Guild Missions: Has the Dust Settled?

Since the implementation of guild missions a couple of weeks ago, the Guild Wars 2 community has expressed a wide variety of, well, concern. A significant portion of small-to-medium guilds have not been able to even start the process of learning guild missions because of the high Influence requirements as well as the fact that the Art of War guild upgrades need to have been unlocked before a guild bounty can be unlocked. Right before the update, we saw a developer blog where smaller guilds were reassured that they would be able to participate in guild missions with ease. Unfortunately, the result is that while players can technically participate in another guild’s mission, they cannot earn the valuable rewards for participating.

This leaves a smaller guild with few options. The guild can merge with another, larger guild, which would work nicely for guild missions, but might harm either guild community. The guild can also actively recruit, which is probably the most effective possibility, but also extremely difficult when large guilds right now already offer a large chunk of guild missions and challenges. The third option is to unlock guild missions using gold. This seems to be the route that many smaller guilds are currently taking, but it’s proving to be a difficult road so far.

A Graphical Primer on How Combos Work in GW2

Bringing Home the Dynamic

One of the aspects of leveling in Guild Wars 2 that players are most looking forward to is the game’s dynamic event system. Let’s face it, questing in a static world gets pretty boring, and the promise of dynamic content– content that actually shifts, changes, and presents danger to us– seems like a breath of fresh air to us after years of plugging away at killing boars and wolves. A game world that actually comes to life based on the acts of players in the area? The ability to make a difference in this world? Sign me up.

The system sounds fantastic on paper, and has proven to be enjoyable in beta for most players who have taken part, but some remain skeptical. Why? Because we’ve heard the promise before. We’ve seen it in other games. Warhammer Online’s Public Quests are advertised as dynamic events, and so is a large portion of RIFT’s content. RIFT is an interesting comparison here, because RIFT’s dynamic content is one of its main focuses. RIFT is about, well, rifts. And huge, planar invasion forces. And zone events that can make an entire map gloomy until danger subsides. Despite all this, however, RIFT’s dynamic content is very different from Guild Wars 2′s. Let’s talk about how.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Code Contest!

Hello fellow Junkies!

When we attended PAX East last weekend we happened to get a few cards that gave us beta codes to use for this weekend! Now, there really is no need to be jealous, because we’re not bragging. On those cards, they gave us extra codes to give to our friends. To get a shot of taking home a code for this weekend’s beta, make sure to follow us on twitter and give us a shout-out, “Hey @GWars2Junkies, I want to get into #GuildWars2 Beta Weekend!“.

We’ll select winners at random, but also making sure you have enough time to download the game and get started!

Char, Human, and Norn Racial Elite Skills!

The guys at The Yogscast took the time to give us an in depth overview of racial elite skills. Not all of the races have been available for any of the closed beta events. The two unique races, Sylvari and Asura have been left out thus far. Giving us something to still look forward to seeing. Char, Human, and Norn however have several options to choose from.

The Loss of the Trinity: Confusion, Denial, Anger or Acceptance

There has been one constant in MMOs for the last eight years.  There have been casual MMOs, raiding MMOs, MMOs in space and MMOs in the future but, through them all, the Holy Trinity has been a constant.  The concept of the tank, the healer and the DPS has been ingrained in our heads over years of constant use.  When we face a boss, be it with four of our friends or nineteen of them, it has almost always been with a tank leading the way, a healer healing him and DPS killing the boss.  Sure, there have been a few exceptions, the Shade of Aran from Karazhan being a notable exception, but the exceptions have been few and far between.  The Trinity has always been there.

Guild Wars 2 Brings Something New

The MMORPG genre is growing faster now than ever before. From Everquest to World of Warcraft, Warcraft to Age of Conan, and in 2011 we saw two major titles released in Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic. With the clock beginning to tick in 2012, there are multiple AAA titles scheduled to be released, but nothing grabs our attention more than Guild Wars 2. With the massive success of it’s predecessor, our expectations are sky high.

Last year we got our hands on the game at PAX Prime, and all we can say is that our expectations aren’t high enough!

Guild Wars 2 End of Year Update

Eric Flannum, Lead Game Designer for Guild Wars 2, gives us an end of the year update:

Hey, there! It’s time for another update on some of the new things we’ve been working on. Jon and I have a lot to talk about this time, so I’ll get started with our achievement system before I hand things over to Mr. Peters, who’ll talk about some more subtle combat refinements as well as recent changes to the thief.

We’ve spoken about and even shown achievements briefly in the past; however, we’ve never really spoken in much depth about the system.

The first thing you’ll need to know is that there are now three different types of achievements located in your achievement panel. First, there is what we refer to as just “achievements.” You’re probably familiar with these: they tend to be similar to the achievements in the original Guild Wars and many other games, which means they tend toward things that are difficult or time consuming to achieve. These types of achievements are designed to reward long-term progress and are all account based. They include things like the Centaur Slayer achievement, which tracks how many centaurs you’ve killed, as well as achievements specific to each of the different story arcs. Achievements encompass all aspects of the game from WvW to PvE to PvP, and even noncombat activities, such as trading and leisure games. Each achievement is divided into tiers, and every tier you complete awards you with achievement points. As your achievement points accumulate, they are reflected in your account’s achievement score. This score is easily viewable in both the friends and guild panels and is an easy way for you to compare your overall level of achievement progress with your friends and guild mates.

Follow the link above for the full update.