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#guildwars My adventures in Guild Wars 2 continue. I've logged in nearly every day for the past few weeks, if only for a few moments. I remain enamored of the art, and in my sessions I nearly always feel like I accomplished something. More »

#guildwars Although Guild Wars 2 has mostly avoided catastrophic launch problems, the online game has been plagued by a number of small nuisances. Among them, that the "Trading Post," which is ArenaNet's term for its auction house, hasn't been available, and perhaps more problematically, that it's been difficult to keep a group of players together. More »

I’ve seen the things that are to come in The Secret World, at least some of them, and even though the present is turbulent the future seems bright, or at least as bright as global conflict, the destruction of a metropolis and the spilling over of supernatural horror onto city streets could possibly be. It’s a flame-bright future with a great deal of ash, boiling blood and smoke blotted across it. As well as witnessing the power of plotting, I’ve been dipping into Guild Wars 2 for the first time, so along with a tour taking in elements of The Secret World’s first raid, I’ve been wondering whether I have room for two MMORPGs in my life.

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While Guild Wars 2 is clearly pretty brillo, its early days have been somewhat hampered by an apparent bug that fouls up groups being in the same place and has meant the in-game auction house, aka Trading Post, has been offline most of the time. The latter has surprisingly been no biggie, and in some regards has meant people could get on with the business of going out there into the world rather than feverishly trying to ensure they have all the best kit all the time. As an obsessive leather crafter (and in the game) though, I would have killed for the Trading Post to have been an easy source of rawhide, if only because it would have spared me wandering the lands and brutalising all the wildlife I could possibly stick my dagger into.

No matter, the Trading Post is apparently now fully functional as of last night, which means the Great Loot Hunt is very much on. Grouping remains troubled, sadly.(more…)

Here’s the exciting news: Guild Wars 2, a PC-only videogame, is number one at UK retail this week. Eurogamer reckon it’s the first PC game to have that honour since Football Manager 2011 and StarCraft 2 both pulled it off in 2010. (Diablo III was held off by Max Payne 3, although, as has to be qualified every bloody time with these kinds of stories, digital sales were not included, therefore the entire chart is basically irrelevant anyway.)

Here’s the confusing news: apparently it sold less than Star Wars: The Old Republic did in launch week, despite being at least twelve times better than it. However, once again this does reflect retail-only sales, so means basically nothing – especially as NCSoft have been running a digital pre-purchase scheme for the game for yonks now.(more…)

#guildwars Over the weekend, Chris Whiteside, Lead Producer at Guild Wars 2 developers ArenaNet, took to Reddit to announce that over 3000 players had been temporarily banned from the game for taking advantage of an exploit. More »

Stiq Flicks - from film and video game industry freelance writer Kevin Kelly - examines video games and attempts to pair them with matching films. It's like wine and cheese, but with more aliens.
Guild Wars 2 seeks to revive the MMO genre that has been long-served by the now-aging World of Warcraft. While the game is different in many ways, you'll still be questing, adventuring and most importantly of all, partying up with others in order to become better, stronger and more resourceful.

Which makes me think of all of the movies where a band of different adventurers come together in the name of a quest. There's actually a lot more than you would think, ranging from the ragtag group of time-traveling little people who snag hapless Kevin out of bed and into their hijinx in Time Bandits, to the motley group of kids in The Goonies who set out to find One-Eyed Willy's treasure.

But there are also a slew of movies that deal with role-playing games. From Tom Hank's first starring role in Mazes and Monsters - based on the book of the same name, which is in turn based on events detailed in the investigative crime book The Dungeon Master, which is all about the dangers of playing Dungeons & Dragons - all the way to the documentary The Dungeon Masters, which I highlighted on the Joystiq Box Office a couple of years ago.
But without a great film that combines both a group of adventurers and the role-playing experience, at least until The Knights of Badassdom finally comes out, I'm applying the tried and true archetypes of adventure-partying to the classic Stand By Me.

#guildwars There the player was, getting the camera right, the lighting right, the character's pose just right for that perfect screenshot and...oh, hi bear. More »

#guildwars If you've been playing Guild Wars 2 at all, then you've probably seen people talking about jumping. Dancing is cool too, and actually, standing in one place is pretty neat as well, but the thing people love to do most is jump. More »

You’ve probably never heard of Guild Wars 2 – a plucky little MMO that’s so far failed to draw much attention around the net. You might want to give it a look though. Maybe. They say it does a couple of moderately cool things. And it looks quite nice, if you’re into that.

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#guildwars2 Guild Wars 2 may be filled with amazing artwork, but the development team behind the game—ArenaNet—makes the best use of them as wall art. More »

ArenaNet has permanently banned 3000 players for exploiting a weapon-reselling bug. Seems a bit harsh for just messing with virtual economics? ArenaNet say it’s a statement of intent. Speaking on reddit, lead producer Chris Whiteside said: “We take our community and the integrity of the game very seriously, and want to be clear that intentionally exploiting the game is unacceptable… The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game. We intended to send a very clear message that exploiting the game in this way will not be tolerated, and we believe this message now has been well understood.”

Blimey. And these are some bold moves from the company: ArenaNet have even stopped selling the game directly from their site until they have things sorted for existing players. This does not stop you from buying it via other outlets, however.(more…)

Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first MMO that’s tried to tell a single-player story. For that specific element, it’s not even the highest profile one in recent months – both The Old Republic and The Secret World going all out to make narrative matter. The stories it tells, while definitely fun, aren’t as interesting or memorable, or even as notable a presence during most of my journey.

So why do I feel much more involved with my Elementalist’s personal journey through the world than with either of the games that set out to make narrative their main selling point?

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#guildwars There's a reason I'm highlighting this quote from ArenaNet co-founder and president Mike O'Brien: you just don't see it anymore at the top end of the video game business. More »

#guildwars In just five days of play, Guild Wars 2 has managed to wreak havoc on my usually-sharp ability to make up my damn mind. More »

Sick metal beards and gigantic thrones are all the rage in ArenaNet's subscription-less MMO.

#guildwars Guild Wars 2 has only just officially launched today, but ever since the head start began on Saturday, ArenaNet has been busily suspending users whose names or behavior violate policy. Many users who have been suspended have taken exception to their punishment. So ArenaNet has taken to Reddit, to answer users' innocent and not-so-innocent questions. More »

It’s Guild Wars 2 Day, and may all the gods combined have mercy on ArenaNet’s servers. I’m working on the WIT at the moment, and you can check out Alec’s early impressions of the game here, but while we battle both foul monsters and bloody overflow server bugs, we’re going to take a look at a couple of specific things of interest. Up first, the Black Lion Trading Company – the Guild Wars 2 item store that’s a little more hooked into the economy than most.

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I’m having a whale of a time with Guild Wars 2, but I am playing it pretty much on my own due to problems with the grouping/instancing/server overflow system. As half the world pointed out on my piece yesterday, in theory if your party is rendered disparate by the game you can right-click on party members and select ‘join’ to be dispatched to whichever overflow shard your chums are on, but only in theory. It doesn’t work much of the time, and to the point that me and mine simply don’t bother to even try it now, especially as we knew that even if it did work we’d soon be torn asunder again should we have the temerity to change zone or embark on personal quests.

Turns out it is at least partially a bug rather than the design flaw I accused of it being, ArenaNet having been in touch with the following statement, and promise that they’re working their hindquarters off to improve the situation.(more…)

#guildwars Come tomorrow, everybody that wants to play Guild Wars 2 can, as the game officially launches for the people drawn in by everyone else talking about the damn game all weekend. You know what this calls for? You read the headline, fool. DJ Person, give us a beat! More »

#guildwars Characters in Guild Wars 2 are good at lots of things: Fighting, spellcasting, animal-summoning. But they're also really good at standing still. No, seriously! More »

#guildwars Guild Wars 2 has been a long time coming. Years of previews, discussions, developer diaries, demos, betas and a head-start weekend have led to this point: Guild Wars 2 finally unlocks for everyone tonight. More »

#guildwars I jumped into Guild Wars 2 on Saturday afternoon, re-creating for myself the Human thief I'd been missing since the first beta weekend back in May. But then I remembered my earlier promise to myself: I needed to step outside of my comfort zone. That's where the Asura engineer came from. More »

We talk about a potential Wii U release date, PAX, a bit of hemming and hawing about this week's new releases, and... actually, we made all the _real_ plans for this week immediately after this video was recorded.

#guildwars Guild Wars 2 went live this weekend for the kajillionty people that managed to wrangle their way into the early start. I am among these people, and I've learned some important things about the game, its players, and my own technological shortcomings over the past 48 hours. More »

One thing: my three days (and counting) in Guild Wars 2 were comfortable the most gripped I’ve been by a new MMO since those heady, early days in World Warcraft.

Another thing: it’s got the most serious design flaw I believe I’ve ever seen in any MMO.(more…)

#hardware Guild Wars 2 launches in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow, and I am almost completely prepared. I've got my collector's edition. I've got my caffeine. I've got SteelSeries' gorgeous mouse and headset combo. Let me tell you about those last two before performing an emergency formatting of my hard drive and then attempt to reinstall everything and download the client before servers open. More »

#guildwars Guild Wars 2 doesn't launch until next week, but the exchanging of currency for goods and services heeds no human schedule. ArenaNet's resident economist has been analyzing beta data, twisting it with his arcane magics into an infographic that any self-respecting Charr would sooner set aflame than read. More »

Have you pre-ordered Guild Wars 2? It seems there are an awful lot of you that have. If you’re amongst that number, then you can join in with a server stress test at 8pm tonight, lasting until midnight. A STRESS TEST, OKAY? GOD!

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