Guild Wars 2

I wish the Rules of Conduct would clarify the “swearing” policy. I saw somewhere a note suggesting that reasonable interjections (e.g., frustrated outbursts) would not be strictly regulated, so long as they respect others. As long as a player is mindfully respectful to others, why consider profanity to be anathema at all? Players are often more offensive without profanity than they are with.

ArenaNet is looking to build a community, and that’s going to involve guiding players to work together, both with actions and words. Part of that can be in the game mechanics themselves (e.g., support roles, and automated party-formation for events a la Rift), and part of that can be in the story (e.g., NPC role-models of dignity and honor, setting up players to embrace the chaotic good paradigm a la City of Heroes), and part of that can be in the words and actions of ArenaNet through its blogs, through its forums (Thank you, Gaile Gray!), and through its warning/banning process.

We can teach our players to respect each other. I spent years playing EVE Online and a few weeks playing Rift, and it was evident within hours how the Rift team designed their game to encourage a strong, respectful, supportive community. ArenaNet has certainly taken steps to do the same in Guild Wars 2, and I’d like to see a few steps further! As Jane McGonigal says, gaming can change the world—-and I want to see the Rules of Conduct (and the warnings for breaches of RoC) reflect ArenaNet’s goals to teach players how to be part of a thriving, honorable, supportive community.

Same boat, waiting over a week. Perhaps my voice among others will help clarify the number of us with similar problems that could probably all be resolved similarly! The HoM thread is filled with linked account problems as well.

GW2 account claims “accounts linked” but I cannot use my reserved character names (and HoM is empty). Until I can use my reserved character names, I cannot play my primary character. (At least I can play at all, compared to some here!)

I suspect that my GW2 account is linked to a nonexistent GW1 account, since I used the same e-mail address but not the @plaync username from GW1. The registration process was unclear on that, and the @plaync username did not work for account linking. I only have one GW1 account and one GW2 account.

I recommend that a password check be instated to require all passwords to contain 8 digits, including alphanumeric, capitalization, and punctuation. That won’t fix all of the hacking issues, but it may fix some, and it will make players think more about account safety. To fix some of the linking problems, a linked account should list character names on the account—-perhaps require a character name to be entered along with the account e-mail address before linking is finalized, as a check to say, “Hey, are you sure you’re linking the account that you intended to link?”