ArenaNet has opened the pre-purchase store for Guild Wars 2, you can find it at: http://buy.guildwars2.com
This gives you access to all beta weekends so if you intend to buy this game, now's the time!
Tag Archives: Guild Wars 2
Beta signups are here!
Well folks, we're getting closer!
Beta signups are now on, you can access them at the Guild Wars 2 Official Site.
Apparently this is only open for 48 hours, so get in fast!
Achievements in GW2
And the final Profession is…?
Like many predicted, the final profession for Guild Wars 2 release is: Mesmer.
The Mesmer is the third cloth based profession, and is the master if illusions. The official description is: “Mesmers are magical duelists who rely on deception and confusion to keep their opponents in check.”
The official GW2 website has been updated with the final profession information, you can see it on the Official Guild Wars 2 Website.
Last Profession and Release Info – Dec 1
This was posted in the guildwars2guru forums recently.
I wanted to clear up some misconceptions that the way I worded things in the interview may have caused as well as clarify some points that I see people commenting on frequently elsewhere on the boards.
“ArenaNet can’t make a perfect game so their iteration process will only result in the game never shipping!”
There are a lot of variations on this sort of statement but the answer to it is pretty simple. Guild Wars 2 is not going to be a perfect game, no game can ever be perfect. The purpose of iterating on a feature is never to make it “perfect” but rather to raise it above mediocre to either good or great. This is especially true if you’re doing something that you haven’t seen done well before since you have no prior examples to consider when you’re trying to anticipate problems. We know the game isn’t going to be perfect and we’ve never stated that as a goal, what we have said is that we want to release a great game and more importantly a complete and polished game.
“There are going to be bugs when they release it so why not just release it now and fix the bugs later?”
In the current western gaming market a game has one chance to find it’s audience and that chance occurs right when it releases. The examples of games that have released with huge problems and then stabilized and gained a following after being fixed are few and far between. On the other hand the examples of games that released with a lot of potential, made a bad first impression and have since been relegated to a small audience or have even been shut down are easy to point to. We’ve all seen where releasing unfinished gets a game and none of us want Guild Wars 2 to fail because it was released before it was finished.
“If the ArenaNet devs were smarter/better/more experienced they wouldn’t make so many mistakes and have to iterate so often.”
I’ll be the first to admit that we make our fair share of mistakes (many of which I am personally responsible for). If you look at the kinds of things that we have iterated on or changed over the course of development however you’ll see that almost all of our core ideas remain intact. What we’ve largely done is iterate on the details which is always going to happen in any game development process. A design document should be all about sketching out the feel and high level goals of the game and not about providing minute details because all games but especially MMO’s are extremely complicated projects with a lot of moving parts and nobody I’ve ever met is capable of anticipating how all of those things will react to each other. Again, this is especially true if you’re trying to do new things.
“The game looks so done. Why won’t they just let us play it?”
The things we’ve shown you at trade shows have indeed been pretty polished but it’s important to consider the things that you haven’t seen or that we haven’t talked about. Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that the things you’ve seen are the only things that have been worked on. For example, out of all of our content types dungeons are probably the farthest along in overall development right now. We haven’t shown them at any shows because we don’t think a crowded show is a good place to show off content that is supposed to be for organized and coordinated groups. All that being said we’re definitely getting closer, we’ll be revealing the final profession before the end of the year, and we’ve got a few other things to talk about in the coming weeks as well.
“They must have a date they’re shooting for. Why won’t they just tell us?”
We do have internal dates and deadlines, lots of them. We don’t tell you about them because quite frankly even if we put a disclaimer on things and told you that it was only a “rough date” or an “estimated release” or something like that, we’d be held to it and accused of lying if we didn’t make that date. It would put pressure on us to release something before it was ready and as I talked about earlier we really don’t want to do that.
I hope that this helps you understand where we’re at a little bit better and that this thread can continue in a more positive and productive direction.
Doesn’t really give us any more information that we already know, but I guess its comforting to hear from the devs every now and then.
I must admit, I’m finding the lack of information and communication from ArenaNet frustrating, but I think that’s only because I really want to play GW2.
Oceanic ping times and Guild Wars 2
Ok, so this is what ArenaNet are supposedly offering so far in Guild Wars 2:
- Stunning graphics – check
- The death of the Holy Trinity (Healer/Tank/DPS model) – check
- Scalable PVE events – check
- The ability to play and be rewarded with your friends in every encounter regardless of level difference – check
- An anti-griefing system to drop high levels down in lower level areas – check
- Dungeons that are not always the same – check
- A PVE reward system that encourages cooperative play – check
- Three team large scale PVP battles like we haven’t seen since Dark Age of Camelot – check
- Arena style small team PVP battles – check
- Responsive movement and twitch based play – ummmm…
I’m sold on GW2 except for that last point.
The question remains…how is a 200+ms ping time going to affect a game where characters have the ability to dodge projectiles plus cast ground targetted and cone based affects?
In Australia the National Broadband Network is coming (supposedly up to 1 Gigabit per second speeds to 93% of homes), but for the majority, not before the game releases.
Are Oceanics at a disadvantage before we even start?
What makes a great guild?
The answer is different for everyone I guess but there seems to be something that makes certain guilds stick in people’s memories many years after the game has gone.
The first ever guild I’d experienced this in was in a text based MUD called Medievia, my guild was Paladins of Destiny.
In 1998 for Everquest it was Aurora Noctum, fighting bugs and pathing issues in the Planes.
Back in 2001, Nocturnal and later Convicts on the server Guinevere (Hibernia) in Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) was probably my most treasured.
Most of us started the game together and went through the steep learning curve that DAoC was. We spent many nights up way too late at first going through the level grind, then later defending the frontier from the Albs and Mids. On a few occasions single-handedly saved the relics from being taken by a much greater force.
We died time and time again, but we enjoyed doing it. Most of us never met in real life but I’ll regard the guys and girls in those guilds friends for life. I’m always looking out for familar names from that time.
We were needed and respected, a feeling that in real life or gaming is pretty hard to come by. I think its one of the great unspoken needs of almost every MMO gamer, to be recognised and respected. Unfortunately today, many people think that is best achieved by trolling which is kinda sad but that’s a whole post in itself.
The same occured in Denied in World of Warcraft (Barthilas Alliance), my second World of Warcraft guild. The hours we spent farming Molten Core and Blackwing Lair would break most mortals, but we forged together and conquered it eventually. I still never did finish my T1 set after a year of farming that place, it became the running joke of the guild. It was always Warlock/Druid gear, eeeeevery time.
My second time around on WoW was quite a bit later, I joined a few guilds, moved on from all of them. Then I found Exiled House, another guild of great people in which I spent 2 expansions, I still game with those guys today.
There hasn’t really been anything since that made me feel at home, I hope Nocturnal in Guild Wars 2 becomes one of those great longtime memories.
Nocturnal Guild Wars 2 Video Library
Within our forums I have been gathering as many video links as I can get my hands on for Guild Wars 2, the game looks simply amazing.
There is information on each known class, gameplay and skills. There is also information on crafting, loot, dungeons, a couple of boss fight spoilers and a lot of PVP.
Its forever growing so set a bookmark and keep coming back to see the new entries!
You can check it out in the Nocturnal Video Library.