2009 Brings New Content!

[Lydon]

Coming Attractions for Guild Wars Live

Six months ago, we assembled the Live Team with one goal: sustaining high quality support for Guild Wars. We started with smaller changes, getting our feet wet by balancing skills and tweaking AI. After these initial successes, we moved on to title balancing and the golem Hero M.O.X. before finishing off the year with new festival content. As the Live Team looks to the new year, we are streamlining our processes, where we can create even more exciting new features and content than ever before. In this Dev Update, we explain the reasons for some of these changes and reveal tidbits of what we've got planned for the future.


Monthly Maintenance


Throughout the year, our regular monthly builds will include Xunlai Tournament rewards, changing out the Zaishen chest monthly tonic, and map rotations for Automated Tournaments. These builds may also include small skill balance changes, tweaks to AI, or bug fixes on an as needed basis. However, we are discontinuing the monthly ATS skill usage charts on the website as the feature isn't popular enough to warrant the time investment required to compile, sort, and publish the data.


Content Updates

Content updates will be done separately from the monthly maintenance and occur every three to four months. By spacing out our content releases, we gain the time to tackle larger and more difficult projects that, previously, would've been impossible. Some features that once seemed unattainable are now being explored as upcoming projects. We are even expanding the Live Team to offer more of the best quality support and content that we can for Guild Wars. With this new system, we release our new content in fewer yet more substantial updates. We want players to feel connected to what we are developing even though it may be months away from release, so during development we will be more open about our process and what we are working on.


Coming Attractions

The Live Team is now designing the first big content update of 2009, which we expect to release in April. We had many discussions towards the end of last year and ended up with a major wish list and a plan for what it would take to make that list a reality. At this point, we have a clear idea of what is ahead of us and we hope everyone will be as excited about these prospects as we are.

Here are a few features we are currently developing for April:

Increases to account-based storage
Improvements to character-based storage
Account-based changes to the Hall of Monuments

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AMEN for more storage.

[Devill]

I really don't care how hard they work on GW I want to see GW2!

[shadowfox]

I'll be pretty happy about the increases to account-based storage though - I'm being very picky with my elite armor because I don't have space to store it all. Add a runner monk with different sets for smiting or 600, and I'm sitting with a nightmare situation.

I had to create an extra character just so I could store all my tomes and dyes.

[dakeyras]

I'll be pretty happy about the increases to account-based storage though - I'm being very picky with my elite armor because I don't have space to store it all. Add a runner monk with different sets for smiting or 600, and I'm sitting with a nightmare situation.

I had to create an extra character just so I could store all my tomes and dyes.

I actually got fed up over the weekend and vendored most of my rare weapons/shields.

[Lydon]

I'll be pretty happy about the increases to account-based storage though - I'm being very picky with my elite armor because I don't have space to store it all. Add a runner monk with different sets for smiting or 600, and I'm sitting with a nightmare situation.

I had to create an extra character just so I could store all my tomes and dyes.

I have so many mule characters it's not funny.

[shadowfox]

I actually got fed up over the weekend and vendored most of my rare weapons/shields.

I rarely keep rares as a matter of course, unless they're exceptional - and then they usually go to my heroes. I'm also not patient enough to trade most times :P so most of it becomes merch food. I'm wondering how much money I've robbed myself of :P

As for greens, most of them have become so valueless (especially CoF greens), that I just drop them. Or I take them to Ascalon and sell them to new players for about 1 - 2k.

[Lydon]

It's sad what's happened to green weapons. Ah the days of farming them and getting rich easily...then they introduced the loot scale and my empire came crashing down lol.

I too sell most of my gold weapons. I only really want them for the Wisdom title to be honest. Then the extra cash helps in purchasing unidentified golds as I don't have anything else I want to purchase.

[lilDeath]

Ye, am glad about the increase in storage. I have 4 mules and almost 2 of them are dedicated to just all my different warrior weapons / shields and weapon upgrades. The other 2 mules are inscriptions, other weapon upgrades, minis, booze, sweets, quest items, etc.

[Lydon]

I've got too many minis and holiday items >< a tonic NPC would be nice.

[shadowfox]

I wish there were more upgrades available for the Guild Halls - mine's fully upgraded, but it just doesn't seem like enough ...

Heh, they should let you buy random NPC's that will just wander around and populate the place

[Renshin]

I wish there were more upgrades available for the Guild Halls - mine's fully upgraded, but it just doesn't seem like enough ...

Heh, they should let you buy random NPC's that will just wander around and populate the place

lmfao

Imo - They should give you some extra dungeons you can attach to your Guild Hall - depending on which isle you are using.

[lilDeath]

Heh, they should let you buy random NPC's that will just wander around and populate the place

That's what Guild Members are for

[Lydon]

I would have loved Guild Halls to be much more customizable than they currently are. Before I got the game back in 2005 I did a load of research and was under the impression that Guild Halls could sorta be tweaked for your guild in various ways. Such as being able to hang huge guild tapestries etc. Would be nice to at least see it in Guild Wars 2.

What I'd find the most legend thing ever is if they surprised us after all this time with an auction house system. It would catch everyone off guard and seriously help with the current terrible trade system.

[Renshin]

I would have loved Guild Halls to be much more customizable than they currently are. Before I got the game back in 2005 I did a load of research and was under the impression that Guild Halls could sorta be tweaked for your guild in various ways. Such as being able to hang huge guild tapestries etc. Would be nice to at least see it in Guild Wars 2.

What I'd find the most legend thing ever is if they surprised us after all this time with an auction house system. It would catch everyone off guard and seriously help with the current terrible trade system.

Yep. I Agree

[shadowfox]

That's what Guild Members are for

Haha ... only if they're active. Right now my guild hall only gets used to meet up so we can organise ourselves before going to open a can of whoop-ass on some poor, innocent, and unsuspecting group of monsters.

Not the least, I would've loved to see some form of guild-wide storage - it would be great if the older players could just drop stuff not being used for younger members to use. Although I suppose that sort of thing is open to all sorts of abuse.