LIVING STORY

Flame and Frost: The Razing

A hybrid army erupts through fiery portals in the Shiverpeaks. This “Molten Alliance” between dredge and Flame Legion has created an enemy powerful enough to massacre any who stand in their way. One ranch, one homestead at a time, they’re wiping out all resistance. The razing has begun.
In Flame and Frost: The Razing, the third installment in this four-part series, we meet Braham and Rox, two fervent Tyrians who believe in doing what’s right, even if it means putting themselves in danger. They’re defending the people and places they love, and they’ll need your help.

For the full notes, keep reading.

Colin Johanson shared some interesting information in a WvW thread yesterday evening. For the next week, due to an attempt to even out our server populations a little more equally, ArenaNet will be allowing free world transfers to servers that are currently medium population. Here is the announcement:

Originally posted by ColinJohanson (Source)

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For the next week, all the medium population servers will be free to transfer to. Might be worth giving one of them a look!

Will incentives like this do more good for our WvW scores than harm? Hard to say, but it’s one option for players to consider.

During this past weekend’s PAX East, ArenaNet held a question and answer session with the press. The subject of future content releases came up quite a bit, understandably, and we found out a few interesting bits of information:

• While we won’t be seeing a Guild Wars 2 expansion in the near future, we may see new skills, new traits, and new maps to explore. These are all possible content additions that may be within future major patch updates.
• Overall, the ArenaNet team is beginning to shift over to a content release schedule that focuses on getting content updates out there as they are developed, not as they are planned for the long term. This is part of the reason why the team has been a little hesitant to announce update details months in advance.
• Most of the new content will focus on endgame and the higher levels.
• The next few months should add additional content for WvWers to enjoy.
• ArenaNet is fully anticipating that WvW players will immediately feel that the new WvW progression system being added this coming week will take too long to complete. This is intentional. The team would rather have a progression system that feels a little slow and then possibly adjust it at a later date than have a system that players race through far too quickly.
• The story of Orr isn’t over yet!
• Custom PvP arenas and spectator mode are both coming in the near future.
• Town clothing will eventually be expanded a bit and will allow players to don it at any time as long as they are out of combat.
• In general, ArenaNet will continue to make content that appeals to all players. Smaller guilds will see improvements to guild missions for this reason. Dungeons will also continue to receive improvements for the same reason.

Head on over to Massively’s PAX writeup for more details!

With a new blog entry this weekend, we find out that there will be new Guild Missions, most aimed at smaller guilds.

An important detail to note is that the Bounty Hunt training mission is automatically available to be built once the guild has researched Art of War Level 3. It costs 300 Guild Influence and 72 hours of research time. Instead of Guild Merits, 3000 Guild Influence will be rewarded. This ought to be perfect for the smaller or less active guild that can’t earn at least 1000 Influence a day.

That’s not all there will be additional content in the form of new targets and new rewards. Find out more at the developer blog entry.

Here is some clarification from the forums:

Origionally posted by AnthonyOrdon (Source)

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I have some clarifications for you guys. The intent of the training mission is to make it easier for your small or less active guild to access other guild missions (or acquire anything else you need influence for). It’s not meant to replace standard bounty hunts or augment influence gain for guilds that can already earn a ton of it. To that end:

• The commendations, rares, and silver are not awarded. That reward is specific to actual bounty missions.
• The training mission can be researched and activated as many times as you like. You can stockpile up to 10. Keep in mind that researching a training mission will tie up one of your research slots and that boosting that research with extra influence will ultimately cancel out a portion or all of your gains from the training mission.

I’m happy to answer further questions, but please remain civil in this thread. Thanks!

Regarding Weapons:

Originally posted by AnthonyOrdon (Source)

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The new weapons are exotics. They have unique skins and are only attainable through guild content.

Ascended weapons may be available from guild content at some point in the future, but that hasn’t been decided yet.

The official information page for the next major Guild Wars 2 update– Flame and Frost: The Razing– is now more than just a teaser page. ArenaNet detailed most of the major features being added in the March 26th update as well as hinted about the new advances for The Living Story that we’ll see as the multi-month storyline continues to unfold. Among the new features headed our way, we’ll be receiving a new progression system in WvW that includes new abilities, a fix to current culling issues in WvW, leaderboards, and new guild bounty hunt targets.

Speaking of features, jump past the cut to find out more info on leaderboards and the new guild bounty targets.

This week we talk with Fable from PRX on why PRX is leaving GW2. We get into the nitty gritty about what Arenanet is lacking in the WvW realm of things. We also hint a bit about Archeage and Wildstar!

In a recent interview with a Russian Guild Wars 2 site by the name of GuildWars-2.ru, Colin Johanson, Jeff Grubb, Leah Rivera, John Smith, Mike Ferguson, and Dave Beetlestone talked about a few interesting subjects. One subject that came up was the game’s economy. John Smith, GW2′s Economist, took on a question regarding price imbalances in the game’s economy. Should prices be more balanced, or does the fact that our economy is global and not world-based complicate any balance issues?

Here’s the question that was asked:

And one more for John Smith — after a decisive victory in the ongoing battle against bots, things with Guild Wars 2 economy became much better. However, it seems that there are still problems. For example – it seems like it is nearly impossible to earn money selling food. We mean that it is mostly more profitable to sell ingredients, than to craft food and sell it. Do you plan to change this? If yes, then how do you plan to change it? In general, what changes can we expect in Guild Wars 2 economy?

Keep reading to see the rather detailed answer.

Isaiah Cartwright had an announcement on the official forums yesterday regarding the loot chests that are a part of the mega boss dynamic events that happen on most maps. At the moment, the special loot chest guarantees a once-a-day rare drop for every character. This is being changed to a new system that will only allow the guaranteed rare/exotic/pre-cursor item to drop once a day per account. Here are the details:

Originally posted by Isaiah Cartwright (Source)

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In the next release we will adjust the way that world mega bosses award their loot. The current chests will stay lootable once per day per character, but each boss’s guaranteed rare item drop will be moved to a separate chest (visually similar to daily achievement reward chests) that can only be acquired once per day across an account.

Our intention with this change is to keep providing rewarding loot for world mega bosses while avoiding overwhelming participation in boss fights (and overwhelming the economy with rares) from players cycling through each character slot for each boss every day.

Martin Kerstein clarified later in the thread that players still have a chance of randomly obtaining rare/exotic/pre-cursor items from the normal loot tables of the bosses. Only the extra, guaranteed drop will be changed.

One of the many complaints across the server spectrum is that native residents are being pushing into overflows due to players guesting to servers hunting for chests. Here is a fix from Anet that is attempting to fix the issue.

Originally posted by Isaiah Cartwright (Source)

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In the next release we will adjust the way that world mega bosses award their loot. The current chests will stay lootable once per day per character, but each boss’s guaranteed rare item drop will be moved to a separate chest (visually similar to daily achievement reward chests) that can only be acquired once per day across an account.
Our intention with this change is to keep providing rewarding loot for world mega bosses while avoiding overwhelming participation in boss fights (and overwhelming the economy with rares) from players cycling through each character slot for each boss every day.

There has been an uproar on the forums, you can follow the conversation here.

Join Junkies Nation in helping our walker get ready for her walk to help Fight Breast Cancer through the Avon Foundation. Junkies Nation is proud to be part of the fight against breast cancer and we hope that you join us with a small donation.

Our walker is committed to participating in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. It’s a big commitment, one that will require me to spend the next several months training and fundraising. But breast cancer is a big disease, one that still affects far too many people, and she is determined to do everything she can to help put an end to it.

This walk is being dedicated to her mother, a breast cancer survivor.

The money she raises will be managed and disbursed by the Avon Foundation Breast Cancer Crusade to help provide access to care for those who most need it, fund educational programs, and accelerate research into new treatments and potential cures. She’ll be just one of thousands of people who will walk up to 39.3 miles over two days, raising awareness promoting education.

She can’t do this without your help, please donate now.

Link to donation page.