Guild Wars 2

This week, we have brand-new minis for you, plus some returning Wintersday favorites! Read on for more details-and remember, you have just one week left to log in and unlock access to the “Seeds of Truth” release.

New Miniatures

Intimidate your foes with the Mini Sand Giant, give the adorable Mini Drooburt’s Ghost a squeeze, and impress all your friends with the Mini Pact Airship. Whichever mini you pick, you’ll be sure to turn heads.

Returning Finishers

Your favorite Wintersday finishers are back! Wintersday is all about giving, so give your fallen foes a present with the Permanent Gift Finisher. Do you want to summon a Permanent Snowman Finisher or behold the glorious Permanent Snow Globe Finisher? Preview them all in the wardrobe today!

Returning Headgear

Keep warm with special Wintersday headgear-cover your ears with Wintersday Earmuffs or show off your spirit with the Festive Hat.

Available Now in the Gem Store!

Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

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Content-Driven Achievement Rewards

With the Wintersday festival coming on December 16, we’re releasing a new version of the daily achievement system. With this new system, we want to give players the opportunity to try things they may not normally experience and feel like the rewards they earn for doing so mean something. Rather than having a generic reward for all achievements, each one will give players something that is thematically tied to the content they’re playing. Completing a fractal daily achievement will get you an extra pristine fractal relic, some additional agony resistance , and a tome of knowledge; taking a tower in WvW for an achievement will grant you World vs. World experience and additional badges of honor; or capturing a point in PvP will give you additional reward track progress. We want the rewards to help drive players to the content, not general rewards for all achievements.

To help accomplish this, we’ve broken the daily achievements into three distinct categories based on their game types: PvE, WvW, and PvP. Additionally, we’ve created a separation of easier achievements like “Killing 3 Players in WvW,†and more challenging ones like “Win 1 Match in PvP as a Mesmer†or “Defeat the Shatterer.†Easier achievements are quicker to accomplish, but harder achievements will give players greater rewards.



As part of this change, we removed achievement points from the individual dailies. In the past, if you wanted to max out your achievement points, you’d have to do all ten daily achievements in a day and run all over the world. Instead, we’ve created a new meta-achievement for completing any combination of three daily achievements from any category. Completing this meta-achievement will award you a flat 10 achievement points that count toward your daily achievement point cap. So now players concentrating on achievement points only need to ensure they finish three daily achievements. Players will earn rewards other than achievement points if they complete additional achievements; you can do more achievements if you’re excited about the additional rewards, but you don’t have to feel pressured to do all of them every day to reach your achievement point max.

With the launch of this new system, December will be the last month to include monthly achievements. The monthly achievements provided larger goals to players but were still fairly generic and repetitive, and they don’t fit well with the new reward paradigm. Because some of you have already made progress on your monthlies, we will leave them in for this final month, allowing you to earn bonus laurels.

Finally, in a release coming early next year, we will merge the existing daily and monthly achievement point caps into one pool. This will allow players to continue working toward the maximum point totals for the daily achievement system without the existence of monthly achievements. “What about the rewards from the existing daily and monthly achievements? What about the laurels and Mystic Coins?†you might be asking. Well, fear not!

Log-in Rewards

One of the things we want to do is reward players for being fans of Guild Wars 2. So we’ve moved the original rewards from daily and monthly achievements, thrown in some new items for good measure, and combined it all into a new bonus system that rewards players just for logging in to the game. The first time you log in each day, you’ll receive a new bonus reward. The items on this new reward track are not only a combination of the previous daily and monthly achievement rewards but also some additional items we’ve added, including bags full of trophies needed for crafting and an exotic equipment chest guaranteed to give you an item for the profession of your choice.



One way to think of this is like a holiday calendar that gives you a new present from ArenaNet each day. There are 28 individual rewards on the track, each one building toward an epic chest containing a permanent 1% increase to account gold find and your choice of either ascended crafting materials, materials necessary for crafting your legendary weapon (including mystic clovers), an additional sum of laurels, or tomes of knowledge.



Missed a day because of work, vacation, or a work vacation? No worries, your progress is still there! The next time you log in, you’ll pick up where you left off. The system will only reset once you’ve claimed the 28th and final reward.
With the new daily achievement and log-in reward systems, players should have more things to do each day and feel more rewarded for being a hero. Happy achievement hunting, and we’ll see you in Tyria!

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Awesome change, no doubt it's a ploy to get people to play everyday but they've at least done it in a way that you aren't required to do so. The new system is easier to understand and seems to offer better rewards. Only time will tell but it seems to be a nice change.

 

A few months ago, we announced that Guild Wars 2‘s Living World experience was launching on a path that would result in our story-and the whole world of Tyria-reaching a point of no return. We’ve since ventured into the heart of Glint’s lair, discovered secrets in the depths of the Durmand Priory, witnessed the fall of the leader of the Zephyrites, recovered the last known dragon egg only to have it stolen out from under us by a longtime friend, and searched through the first memories of the sylvari race in our hunt to find her.

Our story now finds the Pact’s fleet of airships poised to launch their assault into the jungle, and our band of heroes standing before a sealed cave marked with ancient runes. On January 13, Living World Season 2 will return to take you beyond that seal, and you’ll discover moments that will forever change the course of Tyria.

Holiday Events

As we count down to January 13 and enjoy the holiday season, we’ll feature a number of exciting events across our core game modes in Guild Wars 2. On December 16, our annual holiday festival, “A Very Merry Wintersday,” will make its return at its new home in Divinity’s Reach. Queen Jennah has graciously agreed to host the event to celebrate the Pact Fleet’s coming assault into the jungle, and to lighten the burden on Lion’s Arch during its rebuilding efforts in the wake of the city’s destruction.

Starting December 16, and running through January 13, we’ll host our first-ever test ladder season in Player vs. Player! Using our new matchmaking and ladder formulas, you can battle your way to the top of the ladder in PvP for the next four weeks to earn prestige, honor, and prizes!

Hot on the heels of our inaugural World Tournament Series finale event in Beijing, we’ll be bringing you more top-tier PvP action with the first-ever ESL monthly championship. Join us on December 10 to watch top teams in North America and Europe compete for over $3,000 (USD) in prizes, broadcast live from the ESL HQ studios in Los Angeles and Cologne. This marks the beginning of a partnership with ESL that will continue to bring you exciting monthly championship events from the top PvP teams and PvP shoutcasters in the world.

In World vs. World, from December 16 to January 13, we’ll feature our first non-tournament WvW event, the WvW Sneak Attack. Join us as we turn the rules of WvW upside down for four weeks. Every player you kill in WvW will gain your world a point. Earn an extra point by using a finisher while your world has Borderlands Bloodlust. Objectives under attack will not display their customary white sword, and the Mist War Summons buff will give you an extra +15% WXP gain, +50% Magic Find in WvW, and +15% experience on kills in WvW. If all goes well, this will be just the first of many special events in WvW.

The Final Countdown

Exciting events and content are coming to Guild Wars 2 over the holidays as we count down to the pivotal moment of Living World’s second season on January 13. We hope you’ll join us for the ride; you won’t want to miss it.
We’ll see you in Tyria!

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I don't like all the breaks this season has had but it's been pretty good so far, looking forward to the next episode.

 

We have officially reached the Point of No Return. After today, Tyria will never be the same. Here at the Black Lion Trading Company, we are humbled to offer you these exciting new items on this momentous occasion. We have brand new colors for hair and eyes, new weapons created from salvaged Mordrem parts, a new Ghostly Mail Courier, Mini Rox, and unbreakable gathering tools.

Mordrem Weapons

In the war against the Mordrem, we cannot afford to waste valuable resources. Our talented smiths have extracted various Mordrem parts to create a new batch of weapons available in exchange for Black Lion Claim Tickets.

Mini Rox

This valiant hero is now immortalized in miniature form. Look toward this mini when times get tough for inspiration to be just as courageous as Rox herself.

Ghostly Mail Courier

With the Ghostly Mail Courier mail carrier selected, your mail will be hand-delivered to the recipient by a vigilant specter. This tireless apparition will patiently wait until the recipient is out of combat to deliver mail anywhere in the world.

New Colors for Hair and Eyes

Enjoy some of our most extreme eye and hair colors yet in the Total Makeover Kit-and remember that new hair colors are also accessible through the Self-Style Hair Kit!

Minis 3-Pack (Set 3)

The Minis 3-Pack (Set 3) is only available for one more week. After this week, we are retiring this random pack of minis.

Available Now in the Gem Store!
Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

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01/13/15 – January 13th Release Notes
Release Notes:

LIVING WORLD

Point of No Return

Heroes stand at a precipice as Tyria hurtles toward a point of no return. The Pact Fleet is poised to launch its assault on Mordremoth. The search for Caithe—and Glint’s egg—is narrowing, yet the future is uncertain. What answers will be revealed inside the cave?

Achievements

After completing Point of No Return, showcase your tactical mastery as a hero of Tyria by completing challenging, episode-related achievements.

Rewards

• Players can now complete their Carapace and Luminescent armor sets!
• Collect Carapace Headgear Boxes by completing the Point of No Return episode. Additional boxes can be purchased for bandit crests.
• Collect Carapace Coat Boxes by defeating the imposing Mordrem Vinewrath.
• Complete the Bioluminescence collection to receive a new title, a choice of ascended armor pieces, and five transmutation charges.
• Want some help completing your Luminescent boots and leg armor? Mordrem spleen and bladder extractors are now available for purchase with bandit crests.
• Complete the Point of No Return episode to receive various rewards, including a bandit chest for your home instance!
• Players who go up against the Mordrem Vinewrath will receive the Hero of the Wastes boon that grants 50% bonus magic find and extra bandit crests from various events throughout the map.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH

Profession Skills

Guardian

• Hammer Swing / Hammer Bash: Fixed a bug that prevented the Number of Targets facts on these skills from displaying.
• Sanctuary: Fixed a bug that caused the Master of Consecrations trait to create a duplicate skill fact.

Mesmer

• Illusionary Leap: Removed the ability to use this skill in midair.

Necromancer

• Lich Form:
  • Deathly Claws: Added a Pierces skill fact.
  • Marked for Death: Updated the Damage skill fact to correctly scale with the Spiteful Marks trait.

Ranger

• Piercing Arrows: Added Pierces and Targets per Arrow skill facts.
• Mighty Swap: Added a Combat Only trait fact.
• Vigorous Training: Added a Combat Only trait fact.

Warrior

• Fan of Fire: Added Pierces and Targets per Arrow skill facts.
• Combustive Shot: Fixed a bug that caused the Damage skill fact to display a lower amount than the actual damage when Burst Mastery was equipped.

Structured Player vs. Player

• Adjusted matchmaking for parties with higher-skilled players.
• Added an accumulating grace period for disconnects, allowing players to reconnect and finish the game without receiving dishonor or taking a loss.
• Losses will not count toward the leaderboard standings if a teammate outside your party has deserted.
• Party members will receive a desertion leaderboard standing if a member of their party has deserted the game, but only the deserting player will receive dishonor.
• Matchmaking ratings will not be updated if a game has player desertions.
• Fixed a bug that prevented players from properly leaving a queue.
• Fixed a bug that caused players to receive dishonor multiple times for the same infraction.

The winter PvP Ladder Test Season has ended. The following rewards will be distributed to players based on their leaderboard position at end of the season:

• The top 5 players in each region will receive two pieces of Glorious Hero’s armor and one Mini Llama.
• The top 20 players in each region will receive one piece of Glorious Hero’s armor and one Mini Llama.
• The top 250 players in each region will receive one Mini Llama.

World vs. World

• The Toxic Unveiling Volley skill no longer displays on an arrow cart’s skill bar until the skill has been unlocked.
• Updated guild arrow cart skill damage tooltips to properly reflect their superior level of damage.
• The WvW Sneak Attack special event has completed.
  • Player kills no longer score 1 point. Finishing a player while your world has Borderlands Bloodlust will award 1 point.
  • Objectives under attack will now display the white crossed-swords icon in World vs. World.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

• Mini Rox is now available in the Toys category of the Gem Store for 350 gems.
• A new Mordrem weapon set is available from the Black Lion Weapon Specialist for the limited-time price of 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket. Tickets and ticket scraps can be found in Black Lion Chests.
• The new Ghostly Mail Courier mail carrier is available in the Upgrades category of the Gem Store for 500 gems.
• New exclusive colors for hair and eyes are now included in Total Makeover Kits, available in the Services category of the Gem Store for 350 gems.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug in which finishers would sometimes reset to the default finisher after interaction with the Hero panel.

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[video=PAX South announcement of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns]7591[/video]

Video: PAX South announcement of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Category: General
Uploader: Aaddron

 

As many of you now know, we’re introducing an entirely new progression system with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™. The Mastery system is a key component of one of our primary goals with this first expansion to Guild Wars 2. We want to introduce a new framework for endgame progression and a meaningful way for players to grow their characters and their experience once they’ve reached the maximum level in the game.

Through Masteries, players who’ve reached level 80 will have the opportunity to continue their journey by acquiring powerful new abilities for their entire account. Masteries are the way you will progress after reaching level 80 in PvE, but they’re quite a bit different than traditional progression, so let’s take a closer look at exactly how this new system will work.

What Are Masteries?

Masteries provide abilities and bonuses that can be unlocked for all characters on your account by completing in-game content and gaining experience in PvE. Masteries allow you to progress in PvE by playing PvE content. Unlike traditional progression systems, Masteries expand with the world. Instead of earning small increases in base stats, Masteries give you meaningful powers that affect your interaction with the game and open up new possibilities as you progress. Each Mastery track contains several tiers to unlock, allowing you to gain more powerful abilities associated with each track’s theme as you progress. Masteries are all about adding an exciting progression system to the PvE component of Guild Wars 2—WvW has its Abilities system, PvP progression is focused on player skill, and PvE will now have meaningful endgame progression with Masteries.

How Do I Get Masteries?

The ability to train Masteries is unlocked at level 80 for all players that own Heart of Thorns. When this ability is unlocked, your character’s experience bar will change to become a Mastery training bar while in PvE zones. This bar will track your progress on training the Mastery track you currently have selected, showing both the abilities you are training toward and those already earned from the track. To see all your Mastery tracks, spend Mastery points, and change which Mastery you are currently training, click the Mastery training bar to bring up the Mastery tray. Because the Mastery training bar completely replaces the experience bar, players who’ve reached level 80 will no longer gain levels but will instead train Masteries. This means characters that have reached level 80 will no longer gain skill points through leveling. Skill points will be added as rewards across high-level content to offset this change.



To train a specific Mastery track, you must first unlock it by spending Mastery points. Mastery points are awarded for completing various pieces of game content. Things like completing a chapter in your personal story, completing certain achievements, reaching hard-to-find locations, overcoming challenging encounters, excelling at adventures found within the Heart of Maguuma, or earning 100% completion for a map will award Mastery points. Each Mastery point can be earned once per account, so while Mastery points allow you to unlock Mastery tracks, they are also an indicator of how much of the game you’ve experienced. In fact, once you have unlocked the ability to train Masteries, your nameplate will display the number of Mastery points you have gained rather than your level. Mastery points can be gained at any level but cannot be spent until level 80.

Once you’ve unlocked a Mastery track tier with Mastery points, you can begin training that Mastery. Mastery tracks are trained by gaining experience while the Mastery track is slotted on the Mastery training bar. Higher tiers in Mastery tracks require progressively more Mastery points and more experience to fully train.

Each Mastery track is tied to a region of Tyria—they must be unlocked with Mastery points gained in that region and can only be trained in that region. With the launch of Heart of Thorns, there will be two Mastery regions: the Heart of Maguuma, encompassing all PvE zones that are part of the Heart of Thorns expansion, and the core Guild Wars 2 world, encompassing all PvE zones currently available in the game today. Since Mastery tracks can only be trained in their respective regions, the Mastery training bar will automatically change the Mastery track slotted when you change regions, reverting to the last Mastery track you had selected for that region. Some Mastery points will come from content that existing players may have already completed, and these Mastery points will be automatically awarded to you with the release of Heart of Thorns, allowing you to get started on your Mastery journey right away.

What Can I Get From Masteries?

Masteries award account-wide abilities and bonuses. Here are some examples of Masteries you can train in the Heart of Thorns expansion in both the Heart of Maguuma and the core Guild Wars 2 world:

1. Master Lore: Attunement with new ally races can be trained to understand their language, unlocking secret locations and access to battle techniques that can weaken your shared enemies.
   
2. Master Legends: Train in legendary crafting to learn to create all existing legendary weapon precursors and new legendary weapon precursors introduced with Heart of Thorns.
   
3. Master Exploration: Mastering jungle movement will unlock the ability to hang glide to previously unreachable locations as well as the ability to use special mushrooms to traverse the Heart of Maguuma faster.
   
4. Master Combat: The Heart of Maguuma will be home to some of the most challenging combat in Guild Wars 2, and Masteries will give you the tools you need to excel in these fights. Hunt new enemies, master abilities to defeat champions, and become more deadly against the new creatures waiting in the jungle.
   
5. Master Fractals: Uncover new depths in the Fractals of the Mists to gain powerful new abilities to overcome difficult fractal challenges, garner greater rewards, and unlock more powerful infusions.

To give you a better understanding of what Masteries can mean for you, let’s take a closer look at gliding, a new method of exploration introduced in the Heart of Maguuma.

In the jungle, you can make your way up through the canopy layers and climb to impossible heights. While you’re up there, you’ll have the chance to check out some stunning views—and, of course, you’ll be accompanied by the ever-present threat of falling an incredibly long distance to your death on the forest floor. When you train the Gliding Mastery, however, you’ll have the option to soar freely through the treetops, escape the dangers that await you on the jungle floor, use the air to your advantage in combat against certain foes, and save yourself from accidental death by slipping.

Once you’ve unlocked the Gliding Mastery track, you can pull out your glider any time you’re in free fall in the Heart of Maguuma. When you first pull out your glider, you’ll notice that you have a limited amount of energy while in the air. Be careful—if you run out of energy while gliding, your glider will collapse and you’ll be in for a rough landing!

As you continue to explore the jungle, you’ll have the option to further develop your gliding skills by advancing this Mastery. Fly longer, jump higher, take advantage of strong wind currents, and launch yourself into the air with greater force—make your glider work harder for you, and use it to explore the Heart of Maguuma to its fullest.

Masteries and the Heart of Maguuma have been designed to complement and support each other. As you unlock Masteries, you’ll be more effective in fights against certain enemies in the jungle, you’ll be able to reach new areas and fully explore the maps you’re in, and you’ll be able to revisit previous encounters with the advantage of the abilities you’ve mastered over time. And as you complete more content in the Heart of Maguuma, such as hitting certain performance thresholds in adventures or exploring maps, you’ll be rewarded with even more Mastery points to spend as you see fit.

Every Mastery you invest in will bring new benefits to all of the characters on your account. Gliding greatly enhances your ability to move around the jungle, while other Masteries focus on combat, lore, and exploration.

Masteries Are Here to Stay

We are very excited about bringing Masteries to Guild Wars 2. We believe it’s the perfect progression system for a game where the journey is the goal. Masteries allow us to focus on giving you new abilities without invalidating your past achievements. They allow you to constantly grow and overcome new challenges while focusing on playing the game instead of grinding for gear. Masteries have the flexibility to both take us to new places and revisit our old favorites, and since the Mastery system provides account-based progression, new characters are always welcome.

We can’t wait to share Masteries with you when Heart of Thorns arrives in Guild Wars 2.

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It's not mine, it's just a news post from the developers. ^^

 

I’m back from our announcement at PAX South and ready to talk about Heart of Thorns! I loved the overview of all the major features, and I want to see more. Thankfully, this week’s dev guests are coming to the rescue. Expansion Content Designers Steve Hwang and Anthony Ordon are joining me tomorrow on Points of Interest for our first look at Heart of Thorns gameplay!

They’ll venture into the Maguuma Jungle to show you one of the adventures we heard about earlier this week. Plus, they’ll discuss how some of the systems work.

Points of Interest begins at 12:00 p.m. PST (20:00 UTC) but you’ll want to get to twitch.tv/guildwars2 at 11:30 a.m. PST (19:30 UTC) for Richie “BogOtter†Procopio’s live preshow. Keep watching immediately after PoI for Aurora Peachy’s postshow livestream. We’ll see you tomorrow on twitch.tv/guildwars2!

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Points of Interest continues its look into the features of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ with episode 17. Game Designer Roy Cronacher and Game Design Lead Jon Peters are going to join me to discuss their roles in creating the revenant, the new class coming in the Guild Wars 2 expansion. We’ll talk about revenant lore and design, and we’ll show some never-before-seen skills from legends of the past.

As always, Points of Interest begins at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8). Those of you joining chat early can enjoy Richie “BogOtter†Procopio’s live preshow starting at 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8), and stay tuned afterward for Aurora Peachy’s postshow livestream. We’ll see you tomorrow on twitch.tv/guildwars2!

Did you miss last week’s Ready Up? Josh was joined by Game Designer Hugh Norfolk for an in-depth look at Stronghold, our freshly announced PvP game mode. You can view it here on the Guild Wars 2 YouTube channel.

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After many trying months of working closely with Lord Faren, we’ve finally replicated his finely crafted blade. Ever the perfectionist, he wasn’t satisfied until the sword was exact. Now, we’re proud to present this noble’s rapier to you! We felt that the only way to truly honor such a valiant warrior’s sword would be to simultaneously release a chicken-themed finisher. And so, we also present the Chickenado Finisher!

Chickenado Finisher
This swirling whirlwind of chaotic chicken absurdity is available for you to inflict upon your defeated foes. Distract and intimidate your foes with insanity!

Lord Faren's Rapier
For all fancy fighters who’re looking for finesse over strength, we have a blade to satisfy your desires. Lord Faren’s Rapier is a finely honed and crafted one-handed sword skin. No small details were forgotten with this blade!

Available Now in the Gem Store!
Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

Source

 

After many trying months of working closely with Lord Faren, we’ve finally replicated his finely crafted blade. Ever the perfectionist, he wasn’t satisfied until the sword was exact. Now, we’re proud to present this noble’s rapier to you! We felt that the only way to truly honor such a valiant warrior’s sword would be to simultaneously release a chicken-themed finisher. And so, we also present the Chickenado Finisher!

Chickenado Finisher
This swirling whirlwind of chaotic chicken absurdity is available for you to inflict upon your defeated foes. Distract and intimidate your foes with insanity!

Lord Faren's Rapier
For all fancy fighters who’re looking for finesse over strength, we have a blade to satisfy your desires. Lord Faren’s Rapier is a finely honed and crafted one-handed sword skin. No small details were forgotten with this blade!

Available Now in the Gem Store!
Log into Guild Wars 2 and press 'O' to access the Black Lion Trading Company for these great offers and more!

Source

 

[video=Livestream Guest Section with Cithryth and Draculetta in Guild Wars 2]7766[/video]

Video: Livestream Guest Section with Cithryth and Draculetta in Guild Wars 2
Category: Free MMORPGs
Uploader: Aaddron

 

[video=Livestream Guest Section with Cithryth and Draculetta in Guild Wars 2]7766[/video]

Video: Livestream Guest Section with Cithryth and Draculetta in Guild Wars 2
Category: Free MMORPGs
Uploader: Aaddron

 

This week on Ready Up, Josh teams up with Gameplay Programmer Branden Gee for a first-person look at some of the new camera changes that are sure to expand your horizons in Guild Wars 2. Yes, I’m being cheeky, and no, I’m not sorry. On a more serious note, Branden has done some extensive work to improve the way that you view and experience the world of Tyria at the most basic level. We’ve got a number of new options to show you—collision detection, first-person camera, field of view, horizontal camera position, and more!

Ready Up will air live on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel this Friday, February 27, at noon Pacific Time (UTC-8). We’ll see you then!

Did you miss last week’s Points of Interest? Rubi hung out with Jon Peters and Roy Cronacher to debut the revenant gameplay we’d been talking about all week, and they unveiled some brand-new skills.

Source

 

This week on Ready Up, Josh teams up with Gameplay Programmer Branden Gee for a first-person look at some of the new camera changes that are sure to expand your horizons in Guild Wars 2. Yes, I’m being cheeky, and no, I’m not sorry. On a more serious note, Branden has done some extensive work to improve the way that you view and experience the world of Tyria at the most basic level. We’ve got a number of new options to show you—collision detection, first-person camera, field of view, horizontal camera position, and more!

Ready Up will air live on the Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel this Friday, February 27, at noon Pacific Time (UTC-8). We’ll see you then!

Did you miss last week’s Points of Interest? Rubi hung out with Jon Peters and Roy Cronacher to debut the revenant gameplay we’d been talking about all week, and they unveiled some brand-new skills.

Source

 

As we began populating the Heart of Maguuma with new creatures and new challenges, we saw an opportunity to take a system that exists in the game—the Defiance boss effect—and make it both easier to understand and more conducive to interesting combat moments. Today we’ll talk about that change and how it applies to the wyvern—a new champion creature you’ll encounter as you adventure through the jungle.

In Guild Wars 2, there are many skills that we consider control skills because they control what an enemy can do. These skills can stun an enemy, make them run in fear, knock them down, or otherwise prevent them from moving and attacking as they wish. These become problematic for boss creatures, which could be permanently controlled when fighting a coordinated group or large number of players. That’s where the Defiance system comes into play. Champions receive stacks of defiance based on the number of enemies engaged. Each stack of defiance nullifies one control effect and is removed in the process. Once all of the stacks are removed, the next control effect that a player uses is applied to the boss. This makes it possible to coordinate usage of control skills to interrupt the boss without overwhelming it.

However, defiance as it currently exists has room for improvement, so while working on Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, we decided to revisit this issue and formulate a better solution.

While coordinated groups can use the Defiance system to interrupt enemies at key times, it is much harder to use the system intentionally when playing in the open world. A player using a control ability at a bad time could nullify the efforts of the other players present. Additionally, every control effect is treated equally. This means a 3-second stun from Skull Crack has the same effect as a 0.25-second daze from Head Shot. Blindness doesn’t fit well into the system due to its ease of application, and it has its own specific rules instead of working like other control abilities. To resolve these issues, we are making changes to the Defiance system in Heart of Thorns.

Rethinking Defiance

In the expansion, we are adjusting defiance to display as a bar beneath the creature’s health bar. Using a control ability against a creature with defiance will remove a portion of the bar, and the bar will regenerate over time. When multiple control abilities are used together, the defiance bar can be fully depleted and the creature becomes broken.

When broken, some champions may simply be stunned for a time while others may have specific mechanics like a defensive shell that can be shattered. With the new system, we can adjust how much of the bar is removed so that a skill that stuns the enemy for several seconds does much more than an ability that briefly dazes the target, and blindness can remove an appropriate amount of the bar instead of having its own special rules. With the regenerating bar, we’re able to reduce the amount of control required to trigger defiance while still requiring coordinated effort to control the boss. Badly timed control abilities can no longer ruin the efforts of other players, and the bar’s visibility makes it easier to see when other players are attempting to control the boss and help out.

With the greater flexibility of the new Defiance system, we’re able to better incorporate specific encounter mechanics. For instance, in the Heart of Thorns announcement trailer, we showed off glimpses of a new champion creature that has custom defiance behavior as part of its encounter design—the wyvern. Wyverns are flying, fire-breathing creatures that inhabit the jungle canopy and rule the skies above. They can be found harassing their enemies from the skies as players traverse the jungle below, and players can journey into the upper reaches of the canopy in order to try their hands at killing them.

A wyvern fight is composed of two stages: a ground phase where the wyvern is on the ground and fighting players directly, and an air phase during which it flies through the air and ignites large swaths of the battlefield. While the wyvern is not normally affected by control abilities, it gains a defiance bar when it attempts to take off and transition into its air phase. If the wyvern completes its takeoff skill without being broken, it cannot be attacked while flying and players must avoid its aerial attacks. However, if the defiance bar is depleted before it finishes taking flight, it is knocked out of the air and is vulnerable on the ground for several seconds, giving players the opportunity to attack.

Most of the wyvern’s attacks are with its deadly fire breath, which coats the ground with napalm-like flames. This fire burns for a long time, cutting off large portions of the battlefield while the wyvern uses its tail and wings to knock players back. The ignited ground is very dangerous, so players must be careful to position themselves well and avoid the wyvern’s attacks, as getting knocked back either onto the ignited ground or off of the platform’s edge will likely be fatal. The fight is designed so that players must dodge and move quickly in order to stay alive.

Bringing the Wyvern to Life: Visual Effects

The wyvern’s heavy use of fire attacks presented the visual effects team with some challenges. The first is that the wyvern can create multiple areas of fire, and those areas then remain in the world for a long while. This results in dozens of fire effects on the screen during a battle.

Too many heavily detailed fire-area effects will cause frame rate performance to drop to unacceptable levels because of overdraw. Overdraw refers to the number of particles on the screen in a given area. The more particles, the more overdraw, and the more performance and frame rate become an issue. To make realistic fire, you may want lots of particles for flames, fire licks, smoke, heat distortion, and scrolling flame geometry. We knew early on that we wanted the wyvern to breathe believable fire. To keep our particle and geometry counts down so that performance remained high, we developed several new fire material types.

The first new fire material we developed was a lavalike ground decal that would become the main visual element of the wyvern’s fire areas; the incinerated ground becomes a liquefied pool of molten material. The decal is supported by a few well-placed particles and fire geometry effects. We also developed a flow material for the flame-breath effects so that we could rely more on geometry effects rather than having to use hundreds of flame particles.

The biggest challenge we overcame with the wyvern’s visual effects was how to indicate to players that the wyvern is about to breathe fire. We wanted a molten glow to travel up from the wyvern’s belly to its throat before it released the flames.

Effects like this may be easy to show in a movie, where particle count and shader complexity aren’t issues, but for an MMO game where performance is key, we had to get creative. For this, we pushed the limits of a little-used system called material replacement. This is a pretty basic creature system that players may be familiar with. For example, when a player is poisoned, you’ll notice that your player model texture is changed to a sickly, yucky green. This is material replacement.

The visual effects team worked hard to leverage the material replacement system in ways we never had before. Working with our programming team, we added new features to material replacement, expanding its capabilities and giving us the ability to animate the materials’ shader values and texture sets over fixed durations of time. The material replacement system is not a friendly system for an artist to work with—being all text field entries and no instant visual feedback—but in the right hands, it’s become a powerful visual tell for the new creatures in Heart of Thorns.

To leverage this system for the wyvern, we created another custom glow material that allows us to control regions or areas of glow on its body, enabling us to fade different glowing areas on and off. We knew we wanted the glow to build up in its belly, moving to the chest and neck, and finally to the throat and out the mouth, and we wanted these areas to glow consecutively, supporting the napalm-like fire effects. Using material replacement, we then animate by adjusting text values for the different glow areas to match the animation of the wyvern breathing fire, resulting in a wyvern that—through the buildup of molten lava inside itself—shows fire is coming, giving you ample time to evade the impending inferno.

If you’re attending either PAX East or EGX Rezzed, you can look forward to playing our PvE demo and facing off against the wyvern yourself. Stop by booth #5116 at PAX East, or East Mall 3 at EGX Rezzed, to get your hands on the first-ever playable demo of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!

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