Gathering Storm Patch Notes Up

The patch notes for the Gathering Storm are up on the forums. Head over and check them out. The patch is now live. Currently, downloading. I was getting good speeds but now I am getting connection problems.

Some highlights from the patch notes,

Two new achievements, The Gathering Storm and Lost and Found, have been added to the Living Story category.

The refugees’ oppressors are becoming more aggressive and have shown their faces in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. The refugees need qualified adventurers even more!

Camps in Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel have become crowded. As a result, the refugees have begun moving on to Lion’s Arch. 

Refugees arriving in Lion’s Arch have lost on the road precious objects from their homes. The objects will be difficult to find, but the refugees are more likely to tell their stories to the helpful adventurer who recovers their possessions.

Sounds like a good ramp up for the Living Story. I will have updates here when I find them in game.

You can now select the five daily achievements from a list that you will complete to receive the daily reward. 

You can now select which achievements are tracked on the right hand side of the screen through the Achievement tab on the Hero panel.

Added new rewards to the laurels vendors in all major cities.

I have been looking forward to this. The new rewards are just icing on the cake. Along with this comes an expanded selection of daily achievements such as do three jumping puzzles or score points in keg brawl.

Many of the encounters in the Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable have been revamped, including all three final boss fights.

There is more details on this in the patch notes. If we can not do Guild Missions today then I will be running AC tonight to check out the changes.

A new test version of our advanced event scaling algorithm has been applied to four high-level, regularly played events to help us monitor the feasibility of this system in the live environment. This new scaling algorithm dynamically increases the difficulty of events by using the current system of increasing the difficulty of existing creatures, while also adding a new system that substitutes creatures of lower difficulty with different creatures as the event scales up. If successful, this system will be slowly extended to other events across the game during 2013.

Firstly, I wonder which events have been changed. Hopefully they let us know instead of just leaving it to speculation. Secondly, this actually sounds awesome. I hope it works out well so events can accommodate more people.

Next are notes about item preview on the Trading Post, which is nice, but even better is the ability to preview the weapon in different states; sheathed, drawn, or by itself. Next is notes about the Guild Missions and new Guild Content. Nothing new to really note here that I didn't already mention here.

Credit for killing creatures is now easier to receive in situations when many players are attacking a single target. 

Increased the loot rewards on many world boss chests, including the chests in Orr temples and the dragon chests. 

Fixed a bug on certain world boss chests that was causing them to drop fewer rewards than intended. These chests can now only be looted once per day, to encourage players to fight multiple bosses and spread out across the world.

So, more loot, more loot, more loot less often. I will certainly take that. I have often thought that reducing the frequency of the dragons would be a good idea. My thought was to have the dragons spawn once a day at a random time. I like the above idea of only allowing players to grab the chest once per day. This lets them put better stuff in it and allows people of all time zones to enjoy their loot every day. I just worry that their won't be enough people willing to help if they have already received their chest for the day.

Daily achievement tracker now preserves expansion state.

Nice quality of life change.

Fixed most cases of a bug where players would be stuck auto-running when attempting to pick up a bundle.

I know this is a big one for a lot of people. Some guildies went nuts reading that one as did some people on twitter.

Lesser air elementals now have legs and a tail.

First thing I am doing when I get in game is checking that out. I can not even imagine what this will look like.

Black Peppercorns no longer drop from Mature Herb and Verdant Herb nodes.

Will price go up on TP? Who knows. I'll probably buy a bunch when I get in game just in case.

Increased the drop rate of Passion Flowers from Passiflora Vines.

This might also be a good thing to harvest after the patch to take advantage of the high prices before they fall.

Increased the drop rate of exotics in the profession gear boxes sold by laurel vendors.

Another nice change. Might make these boxes worth it. Sounds like we are getting a lot more loot this patch. 

Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.

If this means what I think it means this will be a really nice update. What I think this means is that when you enter stealth the monster will no longer untether and reset, but will instead wait for you to come out of stealth.   Which will be nice as I have had creatures reset and heal on me before.

Cleaned up hit detection for melee attacks targeting inanimate objects.

I hope this finally fixes the issues we have all been experiencing with this since launch.

Changed the orange swords combat marker [in WvW] to show only if more than 25 people are in combat in the area.

I think it used to show up with five or more people. Changing this to a higher number is excellent and will hopefully break up some zergs.

Fixed an issue that allowed NPCs with Righteous Indignation to still take condition damage.

Was always wondering when they would fix this. Will make choices to take the supply camps much more strategic.

Well my game is patched and those are about all the highlights I wanted to mention. Time to play.

Post Patch Redposts

There are some post patch red posts that I wanted quickly take the time to catch everyone up on. Some of these posts clarify how the most recent patch effected the game and others talk of the future. I like to round up all the red posts here every once in a while so you guys can avoid the forums and still get the news.

Two Team PvP Tournaments Cost Reduced

Tyler Bearce posted the following to the forums regarding the cost of the new paid tournaments,

In response to your feedback, we will be reducing the ticket costs for this week’s Paid Tournament event from 3 tickets to 1! In addition to the other tournament rewards, winners will receive 1 tournament ticket back. Thanks for your input. Hope to see you in game!

If you are looking to give structured tournaments a try this week seems like the perfect time with the cost reduction.

Combo Killer Daily Disabled

Colin Johanson had the following to say,

The combo killer has been removed from the weekly rotation, clearly not working as intended.

A lot of people were saying they had a problem with this, however, as I said in my previous post I had no issues what-so-ever. Actually, I had a lot of fun with this one. When I first saw it, I quickly started thinking of ways that I would be able to get combos. I got my first couple by dropping my Elementalist's Fire Ring around enemies that I saw other people attacking. This got me one or two, so I decided to start up a group to get it done. I had to explain to some people how to combo off my fire field, but most of them got it after a couple tries and the whole party was done in 15 minutes. I thought this was a great way to bring people together especially if they are just going after the achievement. Hopefully, they fix it up and bring it back.

Star Icon a Bug

If you are one of the people wondering what that star icon under your dailies achievement tracker in the top right of the HUD is, Tyler Bearce has an answer.

A number of people have asked what the star icon, underneath the new Daily Achievement UI, in the upper right corner is. The star is related to the week long paid PvP tournament change, but wasn’t supposed to be displayed. It will be fixed in the next patch.

Good to know. I thought it was going to have something to do with the new living story events and was waiting for stuff to appear here. Guess not!

Town Clothes Headgear Disappeared!

Perhaps you noticed your missing Town Clothes headgear? It's another bug introduced by the latest patch.

It would appear that the Hide / Unhide option accidentally went away for town clothing headgear in the latest build, so the setting is currently stuck at whatever you had set it to prior to the build. We’re now tracking the issue.

Living Story Clarifications

Last night I could not find any of the new events in Diessa Plateau and I was wondering where they were. Seems like the Living Story will be released in stages slowly seeping out across Tyria. Bobby Stein took to the forums to explain the particulars of this system.

The Flame and Frost story content progresses over time. You will not see everything today, tomorrow, or even the next day. 

Expect subtle changes at first. Maybe you’ll encounter some familiar characters. Perhaps you’ll be introduced to some new ones. You might see a new structure where there wasn't one before.

The Living Story content is initially about the thrill of discovery. We’ll put some markers on your map, maybe send you a letter, or parcel out details through certain characters, but the rest is up to you.  

As the weeks progress, you’ll notice bigger changes in the world. New events may appear. Plots will advance and characters will develop.

This makes sense! This is kind of what I thought the dynamic events would be like at launch. This is interesting and I am looking forward to getting back in game and exploring this story now that I understand how it will work.

And indeed when I logged in today I received a mail message telling me that the Heralds have arrived.

Mini Patches Continue

There have been a couple more mini patches since the big patch dropped on the 28th. Here are some of the highlights,

Changed all non-copper karma gathering tools to have a level restriction.

I was wondering how people were harvesting the Rich Orichalcum node in Southsun without being level 80. Now I know. This has got me thinking about how this will effect the long term price of Orichalcum. I may have to invest some gold into this as I know a lot of people were harvesting the rich node using low level alts. Now the rich node is gone as is the ability to farm Orichalcum with low level characters. There has already been one large spike, maybe there will be more.

Magnetic Grasp: This ability now immobilizes the target that it strikes. It is now a large Projectile finisher, and damage is now split between this ability and Magnetic Leap.  

New skill – Magnetic Leap (Earth Skill 3): Activate this ability to leap to an enemy that’s been struck by Magnetic Grasp.

Not much changed here. The skill was simply split from one spell that you cast then channelled for the leap, to now where they can in individually cast.

Fixed a bug that did not remove the Lava condition from players who died in the pools of lava at the final boss in the Volcano Fractal.

What was happening was people would get killed by falling into the lava, or getting knocked into it. When you enter the lava it deals damage to you by putting a debuff on you. Apparently this debuff wasn't going away, even after the whole party would wipe and reset. I read some horror stories on the forums. Good to know they were on top of this.

 Adjusted Orr Undead loot drops

Sigh... vague comment is vague!

WvW Rating Reset

Habib Loew popped on to the forums to provide details about a planned rating reset for WvW. They have some good reasons for doing so and it sounds like it may increase a lot of people's excitement for WvW.  Now servers will have to fight for the places in the rankings again. Here is what Habib had to say,

In the run up to the end of free world transfers we saw large population changes as people settled in to their home servers. This means that the WvW teams being fielded by many of the worlds are now dramatically different. In recognition of this fact, and in light of the increased population stability that comes with paid transfers, we feel that this would be a good time to reset the ratings of all the servers. A reset at this point will allow the rating & ranking system to more quickly and correctly rate these (effectively) new WvW teams.

So, the idea behind this is to quickly correct all the server ratings now that server populations have settled down and people can not jump ship. He goes on to explain that this weeks matches will continue to play out and the rankings at the end of the week will determine the preliminary rankings for the new server spread. On Friday, February 1st when the new matches start up the rankings will be set back to 0 and everyone will be on equal footing.

But wait, there is more! They are also going to change some of the math behind the scenes. Mike Ferguson came out and game some more details.

Over the last couple of months we've seen that when worlds experience dramatic changes in their ability to field a consistent fighting force for whatever reason, it can take quite a while for them to work their way through the ratings until they end up in a match that suits them better. In a lot of cases, some worlds took multiple matches to work their way through a single tier even after a series of blowouts. We really don't like that, so one of the goals for updating the math behind the ratings is to try and reduce how often we experience the repeated blowouts that can come from that sort of situation and get those teams through the rankings quicker.

We are promised that details of the math will come in the future, but for now we get an idea of what there plans are. The idea is to allow servers to get into the match ups that suit them best, faster. I know my server, Gates of Madness, had to suffer through a couple weeks where we did not stand a chance due to large population shifts. The idea seems solid, but we will have to wait to see.

Both posts contain more minor details. If you are looking for those follow the links to the posts above.

~~~~

I hope you found some of this interesting. I will try to get my first review of the Flame and Frost content up later today. For now I have to get in game and get my daily Laurel.

New Events Start Today

Just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up. Regina Buenaobra, NA Community Team Lead, posted the following on the forums. She contained this text in spoiler tags, as I suppose this information is available in game some where by talking to NPCs.

Check in with the heralds for updates. There are hints of things to come already in the game. 

The playable Living Story content will start appearing tomorrow (January 29) at around noon Pacific Time in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau. When the events start in Diessa Plateau, you’ll be sent an in-game mail letting you know about it. However, if you’re already logged in when that happens, you need to change maps to receive it.

I was wondering where these events were! Good to know that they are still coming. Looking forward to this story starting. I am currently levelling my Mesmer in Diessa Plateau seeing what I can find out.

I am having a blast playing around with these new features and will have more details later today. They have really added some new spice to the game. The new hero panel is fabulous, and the new daily achievements are nice. Last night when the patch launched one of the daily achievements was "Combo Killer". Apparently a lot of people were having trouble with this one. I started a random group and got it done in about 15 minutes just laying down Fire Ring on my Elementalist and instructing people how to combo through it. Either way Colin said on that forums that it has been removed until further notice.

Anyway, I want to get back to playing. I will have a more detailed review of some of the new features later today once I have had the chance to fully experience them.

For now, here is a link to the patch notes, including two mini fixes that went in after the main patch. Also, check out Dulfy for detailed information about some of the new features including, information about the new ascended gear, and the laurel system.

Fire and Frost patch notes up!

The new patch notes have been posted up. Check them out!

Seriously, these patch notes are huge. They are well organized though so you can find what you are looking for quickly. They are far to large for me to provide a decent summary, so head over and read them for yourself. I will provide some reviews of the new content as I get to play it. I am excited!

Expect a long patch. I have been going for over half an hour and I am only at 30%.

Redposts and Blogposts

Over the last couple weeks there have been quite a few posts in the forums and on the official Guild Wars blog about upcoming events and changes to the game. I would like to take the time to catch you up on the stuff that went down while I was not posting.

Black Lion Trading Post Sale

Firstly, lets start with the most recent stuff from the blog posts on the main page. If you did not know there is a sale going on right now in the Black Lion Trading Post. The sale will be on for the next three days with each day featuring three new sale items.

To celebrate the dawn of a new year in Tyria, we’re chopping prices in the Gem Store for three days from January 4-6! During each day of the sale, we’ll feature three different items on sale at drastically reduced prices! All sales begin at 12 AM Pacific and last for 24 hours.

Fractals of the Mist Changes

Next up we have changes, much needed changes, coming down for Fractals of the Mist. The changes are two fold; firstly, disconnected players will be able to rejoin, and secondly, players of different levels will be able to play together and still work towards improving their fractal level. Don't take my word on it, check the article or read the handy quotes below.

Currently, if a party member disconnects from a fractal dungeon run, they are unable to rejoin, which can cause a lot of issues for that player and their party. Our new system will allow players who disconnect to reconnect to their party and jump back into the dungeon.

...[W]e’ve modified the party-level restrictions to allow players of any fractal level to group up. At party creation, players can choose any fractal level up to the highest fractal level in the party. Upon completion of the fractal run, all players equal to or lower than the chosen fractal level will have their fractal level increased by one. All players above the chosen fractal level will gain karma, but their fractal level will not increase. Rewards from the fractal will be based on players’ personal reward level as long as the reward level is equal to or lower than the chosen fractal level.

These are much needed changes that should have been included when the Fractals of the Mist went live. The Anet team is promising to role these changes out at the end of January. This is a little late for me. I have really lost interest in running fractals due to these two problems.

Mesmer Nerf / Exploit Fix

Next up lets head to the forums. Again, starting with the most recent stuff. Firstly, when the Wintersday stuff was removed and the Mesmer class received a nerf to help close up an exploit. See the patch notes here.

Mesmer Shatter skills now share a global 0.25 second recharge, to prevent multiple shatter effects triggering on the same illusion. Shattered Strength: This trait now grants 1 stack of might per illusion shattered.

As a follow up to this change Jon Peters made the following post on the forums. It seems this change was a band-aid to close an exploit. In the future we will see a proper fix to close the exploit and the cool down will be removed.

This was an especially bad problem so we did what we had to do given the resources we had to solve this while the studio was closed for the new year/holidays.

That was the plan but fixing it for real is going to take some time so no timeframe right now.

Gear Preview

Next up, a lot of you probably noticed that you can no longer preview gear that you can not use on your toon. Apparently, this is a temporary change and should be back to normal soon as is confirmed by CC Eva here.

As it has been correctly stated here, the previewing feature such as it is right now is just temporal and will change back very soon but we ask for a little bit more of patience till it gets updated and released

Ban Wave Drama

Next up in the Dev tracker is the drama over the resent ban wave. I really do not want to get into this here. I have mixed feelings about the situation. If you want to read the main drama threads that actually have red posts check out, "Fear of Ban", "The Tale of Two Jewellry Recipes...", or  "Bans for Snowflake Jewelry are unfair".

WvW Culling Issues

Next up, we have a post from Habib Loew who took the time to explain in depth the culling issue and what exactly they are doing about it. This is a really good post, and it relieves a lot of the concerns I had that Anet wasn't really focusing on this problem. Anyway, read the whole post here, or at least the quotes I have below.

Habib Loew (actual picture)

In order to remove culling completely we have to address three issues: 

1) Bandwidth out of our servers/datacenter (traffic would increase without culling) 

2) Bandwidth in to each client (traffic to each client would also increase without culling) 

3) Client performance issues related to rendering (potentially) all the players on a map at once. (Note that we base our performance requirements in this case on min-spec clients. We don’t want to stop anybody being able to play the game after all.) 

I believe that our goal of removing culling from WvW is achievable and I’m looking forward to the day that I can announce to you all that we’ve pulled it off!

Colin Johanson Q1 Teaser

Next up we have a huge post from Colin Johanson where he teases us with what is to come in the Jan/Feb/March patches. I am just going to quote the entire post below because it is probably the most important post on the forums that I am seeing for this post.

Colin Johanson - Game Director

Just to help provide some clarity on this, we’ll be releasing within the next couple of weeks a high level summary of our big plans for the first half of 2013 to help provide more transparency into our plans with the game going forward. This will include providing more details about our goals for the game, information about the stories and features that you’ll see in the Jan/Feb/March releases. 

To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG. 

More details and specifics to come in the next couple of weeks, but I hope that helps provide some more insight into what to expect at a very high level.

So, to summarize. January update will be small, and we will not see new races, classes, or regions (note he did not say zones) in February or March. Basically he is clarifying from an earlier interview where he said Jan/Feb would have an expansions worth of content. A lot of people speculated that this meant new classes, races, and multiple zones. He is merely clarifying here that is not what he meant. He meant that there is so much stuff coming that it is like an expansion. So, with that said Anet will be releasing details about their plans for the first quarter of 2012 in the next couple weeks. Expect to see improvements to existing content.

Anet Philosophy on Quality of Life

Next, Evan Lesh has an interesting post on Anets approach to fixing issues and patches bugs. This post gives you an insight into the philosophy at Anet with respect to adding quality of life improvements.

We try not to jump the gun and add an option to customize everything we can think of.  Its a fine balance ... that really depends on cost/payoff.

More WvW Goodness

Then we have another gem from Colin Johanson. Firstly, he posted a link to an interview done by GuildWars2Junkies.com with Habib Loew and Matt Witter. They talk primarily about WvW and the future changes they have coming up. There is some good stuff there, so I recommend watching the video or checking out the audio version. A lot of forum goer's were disappointed by the lack of concrete details given in this interview, even though it is hinted at that February will have huge updates for WvW. Due to this uproar in this thread Colin Johanson had this to say,

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general.

What?! ... What?!? ... again WHAT?!?! Can't really interpret that any other way than, we are getting another map. Totally did not expect that. Anyway, he also adds,

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

Basically, patience. WvW changes are coming and in February we will see what those are, although, Colin's other post I mentioned above does imply that they will be making an announcement about these changes very soon.

Minion AI Improvements

In the comments j3w3l pointed out that I missed a red post made, probably as I was posting this article yesterday. Anyway, Jason King talks about improvements coming for minions. In the thread he is talking about necro minions but I would imagine that the AI improvements would apply to ranger pets as well.

We’re working on the minions’ behavior now and will be testing some changes to see how they work. Thank you for your patience, everyone!

Well that is it. I have gone back through all the Red Posts since before Xmas and those are the interesting tidbits. Hope you guys find this stuff interesting and it saves you some time.

Wintersday Patch Notes

I don't know if you have had a chance to read the patch notes for the Wintersday release yet. If not, or if you can not be bothered, here is a summary of some of the interesting changes I noticed in the notes. There may be things I miss, what I have highlighted below are those things that affect my game play. First up, are a bunch of Fractals of the Mist changes.

Ascended Rings and Fractal Weapon Skin drop rates now increase appropriately with player scale. Non-infused Ascended Rings will no longer drop after scale 24.  

A Pristine Fractal Relic has been added to the daily rewards for scale 10 and higher. 10 Pristine Fractal Relics can be turned in to Golem Merchant BUY-4373 for an Ascended Ring. 

The chest received when Shaman Lornarr Dragonseeker is defeated now contains rare crystal materials instead of dust. The chest received when the Raving Asura are defeated now contains rare corrupted materials instead of dust.  

Vials of Condensed Mists Essence no longer drop after scale 10. Globs of Coagulated Mists Essence no longer drop after scale 20.

All of these changes work towards making the loot rewards better, and fairer. The old system had people running level 10 FotM trying to get an ascended ring so that they could advance in difficultly. The problem is that even if you get a ring the chances of it match your stats are unlikely, and since the rings are non-tradable you are left grinding FotM trying to get a ring you want. I personally do not like FotM for this reason and for other reasons I may discuss in the future article. This change works towards fixing a problem the community identified though which is always a good sign. Now this dungeon works similarly to the others in that you can trade in your tokens for a reward.

Rare crafting materials and holiday materials can now be deposited into the collections tab in the bank.

Honestly, never thought we would see this. I thought Anet was going to make us pay for the bag space. In fact I just wrote an article discussing the cheapest ways to get bag space. I sold off most of my rare mats because I was sick of holding on to them. Now I can be a good little pack rat and horde all my rare mats. I wonder if this will have an effect on the prices of these goods by restricting the supply.

Increased the drop rate of Passion Flowers from Passion Vines. 

The quantity of vials of Powerful Blood, Vicious Fangs, and Elaborate Totems that drop from loot containers is now 1-2 instead of just 1.

Expect the prices of these goods to start falling due to the increase supply. Looking forward to seeing those prices drop, although, Vicious Fangs have been on a downward trend for a while now.

Permanent Bank Access, Permanent Trader Express, and Permanent Merchant Express items now drop twice as often from Black Lion chests. Though still extremely rare, they can now be traded until their first use. 

The Black Lion Chest drop chance for mystery tonics has been reduced from 100% to 25%. Tonics now have the same drop chance as “Heavy Bag of Coins,” “Unidentified Dye,” or one of three new Guild Influence items worth 50, 100, or 300 influence. 

“Heavy Bags of Coins” have been added to Black Lion Chests in the tonic and buff drop sections. Bags hold between 80c and 1g50s. 

“Glory Booster” has been added to the list of possible buff drops. Buff drops now occasionally drop the “booster multipack” triple buff. 

Rarity and proportion of all other Black Lion Chest drops have been rebalanced to reduce overabundance of some items.

That is a pretty large list of changes to the chests. Personally, I have never bought a key, and I do not think I ever will. I have just heard too many horror stories of people buying $50 of keys to end up with nothing of any value, what-so-ever. Guild Wars 2 cash shop is an area of the game in need of serious love. I kind of want to give Arena Net my money, but I do not really see anything in the cash shop that I would want to buy. There changes to the Black Lion chest do not change that. 

When a team owns few or no defensive structures for a set period of time, a breakout event will now trigger at the portal. 

Repairable walls and gates have been updated to rebuild at 10% health instead of rebuilding immediately. 

Characters that disconnect during combat grant rewards to their opponent, and suffer penalties as though they have been killed.

No new changes to WvW besides the ones we discussed last week. Also, the culling trial is over and we have gone back to the old system. Anet wants your feedback, so head over to the forums and say something even if it is, "I did not notice a change."

Map names on the world map now display completion status.

I have already completed my world exploration, but I bet this will be nice if I ever do it again. When I completed mine, I had to go from zone to zone trying to find the points I was missing. Being able to see that from the map beats going from zone to zone any day.

There are a number of new items added to the Black Lion Trading Post as well as changes to each class. If you are looking for this information just head over to the patch notes and check it out. There is too much for me to just copy and paste over here. Anet has also posted it's design philosophies for each class.

We normally try to employ metered and controlled balance changes with each pass, rather than huge reductions or improvements to classes. We want to get all classes on the same playing field, and we want to avoid “whack-a-mole” style balance. HUGE increases and HUGE decreases lead to meta instability, and thusly, we try to make multiple small tweaks rather than putting in massive changes that we have to later correct. When designing and balancing the classes, we try to make sure that class roles and identities stay intact. So, in doing so, we make sure that there are rules and boundaries outlining the capabilities and weaknesses of each class.

It makes for an interesting read, and I encourage you to head over and check it out. This has been another solid patch from Arena Net. It shows they are listening to players concerns and addressing them. It also shows that they have begun to work on quality of life things, which is always a sign of a healthy MMO. There are still some glaring problems in the game, which concern me. Patches like these relieve some of that concern because it makes me think they have a plan that they are working on in the background that we do not know about. Something spectacular that will eliminate all my concerns. We will just have to wait and see.

Preview of Wintersday WvW Patch

On the forums Habib Loew has dropped some news about the future of WvW with respect to the patch on December 14th, Wintersday. He has mentioned four new things that will be coming into the game, and below I have summary of those changes, and my thoughts on them.

When a new build is ready on the Guild Wars 2 server you currently get 3 minutes, at best, of notice before you have to log out of the game, patch, and log back in. This could happen while you are at the gates of an enemy keep after you have dropped five golems! Never, fear, Anet has your back.

In order to allow WvW players to make good decions about siege placement, assault timing, etc. we’re adding a new build pre-announcement. This will be in the form of a message broadcast to all players some time before the current build expires.

Have you ever chased down a player and worked them down to a sliver of HP only to have them disappear denying you the kill? Well they were most likely closing their GW2 client before you could kill them. Well, no longer, Anet is here with a fix!

If someone that you’re fighting disconnects during combat (via Alt+F4, killing the client process, etc.) their character will be instantly killed, death penalties will be applied, and XP & loot will be handed out as usual.

Also, there is the situation with wall and gate repair. At present you simply need to use a single unit of supply on a wall or gate and it instantly repairs, dividing armies, and causing unnecessary back and forth. Well Arena Net has a fix for this too.

Destroyed walls and gates will now rebuild when they reach 10% health rather than on the very first repair. This means that when attackers down a wall or gate defenders won’t be able to instantly rebuild it.

Finally, there is a strange addition. I personally have never had a problem with "breaking out" from a totally occupied map, but it seems other are. I worry about the way this will be taking WvW. I want WvW to be a player driven environment, not one driven by NPCs. Anyway, read what Habib has to say,

We’ve added a new event type to WvW called Breakout events which trigger when one or more teams have been pushed completely out of a map. They’re designed both to help players break out of severly camped portal keeps and to provide assistance in establishing a foothold in each map.

I really do not know how I feel about this. I will just have to wait and try it out. There are some more details in the thread on the forums if you are interested. Overall, these seem like solid additions. I have personally been effected by the new build issue, the player disconnect exploit, and the instantly repaired walls. It is nice to see these things fixed. At the end of his post Habib leaves this little teaser,

These changes are just a small part of what the WvW team has been up to lately. As you may have already heard, we’re hard at work on some larger updates that we plan to deliver in February. We’re not quite ready to talk about the details yet but as February gets closer we’ll start to reveal more of our secrets.

Indeed! Can't wait to hear more. 

Two small patches and an interview

A quick update for everyone. Last night, and just now a small patch dropped to Guild Wars 2. The patch notes are on the forums. No signifigant changes were made. It seems Arena Net merely closed some holes opened by the patch on December 3rd.

On the flipside the guys over at KillTenRats have a new article up with an interview of Isaiah “Izzy” Cartwright. This interview offers an interesting look at how Guild Wars 2 developers use statistics to shape the players experience in Tyria.

Isaiah "Izzy" Cartwright.

Izzy: Yes, we collect all manner of data from observing the economy, gameplay, and sever load. We use this data in a number of ways. For instance, we can see where players die the most so we can start adjusting content that is too hard at early levels. As for the economy, we’re always watching how different items drop, from where, and how often. This lets us really see the ins and outs of our economy and how things like monthly events or weekends play a role in our ever changing economy.

It is great to see the developers taking this close a look at the data. It can also be frustrating at times when the return from your favourite farming spot is reduced. Anyway, head over and check out the article for the rest of the details.

Patch Dropped

A new group of updates went live just hours ago. The patch notes can be found on the forums. I have some highlights below.

Fixed a bug that caused NPCs not to resurrect other NPCs in various Orr events.

Fixed a bug that caused Warmaster Jofast and her caravan to not advance properly through Cursed Shore.

The karma train centres on events taking place at these three way points Penitent, Shelter's Gate, and Jofast's

It appears the days of farming infinite mobs spawning at Penitent Waypoints is at an end. As of this post Penitent Waypoint is uncontested on my server and the infinite waves of mobs have stopped. With that fixed and Jofast fixed (we have heard this before) that means the karma train is back up and running.

Ascalonian Catacombs Detha’s path: Fixed a bug that caused the Ghostly Oozes not to use their basic attack properly, and spend a large amount of time loitering around players instead of attacking them.

I have often wondered what those Oozes were doing besides being a meat shields for the boss. Now we know! They were bugged. I have yet to run this path with the fix but I will be sure to keep this in mind. I really did think that fight was missing something. It is by far one of the easier encounters in the dungeon and it is the final fight. Just remember this next time you run AC EM P2.

Crucible of Eternity Front door path: Fixed a bug that affected the aggro range of the Destroyer Specimen Boss.

I ran CoE shortly after the patch dropped and ran path three, the front door. We proceeded as usual until the Destroyer Specimen, you know, the one where you fire the laser cannons to lower the shield while ranged DPS stands in "the spot" where you take no damage. Well the people on the cannons can now be hit by the boss' dragon tooth attack, and "the spot" is no longer "the spot". After a number of failed attempts my group decided to call it a night. In retrospect it seems like you will now have to coordinate fire on the lasers, then while they are firing take your entire group down to hit the boss. Let me know if you have figured this out.

Twilight Arbor. Fixed a bug where Morrigu could die after defeating the final boss before the cinematic could start, which would break the dungeon and prevent players from receiving the final reward.

I experienced this bug for the first time last night. It would be my luck that it gets fixed the next day... just to rub salt in my wounds. I do want the TA armor set but after last nights bug I was extremely turned off doing the dungeon again. Now I can give it another shot.

Fractals of the Mists Cliffside Fixed an issue where players could damage the final seal with their normal attacks. Fixed an issue where players were able to attack and kill the first boss before triggering the cinematic.

No more "breezing" through the hammer fractal. We will have to actually work for it now. I am also being told by guildies that they have corrected the exploit to skip the first part of the dredge fractal. I have not confirmed this myself yet.

Total Makeover Kit and Self-Style Hair Kit added to the Black Lion Chest as rare rewards. Increased chance to get Mini boosters and Dye Pack boosters from the Black Lion Chest.

An interesting fix. I personally do not unlock a lot of chests, but I know a lot of people do and have been upset with the rewards. Hopefully this will go a way to alleviate those concerns. Also to note, Black Lion Chests have seen a small rise in price in the short time this patch has been live. I will not be investing in them though.

Finally, there are a couple of class changes. Elementalist received the most attention. Having not played much elementalist I can not appropriately comment on the changes. If you play an elementalist head over to the patch notes and have a read. Engineer, Guardian, Mesmer, Ranger, and Thief also had a couple tweaks which were minor bug fixes.

This patch will not be causing any sensations. There are some nice fixes to be sure, but not being able to rejoin fractals after a disconnect is a major problem. It is seriously affecting my personal enjoyment of fractals, as well as those in my guild. I was really hoping to see a fix to this in this patch. I also find it odd that some of the "short cuts" in the fractals were patched while others were not. Only time will tell if these are design features of the dungeons or bugs.

All-in-all this is another solid patch from Arena Net. I am hoping we are through the majority of the bugs now, and we will start seeing class balancing, day-to-day niceties, and new content at an increased rate.