Guild Wars 2

Take a look at this sneak peak of things-to-come with this intriguing concept art from the upcoming Season 2 of the Living World.



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Listen to two portentous sound clips from the upcoming Season 2, which begins with Gates of Maguuma on July 1.

Both Audio Tracks Here

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Log in on July 1 to experience the start of Living World Season 2 and unlock the story content permanently in your Journal!

[video=Guild Wars 2 - Gates of Maguuma]6693[/video]

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay on top of our latest video releases!

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For four days only we’re slashing the price of Guild Wars 2 in half! From June 26 to June 29, save a massive 50% on Guild Wars 2 – our lowest price ever. Visit buy.guildwars2.com and pick up your copy today!*

* Offer applies only to Digital Heroic Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition purchased through buy.guildwars2.com from 12pm Pacific Time June 25, 2014 through 11:59pm Pacific Time June 29, 2014.

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As the adventure of Season 2 continues, the whole of Tyria is threatened by the peril of the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. Log in and play today to unlock free, permanent access to the story of The Dragon’s Reach: Part 1!

Read more on our release page, or visit our forums to read today’s release notes!

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This episode was weaker than the first 2 in my opinion, it had some good points though and still an improvement over Season 1. One thing that should be noted is thus far these episodes don't seem to be giving all that in the way of drops, I've gotten very little in the way of value and none of it was worth keeping.. it's all just junk to sell. That said, I'm really enjoying the story and for the most part haven't hit any frustrating walls completing the missions.

Remember to log in within the next 2 weeks to unlock this episode for free.

 

[video=Guild Wars 2 - The Living Soundtrack]6767[/video]

Video: Guild Wars 2 - The Living Soundtrack
Category: Free MMORPGs
Uploader: Aaddron

 

Guide from the developer, should help get you started.

http://www.gameogre.com/forums/guil...-2-developer-guide-pve-necromancer-guide.html

 

[video=Guild Wars 2 - The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2]6782[/video]

Video: Guild Wars 2 - The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2
Category: Free MMORPGs
Uploader: Aaddron

 

[video=Guild Wars 2 - Points of Interest: Episode 4]6783[/video]

Video: Guild Wars 2 - Points of Interest: Episode 4
Category: Free MMORPGs
Uploader: Aaddron

 

Feature packs in Guild Wars 2 focus exclusively on in-game features, and this one is bringing in brand-new systems, improvements to existing features, balance updates, and more. We'll be revealing more features and updates as we approach September 9, so check back frequently to stay on top of all the news!

14 Aug
PvP Visual and Reward Updates
The September 2014 Feature Pack is bringing exciting additions to PvP!

13 Aug
Announcing the Guild Wars 2 World Tournament Series
We’re bringing competitive play in Guild Wars 2 to a whole new level.

Week 1: Competitive Week
From new tools for coordinating your tactics to new rewards for your valor, Competitive Week is all about our support for and improvements to competitive play in Guild Wars 2!

18 Aug
Balancing Act

19 Aug
Tricks and Explosive Finales

20 Aug
Command the Rainbow

21 Aug
Prepare to Fight

Week 2: A Fresh Start
Our second week of September 2014 Feature Pack reveals is focused on improving the Guild Wars 2 experience for new and veteran players alike!

Week 3: Collecting and Trading
In the September 2014 Feature Pack, we're rethinking the way you collect and trade items!

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From August 14 to August 24, we’re chopping the price of both Guild Wars 2 Digital Heroic Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition in half! Now is the perfect time to pick up this award-winning MMO and experience a constantly evolving fantasy world where your actions make a difference!

Get Guild Wars 2 today and save!

* Offer applies only to Digital Heroic Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition purchased through buy.guildwars2.com from 12pm PDT August 13, 2014 through 11:59pm PDT August 24, 2014.

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Hello, all! I’m Karl McLain, one of the game designers here at ArenaNet. I’m here to tell you about the direction we’re going with balance changes in the September 2014 Feature Pack.

For a more specific preview of our balance changes, please tune in and watch our Ready Up live stream this Friday at 12:00 p.m. PT to catch the “Skill Bar,†a new segment that will discuss many upcoming balance changes in detail!

Elementalist

The elementalist’s cantrips are popular in all parts of the game, and in the interest of promoting build diversity, we’ll be using the feature pack as an opportunity to work on other types of utility skills. For example, the fire and air storms from the Glyph of Storms will now apply conditions of their own. In addition, we’ll rework some of the new grandmaster traits that currently don’t have enough of a payoff or are too difficult to use. Finally, we’ll be addressing the Tornado and Fiery Greatsword elite skills; we’ll make some usability improvements and tone down some of their unintended functionality.

Engineer

In this balance pass, we’ve focused on giving some love to lesser-used kits and several non-kit utilities. With this update, you’ll see some changes to a few of your elixirs that will give them a bit more functionality, like Elixir R, which we’ve altered to also remove immobilized. Likewise, we’ve looked at a few of the gadgets and updated them to have a more defined purpose and a clear use.

Guardian

With the guardian, our intent for this balance update is to improve some of the less popular utility skills and open up some build diversity in both support and offense. The active skills of some of the spirit weapons have been reworked to include more supportive functionality. One change we’re excited to tell you about is Spirit Bow’s command ability, which will now heal in a targeted area rather than just around the bow itself. We’ve also adjusted the guardian’s elite skills; the tomes have received considerable number changes and quality-of-life updates.

Mesmer

The mesmer has seen adjustments in a few areas. For this update, we’re looking at improving multiple traits, utility skills, weapon skills, and illusions. We’ve taken a look at some of the new grandmaster traits and improved upon their original implementation. We’ve altered the scepter a bit, pushing it more toward the condition role we would like it to have. In addition, you’ll see some awesome improvements to offensive mantras and a rework of the Mimic skill, which will now copy all boons on your target to yourself.

Necromancer

Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits as well as improving the overall effectiveness of their melee and skirmishing weapons. You’ll see that the dagger auto-attack will now hit two targets, while the axe’s animations have been tuned to be more fluid. Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.

Ranger

The balance team has given the ranger a lot of love during this balance update. Rangers will be seeing a rework of Signet of the Beastmaster, which will be replaced by a new trait entitled Predator’s Onslaught. With this change, Signet of the Beastmaster’s effects will be rolled into the baseline signet skills. We’ll also be updating several Beastmastery traits to remove pet specificity, allowing you to choose which pets you’d like to use rather than the traits themselves requiring a specific family. Along with these improvements, we’ll be updating quite a few weapon skills to improve their base functionality and responsiveness.

Thief

The goal for the thief during this balance pass has been to improve upon the new grandmaster traits that were recently added and increase the overall value of a few other traits through small tweaks. For example, Venomous Aura will now use your own stats rather than your allies’, so if you’re a master of condition damage, your shared venoms will be more effective than ever. As with the necromancer, you’ll be seeing increases to the number of targets that your dagger auto-attacks can strike. Additionally, we’ll be introducing a small range increase for pistol attacks when using the Ricochet trait.

Warrior

In this update, we’ll be adjusting how the warrior uses and loses adrenaline. We felt that the warrior maintained their adrenaline a little too well, in that there wasn’t a real consequence to missing with an adrenaline skill or simply keeping it from fight to fight. We’ll be adjusting adrenaline so that it’s lost if you miss with a burst ability as well as draining slowly when you exit combat. With these changes, however, we will be updating the greatsword’s adrenaline burst ability to be a cleaving, execution-style attack more fitting for the weapon. In addition to this, we’ll be updating multiple skills and traits, increasing and decreasing some adrenaline-gain abilities, and addressing multiple traits to have better effects.
The September 2014 Feature Pack is on its way, and we’re extremely excited about the balance changes it will bring!

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Ranger - More pet flexibility and improvements to weapon skills... I like where this is going

 

The September 2014 Feature Pack, which we announced yesterday along with our World Tournament Series, is bringing exciting additions to PvP!
Today, we’ll be talking about two of our additions aimed at supporting our competitive community: Standard Enemy Models and PvP-exclusive armors! Gameplay Programmer Branden Gee will kick things off by introducing the Standard Enemy Models, and then Designer Hugh Norfolk will tell you about our glorious new armors.

Standard Enemy Models

Something you’ve probably noticed if you’ve played much PvP in Guild Wars 2 is that races in our game can have widely varying animations for the same skill. In competitive play, this can make it hard to accurately anticipate and react to opponents. As part of our support for high-end competitions, we wanted to use this feature pack to introduce a way for players to more consistently identify and react to enemy skills.

This left us with a pretty tough question to answer: How do you normalize the animations and sizes of characters to improve readability while still maintaining the visual identity of each profession? Let me tell you right now, upscaling asuran characters was not the answer we were looking for!

Our solution is what we’re calling “Standard Enemy Models.†It consists of a human model, a weapon set, and a set of armor per profession and gender. We put together looks that we feel preserve the feeling of each profession and are visually distinct from other professions.

So what does all of this mean for you? It’s pretty simple. There’s now a setting in the General Options tab of your F11 menu. If you enable the Standard Enemy Models and enter a game type that supports them, all of your opponents will be represented by these models based on their gender and profession. This set will only replace enemy models; your teammates will not be affected. As this functionality is intended for high-end, skilled players at the top tier of PvP, this option will work only in Team Arenas and Custom Arenas that allow Tournament Commands.

PvP Armor & Reward Track

Hey, everybody, Hugh Norfolk here to tell you about our new PvP-exclusive armors. “Wait, Hugh,†I can hear you asking, “did you really just say that we’ll be getting new armors in PvP?†Yes! There will be two sets of armor that will be released exclusively to PvP: the Glorious armor and Glorious Hero’s armor.

When designing this armor set, we really wanted to bring something unique and, well, glorious to PvP. We started out by asking questions like, “What would a god of war wear into battle?†and “What would embody the glory of combat?†As we looked for the answers to these questions, we turned to mythology for inspiration. We also looked to the most glorious place of all: the Hall of Heroes from the original Guild Wars. One of the key visuals from the Hall of Heroes is its majestic statues with ornate wings, which we decided to incorporate into our new armor sets.

In response to the PvP community wanting a very prestigious set of armor, we decided that we would create two variants of this armor. The Glorious Hero’s set is a top-tier reward for certain competitive tournaments like the Guild Wars 2 International All-Star Tournament at gamescom. If you aren’t one of the teams competing in that tournament, don’t despair—the Glorious Hero’s set will be available as a prize in similar tournaments in the future. The Glorious Armor set is something we wanted all players to be able to earn. As such, all players have the opportunity to obtain the Glorious armor set from a repeatable Glorious Armor Reward Track that will arrive with the feature pack.

This track will have rewards similar to those found in region reward tracks, like Dragonite Ore, Empyreal Fragments, Obsidian Shards, and Mystic Clovers. You’ll also be able to earn Custom Arena Time Tokens to support your favorite Custom Arenas. Each time you complete the Glorious Armor Reward Track, you’ll be able to select a piece of Glorious armor to add to your wardrobe!

We are very excited to bring you these armors in the upcoming feature pack, and we can’t wait to see you don the mantle of glory!

We’ll see you in the Mists!

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We’re introducing some exciting World vs. World updates with the September 2014 Feature Pack. Today, we’ll be talking about some of the ways we’re extending the strategic impact of siege for both assaulters and defenders: the new Siege Golem Mastery ability line and our new Siege Disabler trick!

New WvW Ability Line: Siege Golem Mastery

Siege Golem Mastery is joining the list of WvW ability lines. Ability lines in WvW allow you to customize the WvW experience for each character on your account by investing the points you earn when you gain a WvW rank. This new line allows you to become an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction! Gain super speed after destroying a wall or gate, increase your golem’s offensive and defensive stats, add a new AoE healing effect to your Shield Bubble skill, and perhaps most excitingly, gain access to the ejection seat! If your golem takes lethal damage, it will explode, damaging and knocking down nearby foes and launching you safely away, stealthed and invulnerable for a few seconds.

New Trick: Siege Disabler

Your friendly neighborhood Traps and Tricks outfitter is about to be stocking his first trick, the Siege Disabler. This item consumes supply on use, just like the existing WvW traps, but unlike traps, the Siege Disabler is thrown like a grenade. Upon landing, it discharges and temporarily disables all enemy siege weapons within a radius of 450 for 45 seconds. Disabled weapons can’t be used for the duration of the effect, and any players currently manning siege weapons will be forced off them. This trick even disables manned siege golems, albeit for a shorter 20-second duration. We’re excited to see how this can empower defenders in WvW. In addition, traps and tricks will now cost badges and coin instead of badges and karma.

That’s it for today—check back tomorrow and Thursday for more exciting WvW news!

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