 1st 2012.
  • GuildWars2.com — Coming Soon: Guild Wars 2 Halloween Diorama Contest! “Halloween is coming! It’s our favorite time of year, so in addition to the in-game madness that we can’t tell you about quite yet, we’re celebrating Halloween with a special arts and craft contest that we like to call the Guild Wars 2 Halloween Diorama Contest.”
  • On the official Guild Wars 2 Facebook page: “We want to take a moment to warn our Guild Wars 2 community about a Guild Wars 2 impersonation Facebook page.”
  • In case you missed it last week, ArenaNet has uploaded the TAD Talk: Combat Master Class video with Jonathan Sharp to their YouTube channel.
  • On the official Guild Wars 2 forums, Jon Peters posted on the topic Let’s Start the Karma DR Dialogue: “These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren’t there to deal with the offender. It’s important to have a safety net in place. It would be bad for everyone if, for example, a group of players learned how to speed-clear a dungeon in 5 minutes, with full rewards each time, and then repeated that continuously. When one activity emerges that’s order of magnitudes more profitable than anything else in the game, it forces everyone to either engage in that activity or get priced out of the economy.”
  • YouTube — arenanetofficial: ArenaNet Pre-Launch Extravaganza, with John Ryan. “As we counted down the hours to headstart on August 24th, 2012, some of the ArenaNet team took time out for livestreaming in the Pre-Launch Extravaganza. In this event, writer John Ryan plays some Guild Wars 2 under the direction of you, the viewers”
  • GuildWars2.com — Colin Johanson Outlines Guild Wars 2 Live Game Development. “As we’ve always said, Guild Wars 2 is a living, breathing, dynamic world. ArenaNet’s commitment to this has been a crucial part of the game’s development since day one, and it’s an important part of who we are and what Guild Wars 2 represents. Today I want to talk about our philosophy and plans for developing the live game.”
  • GuildWars2.com — World Rankings as of 9/28 (New Format). “We’re trying out a new format for the world rankings that includes more data about how the rankings and ratings changed as a result of the last matchup. Deviation and Volatility are used by the Glicko 2 rating system (http://www.glicko.net/glicko.html). They’re not absolutely necessary for understanding the ratings but I know there are some folks out there who will like to have them.”
  • GuildWars2.com — “My Legend Grows!” Forging Your First Legendary Weapon. “If you’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 in the month or so since launch, you’ve likely heard players talking about Legendary Weapons. What is a Legendary Weapon — and more importantly, how can you get one?”

Recent GuildMag posts

  • Lala’s Escapades – It’s a Ranger’s Life For Me. “The ranger has always held a special place in my heart. It was my very first Guild Wars character, and continued to be my main for four years. I purposely stayed away from it during the beta, so I could get a fresh experience come launch.”
  • No Private Servers for sPvP? “I’m not happy. While the rest of the site has been unable to write due to the joy of Guild Wars 2 being so awesome, I’m fuming at a critical failure. Structured Player vs Player is working, in a sense. But anything resembling a competitive game is thrown out the window once you realise the simple flaw of being unable to make a private game. Balance issues and map problems are nothing if you can’t play it on a competitive scale on your own, and players are stuck unsure what to do apart from nothing.”

Fan articles and blog posts

  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Dev Tracker: Night-Capping is Valid – Stop Being a Bitch. “Night-Capping has been a huge point of contention this week. In the top tier competition this week (HoD vs. SBI vs. ET), HoD has been able to catch up to win, in part, because they have a strong Oceanic presence on the server. The dev quote above goes to show that all is fair in love and war.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — The Art of War: Sigils, Heightened Focus & Berserker’s Power. “Finding the perfect way to employ your sigils requires considering the other sigils you’re using, as well. You want them to work together to maximize your goals. This week, we’re going to look at some of the best Warrior sigils and design some basic rules for using them for maximum effectiveness.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Guardian Weapons Guide. “Weapons are vital to combat in Guild Wars 2, going so far as to determine your profession’s playstyle. In our latest advanced profession guide for the guardian, we examine each weapon and give you the rundown on how the abilities work, how they synergize with each other, and the overall use for each weapon that a guardian can equip.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Black Lion Underground – 29 September 2012. “In the second of our Black Lion Underground series, we test the waters on hooking a big fish to really chase valuable profit margins. This will either make or break the bank. Please note that all prices are based on the time of writing and are subject to change based on market fluctuations.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Riches — Guild Wars 2 Trading Post Bag Strategy (continued). “Place your orders, open your bags, reap your rewards. If you are interested in learning more about the salvageable bag strategy presented in yesterday’s post then I have got some interesting numbers for you. If you have no idea what I’m talking about please refer to this video in yesterday’s post and read on. I’m Josh from the GW2 ShoddyCast Channel and this will be my first of many posts here on GW2Riches.”
  • Flame Throwing — Power, Precision, Crit and You! “I’ve been running these numbers for a long time now. Guild Wars 2 has been particularly challenging for two reasons. 1) No one has really figured out the damage formula. 2) Every skill has its own scaling factor. And while the factor is linear, some skills will fair better from Power while some won’t. So numbers are easier to crunch for one skill, but it gets tedious for all of them.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Cauliflower and Experience Farming Spot. “There is a Cauliflower farming spot in Timberline Falls, just west of the Thistlereeds Waypoint. 8 Cauliflower are waiting to be picked as shown in the picture, as well as gold and platinum ore nodes along the way.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Respawn Rates Undergoing Adjustments. “Over the weekend, Mike Ferguson, ArenaNet Systems Designer, responded to a question on the forums regarding areas in Guild Wars 2 with super-fast respawn timers. “Is the team looking at adjusting any of the respawn rates?” the original question asked.” [Raphia: I was in an area recently with what seemed like insanely fast respawn rates ... it turned out to be a bugged dynamic event just a short distance away.]
  • Guild Wars Insider — Immersion Vs. Role-playing: What’s the Difference? “I’d love to say this is an age old question, but it’s not. The reason for this is that people have been RPing for ages but only recently have people began to talk about immersion as a separate play style. Some people love this and some hate it, but I think it’s necessary because, though related, they really are two separate things. That is to say, when I RP I’m definitely doing something different than when I immersion play.”
  • GWOnline.net — The Ancient Guardian Art of Bashing Faces. “Welcome to Guardian weapons training. My name is Zervish Alaris, I will be your instructor today. This training is meant to give you a brief review of weapons and how to use them. It is not an in-depth analysis however… for this, you should talk to a scholar, or try it out on foes in the field.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — How I Lost Nine Gold Today. “I lost nine gold today. Not through bad buy orders or flips, but by chasing easy money. You’ve probably seen all the youtube videos flying around that show people making tons of gold with the mystic forge. Players are trying so desperately to find ways to make gold outside the realm of flipping with buy orders that they will resort to randomly found advice that promises easy gold. That’s what I did anyway.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Gendarran Fields 100% Completion Map and Cheatsheet. “Next up in our series of Guild Wars 2 area completion guides is Gendarran Fields, the area directly north of Lion’s Arch, intended for players between levels 25-35. The area’s home of some pretty windmills, bloodthirsty pirates, and even more bloodthirsty centaur.”
  • pinktoque.com — Guild Wars 2: Ranger is the Profession for Me. “When I started Guild Wars 2 my biggest problem was deciding which class (profession) to play as my main.”
  • Frappular — Why You Should NOT Try to Play Guild Wars 2: A Game Review. “I’ll admit it. I’m not a fan of MMORPG’s that requires players to pay, subscribe or buy the game or to describe it in a single word, I’m certainly a Cheapskate. But I have my reasons, I eventually quit to play MMORPGs after quite sometime playing the game, tired of doing repeatable quests and endless mob grinding not to mention a boring community. Until eventually, I encountered Guild Wars 2.”
  • Bio Break — Guild Wars 2: Playing together alone together. “Over the last month or so of my time in Guild Wars 2, one thing I’ve really come to appreciate are the other players. I love having them around.” [Raphia: Ravious at Kill Ten Rats has a commentary on this post (H/T for the link, too).]
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Harathi Hinterlands Skill Challenge Guide. “You can never have enough skill points in Guild Wars 2. Even after you’ve unlocked all of the skills for your profession and race, these points become a precious commodity if you intend to take advantage of using the Mystic Forge to create mystic or legendary weapons. Continuing our series to the various skill challenges in GW2, today we’ve got a complete guide to the mid-level Harathi Hinterlands map.”
  • GW2Guru — Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable Mode Guide. “In this article I’d like to take an in-depth look at the explorable paths of the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon. Trash mobs shouldn’t be a problem, so this article will mainly focus on the boss fights.”
  • Chronicles of Tyria — A map of Tyria. “Welcome back adventurers! It’s been a while now, but I have a lot of articles on the way for you guys. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Durmand Priory in the first few days of the game. A lot of interesting New Krytan can be found in there.”
  • Divinity’s Reach — Cloak and Dagger Builds. “I admittedly stumbled upon a thief build that is particularly potent in WvW. It was mimicked after encountering a thief while in a small group of friends. The build revolves around using Cloak and Dagger, the number 5 skill with dagger/dagger. Essentially you can walk into groups of 30+ alone, and essentially cause hilarious unorthodox chaos by yourself.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Riches — Have you been utilizing buy orders like I suggested? “I have suggested numerous times since I began this site that you should be using buy orders at every opportunity you possibly can. Any gold-making site or Guild Wars 2 Gold Guide you see would suggest the same. That is – if they have it clue at all about what they’re doing. Buy orders are essential and you should be using them all the time. So the question that needs to be asked is; have you been placing buy orders like I suggested?”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Free GW2 Armor Dressing Room App For Android. “Looks like there’s another free GW2 app in the works! Matt Dominey has spent his free time taking screenshots of the various armor sets, and now wants to share this little dressing room application with all the Guild Wars 2 fans out there.”
  • Attached to Keyboard — A month with Guild Wars 2. “37 days. That’s how many days have passed since the Guild Wars 2 servers opened. Feel like longer? To me it does.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Weekend Resonance. “These are my tales and thoughts from the weekend of playing Guild Wars 2. Everything from the achiever drive to possibly new content to momentum in the end game is on the butcher’s block.”
  • Dragon Season — Why People Seek Communities. “Ever stopped to wonder why some people seek out guilds and others completely ignore them? People have been asking this question about communities in general for decades and there’s been lots of research and theories to try to answer it.”
  • GW2Guru — Legendary Weapons Have Been Crafted. “Quite a few people have posted since last night’s patch that they have successfully crafted their legendary weapons. If you have any info or other screenshots or videos of these weapons, please share! We’d like to oogle them some more.”
  • Casual Aggro — Is the Honeymoon Over Already? [GW2]. “I just realized something: I haven’t played Guild Wars 2 since the 23rd of September. That’s well over a week now, and I haven’t felt that drastic need to log-in. Am I sick or something? Busy, yes, I had a very busy weekend, but I mostly have been playing other games. Now, it’s not because I’m already tired of the game… in fact, quite the opposite. I love it, and it’s sitting there on top of my “Games You Should Play RIGHT NOW” list. But, the draw right now isn’t all that strong. In fact, I think tonight I’m going to try my hand at seeing if I can make progress with Natasha in Rusty Hearts (an MMO quite under appreciated, by the way…). But I will say this: the last time I played Guild Wars 2, the shine of the community showed a lot of tarnish.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Spirit Weapons Guide. “Guardians have many tools to uphold justice and virtue in Guild Wars 2. One of these tools is the spirit weapons, invulnerable weapons that fight alongside a guardian to remove conditions, shield allies from damage, or assault foes. Our advanced guardian profession guide explains all the caveats with the spirit weapons, the traits that support them, and all the information you’d ever need to know about each of the four spirit weapons.”
  • Blocky Pixel Studios — A Month of Guild Wars 2. “Guild Wars 2 is a game that does a lot of new things, a lot of good things, but it’s failed to grab the attention of my old guildies, and I’m starting to see a lot of burn out, and here is a few reasons I think why.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — High-Sodium Minipet Packs. “I’ve dropped a bit of extra money on Guild Wars 2 for character slots and bank slots. I haven’t really needed any of that yet, but I also felt like ArenaNet earned more support from me. I was having a grand ol’ time. When gems were much cheaper on the exchange, or when I had some extra gems left over, I bought mini packs from the gem store.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Riches — Guild Wars 2 Crafting Map. A fantastic tool for farming and gold making alike. “If you have been around the site for any duration of time you know that not only do I write about gold tips by also tell you guys about great products that exist to help you guys out in making gold. That’s how we came to support great sites in the past like GW2Spidy & GW2Wiz. Both of those are incredibly useful sites which can be used to maximize your gold making potential. In the spirit of sharing great sites that you guys I would like to share the first site I’ve seen which has a Guild Wars 2 Crafting Map. This is a really important resource because you can plan out your farming routes to maximize your return on the time you’re going to spend farming.”
  • Massively — Flameseeker Chronicles: My Guild Wars 2 wishlist. “Having hit level 80 on one character, finished the personal storyline, delved into dungeons, been handed my backside in PvP, conquered keeps in WvW, and run around like a chipmunk on crack with multiple alts, I feel that I am totally in a position to pass absolute judgment on Guild Wars 2.”
  • One Angry Gamer — Cracks in the armor of Guild Wars 2. “The dungeon experience in Guild Wars 2 was so bad, so unpolished and so bland that I doubt I will try another one for a long period of time. I was not the only one either. Most members of our party were really disappointed at the thing and toward the end it got downright funny. On the flip side I had more fun in RIFT for the short time I went back Saturday then trying that GW2 dungeon dreck. This needs to be looked at by the Arena Net crew or many many players will simply go back to you know where. There needs to be that hook and this game just does not have at from what I can tell.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Buy Pink Dye for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “It’s October again, and for the first time ever Breast Cancer Awareness Month is affecting the Guild Wars 2 trading post! Expect the price of pink dye to go up, especially with events like Pink Day in LA going on. Saturday, October 20th is the day when players will want to have their Pink Dyes by, so make sure that you start stocking up right now and selling them to last minute shoppers throughout the week of October 15th up to the 20th.”
  • MPOGD.com — Guild Wars 2 Review. “Guild Wars 2 is an MMO quite unlike any other one on the market, which breaks from what’s considered the “norm” when it comes to the MMO genre. It’s a game that puts the massively multiplayer back in massively multiplayer online role-playing game. A game where social interaction is stressed and you’re free to play the game how you want in a myriad of ways. For all its strengths, however, is Guild Wars 2 the “revolution” it claims and the one that gamers want?”
  • Nerdy Bookahs — Saving coins in Guild Wars 2. “Earning gold is one of my favourite things to do in MMOs. It doesn’t seem to be that easy in Guild Wars 2, however, compared with a few other games I’ve played. With the abundance of armour and weapons dropping, hardly any of them are worth more than 1 copper above the merchant price. But if you want to earn gold in the game, make sure to not sell items for just one copper above merchant price!”
  • Wolf’s Gaming Blog — Guild Wars 2 – Review. “The world of MMORPGs is changing. While we still have the big behemoth that refuses to move there have been many who’ve come to chip away at it’s almost impenetrable defences, but lets not kid ourselves here, the World of Warcraft is here to stay. However, there are some who’ve proven they can weather the WoW storm, titles such as Lord of the Rings Online and Guild Wars who’ve shown that Free2Play doesn’t necessarily spell the end for them. One such title that has taken it upon itself to inspire a new generation of MMORPGs is the NCsoft title Guild Wars 2.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Jute Cloth Flipping and Secret Exposed. “This post started off just talking about Jute Cloth, but then I decided to go off the deep end and keep typing about a secret market that is making me great money at the moment…”
  • tl-dr — Game Advertising: Who is the target audience? “I don’t think most advertisements for games are actually directed at gamers. Hardcore gamers already know about the game, and usually know if they want to play it or not. So, then, are advertisements directed at non-gamers? The casual gamer? The friends of the gamer? Are they designed to excite the gamer so that they show the advertisement to friends to get them excited? I was thinking of this because of a conversation my guildies were having about the recent GW2 cinematic.” [Raphia: In any form of communication, target audience analysis is the key: if you're not speaking to the intended audience, the effort is wasted (or worse).]
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Brisban Wildlands Skill Challenge Guide. “Resident skill hunter Prime is back with another guide in our rapidly expanding collection of skill challenge guides for Guild Wars 2. Today he takes a romp through Brisban Wildlands, the first major map that most asuran and sylvari characters will encounter once they’ve moved beyond their racial starting maps. As with most skill challenges at the lower levels, those found in Brisban will be fairly easy to complete while solo, though there are a couple that tend to require the efforts of a few players to complete.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — We’re In This Together. “Welcome to the fourth edition of The Waypoint, in which Sardu ponders the lapse in social etiquette found in GW2‘s endgame, and ways it to improve the experience for everyone involved. If you’ve ever been inadvertently griefed by players rushing past on their way to gathering nodes or skill challenges in Orr, then today’s column is dedicated to you.”
  • TalkTyria.net — Elementalist 101 – Utility. “Today I will be talking about the utility skill bar, which allows for a lot of versatility in play style and complements the strengths and weaknesses of the weapon skill bar. My goal for this article is to give you a quick and dirty understanding of the different types of utility skills, make a case for when to use which ones, and offer a bit of advice on how to maximize the benefit of many of these skills by using traits.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Wish List. “Elisabeth at Massively was posted her Guild Wars 2 wishlist just as I was drafting mine. I am always surprised that we seem to share much of the same wavelength with the Guild Wars 2 pulse, and yet, great minds and all that. I too have a wishlist of things I would love to see come to Guild Wars 2.”
  • GW2GM — Warrior: Control Tank with Mace and Shield. “This Guild Wars 2 build for Warriors uses a mace and shield for weapons and focuses on physical utilities for control of your enemy. This will allow us to get plenty of abilities that will annoy the hell out of any opponent locking them up, knocking them down, and interrupting. Since this is a defensive build you can focus on toughness and vitality for your runes and amulet.”
  • Prima Games — Guild Wars 2: Thief Class Preview. “Skulking in the shadows, manifesting in a cloud of smoke, striking a crippling blow only to disappear as quickly as arrived, the thief is the master of stealth, shadows and surprise. Do you fancy yourself as a master of theft and subterfuge? If so, the thief may well be for you but take heed! Jumping into the boots of a thief may be enticing but ensuring your endeavors are successful is quite the challenge. Don’t worry if you’re unsure how to take advantage of the skills of the thief, that’s possibly why you’re here.”
  • GW2Guru — What Guild Wars 2 Needs to Succeed as an eSport? “Guild Wars 2 is a Massive Multiplayer Online game focused on many aspects of the genre. We’re going to focus on what is known as Structured PVP. Structured PVP is a 5v5 (Tournament PVP) or 8v8 format (Hot Join) on multiple maps with three capture points and one unique objective for each map. If it hasn’t been apparent to fans Arena Net are huge fans of eSports, so much that they are striving for their game to become one.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Arah. “This weekend, I played The Ruined City of Arah in story mode. This is GW2′s final dungeon, where you and the reunited Destiny’s Edge fight Zhaitan itself. It is probably the worst instance I have ever run, second only to the collective, multi-hour pain of the City of Heroes Shadow Shard task forces that spanned entire zones. The two big problems I see are balance and boredom.”
  • Massively — Free for All: An interview with disabled gamer Keith ‘Aieron’ Knight. “Besides having a killer name, he hasn’t let his muscular dystrophy stop him at all. Recently he gained a bit of fame after being promoted by the official Guild Wars 2 and AbleGamers Twitter accounts. It turns out he was streaming his gameplay live, along with his webcam, as he played games to raise money for research. When I first tuned in to watch, he had over 3,000 viewers. The chat was mostly civil and showed just how educational it can be to show how a disabled player actually accesses a game. Many in the chat room didn’t believe it was real. Why? Well, because Knight can pretty much kick some butt in both Guild Wars 2 and League of Legends… all while playing by using a pen in his mouth and his cheek on the mouse.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Riches — Guild Wars 2 Corner Your Market. “So you tried out the container strategy published by Josh last week, eh? (If not, view his video here.) We had some excellent feedback from you guys and I’m excited to address one of your biggest concerns. Hopefully you’ve done alright and made yourself some gold after several hours of click click click click clicking, opening stacks upon stacks of bags. Well I’m Kyle, Josh’s brother from the ShoddyCast, and I’ve got some more advanced tips on this strategy that can help you take control of your chosen bag market.”
  • Hunter’s Insight — Heart Letters. “I am level 80 now and have been for a while. Would it surprise you to know that, as I said I would, I took my time? Guild Wars 2 is not a difficult game to level in. Basically you just need to do everything. Complete maps, gather, craft, complete your daily achievements, do events, World v World, personal story. I took my time, did it all, and can’t see why anyone would have any trouble leveling.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Damn THIS Is A Gold Guide. “This post is your gold guide to the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. You can read it, love it, use it, and never worry about gold again in the game. This gold guide is just that good.”
  • MMORPG.com — Guild Wars 2 News – Raising the Bar. “Guild Wars 2 lives up to its hype. If our reviews were one sentence in length, that would be “all she wrote”. I’ve been tallying my adventures, offering insight to the ups and downs of my time in Tyria for weeks now. Finally, I feel confident that I’ve spent enough time in the game’s myriad of systems to offer my own conclusive thoughts in just how much mustard ArenaNet’s sequel cuts. It won’t be the game for everyone, but it has most definitely proven itself as a compelling next step in the evolution of the theme-park MMORPG.”
  • Forbes — Guild Wars 2 Vs. Mists Of Pandaria. “Guild Wars 2 has grown on me ever since I abandoned my stupid Norn warrior. But it wasn’t until I picked up World of Warcraft again, to play through the Mists of Pandaria expansion, that I realized just how much all the many small changes in Guild Wars 2 really made such a big impact. After playing both games side by side, the evolution is more than obvious. It’s painfully clear.”
  • Good Game Reviews — Guild Wars 2 Review. “So it’s time for another World of Warcraft killer to emerge, this time it’s the sequel to the massively popular Guild Wars released in 2005. This time the game is back and is bigger than ever. MMO games seem to have hit a bit of a wall over the years, they seems to be a belief that to beat WoW you have to copy WoW.”
  • Voo’s Review — Speculation: Guild Wars 2 ‘bug’. “Since a recent update players have been noticing that in their October Monthly Achievement window the bottom progress bar shows as ‘???’. The first assumption that this was a new bug that had crept in to the game somehow that needed fixing, however as time has gone on indications have cropped up pointing to something else.”
  • GW2Guru — Cooking material farms w/ maps. “Hey everyone, I compiled a list of cooking material farms that I encountered while exploring all the leveling zones. I thought this might help those who are trying to level up a chef although the mats themselves are not too expensive on the trading post. Here is list, the top section is sorted by the cooking material while the bottom is sorted by zones with map for every zone along with the nearest waypoint: http://dulfy.net/2012/10/03/gw2-cooking-material-farms/“
  • Twitter — Lykk_: “Prepare yourself for the Celebrity Deathmatch between Boarzilla and Waspra! (also known as Wasp Queen) http://i.imgur.com/i2M3s.jpg“
  • Guild Wars Insider — Lock & Key: Into the Mists. “If you are like me, then you’ve probably become rather invested in WvW. I can’t tell you how many times playing GW2 till 10 pm has turned into playing GW2 till 2 am simply because of the fact that I helped take a tower and couldn’t watch it fall into the hands of the enemy. While everyone on each different server will likely have an experience of a slightly different flavor of WvW, there are somethings to keep in mind no matter which borderlands you teleport to, and no matter if your fighting for Stonemist Keep or Redvale Camp.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Finding Alternatives. “I’ve only played the thief for a few hours during my time in Guild Wars 2 (a recording session over one of the Beta weekends) and didn’t really invest enough time in the profession to form any sense of opinion on it.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — World vs. World Structure Upgrade Guide. “Structures are critical to scoring points in World vs. World, the persistent battleground in Guild Wars 2. Upgrading these structures can mean the difference between your world owning it or the enemy. Our advanced WvW guide looks at the various upgrades for resource camps, towers, keeps, and castles, what they realistically do, and when to start the upgrade.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Riches — The crazy stupid truth about making gold in Guild Wars 2. “Since I began writing for this site I have written countless posts highlighting gold-making tips for Guild Wars 2. There are going to be thousands more gold making tips that come out as long as people are still playing Guild Wars 2. The key in all this is that people still must be playing Guild Wars 2 though. A lot of the tips that I’ve written and help people make at least a baseline amount of gold to get them started in the game.”

Videos and podcasts

Fanfic

  • Chronicles of Tyria — The Long Road Ahead, Part One. “Today was… exhausting. We did not even travel very far, but with everything that happened, we were lucky to have travelled at all. We were lucky to survive. For the second time in a week my day started very early in the morning, hours before dawn.”
  • Chronicles of Tyria — Chapter 5: Part 6 Ascalon’s Broken Academy. “We traveled through the cool night; the wet ground squished under our boots. Other than that, everything was silent. I hadn’t gained the courage to talk again since we decided to keep traveling through at least part of the night. My eyes watched the area around us. I felt as if we were being watched.”
  • Chronicles of Tyria — Frameworks for Plot and Narrative. “So, I have spent the past weeks talking about how to start writing and spouting opinions on how to create the foundations of a story. Over the next few weeks, I will be discussing the foundations of the writing itself – namely, action, description and dialogue”
  • GWOnline.net — Chronicals of the House of Azure: Unsympathic Asurans. “I know the Asura are not famed for their compensation when one of their inventions starts malfunctioning but this is beyond a joke, almost two weeks unconscious, years of my life erased and all I get is a Larynx to Data Modulator, or for those of us without the arrogance and overly complicated intelligence of a Asuran, a voice recording device. From what I’ve been told by the Sister of Dwayna that looked after me, I was struck by some form of lightening. According to her, an elementalist’s lightning surge missed its target, stuck the Asura gate I was passing through and when I came out the other side I lost nearly everything of my life.”

Community Events

  • Gaming World Entertainment Network (GWEN) — Pink Day in LA. “It’s time to save the date! Make a note on your calender, in your diary, set your phone reminders, put a note of the fridge, pin a note to your cat…actually don’t do that last one that would be bad! The point is Pink Day in LA is returning once again and this year it will be on October 20th 2012 along side the Extra Life charity event.”
  • GW2Guru — Pink Day in LA 2012. “Hello Everyone! It is that wonderful time of year again when we gather together ingame and get in touch with our Pink Sides! (For a great cause!) Pink Day in La will not only be in Guild Wars 1 this year — but Guild Wars 2, Rift, League of Legends and Firefall as well! However — we can’t forget where Pink Day began and that is in the Guild Wars community.”
  • Gaming World Entertainment Network — Extra Life. “On October 20th 2012 gamers all over the globe will be playing their favourite games non stop for 24 hours! This might just sound like a hardcore gaming weekend for some of you but there is a bigger purpose to it this time!”
  • Gaming World Entertainment Network — Paint The Game Pink! “Calling all digital fashionistas, artists, creative types and gamers. We have a challenge for you! As you can see Gamers Giving Back has gone pink in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We’ve picked our finest shades and we are now strutting our stuff on the digital runway like a majestic flamingo. Yes, we have just claimed a website can strut and be a flamingo simultaneously because that’s just how we do it.”

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).