Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm

[shawn]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-ga...february-2013/

The situation worsens for the citizens of Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. Volunteers have eased the burden, but more refugees hobble down from the Shiverpeaks. The storm there gains momentum, but the forces of good are beginning to rally. They’re sending their heroes to defend the land and its peoples. Someone must hold back the gathering storm.

In Flame and Frost: The Gathering Storm, the second installment in this four-part series, the stakes are raised, and battles rage, in the foothills of the Shiverpeaks.

New Features
Brand New PvP Map – Spirit Watch

This peaceful green vale, nestled between cliffside shrines to the norn Spirits of the Wild is about to echo with the sounds of combat. In Spirit Watch, players will score bonus points by capturing the Orb of Ascension and running it to any of the three shrines on this newest PvP map.

Team Up for Guild Missions

Join your fellow guild members to take on an entirely new category of content! These missions, designed for coordinated group play, include everything from bounties to group puzzles to cross-country challenges. You’ll need to work together to complete the missions and earn new Guild Merits, which can unlock cool upgrades and rewards. It pays to be in a guild!

Two Team Rated Play in PvP

It’s time to prove your skill! In this new type of competitive PvP, two teams of equal average rating are pitted against each other in a quick, intense match. The ratings for every member of each team is then adjusted after the match.

Choose Your Own Daily Achievements

With our new selectable achievement system, you’ll have a chance to set new daily challenges for yourself and to choose what kind of content you want to be rewarded for playing.

[RD]

Choose your own dailies.

I'd still prefer progress rolls over, but that's a really good change.

Except I'll definitely forget to do it at the start of every session.

[shawn]

That wording is strange, I just assumed you'd have your dailies and whichever ones you achieved first would be the ones that counted, rather than actually having to select the ones you want to work on beforehand.

[RD]

Who knows? With words like "selectable" and "set" in it, it sounds to me like you will check off the boxes you want to count for your achievement. But I'm usually wrong when it comes to what ANet means.

[nkuvu]

I was discussing this briefly in map chat today. I was actually hoping for more variety when it comes to daily achievements. As it stands, two are constant (gatherer and events), and three more chosen from a pool of eight. With seven days in a week, there's a lot of repetition there.

What I wanted was to have a pool of, say, two dozen possible daily achievements. Or more. I don't know how feasible this would be, with the constraint that it can't be level specific or even region-specific (killing X number of bandits is fine for low level humans, but would require extra travel for low level asura/sylvari/norn/charr).

But I kind of digress.

I expect that the daily achievement will be "complete four out of these six possible achievements for the day." And whichever you get done first are the ones that count.

Nothing else from the announcement strikes me, though. Still not in a large guild, and not really looking for one, and kind of tired of brand new currencies like guild merits. Not interested in PvP, so... yeah.

Also, monkeys.

[Смерть]

Volunteers have eased the burden, but more refugees hobble down from the Shiverpeaks.

Lulz, hobbling -- all the refugees I saw were dead.

...

I really hope this isn't an eventual battle to watch from the side between two dragons. A friend proposed the concept of this thing eventually uncovering Primordious VS Jormag -- and uncovering the dwarves.

I think Deldrimor Front would be pretty area specific as a new open map in relation to Wayfarer and Diessa.

[shawn]

It's not dragons.

Sons of Svanir (frost) and Flame Legion (..flame) more than likely.

[RD]

My guess was the two dragons battling, too, and since I'm never right about ANet's plans, we can rule that out.

I've seen hobbling refugees.

[shawn]

They've specifically said it wasn't dragons.

[BladeDVD]

What? It's going to be dragons?! That's totally AWESOME!