Tag: Arenanet

Heart of Thorns Is Officially Here


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Guild Wars 2 players have reason to rejoice today, as Arenanet has launched the latest and first paid expansion to the MMO. The expansion adds a number of firsts to the game, from raids to the new mastery system, guild halls, and more. The Heart of Thorns expansion is available on the Guild Wars 2 website, while the base game is available for free for anyone interested in giving it a go.

Arenanet co-founder Mike O’Brien had the following to say about the launch:

“We energized our fans in January with the announcement of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns as the first expansion to Guild Wars 2, and we’ve seen steady growth in our player base ever since. Our community is widely recognized as one of the best and friendliest in MMOs—many of our veteran players organized in starter zones to welcome new players the weekend we made the core Guild Wars 2 game free. We’re eager to see how our fast growing community continues to flourish, and we hope they’re eager to embrace where their Guild Wars 2 journey takes them next in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.”

Since launch, over seven million accounts have been created in Guild Wars 2.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Is Now Free To Play


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With Heart of Thorns right around the corner, Arenanet has announced a major change in the Guild Wars 2 business model. Starting yesterday (the 29th), anyone can now access the core game for no down payment. In the announcement, Arenanet discusses the move being partially in response to other games where the heavy list of expansions made getting into the game as a new player confusing.

We’ve seen examples in the industry where that kind of thing has gotten out of control. It doesn’t seem right, and we want to do better. As we get ready to ship our first expansion forGuild Wars 2, we want to ensure that we keep the business model friendly and simple. So let’s be clear that when we say Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, we’re only asking you to buy one thing: the current release, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

What does “access the core game” mean? Well in this context, free players are limited in character and bag slots, cannot use map chat, and can only buy/sell common goods on the market. They also cannot mail items/gold, trade gold for gems, or access guild vaults. Free accounts are also limited from leaving the starting zone until level 10, from using the LFG tool until 30, and to level 60 until they can compete in world v world, to prevent players from disrupting the game.

Arenanet also promises that this change will not usher in heavy microtransaction marketing.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Kills, Deletes, Then Bans Cheater


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What could be worse than having your account publicly banned on an MMO? When the developer films themself logging into your account and manually deleting your characters. Chris Cleary, game security lead over at Arenanet, did just this against a rather notable cheater, first committing suicide and then logging out and deleting his characters, all uploaded to Youtube.

Cleary posted later in the same thread that the cheater’s other accounts were banned as well. You can see the video at the link below.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Grab Guild Wars 2 On Sale This Weekend


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If you still haven’t gotten around to picking up Guild Wars 2, now is the time to do so. The game is on sale for 75% off beginning today, March 6th, until the sale ends on March 8th. The sale applies only to the Digital Heroic Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition.

In other Guild Wars 2 news, a closed beta for Heart of Thorns will be up after PAX East. You can sign up for the beta on the Guild Wars 2 website.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Expansion Confirmed


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It looks like our friends at Daewoo Securities knew a lot more than we gave them credit for. Today at PAX South, ArenaNet has officially confirmed the first Guild Wars 2 expansion: Heart of Thorns.

Among the list of confirmed features includes:

  • New Profession: Revenant.
  • New Feature: Guild Halls.
  • Reimagined mastery system, including master abilities.
  • New zone: Maguuma Jungle
  • New group content.
  • New storylines, bosses, and events.
  • Profession specialization.
  • Stronghold game mode for PVP.
  • WvW: New borderland map.

More on Heart of Thorns is sure to come with today’s presentation. You can find more details at the link below.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Double Exp Weekend


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This weekend looks to be a big one for Guild Wars 2, and ArenaNet is kicking off with a double experience weekend and the biggest sale the game has seen yet. New players will be able to pick up Guild Wars 2 for $9.99, the cheapest the game has been in some time, while all players will be able to take advantage of double experience all weekend in-game.

On Saturday, ArenaNet will be broadcasting a special presentation titled “Beyond the Point of No Return,” featuring studio president Mike O’Brien and game director Colin Johanson. ArenaNet is expected to announce something large coming to Guild Wars 2.

(Source: NCSoft Press Release)

Guild Wars 2 Tournaments Dish Out the Dosh


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Do you have what it takes to make it big in Guild Wars 2? If so, there might just be a financial incentive in it for you. With esports becoming bigger every year, the diversity and breadth of tournaments has only gotten bigger. Arenanet has posted an update on the Guild Wars 2 website detailing just a few of these tournaments and how you can get into them.

Most of the tournaments reward players with a heaping helping of gold and gems, but the Go4GuildWars2 cup is doling out one thousand dollars every Sunday to the top players, with the best of the best going on to play for a fifty grand prize pool.

You can find the details for all of the tournaments at the link below.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

[Editorial] Gem Store Update Poorly Introduced, Response Even Worse


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The latest gem store update to Guild Wars 2 has had players up in arms, and it’s hard not to sympathize with their position. Previously, buying and selling gems was a process that involved deciding how much you wanted to buy/sell, setting an asking price, and waiting until your order was filled. If you wanted enough gems for a Black Lion chest key, you could get it. If you had 124 gems and wanted an item that cost 125 gems, you could buy that extra gem.

If you can figure out what is wrong with the new gem shop interface in the screenshot above, you probably don’t work for Arenanet. Given that the trade shop was built to be flexible and user-friendly, the change to a system that is entirely based on fixed, inflexible increments seems counterproductive and quite baffling in its logic, but so far Arenanet doesn’t seem to understand why players would be angry about being forced to buy 400 gems minimum.

As seems to be the popular excuse, Arenanet blamed the update on new players not understanding the system, a problem that apparently only exists in Arenanet’s customer support tickets. Communications team lead Gaile Gray has not helped the situation by going on the offensive against players in the forums. In her first response, Gray explained that “very few people bought gems at smaller denominations.” Following pages of complaints and suggestions, Gray made another post making no acknowledgement of the previous suggestions and instead decrying “most” of the posters as nonconstructive ranters.

Ok, guys. Some of you are unhappy about this change, I can see that. BUT… quite honestly, most of you are sort of (I hate to use the word) ranting (sorry!) instead of offering suggestions.

The comment on this update being geared towards new players is suspicious at best, considering that the lowest increment of gems now costs 75 gold. How many new players are going to have 75 gold to spend on the gem store? None. The only impact that this could conceivably have on new players is to remove their ability to purchase smaller amounts of gems and funnel them toward buying the gems with real money.

Guild Wars 2 has a habit of introducing updates which beg the question “who asked for this?” The answer is usually a lot of unseen people who submit support tickets and then apparently never feel the need to discuss the matter anywhere else, because if you searched the forums you wouldn’t come up with many, if any, results.

Arenanet has already confirmed that an update will allow player to use either system to their choosing, begging the question on why it wasn’t just included in the first place.

Guild Wars 2 Did Not Sell 3.8 Million In China


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You may have seen some news over the past few days that Guild Wars 2 has sold 3.8 million copies in China, which would be excellent were it true. As it so often turns out, the information was spread via a fansite and is inaccurate, according to an Arenanet Twitter post:

We’d like to clarify recent news of GW2 China sales: it’s inaccurate, from a Chinese fansite, and they could be estimating characters.

The moral of the story is: Always wait for an official source.

(Source: Twitter)

Go Back And Revisit Old Events In Guild Wars 2


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To date, Arenanet has introduced more than two dozen living world updates to Guild Wars 2. The feature is great, for those of you who can keep up with it. For others, missing a week or two due to real world obligations or simply taking a hiatus means missing out on rewards and the world’s ongoing evolution. Thankfully this is set to change for (most) affected players. Beginning with the launch of Season 2 on July 1st, as long as a player is able to log in during the two week period, they are able to “bank” the living world to return to at any time after. If you aren’t able to log in during the period, you are still able to access the content for a small fee of in-game currency.

“The Living World exists to drive the story of Guild Wars 2 forward and create a sense of speculation, wonder, and intrigue around the world of Tyria and its characters. We want to create the feeling that anything in Tyria can change and get players looking forward to what might happen next. A natural system that provides story and context for these changes makes sense when we regularly expand the experiences in our game”.

Season 1 will not be included at the launch of the new journal, as it was not built with the journal in mind, but Arenanet hopes to add it in at some point in the future. Season 2 will move away from the concept of meta-achievements entirely, replaced with story-mode achievements accompanied by open world event achievements with each step.

(Source: Arenanet Press Release)