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.

WvW players received an important announcement on the forums yesterday regarding an incoming change to the time that our WvW matches reset every week. The time is being bumped back two hours in order to strike a better match finishing time for both our European and North American Guild Wars 2 communities. The new reset time will take affect this week. Here is the official announcement:

Originally posted by DevonCarver (Source)

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As part of our ongoing effort to improve the game experience with changes big and small, we’ve decided to change the time of the WvW match resets. The current time is 00:00 UTC on Saturdays, which is mighty inconvenient for our European friends who want to get in on the action of the newest match right away. We’ve decided that moving the reset time back by 2 hours to 22:00 UTC on Friday night to try and find a more happy medium for NA and EU servers. This will go into effect beginning this week and will be the new time going forward. Hopefully this makes it easier for you all to jump right in at the start of a new matchup.

Yesterday we finally gained access to one Guild Wars 2 tool that has been requested for quite some time now: Leaderboards! Players can access PvP ranks, WvW ranks, and a list of our top achievers in the game by going to this section of the official Guild Wars 2 site. Leaderboards currently feature rank positions, rank totals, character names, account names in some cases, rank adjustments, and rank deviations. ArenaNet is planning more for the tool as well, which Nate Long detailed in a recent developer blog:

“We’re starting with the top 100 users in PvP and Achievements, but over the next few weeks we’ll ramp this number up and add some different ways to slice the data to help you get the most relevant information possible.”

“We have lots of plans for ways we can expand and enhance this data to include more information about more of the game—the current release is just the first taste of what we’re doing. As always, we love hearing what you have to say, so feel free to post any comments, suggestions, ideas, etc. on the forums.”

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!

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.

Habib Loew shared an informative developer blog with the Guild Wars 2 community yesterday that detailed how the WvW culling issues will be fixed during the next major update. He also detailed a couple of new display options that players will be able to use in order to ensure their computers can handle heavy character model load. Character models will have three display options: High resolution model, lower resolution fallback model, and nameplate only. Players will able to customize the amount of character models showing on-screen as well as the quality of the models using the following UI options:

WvW Character Limit – This controls how many of the reported characters render with a model and how many are rendered only with nameplates.

WvW Character Quality - This controls how many of the characters rendered with a model use the high resolution models and how many use the lower resolution fallback models.

For more information, see the full developer blog. Keep reading to see an important forum response Colin Johanson issued regarding the culling fix.

This week we catch up on the news, notes, and community pulse of what we missed after our week off. We discuss what we think the game is missing and what we hope to see in the elusive “WVW Patch” that should be coming soon.

Here are the scores as posted by Habib Loew as of March 1st. Again not much movement here except we see the expected drop of Sea of Sorrows in to Tier 2 and the rise of Blackgate. If you wish to discuss these scores, you can find the official thread via this link.