Player compensation for event problems

As announced on the official forums now, ArenaNet wants to compensate the players of Guild Wars 2 for aufgetretenene problems during the last event.

Adventurers in the world of Guild Wars 2 these days have really much cause for celebration, because the developers at ArenaNet be making a big effort to keep their players with different current events in a good mood. So on the Halloween event in October followed by the Lost Coast, before it continues this month with the winter. But the mood among some is still clouded, because it's hard with the last event ever finish first, before then the week of Christmas to be celebrated.

Sigh of relief when it comes to Lost Coast: There are gw2 gold players compensation for the event problems.

Numerous customers had, in fact not the desired access to the event rewards the Lost Coast. This was due to connection problems that prevented her to open the box of Karka event to insert the appropriate loot. In recent days, was becoming known that the developers would compensate the players for it. Now brings an official forum post by Mark Katzbach also announced the redemption of the pledge. There it is, you've started to send the rewards using a special script to the victims. Accordingly, they should see this soon in their mailbox.

Guild Wars 2 Publisher NCsoft Hit with Layoffs

Layoffs have hit Guild Wars 2 publisher NCsoft. The employment cuts hits NCsoft's Seattle studio. There was first a rumor that the studio had closed, although that has since been dismissed, nevertheless Computer Gamer has situated out that a 'realignment' has taken place.

"NCsoft is realigning internal publishing resources to better suit the desires of our gw2 gold game development studios," Lincold Davis, a spokesman for NCsoft, told Personal computer Gamer. "As a result of the realignment, several personnel and contract positions were affected. This was a tremendously difficult decision to make and wish the finest for all NCsoft staff in their subsequent ventures."

NCsoft had laid off workers at its Austin, Brighton and Seattle studios in October 2011.

Guild Wars 2: How to Demonstrate Your Game World's Beauty

Rowan Kaiser writes about Guild Wars 2's beautiful environments.

Part of the joy of open-world games comes from the rare moments of seemingly accidental beauty they provide. These are the gw2 gold games where it's possible to, say, come to the summit of a hill in Skyrim and see a foggy mountain in the distance from a new perspective. Or it's possible to creatively find yourself in a place you didn't expect to be in, like crashing a car to create a bridge in Far Cry 2. 

Massively multi-player role-playing games since Everquest may have been built on a model of strictly regimenting player behavior, but even those their powerful moments. My favorite zone in World Of Warcraft was probably the corrupted Elven forest of Feralas, a region which seemed to be in a perpetual sunset, enhanced by some of the better music in WOW.  I always looked interesting ways to view World Of Warcraft's geography. In Nagrand, I took my flying mount to each island hovering above the land. All were essentially barren, but I could see the beauty below, and anticipate what might be above.

I once tried to swim from the Swamp of Sorrows in the far southeast to the Badlands slightly north of there, but the cliffs surrounding Azeroth prevented my access, and so I slowly made my way north, crossing over half of the continent, until I arrived at the Hinterlands. I found some beauty in the recycled, lifeless cliffs. I also had fun trying a jump my way up those cliffs, and even made some impossible progress. There are a bunch of players who hop around the world looking for surprise holes or ways to reach the previously unreachable. Some do this to cause chaos, and grief other players. But many are just looking for the real boundaries of the game world. I liked watching them do this and reading about their exploits, but rarely felt encouraged to do so myself.

When I started up Star Wars: The Old Republic, there were special “Holocrons” scattered across the maps, which required a certain level of searching nooks and crannies early on. As you progressed into more difficult zones, finding the holocrons became more of a matter of looking them up on Google or YouTube. The idea of pushing players into the more hidden areas of the map is a good one, but the rewards promised by the holocrons—permanent stat increases, unavailable anywhere else—made them feel more mandatory than fun. Combined with the need to research their locations externally, they became more of an annoyance than a chance to show off the detail of the gw2 gold game world.

There is a sweet spot of beautiful visuals, of mechanical reward, and of exploratory gameplay that one game, finally, managed to hit. Guild Wars 2 has several “vistas” scattered throughout each of its regions. The point at the end is labeled on the map, and you get an experience reward when you find your way there. But actually getting to the vistas can be difficult. Not usually enough that you have to look up how it's done—but difficult enough that when you figure it out, there's a rush of success. And then, the reward of the game showing off its detailed, beautiful locations. Nothing gave me more joy in Guild Wars 2 than finding these points on the map, trying to access them, and then discovering how the game encouraged me to see its world.<source>

ArenaNet holds frank Reddit debate on Guild Wars 2 loot-grind

The no-gear-grind philosophy of Guild Wars 2 has been called into question, so developer ArenaNet has responded on Reddit.

Brief recap: a brand new Ascended armour type statistically more powerful than other end-game armours has been added to the game. ArenaNet said hardcore players needed more to do and more progression to chase. But the Guild Wars 2 community interpreted this as signs of an end-game gear grind - a mechanic ArenaNet chastised in the lead up to Guild Wars 2's launch. Did ArenaNet contradict itself?

"I hope we've been clear that GW2 is not a game with virtually no stat progression in it like GW1 was," ArenaNet co-founder and boss Mike O'Brien wrote on Reddit. "That's why GW2 shipped with a higher level cap, and with a hard separation between PVE and PVP.

"In GW1 we never advanced the level cap through four campaigns/expansions. The game design didn't allow for it. But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we've always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2."

I put that last part in bold because it's the first I've heard of plans to increase the Guild Wars 2 level cap.

"That's why we've always said that GW2 rewards players through both progression and collection," O'Brien went on, "whereas GW1 primarily rewarded through collection. Presumably players aren't shocked that GW2 rewards through progression, since it has a level 80 cap.

"I would ask you to judge us by details and not by making slippery-slope arguments."
Mike O'Brien
"I wonder if the core sentiment is more this: It's only been two-and-a-half months! We don't even all have Exotics yet, and already you're introducing another tier. Is this the start of a power progression curve that I'll never be able to keep up with?

"I certainly appreciate that worry," he wrote. "I myself don't want a constant struggle, as exists in some other gw2 gold games, to keep my equipment viable. Then we're left with a balancing act: some progression is OK, but pushing players onto gear treadmill isn't OK and isn't what the game is about.

"So I would ask you to judge us," he concluded, "by details, and not by making slippery-slope arguments. We introduced a ton of new content in November, and the sum total of new progression rewards we added to go with it provided a 5-10 per cent stat increase in two of 12 slots. I hope you'll agree that that kind of very shallow and gradual progression does not force people onto a gear treadmill."

O'Brien said it was "important" for Guild Wars 2 to have that kind of "gradual" progression. And although "we made some mistakes with the way we introduced Ascended gear", he added, "I don't think they invalidate the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game".


So what "mistakes" were made with the introduction to Ascended gear?
Studio design director Chris Whiteside said "we did not intend for the information to come out this way, referencing a jumped-the-gun article on MMORPG.com [thanks Sirrush on Twitter].

Bizarrely, ArenaNet was apparently "acutely aware of what the reaction was going to be". "Yes, the response was definitively expected," Chris Whiteside admitted. So, err, why do it?

The first revelation was that "in retrospect it would have been better to have included Ascended gear at launch", wrote Whiteside. As we know, Ascended gear was designed to sit between Exotic and Legendary items. "It was not specifically designed before launch," Whiteside added. "However, the concept of progression rewards with a shallow curve bridging other rewards was." The whole debate about a new tier of armour being added post-launch to placate goalless hardcore players would have been avoided, too.

The second revelation or declaration, if you like, is that "we have no intention of adding a new rarity gear such as Ascended".

"Instead and as we evolve," Whiteside wrote, "the game's existing rarities will evolve over time. However, these will not be common occurrences. For example, full Ascended gear will be introduced over a long period of time ["throughout next year" he said later] and will be earned through lots of different parts/activities of the buy guild wars 2 gold game."

On a time-frame for rarity evolution he said: "The opportunity to enhance existing tiers of loot will not be through a regular cadence of monthly updates instead it is more likely to come from expansions or very big drops of content."

"We have never said there would be no vertical progression."
Chris Whiteside
Whiteside also reiterated that "it is absolutely not intended that Ascended will make a discernible difference in world versus world [battles]", but said players in these server-versus-server-versus-server battles will be able to acquire Ascended items "within that area of the game soon".

On the general topic of vertical progression - i.e. going upwards in power rather than sideways or horizontal: being as powerful but different - Whiteside said Guild Wars 2 has it and "we do intend to keep moving forward with this philosophy".

"We have never said there would be no vertical progression," he wrote. "We do intend to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.

"Please understand that we see the community as a 'whole' and therefore are not intending to design again for one specific type of player over another. This is a misconception and one that is not promoted by the team. We will continue to develop the game for the community as a whole, offering gameplay that caters to lots of different types of players in a unified approach that will evolve over time based on feedback and the direction the team as a whole wants to take.

"Personally," he added, "I do not feel that the latest changes are against what we said in the manifesto. I do however feel that we do have to be very careful in regard to progression design turning into grind and I believe there are some instances of this kind of grind that pre-date the launch of the game. It is for this reason that we are looking to revamp some aspects of the game whilst connecting other parts increase the overall experience of fun in our progression mechanics."

Concluding, Chris Whiteside described all of this as "an exciting problem, but one that has been poorly communicated and handled". On the flip-side, the debate "helps us to answer and navigate larger questions we have in terms of the direction of the game moving forward", he said.

Whether or not you're appeased by ArenaNet's reaction here, at least you got one. It's uncommon in the world of MMOs for developers to frankly address the community's questions in this way, let alone pledge to do something differently because of them.

This is not Guild Wars 1 and was never intended to be, but what Guild Wars 2 was meant to be was different - different to other MMOs. Its test will be how well it resists the dangling carrots used to elongate those other worlds: the level-cap raises, the additional progression paths (PVP ranks) and the ever-more-powerful-loot grind. Perhaps such mechanics are unavoidable.

Question is: do you trust ArenaNet?

Guild Wars 2 Designer Explains Itemization Changes

The Lost Shores are feeling a little less lost this morning.

Yesterday, along with the lifting of the press embargo on the event, ArenaNet fleshed out the Lost Shores content page with a new video and some other details about the upcoming patch. We learned about a new dungeon, a new PvP map and perhaps most interestingly a new level of gear rarity dubbed "Ascended" gear, slightly more powerful than Exotic gear.

It's this last item that caused no small amount of confusion and concern in the buy Guild Wars 2 gold player community. So, late last night, ArenaNet designer Linsey Murdock took to the Guild Wars 2 blog to offer some clarification on exactly what players can expect from these Ascended items.

Many players were questioning why a new level of itemization was needed so soon in the game's life-cycle, and if this move represents the emergence of the oft-maligned "gear treadmill,", and in true ArenaNet fashion, Murdock addressed exactly that:

"As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later."

This Ascended gear, however, is only one piece of the puzzle. Along with it, ArenaNet is adding a new condition - Agony. This new condition will be of critical importance for players planning to tackle the new dungeon, Fractals of the Mists. It seems enemies there will make judicious use of it, requiring players to have this "Agony resistance" of Ascended items to make real progress. How do you build this resistance? Through Infusions, of course! Another new system being added to the gw2 gold game:

"There are multiple types of Infusions and Infusion slots. In November, we’ll introduce Offensive, Defensive, and Omni Infusions of Fine rarity from new Mystic Forge recipes. Infusion upgrade types must be paired with their like slot, with the exception of the rare and versatile Omni Infusions which can be slotted into any type of Infusion slot. For now, Infusions slots can only be found in gear of a new rarity type: Ascended."

But what about Legendary items? Stat-wise, those were on-par with Exotics. What of them? To those of you who already worked your tushes off to acquire a Legendary item, there's no need to fret. Your stats will be bumped up to be in line with Ascended items.

There's a lot to take in with these new changes, and the community is currently well on the task of discussing it. Head over to the Guild Wars 2 blog for the full read, and please let us know what you think here. This is an important milestone in the future of the game!

Guild Wars 2: connection problems when final event - ArenaNet promises redress for Disconnects

At the conclusion of the event, "Lost Coast" quite a few players of Guild Wars had 2 problems with the connection. Who suffered in the fight against the Ancient Karka under Connection Problems missed his reward, the promises ArenaNet reparation. At a suitable solution is still being worked.

At yesterday's final of the event, "Lost Coast", there were some problems for quite a few players who ensured frustration. Some Guild Wars fans have reported bugs and disconnects. Especially after the three-hour battle against the creatures of the sea were client problems and not a cause for excitement obtained prey for many players of Guild Wars 2 At ArenaNet, Guild Wars makers now want to find a solution to reward those players who suffered from the problems mentioned above.

All gw2 gold players who suffered towards the end of the one-time events with connection problems and received no reward for fighting the Ancients Karka should get your reward afterwards. However, there is no immediate solution by ArenaNet. "We will offer a solution, so that players who took part in the event will receive their rewards, but we only have to implement, so it is not happening today. Keep an eye on the forum and our other channels, we will let you know second, if we "have the solution ready to Martin Kerstein on the official forums for Guild Wars More information about ArenaNet can be found on MMO of our topics page to Guild Wars 2.

Tags: buy guild wars 2 gold; gw2 gold

Guild Wars 2: An Epic One-Time Event

Guild Wars 2 has brought serveral funny event in this big update, and from the official news that there are an Epic One-Time Event, have a look at it.

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All hands on deck! This is it: the final battle against the fierce Ancient Karka on the brand-new Southsun Cove map. Only the combined might of the heroes of Tyria has any hope against a creature this powerful, which means we need you!  This once-in-a-lifetime event takes place NOW on November 18—don’t miss it.

Advertise: buy gw2 gold at gw2gold.net now.