Weekend Roundup – Molten Weapon Facility and sPVP

Posted 05/05/13 by

Well it’s been quite the week in Guild Wars 2. Huge update introducing a new (temporary) dungeon, spectator mode and custom arenas in PVP, a big skill rebalance and more. FYI, there have been three more updates since April 30 to fix a few things.

Alaris penned a new piece for GWOnline about his experience running through the new Molten Weapon Facility dungeon, which will only be in the game through Sunday May 12, Noon Pacific (7pm UTC). After reading, come join us in the forum to talk about your run through the new dungeon.

Such a pretty face Such a pretty dress Such a pretty bow Such a pretty me!

I feel pretty…oh so pretty…I feel pretty and witty and bright!

And for a more technical breakdown of the dungeon, the prolific Wethospu has posted his own guide to the MWF Dungeon including a bestiary! Wethospu has guides for every dungeon in the game up in the same forum. Take a look once you finish his Molten Facility guide.

It was also strongly implied in a developer post on the official forums that we could see the MWF dungeon show up as a new Fractals instance in the future.

Living World Coordinator Steven Waller, Content Designer Leif Chappelle, and Principal Living World QA Paul Belz held a livestream event touring the Molten Weapon Facilities. It’s a 55min video. Click here to watch. Paul also wrote a sort of “how do I find the story” guide to the new F & F: Retribution Live Story too.

On the PVP front, it appears that when Ascended gear becomes available in WvW, you will be able to use Badges of Honor to get it.

It also sounds like they are working on a true Observer Mode, but have some technical limitations to over come. Hope they can figure it out.

WvW Team Coordinator, Devon Carter, has gone into a little bit of detail on their plans for siege weapons and a fix for Arrow Carts is incoming as well.

Finally, Anet’s Jonathan Sharp and Karl McLain talk over sPvP, answer a few community questions, and do a little shoutcasting in this 23 minute Twitch TV piece recorded on Friday.

Have fun everyone!

Read more & comment >>

The Molting Alliance

Posted 30/04/13 by
Fire blender of hurt

Fire blender of hurt

If you just came out of coma as I did, it may seem that a new story dungeon has just appeared out of nowhere! But no! Apparently there’s this cool extended ad going on in Guild Wars 2 (they called it living story) that has been playing for a while to announce this new dungeon.

So I was willingly grabbed and coerced into this story dungeon thingy that has you fight some silly creatures with pointy hats and some cats on fire. Hey, it’s a fantasy game, whatever goes. And I like those flaming kittens. Here’s my review.

Note: The Molten Facility dungeon will be available until Sunday, May 12 at 12:00pm Pacific

Read more & comment >>

Update Notes: April 30, 2013

Posted 30/04/13 by

Frost and Fire Living Story conclusion, big new PVP features, new WvW changes, skill balances, mechanic changes, and lots more stuff. Follow the ArenaNet logo link at the bottom for the full details, or come read them in our forums and join in with the cheering/booing/confusion/appreciation with the rest of us!

Abbreviated headings:

Retribution is here!

Retribution is here!

LIVING STORY
Flame & Frost: Retribution
Molten Weapons Facility
Achievements

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT
Structured Player vs. Player
World vs. World
Guild Content

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
General
Dungeons
Fractals
Personal Story
Items
Profession Skills
Structured Player vs. Player
World vs. World

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions
Improvements
Bug Fixes

Read more & comment >>

Custom Arena and Spectator Mode Videos! Also a Few Dev Notes and a Fan Video Parody.

Posted 30/04/13 by

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!

Per Jonathan Sharp:

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.

Very cool new PVP feature: Mini map will now use profession icons instead of dots to represent your teammates. In Spectator Mode, both teams will show up like that. This works in ANY sPVP map! Source1, Source2.

Things they are already considering adding to Spectator Mode: Free Camera. Being able to spectate from downed players POV. Auto mode that switches cameras for you.

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.

10 Tips to playing Guild Wars 2 better > Forum post.

Rushter asks Regina Buenaobra what perspective on the game she has gained from working at Anet. > Forum post.

A basic introduction to sPVP > Forum post.

Read more & comment >>

Weekend Roundup

Posted 28/04/13 by

GWOnline’s own Alaris just posted a great piece on how to learn to play GW2 better. Reminded me again that I really need to learn to combo better. Check it out and then join the discussion in our forums!

https://forum-fr.guildwars2.com/forum/community/fangen/Artwork-Fan-art-by-Ashline-1

Beautiful fan art of an Asura from Ashline!

GuildWars2Guru.com held a State of the Game on Friday with Jonathan Sharp & Karl McLain from Anet focusing on the tPVP changes in the April 30th update.Click here to watch the 120 minute video on Youtube. (They started late, so the link skips about 1:35 of not much happening.) Great stuff about changes to signets, Warriors, traits for a few different professions, WvW and PVE effect split for Retaliation and Confusion and lots more. This will be a big balance update too. To give the meta time to settle down there will not be many balance changes for the May patch; they will be focusing on bug fixes instead.

There will be Wiki Maintenance (GW1 & GW2) on May 8th from 4pm to midnite UTC (9am to 5pm Pacific). For the first two hours of the maintenance, both English wikis will be unavailable, then in read only mode for the rest of the time. All non-English GW2 wikis will be read only during the entire duration. They will be upgrading to MediaWiki version 1.20.4

GuildWars2Hub.com has put out an easy to read guide to Runes to help get you started on learning how they work.

Gamersbook is giving away copies of Guild Wars 2 and some TteSPORTS gaming peripherals. While the first copy of the game is being awarded today, they have 4 more copies being awarded throughout May and after that some nice gaming peripherals. There are a few steps to take, but hey, free stuff! Click here to see the rules and to enter.

Laura Vk, Loes Schubert, and Kelsey Hendriks have done some amazing cosplay costume work and put it up on Laura Vk’s Facebook page. Amazing amount of detail, you should really check it out.

See you all in game and don’t forget that Super Adventure Box goes away with the April 30 patch in just a couple days and while the full version of World 2 should be out in a few months (ie. “when it’s done”), there’s a good chance the World 1 skins won’t be coming back any time soon.

*The Tyria Information Bureau and The Consortium are not liable for medical or other costs arising from conditions, dismemberment, or death sustained while traveling in Southsun Cove.

Southsun Cove – Warm sun, sandy beaches, exotic wildlife*, and new adventures.

Read more & comment >>

10 Tips to playing Guild Wars 2 better

Posted 25/04/13 by

Thief is a good profession to learn to play.

Thief is a good profession to learn to play.

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.

Read more & comment >>

Billing Maintenance: 24th Apr 5:00AM PDT (12:00 UTC)

Posted 24/04/13 by

We will be taking down the commerce system for maintenance at 5:00 AM PDT (12:00 UTC) on April 24th for 3 hours. The following systems will be affected by this maintenance:

Gem Purchasing
Buy Guild Wars 2

So load up on those gems now before it’s too late! Or…I guess… you can just wait for the maintenance to be over. Yeah, that would work too….

Read more & comment >>

Flame & Frost Finale and Some PVP Lovin’!

Posted 24/04/13 by

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.

But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather.

…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!

Read more & comment >>

Play Rytlock’s Critter Rampage Now

Posted 20/04/13 by

Critter Rampage

The Super Adventure Box was a such a neat idea for 1 April and there’s a new update from Matthew Oswald, ArenaNet’s Cinematics team lead, who discusses the process they went through to create the retro styled trailer.

There is more to Super Adventure Box than meats the eye though, they decided to create a 16-bit platform adventure called Rytlock’s Critter Rampage to make the video feel authentic. The game was created by cinematic artist Delly Sartika and it’s actually playable now in your browser on this page.

Read more & comment >>

This Week on IncGamers 8-14 April

Posted 15/04/13 by

The team have been busy this week on incgamers.com, it’s been pretty hectic thanks to embargoes lifting and also preparing for the week ahead’s content. So what did we get up to? Here’s your weekly recap.

Also, this week we are planning a Marvel Heroes beta key giveaway which will be open to PALs as part of our new priority access for site supporters. Hopefully we will have more details on that in a couple of days but keep your eye on the main incgamers.com site for updates on that.

Read more & comment >>

Regina Interview

Posted 13/04/13 by

Regina Buenaobra, as most of you know, is the community manager at ArenaNet and there’s a nice interview with here online here in which discusses her role at the company and of course Guild Wars 2.

Given the behind the scenes access Regina has, being part of ArenaNet, we were wondering how much, if at all, it has changed her perspective of the game and if she had familiarized with the content pre-launch.

I think working in the company gives me insight into design decisions, and being a community manager gives me insight into how those decisions may be perceived or received by fans. Because of those two factors, we’re often able to have responses in mind or are able to give the development team a heads-up about these issues.

The Community Team was already familiar with the game before launch. In preparation for showing the game at various conventions, we got acquainted with the content. In some cases we had to give presentations, so it was important to have a good working knowledge of the game. I mentioned earlier about the all-company play sessions; we had a lot of those before launch, and we still have them to familiarize ourselves with the new content and to provide feedback to the teams working on upcoming content.

Read more & comment >>

Guild Wars 2 Flame & Frost Retribution Page Live

Posted 11/04/13 by

A quick heads-up that the Flame & Frost: Retribution page is now live on the official site.

In secret foundries deep beneath the Shiverpeaks, the Molten Alliance forges deadly new weaponry that combine the fiery power of the Flame Legion with the iron might of the dredge. There, Alliance weapon smiths test their creations on innocent captives, perfecting their cruel technology until it is ready to unleash on all of Tyria.

In the last chapter of the Flame and Frost series, you’ll strike at the heart of the Molten Alliance with your comrades Rox the charr and the norn Braham. Take the battle into the enemy’s weapons facilities and defeat a final hybrid menace unlike any Tyria has ever seen!

Read more & comment >>
«« Older Entries
Newer Entries »»
This is default text, which will be replaced