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This week in Guild Wars 2

Posted by on March 6, 2013 in | | 1 Response

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m loving the new daily achievements. Being able to select which of the available choices I end up doing makes doing my daily much more of an ordinary part of my regular play. I’m also hoping the March monthly achievement is typical of monthlies going forward, because I completed it last night (even before I got the daily done).

My server, Darkhaven, clawed its way back up to tier 6 (before Christmas we were usually in the middle of the pack, but lost a lot of ground over the holidays). Our two current opponents seem to have better around-the-clock coverage than we do, because while we are usually able to grab territory and rack up points in the evening, by the next day, we’ve dropped back down to third place again.

It didn’t take long for someone to figure out how to grief someone else’s guild mission.

Official Guild Wars 2 news

  • GuildWars2.com — 31 Days of Sales in the Gem Store! “Each day in March we’re putting a different item on sale in the Gem Store! Save from 15% to 40% on boosters, upgrades, consumables and more! Each sale begins and ends at midnight Pacific Standard Time, so make sure to check the Promotions tab in the Gem Store every day in March to see the daily savings!”
  • Game Update Notes – March 2, 2013.
  • On the official Guild Wars 2 forums, Mike Ferguson posted on the topic What if culling is unfixable?: “Culling is absolutely a fixable problem, and as Habib mentioned in his MMORPG interview, we are planning to completely remove it from the game in March. Why is it taking so long? Well, I think the best way I can describe how we’ve had to approach this problem is that it’s almost like changing a flat tire on a car that’s still moving. That’s a really rough analogy, but hopefully it helps illustrate just how difficult this would be in terms that are easier for everyone to understand.” [Raphia: Since the February update, I've actually been seeing culling far more often in PvE than before. I ran up to a dynamic event at Penitent Camp in Cursed Shore, but I only saw the particle effects. There were no Risen or players visible until I had been within the area of the event for several seconds.]
  • Guild Wars 2 Junkies — Robert Hrouda Talks Rangers and Pet Survivability. “As part of an ongoing conversation with the Guild Wars 2 dungeon community, Robert Hrouda, ArenaNet Content Designer, mentioned Rangers in quite a few forum posts yesterday. The pet UI in Guild Wars 2 can be a little frustrating (poor Necros have it even worse), and this fact seems amplified when running dungeons and fractals as a Ranger. Pets have to be micromanaged fairly closely in order to even have a chance of staying alive, and due to the lack of overall survivability that pets have, even when micromanaged correctly, some pets don’t stand much of a chance in the more dangerous fractals.”
  • IGN.com — No Guild Wars 2 Expansions Currently Planned But what about Guild Wars 3? “No expansions for Guild Wars 2 are currently being created, though ArenaNet hasn’t ruled out the possibility in future. Speaking to IGN, game director Colin Johanson explained that the company was currently focused on improving the live experience of the game and didn’t want to be distracted.”
  • GuildWars2.com — Flame & Frost: The Razing. “A hybrid army erupts through fiery portals in the Shiverpeaks. A Molten Alliance between the dredge and the charr Flame Legion has created a force powerful enough to massacre any who stand in their way. One settlement, one homestead at a time, they’re wiping out all resistance. The razing has begun.”
  • Game Update Notes – March 07, 2013.

Recent GuildMag posts

  • Amazing Wintersday Music Cover. “Though the magic of Wintersday may have gone, and spring is rapidly approaching, it’s never a bad time to relive the joys of winter. This amazing instrumental cover of Guild Wars 2 music, including ‘Fear Not This Night’ and the main theme to the game, is well worth listening to! All credit goes to Laurent Lozano”
  • Dynamically Spoken Episode 11: Gathering Storm Review. “Join us in this week’s podcast to take a look at the latest big patch to hit Guild Wars 2 – The Gathering Storm.”

Fan articles and blog posts

  • The Egg Baron — Living Story: Gathering Storm part 1. “The latest patch brings a lot of changes to the Living Story. As always, I have documented those changes to the best of my ability and today I have screenshots and much more to share. There are changes in all four zones, Wayfarer Foothills, Diessa Plateau, Hoelbrak, and the Black Citadel, and the story has spread to Lion’s Arch.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Dodge. “When you double-tap to dodge in Guild Wars 2, you are invulnerable while dodging.”
  • Divinity’s Reach — Exposing the Truth, Past and Present. “Purpose: In effect, what I intend to do is expose ArenaNet of lies, deceit, and otherwise facilitating or spreading false information for the sole purpose of garnering favor, attention, and playtime from the general public and its customers. I intend to do this relatively systematically with use of direct quotes from the company, a list of facts, occasionally brief personal experiences and commentary, and a logical conclusion.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Upcoming Blog Carnival Topic for March 15th. “Here’s how a blogging carnival that I run works. They are rare and everyone does it differently, so pay attention real quick to these simple guidelines. 1. Send me a link to something you wrote or read recently about the carnival’s topic. 2. I will feature the link along with a title and description in the blog carnival.”
  • Inventory Full — Oh That’s Good, No That’s Bad. “Sam the Sham knows. Got it back to front though. Long gap between posts. Hate that. Reason? Playing. Love that. Back to work, less time to play or write. Big patch dropped late evening last day of week off. Liked it a lot. Patch, not going back to work.”
  • Twitter — @Lions_Profit. “Well that’s a good time to have just under 9000 blackberries in your inventory. i.imgur.com/IHIQgXp.jpg guildwarstrade.com/item/12537“
  • The Egg Baron — Living Story: Gathering Storm part 2. “Yesterday I started discussing the changes to the Living Story by going over the additions to Hoelbrak, the Black Citadel, and Lion’s Arch. Today I would like to finish by looking at the achievements you can complete, the new content in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau, and provide you with my thoughts and speculations on the Living Story so far. There is a lot of stuff to go over so I will get right to it.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Two Cool Magic Find Tips. “Here are two really good magic find tips for those of you building a magic find set that Sterling emailed me about. At the time he had just received an email from me on how to create a magic find set out of Pirate or Explorer runes.”
  • Nerdy Bookahs — Ask Nerdy Bookahs (March 3, 2013). “It’s time for another “Ask Nerdy Bookahs”. We have looked at the questions in the search terms that led people to our blog for which we know we do not have fitting entries and we’re trying to answer those questions now.”
  • Twitter — @Lykk_. “If you´re not in a large guild, you´re not the player. You´re the product being sold to larger guilds until dynamic scaling #GW2 #GuildWars2″
  • Nerdy Bookahs — Guild Missions – Dragon Season-Style. “We did our first Guild Mission yesterday. We gathered right north of Lion’s Arch – where apparently, every guild on our server had decided to gather as well. ;) Especially thanks to Culling, it’s important to meet somewhere empty, so you can actually see which of your guild members showed up. Before we could start, it took us a very long time to get organized. Most of us were in Raidcall as voice-chat is just so much faster and more efficient in organizing things. Still, it took a long time. At the end of the night, we also shared ideas on how to make everything a bit faster. Tonight, we met again. This time, putting people in groups happened fast. We knew where to go within a few seconds and everything went a lot more smoothly.”
  • Healing the masses — An Ascended Dilemma. “An article on reddit made me think a little today, I had never really thought about it in that way before and now that I have it really seems to resonate with how I feel about the game. The title pretty much says it all but there is bit more to it then just being about better gear. Reading that thread I kind of had one of those epiphany moments, it revealed that one niggly little feeling in the back of my head which has been spoiling a bit of my gameplay of late. Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be more casually orientated where it was more about grinding for outfits than for gear but i don’t think they achieved that aim very well. I know people have thought this for a while but the extent of it was just out of sight until recently.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Great Example of Market Cycle and Gold Making. “Patrick wrote a lengthy email focusing in on his recent finds on the trading post, along with two examples of what he’s talking about. I know it’s long, but give it a read as well as my answer below.”
  • Inventory Full — Direction Of Travel. “I wanted to slap Saturday’s breathless, Herbie inspired gasp of approval up because it occurred to me that a lot of what I write about GW2, both here and in comments on other blogs, not to mention much of what I say out loud at home, may come across as overly negative. If so, that doesn’t accurately reflect the experience I’m having in game. I’m having a whale of a time.”
  • Reddit — The more ascended pieces come out the more single character pigeon holed I feel… “Maybe the WvW patch will fix this by making ascended gear available from there but I’m getting to the point where I feel like I have to choose one char to gear out. I got 2 ascended slots for my Thief but have been playing my memser more. Now I’m having to debate if I should make my next piece go to him or continue with the Thief. One way I gear out fully a char I may not play much anymore and the other I feel like I’ve waisted a lot of effort if I don’t finish what I started.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Are Ascended Items Restricting Versatility? “Over on Reddit this morning, there’s an interesting topic discussing Ascended items and how the entry level for them almost forces all individuals to choose a “main”. I must admit, it’s something I recently discussed with friends and is also something I’ve had to deal with. With 5 level 80 characters, it has come to the point where I need to acknowledge I cannot spend equal time across all of them. Ascended items have dictated that I cannot get them up to the level needed in order to be fully geared.”
  • Black Lions Profit — gw2tp.net launches chrome search extension! “You have probably noticed that I am a quite a big fan of the gw2tp.net trading post tool, with its clean-cut graphs, innovative features and user friendly interface it is a great resource for making gold in Guild Wars 2. In my opinion, it is one of the best tools currently available and has a premium service that rivals Gold Wars 2.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — March Money Maker with Monthly Achievement. “The monthly was announced for March and it looks like crafters are going to get hit HARD. A huge number of masterwork or better items need to be crafted in order to complete the monthly. I’m going to layout a collection of tips which will help you make gold during March as well as April.”
  • The Guild Wars Chef — Week 10: Tomato-zucchini soup. “This is a rich soup that can be a starter, or if you’re not in the mood for a three course dinner just serve it with some bread and it’ll work as a full meal. In GW2, you make this soup by adding a few ingredients to tomato soup, for which I already gave a recipe. So I’m going to stay with the basic structure of the tomato soup as I gave it earlier, with a few adaptations to properly incorporate the ingredients for the tomato-zucchini soup.”
  • Guild Wars Insider — Interview with GW2 Dungeon Designer Robert Hrouda. “We were lucky enough to snag some time with one of ArenaNet’s Dungeon Content Designers, Robert Hrouda.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — A Conversation (Comic).
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — 6 Part Gold Guide Incoming. “I am henceforth dedicating myself to the gold guide and forum I’ve created alongside this blog. Not only will I continue to deliver new posts to this blog, but I will now continuously be adding podcasts, videos, and written guides to the Trading Post Extractor on a weekly basis. My goal is one video, one podcast, and one new written guide per week. It will be a challenge, but the amount of value I can bring to this forum and gold guide will be well worth the effort.”
  • MMORPG.com — There’s a Storm Brewing. “The plot thickens in Guild Wars 2, as the Flame and Frost storyline goes into the second act. ArenaNet expands the Living Story, creating new challenges for players, and breathing more life into the world of Tyria. The first chapter in the Flame and Frost storyline kicked off last month revealing a dark shadow in the northern part of the world. Act 2 continues offering some answers, but leaving more questions.”
  • Hunter’s Insight — Guild Bounties. “There isn’t currently a place for small guilds to take part in Guild Missions. I see that as a big oversight. Despite what a lot of people on forums and blogs might say about small guilds (a bunch of nasty, immature, bullshit) this isn’t their fault. Some people prefer small guilds and some people despite their best efforts can’t grow theirs. But the fanboys defend Arenanet on the grounds that you should just join a larger guild. Well there is something to be said for a small guilds morale. Personally I think people would rather play with people they know rather than being some anonymous random in a giant guild. Not to mention the fact it becomes increasingly harder to start a new guild or grow your small one when people find out you can’t do Guild Missions. Especially seeing members of your small guild, maybe even the guild leader, repping other guilds to get in on Guild Bounties. I don’t want to even start in on guesting or think about the consequences of moving servers.”
  • Massively — Flameseeker Chronicles: Puzzle jumping in Guild Wars 2. “I’ve been meaning to talk about jumping puzzles for a while. I haven’t made it through quite all of the ones in Guild Wars 2 yet, but I’m getting closer to that point all the time. The problem is that I never want to just sit down and hammer out three or four in a session because I feel that’d take away from some of the fun of it, so I get to one every little while, and I treasure it, and that’s actually pretty OK by me.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Guild Score. “ArenaNet has called guilds in to question. Not all guilds. The very active, very big guilds are having no issues plowing right ahead to unlocking all the mission types at the pace of a few months (or less!). It’s the small guilds that are having problems. It’s the small guilds that feel threatened. It’s the small guilds that are now forced to reflect on whether their community actually reflects ArenaNet’s mechanical definition of a guild.”
  • ErrantQuest — Chef Guide. “The original cooking guides that were created shortly after GW2 launches are long outdated. All of them require vanilla bean, an object that once was purchasable from vendors for a small amount of karma. That changed. Vanilla bean is now quite pricey and not a viable component to use for cheap chef leveling.” [Raphia: Recommended by Garran The Lost, RTH's WvW commander.]
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Profession Review – March 2013. “After a brief title change and 4 months having passed, I felt it time to look once again at Guild Wars 2’s profession to establish what’s hot and what’s not. As always, this post is based on my own anecdotal evidence while I remain ever keen to hear your views on the status of your profession.”
  • The Egg Baron — More Living Story Updates. “Firstly, I find it strange that there was no changes at all this week. On Monday, I thought, “okay, maybe Tuesday since that is when the patch was.” Now Tuesday has come and gone and there is still nothing new to report. I don’t think I missed anything. I checked all the hot spots; Hoelbrak, Black Citadel, Lion’s Arch, Wayfarer, Diessa, and Southsun Cove. I have yet to notice anything new. If I have missed something please be sure to let me know.”
  • Distilled Willpower — The Lazy Legendary Guide – Gift of Battle – Part 3. “If anyone tells you that doing the jumping puzzles is the best way to get badges, they obviously haven’t tried actual coordinated WvW. This lazy legendary guide will tell you the basics of what you should do to get involved in your server’s coordinated WvW efforts, how you can be most effective, and ultimately how you could, effectively, gather all your badges within a week.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — New WvW Ranks and Abilities are Character Bound. “Well this is an interesting piece of news. Habib Loew over on the official forums has confirmed that the new WvW ranks and abilities will be character bound. By my calculations, that now leaves: dyes, fractal difficulty, ascended items and the commander title as time consuming, character bound progression.”
  • The Escapist — Guild Wars 2 May Be The End Of The Franchise. “Hopefully you really like the current state of Guild Wars 2 as developer ArenaNet has no plans to expand the game, and a sequel seems increasingly unlikely.” [Raphia: Is this the first "Guild Wars 2 is Dying!" article? It's actually rather amazing how many wrongheaded notions you can generate by maliciously misreading your sources.]
  • Hunter’s Insight — EQuipped. “I have now joined the ranks of the many thousands of people who’ve acquired shiny footprints, unique weapon skins, rare sound effects and the envy of absolutely everyone in existence. Quip is mine.”
  • The Lazy Geek — A Guild Wars 2 Dungeoneer’s Tale: On The New Ascalonian Catacombs. “Despite having some time away from writing about my dungeoneering tales in Tyria, I have been keeping up still with the game. With the previous update, we were given a change to the Ascalonian Catacombs…for better and for worse. I also remind everyone this is a dungeon for which the recommended level for explore mode is 35.”
  • Kill Ten Rats — Bounty Hunter Hour. “Ruminations aside, I did take part in a few Tier 1 Guild Bounty guild missions last weekend. My guild is actually composed of 5 rooms, which are actual Guild Wars 2 guilds. So we were working on making sure that every guild was able to complete a Guild Bounty.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Hub — Complete Guide to Daily Achievements. “In this guide, we provide a complete breakdown of all the daily achievements in Guild Wars 2 and where the best locations are for completing them.”
  • Golden Griffon Trading — To Dye For: Pretty in Pinks & Reds.
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — We Want More Economic Disasters. “Whenever bot bans occur, there are sweeping changes in the supply of items throughout the game. This economic turmoil may confuse the average consumer, but it sends jolts of adrenaline through the trading post players.”
  • Golden Griffon Trading — But I don’t have much time.. (Part Two). “So your play time is limited and you want to make some money; an approach you may want to try is exploiting reliable markets. Finding stable markets that are always profit-worthy can be a little time consuming at first, but once you have you can continue making a reliable profit off of them.”
  • Healing the masses — A Better Mouse Wheel. “I have said often enough on random game boards and in conversation with other pvp’ers that if you build a decent mouse wheel the mouse will run forever. I don’t know what the perfect wheel will involve but the one thing I know for sure is that most mmo companies and developers haven’t even tried. They build their silly little Skinner boxes and port it over to PvP thinking it might finally satiate us, that our drive towards carnage can somehow be fulfilled with shiny things.. Sorry but we’re not Skritt, even if we do appear as brainless at times.”
  • Distilled Willpower — Crest Economics. “At the moment I’m rocking all Explorer’s armour. As a guardian, that means that my health is relatively low – ideally once I’ve managed to get my legendary weapon I will switch to using something a little more useful – probably Clerics (Power, Toughness, Healing Power), but I’m debating over what runes I should be rocking.”
  • Guild Wars 2 Trading Post — Masterwork More Profit Than Rares. “When it comes to armor, I find that masterwork items get me more profit than rares of similar levels. Sure, the rares can usually net me a larger amount of silver per transaction, but the masterwork items move so much faster.”

Videos and podcasts

Fanfic

Community Events

  • Gaming World Entertainment Network — Screenshot Contest! “Who likes in-game gold? Everyone? Well get your print-screen buttons ready! Wait…did some one say no? Sorry, my mistake, I still have the words of a certain Dredge ringing in my ears after spending some time in Sorrow’s Embrace.”
  • GW2Guru — Guru State of the Game – with ArenaNet dev: Tyler Bearce, Jonathan Sharp, and Karl McLain. “It’s time for the Guru’s State of the Game sPvP, a monthly stream focusing on the sPvP aspects of Guild Wars 2. Who will be attending? We’re joined by players from top competitive teams (and occasionally by a developer… or two) with the hopes of generating genuine and constructive discussion regarding the current state of the game.”
  • Project Tyria — Project Tyria Panel. “I’m making this post today to let everyone know that I’ve been spending time securing and getting ready for my first Guild Wars panel convention debut! The convention I will be attending is a rising Anime and Gaming convention in Atlanta, Georgia called Momocon. In the panel I will be discussing the lore of the two games (with as few spoilers between one or the other as possible.) If you’re in the area, please come visit, I go on at 5:30pm Eastern US time this Saturday (March 9th).”

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).

One Response

  1. This week in Guild Wars 2 « Quotulatiousness
    This week in Guild Wars 2 « Quotulatiousness March 8, 2013 at 18:19 |

    [...] weekly Guild Wars 2 community round-up at GuildMag is now online. Teaser for the March update went up the other day, and there’s lots of [...]

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