A Guild Wars 2 podcast (see link in roundup below) played devil’s advocate trying to list possible reasons why Guild Wars 2 might fail. One was that players will figure out what the best builds are, and how to make the trinity work. They used the guardian as a tank in their example (which they then pointed out was an unfortunate example). However, the point remains… what if there is an optimal way to play the trinity, and Guild Wars 2 end up being like that…
Read more & comment >>Archive for November 2011
Sunday weekly Guild Wars news roundup
Posted 27/11/11 by Lensor
Welcome to the third weekly GWOnline Guild Wars news roundup, which means that we can now call it a regular thing!
This week Jim Boer at ArenaNet posted a developer blog about the iterative process of the conversation cinematics in Guild Wars 2. ArenaNet also showed that they still care about Guild Wars 1, by announcing a brand new post-hack account restoration feature. And we here at GWOnline announced our Secret Charr program! But that is not all. Follow after the jump for a full list of this week’s Guild Wars news.
Read more & comment >>MMO Report’s Guild Wars 2 voice over special
Posted 26/11/11 by Lensor
For their Thanksgiving special show, The MMO Report sent Casey Schreiner over to the ArenaNet studios to have a chat with their voice actor talent as well as try to get himself casted as one!
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Sign up as a GWOnline Secret Charr!
Posted 24/11/11 by Lensor
Ho Ho Ho!
Sure Thanksgiving is not even over yet, but Wintersday is just an Asura-toss away. It is already time to get festive, and what better way to get in the proper Wintersday spirit than by participating in GWOnline’s very own Secret Charr?
Secret Charr works exactly the same as Secret Santa, just with a little more fur, and lots of extra teeth!
How do you sign up?
Just provide a post with the following:
- Picture of your Guild Wars Avatar for possible Drawing
- Name of your Guild Wars Avatar and profession for possible Fan-Fiction
(may include more information as well if you like)
We will be taking participants until December 9th (got a 3-day extention).
Please visit the thread in our community forum for the full details of Secret Charr!
Read more & comment >>NCsoft sale – Half off on the GW 1 trilogy + Eye of the North
Posted 24/11/11 by Lensor
This coming weekend, NCsoft is offering the original Guild Wars 1 trilogy and the expansion Eye of the North for half prize.
The sales prizes are Guild Wars Trilogy for $14.99 and Eye of the North for $9.99. The sale runs from November 25 (12:01 AM Pacific Time) to November 28 (11:59 PM Pacific Time) in the in-game Store and the NCsoft store.
Read more & comment >>Jim Boer Discusses Guild Wars 2 Cinematic Conversations
Posted 23/11/11 by Rushster
The latest ArenaNet develeper blog comes from Jim Boer who takes a further look at the cinematic conversations in the game. The amount of work involved in creating  around fifteen hundred cinematic conversations is not easy and the team have faced some challenges in making the system not only work but look decent.
According to Jim, because the level of facial detail is not high enough on the characters they have had to push them further back so as to hide any flaws, a simple solution to the problem which means they can create the sequences quicker.
Read more & comment >>Guild Wars 1 account restorations now possible
Posted 22/11/11 by Lensor
ArenaNet just announced that for Guild Wars 1 accounts hacked after October 1, 2011, they will be able to restore a player’s account to its pre-hacked status under certain conditions. Support will first need to carefully research the hacking incident and perform the following steps:
- Verify that the person requesting the restoration is the original owner of the account.
- Confirm that the request is for a hacking incident that took place after October 1, 2011.
- Review account history preceding and during the hacking incident to establish with certainty that the account was hacked by a third party.
- Take action on the account of the hacker and others who may have been involved in the incident. Terminating all such accounts will remove the hackers from our game community and will also remove all stolen items from the game economy.
- Restore the account, when appropriate.
The restoration is working through a “snap-shot” process of the entire account, so restorations will be for the whole account, and to the last available snap-shot before the hack. Visit the forum thread on ArenaNet’s official suppost forum for more information.Â
As Guild Wars 2 gets closer it may get more attractive for dishonest people to try to gain access to other people’s Guild Wars 1 account for Hall of Monument perks, so it is reassuring to see that ArenaNet is still actively working on Guild Wars 1 security. Join the discussion at our community forums.
Read more & comment >>Sunday weekly Guild Wars news roundup
Posted 20/11/11 by Lensor
Welcome to the second weekly GWOnline news roundup.
Last week was as you all know the G*Star 2011, and one news item in particular should get some juices flowing among the PvP community. The ArenaNet development team, with players such as Karl and Izzy, got beat by a fan team comprised of none other than players from War Machine and The Last Pride, famous Guild Wars 1 guilds that reaped many wins before retiring from Guild Wars 1. That they will return to Guild Wars 2 is great news indeed. Join the discussion in our community forum for videos and images. ArenaNet took the loss with grace though.
I wasn’t there but I can confirm that what we at ANet heard was that the Warmachine/Last Pride team won vs. Karl, Izzy and some NCSoft employees. Karl and Izzy are the only “PvP experts” that we sent to G-Star, they will of course be asked to fall on their swords when they get back into the office to atone for their disgrace – Eric Flannum
Continuing on the PvP track, the fellows over at Team Quitter posted an interlude in their PvP-focused feature series on the Guild Wars 2 professions. Not being able to contain themselves, they speculate about the possibility of the final profession being mesmer. Agree? Join our community forum discussion.
Other news this week:
- A new TWIMMO-episode at Gamebreaker TV, talking about the new Guild Wars 2 dialogue cut scenes.
- GuildCast came out with their 51st episode, also marking their 6th aniversary. Congratulation guys! By the way, the GuildCast team is starting a new Guild Wars 2 show at Gamebreaker TV in December, so make sure to check it out.
- Ravious over at Kill Ten Rats pondered the impact of facial expression and movement in video games.
- GuildMag came out with their 8th issue, packed with articles, interviews, art, and more. Make sure to check out this excellent community-created publication.
- Rubi contemplated the recent news on skills, cut scenes, and more in the Flameseeker Chronicles.
- The Tales of Tyria videocast came out with their 6th episode, this one dealing with the recent ANet blog posts, MMORPG economics, and crafting & gear.
- Varyn over at the Guardians of Tyria Blog took a look at what being a Norn Guardian might mean.
- Ryan Clements over at IGN shared his impressions of the Guild Wars 2 demo.
- MMORPG.com threw a real curve ball, reviewing the one and only Guild Wars 1 expansion Eye of the North, more that four years after its release. Not as weird as it might seem though, seeing as one of the most common questions we get from people new to the Guild Wars universe is if it is worth it to get the old games now.
- Finally, the fellows over at The Morton Report had a chat with Ellen Dubin, voice actress in Skyrim (the bulk of the interview) and Guild Wars 2. Nice to hear what some of the voice talent has to say, and let us hope more such interviews are coming the closer we get to release.
That was all for this week. If we missed anything, please leave a tip in the comment section!
Check back next Sunday for another weekly news roundup here at GWOnline.
GWOnline presents: “Can I Play GW2?” by ActionJack
Posted 20/11/11 by Lensor
"Can I Play GW2?" by ActionJack - now at GWOnline!
We here at GWOnline are proud to present the Guild Wars 2 comic “Can I Play GW2?” by ActionJack as a feature here on the site. With his very own take on Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet, ActionJack’s comic has been a smash hit in the Guild Wars fan art community. Now also our audience gets a chance to follow the comic from the start. We are of course very happy about this opportunity to share the comic with all of you, and hope you will enjoy it as much as we did!
Links to ActionJack’s Facebook and Deviantart accounts.
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Guild Wars 2 trailer made in Minecraft
Posted 16/11/11 by Lensor
Check out this fan-made Guild Wars 2 trailer made entirely in Minecraft. Uploaded by YouTube user jamesdarandom, who took a whole week to finish his blocky recreation of the Guild Wars 2 Gamescom 2011 trailer. We here at GWOnline only have one word for this feat – awesome!
Read more & comment >>GWOnline Halloween contest winners announced!
Posted 14/11/11 by Lensor
Clay Asura by Battletoad, Grand Prize Winner of the 2011 GWOnline Halloween contest.
We here at GWOnline were delighted to see how much spooky creativity showed up to haunt the forums for our Halloween contest! The judging is now over, and the winners were announced in the contest thread in our community forum.
- Grand prize – Battletoad
- First prize – stoudacz
- Second prize – Konig Des Todes
- Third prize – Melody
- Art category first prize – ninja bunny go
- Art category runner up – SunRoamer
- Literature category first prize – Bilbo Baggins
- Literature category runner up – cursedseishi
- Music/Video category first prize – The Mikey
Congratulations to all the winners!
Read more & comment >>Weekly news roundup – link extravaganza!
Posted 13/11/11 by Lensor
This week ArenaNet and NCsoft showed off Guild Wars 2 to the Asian market at the G*Star 2011 gaming convention (Convention site, NCsoft booth, ArenaNet flickr stream).
The demo was beefed up with more character creation options and better in-game cinematics, among other things (ArenaNet blog about the new demo, ArenaNet blog about the improved cinematics), which gave rise to many analyzes from the fans (Flameseeker Chronicles, Kill Ten Rats, The Feral Engineer, Tyria Talk).
The convention also gave us some new video material (press conference parts 1, 2, 3, 4, character customization videos 1, 2, pvp-videos 1, 2, 3, 4).
But G*Star was not all that was happening this last week!
- BJ Geek Nation posted a video interview with Colin Johanson.
- Guild Wars 2 Live posted their first video episode about Guild Wars lore.
- David North over at MMORPG wondered what would happen with holidays in Guild Wars 2.
- Guild Wars 2 PvP posted the fourth part in their excellent interview series about PvP in Guild Wars 2, this one with environmental artist Tirzah Bauer (community forum thread about the entire series).
- The MMO Report opened with Guild Wars 2 info revealed in a recent Jon Peters Interview at MMORPG.
- Nerdybookahs wrote about the adventures of a Charr.
- There were also some brand new fan sites that surfaced; I Swung a Sword (podcast) and Dragon Season (blog).
If you have another tip of Guild Wars content we should follow, please leave us a comment and we will add it in.
Finally, Guild Wars 2 was nominated for the “Most-Anticipated MMO” award from Massive Online Gamer, and I for one have already voted.
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