While I am still under-impressed with the lack of alliances in Guild Wars 2, I am thrilled with all the new bells and whistles that have been given to the guilds.

First and foremost is the ability to have more than one guild leader. Let’s face it, life has a way of biting us in the derriere and having more than one person at the helm is a big plus in my book.

The next great thing is the ability to create custom ranks. TRUE has been adding these as we began to understand how they work and how useful they can be. Our first addition was an Upgrade Officer. We want to grow but we want to do so in an orderly and well-thought out manner. We were fortunate in having someone who gained a good grasp of the upgrade system early on and it made sense to have him in charge of initiating the upgrades.

The next two ranks were born of the same conversation. Keeping tabs on our Membership Applications, sending out invites and then initiating the guild-wide vote after the appropriate time period is the job description of the Recruit Officer (we wanted to call it Recruiting Officer, but there’s a limit as to how many characters are allowed in the titles). To facilitate the process, we created the rank of Initiate. These are new members, with very limited permissions. Once they pass the vetting process, the Recruit Officer then promotes them to Members.

Since the number of customized ranks is limited, we cautiously look at each new addition before adding them We’ve had a number of suggestions for fun ranks and once we’ve sorted out all the ranks we truly need, perhaps we’ll see the implementation of such ranks as Guild Member of the Month (although that one will definitely have to be abreviated!), Oldest Member or Too Cool to School. Who knows, we’ve got some really creative minds in TRUE and there’s no telling what they might think up.

~ Mawg Fyrewyn

In a banner that rotates with launch information the Headstart Countdown has begun.

Rubi Bayer, a member of ArenaNet’s community team, tweeted the following:

Those of you looking forward to headstart, it will begin on August 25 at 00:00 PACIFIC Time. ~RB2 #GW2

— Guild Wars 2 (@GuildWars2) August 1, 2012

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m planning on an early night on Friday, since that will make a 3:00 am start for me!

Every company has its secrets: secret recipes, secret codes, secret programs, and secret ways of doing things. Some secrets are kept for important spy reasons, and some are kept simply because no one bothers sharing them. The secrets I’m sharing in this blog post are equal parts both.

ArenaNet Game Designer, Ben Miller, gives us rare insight on the “recipe” for cooking up a great game. READ MORE…