The May Upate is now live, bringing us the new Southsun Cove content. Jump in and enjoy the sun and surf as it will only be available through June 4th. Don’t get too close to the animals though…
A few highlights from the notes:
New weapons skins and minis added
New Guild Treks for Southsun Cove area
WvW EB Jumping Puzzle now a separate map
WvW now has traps
New Gem Store item How to Dance 400 gems
First Skill Lag fix is in (more to come)
Follow the little red icon link to the right to read all the notes, or check out the full notes in our forum. Then come join us in discussing the new Southsun Cove content here.
Reginal also posted a short “things to do list” for the new Southsun Cove content here.
Finally, GWOnline’s Alaris created an interesting article about Rangers’ (generally bad) Dungeon reputation vs their actual performance in a more casual or medium level ability group, which has sparked a very lively forum debate. Come on in and join the fun. And check our RD’s piece on the problems with Town Clothes and then let us know what you think in the forum!
Earlier today, Isaiah Cartwright live streamed some WvW, showcasing some of his favorite tactics for running small groups in WvW. Check out a link below!
ArenaNet has released some short videos to help introduce the beta versions of Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode which will be in the April 30th update. (Also, scroll down a little for some developer comments about these new features and Leaderboards, SAB and a few other things including a great parody SAB achievement guide.)
Custom Arenas:
Spectator Mode:
Looks pretty polished to me. You’ll see below there are some things they are already thinking of adding. Come to the forum and tell us what you think of shoutcasting or any other features you’d like to see added to these new features!
John Corpening, our PvP team coordinator, is in the first vid. I’m in the second vid. Jon Peters, also a design lead, also does a lot of help w/ PvP and balance. Hope that clears it up!
If you don’t want people to see your builds, just disable spec mode when setting your Custom Arena parameters. Source.
Other notes: Leaderboards and Trial Accounts. Trial accounts will be removed from the leaderboards, but if you upgrade your trial account to a full game, then your trial account activity will be retained and count toward your account’s leaderboard activity (if you link the full game to your trial account. Per Martin Kerstein.
The actual April 30th update is what will make SAB disappear. It is not going away at a set time. Source.
Speaking of SAB, you have to check out the following fan made parody achievement guide video. I thought it started off a little slow, but around the 3 minute mark, it starts creating GW2 comedy gold! Amazing work ZoCks!
Lastly, here are links to some of our most recent GWOnline created content. Hope you find them interesting and you can just click the forum link after each feature if you want to comment or see discussion about the topics. The 10 Tips link in particular has some great follow up posts by our members.
I create the opportunity for learning, so that I can keep improving. I do that by seeking ways to challenge myself on specific gameplay skills. Here’s 10 ways you can use to keep learning too.
10 Trigger combos
You can trigger combos by yourself on many professions by using a skill that creates a combo field, then using a skill that triggers it. Self-triggered combos is a good way to learn and practice which of your own skills are what part of a combo. Sometimes, you can combo skills differently to trigger different effects like defensive or offensive effects. Once you learn that, expand your combo knowledge by triggering combos with other players either by triggering their fields, or by setting up fields where they will naturally trigger them.
You can likewise take some time to learn how to combine skill effects. Breaking armors is good just before doing high dps. Or snaring is good before hitting those large AoE’s.
The Flame and Frost page has been updated with highlights of the April 30, 2013, update information.
The standouts are a new Dungeon to tell the final part of the Flame and Frost Living Story, and Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode for the sPVP players.
…you come into my house on the day they release this update, and you uh ask me to do murder, for money.
The new dungeon will feature only one path, and ArenaNet has tried to set the difficulty level between that of the Story and Explorable modes in regular dungeons. However, like the Flame and Frost Living Story, it won’t be in the game forever, so you’ll want to get in there before it’s gone.
They are rolling out Beta versions of the Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode this month too. Initially, only a small group of people will be able to create their own Custom Arenas. Everyone, however, will be able to play in them and use Spectator Mode. Just go to the Mists to check them out.
If that wasn’t enough, there are new WvW abilities, new Guild Mission content, skill balance and more. Check it out and them come to the forums and tell us what you think!
I found out that sPvP wasn’t some minigame that pokes some fun at the latest WoW playable race in a juiced up sequel of the game Plants vs Zombies…
Instead, I got another monthly done in maybe 4-5 hours of play on my first real try playing sPvP, and I am close to getting it done again. Not too shabby for a sPvP noob.
Dailies are easy extra income, mystic coins, laurels, and karma. This is a short guide giving some pointers on ways to make the dailies easier, by giving hints on how to incorporate them into normal play or combo-ing them.
I would suggest you start with the following if you plan on completing them… they are relatively short but also fairly specific. These dailies are also pretty easy to synergize with other dailies.
ArenaNet revealed that paid tournaments are being replaced with free tournaments as paid tournaments are no longer required due to the ratings and matchmaking system.
In the upcoming patch on February 26, Paid Tournaments are going to be replaced by Free Tournaments.
One of the reasons we initially introduced Paid Tournaments was to create a place for hyper-competitive, highly skilled players to find matches with other players of comparable skill, leaving the Free Tournament system available for more casual competitive play. However, now that we have a ratings and matchmaking system in-place that matches players of similar skill levels, we’ve decided that the ticket cost barrier-to-entry of Paid Tournaments is no longer necessary.
Instead, we’ll have 1-round Free Tournaments and 3-round Free Tournaments. Both of these tournament types will use a separate rating for the purposes of matchmaking.
If you have any unused Tournament Tickets you may exchange these for Gold, Silver or Copper Tournament Reward Chests at the new Ticket Merchant NPC who is located next to the Tournament Master in the Heart of the Mists.
We’re also updating the rewards for the 1-round Free Tournaments. A new Match Win Chest will be awarded to the winning team. The losing team will no longer get a chest.
Also, now that we are removing the entry fee for Paid Tournaments, we are removing Qualifying Points (QP) as a tournament reward as well. In the future, top QP earners will receive a valuable in-game prize, which will be detailed in a later blog post.
ANet just posted an overview of the upcoming PvP map, Spirit Watch, which will be live with the next patch. Check it out!
In the upcoming patch, you will be able to play our latest PvP map—Spirit Watch! This norn-themed map, which is surrounded by sheer cliffs, features shrines to the Spirits of the Wild and a new secondary objective.
I’ve always liked playing different characters, and now that I have a few at max level and with somewhat decent gear, I feel I have some *cough*authority*cough* to talk about what to expect from your characters in endgame. The good news is… the game remains pretty similar to early- or mid-game, so whatever profession you like early on is likely going to be your favourite still later on.
I regularly switch between my so-far 7 characters, and I will eventually have all 8 professions afterall. The main thing that influences who I play though isn’t what profession I like best… I love them all for different reason, and I especially love that they give me different experiences. The main thing that influences my pick is whether I plan to PvE, do dungeons, or do WvW. I find that while each profession can be useful in all three places, some professions adapt better to my playstyle in those different areas…
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.
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.
