MMOs, Console Games and anything else with buttons
In a gradual ramping up of its forums, Guild Wars 2 now at least has support forums live.
ArenaNet state that more forums will be put live once “we’re satisfied with performance under load” (source).
It’s a start and if you’re wanting to get some issues communicated, you now have another way of doing so.
ArenaNet remain on the front foot with the update on issues in-game. This update is larger than the last one and covers off in detail the email authentication issues, customer support, guilds, overflow servers and the dearth of official forums.
You can read it all right here:
Monday, September 3, 2012
- 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!
- Today a Guild Wars related fan site announced that its account database has been breached. That’s important but just one of many apparent breaches of other games and web sites that hackers have been collecting email addresses and passwords from. Protect yourself by using a unique password for each game and web site account you care about, and especially be sure to use a unique password for your Guild Wars 2 account.
- Customer Support
- Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests. If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions.
- We have now completed prioritized requests submitted prior to Saturday, September 1. If you have an older ticket that has not been completed, that means it’s not correctly prioritized. Submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, “Hacked Account – Ticket submitted August xx – Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx” (fill in the date and ticket number of your existing ticket), and we will prioritize your existing ticket.
- In the past 24 hours we helped 2,574 players with hacked accounts and 2,867 players with other blocking login issues get back into the game.
- Email Authentication
- Once you validate your account email address, we help protect you from attempted account hacking (even if the hacker guesses your password) by sending you an email every time you attempt to login from a new location, asking you to approve or deny the login attempt. Keep in mind, if you receive an email asking you to approve or deny a login attempt and you didn’t make that login attempt, that means a hacker knows your password. Change your password immediately.
- Be sure not to flag an email authentication message as spam; if you do, your email provider may prevent future email authentication messages from reaching you.
- If email authentication is preventing you from logging in, contact our customer support team following these instructions and we’ll disable it for your account.
- Reset Password
- We will leave “reset password” disabled until further notice. We don’t want to allow hackers who compromise an email account to use that email account to steal the associated Guild Wars 2 game account. If you forget your password, please contact customer support.
- Network Connectivity Issues
- We experienced network connectivity issues today between our North American and European data centers, which caused intermittent errors with login, character creation and deletion, and guild manipulation. These issues should now be resolved.
- Parties & Guilds
- We’ve made progress but still have capacity constraints causing issues with party 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’re working on a fix and will provide a further update tomorrow.
- PvP Tournament Rewards
- PvP tournament rewards are currently not functioning properly. We’re working on a fix and will provide a further update tomorrow.
- Trading Post
- We’ve been expanding the Trading Post’s capacity to handle the huge volume of requested trades. After our test yesterday, we’ve been working to resolve some issues reported by players. We expect to have the Trading Post online for all players this evening.
- Storyline Steps
- In last night’s update we fixed blocking issues with the storyline steps “Stealing Secrets” and “A Grisly Shipment”. We’re preparing to fix issues with “The Battle for Fort Trinity” and “Shell Shock” for tonight’s update.
- 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.
- Forums
- Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.
- 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.
We’re making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We’ll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.
Over to you: what do you think of the communication so far and how’s your playing experience been?
ArenaNet have posted the first significant ‘State Of The Game’ update to the official Wiki. There’s a range of interesting stuff mentioned, replicated in full below.
It’s worth taking notice of the password and bot warning in particular. There’s a few bugs/glitches discussed as well, and I have to say I like the overall approach to fix these whilst minimising disruptions.
Here’s all the details:
This is the current status of the most important issues we’re tracking with Guild Wars 2 live service.
Account Security – Protect your account! We’ve seen hackers systematically scan email addresses and passwords harvested from other games, web sites, and trojans to see if they match Guild Wars 2 accounts. We’ve taken steps to protect our players from this, but we need your help too. Make sure that you use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you’ve never used anywhere else. For best security, use a unique email address too, and see our blog post for more tips.
Email authentication – We now have email authentication enabled for all players who have validated their email addresses. This feature sends an email whenever it detects a login attempt to your account from a location you haven’t played from before, asking you to allow or deny the login.
We’ve learned of an incompatibility between email authentication and older versions of Internet Explorer. We’re working on a fix, which we expect to deploy tomorrow.
If you’re not receiving account verification emails or account authentication emails, please check your junk/spam folders, and add noreply@guildwars2.com to your safe senders list.
Parties, guilds, etc. – We’ve made significant fixes to parties and guilds. However, you may still see intermittent outages. These outages cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, and guild invites not working.
Trading Post – Yesterday we opened the Trading Post for a random, rotating 50% of users. After gathering data from yesterday’s tests, we applied a number of fixes and performance improvements, and are preparing a larger-scale test today.
Tournament Rewards – We believe we’ve addressed the problem with tournament chests not appearing. Let us know if you still see any issues with this.
World v. World – We’re aware the world v. world matches have not been resetting properly. We’re preparing an update to fix this. Once the issue is fixed, we’ll start running 24-hour matches to balance servers.
Worlds – We added three new worlds in Europe yesterday, three new worlds in America today, and increased the population limits on all worlds.
Overflow – 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. If you want to play with a friend, but you’re not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your 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.
Botting – We suspended accounts of 750 players running bots. We’re ramping up and will soon apply permanent bans for cases of substantial botting.
Exploits – If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead please notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net.
Forums – Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.
Wiki – We increased wiki server capacity to address issues users are seeing. We plan to start posting these updates to the wiki, as long as the wiki can handle the traffic.
Next software updates – We’re making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We’ll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.
Over to you: are you still having a great GW2 playing experience, and are any frustrations covered off in the above info for you?
I love nothing better than a huge Minecraft map that pays tribute to a genre / movie / TV show. There was the stupendous Game of Thrones in Minecraft a few months back. Now, a dedicated bunch have got together to create some iconic parts of the Star Wars universe.
Have a look:
There’s even an oceanic connection with Reece G, a member of the Gamers of Oceania Facebook Group, playing a part.
Kudos to all the creators of this – and if you want the map for yourself you can download it here.
/gchat is an ongoing column on guilds and the fun, conflicts, laughs and rage-quits they contain. If you have a topic you’d like covered, drop our guild guru Jemima Moore a line!
Raid Team Selection. Yep, I said it. It’s a dirty word. It’s an ugly word. Ok, it’s three words but I’m bringing them out of the closet and shining a light on the shabby, shameful, heart-wrenching world of raid team selection – no holds barred.
The oldest and arguably most maligned way to assemble a raid team is the Playground Panel.
It comes in many forms from “everyone be on at 7 and we’ll see who’s on” to “I’ll be picking teams based on class balance and gear” and is often characterised by a green wall of furtive questions around 7:15pm AEST: “Are we raiding tonight?” “What time is it starting?” “Have invites gone out yet?” It may seem harmless enough, but rest assured it’s all a euphemism for “I’m too lazy to care about anyone ‘cept me and mah boyz.”
It’s a bad system. Designed and perpetuated by a select few who want the maximum number of warm bodies to fill raid slots for the minimum effort. It promotes elitism, anxiety, dissent and disappointment as even the most seasoned raider can’t help feeling at least a momentary lump in the throat wondering whether they’ll get to go – and only the biggest narcissist will leave someone behind without at least a momentary twang of guilt. The best case scenario is you didn’t set aside an entire evening for nothing and the majority of the team made it through the selection process with enough confidence intact to actually perform.
Thankfully, this arcane system of selection has evolved and most guilds have moved on to more structured modes of selection. If yours hasn’t, I suggest you shop around.
The Rotating Roster with a Team Split Twist is the most common of these. Guilds divide their raiders into fixed, over-sized teams and schedule the extras on a rotating stand-by schedule.
It’s a much fairer method and provides a lot more flexibility in terms of attendance. Plus there’s an argument that sticking with the same people in the same roles makes progression easier and more efficient. There are some hidden drawbacks though.
Tanks and healers are typically not rotated as much as dps. If they are, it falls on a few members of the team to maintain two sets of gear and the skills to fill those roles on odd nights.
The counter-argument to easier and more efficient progression is reduced development of skills across the broader team which often makes the next fight harder. Plus, you’re back to wiping a few times on a boss you usually one-shot when that key taunter/runner/add collector isn’t around.
It sucks to have your standard rotation night come up just after you spent an entire evening wiping on a boss and know the team will kill him next raid without you. The only things that sucks worse is having it happen twice.
Unapologetic 1980’s reference foisted on this great post by the sentimental Editor
Then there’s the ‘guild killer’ that’s more insidious than cancer: the A-team / B-team split. One team due to subtle (or not so subtle) differences in make-up, happens to progress faster than the other. Maybe that team has an extra taunt, a speed boost or a min/maxing dps of a certain class that makes a hard boss just a little easier. The acquisition of gear and new skills they’re developing skyrocket them ahead of the other teams and A-grade egos develop in line with an A-team tag. As the gap in progression widens, so does the ability for players to interchange teams and, over time, the individual groups become insular and cliquey. A vicious circle ensues until one day someone wonders out loud why they’re tolerating the whiney/egotistical pack of QQers/l33t jerks on the other team at all. There’s usually casualties.
All too frequently, guilds with this make up can’t ride the ebbs and flows of raiding through multiple expansions and inevitably one team breaks away to form their own guild ready to start the cycle over again.
In order to overcome these problems, some guilds are now guaranteeing raid spots for players willing to commit to 100% attendance (or close to it) and are mixing raiders up from lock-out to lock-out. I call it “Will it Blend?” and Aftermath tried it this season. It’s not a perfect system by any stretch but it does engender whole-guild camaraderie, significantly reduces the drama surrounding kills and loot drops and that in turn develops both loyalty and pride in oneself and the guild. It also requires a team of skilled and committed raiders who show up every week ready to do anything but that’s kind of a chicken and egg thing. The downside is that without guilded raiders on stand-by, real life getting in the way becomes a huge issue. Assembling and balancing teams each week is no small issue and maintaining a wide and varied friends list to PUG from takes a lot of time.
As an aside, Murphy’s law holds true every time – a PuG will always win the /roll on set gear. And finally, when there’s no side door to nudge a lacklustre player to, it occasionally forces you to have conversations that are more honest than you’d like.
I can’t help but think there has to be a middle ground. On the one hand, it’s a game and requiring 100% attendance for a hobby is pretty hard core. On the other hand, less than 100% attendance when multiplied by the number of people in your raid team, means that somewhere between 7 and 24 people that set aside their evening are adversely affected to at least some degree every single raid.
In a good MMO, raids are hard enough that the individuals in the team need to work pretty hard on their class, their gear and their research to be there in the first place. Yet developers don’t allow any flexibility in raid size or balance for sickness, working late, someone’s 21st birthday, wife aggro or the Grand Final. Guilds and players are expected to somehow overcome real life and field a team of an exact size and class balance each and every week. Working within these limited parameters, it’s hoped that Raid Leaders can minimise disappointment, inconvenience and drama while providing a fulfilling and satisfying group experience for a set of highly competitive and motivated individuals.
Anyone else think these mechanics are somewhat at odds?
What BioWare, as a developer, has done to help is make a point of supporting server communities. On the Empire side of Dalborra end-game raiding guilds have embraced that. The GMs of Prophets of Agony, Tenacity, First Legion, Reach (now part of Violation) and Aftermath formed a network of guilds that “borrow” raiders from each other for the night or the week. We try and make sure all our raiders get a run through somewhere and we try our best to help each other out with any bodies we can muster when another team is short. There’s still a healthy dose of competition between the guilds, but there’s just as many woots and gratz in /1 Denova on Wednesday night.
Again, it’s not a perfect system but it is better than the sand-box shenanigans we suffered in primary school.
I’d love to hear your stories of the best and worse raid team selection techniques you’ve come across.
For those with Head Start access to GW2, it’s easy to forget that the official launch of the game is tomorrow afternoon (exact details here). It’s been a fairly successful early access period, albeit with some early server issues.
Since then, things have stabilised although I’m still spending as much time playing in the overflow queue as being on my server. For me that’s no real issue but it is for a lot of people, and the full launch may exacerbate things. That said, we’re not hearing a lot of negative talk overall – people seem to be loving the game on the whole. We’ll have a full review up this week sometime, but I’ll need to play more than the couple of hours I’ve done so far to make a final call.
Other key info for launch:
Other key bits of info for oceanic players to keep in mind:
Unofficial Oceanic Server: Sea of Sorrows
Unofficial secondary oceanic server: Gate of Madness
Guild Wars 2 Server List: here
Guild Wars 2 Guilds List: here
Guild Wars Oceanic Facebook Page: here
For Head Starters: how have you found the game so far?
It’s less than 12 hours into the 3-day early access for those who pre-purchased Guild Wars 2, and it’s fair to say that if the amount of server downtime being experienced is an indication of game popularity, then this is going to be one popular game.
Since 2pm AEST when the servers came up, there have been intermittent issues with being able to log in, and these appear to have worsened this evening. Some are getting angry but it’s pretty par for the course for any MMO launch and things will pan out over coming hours.
And anyway: imagine what it’ll be like when the full launch occurs….
Over to you: how has your experience been with the game so far?
[Pic courtesy of businessinsider.com]
For those who pre-purchased GW2, access to the game started at 2pm today AEST, a little ahead of the 5pm formal start as the servers opened up.
I jumped in pretty much from the start and as expected, was greeted with rather a large crowd of toons:
Lag has been minimal given the server loads, so kudos to ArenaNet there. There are some queues but that’s to be expected as well.
Other key bits of info for oceanic players to keep in mind:
Unofficial Oceanic Server: Sea of Sorrows
Unofficial secondary oceanic server: Gate of Madness
Guild Wars 2 Server List: here
Guild Wars 2 Guilds List: here
Guild Wars Oceanic Facebook Page: here
Over to you: tell those without the early access how you’re finding the game!
This week it’s a bit hard to ignore the huge MMO launch on our doorstep. Guild Wars 2 launches for some tomorrow afternoon, and for the rest three days after that. So let’s make that the topic for debate this week.
Will you be jumping into GW2 at launch? Will you be playing it at all and if not, why not?
For mine, I’ll be there Saturday afternoon to check things out and to start levelling but for me GW2 is going to be a casual thing. Something I jump in and enjoy once a week or so.
What about you?
It’s only three days until those with 3-day headstart access will start playing GW2, and I know a bunch of people are getting pretty excited.
One in particular is Victoria-based Hayden, who has set up Condescend Gaming. He’ll be doing some serious streaming of his early days and weeks in GW2. If like me you won’t have 14+ hours a day to level up, you may be interested in seeing someone else having a go.
I threw some questions at Hayden to get an idea of what he has planned:
Tell us a little about how you got into streaming your play time
Got into streaming about 2-3 months ago while playing SWTOR. A friend on my server was a streamer and I had never heard of such a thing. Once I found out what it was, it instantly became something I was interested in and wanted to be a part of.
How long have you been playing MMOs?
WoW was the first MMO I ever played back in 04/05. I instantly fell in love with MMOs from the first time I logged on. Although I did quit and come back a lot over the following years, I still kept a high standard of competitiveness – landing Gladiator in Season 4 and Alliance first ICC 10man Heroic kill on our server (server 2nd) to name a couple.
After deciding to quit WoW for good a few weeks after Cataclysm was released, I have been searching for a new MMO ever since. Have tried Rift and TERA for a short time but it didn’t cut it for me. SWTOR was a game I thought had a lot of potential, but was rushed in it release and collapsed on itself soon after. I think GW2 is finally the MMO I am looking for to play long term.
Why are you excited about GW2 in particular?
The main fact that it is a brand new MMO. I have been searching and waiting for an MMO to grab me and keep me interested. I thought SWTOR was that game but I was highly mistaken. Guild Wars 2 seems to have so many new and appealing features that I can’t wait to play through.
You’re intending to go flat out to level up in GW2 – what’s your strategy and how long do you think it’ll take you?
I have 5-6 days off where I will be playing a minimum of 14+ hour days. Oceanic 1st 80 is something that I have in mind and will definitely be pushing to achieve this. I have read that someone in BETA did it in ~88 hours, so I think I would be able to achieve this in a similar time. Just have to stay focused and not get distracted. Remember the goals that have been set in place and strive to achieve them.
Plug time: where can people follow your stream?
I currently stream from twitch, a link can be found here twitch.tv/condescendgaming
Also be sure to follow me on Twitter and YouTube for the latest updates:
twitter.com/condescendau
I want to thank everyone at The Oceanic Gamer for this opportunity and the hard work that has been put into their website. There are constant news updates and articles which makes a good read and easy to keep up to scratch with all that is going on.
And here’s a quick promo vid that our esteemed oceanic colleague has created to showcase his intentions:
Over to you: how full-on will you be levelling in GW2?
If you’d like your guild spotlighted, just use our contact form to let us know. Or if you like, respond to the questions shown below and send them in – we love to profile guilds and the work they’re doing. The only requirement is that you’re an active oceanic guild. Please be patient if you don’t hear back from us immediately – we will only be spotlighting a guild every week or so.
Name of guild
Brigade of Light and Dark (BOLD)
Guild website
http://brigade-of-light-and-dark.shivtr.com/
– our old GW1 website…a new one may be on the horizon…..
History of your guild’s name?
Brigade of Light and Dark (BOLD) was originally formed by our guild leader Ptolia Arter in GW1. The name inspired by “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
What sort of guild are you?
This is a very relaxed guild who maintains “fun” as a priority – winning is, of course, fun. Many members are returning Guild Wars players and have already pre-purchased GW2, looking to give us that head-start access. We are looking to dominate Yak’s Bend, but members will in no way be limited to that one server. Could make for some fun in WvW though.
Some may say “international” is a fairly broad term and can complicate guild events. However, our time-zone differences (ranging anywhere from the Americas, Europe and Oceania) are too weak of a barrier to keep us from hosting constant guild events! Not only that, we also feel that through an international guild comes international friendships, cultures, constant members online, and success.
Most importantly, our guild focuses on learning; always trying new things, excelling, and then teaching others. Knowledge is only real if shared (the saying was something like that). Try visiting our website: “BOLD is not a guild that objects to answering questions – no matter how “silly” or “noobish” you might think they are.” – Ptolia Arter (Guild Leader)
Have key guild members been involved in other games / MMOs?
Mostly GW1 but also LOTRO, Rappelz, and other MMOs
How many guild members do you have at the moment?
25 – 30 coming in at release or very soon after
What days/times do you see the guild being most active?
With being an international Guild we envisage having members online for most of the day/night
What are the achievements that your guild is most proud of?
Several members including our GL have attained 50/50 pts in Hall of Monuments and also GWAMM (God Walking Among Mere Mortals – the highest title in GW1)
You have one minute to convince someone they should be in your guild – what would you say to them?
We are a guild that has always enjoyed “Going Hard Out” in-game then kicking back with a party and some fun guild events, either in the Guild Hall or the world of Tyria
What are your predictions for the next 6 months for the guild?
We are all looking to get into GW2 and level our main characters asap while reuniting with old friends and making many more. We are looking to quickly grow BOLD into a 50 – 100 member friendly, family orientated guild for all ages and experiences.
Just a quick reminder for those Facebookers counting down the days until next weekend’s launch of GW2.
There’s a Facebook Group for Australian and New Zealand players right here – it’s a friendly group so jump
in!
And don’t forget that if you’re part of a GW2 guild and would like to be profiled, drop us a line!
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