Guild Wars 2 Info

[chaos5061]

The Living Story in
Guild Wars 2


Hey, everybody! I’m Angel McCoy, the narrative designer assigned to guide the Living Story inGuild Wars 2. I’m here to give you a little introduction to this content, what it means to the world of Tyria, and how you can get the most fun out of it. We’ve been working hard on it for several months, and we’re super excited to share it with you! The Living Story team (and all of ArenaNet) really hopes you like it.
What is the Living Story?

The job of the Living Story team is to bring the world to life. On an ongoing basis, we’ll spin out story threads that will introduce you to new heroic characters, mysterious plot twists, and dramatic moments that affect the world.

“…we’ll spin out story threads that will introduce you to new heroic characters, mysterious plot twists, and dramatic moments that affect the world.”

You’ll discover new dynamic events—some that will change Tyria—and you’ll have the opportunity to take part in history in the making.
If you love interactive stories and find the inhabitants of Tyria interesting, then this content is for you. It’s designed to change up what’s happening in the world and to add to the evolving story and challenge of the game. None of this is required content you need to play in order to level your character. But, fair warning: once you meet these characters and learn their stories, you may find yourself logging in more regularly to see how it’s all turning out! (Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Hee.)
The Living Story is simultaneously transitory and permanent. As the story arcs play out, the tale evolves. Each portion of the Living Story narrative will only be available for a certain period of time, yet it will have repercussions in the world and upon the people living in it. The occurrences in the Living Story leave their mark—both scars and flowerbeds—and these wounds and blessings are permanent.
Themed Story Arcs

Story arcs will play out over time. You won’t necessarily know how long an arc is, and some could take months to fully unfold. We’re weaving many plot threads together to make one big cohesive world, a river of story, a living world. Watch GuildWars2.com for more information on upcoming story arcs.

In the current arc, “Flame and Frost,” we started modestly on January 28 with teaser content that begins to make small changes to the world.
You can participate by volunteering to help the refugees streaming down from the Shiverpeaks in both the Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. These refugees have lost their homes and their loved ones. They’re arriving in the Black Citadel and Hoelbrak with little more than the clothes and battered armor on their backs. These cities are struggling to feed and care for the influx of refugees. The leaders in these cities are considering how to mobilize a response, but for the moment, chaos reigns, and great danger brews just below the surface. One day soon… oops! No spoilers!
New Characters

You’ll meet new characters in the Living Story who may return periodically to adventure with you. You’ll get to know heroes and villains who have been designed to add an air of mystery, mischief, and drama to Guild Wars 2. Some of these new figures are deeply connected to characters you’ve already come to know and love (or hate), and many of those well-known personalities will appear in our story arcs.

For example, at some point over the next few months, you will meet a Blood Legion soldier named Rox who is training with Rytlock in the Black Citadel. She and Rytlock will be responding to the refugee situation and will need your help to secure Blood Legion assets in the danger zone.
Not Holiday; Life

The Living Story is different from our in-game Holidays or major events, because it’s based around an evolving storyline rather than a single festival. We’ll begin by introducing plotlines in our regular game releases. In this way, you may only get a portion of the story now—a taste, a nibble, a prelude— but as the story unfolds, you’ll get meatier content and get a chance to solve the mysteries we introduce earlier. We’re in it for the long term, and we hope you will be too.
Because The Living Story is designed to be an organic experience, the story content will, at times, proceed with much less fanfare than our holidays or major events. You’ll witness the citizens of Tyria living their lives, fighting their foes, making good and bad decisions, and paying the consequences for them; and if you choose, you can be the friend who sees them through their darkest hours and who joins them in their celebrations.

Gameplay Support

We’re introducing a new Achievement category—Living Story Achievements—that will help guide you to all the dramatic bits we place in the world for you. These achievements will give titles and rewards specific to them.
The gold stars on your map and the directions in your Living Story Achievement pane will guide you to where you need to go and to the characters you should approach.
In addition, each city has hired heralds to spread the latest news to its citizens. These rumor mongers, stationed at two key locations in each city, will help you find the most current Living Story events, so you always know where to go to find the latest story moments.
Flame and Frost: Prelude

This month, you’ll be playing through a light preamble, a teaser intended to whet your appetite for the rest of the story. This content will stick around for a couple months, so you have plenty of time to play it before it goes away, and we’ll be adding to it as well. Learn more at the Flame and Frost page on GuildWars2.com.
See you in my Dream!

[chaos5061]

Mandatory Password Change is Coming


Account security is a very important topic for us. As ArenaNet president Mike O’Brien mentioned in this article on account security, one of the ways we protect your account is by creating a blacklist of passwords that have been used in the past by hackers to scan for accounts. As this blacklist has been very successful for protecting newly created accounts, we have asked all our existing customers to change their passwords.
In fact, for those customers with passwords chosen before the introduction of blacklisting, we have displayed a red banner in the launcher for the past three months, encouraging (but not requiring) a password change. Starting on February 7, 2013, we will change it to a requirement.
Thus, if you are still using a password that was chosen before the introduction of password blacklisting on September 12, 2012, you will need to choose a new password.
Of course, there’s no advantage in waiting until February 7. If you have an older password, please visit the account management site and change it today.

“If you have an older password, please visit the account management site and change it today.”

When you change your password, the system won’t allow you to pick your previous password, or any password that we’ve seen tested against any existing or non-existent account. Thus, after changing your password, you’ll be confident that your new password is unique within Guild Wars 2. However, your password only stays unique if you then don’t use it for other games and web sites, so please, if you value the security of your account, use your password exclusively for Guild Wars 2.
We will roll out the mandatory password change over time, so you might not be asked immediately on February 7 to change yours. Regardless, now is a good time to choose a new, unique password.
If you have trouble thinking of a new unique password, now that millions of possible passwords are blacklisted, we advise you to build a password out of four random words, as shown in this comic strip. Use a password like “correct horse battery staple.” As the comic strip calculates, even if everyone selects their words from the same 2,000 most common words, that’s still 16 trillion possible passwords.
So remember: keep it secret, keep it safe, and we’ll see you in-game!

[chaos5061]

Don't forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a Marvel Heroes Closed Beta Key. Go here http://www.zygorguides.com/forum/sho...-Later-Tonight and read the rules in the second post and then make a post in the thread for your chance to win. For everyone who doesn't know Marvel Heroes is a ARPG type game like the Torchlight and Diablo Series with Marvel Characters like Spiderman Wolverine and others from all the different Marvel comics.

[chaos5061]

Also have a contest running for a Defiance Closed Beta Key. You can find it here http://www.zygorguides.com/forum/sho...8036#post88036 read over the rules and make a post in the thread to enter. If you want to know more about Defiance read the 4th rule in the first post and I explain what some of the game is about.

[chaos5061]

Hello All,
We will be having a sale in the Gem Store from Monday February 4th through Sunday February 10th PST. The following items will be on sale:
Crafting Booster – 20% off

• Regularly: 1 for 150 and 5 for 550
• Sale: 1 for 120 and 5 for 440

Instant Repair Canister – 30% off

• Regularly: 1 for 70 and 5 for 300
• Sale: 1 for 50 and 5 for 200

Mystic Forgestones – 20% off

• Regularly: 5 for 250 and 10 for 450
• Sale: 5 for 200 and 10 for 360

Enjoy!

[chaos5061]

More and More Contests. Running for a Neverwinter Closed Beta Key. You can find it here http://www.zygorguides.com/forum/sho...losed-Beta-Key read over the rules and make a post in the thread to enter.

[chaos5061]

We are doing some maintenance work in 60 minutes.

This might affect your connectivity.

[chaos5061]

We will be taking down the commerce system for maintenance at 5:00 AM PST (13:00 GMT) on February 7th for 3 hours. The following systems will be affected by this maintenance:
• Gem Purchasing
• Buy Guild Wars 2

[chaos5061]

Greetings,
If you read or post on our official forums, you may have noticed the +1 button next to each post. Recently, we have updated this system with more features and visibility for you, the players. You can find the full forum update notes here. This post is to familiarize you all with the new features in our +1 system and how they affect you.

Added a link to user profile pages which shows posts that a user has +1’d, ordered such that top-most is the most recent

Added a link to user profiles to show highly rated posts ordered descending by score

When visiting a user’s profile page, you can view all posts that user has +1’d starting with the most recent, or see all of their own posts that have been +1’d by others sorted descending by score.
Both of these options are opt-in, because we respect your privacy and don’t want to force you into sharing information you are not comfortable with sharing. As such, you may not see these links in other user profile pages immediately. You will always see these links on your own page, regardless of your settings.
To allow others to view these pages on your own profile, click on your display name in the upper right of the forum, then on the following page, click “Edit Profile”, check the last two boxes and click “Save changes”.

Popularity is divided between popular and very popular as well as per-thread and forum-wide

What this means is that there are two levels of popularity, categorized “popular” and “very popular”. Currently these are indicated by a thumbs-up icon that appears next to the +1 button. If a post is very popular, the thumbs-up earns a star that appears within said icon.
Our future plans include updating these indicators to something more visually striking. Until then, this is how you will know if a post has achieved popular status.
There are also two levels in which posts are gauged for popularity, on a per-thread basis and forum-wide. Forum-wide popularity takes into account +1s from within a set time period across the forum. Per-thread popularity takes into account all +1s in a thread. Visually, a forum-wide popular post will have a red underline beneath the thumbs-up icon.
Over the next few weeks, we will monitor thresholds against post-scores and make adjustments as we see is necessary to ensure accurate display of popularity indicators. Going forward, if you read a post and like it, press that +1 button. It’s how you let us, and other players, know that you liked what you read.

[chaos5061]

We will be doing scheduled server maintenance on Wednesday February 13th from 12:00 AM – 4:00 AM PST (08:00 – 12:00 GMT). During this period players on both North American and European worlds will not be able to log in. Forums, register.guildwars2.com, and buy.guildwars2.com will also not be available during this time, and the Black Lion Trading Company will not be available until 6:00 AM PST (14:00 GMT).

[chaos5061]

We’ve updated the game for routine maintenance only. No content changes were included.

[chaos5061]

Introducing the New Spirit Watch PvP Map


In the upcoming patch, you will be able to play our latest PvP map—Spirit Watch! This norn-themed map, which is surrounded by sheer cliffs, features shrines to the Spirits of the Wild and a new secondary objective.
In this map, we combine our established conquest gameplay with intense capture-the-flag gameplay—except instead of a flag, players will battle over the glowing Orb of Ascension! Opportunities for vertical play abound in Spirit Watch, with constant battles raging across bridges, valleys, and cliff sides. The map also provides plenty of brawling opportunities as players race to the center for control of the Orb.

Here’s how it works: At the beginning of each match, the Orb of Ascension spawns at an altar, located in the center of the map. In order to pick up the Orb, a player will have to successfully complete a very short commune time. The player carrying the Orb will want to take it to any of the three capture points —represented as shrines to Wolf, Raven and Bear—located up in the surrounding cliffs.
While carrying the Orb, the player still has access to all of their skills, but has a 40% movement speed penalty and is unable to stealth or gain swiftness. If they teleport or become downed, they will drop the Orb.
Once the Orb of Ascension is brought to a shrine capture point, the Spirit of the Wild at the shrine ascends, immediately scoring bonus points for your team. If it’s a capture point that your team controls, your team scores 30 points; if not, your team scores 15 points instead. Also, if the Orb is brought to an enemy point, in addition to the bonus points scored, the capture point will instantly become neutralized! The Orb resets to the altar 10 seconds later.

That’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at Spirit Watch and are as excited for the new map as we are!

[chaos5061]

Guild Wars 2 Community Meet and Greet in Seattle on March 1


We’re having a meet and greet for Guild Wars 2 fans at the Tap House Grill in downtown Seattle, WA on Friday, March 1. If you’re in town for Emerald City Comicon or if you’re local to the Seattle area, stop on by—we’d love to see you there!
Members of the Guild Wars 2 development team and members of the community team will be there to hang out with fans during the event. Light munchies will be served and we’ll have a couple of drink tickets for attendees.
We’ll host a special Q&A session where you’ll have an opportunity to ask members of the Guild Wars 2 development team your burning questions about recent game updates, the Living Story, and anything else you can come up with.
It wouldn’t be a proper meet and greet without prizes, so we’ll be raffling off Guild Wars 2 branded mice and headsets from the awesome folks at SteelSeries.
Here are the details.
When: Friday March 1, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Where: Tap House Grill, 1506 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98101
Who can attend: This event is open to anyone 21 and over. No tickets or reservations are required, but we are limited to the capacity of the venue.

[chaos5061]

We’ve updated the game for routine maintenance only. No content changes were included.

[chaos5061]

Bag Slots and Bank Tabs are 20% off in the Gem Store through February 26!
Reminder: take care that you do not purchase more bank and bag slots than you can use! Your character can have up to 8 bank tabs (including your original bank tab) and 8 bag slots (including your original Starter Backpack).

Chaos5061 Note: Also remember that bank is shared between characters so after you max it you don't go and max it on another character. Only one you have to max for each character is the bag space.