Guild Wars 2 in 2013: Arenanet reveal WvW particular abilities, living stories

Guild Wars 2's game director, Colin Johanson, is an incredibly glad bunny. "Factors are excellent right now," he says, laughing. "We are having fun."

The reason factors are remarkable? Guild Wars two is a success: intrinsically, commercially and now, qualitatively.
The game's reached 3 million sales: a important & crucial milestone. As importantly, players are nonetheless playing & enjoying the gw2 gold game. Player concurrency numbers, the degree of people playing the game at any one time, have actually been primarily rising for the past 5 weeks. & now, speaking from ArenaNet's offices in Bellevue, near Seattle, Colin's outlining the plans the team have for the game in 2013. That includes: new skill-sets for players in Guild Wars 2's World vs World, ambitious plans to tell a year lengthy story, and help for players to enter Guild Wars 2's unstructured, then again liberating end-game.

What is more: the objective for now, Colin explains, isn't necessarily captivating new players. It is about looking after the players they already have.

First, a brief lesson in MMO-economics. Every MMO developer lives & breathes their concurrency curve. In the lifecycle of an MMO, you tend to see an early spike, where fresh faced players log in for the 1st time. That spike inevitably drops following launch: to a concurrency base. What takes place next determines the future of the game. "For games that are not doing well, that core base over time slowly drops. A whole lot of them respond by going zero cost-to-play, which causes them to spike back up & hit a brand new concurrency base."

There are a few games that have managed to grow their concurrency base in the period following launch. World of Warcraft. Eve Online. And now Guild Wars 2.

"We hit our flat concurrency numbers back in November, and we have constantly grown every single week for the past five weeks," says Colin. "Our core concurrency base that we hit back in November was really thrilling - nevertheless to see that number going up is often, genuinely exciting. especially since a whole lot of the pieces that will make the game more thrilling are coming in January, February and March."

The biggest & most ambitious of those pieces is their commitment to a brand new form of storytelling. Over the subsequent 12 months, Guild Wars 2 will usually drop new episodes of story content all through the game world.

The very first beats of those episodes were deployed in the recent Flame and Frost update, with refugees fleeing the Shiverpeak mountains, arriving in Hoelbrak plus the Black Citadel. Colin will not say what is brewing; but he will say how it will brew.

The plan is to create a number of arcs, with content appearing in dungeons and the open world. ArenaNet will generate new sections to explore & new events inside existing sectors. Some of those events will be permanently obtainable to players. Others will disappear from the game as they are completed. "If you do not see it in that period of time, you are not going to experience it," says Colin. "They might play out in dungeons, they may play out in the open world, it's really a matter where each storyline best fits."

It will feel, says Colin, "practically like a pen & paper RPG, where you are on this lengthy adventure," yet playing out in a persistent MMO world.

The aim: to keep players logging in, week in, week out. Or day in, day out.

But there's a roadbump in that process: Guild Wars 2's endgame.

1 challenge every high-end player faces as they reach Guild Wars 2's level cap is "what now." What do I do to occupy my time now I have stopped levelling. There is a lot to do: PvP, more questing, crafting, & aiming for 100% completion. But Johanson acknowledges that it is poorly signposted - that players struggle to comprehend what they could, or ought to, be doing. That is altering.

"1 of the factors we attempted to do in Guild Wars 2 is make it a game where you can play the game the way you need to play it," explains Colin. "We've left it extremely open ended. For the explorer types that is something that is particularly up their alley. For players who want more guidance or direction - who want to be shown: these are your solutions, now pick 1 - I don't think the procedure we have does a awesome work of showing them what to do within our game. That's absolutely one of the things we plan to address this year."

The endgame focus highlights the kind of nuts & bolts background improvements MMOs need to remain competitive. There is tech work going on, too. Following oversubscribed preceding events, in which player numbers battered the Guild Wars 2 servers, the team are working on technology that need to improve crowded scenes. Culling tech developed for Guild Wars 2's World vs World - that allows the game to intelligently remove players from your view to sustain frame & response rates - will be applied to the open world, prioritising creatures that are attacking you over other players. "Right now, we are at the point where you could see giant battles with 50 to 100 men and women or so. We'd like to get to the point where you could see hundreds of individuals on display."

And with the culling tech comes a reason to fight in World vs World, Guild Wars 2's ambitious open world competition. At the moment, players who want to fight in PvP landscapes do it for insignificant bonuses to health & crafting. There's no private reason to fight. That's a issue that Arenanet intend to address.

"There demands to be more powerful incentives for folks to play world versus world," says Colin. There are 2 methods in the works. The 1st is a private progression system that will unlock new abilities for Guild Wars 2 gold players the more they play World versus World. Those abilities, says Colin, "make your character more beneficial, yet they do not make your character fundamentally more potent. They won't grow your strength or harm output. They just make you more functional."

The 2nd reason: Arenanet need to enhance the server rewards for fighting beyond a weekly win scenario. It will take the form of a new process "that supplies reasons for your world to be fighting at any given time, instead of across the week," explains Colin. "You may be on day six, & you're losing the week, yet we've got to give a reason for you to hold the region, even for an hour."

Guild Wars two success is heartwarming. It's an MMO without a subscription fee; and without an associated gratis-to-play gouging. Its success indicates it can get better; and if it gets better, it could get more prosperous. The Guild Wars 2 team aren't chasing growth for growth's sake; their first priority is to keep their existing players pleased.

"Our focus is: how do we make it so the core group of players have the greatest achievable experience they can. If we continue to deliver on that, that core group will be more excited, they'll play more normally, & perhaps some of those that took a break will come back."

That sounds like an invitation.

ArenaNet's Greatest Strength, & how it's Grow to be their Greatest Weakness

Over the past week we have seen ArenaNet make a important push to engage the community and lay out their plans for 2013. After a wintersday update that included (virtually) no permanent content, it's nice to see what they plan to add to the game lengthy term. Here's the challenge although, regardless of one or two confirmed alterations coming in the January update, it appears like most of the fantastic stuff is not hitting till February at the earliest, maybe even further. ArenaNet wooed it is fanbase into a chant of "when it is ready" before the launch of the game, however convincing them to wait months for uncomplicated features once the Guild Wars 2 gold game is out has proved a slightly harder trick to pull.

I want to be extraordinaryly clear in my intentions here. I think the roadmap laid out by ArenaNet is stupendous. I even mentioned so myself when they first started discussing it a number of days ago. The issue for me has been the complete avoidance of specifics. I respect the reality that in the event you just do not know, you just don't know. I also respect & understand how difficult a path it is to navigate in the public sphere when discussing future plans. And should you dig around for a lot of my world wide web personas before I began writing for GuildWars 2 Hub, you will find I'm a pretty staunch defender of ArenaNet & what they're doing.

So what is altered? I've been a paying client since 15 minutes after they opened the presale doors. I waited months from investing real income on the game just to get a taste of a beta weekend. Why need to I be upset that now that the game is out and I get to get pleasure from it, minus a number of features that are nonetheless a couple months away? The concern isn't in the waiting, it's in the delivery.

Before the launch of the game, it was perfectly valid for them to convey, "We don't know when the game will be coming out, so we can't tell you when all of this will be done."" Although ArenaNet set the clock for themselves after launch when they began down this monthly update cycle. The issue with this seems clear in hindsight, so permit me to Monday morning quarterback for a bit.

ArenaNet had the luxury of 6 years of soft deadlines. I'm not naive enough to think they did not have internal deadlines & goals for the production of the game. Nevertheless decided by their handling of the development & betas it appears abundantly clear that while there were ambitions, they did not have challenging deadlines. I think if the gw2 gold game had not been ready to ship on August 28th, it would not have. It was for that reason I put so much faith into ArenaNet to commence with. It was for that reason I was willing to put down income for a collector's edition before I ever even played the game. It was since I believed that if something wasn't right with the game, it wouldn't ship.

This reassurance by ArenaNet that if something wasn't outstanding adequate for them, it wasn't great sufficient for the game, was (& is) the right factor ArenaNet had to offer. It was the unofficial badge of quality to everything that they did. What has happened since launch is what has appeared to be constant fudging of that code of standards to appease a fanbase that from my perspective seemed fairly pleased. The 2 most glaring occurrences are horses that I have already beaten dead, but they're worth mentioning for the reason that I do not think they are the trigger of my recent frustration, but the symptoms of a deeper difficulty.

How to fix the problem of not being able to do low-mid level zones

Its easy. And I suggested this before GW2 was released because I already knew what was going to happen from past MMO experiences. I got a lot of hate for it. Turns out, I was right and it would have solved the problem.

Low level and mid level zones being absolutely dead, and everyone being at the high end of the game.

Guild Wars 1 had this problem too once you got out of the starter area.
HOWEVER...GW1 let you hire henchman and companions. This let you still experience the storyline and do dungeons, that you couldn't find a group at all (rarely) to do.

Why did they remove henchman and companions? It would have solved the problem of people not being able to do their PERSONAL story. It would also have solved the problem of people having to skip entire content because there is no one around to help them do the dynamic events or anything.

GW1 did it, and it worked really well. If I couldn't find a group, I would get henchman and I could still progress through the Guild Wars 2 gold game. Easy fix.

Aliens: Colonial Marines has gone gold in preparation for Feb. 12th

Yes, it is accurate. The upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines from Gearbox Program has gone gold & is getting ready to get stamped onto plastic discs to be sold for public consumption in a matter of weeks. Aliens: Colonial Marines is set to launch on February 12th on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Personal computer & will be available for $59.99.

There is nonetheless time to get a preorder in for the Aliens: Colonial Marines Collector's Edition as well, which at $99.99 comes with many bonus multiplayer content, a USCM Dossier with a lot of miscellaneous goodies, and oh yeah, a mothereffing POWERLOADER FIGURINE, all packaged in a Xeno Hive box.

So yeah, if you have been undecided on dropping that additional $40 for the Collector's Edition, now is the time to make up your mind! You've got less than a month before release! Maybe I'll see you online, you understand, if I'm not too busy posing my Powerloader on a shelf subsequent to my Guild Wars 2 gold statue or a Harvest Moon plushie.

Updates for January and February: the equivalent of an extension

ArenaNet studio aims to launch a major update every month. Those of January and February will be "giant", particularly focused on PvP as well as a large extension.

One of the traditional arguments MMO operators pay to justify the payment of a monthly fee based on the developer's ability to provide regular (often monthly) updates of scale. Some keep their promises better than others, and the ArenaNet studio displays the same ambitions - even when Guild Wars 2 is playable without a subscription.

This is what Colin Johanson confirms Gamingbolt while briefly outlining future updates MMORPG.

"[...] Our main focus of attention now, like most studios, based on the live update [the regular updates of the game]. Our main goal, what we really want to do and nobody else has succeeded so far in an MMO is that enrich the gw2 gold game each month to update and implement a giant huge launch every time that really gives the feeling that the player could legitimately pay the monthly fee for such content and every four or five months, they get the equivalent of an extension in terms of content when they connect to our game .

We have added a huge update in October around Halloween, we just integrate one in November, we have a huge update for Christmas. Everything is going really well, and I think in December, players will be really excited. But updates in January and February are actually larger today. They are even more impressive than anything we have proposed in October, November and December. And I think that when the players see what they can access for free in January and February, they will be truly amazed. The content of these two months is almost an extension of their own. '

We know teams ArenaNet very quick to get excited (sometimes at the risk of overselling its updates and generate disappointment among the players) and we therefore expect to judge by the time comes. However, when asked about the sources of inspiration for the studio in the realization of Guild Wars 2, the game director makes widely tribute to Dark Age of Camelot, particularly in the context of the design clashes "World against World" GW2 and accurate in the wake of the SPVP will be a fermatas updates from the studio in February.

"Our World PvP against World is largely inspired by the system of the old kingdom against kingdom Dark Age of Camelot. Number of employees here have long enjoyed Dark Age of Camelot, and RvR was an incredible game. And the system based on three different fronts clashing constantly, these power struggles in large PvP areas, has been a great source of inspiration for us. We used it for Guild Wars 2 and try to adapt it to do something unique and specific to Guild Wars.

In Indeed, in February, we will have a series of updates on World against World areas, to make the experience more unique Guild Wars. But it is something we found inspiration in a previous gw2 gold game, but we try to sublimate it into something bigger. '

We do not know what it is, but Colin Johanson said later one of the challenges of an MMO PvP zones: during internal testing during the development of Guild Wars 2, players were invited to test the PvP zones Thurs .. but none understands exactly what to do in these areas open without NPC guide (they clearly did not instinctively go freely explore the area at random to make discoveries). According to the developer, in recent years, players "have lost the sense of direction" in MMOs and it is now their developers learn to cultivate a taste for discovery and sense of curiosity. One of the objectives of updates to January and February? Maybe.

Guild Wars 2: Special Offer for Black Friday

The developers of Guild Wars 2 offer in celebration of Black Friday in the Digital Deluxe Edition of their online role-playing game for the price of the standard version. The offer starts tonight at 19 clock. In addition, players can expect from Guild Wars 2 discounts of up to 70 percent in the gem shop the Black Lion-trading company.

The developers of ArenaNet Celebrate Black Friday with special offers for their online RPG Guild Wars 2 As the makers have announced in a press release today from 19 clock, the Digital Deluxe Edition for three days for the price of the digital standard edition will be available. Who plays with the idea of Guild Wars 2 can enter, so the price of the regular version still dusting additional gw2 gold game goodies. The offer is valid until 26 November 2012 by 21 clock.

Even in the gem shop the Black Lion-trading company in Guild Wars 2 you can expect over the weekend a number of special deals on popular items. Given every day for three other items with a discount of 70 percent are offered. Black Friday is in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving and is traditionally considered the beginning of the Christmas season, the number of traders herald of special offers. To purchase the Digital Deluxe Edition you get on the official website of the online role-playing Guild Wars 2 gold game. For more news and information about Guild Wars 2, check out our topics page.

Wintersday Calendar

It is no secret the Guild Wars 2 community has some unbelievable talent flowing through its veins, and with the break season in full swing it's the perfect time to show off completed Wintersday advent calendar. Each day features a Wintersday themed piece of art submitted directly from users inside the community here on Guru and on GWOnline. After you have checked out the calendar, make sure to head over to original thread in the Library of Whispers to let everyone know which one is your preferred!

Who knows? We could be seeing this again subsequent year.

Pleased Holidays and Merry Christmas, everybody!

Buy gw2 gold at gw2gold.net.