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. This week was pretty quiet after last week’s release of the new Winds of Change content in Cantha.
I got a few comments from non-gaming folks that these posts can get too long to scroll past, so it’s now in the extended post below.
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.
- Flameseeker Chronicles: Who wants to go kill some afflicted? “Several members of our guild were sitting around playing the “What do you wanna do? Eh, I dunno, what do you wanna do?” game when Winds of Change arrived, so we were all pretty much free. Six of us bolted for Kaineng Center, partied up, jumped on vent, and took off. We were in for a bit of a surprise. You see, most of us have been playing for a very long time and are pretty comfortable with normal-mode content. We threw in a couple of hero monks, loaded up some standard builds, and off we went. We were treating it like a casual exploration thing, heading out to see what was out there. Whoops. The Live Team has been working overtime, I see. We slunk back to town to lick our wounds and tried again, this time with more (relative) success.”
Part 2: Guild Wars news
- Reminder: If you’d like to keep track of the Guild Wars Beyond material, keep this page bookmarked.
- Reminder: Guild Wars official support forum. Here is the FAQ page for the forums.
- Dragonchasers: Revisiting Guild Wars. “I’m tired today. It’s my own fault, really. I was up too late playing video games (again). Will I never learn? The only reason this is remotely interesting is because I was playing Guild Wars, a game that came out in 2005. A game that I’ve dutifully purchased every expansion for, yet never really played. I’ve tried to get into Guild Wars over and over again since it launched but it’s never ‘stuck’ with me.”
Part 3: Guild Wars 2 news
- Hunters Insight: Participation Meters Matter. “It seems like an important question. The majority of Guild Wars 2‘s content are Dynamic Events and they reward players by measuring their participation. Get that wrong even slightly and there will be a lot of angry players.”
- Talk Tyria: Guild Wars 2, Getting Down to Business. “Six years later, having seen may other MMOs come and go, ArenaNet are sticking to their guns. They clearly have a tremendous amount of faith in their model, and when you hear them talking about it (12:42) it’s clear why: They firmly believe in earning their success through making truly compelling content, not just eking money out of their player-base at any opportunity. As a result, they have a constant drive to satisfy their fans, never becoming complacent, always pushing themselves that little bit further.”
- Guild Wars 2 Open House video.
- Guild Wars 2 — Top 10 Reasons to be Interested video.
- 10 Little Things to like about Guild Wars 2 video.
- Daniel Dociu wins Esposé Grand Master Award. “Congratulations to ArenaNet Art Director Daniel Dociu, who was recently selected for the Grand Master Award in Exposé 9, Ballistic Publishing’s 2011 digital art annual. Daniel Dociu joins the ranks of former Grand Master winners such as H.R. Giger, Syd Mead, John Berkey, and original Star Wars artist Ralph McQuarrie — pretty impressive company to keep!”
