Guild Wars 2 – Page 6

Guild Wars 2 Tournaments Dish Out the Dosh

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)

Reminder: Daewoo Is Not An Official Source

Daewoo Securities, a financial investment group in Korea, have released an earnings forecast for NCSoft that is throwing some of the community into a ruckus. The whole thing stems from the prediction that in Q3 2015, Guild Wars 2 will see a massive rise in sales thanks to an upcoming expansion launch.

Here’s what you should know about the forecast: Daewoo is not an official source for any of NCSoft’s products. They are a third party investment firm that makes predictions based off of speculation and assumptions.

As of this publishing, NCSoft has not announced an expansion to Guild Wars 2, let alone one launching in 2015. For context, this is Daewoo’s full prediction regarding Guild Wars 2:

Also, in 2015, NCsoft is expected to roll out an expansion pack for Guild Wars 2, which has sold more than 3mn copies since its release in 2012 in the US and Europe. We assumed in our 2015 earnings estimates Guild Wars 2 expansion pack sales of around 2mn copies (US$50 per copy), and note that the expansion packs for Guild Wars 1 have sold almost as much as the original game in the year of their release.

A snippet of Daewoo’s disclaimer:

Information and opinions contained herein have been compiled from sources believed to be reliable and in good faith, but such information has not been independently verified and Daewoo makes no guarantee, representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the fairness, accuracy, completeness or correctness of the information and opinions contained herein or of any translation into English from the Korean language.

To inject some positivity into this, the rest of Daewoo’s predictions seem pretty solid. The firm predicts high sales from NCSoft’s numerous mobile games being released this year based off of trends from Activision Blizzard, Netease, Changyou, and Electronic Arts.

Arenanet will be hosting a panel at PAX South to discuss the future of Guild Wars 2 later this month.

(Source: Source)

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

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.

NCSoft Q2 2014 Finances

NCSoft has posted their second quarter finances for 2014 and the results are looking good across the board. Thanks to strong launches including Guild Wars 2 in China and Wildstar in the US and EU, NCSoft saw a 20% increase in sales, a 46% increase in profit, and a 45% increase in net income over the previous quarter. Lineage 1, meanwhile, increased in sales thanks to a solid base.

Wildstar debuted to $27 million in sales during its first posted quarter. Sales in Europe and North America have been consolidated into a single metric, not so surprising when you consider that Europe had dropped to just 3% of NCSoft’s sales with North America at 13%.

Guild Wars 2 Did Not Sell 3.8 Million In China

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

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)

Guild Wars 2 Megaserver Is Complete

Arenanet has announced that the Megaserver technology has been fully implemented in all PvE maps and Heart of the Mists.

Although we’re excited that you have more players than ever to explore the open world of Guild Wars 2 with, our work is not yet complete. Our megaserver team will continue to monitor the performance of the technology on live and evaluate your feedback. We will continue to tweak and update the way the system works until it is providing even better megaservice!

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Rolls Out Megaserver Tech

Arenanet has rolled out the first areas for the new megaserver technology. As reported a couple of weeks ago, today’s patch saw the launch of new megaserver technology in Guild Wars 2, allowing players to fight alongside each other in certain zones regardless of their home world. No more dead zones and no more overflow.

The update is still in the process of being rolled out. The following zones have been activated at the time of this publishing. Check out the forum post here for more details.

The Grove
Heart of the Mist
Black Citadel
Timberline Falls
Southsun Cove
Rata Sum
Straits of Devastation
Fields of Ruin
Brisban Wildlands
Hoelbrak
Iron Marches
Blazeridge Steppes
Dredgehaunt Cliffs
Lion’s Arch
Lornar’s Pass
Kessex Hills
Diessa Plateau
Metrica Province

Guild Wars 2's Megaservers

April 15th sees the launch of the latest content pack from Guild Wars 2, and Arenanet is finally ready to show off the last major feature to be added: Megaservers. Under this new system, players will no longer be separated into separate versions of the same map based on their home world, but rather will be assigned to one of a lower number of worlds based on factors like location and language. The megaserver is developed to create as many instances of the world as are needed, instead of the static number already in place.

What does this mean for you, the player? First off, it means no more hitting empty zones because your world is asleep, and no longer hitting the zone’s overflow location. You are also more likely to be zoned with guildmates and friends. Check out the new megaserver technology when it goes into soft launch on April 15th in beginner areas with the rest of the game coming later in 2014.

(Source: Guild Wars 2)

Guild Wars 2 Reveals…Bobble Heads!

Why does everyone have tiny heads? If you have to ask, you don’t know the answer. Luckily, ArenaNet is here to solve this age-old question, of which you are apparently the only person who has yet to figure out. Starting today, Guild Wars 2 players will find that their heads have been inflated to a more normal size.

The procedure is not optional, by order of the Red Queen.

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