Archive for the Items Category

Colin Johanson Talks 2013 Content Updates & Snowflake Bannings

Posted 04/01/13 by

In a forum post from game director Colin Johanson he outlines ArenaNet’s goals for the coming months ahead with more details to follow soon.

Just to help provide some clarity on this, we’ll be releasing within the next couple of weeks a high level summary of our big plans for the first half of 2013 to help provide more transparency into our plans with the game going forward. This will include providing more details about our goals for the game, information about the stories and features that you’ll see in the Jan/Feb/March releases.

To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.

More details and specifics to come in the next couple of weeks, but I hope that helps provide some more insight into what to expect at a very high level.

In other news, there has been bannings for salvaging snowflakes into ecto before the exploit was sorted out. Gaile commented on this…

I’ve seen the numbers, and the damage to the economy could have been substantial, if the exploit wasn’t closed down and if these people were allowed to use their ill-gotten gains. People whose accounts were terminated were the worst offenders. I’m talking a lot of ill-gotten gains that posed a significant potential impact on the economy.

Any time you take one thing and can make two, and then four, and then sixteen… ya gotta know that’s just wrong. (I won’t quibble on the odds, but overall, that form of doubling was not outside the realm of possibility.) And to perform that action hundreds and hundreds of times? That’s call “exploitation,” and that’s against the User Agreement, the Rules of Conduct, and all that is holy.

I know the OP will disagree. But we’ve been more than kind, in the past, and everyone needs to own up to his/her errors and recognize: We all are part of the game economy, and those who exploit it are hurting the rest of us.

Exploit closed.
Worst offenders terminated.
That’s what has to happen to make things right for all of us.

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Make Yourself Over

Posted 27/11/12 by

There are a couple of new items in the BLTC today, which allow you to change your facial features or your body features. They are purely cosmetic: Neither will allow a name change.

Are you planning to change any of your character’s appearances? If so, why not swing by our forums and show off the before and after?

New BLTC Items

New BLTC Items

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Black Lion Trading Does Black Friday

Posted 22/11/12 by

Exciting times for shoppers as Black Friday looms in the US following Thanksgiving. Black Friday is also coming to Tyria so snap up those bargains!

The Black Lion Trading Company is celebrating the biggest shopping day of the year with a Black Friday sale of their own.

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, be sure to check out the Gem Store for limited-time discounts on some of your favorite items. Each day three different items will be discounted up to 70% off!But don’t wait, because each sale only lasts 24 hours.

You’ll have to log into the game and open the Gem Store (default key is “O”) to find out exactly which items are on sale each day. Happy shopping!

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Linsey Murdock on Item Progression – Like the changes?

Posted 13/11/12 by

With the big update coming this week, ArenaNet are getting ready to add some changes to the item progression with the addition of a new condition called Agony, Infusions and Ascended items.  The changes have raised a few eyebrows as the thought of grinding doesn’t appeal to everyone depending on how you look at it.

The update from Linsey Murdock explains the route ArenaNet are taking, and key points to note from the update are as follows:

As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.

We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach. Original Guild Wars fans may recognize that we took a familiar approach to our new progression. The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.

This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game.  Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. Legendary items were always intended to be on par with other “best-in-slot” items. So fear not, all existing Legendary weapons, which are currently on par with Exotics, will be upgraded to be on par with Ascended weapons at the same time that we add Ascended weapons to the game. Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items. All Legendary items going forward will be of Ascended power. We also have plans to add more fun ways to acquire Legendary precursor items with a more “scavenger hunt” feel than they are acquired currently.

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative. We’re going to add tons of new high-level content to Guild Wars 2 in the future. As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).

A debate rages on in the forums about the changes and the community seems quite split on the direction ArenaNet are taking.

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Winds of Change (Part 1) is Live!

Posted 11/07/11 by

If you have a thing against the afflicted (who doesn’t?), then head over to Kaineng to talk to Initiate Zei Ri and to start with the cleansing process. Also, check out the new costumes, as well as new items to be gained (I’d wait for parts 2-3 before getting items though, to see all the skin choices).

More details at http://www.guildwars.com/windsofchange/

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Guild Wars 2: A closer look at the weapon bar

Posted 16/05/11 by
Weapon bar for the Guardian

Weapon bar for the Guardian

I’ve been looking at the Guardian skills… And I’ve been seeing some patterns in the weapon skills. A quick look at the Elementalist supports these patterns, and I suspect the same patterns are also present in the other professions.

These patterns help understand not only how the gameplay will be like, but also what kind of design decisions went behind these decisions and why.

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Item and Loot Questions Answered

Posted 08/10/10 by

Following the recent developer update looking at loot in the game, John Hargrove and Eric Flannum have posted a follow-up Q&A tackling some of the more common questions that have arisen after their original update on loot. Topics include crafting, armor, gathering and the recently revealed Transmutation Stones. If crafting is something you enjoy and you like a bit of tailoring then you’re in luck.

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Live and Let Dye

Posted 29/09/10 by

Another week, another great update to get stuck into from the ArenaNet team, and this time Kristen Perry discusses the dye system in-depth. If you thought it was all about slapping a few colours together to come up with the dye system then you?Eurore very much mistaken. As the update stresses, the Guild Wars 2 dye system is highly complex with dependence on material type and numerous other complex factors and even the introduction of Sets. Check out the full article. Here’s a quick snip on Sets.

In Guild Wars 2, weight classes determine the profession distribution and the seam rules for our armor coordination. We realized there were times when we desperately wanted to break those rules, so we developed a solution to do so. For example, town clothes work similar to the light armor system. There is a waist seam that allows mixing and matching to work relatively smoothly between pieces, which gives the player as much creative freedom as possible. But for clothing, it would be a travesty to never have a long trench coat, which has a seam overlap that would follow medium armor seam rules.

To solve this dilemma, we have created sets. Sets are two or more sections of armor fused into one to prevent mixing troubles that allow us to design with far less seam constraints. For example, we could have an outfit with a large trench coat, an inside vest and shirt, and pants. You?Eurove seen this before in my previous clothing blog post. That outfit is one piece. However, because we know there?Euros so much fabric real estate, three dye channels aren?Eurot enough. In cases like these, we have allowed four dye channels. This will allow a remarkable amount of control over the parts of the outfit without having to require the pants to dye the same as some part of the coat.

 

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Live and Let Dye – Kristen Perry on the GW2 Dye System

Posted 29/09/10 by

Another week, another great update to get stuck into from the ArenaNet team, and this time Kristen Perry discusses the dye system in-depth. If you thought it was all about slapping a few colours together to come up with the dye system then you

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Treadmill 3: Treadmills for Health (healthier ways to play a treadmill-filled game)

Posted 14/04/10 by

If you have been following my blog, and have been doing your homework (yeah, right), you should now have a list of goals. That list should have been modified from it?Euros original form not only so that bad goals are removed, but also so that the ways you reach those goals are more fun-oriented. The current blog contains a bunch of rules you should impose on your gameplay to ensure that this philosophy of ?Euro?fun is more important than virtual wealth?Euro? is strictly adhered to.

1) Recognize the signs of grind-induced fatigue.

Games, especially RPGs and online games, generally have a complex array of addictive mechanisms built-in to keep you playing… if only so that the game builds a player-base via word-of-mouth. If done well, these mechanisms will be invisible to most players. However, it is much easier to recognize signs of grind-induced fatigue (1) playing even though the game got boring, (2) not being able to take a break, (3) feeling your thoughts wander to other things, (4) feeling that you need to stick with your investment, (5) impatience or irritability…

If you feel these, it may be time to take a break… but also to use that break to think about the reasons why you kept playing. Ask yourself ?Euro?what would I be doing if there were no rewards to my gameplay??Euro?

2) Renounce the boring grind.

If you?Eurore doing something that you find boring, stop, and ask yourself… ?Euro?Is there a way I can achieve the same goal but in a way that is more fun??Euro? And when you ask yourself that, do consider that that alternative way may be slower, but that shouldn?Eurot stop you.

Take the Kurzick/Luxon titles for example. Each is very long to complete… but each can be completed using any combination of vanquishing (speed clear or regular), casual PvP (Fort Aspenwood, Jade Quarry, Alliance Battles), missions (via books), challenge missions, elite areas (The Deep, Urgoz?Euros), repeatable quests, and I might be forgetting something. By trying the different ways, you get to experience more of the game. And as a bonus, you can use alternative ways to keep it fresh, or to suit your mood.

Anything that cost money also tends to get people to adopt farming or running as income, but those can get boring fast (not always though, some people enjoy those). Fortunately, almost anything you do in the game gives you gold directly or indirectly, especially if you do it in hard mode. So, although I mainly have gold-based titles left that I care to do, I have decided not to farm beyond the amount of farming I can do while still having fun (which is not much). Sure it takes longer, but I am having fun doing it.

3) Find a way that stays fresh

Sometimes, an activity can stay fresh by itself. For example, I do most of my gold grind by picking zaishen missions or zaishen bounties and doing those. So every day I end up doing something different. Zaishen combat would work too if you enjoy PvP. I am also playing my characters through the campaigns to unlock access, or through quests to unlock PvE-only skills, and that too keeps the game fresh.

Next week, I?Euroll start a topic on how to keep the game fresh… so until then!

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