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DJ Tasha's Blog
| Guild Wars & Guild Wars 2 News Roundup 30-5-10 |
Guild Wars
War In Kryta
May 14th saw a game update that introduced 2 new explorable areas to Guild Wars: the Secret River Passage that leads into Divinity Coast (Explorable) and Lions Arch Keep. Divinity Coast (Explorable) is home to a makeshift Golemancer lab for the Asurans Blimm and Zinn, where as in Lions Arch Keep Princess Salma has taken to the throne. Both areas are only accessible after having finished viewing a number of dialogs in Tyria. May 21st saw the addition of new daily quests that take place in Kryta where players take the side of the Shining Blade to help Princess Salma hold the throne. After this update Peacekeepers and White Mantle in explorable areas began dropping unique items and minipets once killed, and new items were introduced into the game as rewards for the quests. There's a lot going on here than I can neatly summarise so follow the link below for an in depth look.
Link: War In Kryta Wiki Page
Skill Update
21st May update also contained the large skill update for Mesmers. This rebalance aimed to leave Mesmers largely untouched in PvP but rework skills to better fit the pace of the PvE game by increasing damage and lowering recharge times amongst other methods.
The main change involved a rework of the Mesmers' primary attribute Fast Casting. The new description reads: "Fast Casting decreases the activation time of your Spells and Signets. (No effect for non-Mesmer skills with an activation time less than 2 seconds.) In PvE, each rank of Fast Casting decreases the recharge time for your Mesmer Spells by 3%." This change has the effect of reducing recharge times in PvE only and limits the use of secondary profession skills in PvP. To prevent a total imbalance when in Hard Mode and using consumables, skill activation has been changed in Hard Mode as follows: "Items and skills that improve skill activation time can no longer stack higher than 25%. Single effects that improve skill activation over 25% can exceed this cap. (Fast Casting is not included in this cap.)" The PvE skill Mindbender and consumables Red and Blue Rock Candy and Pumpkin Pie have also had their effects changed to prevent imbalance.
Nearly every Mesmer skill appears to have been touched in this update so to go through it all here would be rather tedious. Full details are on the links below.
Other changes in this update included other PvP balances addressing concerns over skills such as Blinding Flash, Blinding Surge, Spoil Victor and Seeping Wound. There were also to monsters in the Underworld, Fissure of Woe and Tombs of the Primeval Kings with enemies on Hard Mode having higher health regeneration but lower overall health and quests in the Underworld such as "The Four Horsemen" being rebalanced as a result.
Link: Wiki Update Details
Link: Skill Update Discussion notes
Bannings
On 26th May, ArenaNet dished out perminant bans to players who have been investigated and found to be using botting programs. Its reported that around 3,700 accounts have been banned. Players who logged onto their Guild Wars accounts that had been terminated were met with an awesome animation of Dhuum killing their character before being logged out of the game for good. It has been said by James Phinney, Design Director for Guild Wars, that more bans will be handed out in the future to those found to be botting in random chunks so as to disguise ArenaNet's detection methods.
Link: Full article
Link: Youtube video of bans
Guild Wars 2
Putting the RPG back into MMORPG
As expected Rees Soesbee posted a blog on the Guild Wars 2 website talking about the Personal Story of characters. As well as choosing the traditional race, sex, class and general appearance of characters, players in Guild Wars 2 will also be able to flesh out their characters more by answering 7-12 multiple choice questions. The answers to these questions will determine the motivation of your character in Tyria and affect what your personal story is. There will also be a "random personality" button for those who are rolling an alt or simply don't want to make use of the RPG functions. By personal story, ArenaNet are making a distinction between the events system and the end game raids and dungeons and the storyline that only your character can make in an instanced environment (think Age of Conan). However you can bring other players in to play your personal storyline but only your choices will matter and no one else's personal stories will be affected. Players helping in your personal story will also be rewarded for their work. There will also be a journal which automatically records your deeds in Tyria.
The storyline itself consists of several elements - the overall fight to defeat the dragons, the "Divinity's Edge" arch and that of the Orders. Divinity's Edge is a fictional guild consisting of the NPCs introduced in the "Races of Tyria" video that has been torn apart by mistrust and other guild drama. Players are tasked with getting the guild back together. The Orders are 3 racially independant organisations with their own ideas of how to defeat the dragons that players can join. They are "The Order Of Whispers" that seek to make the dragons go back to sleep, "The Durmand Priory" that aim to find the currently lost knowledge that put the dragons to sleep before and "The Vigil" who aim to fight power with power. For more information, follow the link below to the Personal Story article.
Character housing has been confirmed and consists of an area the size of a city block containing merchants and monuments to your achievements in the world. NPCs you befriend through the storyline will also appear here. Also confirmed is an in game market place (auction house) which will be partially accessible through a web interface and has spaces for "want to buy" adverts.
Link: Personal Story Overview
Link: Followup questions
Link: Massively interview
Also in the news...
Revealed elsewhere in the Guild Wars 2 world was more information on the Sidekick system. This idea copied from a number of other MMOs will work in reverse to many of them. That is if a high level player joins a group with a low level player the high level player will be debuffed to just a few levels higher than the low level player. This is aimed at not allowing established players to steam roll early areas and spoil the game for new players. The debuff will also allow high level players to experience content at the lower levels they may have missed.
Karma, a term that was used but not described in previous interviews, has also been described in more detail. It describes a non tradable reward point system, similar to how faction operates in Guild Wars 1 that allows characters to interact with different NPCs. We're expecting to hear more details about it in future.
For a full round up of all official Guild Wars 2 information I highly recommend watching the videos on Youtube compiled by Sabre Wolf: Link
Thats my round up of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 information for this week. I'm away from DJing for a few more weeks but I'll be back next Sunday with another round-up. Keep safe and enjoy yourselves!
~Tasha |
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Sunday, 30 May - 15:41:53 |
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