Archive for 29 January 2013

Temple of the Silent Storm Week

Posted 29/01/13 by

It’s been a busy week already in Tyria! Another blog just went up on the official site with information on some new PvP features. As always, a snippet is below, click through for more, and drop by the forums for discussion!

We’ve been working on PvP features consistently since our last update, and as always, we’ve been watching the forums for feedback and inspiration.

So I’m really excited to announce that, based on player feedback, we’ll be testing a new tournament system for PvP from January 28 to February 4 in the Temple of the Silent Storm map! This new system will pit one team vs. another, instead of the usual eight teams needed for a normal paid tournament. Free tournaments will still be available during this test, but we’ll be replacing paid tournaments with this test system for the duration of the week.

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Upcoming Changes to Dungeon Mechanics

Posted 29/01/13 by

Check out the latest blog update from ArenaNet with changes coming to dungeons. The big change for Phase 1 will be that defeated players cannot use Waypoints while their party is in combat. Definitely going to require changing up playstyle for some people. See a snapshot below or click through for details on Phase 2. Don’t forget to swing by our forums and let us know your thoughts.

Hey folks, I’m Robert Hrouda, a content designer on Guild Wars 2. In the coming months, we’ll make some changes to dungeon mechanics to make them a more fun and challenging experience. I wanted to give you a heads-up on our plans for phase 1 of our dungeons evolution—specifically, the removal of “res-rushing”—as well as a brief overview of our plans for phase 2.

“Res-rushing” is when a player uses a waypoint to resurrect immediately after being defeated in a dungeon and then runs back to the fight, instead of waiting for their party members to resurrect them.

Dungeons were designed to be highly focused on teamwork. The current res-rushing mechanic discourages the type of behavior we intended when a fellow player goes down. We hope that by eliminating res-rushing, we’ll bring dungeons more in-line with our original design goals, which are based around team play and strategy.

With this upcoming change, defeated players will be unable to use waypoints while their party is in combat. Players will only be able to use waypoints if the party wipes or withdraws from combat.

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WvW Rating Reset Coming Soon

Posted 29/01/13 by

A quick update on WvW. Looks like all pairings are going to be reset now that free transfers are done. Little surprising, but makes sense. Full post is below.


In the run up to the end of free world transfers we saw large population changes as people settled in to their home servers. This means that the WvW teams being fielded by many of the worlds are now dramatically different. In recognition of this fact, and in light of the increased population stability that comes with paid transfers, we feel that this would be a good time to reset the ratings of all the servers. A reset at this point will allow the rating & ranking system to more quickly and correctly rate these (effectively) new WvW teams.
Here’s how the reset will work:

1) We’ll let the current matchup play out. Since free transfers were available during the first part of this matchup we don’t want it to count towards the new ratings.
2) When the matchup rolls over on Friday, February 1st we’ll post the final ratings & rankings. The new ordering will determine the groupings for the next matchup as usual.
3) After the new matchup has started on February 1st we’ll reset all the ratings (and deviation & volatility) behind the scenes.

Because every world will have reset ratings the system will treat the February 1st matchup as the first matchup and will calculate the ratings accordingly. The new ratings will then be calculated normally in the way that you’re already familiar with. We expect several weeks of volatility while the ratings settle down but we believe that it will ultimately yield a more correct result more quickly than letting the current ratings persist. That also means that the coming month or two will be a fantastic time to fight for your world’s place in the rankings!

Additionally, we’re taking advantage of the reset to revisit some of the math behind the ratings. I’ll have more to post on that once we’ve crunched some numbers and made some decisions.

-Habib Loew

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