Guild Wars 2 Concept Art: Theo Prins Profile

ArenaNet have posted an interesting profile of one of their concept artists, Theo Prins.

If you appreciate art or have an interest in how some of the GW2 vistas are created, then have a read.

If you like creating your own game art, we’d love to show off your work. If you’re interested, drop us a line!

World of Tanks: Patch 8.0 Tank Destroyer Review


Blitzkrieg is a new regular column devoted to the very popular MMO World of Tanks. If you’ve got a topic you’d like our resident expert Matthew “Scope” Pearce to cover, drop him a line!

G’day fellow gamers – recently Patch 8.0 of World of Tanks hit the live servers with its brand new physics engine, a graphical overhaul on some of the original maps, and also the introduction of a second TD (Tank Destroyer) line added to the Russian tech tree with four new TDs all up.

First up in my review is the brand new tier VII TD the SU-100M1

The SU-100M1 is equipped with the 100mm D-10S mod. 1944 gun with 131-219mm of armour penetration which deals 173-288 of damage, and sports a health pool of 830, and has a top speed of 50Kmph, with 90mm of frontal armour.

The armour for this tank is rather low for its tier, however its strength lies in its low profile and high camouflage rating, and how fast it can react to the ever changing battle with its amazing speed.

The upgraded gun 100mm LB-1C can shoot 9.52 rounds a minute with an accuracy of 0.33 at 100m, and an aiming time of only 1.7 seconds, which makes this TD an incredibly accurate borderline semi automatic sniper rifle with an average of 2070dpm (damage per minute).

The SU-100M1 tank destroyer offers players the speed of a medium tank, and the firepower and accuracy of a tank destroyer giving yourself more opportunities to move to your favourite bush, or sniper spot quicker and easier than before. 

Next up is the tier VIII TD the SU-101

The SU-101 comes equipped with the tier VII 100mm D-10S mod. 1944, has 990 hit points and has a top speed of 54kmph with 120mm of frontal armour.

The SU-101 plays as a slightly faster, more heavily armed TD than its predecessor.

This vehicle is a counterpart of the Jagdpanther II – it even looks the same.

There’s one difference though – the gun on the SU-101 is a TD version of the tier X IS-4’s top gun, and boy is it powerful.

Let’s compare the stats on the guns. This powerful 122mm M62-C2 gun is in a small nimble platform that has a nice 120mm of armour angled at 60° which means you can bounce quite a few shots from range while packing quite a punch and retaining good accuracy and a comfortable rate of fire.

Now for the tier IX  TD the SU-122-54

 World of Tanks Tank Destroyer

The SU-122-54 TD is based on the T-54’s medium tank hull with a max speed of 48kmph and 1530 hit points, while sporting a newer upgraded 122mm M62-C2 gun.

The strength of the SU-122-54 is not only in its powerful new gun though – it is also the smallest of the tier IX tank destroyers, making it harder to hit as well as having the best camouflage and thus making it harder for enemy players to spot you .

The SU-122-54 is also a great flanker due to its lower profile allowing it to move around unnoticed far easier than other tier IX tank destroyers.

And now for the tier X tank destroyer: the Object 263

 Object 263 World of Tanks Tank Destroyer

The Object 263 is completely different from its predecessors as it is based on the Russian tier X IS-7 heavy tank.

The Object 263 has 250mm of sloped frontal armour, making it one of the hardest tanks in game to penetrate frontally from range.  It’s got  1900 hit points with a maximum speed of 55kmph meaning it is also the fastest tier X tank destroyer in the game.

But wait it gets even better. The Object 263 comes equipped with the 130mm S-70A that has the best accuracy of 0.32 at 100m out of all the tier X tank destroyers as well as a rate of fire of 5.45, which gives it the title of the fastest shooting tier X tank destroyer and making it capable of dealing over 3300dpm.

This tank destroyer is a killing machine on crack – not only does it have an accurate gun that has an insane ROF (Rate of Fire), more armour then the most heavily armoured tank in the German tech tree (the Maus), but it also has an incredible speed of 55kph while the Maus can hardly get to 20kph on open ground.

Coming from playing the German tech tree for the majority of my World of Tanks career, with the amazing accuracy that comes with being a German tank commander and loving my Jag Tiger ,I have reluctantly started to climb the Russian TD line in order to get a tier 10 version of my beloved JT as the JpzE-100 just doesn’t feel like an upgrade from the JT but more of a downgrade.

So over to you, what do you think of these new TDs?

Funniest Guild Wars 2 Review?

Back in February we posted a rather funny review of SWTOR from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, and he’s backed up with another cracker review, this time for Guild Wars 2.

If you like cutting sarcasm then waste no more time, watch this:


 

What I like most about the review, aside from the gold humour, is that fact that it’s overall pretty accurate – do you agree?

[Via Guild Wars 2 Gamers of Oceania Facebook Group]

Guild Wars 2 Patch Notes: 25th September 2012

Guild Wars 2 Patch NotesAnother big update from ArenaNet – kudos to them for the speed in which they’re getting a lot of these fixes in.

The full patch notes for you:

General
• Fixes to LOD on numerous objects in the world.
• Fixes to maps to prevent players from moving outside of the playable area.
• Fixed a bug that made pet footsteps excessively loud, especially in water.
• Fixed a bug with assists not working in keg brawl.
• Fixed numerous blocked events.
• Updated text and functionality when purchasing bank slots.
• Fixed loud sounds on portals to the Underworld in Godslost Swamp.
• Fixed several bugs that were preventing some skill challenges from resetting properly.
• All recipe items are now account bound. Many were previously soulbound.
• Updated Superior Rune of the Ogre Rock Dog so that it doesn’t summon when the player is underwater.
• Updated Sigil of Demon Summoning so that it doesn’t summon when the player is underwater.
• Summoned rock dogs and fleshreavers die when they enter water.
• Removed the lone 1 copper from city map completion rewards.
• Removed Mystic Forge recipes that were being used to reduce surplus supplies.
• Enemies in tutorial areas will no long drop loot. Instead, an award of 72 copper has been added to the rewards for completing the tutorial. This is to dissuade players from lingering in tutorial instances to farm the creatures in them.
• Obsidian Shards are now account bound.
• Box of Berserker’s Draconian Armor and Box of Rampager’s Draconian Armor now reward the proper items.
• Fixed various crash bugs.
• Added the rank 30-39 wolf finishing move.
• Fixed recipes for the Mystic Artifact, Mystic Barricade, and Mystic Trident.
• Fixed visible map completion percentage errors and the achievement not completing.
• Applied 10-second cooldown to Bowl of Saffron-scented Poultry Soup buff. This was done to keep elementalists from spamming condition removal with Signet of Restoration.

Black Lion Trading Company
• Added functionality and improvements to the Black Lion Chests, including a chance to receive new items like a permanent version of the Black Lion Trader Express.
• Black Lion Salvage Kits now properly display the correct percentages for rare materials.

Story
• Adjusted difficulty for the following story steps: “A Fragile Peace,” “Breaking the Bone Ship,” “Killing Fields,” “Political Homicide,” “Sabotage,” “Set to Blow,” “Stand By Your Krewe,” “The Ringmaster,” “The Stone Sheath,” “Track the Seraph,” “Unscheduled Delay,” “Unwelcome Visitors,” and “Welcome Home.”
• Fixed bugs in the following story steps: “A Fragile Peace,” “Against the Corruption,” “Bad Blood,” “Forging the Pact,” “Stand By Your Krewe,” and “Tower Down.”
• Fixed exploits in “The Sound of Psi-Lance.”
• End of Story Loot Bags:
o These have been improved to only give green or better gear of level 78 or higher.
o The number of bags received has been reduced from 5 to 3.
o More improvements will be made in coming weeks. Players who complete the story before the final update will be equally compensated once the new rewards are in.

Dungeons
General
• Updated vendors in the Ascalonian Catacombs and Caudecus’s Manor to sell level 80 versions of their unique skins rather than level 60 and 70. Players who purchased the level 60 and 70 versions will soon be given the opportunity to upgrade those to level 80 without having to use transmutation stones.
Citadel of Flame
• Fixed an exploit in Magg’s chain that was allowing players to skip the entire dungeon and still be rewarded.
• In Magg’s chain, if Magg happens to die in the lava field, he’ll teleport himself to the start of the area just outside it.
• In Magg’s chain, Magg must be much closer to things to draw their initial aggro. This only affects the escort to the magmacyte rock.
Caudecus’s Manor
• Fixed an exploit that was allowing players to skip content.
Honor of the Waves
• Fixed a bug in the Butcher’s chain that prevented a boss from spawning.
Arah
• Fixed a blocking issue.
Ascalonian Catacombs
• Fixed blocking bugs in Detha’s chain.

Dungeon Rewards
We’ve made some significant updates to dungeon rewards. I wanted to try and clarify them here. All of these changes have been the result of an original exploit which was letting players receive upwards of 20 levels by completing a single dungeon run. We initially closed this exploit, which caused some new problems. The result is this new system which should increase dungeon rewards for players who play though them normally but help curb inflation of rewards for those who are using exploitative methods to farm them.

1) Dungeon tokens are now rewarded at the end of an explorable chain. This was done to stop players from repeatedly entering a chain and farming the first boss that dropped tokens rather than playing the entire chain. At some point in the near future, we will make up for this by making dungeon tokens a rare drop so that even players who are not completing a chain can make partial progress toward the rewards.
2) Dungeons reward 20 tokens for completion and now reward an additional 40 tokens for the first time they are completed each day. This means that if players can complete all 3 chains of a dungeon in a day, they’ll receive a total of 180 tokens, which is enough to purchase some of the smaller rewards.
3) Dungeon tokens should be account bound. This will allow players to have a single character farm tokens for their other characters.
4) Last week, to limit the most extreme cases of dungeon speed-clearing, we introduced a system to limit rewards for rapidly repeating dungeon clears. However, a bug in that system caused it to impact more players than intended. This week, we’re updating the system to not impact clearing different chains of the same dungeon. We’ll continue to evaluate this system in coming weeks.

Professions
General
• Implemented a fix to make Heartseeker, Lightning Leap, Flame Leap, and Monarch’s Leap hit more reliably.

Elementalist
• Fixed bugs with Flamestrike and Ice Shards so they can’t be fired behind the player.
• Quick Glyphs: This Air Magic trait has been updated to apply 20% recharge reduction to the elite skill Glyph of Elementals.

Engineer
• Grenade Barrage: This Grenade Kit skill should now be usable underwater.
• Short Fuse: This trait is no longer overwritten by the Grenadier trait. Also, this trait now works with underwater grenades.
• Speedy Kits: Added a 5-second recharge to the trigger for this trait. This was to prevent players from exploiting it to gain vigor buffs of extreme duration.
• Invigorating Speed: Added a 5-second recharge to the trigger for this trait. This was to prevent players from exploiting it to gain vigor buffs of extreme duration.

Guardian
• Merciful Intervention: This skill has been updated to work with the Meditation Mastery trait. The tooltip for this skill has also been updated to display the healing amount when affected by traits.
• Elusive Power: This trait has been updated to not grant might when aegis was blocked.

Mesmer
• Fixed text on “readied” mantra buffs.
• Veil: This glamour skill has been updated to show the appropriate active duration when not affected by traits.

Necromancer
• Taste of Death: This skill’s healing fact has been updated.
• Spectral Wall: This skill has been updated to apply the correct amount of vulnerability (10).
• Vampiric: Fixed a bug with this trait so that it now functions with projectiles.
• Close to Death: This trait has been updated to provide its listed 20% boost instead of the previous (unlisted) 10% boost.
• Banshee’s Wail: This Curses trait has been updated to apply extra swiftness.
• Spectral Walk: This skill has been updated to be more active and to work properly with its recharge trait. Also, Sever Spectral Bond has been changed to Spectral Recall.
• Minion Master: This Death Magic trait has been updated to properly affect the elite skill Summon Flesh Golem.
• Putrid Mark: This skill has been fixed to make it properly unblockable with the Greater Marks trait.
• Mark of Evasion: This trait can now trigger the Soul Marks trait.
• Reaper’s Protection: This trait has been updated to properly work with a variety of crowd-control effects.
Thief
• Bountiful Theft: This strait has been fixed so that it doesn’t apply 15 seconds of vigor twice.

Races
Norn
• Call Wurm: Autocasting has been removed from this skill to prevent an exploit. Additionally, the skill may now be cast on the move.

Player versus Player
• Legacy of the Foefire: Fixed an exploit that was allowing players to teleport past one of the gates.

World versus World
• Experimental Rifle: This item is no longer usable in World versus World.

Guild Wars 2 and Hackers: How To Secure Your Account

Mike O’Brien, who is GW2’s Executive Producer and who is also President of ArenaNet, has posted a nifty overview of account security.

It covers everything from:

– two-factor authentication (they were working on a mobile app but have chosen to change direction and go with Google Authenticator instead)
– password strength (surprise, surprise, people still set lame passwords)
– fighting hackers (they have 20+ million passwords on a blacklist that hackers have attempted to use with particular email addresses – you won’t be able to use these passwords if they are linked to an email that a hacker has tried. It’s reduced hacked acocunts from 1.5% to 0.1%)
– database breaches (they haven’t had any – yet)
– hitting the hackers where it hurts by not buying gold from third-party gold sellers

You can read the full post here – it’s not just for the noobs and has some interesting insights.

Guild Wars 2 For Mac Announced

Ok I have to admit this has come as a major surprise. ArenaNet have just announced that GW2 is ocming to the Mac and a beta version is already avilable for download.

Here’s the details:

Today we’re happy to announce another major milestone in the development of Guild Wars 2: going forward, ArenaNet will also be supporting the game on Apple’s Mac OS X. The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players. It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.

Bringing Guild Wars 2 to the Mac is huge for us, because it introduces the game to an entire group of players who are often ignored by game developers. The ability to play together with your friends is one of the underlying principles of Guild Wars 2, and providing a Mac client means that friends and guildmates can play together regardless of what operating system they favor.

On top of it all, ArenaNet staffers are big fans of Macs. We offer them as part of our employee laptop subsidy program, and our president Mike O’Brien is rarely seen without his Mac laptop. We’re as excited as anyone to play Guild Wars 2 on OS X.

The Mac Beta is available to anyone who has purchased or purchases Guild Wars 2. All you need is an active Guild Wars 2 account to download the Mac Beta client. Just log in to account.guildwars2.com and click Download Client to get started. If you have any questions, check out our Mac FAQ.

Keep in mind as you play the Mac Beta that it is a beta product. Performance and system requirements aren’t finalized. Review the beta hardware specification, and understand that your overall experience will be better when we release the final version. Even though it’s a beta, the Mac client does connect to the same live environment that the PC client connects to.

To bring Guild Wars 2 to the Mac, ArenaNet worked with our partners at TransGaming, whose Cider technology allows us to mirror the game experience as closely as possible between the PC and Mac. This means that future updates to Guild Wars 2 will be available for both platforms simultaneously.

So whether you’re a PC or a Mac, or both, we’ll see you in-game!

The hardware specs mentioned in the post aren’t too harsh either:

  • Mac OS®X 10.7.X or later
  • Intel® Core™ i5 or better
  • 4 GB Ram or better
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® 320M, ATI Radeon™ HD 6630M, Intel HD 3000 or better
  • 25 GB available HDD space
  • Broadband Internet connection
  • Keyboard and mouse/equivalent

 

The Mac beta version of Guild Wars 2 runs well on the below machines or better. Your results may vary if you’ve upgraded or changed your Mac hardware or are running on lower hardware specifications.

  • iMac 21.5″, 27″ (Mid-2010)
  • iMac 21.5″, 27″ (Mid-2011)
  • MacBook Pro 15″, 17″ (Mid-2010)
  • MacBook Pro 13″, 15″, 17″ (Early and Late-2011)
  • MacBook Pro 13″, 15″, 17 (Mid-2012)
  • Mac Mini (Mid-2011)

So over to you: are you a Mac user that’s been waiting for this?

GW2 Patch Notes: 17th September 2012

The full patch notes for you from the latest GW2 game update – enjoy! :

General

  • Asuran players will now aim toward their targets when using a rifle.
  • Fixed various broken events and skill challenges.
  • Fixed various locations that allowed players to move outside the map.
  • Fixed various locations on maps where players could become stuck.
  • Discovery crafting may now use items directly from a player’s bank.
  • Fixed bugs in the Exploration achievement so players can now receive 100% map completion.
  • Added a system to limit the experience and gold that players can receive from speed-farming dungeons.

Story

  • Fixed bugs in “A Different Dream,” “A Fragile Peace,” “Dredging Up the Past,” “Forging the Pact,” “Pastkeeper,” “Ships of the Line,” “Stealing Secrets,” “The Priory Assailed,” and “The Source of Orr.”
  • Reduced the overall difficulty in “Dead of Winter.”

World-versus-World

  • Retaliation: This boon no longer reflects damage received from siege weapons.
  • The Experimental Rifle is no longer usable in World-versus-World.

Professions

Warrior

  • Smoldering Arrow: This skill’s casting time has been reduced.

Mesmer

  • The Prestige: This skill now requires full recharge if it’s interrupted at any time.

Thief

  • Descent of Shadows: This trait’s effect can now only trigger once every 8 seconds.

Engineer

  • Rocket Boots: This skill is no longer usable underwater. This is a temporary change until we can figure out why players can launch themselves into the sky using this skill.
  • Detonate Mine Field: This skill is no longer a blast finisher.

BioWare Announce Dragon Age 3: Inquisition

BioWare have announced, over a year-ahead, that Dragon Age 3 is coming. This instalment is called Inquisition and it’s coming in ‘late 2013’.

Exec Producer Mark Darrah has written a brief post over at the Dragon Age website, which includes this summary of the state of play:

 

So here’s what I can confirm for now:

  • The next game will be called Dragon Age III: Inquisition.
  • We won’t be talking about the story of the game today. Though you can make some guesses from the title.
  • This game is being made by a lot of the same team that has been working on Dragon Age since Dragon Age: Origins. It’s composed of both experienced BioWare veterans and talented new developers.
  • We are working on a new engine which we believe will allow us to deliver a more expansive world, better visuals, more reactivity to player choices, and more customization. At PAX East, we talked about armor and followers… Yeah, that kind of customization. We’ve started with Frostbite 2 from DICE as a foundation to accomplish this.

There’s much more to talk about, of course, but it will have to wait until it’s ready for the prime time.

So really, the announcement is one of those “Hey, we’re working on the next game” ones, but Dragon Age fans will be pretty excited all the same.

Here’s the full press release:

BIOWARE ANNOUNCES DRAGON AGE 3: INQUISITION

The Return of Dragon Age will be Bigger, Deeper and Powered by Frostbite 2

SYDNEY, Australia– September 18, 2012 – BioWare, a Label of Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA), today announced Dragon Age™ 3: Inquisition, the next chapter in the award-winning role-playing game (RPG) franchise, is in development at BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Montreal. Coming in late 2013, Dragon Age 3: Inquisition combines the storytelling legacy BioWare is known for, with deep RPG gameplay, all on a brand new RPG game engine underpinned by EA’s critically-acclaimed Frostbite™ 2 technology.

“The Dragon Age team has been working on Dragon Age 3: Inquisition for almost two years now,” said Aaryn Flynn, General Manager of BioWare Edmonton and BioWare Montreal.  “We’ve been poring over player feedback from past games and connecting directly with our fans. They haven’t held back, so we’re not either. With Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, we want to give fans what they’re asking for – a great story with choices that matter, a massive world to explore, deep customization and combat that is both tactical and visceral.”

Added Flynn, “At the same time, we know we need new technology to truly make this vision become fully realized. And we’ve been working with DICE to make Frostbite 2 the foundation for the engine that is going to power Dragon Age 3.”

The Dragon Age franchise has received over 80 awards from critics around the world, and has sold over 8 million copies to date*. Created by BioWare, the property has spawned many novels, an animated film, comic books, collectibles and more since Dragon Age: Originslaunched in 2009.

For more information about Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, including updates from the development team and a letter to the fans from Executive Producer Mark Darrah, please visit the game’s official web site at http://dragonage.com.  Dragon Age fans can also receive updates on Twitter® at http://twitter.com/dragonage, or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/dragonage.

 

So over to you: given some of the bumps in the road DA2 had, are you excited for DA3 and its new engine?

GW2 Hits 2 Million Copies Sold: Just The Beginning?

For those (like me) that missed the press release, NCsoft have announced that sales of Guild Wars 2 has broken the 2-million mark. It’s a milestone for sure – some cynics say they’re surprised it took this long, but there’d have to be a great deal of happiness at NCsoft and ArenaNet on the achievement.

Predicting ongoing sales numbers is a bit like tea-leaf reading, but my feeling is that this is the first of many growth milestones for what is a very engaging game. What do you think?

The press release in full:

GUILD WARS® 2 SALES BREAK TWO MILLION UNITS
Critically-acclaimed online RPG quickly surpasses milestone after re-opening sales
NCsoft®, the world’s premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and ArenaNet, developer of the renowned  Guild Wars franchise, has announced that the chart-topping MMO Guild Wars 2 has sold more than two million units. Despite temporarily halting first-party sales and replenishing retail stores to maintain an optimal player experience, Guild Wars 2surpassed the two million sales milestone shortly after turning sales back on.

Guild Wars 2, which launched just over two weeks ago, has captured the imagination of the gaming community around the world. With peak concurrency regularly exceeding 400,000 players and first week sales that placed it at the top of the All Formats charts across ten European territories, it’s clear that demand for the game remains high.

“Reactions from around the world justified the time and care we put into developing Guild Wars 2 and making it into the game it is today”, said Mike O’Brien, president and co-founder of ArenaNet. “And this is only the beginning. We’re continually fine-tuning the game to deliver the polished experience that our players expect, and we’re already working on new adventures and experiences to introduce into this truly dynamic online world.”

Guild Wars 2 Economy: Metrics Update

Click on image for full size

John Smith from the GW2 team has provided an interesting blog post on the state of play with the GW2 economy.

He covers off the Trading Post, supply and demand and economy exploits in some detail.

I found the most interesting bit to be the supply and demand issue, where John gives some insight on how interventionist ArenaNet are being:

We’ve noticed several markets that are clearly out of sync in terms of supply and demand. It isn’t interesting or fun to have a market flooded with items that contain very little value, so we’re making adjustments to the game every day. Players can expect to see these markets even out over time.

While adjusting the supply and demand will bring markets closer to non-vendor based equilibrium, there is still the matter of massive surplus of some items. To address the surplus, we’ve created some new, limited-time Mystic Forge recipes that use these items. These recipes create boxes that give chances for gold and some cool items.

Of course, all MMOs have interventions in their economy, but this seems to be some pretty formalised stuff. The graph you see above (click on it for the full size), shows the character gender spread in the game (roughly 60/40 to males), and the breakdown of professions, races and crafting. You can read the full blog post here.

Over to you: how are you finding the GW2 Trading Post so far? Have any tips to share?

GW2 Game Status Update: 8th September 2012

Another day, another game update with a nice bunch of fixes, particularly with some storyline steps.

Interestingly, you can now also choose to not be prompted to join your home world if you’re wanting to play on overflow indefinitely.

The update in full:

 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Account Security
Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you’ve never used anywhere else!
When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, “this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement,” and if you’re not a gold seller, it’s likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.
If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn’t initiate and from someplace you don’t recognize, that’s a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you’ve never used anywhere else.
You can find more tips for keeping your Guild Wars 2 account secure in this article.
Customer Support
Our customer support team is still prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.
Hacked accounts – If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. Clearly state that it is a hacked account, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.
Email authentication – Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location, which can help protect your account even in the event a hacker discovers your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages are being filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. You can now turn off email authentication by following these instructions. If you turn it off, be especially sure to use a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you’ve never used anywhere else.
Password resets – If you’ve lost your password, you can now reset it by following these instructions.
Last Night’s Update
    • Fixed the issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons.
    • Fixed issues with the storyline steps “A Light in the Darkness,” “Estate of Decay,” “Explosive Intellect,” “Rumors of Trouble,” “The Lost Chieftain’s Return,” and “Tribunes in Effigy.”
    • Added an option to stop queueing for your home world, for players who want to remain on an overflow server indefinitely without being asked.
Today’s Back-End Work
    • Fixed PvP tournament rewards.
Tonight’s Update
    • Will add the ability to report in-game mail.
    • Will reset monthly achievements for players who have been stuck at 100%, to help those whose achievements didn’t reset correctly on September 1. (Note that daily achievements reset each day at 00:00 GMT and monthly achievements reset on the first of each month at 00:00 GMT.)
    • Will include fixes for various blocked events and skill challenges.
Reporting exploits
If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.
Worlds & Overflow
We’re increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.
During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it’s common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend’s portrait in the party list and click “join”. We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.
Next software updates

The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don’t expect significant downtime; however players may experience some connectivity issues at this time.

GW2 Game Status Update: 6th September 2012

There’s another update on live issues for GW2.

Some are the ongoing account security / customer service areas, but there’s a range of stuff beyond that. The update is replicated in full for you below:

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you’ve never used anywhere else!

Customer Support
Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.
Hacked accounts – If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We’re resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.
Email authentication – We will soon provide a secure method on our web site for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it for their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn’t work for you.
Password resets – We will soon provide a secure method on our web site for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren’t working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn’t work for you.
Support forums – The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.
Trading Post
The Trading Post is now available to all players. Items and gold deliveries that have been delayed should arrive soon. Please check your “pick up” tab.
Parties & Guilds
We’re working on capacity constraints causing issues with parties and guild functionality, including symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working. We deployed fixes in last night’s update and will deploy additional fixes in tonight’s update.
Note that guild upgrades and guild influence are world-specific. If you move your account to a new world, you’ll see the upgrades and influence that your guild has on that new world, not the upgrades and influence you previously saw on the old world.
PvP Tournament rewards
We’re still working on the issue with missing PvP tournament rewards.
World v. World event rewards
Event rewards for Dolyak caravan escort events in World v. World will be disabled until further notice.
Storyline steps
In tonight’s software update we will fix issues with the storyline steps “Fury of the Dead”, “Grisly Shipment”, and “In The Ruins”.
Downed mode camera
In tonight’s software update we will improve the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.
Reporting exploits
If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.
Worlds & Overflow
We’re increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.
During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it’s common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend’s portrait in the party list and click “join”. We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.
Next software updates
We’ll perform a significant update tonight at midnight Seattle time, during which the game will be unavailable for approximately one hour.

We’ll perform maintenance on the Guild Wars 2 wiki tomorrow night, during which time the wiki will be unavailable for approximately one hour.