The End Begins on January 21st for Guild Wars 2 with the release of the Origins of Madness patch. Players will find themselves once again pitted against the forces of Scarlet Briar in the new patch as incredible new adversaries are revealed and the start to an epic finish to the first season of the Living World that started last January.
Last month, Colin Johanson posted a 2013 year in review blog post on the official Guild Wars 2 website. In the post he reviewed the features that players saw over the latter half of the year before announcing that the next four patches would finish off the first season of the Living World initiative with the first patch not coming until January 21st.
On the 11th day of gaming ZAM gave to thee the most awesome column ever, and last week was the 11th month anniversary of The Scrying Pool, my Guild Wars 2 column here on ZAM.
Last week I had a chance to sit down with Devon Carver and Jon Peters of ArenaNet to talk about the new World vs. World (WvW) map in Guild Wars 2, Edge of the Mists. What makes this new map so special is that it is the first WvW map that will create overflows when the population reaches the cap instead of lining players up in a queue like the current maps.
ArenaNet, through the voice of French Community Manager Stephane Lo Presti, clarified its stance about posting to YouTube video content that contains video game assets. They will be monitoring YouTube changes, but wanted to let the community know where they stand.
To use assets (e.g. screenshots, footage) from the games, any content creator needs to comply with the Guild Wars 2 Terms of Use. Content creators cannot use them for commercial products, but use for non-commercial purposes is permitted:
In each article of The Scrying Pool, I look at what is and what could be. After taking a look at what is present in Guild Wars 2 now, be that lore or game mechanics, I then ask What If? What if this happened in the lore or this feature was added in a future patch.
Scarlet Briar is the main villain in Guild wars 2’s Living World. She first appeared in the August content and has taken center stage in almost every content release since. Now with every content, there is almost a lack of suspense as the tag line is just Scarlet did it.
Guild Wars 2 Game Director Colin Johanson made a review listing what came to the game with the December 10th release, and what will come in early 2014. Some of the 2013 projects will be extended to 2014 to ensure further polish of those features.
Wintersday is returning to Guild Wars 2 next week with the A Very Merry Wintersday content patch. Players who were around for last year's festivities will recognize their returning favorites as many of them have made their return. Toymaker Tixx is sticking around a little longer this year for a six-week long winter festival starting on December 10th.
In a new blog post, ArenaNet's PvP team lead John Corpening outlined the PvP reward changes coming to Guild Wars 2. Unlike many reveals by ArenaNet, these changes are not all coming soon, but will slowly be implemented a piece at a time for these long term plans. This early release of information is so that players will know why each individual change is being done, as some of the changes would have been hard to understand without knowing the overall vision.
The next update for Guild Wars 2, Fractured, will be launched later today. Fractals of the Mist was first introduced a year ago and this update will see the first changes to them. Not only will players see the introduction of three new fractals, but updates to the rewards, difficulty and the addition of the new Mistlock Instabilities at levels 30 and above.
