With the arrival of a new major Living Story update as we saw yesterday, players often log in and feel a little lost as to where exactly to start. ArenaNet published a corresponding non-spoiler starting guide for Flame and Frost: Retribution along with the update’s official patch notes. There is also a schedule for the event that was added in:

• The Molten Facility dungeon will be available until Sunday, May 12 at 12:00pm Pacific, when the entire Flame and Frost saga will progress to an epilogue. At this point, players will no longer be able to earn achievements associated with the previous chapters of Flame and Frost, nor will they be able to earn the achievement Rage against the War Machine.
• The Flame and Frost epilogue will be active from Sunday, May 12 at 12:00pm Pacific until Thursday May 16 at 12:00am Pacific. The epilogue will mostly consist of conversations and story elements; there are no exclusive rewards to be given at this time.

Check out the full guide here.

Build 4/30/13 April Content Update Release Notes
LIVING STORY
Flame & Frost: Retribution
In secret foundries deep beneath the Shiverpeaks, the Molten Alliance forges deadly new weaponry that combines the fiery power of the Flame Legion with the iron might of the dredge. There, Alliance weaponsmiths test their creations on innocent captives, perfecting their cruel technology until it is ready to unleash on all of Tyria.
In the last chapter of the Flame and Frost series, you’ll strike at the heart of the Molten Alliance with your comrades, Rox the charr and the norn Braham. Take the battle into the enemy’s weapons facilities and defeat a final hybrid menace unlike any Tyria has ever seen!

Molten Weapons Facility

• The Vigil has pinpointed the first of what may be several entrances to the weapons facilities where the Molten Alliance has been creating their fearsome technologies.
• The Molten Weapons Facility is a level-80 single-path dungeon experience where players fight alongside Rox Whetstone and Braham Eirsson.
• All players who enter are scaled up to level 80.
• Entrances to the Molten Weapons Facility change over time as new locations are found.
• Information on the map where the dungeon is located is in the Living World UI on the top right of the screen.
• A wide variety of new and unique rewards are available by defeating the challenging encounters within.
• This content is available from April 30 to May 12.

Last Friday, an interesting blog posted was published on Gamasutra that discussed the downfalls of Guild Wars 2′s economy. In particular, the pre-endgame economy of the game was looked at rather critically. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Experience is flooded, and thus of minimal value in the marketplace. I would anticipate that experience boosts sell poorly here relative to other games since your level is not so critical in the game and leveling up is very easy. Since there is a maximum amount of experience the demand drops to zero as you approach the cap.

Craft xp is scarce, which is good, lending itself to monetization in the form of selling craft boosts. It also makes anything in the item economy that can give Craft xp more valuable.

Coin is scarce, which is good as it makes the primary currency economy tight. This is essential because the game hosts charge about $1.25 per 100 gems, and players can trade gems for coins with each other. The hosts take a cut of all such transactions, which is about 15%. This acts as a money sink on the economy. Since Experience is almost valueless, but coin is extremely valuable, wealth is the primary achievement metric in the game. Being able to purchase this metric makes the game somewhat “pay to win” as the primary game objects are for sale.

With the exception of craft materials, the pre-endgame item economy is broken.

Interesting observations. For the most part the reviewer’s arguments make a lot of sense, although I personally tend to place more value on a game’s endgame economy than the one that’s present while leveling up, especially in a game where it’s fairly easy to level in like Guild Wars 2. What are your thoughts? For the full article, check it out here.

This week we sit down with Mark Jacobs and discuss his Kickstarter project: Camelot Unchained. Our conversation ranges from what to expect in the game to going over his founding principles and getting to the bottom of what he wants his game to become. Camelot Unchained looks to bring old school RVR/PVP ideals to a modern game. While not shooting for a AAA game created to support millions of players; Mark Jacobs hopes to fashion a game for RVR players only. Not sacrificing design to make everyone happy, Camelot Unchained hopes to bring RVR to its niche market.

Keep reading to watch the interview.

We are pleased to announce the latest addition to the Junkies Nation Network: Final Fantasy XIV Junkies! In our long-standing tradition of launching and covering the latest and greatest MMORPGs, we bring to you what we hope will be the cornerstone of the FFXIV news and guide community! We will tirelessly dedicate ourselves to bringing you the latest in news, guides, articles and community coverage; when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV info, look no further!

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will be nothing less than a crowning jewel in the MMORPG-scape. Featuring an all-new world designed from the ground up, Square-Enix has over looked nothing in the rerelease of this flagship installment of its Final Fantasy franchise. From it’s new and robust combat system, to it’s chocobo breeding system and player housing; FFXIV:ARR will have something for everyone.

A new world filled with Moogles, magic, chocobos and Magitek armor await you and we here at FFXIV Junkies will be there every step of the way with you. Be it exploring the depths of the deepest dungeons, taking down Ifrit or just decorating your player housing, we’ll be here with all the latest news and information in this realm reborn.

So please, be sure to bookmark us and follow us on twitter!

On April 30th we’re going to be receiving the final update to the Flame and Frost world event, which is being called Flame and Frost: Retribution. Where will we strike our retribution? In a new dungeon! This new Living Story dungeon is called Molten Weapon Facilities and will feature our NPC comrades Rox and Braham as well as an end boss fight that seems mighty intriguing from the looks of the screenshots. We’re also going to finally be able to create our own custom PvP Arena matches and take a peek at matches in progress using the new Spectator mode that will be debuting in beta form with the update.

In addition, we’ll be getting new World vs. World abilities, new guild missions, and guild siege weapons and back banners that can be used during WvW. For more information, check out ArenaNet’s updated Flame and Frost: Retribution information page. There are also a few screenshots of the new dungeon on there, so make sure to check those out as well!

It seems that ArenaNet has finally found a solution to the good ol’ issue time zones bring to our WvW reset times. Beginning on the next WvW matchup this week, the North American and European Guild Wars 2 regions will experience separate WvW reset times. The North American matchup will reset at 9:00 PM EST and the European matchup will reset at 19:00 GMT. The team hopes that this will finally make it a little easier for guilds across various time zones to be around when it may matter most.

Devon Carver shared the announcement yesterday on the official forums, which can be found here.

We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. Once a month or so I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

I think a lot of us were blown away when ArenaNet turned their April Fool’s Day gag– Super Adventure Box– and turned it into a full-fledged event complete with its own story, 8-bit world and system, novelty items, and rewards. For those of us who grew up in the 8-bit era, the whole thing is a bittersweet trip down nostalgia lane, and ArenaNet, frankly, did an awesome job integrating an 8-bit world into the Guild Wars 2 world we’re already familiar with it. It was a taste of the odd, a taste of the fun, and for most of us, it was refreshing to have a mini-game that gave us so many completely different options to explore. Yes, I will break all those pots and bounce around collecting shinies, thank you very much.

The potential problem with this awesome mini-game distraction, however, is the fact that at the end of the day, Super Adventure Box is still a game within a game. It’s a fun little adventure that distracts us from what we’d normally take part in during our time spent in the game. Distraction can be fun, but at some point, many of us kind of find ourselves stepping back and wondering, “okay, now what?” Can you ever have too many shinies and mini-games within a game?

Just in case you haven’t had your daily dose of Guild Wars 2-flavored 8-bit awesomeness, ArenaNet released a little side project one team member had going– Rytlock’s Critter Rampage! Yes, that’s right, the video game the kid in the Super Adventure Box cheesy TV ad is playing can now be played by all of us. It’s a fun browser-based platformer with multiple difficulty levels starring our favorite butt-kicking charr Rytlock. He apparently doesn’t like cute bunnies much. The game also features four different endings. Watch out for Rytlock difficulty!

To check out the browser game for yourself, check it out here. Also be sure to check out the release announcement.

Watch Draegan and Clementine go at it as they discuss the PVP news of the week across multiple MMORPGs. This week we discuss Camelot Unchained and if it will meet it’s goals and why CU is worth watching. We also touch upon TESO, Wildstar’s Warplots and what makes them interesting to us.

Keep your eyes here for all future MMORPG PVP news on GUILDCENTER. Hit continue reading to watch this week’s episode.