Reserving Guild Wars 2 Character Names

Written by Kris
Thursday, 17 May 2012 21:31

News

ArenaNet's newest blogpost is a short but important one as it clarifies how character name reservations will work. In case you already didn't know Guild Wars 1 players can reserve their GW1 character names for use in GW2.

All you need to do is have the character whose name you want to reserv on your GW1 account and make sure you have logged in with him/her this year before ArenaNet will confirm the list of names, which will happen a few weeks before launch. You have to then claim your reserved name during GW2 headstart or at launch day by creating a character with that name. All reserved names that haven't been used will be unlocked for everyone after launch day.

I'm personally not too worried. My planned multible word character names are unique enough that I'm not afraid that someone will "steal" them from me. I'm more concerned for grabbing my desired one word names as it's going to be a race for those at launch!

Stress Test Elementalist Videos

Written by Kris
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 16:35

Headlines

Looks like the recent Stress Test (May 14) was more or less a success. People had the chance to play Guild Wars 2, servers were mildly stressed and bugs were found! After combating invaders in World vs World with my norn warrior, I decided to roll a human elementalist for some fresh gameplay.

I didn't enjoy the staff and scepter skills too much, because their casting speed felt slower than I would have prefered. So I switched to dual daggers and that was the point I started to enjoy the elementalist way more. Of course it always comes down to each person's personal taste.

The speed and mobility double daggers require and grant the player were just plain fun. Here's a video of my elementalist fighting the Drake Broodmother and a couple of bandits with the User Interface turned off. Every time my character was low on health, he yelled out his need for healing - that way I would always know when to heal without any on-screen indication. It was quite refreshing to play that way and I suggest You to do the same at least once.

In the second video I'm running around in Queensdale and Divinity's Reach, stopping for the beautiful views and breathing fire or ice. Main-hand daggers provide skills named Drake's Breath with fire attunement and Cone of Ice with water attunement. Both of these attacks looked really satisfying! I mean, come one, who wouldn't like to reply a flamebreathing drake with a breath of fire of their own.

7-Hour Beta Test on May 14th!

Written by Kris
Thursday, 10 May 2012 05:34

News

Your next chance to play Guild Wars 2 is already on Monday! According to this unexpected tweet from ArenaNet, they will be conducting a stress test on May 14th from 11:00 to 18:00 PDT (-7 GMT). The beta will last for 7 hours and is open for only pre-purchasers.

UPDATE: Mike O'Brien discusses the lst beta test and the upcoming stress test in this short blogpost.

The following detailed information can be found in the last GW2 facebook update:

This special test event is open only to Pre-Purchase customers who have registered their accounts. With your help, we can conduct important tests and address some of the issues we identified during our first Beta Weekend Event. During this event, all you need to do is play normally with a new or existing character on your Beta account using the same game client. Please note that since this is a stress test of our servers, you may experience some in-game performance issues. If you’ve pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 and wish to participate in the stress test, we recommend that you register the account and download the game client.

Considering this a short stress test, I'd advise everyone to brace yourself for connectivty issues and really just expect the worst. But if we're lucky, it'll all work out fine. I for one can't wait to play again!

More Videos from the April Beta

Written by Kris
Wednesday, 09 May 2012 17:47

Videos

I decided to make a separate article post for some of the other videos I've uploaded to the GW2Camp channel just in case some of them have been missed.

The first video shows me on my norn warrior trying out the rifle+signets build. It was fun to play this way and I did feel like a dangerous marksman while mercilessly sniping down my crippled foes.

If you look at my traits settings, you'll see that I have maximised both Arms and Discipline trees to 30 and distributed the remaining 10 into Defense for extra adrenaline. It's heavily focused on the burst skill, but I assume if one would put the 30 points from Discipline to Strength, that could result in higher damage overall if you're not into Kill Shot spamming.

Here's a random story instance from the norn Cunning biography storyline. I didn't like it honestly, the whole spirit chasing and shamanistic talk didn't really fit my shoot first and ask questions later type norn rifleman. The Strength biography storyline was a lot more straightforward.

This video is a real dumb one. Me and Marek were waiting in the WvW starting base in Eternal Battlegrounds. I decided to use the sleep emote and Marek the crying one. Incidentaly we ended up in a very specific position. Naturally I just had to record this. For the lulz!

Gem Shop Videos

Written by Kris
Friday, 04 May 2012 11:21

Videos

During the beta I made I managed to get the free 2000 gems (you had to submit valid credit card information). I recorded an overall video of the commerce panel and a separate video of me opening the bought minipet packs. I also bought a dye pack and a cosmetic tophat!

Dye Pack (150 gems) - each dye box contains 3 random dyes (2 common and 1 uncommon). Once a dye has been unlocked on a character it can be used as many times as you like to color armor and town clothes.

Carnival Ringmaster's Hat (200 gems) - the hat of a carnival master.

Minis Pack (300 gems) - this pack comes with 3 randomly selected Minis (2 common and 1 uncommon) to add to your collection. Minis are tiny models of your favorite monsters and characters from the world of Tyria.