ArenaNet will soon begin beta testing two new features aimed at enlivening the PvP experience in Guild Wars 2.

The first is the advent of custom arenas. You’ll be able to buy or rent these dedicated spaces and (more importantly) determine the rules for participation. As server programmer Steve Bikun puts it, “you can make your place to play, you can organise private tournaments with friends, and you can challenge other teams to scrimmage.”

If you’re keen to use these zones for training or even e-sports purposes, you’ll be pleased to hear that a spectator mode is also in the works. According to gameplay programmer Even Lesh, “it will allow expert players to watch each other in order to refine their skill. It will also be an amazing tool for shoutcasting games between high-level teams!”

The new modes will become available for top ranked players on 30 April. It isn’t yet clear when these features will be offered to the broader Guild Wars 2 community.

Source: Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet have very happily announced that culling, the behind-the-scenes process which keeps your game lag-free and the servers happy by reducing the amount of people who are visible in your WvW games, is soon to disappear. In an upcoming patch on March 26, culling will be removed entirely from the game.

“While (culling) achieved our goal of limiting bandwidth and client-side resource utilization, it had the unfortunate side effect of causing large battles in WvW to be confusing, as there were sometimes many enemy players that were completely invisible,” ArenaNet admit in their latest blog post. “Additionally, there were side effects of culling which could result in stealth characters getting up to two seconds of additional invisibility when coming out of stealth.”

“By removing culling, we’ve been able to eliminate these negative side effects and greatly increase the epic feel of large WvW battles.”

A new series of graphical options will be added for WvW, that will allow players to manage the huge amount of new players expected to appear on their screens. You can choose from high-resolution regular models, lower-resolution placeholders or nameplates only, as well as set up filters to mix the three.

Source: Guild Wars 2

One of the frustrating parts about MMOs can often be when your friends ignore your advice and start playing on a completely different server the one you’re on. Those jerks! Well, be angry no more as Guild Wars 2‘s ‘Guesting’ feature is launching on January 28, and will allow you to effectively just pop in to their servers and run around with them like normal… with a few restrictions.

For one, WvW is out — try to jump into some WvW and you’ll be booted back to your own server. And for another, guesting only works within the same region, so if you’re on a European server you can’t guest onto a North American server. You can also only guest on up to two worlds at a time: each time you guest on a world, that becomes one of your eligible guesting worlds for the next 24 hours. Once those 24 hours have passed, you can guest on a different server.

As a result of guesting becoming active, free world transfers will cease to operate. “Make sure that you will be on the world you intend to play on before January 28th,” writes ArenaNet, “because after that date, you’ll have to pay a gem fee to transfer worlds.”

Check out all the info and details on how guesting works over on the Guild Wars 2 site.

Source: Guild Wars 2

Since its August release, Guild Wars 2 has sold an impressive three million copies, ArenaNet revealed overnight. But they’re not resting on their laurels, and are keen to get into 2013 and change up a few key areas.

“One of our focuses is expanding and leveraging our achievement system,” claimed game director Colin Johanson. “The concept behind this is to allow players to earn new rewards for achievements, as well as progressing down achievement paths that take advantage of the open world experience.” Support for daily achievements is coming, with different achievements each day of the week.

Johanson also touches on the importance of guilds, saying “We’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together.”

“Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements, while others will see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience.”

Paid server transfers are also on their way for 2013, with time limitations and WvW restrictions, and improvements to culling are planned to help eliminate culling. There’s more — a LOT more — so if GW2 is important to you, cast your eye over the official blog.

Source: GW2

An exploit in Guild Wars 2 that allowed players to receive infinite ectoplasm has now been patched, and any egregious offenders “terminated”, according to a thread on the official Guild Wars 2 forums, where outraged players are claiming they’ve wasted their time without knowing it was wrong.

The exploit allowed you to craft a Snowflake Jewellery item using a singular ectoplasm as an ingredient, then salvage it to get two ectoplasm out of it — repeat ad infinitum, and you have what ArenaNet’s Gaile Gray calls “a significant potential impact on the economy”.

“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.”

“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.”

Source: Massively via VG247

This weekend marks the first free trial weekend for Guild Wars 2, when the lands of Tyria are expected to be flooded by people whose friends have gifted them a weekend pass code. But what if you don’t have a friend to give you a referral code? What then?

Well, never fear: games.on.net is here to help you out. Simply head on over here to this forum thread and post a reply telling us, in 50 words or less, why you think Guild Wars 2 sounds like fun and why you’d like to play.

That’s all there is to it! Head on over there and let us know. We’ve got 50 keys to give away and we’re just waiting for you. Move! You don’t want to miss out on The Lost Shores Event, do you?

The trial runs from right now through to 5:00 PM Sydney time on Monday November 19.

How do I redeem my key?

Visit register.guildwars2.com to create an account and put in your key. You can then download the client from there, or from our file library instead. (You’ll need to patch it, but why not save yourself 14 GB?)

Okay, let’s get this out of the way first: the enemies of the Lost Shores event are, in fact, giant enemy crabs.

Well, not exactly. But they may as well be: they swarm out of the sea, as big as houses, scuttling like nobody’s business and trying to stomp you into the dirt. They’re called the karka, and they want to move into Lion’s Arch and set up a new home there. Over the corpses of you and your friends.

Sounds like fun? Well, it is, actually — although it’s tough as nails, so bring your best level 80s and let’s get down to bidness.

One-time only world destruction

The Lost Shores kicks off in unassuming Lion’s Arch next to the old lighthouse, where you’re minding your own business when, suddenly, an enormous karka bursts out of the water, smashing through a ship in the harbour and spearheading a flood of scuttling crab-like enemies who immediately begin to tear you apart.

If you’re not around the level 80 mark when it kicks off, it’s probably best to get out of the way and let your high-level friends take the first wave. During the battle, with nearly a dozen level-capped characters with level 1337 gear (I know, right) and even two twinked-out developers fighting on our side, we were getting mauled.

PC corpses littered the landscape and we fell back to the gates time and time again, only to remember that they had been shut in the face of the invasion. “We’re piling on the numbers here in a way we wouldn’t normally do,” Guild Wars 2 content designer Matt Medina told me over Ventrillo, as my level 80 charr warrior was smashed to paste for the seventh time. “We really want to emphasise the threat.”

And the karka really are a threat. They range in size from smaller, young karka roughly the size of a player to enormous veteran karka who not only leap around with a surprising mobility, but who can spew hordes of suicidal baneling-style larva at you that seek you out and detonate — or just attach themselves to your body and inflict conditions as they gnaw away on your face. Veteran older karka look massive and lumbering, but wait until the first time they curl into a ball and roll across you and your friends like a boulder, only to spring up and scuttle away as you close in.

New shaders, new destruction, new hotness

Fighting the karka is not only an exercise in new tactics and strategy, but a chance to see a whole new shader tech that ArenaNet have put into place. The karka begin each battle looking normal (as normal as possible for abominations from the ocean depths), but as you wear them down you’ll notice that their carapaces begin to take damage, falling off in chunks to expose their more vulnerable innards.

It’s great to see, and really helps give a more meaningful feel to MMO combat, which is something that has traditionally lacked any real visual damage representation. “We are absolutely looking to use this technology in other places,” said Medina to me, but also confirmed that it would take a lot of time to figure out how to do so effectively.

If you happen to be around during the initial wave of the karka invasion, you’ll also see something else: parts of the world literally being altered, permanently, in real-time around you. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you’re the sort who gets attached to relics of the old Lions Arch, well… maybe it’s time to learn to let go.

Follow them home and end it for good

Once the karka have been driven off, a new zone will open up at Southsun Cove, an island in the Sea of Sorrows. If you’re still up for it after the thrashing outside Lions Arch, you can head on over there and try and wipe them out for good. Here you’ll see more world destruction in action, as you follow NPCs around, knocking over trees, building roads and generally making the island more suitable for human habitation — after you’ve cleared the karka off the beach, of course.

Once we hit the island, we quickly discovered that the meddling Consortium’s attempts to turn the island into a vacation resort were responsible for freaking the beasties out and causing them to try and re-locate directly into Lions Arch. Needless to say, the Lionguard aren’t too happy about that and, in a delightful in-game turn of events, will actually abandon the Consortium in anger, leaving you to choose which NPC to follow.

On the urgings of ArenaNet’s excited devs, we followed the Lionguard — who immediately hatched a thrilling, slightly unstable plan to get rid of the karka for good. Naturally, we agreed. What could go wrong?

Everything, actually

Shepherding a bunch of NPCs deep into a hive populated exclusively by level 80 monsters isn’t generally what I’d call a tactically sound idea and, if you’re looking for another tough fight, this is the place to find it. Eventually we slogged our way to the bottom, but ArenaNet stopped us before we could lay the smack down on the final boss — the Ancient Karka. That’s saved for the live event only, they said — all the more reason to get in and check it out while it’s happening.

But if you do miss it, don’t worry. Once the Lost Shores is over, Southsun Cove will become a standard level 80 zone, and the large, veteran karka will migrate further inland, leaving the beaches guarded by the less terrifying young karka. You can visit it at any time, and you’ll probably want to: with resource nodes of the new ‘passiflora’ littering the landscape, it’s a valuable place to get mining.

During the game event, Southsun Cove will automatically buff players up to level 80, but post-event it will become an exclusive level 80 zone.

By the same token, ArenaNet explained to us that the karka invasion of Lions Arch will feature activities for players below level 80 to complete, running around as the battle rages and collecting samples for Research Assistant Bardus, who is looking to build a weapon that will penetrate their thick carapaces.

Is it really over?

Ominously, Medina warned us that the karka were actually only in the game because they’d been driven from their deep-sea homes by an even larger, more powerful threat. What could be powerful enough to drive out an entire race of level 80 creatures? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The Lost Shores event kicks off on Saturday, November 17 at 7:00 AM Sydney time. Be there, and bring a healer. It’s going to be fun.

That’s right: if you’re one of the many who put a name aside from Guild Wars 1 to re-use literally hundreds of in-game years later in Guild Wars 2 but who hasn’t actually got around to re-using the name yet, hurry up!

ArenaNet announced late last week that those reserved names will be released as of November 8th at 2:00 PM PST (which works out to 9:00 AM Sydney time on Friday, November 9).

“If you have a character name reserved from Guild Wars and haven’t gotten around to making that character in Guild Wars 2, this is the time to do so,” reads the announcement. “If you’ve been waiting for a reserved name, your wait is almost over!”

Source: Massively

As reported last weekend, Guild Wars 2 is celebrating Halloween with a significant update called Shadow of the Mad King. As we draw closer to the fateful kick off date – October 22 – ArenaNet has gone into further detail of what the update brings. As well as the trailer below, the update’s promotional page now gives a timeline for the four acts of the new storyline, and gives a little bit of context for it. According to legend, a tyrannical king was slain 500 years ago, returning only on Halloween. Although he hasn’t been seen for 250 years, the tales have sprung up again in the wake of strange stirrings in the night.

Source: ArenaNet via Ten Ton Hammer

ArenaNet has released details of its first major seasonal update to Guild Wars 2 since the wildly successful MMORPG launched in late August. The Hallowe’en themed expansion is called Shadow of the Mad King, and will go live on October 22.

Decorations will be strewn across Tyria, along with new mini-games, bosses, jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, achievements and dynamic events, but on the weightier side, “an adventure in four acts” runs through October 31, when the “barriers between the realms are weakest”. The Black Lion Trading Company will offer a variety of holiday goods, and paid PvP tournaments will offer more significant prizes than usual, as well as handing out participation points to competiting teams, which will qualify them for future events.

Source: ArenaNet

If you haven’t heard about Guild Wars 2, this is probably your first time here at GON, and welcome to you. But seriously, what’s wrong with you? In any case, you’ve probably heard about the amazing new MMO experience Guild Wars 2 offers, but what if you’re not convinced? What if, like me, you are convinced, but there are still some things that are strange and confusing for you? This new trailer-type-thing should help with that!

While not exactly a launch trailer, or a trailer at all, the video below is far more accessible (and less terrifyingly bizarre) than the actual launch trailer and explains some of the things that never really get mentioned in the game. Like that whole dragon business. How did I miss that!

A Guild Wars 2 player by the name of ‘pvpPROJECT’ has created a mod for the game that locks the camera to your character — as if you were constantly holding down the right mouse button — and overlays a new cross hair onto the screen, thus turning it into more of a third-person-shooter style experience. Unfortunately as we know the Guild Wars 2 EULA makes it illegal to use any mods or scripts, and indeed a thread on it has already been locked by GW2 community management. Still, interesting stuff! Check out the video below or visit this Reddit thread for more.

Source: Kotaku

ArenaNet have found their own horn this morning and begun thoroughly tooting it, with the news that Guild Wars 2 has passed two million units sold. With the game only being out for two weeks, that’s a fairly staggering one million per week, even when you take into account their decision to suspend digital sales temporarily.

“Despite temporarily halting first-party sales and replenishing retail stores to maintain an optimal player experience, Guild Wars 2 surpassed the two million sales milestone shortly after turning sales back on,” reads the press release excitedly. It took the original Guild Wars just over a year to achieve the same sales figures, an impressive improvement by anybody’s standards.

The launch of Guild Wars 2 has been far from perfect, with server stress issues, widespread hacking, and the ban of over 3,000 players due to taking advantage of cheap vendor items. But to make it to two million in such a short time is well done indeed — hats off to ArenaNet!

Source: Press Release

With Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has polished the entire MMO experience into something seamless and beautiful. Advancement in the multitude of systems in Guild Wars 2 is as simple as playing the game however you normally would…

…with one exception.

The crafting system in Guild Wars 2, while pretty simple, is tuned in such a way that actually leveling it up at the same rate as your character takes some planning and a little discipline on your part. In most MMOs, leveling up crafting is a case of finding the cheapest but highest-level recipe you can craft, and making it over and over again until another cheap, high-level crafting option opens up.

Guild Wars 2 still has some of that, but with the recipe discovery system — which requires you to semi-blindly place recipes into a crafting window and hope for the best — the big emphasis, and the fastest way to level your crafting, is on experimentation.

With the exception of the Chef skill, which has its own set of patterns, all of the crafting skills have a fairly easy method for advancement. It sounds strange, but the best way to boost your crafting is to craft as infrequently as possible.

As tempting as it might be to use your materials as soon as you acquire them, the best way to advance is to only refine raw materials until you no longer advance from it (you can stop when the option becomes blue too, usually), then do the same for creating the crafting components from those refined materials. This is where it gets a bit tricky though, because a lot of crafting professions have a lot of options here.

To make the absolute most out of the materials you have, you need to spread your crafting out across virtually all of your options. Discovering new recipes, which is best done by using the same dozen refined materials and components in different combinations, awards vastly more experience than repeatedly crafting the same item, even if it’s a strong one. So, if you’re a leatherworker, you would want to refine all your cloth and leather scraps into bolts and leather squares until you gain little or no experience from it. Then you want to go through your list of possible crafting options (shoulder padding, shoulder straps etc) and spread your materials fairly evenly across them.

This includes making insignias, because that’s where most of your discoveries come from. Be very careful with the insignias, too: the materials are expensive. Once you’ve got, say, three of each crafting option and several of each insignia, it’s just a case of systematically making as many new combinations in the discovery tab as you can. You should get a couple skill levels per discovery, and it should get you up to the next tier of materials, or at least very close.

The downside to this method is that most of those crafted goods are likely to be several levels lower than whatever enemies are dropping. But you can simply sell the goods on the Trading Post, or break them down back into their raw materials and sell those instead.

The upside, and its a pretty massive upside, is that you should always be caught-up in crafting by the time you reach the next tier of materials in your exploration. You should also even get a few free level-ups just from crafting, and it’s one of the easiest ways to fulfill the experience-without-dying requirement for your monthly achievement.

Have fun!

On August 31, 3,000 Guild Wars 2 players were banned from the game for exploiting a bug: an in-game vendor was selling an item for far too cheap, people bought it (repeatedly), and then sold it on for profit.

ArenaNet wasn’t amused. They quickly deployed an emergency hotfix, banned the offenders permanently, and only reduced these bans to 72 hours upon receiving a commitment from the offenders not to do it again.

This caused a bit of a stir at the time. The players weren’t hacking the game, and only taking advantage of one of the few bugs that made it into the final release. Still, ArenaNet justified their actions based on the argument that the players knew they were being bad.

ArenaNet then said that any future exploiting would be met harshly, and that they wouldn’t be so quick to pardon lifetime bans in future. So what else could you get banned for?

Going AFK in PvP

AFKers are the scourge of PvP games everywhere. That’s why they receive special mention in the Guild Wars 2 Rules of Conduct:

“While participating in Plaver-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation. Match manipulation is defined as any action taken to fix or manipulate the outcome of a match or alter or manipulate the rankings or ratings of the ladder. This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith, a.k.a leeching.”

“Not participating in matches in good faith” seems broad. If you have to take an emergency AFK, is it a violation? Probably, as it would be difficult to prove your sudden urge to go to the toilet. It’s your word against theirs. As such, make sure you relieve yourself before signing up to PvP. Your account privileges depend on it.

Modding the UI

You can’t “Use, or provide others with, any ‘hack,’ ‘cheat,’ ‘exploit’ or ‘mod’”. The inclusion of mods in the prohibited programs list is interesting. Most other MMOs allow and even encourage mods. Half of WoW’s features were built on player-created mods.

I’m guessing that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t even include the code hooks to make a UI mod, so it’s just as well the default UI works. Still, it is a relief to know that damage parses and other such annoying tools will be excluded from the game.

Playing the game at a cybercafé

You can’t, without written authorisation “Be a party to any commercial activity related to the Game, including but not limited to:

1. providing or obtaining any Item; or
2. use of the Service, the Game, Content or Software at an Internet café, cyber café or computer gaming center.”

The first part is a clear prohibition on gold farming. The second part means you can’t play Guild Wars 2 at a cybercafé without the signed, written permission of ArenaNet themselves. I have no idea how this will be enforced, but I suppose you’re best off playing the game from home, anyway.

Advertising your guild

You can’t “market, promote, advertise, or solicit within the Guild Wars 2 Game or on the official Guild Wars 2 websites.”

Obviously, this is more aimed at commercial advertising, and it’s possible I’m using a bit of hyperbole here. But the open wording of this section makes it a bannable offense to recruit people to your guild, in Guild Wars 2, if ArenaNet really wanted to. You never know.

Losing your grip on reality

We all hate those crazy people who believe gamers are itching to take a sniper rifle to the nearest rooftop. However, ArenaNet’s going a step further and demanding you agree to your sanity. This is quite the boon, because if anyone ever tells you that video games have affected your psyche, you can just waive the Guild Wars 2 EULA at them — the bit where you legally agreed that you were untouched by gaming:

“You understand the Game sets forth a virtual world and not the real world, that You understand the distinction between a virtual world and the real world.”

It is, after all, what we’ve been telling to opponents of the R18+ rating for years, so it’s good to see ArenaNet join the cause. But just to make sure you understand the importance of this:

“You understand that Your privacy, as well as the privacy of others who do not know each other personally in the real world, is well served by keeping interactions in a virtual world separate from those in the real world.”

There you go. Don’t name your character after yourself, don’t talk on TeamSpeak with complete strangers, and don’t expect to meet your future next girlfriend in Guild Wars 2.

Every MMO has a honeymoon. The world is new, lauded by critics and fans alike. Then… cracks appear. The hype wears off. The game goes free to play, and EA announces that it tanked.

Guild Wars 2 launched two weeks ago, and yet in many ways is well past its honeymoon. With the length of its beta test rivalling Longcat himself, many have already been playing the game for months. And honestly, in all this time, the game’s barely changed.

So when I loaded Guild Wars 2 on release, my first impressions were laced with cynicism. Fortunately, I’m now enjoying the game, even if it’s not the promised, overhyped revolution. Let’s look at what Guild Wars 2 brings to the MMO table.

Polished to a fault

What first hits you is how incredibly smooth the game is. Everything works, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a single bug in the gameplay. Guild Wars 2 is a great example of how an MMO should be launched — held back until it’s ready to go, not released early from running out of funds.

Of course, there were some issues at launch. Many players complained of connection issues — almost over nine thousand, in fact. And it took a whole week before I could actually use the marketplace.

But these problems have been fixed, so if you’re just getting into the game (after waiting to read this review, of course), you won’t have them. You’ll be able to focus on enjoying the game, not struggle against bugs. This is a refreshing change, and potentially the greatest advancement over other MMO releases.

A living, breathing, generic world

Guild Wars 2 lets you explore a huge living world. The world is enormous, and running around, there’s always something to discover without any artificial constraints placed on your choices. If you want to quest normally, you can do that. Explore like you’re playing Skyrim… that’s here too. PvP all day without even levelling up… you’re given top level gear to do this.

Complimenting this is the excellent art style. Guild Wars 2 pulls off the ‘living painting’ look quite well, with lots of strokes and colours. Just wandering around is really quite charming, all in all, and the game manages to look so much better in motion than it does in screenshots.

However, my enthusiasm for exploration is often dampened by the same old fantasy setting that we’ve seen in MMOS for the past two decades. This is a lost opportunity. Guild Wars 2 advances the timeline of Guild Wars, bringing in gunpowder weapons and other steampunk elements. However, rather than take advantage of this to provide a truly unique setting, the game stops short, and ends up with steampunk plastered into a generic fantasy world. Oh well.

Responsive combat from the start

One of the great improvements promised by Guild Wars 2 is that you should be having fun right from the start, not simply biding your time preparing for an ‘endgame’. ArenaNet’s design manifesto was critical of the traditional hamster wheel approach to MMO design. From talking to many before the game’s release, this was one of the game’s biggest selling points.

The good news is that Guild Wars 2 actually lives up to this promise. You unlock the majority of the skills you’ll be using during the game very quickly, and there is no waiting to get powerful. Rather than ping away at rats with magic missiles, you’ll be hurling firestorms at centaurs from day one.

Further boosting the combat is the lack of a global cooldown. A global cooldown is a common MMO system where every skill, no matter what, has to wait one second after the previous skill was activated. As such, combat will often move along at a dull, one second beat. Guild Wars 2 does away with this, and the result is combat that just feels more responsive than other MMOs.

But no real depth

Unfortunately, you can’t redesign MMO combat without breaking a few orcs. ‘Easy to learn, hard to master’ should carry a warning: ‘difficult to achieve’. Fans of Guild Wars enjoyed the extreme amounts of skill combinations that could be used to create a truly unique character. That, sadly, has been done away with in the sequel, making characters much less unique.

A major problem is that the skill system locks you into certain choices, as many skills, traits, and gear are only suitable for certain weapon types. For example, my thief has weapons, such as the sword, that do instant direct damage. Her shortbow, on the other hand, is almost pure condition damage over time.

Now, if I spend my gear and traits on buffing direct damage, I won’t be able to use the shortbow effectively. If I buff condition damage, my sword will hit like a wet noodle. And if I go half and half, I’ll be terribad at both.

Wearing any direct damage gear, therefore, locks me out of the shortbow and many other condition damage options. When you get down to it, if you really like the feel of a certain weapon, your build choices are actually rather limited.

Another issue comes from the sheer importance of the dodge roll. By making combat so dependent on mobility, high responsiveness is achieved, but it also makes auto attack spam the top tactic. My thief can blow through just about every combat situation, PvE or PvP, by maxing out her dodge endurance, rolling all over the place so nothing can hit her, and spamming ‘1’.

This is a double-edged sword. It’s a real joy to have the traditional arcade gaming skills be important in an MMO. But at the same time, it sucks that theorycrafting and skill knowledge is much less important. As long as you can dodge roll, you don’t need to learn anything.

Story is a bit… lacking

While we’re talking about problems, we need to have words about the story. Serious words. While it does work in a sort of ‘choose your own adventure’ style, with plenty of branching paths, the game’s telling of it is not particularly compelling.

The story is advanced by limited cutscenes of two people talking, and the quality of the dialogue is mixed — sometimes good, sometimes downright tragic. In the above scene we see Miss Chambers being told she looks good in tight pants, which means I must give the story credit for accuracy. But I do miss the detailed cutscenes that you’ll find in The Old Republic or The Secret World. Two motionless people talking just doesn’t have the same pull.

Guild Wars 2 also fails to solve that age-old problem in MMOs — making you feel like your actions matter, instead of just being a cog in a machine. What passes for quests in Guild Wars 2 are dynamic events where many players work together to achieve an outcome. These are supposed to influence the world by having different dynamic events spawn off each other in a chain, making your actions consequential.

However, because the outcome of events across the world is influenced by hundreds of other players, it’s more akin to watching the flow of a river that only all of you working together could change. This is especially so given that the quests are some of the most basic you’ll find in any MMO. For the most part you’ll simply be fighting off waves of enemies, over and over and over again. At the end of the day, it’s really just grinding.

Has Guild Wars 2 achieved its aims?

According to ArenaNet’s Manifesto, Guild Wars 2 wants to be the MMO for people who hate MMOs — and taking on WoW demands such a mainstream approach. It is a lot of fun, and breaks the MMO mould by having responsive combat with no global cooldowns. It’s sure to be a success, too, because the game’s launched in such a polished state. If you’re worried that the game will lose half its players after the first month, then worry not, for Guild Wars 2 is here to stay.

But in many ways, Guild Wars 2 feels safe, and doesn’t take the steps needed to advance the genre beyond the traditional MMO audience. The setting is generic fantasy, and the limited cutscenes are uninspired. Auto attack spam is alive and well. Questing is a random collection of generic events that fail to give a true feeling of meaningful consequence.

Guild Wars 2, then, is still an MMO. It succeeds at being a really fun one, granted — maybe even the best one yet — but the core of the game remains an MMO. If you want a great online game to have fun with, then Guild Wars 2 will fit the bill. But if you want to seduce Kelly Chambers as Femshep, or see how your actions matter as Geralt of Rivia, you’re still better off with single player RPGs.

Good:

• Released when it was actually ready
• Charming art style
• Combat is extremely fluid and action-oriented
• Vibrant, living world with so much to do and explore
• Entertaining from day one
• No level restrictions on what you can do
• You can make your character look exactly like Kelly Chambers

Bad:

• World is the same old fantasy
• Skill choice is less flexible than initially appears
• Cutscenes are awful
• No real story consequences for your actions
• It’s still an MMO
• Kelly Chambers when she was sixteen years old, that is

Guild Wars 2 is available through the official site for $59.99 USD.

If you’ve been waiting for the digital gates to re-open after ArenaNet suspended digital sales of their game to prevent overflow, then your time is now! Sales of the game through the official site have now resumed, and new servers added to cope with the load.

To celebrate, ArenaNet have released the live action ‘Our Time is Now’ trailer and it’s, uh. It’s certainly something. I reccommend you watch it for yourself and certainly, as the lovely Ms. Hillier of VG247 points out, do try not to be confused when you realise it’s not a trailer for The Secret World.

Source: VG247

Between lost passwords, hacks, and other account locking issues, ArenaNet has been hit by a massive number of requests for assistance logging into Guild Wars 2.

“Over the past three days we’ve received approximately 8,500 new support tickets related to hacked accounts and other blocking login issues,” ArenaNet said last Sunday afternoon. “And we’ve resolved issues to get approximately 9,500 players back into the game (most from tickets submitted prior to Friday, August 31).”

ArenaNet then promised to “aggressively ramp up its customer support team” which seems like a thing you’d definitely want to do in that situation, and started smacking the ticket queue. On Monday, the team said it had “helped 2,574 players with hacked accounts and 2,867 players with other blocking login issues get back into the game”.

In the meantime, the team has stopped posting details of how many tickets it has received and actioned, but its continuing warnings to protect your Guild Wars 2 account suggest phishing and hacking are still a problem.

Source: ArsTechnica

I’ve always been quite terrible at PvP combat. The time-honoured practise of farming gear and developing the perfect combination of fifteen core skills has always outclassed my abilities and available time investment. I’d imagine that I’m not the only idiot to have joined a battleground, usually after a particularly long and boring session of grinding in WoW or RIFT to find myself completely useless at defending a point, let alone keeping myself alive.

So it’s been a very pleasurable experience to have dived headfirst into the bloody perpetual pool of Guild Wars 2‘s WvW, only to emerge hours later, glistening with well earned karma and experience, to continue my story.

GW2‘s World Battle system consists of four separate battlegrounds, three of which are considered a “part” of each of the servers fighting, alongside a neutral area. Each battleground is full of various types of mobs, NPCs and infrastructure that require capture and holding to generate a points tally that determines not only the server’s ranking, but how many perks and bonuses are offered to players adventuring in standard PVE.

The eternal war

The war rages 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no breaks, meaning that territory can change hands very quickly; as one country’s players sleep, another awakens, and as populations will always vary, some servers do better than others. Currently, as ArenaNet begins to determine server rankings to create more balanced play, a battle session only rages for 24 hours at a time before it’s reset. In future, this will change to a fortnight.

As a result, some of the more successful servers do not necessarily consist of large player bases, but organised ones. Various guilds, especially established ones like TOG and GoonSquad, run tight squads of players to capture and hold objectives efficiently rather than the current, more ad hoc zerging approach, where public players with no affiliations will simply follow the mob from point to point.

Both strategies can be successful, and it’s a testament to the developers that they have made it not only easy to track other players, but to quickly notice the rapidly changing situation on the ground through the map, which highlights current skirmishes, recently captured territory and where assets, like supply caravans, are currently located.

Don’t run in blind

The design of WvW has been carefully moulded to make it simple and easy for newcomers to get started, but it’s worth taking stock before you quickly run off and fight.

Firstly, if you have jumped in on your own, open up the map and take stock of the situation. Does your server currently have a strong footprint on this map? By default, most areas, like Keeps, Supply Camps and Towers, will be heavily fortified with strong mobs. Running in alone means a very quick and aggravating death, so it might be worth seeing where your team is fighting, whether defending a point or attacking one, and running there to help out.

As in PVE, everything you do as a loose group will count towards your stats; whether as influence for your guild or just experience, karma and silver for yourself.

Know your limits

Secondly, make sure you don’t take on more than you can handle. Even though everyone is bumped to level 80, their skills and gear are not, meaning that some players may be able to take a few more hits or inflict a bit more damage to you. Surveying the area from a hill or another vantage point may identify opportunities — like an undefended supply mule (very easy to take down alone), a single NPC guard or even an enemy player hopelessly holding an area on their own. Mobs of players can appear from nowhere, so it’s important to keep moving, sticking around with other players and attempting some semblance of organisation.

If you can, join WvW with some friends or better yet, guildies; having someone to watch your back makes all the difference after you’re ambushed by some randoms or the group of people who used to be fighting next to you just disappear. Plus, fighting with guildmates provides a larger amount of influence to your guild, and thus more perks and bonuses flowing into the communal coffers.

Additionally, smaller groups of six or seven people are significantly more useful than mobs of 30 or 40, since most of those extra players just become completely redundant in a single group bouncing from spot to spot, when proper targeting of objectives would be much more effective.

Don’t be a hero

Thirdly, don’t blow all of your money being a hero. Defending and attacking structures is made much easier by purchasing schematics for siege weapons, like battering rams and trebuchets, which are built with supply. Supply is generated by camps, and transported by the previous mentioned caravans, or by players themselves. You can only carry 10 supply at a time, which means that if you drop 20 silver on a flame ram and start building it during a battle, you better hope that you have easy access to a supply area or your team are resourceful enough to pick up supply for you.

Sure, you’ll feel pretty badarse being the one who puts down the heat, but if the ram is destroyed by AOE spam before anyone can build it, you’ve just blown all of your hard earned coin.

As you log more time, you will earn badges for successful conquests, which can be traded in lieu of coin for weapons and other items, so it’s worthwhile waiting until you have a few under your belt. Trust me, gold is hard enough to come by in GW2, so wasting it on an item that likely won’t gain you any more of a reward than not deploying it at all is pretty silly. In all likeliness, someone with more money or badges than yourself will do the honors, and just being part of the group will gain you the spoils.

Have fun

And lastly, enjoy yourself. Don’t take anything personally; the nature of this sort of battle is notoriously mob-orientated at the moment, particularly when there isn’t any system of leadership in place and most people are generally following each other in a vain attempt to use strength in numbers.

You will probably die a lot at first, so it might be worth debating whether you can afford the repair costs, or if you should return when your skills and traits are a little higher. I’ve been surprised at how much fun I’ve had with WvW, particularly when there are cool little sub events that pop up as you play, and even skill points to collect. Even if you aren’t a fan of PvP, I highly recommend you jump on and fight for your shard. Good luck.

If you’re one of the many who have been trying in vain to use Guild Wars 2‘s auction house and having it flake out on you, ArenaNet would like you to know that you are now good to go. “We’re increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game,” writes ArenaNet on the Guild Wars 2 wiki.

“We’ve made progress, but still have capacity constraints causing issues with party and guild functionality, including symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working,” ArenaNet continues. “We’re working on a fix and will provide a further update tomorrow.”

Source: Eurogamer

So many people are playing Guild Wars 2 that ArenaNet has stopped selling it; when you hit those kinds of numbers, problems are inevitable, but the developer is working hard to meet demand.

“The magnitude of this launch just dwarfs everything we have done in the past, and there are certain things you just can’t predict. Certainly right now none of us are sleeping very much, as we make sure we iron out everything that our customers are running into, and trying to make this launch as smooth as possible,” ArenaNet founder and president Mike O’Brien told GamesIndustry.

“There are so many people playing right now, our servers are under such stress. And they’re holding up pretty well, but there are little things going on all the time that we need to chase down. And so we’re literally working around the clock trying to make sure that all our players are having a great experience.

“Right now it’s all hands on deck. We’re in the middle of a launch, and we want to make sure that the game is off to a great start. We want to make sure that players are having a flawless experience in the game, so as things crop up that we need to address we’re working around the clock to address them. We’ve got the whole company focused on the live game and addressing everything that comes up.”

Source: GamesIndustry

In a somewhat unprecedented move, ArenaNet have announced on their Facebook page that they will be temporarily suspending all first-party digital sales through their website — effective immediately.

“Ensuring the best possible play experience for our fans is our highest priority,” reads the post. “We’ve said before that we would be willing to temporarily disable first-party digital sales if we felt our high player concurrency may compromise player experiences. We have now reached that point.”

“Effective immediately we have disabled sales via buy.guildwars2.com. To be clear, box and digital sales are still available via our retail partners. We are tracking our concurrency closely while expanding our infrastructure. We’ll re-enable first-party digital sales as soon as we feel that we can do so safely.”

Source: Facebook (Thanks, James)

I recently had the pleasure of playing a few games that reminded me why I continue, in the face of adversity, to be a PC gamer.

Sleeping Dogs and Guild Wars 2 are both stand out examples of what happens when you use the PC as a template, rather than just another avenue for revenue — or, at the very least, put enough effort into respecting what is the oldest and most technically affluent community of gamers by providing a version that actually takes advantage of the cutting edge hardware we spend many hundreds of dollars maintaining and hours tweaking.

As our current set of consoles come into their seventh year of the generation that never seems to end, developers continue to squeeze the final drops out of ancient hardware that desperately cries for retirement. It’s not really that surprising, with over 100 million 360s and PS3s sitting in lounge rooms, game sales continuing to rise, and subscription packages like Battlefield Premium and CoD Elite selling gangbusters alongside their base titles.

But for the rest of us, this is at the expense of progress; there have been some absolutely shocking concessions that have affected almost every single cross platform title released in the past four years.

Nothing’s gonna touch you in those golden years

It used to be the rule of thumb that both the console and the PC were birthplaces of original content, and this was at its high during the golden years of the 90′s when very few games were ported between systems. There were many reasons for this, although most of them revolved around complicated licensing agreements, technical restrictions and a lack of super-publishers that had both the means and the want to develop for multiple platforms.

Back then, a NES, SNES, or even a PlayStation didn’t resemble anything close to a PC in specification or structure. PC games were generally always more complex in nature, and took advantage of the more varied control systems available.

Any games that were ported, mind you, were usually pretty terrible. Doom for the SNES and Quake 3 Arena for the Dreamcast were both interesting examples of poor porting and implementation, while the SNES port of Sim City, on the other hand, was considered by many to be better than the original. But in this specific case, a lot of effort was made to make the transition viable and playable. Sim City on the SNES made fantastic use of easily accessible sub-menus and every single one of the SNES’s various buttons and cartridge backup.

But it was the PC version that originally provided a complex base to build from, and rather than compromises being made, developers were given a berth of support and systems to convert for console use.

It wasn’t until the 2000′s that the tables began to turn. Many PS2 games slowly started making their way to the PC, as large publishers like Ubisoft noticed markets for gamers who hadn’t bought a console. The trend not only continued but blossomed with the introduction of the XBox, where its PC-like architecture made two-way porting simpler than ever. For the first time, it was no longer a drain on resources to make concurrent versions of software that shared much of the code base and visual assets. The problem, however, was that it was a great way to avoid keeping up with the ever-burgeoning speed of graphics technology development by limiting your options to the lowest ones necessary.

A comforting compromise is still a compromise

It’s been devastating to watch this slow burn, as more and more PC titles find themselves being originally developed on 360 or PS3 devkits, as opposed to the elite workstations that were once the birthplaces of software. Titles like Borderlands and Skyrim, FPS/RPG hybrids that traditionally excel on PC (think Deus Ex, or to a limited extent, Thief) , were lambasted for their atrocious UI, coupling full screen menus with awkward control schemes and limited graphics options. Many also blame the console focused development of Deus Ex‘s dreadful sequel Invisible War for the atrocious outcome of the final product, thanks to the low polygon counts and control changes needed to be workable on the XBox.

I can see why developers, or namely publishers, see the benefits of using consoles as the primary development focus. Costs are much lower, piracy isn’t as prevalent and it doesn’t require any investment in PC staples like DRM or dedicated servers. Engines exist, like Unreal, CryEngine and Unity that already provide customized development environments for easy development and transition across multiple platforms. You’re generally more likely to get a product that contains less bugs, inconsistencies and, subsequently, less costs involved if a patch is needed down the track. Releases will be generally uniform, mostly limited to 720p, and available across everything at (generally) the same time.

But there are a number of important things to consider here. Firstly, the current crop of consoles are still stuck using Direct X9 or a variation of it, meaning there is automatically going to be a ceiling on elements that will be supported — like advanced shaders, multiple cores and multi-threading in general.

Mutton dressed up as lamb

Regardless of how much you squeeze from an eight year old graphics system, as powerful and proprietary as it is, you will be significantly limited to the level of detail and complexity far below that which can be obtained by even the cheapest DX11 GPU. Then there are the limitations on RAM, and the possible omission of a HDD meaning more streaming and less caching. While the CELL processor in the PS3 and the Xenon were especially powerful for their day, the lack of modern advancements like a L3 cache create bottlenecks in performance.

So while development is cheaper initially, it’s also intrinsically restrained by years old hardware and software, meaning the complexity of any experience will rely solely on the programmer to cut corners in order to fit their scope into the box they are given. As a result, the PC versions of any console primary title will almost always be neutered, even when developers promise DX11 or advanced graphics systems, because the scope of their creations are will be restricted from conception. Why imagine a game world the size of a planet when you’re suck with barely enough memory to generate a city in pieces?

The PC is, by design, the most flexible development studio there is.

The number of engines available, like Unreal, Source, CryEngine, can provide the same scaled down environments to develop console versions, as irritating as they may be. But what was borderline acceptable five years ago is becoming unacceptable today, especially when we’re getting titles that look arguably tired and suffer from obvious restrictions in memory (a PC with 16GB of RAM should not have to load every time you enter a house or even a city for that matter). Developers are starting to catch on – a plethora of upcoming, especially great looking titles from Star Wars 1313 to Watch Dogs are still dodging questions about their console availability.

It doesn’t need to be this way

Just looking at a stunning PC focused game is a perfect reminder of what can come from a primary dev focus. Guild Wars 2 is a shining example of almost perfect UI design, taking full advantage of high resolutions and screen space. The graphics engine has been built from the ground up to scale from lower to higher end PCs, utilizing a host of various options to optimize or enhance the experience. There have been no corners cut, other than those generally found in MMOs to reduce lag and increase frame-rate in population heavy areas, plus special dedication provided to supporting the multiple cores and advanced threading found in the newest generation of CPUs and GPUs.

Sleeping Dogs was, however, not developed originally for a PC audience, beginning its life under Activision’s console-focused guise as another installment of the moderately successful True Crime franchise. Its subsequent purchase by Square Enix tightened the reins of development and changed the name, promising at the same time to create a PC version that was worth buying. To their credit, they did. A host of options, including a free high-res texture pack, 3D, Eyefinity and UI optimization were all provided on release, leading to the delight of many gamers, a massive increase in sales (particularly in PC centric markets like Europe) and showing that it really wasn’t that difficult to create a version of a console focused game worth playing.

There is a renewed shift back towards support for the PC, and unusually, it is being championed by publishers like Square Enix who, like most Japanese based developers, always preferred consoles. Enormous sales success on digital download systems like Steam and Origin have demonstrated that the market is not only stable, but growing rapidly, as PC prices and components drop in price and the flexibility of market forces allows for significantly cheaper distribution.

But we’re not there just yet. For the sake of our industry, developers need to go back to the PC as their development focus, otherwise we will be stuck at the whim of forces focused on aspects other than gaming.

Thanks to Cas Bitton and SuBw00FeR for their Sleeping Dogs screenshots!

Five years after its initial announcement, Guild Wars 2 is officially live. You are no doubt chomping at the bit to start killing gigantic fire elementals, but before you step into Tyria and leave all your Earthen friends behind indefinitely, there are a few basics you should be aware of.

Explore Everywhere

Guild Wars 2 is quite gorgeous looking, and ArenaNet wants to make sure you know this. That’s why they’ve hidden little secrets all over the world. Sometimes it’s a chest at the end of a jump-puzzle with some decent loot, and sometimes it’s a vista – a special marker that shows a short cinematic of the local area. There are also plenty of semi-secret events off the beaten track that dole out plenty of experience. Don’t just follow your story markers; explore all you can and you’ll be greatly rewarded.

Experiment With Crafting

Most MMO crafting systems are pretty straightforward – you learn a recipe, which tells you exactly what you need to craft and item, and once you’ve got all the necessary materials, you slap it together. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t work that way. To make the most of crafting here, you’ve got to blindly try to combine some items at your crafting workstation. Guild Wars 2 will give you some hints and help you narrow down your materials into a craftable item, but its still up to you to try interesting item combinations.

Use All Your Weapons

Unlike other online games, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t require that you hit certain levels to learn your core abilities. Instead, they’re all tied to the weapons your profession can use. Even if the sword you’re currently using is a little stronger than the bow you just picked up, try switching to the bow. You can learn new abilities by killing a few enemies with it, and it’s a good idea to get some sense of what weapon is able to bring to the killing fields. Try experimenting with different combinations of one-handers too, as they can completely shift a profession’s playstyle.

Do Everything

There is a lot to do in Tyria, and it’s all worth doing. Guild Wars 2 keeps track of how much you have done in each area of the world, and gives very good rewards to players who complete entire areas. Be sure to visit all the points of interest and vistas, and absolutely chase down every skill-point marker, as they are core to your character’s advancement. And try to do all the major events in a zone, because that tends to be the most effective way to level up. If you manage to max out a zone, look forward to some sweet loot and a load of cash and experience.

Fight For Your World

You don’t have to be high-level to compete in PvP. In fact, you can do it from the get-go. If melting faces is your pastime of choice then check out the World vs World (vs World) feature in Guild Wars 2. It pits three servers against each other in massive, open-world, objective-driven combat. Help your world hold key points on the map and everyone will enjoy powerful benefits to all aspects of gameplay, from crafting to damage reduction.

What’s bigger than Duke Nukem’s ego? Why, the hype surrounding Guild Wars 2. Promising a revolution to shake the MMO genre to its core, Guild Wars 2 is now, finally, live.

According to its design manifesto, Guild Wars 2 will be fun from the start, force no grinding, possess a compelling story, be a grand box social, and should be, in fact, the best MMO ever. Bold claims. So let’s look at how the game stacks up just after release. Are ArenaNet making good on their promises, or is it too early to tell?

Fun from the start?

Guild Wars 2 promises you fun from the start. You won’t be dragged through a gear treadmill, getting ready to have fun. Well, after a couple days play, I have to say this is one of Guild Wars 2’s strong points. The game makes jumping in and playing fun right away, with lots of skill unlocks and combat experimentation at the start. Supporting this are great animations that make it a joy to watch as well. So yes, Guild Wars 2 is a lot of fun.

No grinding?

Guild Wars 2 promises no repetition. Unfortunately, without the narrative quest structure of other MMOs, Guild Wars 2 can feel like a big chain of all-too-similar dynamic events strung together. You’ve got the escort quest, the fight enemy commander quest, the fend-off-waves quest, and the gather items quest.

To the game’s credit, the art is gorgeous, making random wandering enjoyable as a grindless alternative. Indeed, I really started to enjoy myself when I went on a grand adventure through all the different starting zones. I am concerned, though, that after another week’s play, repeated events will start to have a feeling of ‘been there, done that’. We’ll have to wait and see.

A compelling story?

So… I have no idea why centaurs are attacking the humans. Anyone? I also have no idea why whenever I talk to Logan Thackeray, I’m treated to a backdrop of flowers blowing in the wind while we talk about people dying.

I loved the original Guild Wars story. By contrasting the peaceful Tyria with the burnt-out Tyria after the Charr invaded, the opening set the backdrop for everything to come. However, I’ve not yet been treated to any such ‘wow’ moments in Guild Wars 2.

A grand box social?

The game is the definition of social — servers are packed! Dynamic events give a great multiplayer feeling that other games have tried and failed to achieve.

However, I also feel that true teamwork has been replaced by skill spam. With so many skills going off all over the place, it almost becomes a race to see who can spam attacks fastest, and true tactical coordination between people is missing.

I’d really like to see how the social side of the game plays out in dungeons. But with the first dungeon coming relatively late at level 35, I’ve a long way till I get to play what I enjoy most in an MMO.

Best MMO ever?

Guild Wars 2 is one of the most polished, fun MMOs to date. It’s just very entertaining. However, the game does make sacrifices. In particular, the lack of group tactical play and true story is noticeable at this early stage.

Just like all of you, I’ll be playing the game through the week to see how it continues to shape up. Hopefully, it will get over some of these initial teething problems and start to really shine.