I’ve been accumulating news snippets about the as-yet-to-be-formally-scheduled release of Guild Wars 2 for an email newsletter I send out to my friends and acquaintances in the Guild Wars community.
Part 1: Discussion of previous news
- If you listen to podcasts, you might want to subscribe to the Guildcast weekly podcast
- Reminder: the official Guild Wars 2 wiki is still growing, so it’s worth checking it out now and again for new information.
- Not really Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2-related, but interesting anyway: “The report, entitled 2011 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry (and can be downloaded in pdf form here) has revealed some new numbers about female gamers, including their growing presence in the gaming audience. As of 2010, 42 percent of the gaming audience is female, up from 40 percent the previous year. And interestingly enough, turning the whole “video games are for teenage boys” stereotype on its head, women 18 and older make up more of the gaming audience than boys 17 and younger.”
Part 2: Guild Wars news
- Reminder: If you’d like to keep track of the upcoming Winds of Change and other Guild Wars Beyond material, keep this page bookmarked.
- Flameseeker Chronicles: A method to the madness. “The June 2nd update is the talk of the Guild Wars playerbase this week — especially on the PvP side of the community. It was certainly enough to pique my interest, even though my PvP project fell victim to a complete lack of free time this month. What really interested me about this update, however, is that it feels like such a response to feedback and the current vibe of the player community. Not that ArenaNet doesn’t pay attention as a rule, but so many of the huge updates are focused on the Hall of Monuments and Guild Wars: Beyond in preparation for Guild Wars 2 that it’s nice to see one that is all about Guild Wars 1 — not to mention one that is a pure response to the state of the current game.”
Part 3: Guild Wars 2 news
- Check out a neat fan-made “New Krytan Translator” website.
- Arenanet is sponsoring a symphony performance of music from Guild Wars. “The Seattle Symphony and Chorus will perform music from a wide range of video game titles old and new, accompanied by hi-def graphics from the games on large screens above the orchestra. We’ve cut together a new video of cinematic footage from Guild Wars 2 specifically for the event. We’re sure that the incredible visuals paired with Jeremy Soule’s stirring Guild Wars music will be the highlight of the performance.”
- Gamer Zines interview with Eric Flannum, part 1. “We do guide our players through their story with markers (which resemble a green star burst) and these markers will sometimes appear over an NPC’s head. The important difference in this case is that a player will only ever have one step in their story, one thing that they are trying to accomplish, not a journal full of 20 tasks that by their very nature and quantity start to seem unimportant. The things that the player is asked to do while on their personal story are often long and involved and they should always feel like they flow organically from the narrative that the player is experiencing. In short, the player should never be asked to kill X monsters by someone who they’ve never met before. Think of the personal story in Guild Wars 2 as you would the “main” storyline of a great single player RPG.”
- Tap Repeatedly‘s interview with Jonathan Sharp and Jon Peters. “The warriors strength is mainly focused on its melee attacks but knowing where to be on the battlefield, at a high level, is probably the most difficult thing. To get to a very acceptable, competent level with the warrior, yes, it’s probably the easiest one to get there. But only 1 in a million people have reached the level of a warrior that really sets them apart. If you’ve seen any Guild Wars 1 we had The Last Pride, a Korean guild, and they had a warrior called Last of Master and there is no one I have seen who is even close to him. He takes positioning — things that makes a warrior — to a level no one else does. There is more room to improve on the warrior than any other profession, though a lot of people would argue that with me, but to me that subtlety of positioning is something almost no one ever understands.”
