GuildWars Insider Staff Openings: Find out how you can join GWI!
Three weeks from today, gamers from around the world will flood the future world of Tyria, and some will do it with the game’s Collector’s Edition.
We’ve seen them boxed, and we’ve seen what is inside from press materials. But have we seen one opened? Now, you can!
Like many of you, I spent most of my time in Beta Weekend Events staring at damage numbers and stats to develop a firm understanding of the mechanics behind the profession.
…What do you mean no one does that? Your kidding… so I basically wasted my… UGH!
Oh well, I guess its not all in vain. I spent a lot of time playing with Necromancer pets because I ignored them previously. I felt they were gimmicks that helped cover over the flaws of lesser players. In the name of science, I decided to disprove this preconception – I mean, come on, who would completely condemn a play style without so much as a second thought or a first one? Oh, seriously? You mean lots of people do this? In EVERY video game? What a world. Oh well, lets enlighten ourselves with a little research into minions after the break.
Here at Guild Wars Insider we’ve been trying to help the newcomers get comfortable with the game that we all know and love. Last time I gave a brief overview of the humans and where they stand in the world of Tyria. While the humans can be great, there are four other races that you may want to consider when stepping into the world. Today, let’s take a look at the charr, the ferocious antagonists to the humans in Guild Wars 1.
Back in the first Guild Wars game the charr originally worshiped beings known as the Titans. It was through their worship of these mighty creatures that their society centralized around a caste of shamans who in the long run, did more harm to the people than good. Through the shaman female charr were removed from the field of battle and relegated to more domestic roles while the males of the species focused on taking back their lands from the humans. In the events of the Searing the charr conjured powerful magic that enabled them to destroy the Great Northern Wall and overrun the kingdom of Ascalon.
As the events continued to progress the charr paid a horrible price when their gods where destroyed right in front of them as a result of the Flameseeker Prophecies. It was a tragic day for these mighty people as everything they had placed their trust in came to ruin. The shaman attempted to find a new god for the people to worship in order to maintain their control and so they turned to the destroyers. This would prove to be the final nail in the coffin though as the destroyers were ultimately defeated as well! Charr society began to change then and many charr abandoned the idea of worshiping gods in favor of relying on their own strength.
Over the next 250 years charr society developed into a well oiled machine. Female charr, previously relegated to more menial roles, proved to be the turning point in a civil war with the Flame Legion and as a result were incorporated back into the warbands as valuable members.
In modern Tyrian society the charr live and breath for battle. Every aspect of their culture, from “family units” to profession, is centered around the warband and your brother/sister in arms. Charr children are even given over to their own “fahrar”, which is a warband in training, in which they learn the skills that are necessary for their daily survival.
Three of the four legions are currently allied together (the Flame Legion being outcasts) and as a player you will choose one of these legions to join. They are:
Ash Legion: members of this legion are renowned for their skills as stalkers and assassins. Preferring to strike from the shadows this is the legion that works behind enemy lines to disrupt their foe instead of facing them head on. They are led by Malice Swordshadow.
Iron Legion: these are the engineers and craftsman of the legions. They are skilled in the development of weapons of war, working on technology that will help them in their constant struggle against their enemies. Smodur the Unflinching is the leader of this legion.
Blood Legion: this legion is the traditional warriors, they prefer to meet a foe head on, charging into battle with swords raised! Preferring tactics over stealth or technology the Blood Legion is not afraid of any fight. Rytlock Brimstone is a member of the blood legion, but Bangar Ruinbringer is the imperator.
Fierce, resilient, and always ready for a fight, the charr are a very unique race among the peoples of Tyria and one that you very much should consider playing! Next time we’ll look at the norn who share some similarities to the charr society, look almost human, but are very unique as well!
Greetings and well met noble Rangers! It is my pleasure and special honor to welcome you to Companions’ Crossing! I am Julian Evenfeather, Keeper of the Crossing and Master of Companions. In the days, weeks, and months ahead, I will be your guide and captain to help you gain knowledge and wisdom in the expertise of the Ranger profession in Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.
Pull up a tree stump and gather to The Ranger’s Table, because the first round of drinks are on the house!
I was pretty excited about the announcement of the Mobile and Web Apps, from the blog post it seemed like a much more complex project than your traditional MMO Companion App. Will the Apps be ready for launch day?
to which ArenaNet responded to, by saying
For launch we won’t have any GW2 apps available for use for players. However, soon after launch we’ll be launching a robust app development program in conjunction with our community that should allow for the development of some truly spectacular GW2 app and website development. We’ll discuss this more post ship, right now we’re focused on making the release of the game the greatest it can be.
The potential interaction with the game mobile and web apps represent could mean interesting things for the game and its players.
The rest of the interview covers various other topics, from the design choices and possible expansions on the current SPvP format and skill system to the impact that Dynamic Events make and more.
Be sure to check out the full interview here
For the vast majority of players stepping into Tyria, Guild Wars 2 isn’t their first MMO. Many will come from a background of playing other titles where things like static ability rotations are necessary evils. These MMOs often have what I call skill bloat, or the illusion of complexity created by crowding your user interface with dozens of seemingly unique abilities. I say the “illusion” of complexity because for most of the time spent in those games, only a fraction of your abilities are used a majority of the time. Many are completely situational, only coming into play once or twice over an entire gaming session. Others are specifically designed to be part of a rigid sequence, or rotation. They may have their own button and hotkey, but they aren’t really an independent ability in practice. Some skills become completely obsolete, and are replaced by new ones meant to take their place while essentially doing the same thing. To manage all of this clutter, players often resort to macros and addons.
In Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has scaled all of this down into something far more manageable and far more meaningful. Several professions have chain abilities where a single ability slot performs three successive attacks, with each one hitting harder or being more powerful than the one before. You hit the button three times in a row, and each of the abilities fires off in sequence. There’s no need to have each of these split out into three different ability slots, when they’re clearly designed to be used in order.
By tying abilities to weapons, and limiting the number of utility skills you can have at the ready at any given time, ArenaNet offers us a chance at real customization while still providing us depth and complexity. In your travels you may encounter five different warriors who are playing five different ways, and each of them just as viable based on their style of play. By giving most professions the ability to hot swap between two weapon sets, and giving elementalists and engineers the ability to change between attunements and kits respectively, this depth and complexity increases exponentially, all while maintaining a streamlined user interface.
Make sure you didn’t missed the two last subject about your warrior build about the adrenaline generation and your role.
The next subject of the “Build your Warrior” schema: your critical percentage. Having a decent critical chance value has many uses – it obviously helps you deal more damage. Yet, it also helps taking advantage of the discipline trait line that you use in so many builds. It gives so many side effects combined with your traits (bleeding, vulnerability, adrenaline etc), and it definitely gives you the opportunity to equip a defensive amulet.
The warrior has six ways to build critical chance on his own: Amulets, the arms trait line, stuns, fury, Heightened Focus and the Sigil of Intelligence.
Before going deeper into those different possibilities, I would like to introduce one of the last competitive builds Izkimar and I made during the stress test (we are always working on our builds with multiple people at the same time, because having different perspectives is essential) – this is a good example of how to build your critical chance as warrior.
Today, Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee sat down on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch Channel to talk about RPG elements, storytelling, and the fantasy genre in general. This is a collection of the best bits of discussion and information to come out of this stream, and will be updated and added to as the stream progresses.
Aug. 6th. Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee Talk Fantasy, RPG, and Storytelling:
Watch live video from guildwars2 on TwitchTV
- Ree mentioned the fact that the original Guild Wars was left fairly open, which leaves a lot of room for them to develop the story of the Guild Wars universe. As such, this leaves a number of stories open for Guild Wars 2, boding well for the fans of the Mursaat. They’ve also clearly brought in the story of Glint in some way (see below).
- Discussion of the transformation of the Charr from enemies into a playable race. A discussion of the militaristic aspects of the race as well as some of the influences of the Charr race.
- They seemed to have talked quite a bit about the first entry on the Guild Wars Timeline. ” 10,000 BE: Last of the Giganticus Lupicus, the Great Giants, disappear from the Tyrian continent.” Could this be foreshadowing of some sort?
- Bring up the idea of the Fantasy stereotype of restoration; The world of Tyria is broken. We are not going back to a golden age, we are going to forge forward. This is a story of progressive movement.
-” Everyone is the hero of their own story.” A discussion of looking at the good of all the races, which is particularly interesting considering the place of the Charr as the former ‘bad guys’.
- Confirmed: The Asura will take over the world, eventually. ( Not really. This was a central idea behind the creation of the Asura as an aggressive, intellectual race)
- Ree brought up some of the subtle changes they have made to the standard fantasy archetypes. For example, the Sylvari are optimistic and nieve, which is very different from the standard archetypes of pessimistic and ancient Tolkien Elves.
- In the personal story, perspective is based on the race first and foremost. Stories flow out of the defining characteristics of a race, and are then are turned over to the player to develop on their own. People are going to see things differently, but racial archetypes create a framework upon which players can build their own story.
- “Fantasy can be reflective in nature” – Jeff Grubb Lots of discussion of the differences between fantasy and science fiction storytelling,.
- Ree mentions Steampunk. Millions rejoice. Also, She mentioned a ‘Charr tank mission’, and ’Magical Hamster Driven Machines’.
-” All roads lead to Orr” -Jeff Grubb. Great Quote.
So with the necessity of character wipes before launch, all of us will be required to start over again. With that in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to re-evaluate my initial choice of race (Human for my Elementalist) by looking at all the options. After all, each race seems to have quirks and abilities that make it unique, and maybe that should be a factor in deciding what race to go with! (more…)
Video for the many dances of Guild Wars 2 have hit the web after long being kept in secret.
The lineage of the video video is a bit unclear, ripped from a stream evidently, so don’t mind the issues with audio.
[UPDATE]: Since this article was published, all of the videos have been removed. Says the warning, “This video is no longer available beacuse the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement from claimant: [NCSoft]”
The videos were sourced evidently from a beta test, as a watermarked account email address was barely visible in the videos.
All of these dances are initiated by using the /dance emote in Guild Wars 2. Of note – /dancenew, the collector’s edition dance emote from Guild Wars 1, is a command in Guild Wars 2 (as tested in the last beta weekend). No actions are tied to it at the moment, but that’s evidence that there may be more dances to come – specifically for those who didn’t settle to buy just the $60 version of the game.
