Guild Wars 2

Technically the tinfoil hat would view your character as a mount, so it’d be an easy way for us to get mounts in game.

We might even have concept art for it….

<-Troll.

Hey all,

I wanted to quickly give an update on where we stand with upcoming releases for WvW to help give a sense of where we’re at, and set expectations for the coming months. We’re in the midst of finalizing our February release, which I know had been discussed as a potentially large month for WvW additions.

Because of how broad the WvW game type is, and how large testing for features for this area of the game can be we’re going to hold off on any major WvW updates until March to allow a bit more time to test and polish.

March will see the release of the WuvWuv progression system, new ranks you can earn in WvW visible to all other players, and new DubVDub specific abilities/bonuses that you can earn as you rank up. Our team working on WvW will discuss this system in more detail as that date approaches.

Other major systems currently in the works, which will see updates in the future, include:

- Continual work to re-build the way our game loads models and compresses data, to allow for more visible characters/names in WvW in the long run as we build towards removing as much culling as possible from the game.

- Expanding on reasons to be winning in WvW beyond the total weekly score, providing stronger incentives for specific objectives and additional short term goals/rewards for winning minute-to-minute in the WvW maps.

- Providing additional ways for WvW players to earn various power-progression rewards available across the game currently in PvE for participating in WvW content.

- Exploring ways to help get more people playing WvW, as well as dealing with queue issues that come with those inherent issues of player population and demand.

- And of course additional polish and cleanup features to make the general experience in WuvWuv more fun and exciting.

We’ll discuss timelines and more details for the projects for 2013 listed above as they get closer to being finalized and we can safely say we know for sure when they will be released. We’ve recently expanded the staffing on our WvW team to build up and expand this core part of Gw2 even more, and we look forward to sharing with you more details and features in the coming month as this group polishes and grows the WvW experience.

Just wanted to give a quick update on this topic. We’ve completed verifying every update from the november release, and there were zero changes to anything what so ever that would have negatively affected loot in any way/shape/form. We can officially confirm this as an X-files level conspiracy at this point.

We’re in the midst of evaluating every loot table in the game and running massive random roll evaluations table by table, as well as evaluating every system game wide that causes a player to qualify for items to determine if any issues exist in those systems from launch.

Will update again when we have another round of concrete information.

One thing worth checking is what effective fractal level your party is playing at, though nothing about loot rewards in fractals changed, we did change the system allowing what levels of fractal you could play with others which means you might simply be qualifying for much lower fractal levels (and thus loot).

The “level” of loot dropped for a player is the min of fractal scale and reward level. The reward level will still be displayed in the UI as a higher number than the fractal scale which might be cause for confusion, reward wise you’re still earning items based on the actual fractal scale you’re playing in. We display your personal rank because the players are awarded extra karma if there personal rank is over the current fractal scale.

You can add a second person to your list of people getting items, in my two fractal runs since the January release I’ve got an exotic and three rares. So there ya go!

TheAgedGnome.7520:

I’ve noticed recently (since Jan 28th patch?) that the world populations seem to be decreasing, at least for NA servers. There are no Full servers, and where there used to be just a few High compared to Very High, there is now sometimes about 60/40 Very High/High.

I’m not trying to say the sky is falling. I’m just curious. Is this a reflection of population changes? Has ANet upped the capacity per server?

We created more capacity a little while ago guesting went up live to allow more chances for people to move around their home worlds if they wished to do so. In game population wise, you’ll be excited to know login numbers and peak concurrency numbers have been slowly going up or staying consistent depending on the day going on 6 weeks in a row now. We’re very excited to see that =)

TooBz.3065:

ColinJohanson.2394:

There is no such thing as player or account specific random loot rolls/odds. It’s the same for everyone, only magic find can alter your chances.

Thanks for the comment. It helps diffuse the conspiracy theorists. It is correct to say that there is no account specific information that is used as a seed in the random number generator?

That’s the only way that I could see any difference in drops for accounts.

That is correct yes, there is absolutely no account or character specific data used in loot rolls what so ever, can debunk that theory. The only thing you can do to alter a specific characters chances is magic find which is a stat visible on your character from gear/food, for loot drops specifically.

That being said, we’re trying to offset some of that random chance by implementing systems like our new laurel system (and other additions down the road) to help give players more opportunities to earn specific rewards as well over time. This gives the capacity for those exciting “jackpot” moments of getting a big reward, while also helping provide a more clear long term timeline when you can earn the same reward for those who don’t hit the moment-to-moment jackpot since for those who are extremely unlucky, it can be very frustrating.

Other than adjustments to Orr rewards (as covered in the release notes) the only change made in this patch to over-all loot was allowing high level characters who are playing in lower level zones the opportunity to earn top level gear to provide greater rewards. (as also covered in the release notes)

There are no “stealth nerfs”, any changes will be covered directly in the release notes, of which there are none.

There is no such thing as player or account specific random loot rolls/odds. It’s the same for everyone, only magic find can alter your chances.

No changes were made to loot in fractals what so ever, they will be covered in release notes if changes of that nature are made.

SonicTHI.3217:

I thought the daily would be selective (complete 3 objectives out of 5 or similar) to get the reward. What happened to that?

This system for picking from a list for dailies, along with rotating in new more specific achievements will be added in a later release to build on the system going forward. As discussed in the Gw2 in 2013 blog post this is really just the ground work for the systems coming down the road.

The combo killer has been removed from the weekly rotation, clearly not working as intended.

Vol.5241:

ColinJohanson.2394:

critickitten.1498:

And that concern is this: I’m worried that this entire multi-month event is just setting the stage for the first expansion, and that we’ll have to buy the expansion to get the full story. GW1 managed to introduce entire post-campaign storylines of a fairly significant size and did it entirely for free, so I sure hope GW2 isn’t drumming up this multi-month event for additional drama when they announce the first expansion. That’d be awfully disappointing.

Colin, mind putting my fears to rest, please?

This is not a live storyline that requires you to purchase an expansion to discover the ending, no. This month is a small pre-cursor / lead-in to kick off a storyline that will play out over the coming months.

Might not want to use the word precursor, people are gonna freak out! :P

LOL nice catch! Fixed

That should say dynamic level adjustment system, way back in the day we called that the sidekicking system and that snuck through to the website.

How it did so without any of us noticing is an enigma wrapped in a paradox, surrounded in a mystery.

critickitten.1498:

And that concern is this: I’m worried that this entire multi-month event is just setting the stage for the first expansion, and that we’ll have to buy the expansion to get the full story. GW1 managed to introduce entire post-campaign storylines of a fairly significant size and did it entirely for free, so I sure hope GW2 isn’t drumming up this multi-month event for additional drama when they announce the first expansion. That’d be awfully disappointing.

Colin, mind putting my fears to rest, please?

This is not a live storyline that requires you to purchase an expansion to discover the ending, no. This month is a small lead-in to kick off a storyline that will play out over the coming months.

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

PhilipRed.9473:

Just ascended amulets? what about the rest of the gear?

Good question!

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

We will also introduce an additional reward system (or systems) in the future to make these items more accessible to WvW players on top of the laurel system.

The remaining ascended item types will be introduced in future releases, and may or may not tie into the laurel system, TBD.

(Edited to add note about agony)

Thanks for the post and clarification! The ascended items obtainable via laurel, will they at least have the infusion slot? Or just the stats?

You will also be able to put infusions in the ascended gear from laurels, yes!

Eddie.6701:

I’m sure I read somewhere that the achievement points we already have from previous dailies and monthlies will be taken into account with this update, so some of us will already have some currency to spend?

Laurels are only earned through daily and monthly achievements (starting with the feb monthly) and will not reward for previous daily/monthly achievements completed since folks didn’t know this system was coming.

We will however introduce an expanded/new reward system in the future that will reward for other types of achievements, this system will reward previous achievement points earned. (But may require bringing back into line some infinitely repeatable achievements that would bloat/break this system)

PhilipRed.9473:

Just ascended amulets? what about the rest of the gear?

Good question!

Ascended rings will also be available for laurels as well. Back slot items will be made more widely available in the future and will likely tie into a different reward system.

(Please note, the ascended gear purchased for laurels will not have agony resistance built in, since that mechanic is currently unique to progression in the fractal dungeons. They are however statistically the same as any other ascended gear.)

We will also introduce an additional reward system (or systems) in the future to make these items more accessible to WvW players on top of the laurel system.

The remaining ascended item types will be introduced in future releases, and may or may not tie into the laurel system, TBD.

(Edited to add note about agony)

The highlight notes for the release will be out within a few days.

The detailed line by line notes on the day of the release on the 28th.

Keep an eye on the website, maybe even as early as….tomorrow morning =)

Nothing about ecto drop rates has changed what so ever, we’d make sure to call this out if it was changed.

I posted this elsewhere, but just quickly wanted to update where we stand on this issue:

We’re continuing to look into this and have a team of folks sifting through insane amounts of data based on all of your reports. This is an incredibly time intensive and unfortunately mostly manual process while we work on building tools to streamline this in more automated ways so it’s going to take a while.

We’ll update once we have more tangible information to share.

Just to clarify, you’ll no longer be able to use waypoints when a party member is in combat inside a dungeon. This is prevent people from using waypoints to rush and kill bosses or clear areas, which is not intended game play.

All other forms of res remain unchanged.

Pinkus.2860:

Fiontar.4695:

Fozzik.1742:

It all sounds really good. The only thing that is a tiny bit frustrating is the TONS of achievements I’ve already completed and gotten nothing for. I wish I could do them over again once they are worth tokens. =\

Indeed. There better be a way to get rewards on previous achievements, because we can’t reset achievements and veteran players will really be at a pretty big disadvantage.

Either retroactive rewards, or a reset of completed achievements, with the current AP totals not being effected would be fine. I don’t mind having to revisit achievements I’ve already finished, but retroactive token rewards would be nice to have. (I’ve been focusing on achievements recently, now I have to wonder if I should stop that until there is some clarification on this).

They have explained in another post that once the initial system is implemented (Daily/Monthly for crowns), they will retroactively reward players with crowns for their already completed achievements. It WONT be part of the initial release though.

Since I think all of this can be a little confusing until seen in practice, and because some of the details aren’t yet fleshed out, a few points to help clarify:

• Previous daily and monthly achievements will not be reward retroactively with crowns, it will be newly completed daily/monthly achievements only. (January achievement if completed after the release will not give crowns, monthly from February on will qualify.)

• We will develop a separate reward system you’ll see later for other types of achievements, this system hasn’t been finalized, it’s entirely possible this system will not reward the crown currency at all. This system will retroactively reward achievements you’ve already earned (except dailies/monthlies) and may possibly cap out the rewards you can earn from infinitely repeatable achievements, so no one has an unfair advantage.

Hope that helps a bit, more info once we’ve finalized more of the details.

Kain Nosgoth.4218:

Yes we still get jugs and the other stuff.

Forgot to ask if we get crowns from PvP daily and monthly (meaning 80/month not 40). I hope not, I don’t want to be forced into doing pvp just to get my ascended and precursor at 2x speed.

You do not earn crowns for the daily or monthly PvP achievement, and the items you can earn for spending crowns are not intended for purely PvP players. We don’t want to make PvP players feel like they need to do PvE achievements to maximize their daily rewards, or PvE players feel like they need to do PvP achievements to maximize their daily rewards.

We’ll be evaluating progression and rewards in PvP with a separate system that takes players from all sides into account without making them feel like they have to play one part of the game they may not be interested in.

We’ll be evaluating the culling system fixes we do for WvW, and applying as many of them as make sense as possible to all parts of the game absolutely.

I just want to quickly clarify to set expectations, nothing in the blog post, nor nothing we’ve said anywhere has said you will be able to buy precursor items directly for crowns, this is not the case. We’ve simply said we’ll try and find some other places to add a chance to get them to the game until we’ve implemented the eventual precursor scavenger hunt.

Long term we’ll be working on the scavenger hunt concept to track down and earn a precursor item as a direct form of earning the reward. We’ll discuss that in more detail in the future once a design and implementation has been finalized.

Zaxares.5419:

Hadson.5024:

Am I right thinking that we wil receive that new crowns both for daily/monthly and for some open-world activities?

Yes, Colin stated that you will get 1 Crown per Daily and 10 Crowns for a Monthly. This is planned to be introduced during the January update.

The blog also stated that Crowns will be offered for achievements down the track, possibly linked to “open world achievement tracks”, which suggests things like completing Jumping Puzzles, Dungeons and Mini-Dungeons, and maybe even Diving Goggles. However, this will be introduced after the January update.

I just want to clarify, the blog post never said anywhere that rewards for normal achievements outside of daily/monthly achievement will give tokens (crowns). We haven’t finalized what the rewards will be for the expanded achievement rewards, and it’s entirely possible they will have their own unique reward system.

Kos Luftar.9214:

I just completed my January monthly so if the January update includes the achievement changes, does it mean I will lose out on the 10 crowns, or will I be retro actively compensated at least just for this month?

The January monthly achievement, regardless of when you complete it will not reward the new crown currency.

Joiry.2504:

Colin – got any examples of what the new variable dailies might be? Is there going to be much of a time gap between the variable versions and the subsetting (eg 4/6)? Feels like you’re going to push players into daily achievements in parts of the game they don’t necessarily like if there’s much of a time gap between the two.

In going back to that whole “let people play the way they want to play” concept:

We’re going to hold off on adding most of the daily achievements that send you to specific parts of the game until we’ve added the ability to select from a list (like 4/6.) The initial version you’ll see with rotating daily achievements won’t feature too many new achievement options, since we don’t want to do more specific type achievements without giving you the choice to pick from a list of stuff you’re more excited about.

Tommyknocker.6089:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xavori.3768:

The only infinitely repeatable achievement I can think of is Agent of Entropy that you get for salvaging stuff. Playing normally (ie. never going out of my way to salvage stuff), I’ve gotten 140 points out of 4224 total points. I salvage everything that vendors for less than 90c.

If all I lose is those 140 points, I’d be okay with it. However, I’m not sure that I’d qualify as someone who went crazy. It’s 2 points per 200 salvages. So, I’m at about 14,000 items salvaged.

Also, based on the screenshot and the value of dailies (9) and monthlies (35), it looks like you can get a nice amount of stuff each month with the 305 points you’d get for completing 30 dailies and the monthly.

Really looking forward to this.

Just want to quickly point out to get out ahead of it since those numbers are wildly off. You receive 1 crown per daily, and 10 per monthly. (We’re also still tweaking the costs of the items shown in the screen shot, and will continue to adjust them until until the system is released.)

Will we still get the mystic coins along with these new crowns? And will the current karma rewards be effected?

BTW I am loving the direction you are taking in rewarding open world exploration!.

You will still receive all the same rewards you currently get for your daily and monthly achievements, this will be an additional reward on top of it to make it more rewarding.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

ColinJohanson.2394:

jwburks.9735:

Remember the Halloween jumping puzzle? I hope I don’t end up having to do it again.

You won’t lose any achievement progress and will get full credit for all that kind of thing, absolutely. The only stuff that might need to be capped are achievements that extend infinitely that a handful of people have taken to extreme levels, we’ll discuss other options as well but I think if an effort to be transparent, it’s better to get out ahead of expectations so no one is surprised.

Colin, will we still be rewarded for the things like map completetion? I am wondering if I should wait to level the last 3 of my alts and get 100% until after? Will that sort of thing be retroactive also?

You will be yes, no reason to change your play habits in any way when it comes to anything other than if you’re collecting achievements points by progressing massively down an infinitely repeatable achievement. Map complete away!

We haven’t finalized a solution for those in that specific category, I just want to get out ahead and warn this probably isn’t the best use of your time if you were considering it.

Keiran.1896:

ColinJohanson.2394:

The initial version will only be for daily/monthly achievements (this will not be retroactively rewarded.) Later you’ll see a system in place that rewards more expanded achievements points which will retroactively reward all achievements already earned, yes.

However, there are some achievements which are infinitely repeatable currently. It is highly likely so this new system isn’t broken we’ll need to cap those and people who have made insane progress down one of those lines will lose some of their progress to get back to the cap. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go bonkers trying to progress an infinitely repeatable achievement category in anticipation of the release of this system, as you will likely lose some points/progress if you take it to an extreme number.

We’re still working out the details on the system, so that’s about as far into detail as I can go currently.

This guy who posted his screenshoot with 10k achievement points earned by salvaging… he won’t be very happy xD

Yeah we’ll need to figure out something for folks who do fall into that category, I just want to make sure to get out ahead of expectations so people don’t all feel they should now go rush off and have to do this (or other infinitely repeatable achievements.) We don’t want people to feel they need to play the game that way and have it be the best way to be rewarded.

jwburks.9735:

Remember the Halloween jumping puzzle? I hope I don’t end up having to do it again.

You won’t lose any achievement progress and will get full credit for all that kind of thing, absolutely. The only stuff that might need to be capped are achievements that extend infinitely that a handful of people have taken to extreme levels, we’ll discuss other options as well but I think if an effort to be transparent, it’s better to get out ahead of expectations so no one is surprised.

Xavori.3768:

The only infinitely repeatable achievement I can think of is Agent of Entropy that you get for salvaging stuff. Playing normally (ie. never going out of my way to salvage stuff), I’ve gotten 140 points out of 4224 total points. I salvage everything that vendors for less than 90c.

If all I lose is those 140 points, I’d be okay with it. However, I’m not sure that I’d qualify as someone who went crazy. It’s 2 points per 200 salvages. So, I’m at about 14,000 items salvaged.

Also, based on the screenshot and the value of dailies (9) and monthlies (35), it looks like you can get a nice amount of stuff each month with the 305 points you’d get for completing 30 dailies and the monthly.

Really looking forward to this.

Just want to quickly point out to get out ahead of it since those numbers are wildly off. You receive 1 crown per daily, and 10 per monthly. (We’re also still tweaking the costs of the items shown in the screen shot, and will continue to adjust them until until the system is released.)

The initial version will only be for daily/monthly achievements (this will not be retroactively rewarded.) Later you’ll see a system in place that rewards more expanded achievements points which will retroactively reward all achievements already earned, yes.

However, there are some achievements which are infinitely repeatable currently. It is highly likely so this new system isn’t broken we’ll need to cap those and people who have made insane progress down one of those lines will lose some of their progress to get back to the cap. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go bonkers trying to progress an infinitely repeatable achievement category in anticipation of the release of this system, as you will likely lose some points/progress if you take it to an extreme number.

We’re still working out the details on the system, so that’s about as far into detail as I can go currently.

This project was delayed in favor of having the specific folks required to build it skill-set wise working on solidifying the core of the game. You’ll hear more about our ecosystem in the future, but we’re not actively working on this project, in favor of making sure the core game itself is as fun and rewarding as possible.

Edited to add: We’ll discuss what sort of projects we’re doing instead in more detail in the blog post later this week, and even in more detail as the Jan/Feb/March releases get closer.

Munkee.3542:

Colin Today:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

Linsey Murdock A month ago:

I am definitely working on the precursor scavenger hunt!

Just add it to the list.

To clarify since I think these two statements could be confusing without context, Linsey is indeed working on designing the system by which we’d add precursor scavenger hunts to the game. We are not actively implementing that design yet, it hasn’t been finalized, and building it that will involve a much larger team.

No conflicting statements here, as a game designer when they are working on something, usually that means they are designing it, as that is their job.

Good catch and thank you for asking for clarity!

To try and give as much transparency (and visibility) on the answer on this as possible, heads up → I just posted in the other scavenger hunt thread, answer can be found there

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

One of our goals for 2013 will be evaluating all of the bosses and creatures in the game, from open world to dungeons, to try and make them more exciting and fun to fight against.

In general if anything has a really high health pool, it needs to have unique abilities to make it exciting for the entire time, or actually change abilities/tactics as it goes down in health to ensure it stays fun and exciting to fight against.

We realize there are a number of bosses in the game, from the open world to instances that all can be more fun to fight than they are now. We’ll be tackling that this year in part of our goal to make our core game as strong as possible.

Azjenco.9425:

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

We’ll be releasing more information on our blog in the next couple weeks that details our plans for first half of 2013, including more details on the kind of stories and features you’ll see in the January, February and March releases.

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

It’s ok to open it if you got a second one, consider it an extra Wintersday gift. We wanted to be sure everyone got one, even if it meant some people got two (better than some people getting zero)

Never saw this end up on the forums so figured I’d share ->

http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/2012/12/18/guildcenter-121712-special-guests-habib-loew-matt-witter-anet-wvw-devs/

Interview section starts about 25 minutes in, some useful info looking ahead for all of you in there who love WvW. Don’t (or do?) miss the song at the start!

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I really hope that once a city got a visit, the toys / events / activities stay there until the end of the holidayevent. Otherwise I would have to log in everyday which I won’t be able to. I’d miss tons of fun events :-(

This reminds me of the one-time Karka-event, I hope this time it’s different :-/

If you miss any of the days in a specific city, you can re-play that days event all over again once Tixx arrives in Lion’s Arch. He will let you do this the entire time he is in Lion’s Arch, from his arrival there until the Wintersday event comes to an end.

Neve.7134:

Why you don’t fix the fact that on Fractals if someone dcs cannot re enter in Fractal?

We’ve got people working specifically on this issue, it has turned out to be much more complicated due to the way fractals are implemented than we hoped. We’ll have a fix for this soon as it’s tested enough we think it’s clearly solved and doesn’t cause any other issues.

We are at least a week and a half away on a fix for this, possibly longer depending on how long it takes to test it properly, we wouldn’t want to deploy anything that makes the issue worse!

Thanks for your patience, we wish this one was super easy! =)

We’re investigating a way to make sure anyone who participated in the event, but was unable to loot the chest will still get rewarded. More info on this soon as we know (please see the community post in game announcements for more detail)

Feel free to use →

-useOldFov

In your target for the game .exe and it’ll put it back to the old one.