So, I run a guild. A decently sizable one, though it’s not massive. We’re generally a pretty casual group.

And the more time goes on, the more frustrated I get with the guild system in Guild Wars 2.

[TWIT] was created as a cross-server, international social guild. However, the way the game handles guilds has caused us to not be able to fully meet what we intended ourselves to be. The guild was formed in BWE3, when we were still all under the assumption that guesting would be in at launch, and that it would be fully universal.

The lack of guesting at launch was the first big blow we were dealt. People on other servers could not play with us, outside of the very first weeks when there were overflows in explorable zones, or in dungeons. There is also the fact that influence and guild upgrades are server-tied; the combination of these two things made it so there was very little reason for our members not on Jade Quarry to represent the guild.

I do understand why influence is server-tied, to an extent. You can’t designate one server to be the guild’s home world. However, surely there were better ways of handling it. Make it so that all influence earned is a universal pool, collected by and usable from all servers. Same with the upgrades. If you are repping a guild, you should be able to access them, no matter what server you’re on. Not to mention the various boosts you can build and use!

Oh, and when you guest, influence you earn? Still goes back to your home server, as opposed to the one you’re guesting to.

For all that the game likes to say it’s about building communities, there are a lot of things it does that fly in the face of that claim. Guesting taking so long to be implemented and then being data center restricted is part of it. The restrictions on guilds, however, are another large part of it.

Last time I checked the [TWIT] roster, we were up around 160 members. That isn’t small. However, if even a quarter of those members have repped the guild, I’d say it’s a high estimate. The fact of the matter is, there’s absolutely no reason for members outside of JQ and certain other servers where we have a good number of active members to rep the guild, and there’s nothing that myself and my co-leaders can do about that.

I mean, I suppose we could. We could make being on JQ or repping a certain amount of time a requirement…but that’s not something we want to do. That goes directly against why this guild was created and what it’s meant to be. Guesting has helped some (I guest over to Sanctum of Rall or Anvil Rock for events at times), but it still doesn’t help a lot of the problems inherent in making everything tied to servers so tightly.

Guild missions are going to be here on Tuesday. Yay! We were looking forward to these – they’d make it easier to get guildies involved!

Except that merits, earned by completing guild missions and used to unlock more upgrades, are…wait for it…server-tied! Oh, and if you want to do Guild Bounties? Better have your Art of War at level 5.

Luckily, we have everything upgraded in full, but that’s still very frustrating. A lot of smaller guilds will not necessarily have Art of War to that level, or the influence to get it there any time soon. And don’t forget build times for those upgrades! This essentially makes guilds that do not normally have any interest in PvP or WvW burn influence to kick off PvE content, which I think is wrong.

There’s also the communication side of things, which is difficult People not repping your guild cannot read your guild chat, which makes it easy to miss out on things. There’s the message of the day, but unless someone is 1) repping and 2) checks the guild pane, they won’t see it.

Remember in Guild Wars 1 when you’d see your guild’s current message in your chat window when you logged in? I miss that. A lot. I also wish that guild leaders had a way to send a message to all members, even those not repping, similar to how maintenance messages are displayed in the chat window in-game. Things like that would be a great help to all guild leaders.

I love this game. I love my guild. But I really feel like the guild sytem leaves a lot to be desired, and splits the community more than it brings it together.

As two of the three leaders of [TWIT], AJ and I have been kicking around an idea for a while of something we’d like to do as an in-game event, and we’re finally kicking it off this week.

This event is a girls night, where we group up with any women that are interested in coming along, and do stuff in-game together with no men involved.

We have quite a few reasons for wanting to do something like this, and I’m simply going to quote what I wrote elsewhere on this subject.

Girls Night events are for women only. This is not to be exclusive – rather this is to try and build a space for women to play. Gaming is an industry that is very hostile to women, despite the fact that we make up half of all gamers. Games are rarely marketed for us, and the ones that are aimed towards women tend to just fall on tired-out stereotypes.

The vast majority of gaming communities are extremely male-oriented, and most tend to not be kind to women “invading”…when really all we want to do is play a damn game. And thus, we have to turn to creating our own spaces to play in, until the rest of the gaming community wakes up and realizes that yes, we’re going to be playing these games, we have just as much right to be here as anyone else, and we aren’t leaving, so get used to it.

And we also know that not all women are comfortable enough in the face of such constant sexism to stand up like that. And that’s okay. Everyone handles things differently.

There are also times where we just want to escape and be on our own. To be able to talk about things we wouldn’t feel comfortable with when guys are around. To have fun on our own. This is not a bad thing.

AJ and I have high hopes for these events. We’re starting small, but we’re hoping to build this into something big. But it all revolves around creating a space where women feel safe and welcome while gaming, and it would fall apart immediately if we did not hold to that core.

Guys, 99% of gaming is yours. Let us have our spaces as well. It won’t hurt you, we promise.

So far, the response has been almost entirely positive. Lots of women have expressed an interest in coming, with a few that I didn’t even know played GW2! That, I think, makes this something of a success before the first event has even stated. These events are things we hope to do monthly – just once a month, pick an evening where we all meet up together in-game and hang out and play and create our own part of the community.

Our first event will be this Thursday evening; we’ll be meeting in Caledon Forest, at Astorea Waypoint, on Jade Quarry at 6pm CST (4pm PST/7pm EST). That’s right when the daily reset hits, so we can work on doing our dailies before deciding if we want to branch out and do other things as well. This event isn’t just for members of our guild; it is open to any women that want to attend. AJ and I both have characters with commander icons so we shall be easy to find. More info can be found in this thread on our guild’s forums.

Ladies, hope to see you this Thursday!

Guys, I really love art contests. I love seeing all of the creativity that people create, all of the different styles that they use…

Basically, I love art.

And so here I have my winner for the signed CE contest! I didn’t get many entries, but the ones I did get were all very varied and I really enjoyed seeing all of them. First, before posting the winner, though, I want to show off the two entries I selected as runners-up! I do not have prizes for you guys (sorry!), but I still want to share your entries!

The first is a simple pencil sketch of a sylvari by Jo X. I am a sucker for pencil sketches, I won’t even deny it. The majority of my drawing is just scribbles and sketches. Also, it’s a sylvari…enough said.

The second one is The 35 Slot Shopping Cart, by Jeff. This one made me laugh. I think most engineers would like something like this.

The winner, though, is Christopher’s entry, the Crafting Conundrum. The explanation behind the piece that he included made me laugh. As he put it:

The hours I’ve spent crafting in GW2 has always led my mind to wander to certain silly thoughts – particularly, what’s going through a character’s mind when they need to use several venom sacs or totems in creating an item. While we as the players simply see a progress bar, how do our characters react when faced with an Asura instruction manual that calls for a pile of totems in order to build a rifle or sword? And how does that even work?

I have definitely wondered such things myself, and I’m sure many people have as well. That, combined with the quality of the piece, made it an easy choice for me.

Congratulations, Christopher!

And congratulations and thank you to everyone who entered this contest, and again a big thank you to ArenaNet for giving me the chance to do this!

(Also, a special shout-out to Vivian, the winner of Syp’s photo contest – she had entered mine as well, and I absolutely love the cosplay. Great job and congrats!)

First of all, before I go into main reason for this post, Under the Pale Tree has expanded again! I would like everyone to give a warm welcome to AJ Wolf (@ajwolf84 on twitter), who has joined as a writer. Previously she had blogged for The Tyrian Order before the site had closed down, and along with Opt of Malefic Incantations, is my co-leader of I Can Outtweet a Centaur [TWIT]. So keep an eye out for her posts, and her take on the Guild Wars lore and the state of the game!

And now, we come to the main event! I have right now, sitting in my room, this lovely item:

Yes, that is a Guild Wars 2 Collector’s Edition. Yes, it is signed by the team. This thing is covered in signatures. It is amazing.

And it can be yours!

How? Simple. We are going to be holding an art contest. I have always loved the art contests held by ArenaNet, and I was sad that there wasn’t a Wintersday Guild Wars 2 contest this year. I also was a winner of one of the previous GW art contests. So in that spirit, that’s how I shall rehome this CE!

Any type of artwork is welcome – whether it’s a traditional drawing, digital painting, or crafted item. It must be Guild Wars 2 related. Entries should be emailed to verene@thepaletree.net. You have until 11pm CST on February 9th to send in your entry. And because of the fact that it will be an NA game key, and I have to ship this sucker, I will have to limit entries to the US and Canada only (sorry!).

Good luck, and get creating!

Finally, a huge thank you to the lovely folks at ANet that made this possible!

Originally today I was planning on writing something up about the Wintersday event in Guild Wars 2, but there will be a large number of people doing that already, and I don’t see myself being able to add anything new that, especially when I haven’t yet tried everything. I have some lore stuff I want to ponder through, but not right now.

I did realize, though, that the game has been out for just under four months now. Crazy, right? It’s been that long. It feels, to me, like it’s been out forever…and yet there are times where it still feels brand new, like it released last week. It is also the end of the year, and that’s always a good time to look back and reflect on things. So today I am going to look back over my time in-game over the past few months, and talk about my favorite parts of it so far. There are flaws to the game, of course – a great number of them. But those will be left aside for now. It’s time to talk about the good.

So, what do I like best about Guild Wars 2 so far?

The game makes me enjoy playing things I normally dislike.

The fact that I’m even playing Guild Wars 2 at all is testament to that. I am not an MMO gamer. I do not like MMOs. I have tried pretty much every major one that’s released over the past decade, with none keeping me interested for more than a month. The original Guild Wars I fell in love with, but that was because it was so different than the standard MMO – so much so that it could barely be called one. I was very apprehensive about Guild Wars 2 for a good, long time, because of the fact that it was taking on so many parts of standard MMOs that I dislike – part of why I loved GW1 so much was because everything was instanced. I’m not generally a social gamer, and usually, I don’t want to see other people around when I’m playing.

And yet…in GW2, it’s completely different. I’ve gone from not liking other people being around, to being indifferent, to actively wanting to play with others. Whether I’m partied up with some friends/guildies, or just running around and finding another person or group doing the same things I’m doing and going along with them for a while…I enjoy there being other players around me. The game doesn’t punish you for playing with others, like so many MMOs do. It’s truly cooperative in a way that most MMOs will never manage, and I love it.

So, I like playing a game that’s a genre I dislike, and I like playing it socially, which normally I do not. I also find that I enjoy playing roles that normally I am not fond of. Ordinarily, I hate support and healing types. I can’t stand it, because in other games you spend so much time just watching the UI instead of actually participating in the fight. And yet, my second character that I got to level 80 was a Guardian. A Guardian that is, in fact, specced fully for healing and support. And I love it. I love playing her. I can’t do huge amounts of damage in a fight, but I love that a well-timed virtue can protect people from potentially being one-shotted if they don’t dodge in time. I love that so many of my skills are fields that combo to remove conditions, as condition removal is not nearly common enough in the game. I love that I can pile on pretty much every boon in the game. I love that almost everything I do will grant healing in some manner. I love that I’m still capable of fighting and doing a good amount of damage if support isn’t needed at the moment.

And more than anything else, I love that sitting there and watching the party UI is not something I can do, but instead I have to pay attention to the fight and move around as much as if I was playing my Mesmer.

The game can be utterly ridiculous sometimes.

There are so, so, so many silly things you can do in this game. And if it can be done, we’ve probably done it.

Take Feedback, for example. It’s a skill that I think should be stapled to every Mesmer’s bar, because it’s just so useful…it also lets you do some pretty ridiculous things. Such as creating yourself a small army of graveling babies to fight with you in the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon. Or giving the Defiler in one of the Twilight Arbor explorable paths the status effect of “Bees”. Or knocking off half the health of the Dredge Mining Suit in one of the Fractals if you time it right.

There’s also the fact that it’s an Ethereal combo field, so if you use it with pistol off-hand and also have a Thief in the group that’s dual-wielding pistols, it’s very possible to build up 25 stacks of confusion on an enemy…

Outside of playing with skills, there’s a ton of other bizarre and hilarious things you can do. Not long after Halloween, we decided to do the pirate jumping puzzle in Lion’s Arch all in our Halloween costumes…which mean riding our brooms throughout the puzzle. Last night we decided to take things one step sillier, after having all managed to craft Wintersday endless tonics…and did the LA jump puzzles like this:

Why yes, that is a plush griffon, princess doll, and toy soldier, with minipets.

And then, there’s the fact that occasionally the game bugs out. And sometimes, these bugs are hilarious and awesome. Such as having a hovering shark running through Lion’s Arch.

So yeah, the game is definitely big on silly sometimes.

I love my guild.

I am the leader of I Can Outtweet a Centaur! [TWIT], and…honestly, my guild is great. It started out in BWE3 as something silly for the GW2 twitter users, and while the core of the guild is still that it’s the unofficial twitter community guild…it’s grown so much beyond that. We’re open for anyone to join that wants to, and as a result we’re a mix of tweeples, offline friends and family of members, and guildless players we’ve run into and played with out in the world.

It’s also grown in size far beyond where I ever thought we’d be, which is amazing.

There is also a real sense of community within the guild, that I enjoy and I’m so happy exists. Very often I see people offer up items in guild chat that they got and think would possibly go to better use being given to someone else than being sold. We have a packed guild bank. A large number of us exchanged in-game Wintersday gifts. One of my favorite recent things was Optimus saying in vent that he was a few gold short of…something, I don’t remember what, and the rest of us in vent/the party proceeding to bird-bomb him with a couple of gold each. At the exact same time, without planning it at all.

There’s also the fact that we are quite silly, as was shown in the point above this one. Those screenshots? Things we did last night. We tend to do things like turn everything in the world we can jump on into a jumping puzzle, including dungeons. And that includes dragging NPCs with us in the process.

And guild chat can be extremely entertaining as well…as this screenshot shows…

Yup. That’s my guild.

The game is absolutely beautiful, and they put a ton of work into it.

People point this out all the time, but it’s worth saying again. The game is gorgeous. Wintersday just proved that over again, with Lion’s Arch covered in snow and decorations, as well as the maps and art for Tixx’s Infinirarium, the Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle, Bell Choir, Snowball Mayhem…it’s just lovely.

There’s also the fact that ArenaNet isn’t going to just sit back and rest on what they have already, but still work like mad to add new things to the game. I can’t remember who it was, but someone said on twitter that they put more work into their holidays events than many games do a full expansion…and really, I agree. I had high hopes for holidays in Guild Wars 2, being as I loved them in GW1. Halloween raised the bar for Wintersday even higher. And when the update arrived? Shattered right through that bar.

Also, did I mention the game is amazingly pretty? I’m pretty sure I did. But to be sure I made the point clear, I’ll just leave this screenshot of the scene you see when entering Winter Wonderland.

ArenaNet cares about the playerbase and community.

I can’t talk about the things I like about Guild Wars 2 without mentioning the dev teams behind the game. They really do care about and love their game, and care about the playerbase. They care about the community that the game has. They listen to us when we have things to say. They own up when they make mistakes, and take steps to try and fix them. They participate in the community themselves.

And if you’re on any social media channels, you quickly realize that they are not a faceless company, but made up of people who are just as down to earth and fun as anyone else. They are a great bunch of people talk to, as well as to play with in-game.

They also acknowledge their fans, which is great, and not something many companies do. There was the Fan Day event, where they invited fans to visit the offices. There were the giveaways over the summer, where a number of fansites and blogs (this one included!) were given keys for the BWEs to give away. There’s the fact that fansite interviews with members of ArenaNet are fairly common.

And I can’t forget what a number of fans, myself included, received in the mail this week:

Best card ever? Why, I do think so.

The game isn’t perfect. There’s a lot of things with it that can be fixed, or that should be in but are missing. But there’s far more good to it than there is bad. And what is good about Guild Wars 2, is absolutely amazing. I could write all day on what I enjoy about it.

Happy Wintersday and a lovely New Year to all!

So, this blog has been pretty quiet the past couple weeks. The reason is fairly obvious, though – Dak and I have both been busy playing Guild Wars 2!

The game has officially been out for two weeks now. It did not have the smoothest launch, but compared to many others, it went very well indeed. ANet’s been working hard to clear up issues as they appear, and it shows.

As of writing, I have seven characters (one more than I had originally planned on). Liusaidh, my mesmer sylvari, is my main, but I also have Janan Savitri (human thief, descendant of my GW1 Dervish), Ragna Blazefur (charr elementalist), Brynja Rabbitfoot (norn ranger), Katta (asura warrior), Rosheen (sylvari guardian), and Carella (human necromancer). Liusaidh is currently level 72. Did I expect to level as quickly as I have? Oh my god, not even close. I’m actually really amazed that I’m as far with her as I am. My short attention span is to thanked for that, I think.

And yes, you heard that right. Me having a short attention span is the reason I’ve progressed so much further in this game than I had figured I would have in this time period.

Let me put it this way – this game is ridiculous for short attention spans. And I mean that in a good way. Nearly every time I set out to do something, I spot another thing going on, and then another, and so on and so forth. Suddenly it’s three hours later, I’ve leveled up several times, and I realize I never got to what I was going to do in the first place! A very good example of this was a few days ago. I’ve been running around with Opt from Malefic Incantations a lot in-game, and while wandering Lornar’s Pass after finishing a story quest, I ran into him. And then revived him as he decided to test if Death Shroud helps against falling damage (hint – it does not. But it was funny!). We went exploring across Lornar’s, found a portal to Dredgehaunt Cliffs, went “sure, why not”…and proceeded to spend the next three or four hours exploring in there.

And that seems to be the case whenever we go to do anything. I love it.

I also got addicted to crafting. I’d say that as a guild we’re all pretty big on crafting, but damn did the “must make things!” bug bite me hard. I don’t even want to think about the amount of money I’ve probably thrown at fine materials at this point. I’m just shy of 350 on tailoring, and my jewelcrafting is in the 330s. The character that is my jewelcrafter, Janan, has gotten to level 14 almost entirely through crafting. I foresee maxing out both of these disciplines fairly soon. I also got artificing up in the 100s but I haven’t really concentrated on that one too much. I also made Katta a weaponsmith because I don’t believe our guild really has one.

Oh yes, the guild. I am the leader of I Can Outtweet a Centaur! [TWIT], which started out as an unofficial twitter community guild and has grown well beyond that. Right now we’ve got about 75 members, and exactly the sort of atmosphere I’d want from a guild I’m a part of. I’m going to be plain – I love my guild. There is such a sense of companionship, and it’s great. We’re such a sharing, giving group – I like the idea of giving it forward, and we do that very well. Help is always given where it’s needed, people are always offering up stuff they get that they think someone else could use, and we’ve got a guild bank stuffed full of goodies because people put stuff in more than they take stuff out. Not to mention the silly, ridiculous things we do – like Orr runs at low level, creating a cult of the boulder while doing Ascalon Catacombs, and spontaneous dance parties any and everywhere. It’s so much fun, and I’m so glad and honored to be a part of such a group.

Not everything about the game has been perfect so far, though. The very first night was littered with severe lag and disconnects…though that did clear up pretty quickly and is unsurprising, considering the number of people logging in at once. The morning after headstart guilds broke entirely – guild creators would show as not being in a guild, were unable to be invited to any or start any, but would show up on their guild roster as a member but not representing. Invites in general also were not going through. Thankfully this was fixed, but it took a few days.

The trading post being down for so long definitely sucked. I won’t say it was a game-breaking thing, but…there’s no denying that it not being available for about a week and a half rather screwed up the economy. Certain materials have so flooded the market that it will be ages before they ever sell and the prices raise above rock-bottom. Crafted items simply do not sell unless you get lucky. People will list stuff for one copper above merchant value…either not realizing there’s a listing fee, or not caring. Things will eventually balance out, but it will take a long while, I think.

Parties mostly work, but can still bug out and break on occasion. Quite frequently we’ve had issues where someone on an overflow can’t join their party on another overflow or the main shard. There’s an issue that crops up every so often where if a party member moves out of minimap range of the rest of the party they simply vanish off the map entirely and show in the party window as being in another overflow. The window doesn’t always accurately reflect where people are. Yesterday it would show people as being level 0 and having no profession. And getting into a dungeon with your group can sometimes be a gamble.

Still no guesting. No guesting makes quaggans sad. In all seriousness, though, I really hope guesting gets added in soon. Free server transfers is all well and good and all, but…if you play on a popular server, you’re going to be hesitant to transfer to play with someone else because you may not be able to get back into your original one, and they may not be able to join you. If you’re on servers on the same data center (NA or EU), there’s a way to work around that using overflows, but as the number of times I see myself in an overflow is diminishing, it’s not a good solution.

The one thing that really bothers me the most is that influence and guild upgrades are server-limited. [TWIT] is an international guild, and our members are all over the place. Many people are in other guilds as well, so they go where their main guild is. However, even if they’re representing us and they’re on another server…it doesn’t help our influence at all. On the flip side, stuff like our guild bank and our other upgrades? They can’t use! I’ve seen people say that it’s probably to keep guilds from dominating WvW on multiple servers, as well as the argument of “well why would your guildies be on multiple servers?”. As someone who doesn’t have much interest in WvW and isn’t going to tell her members to transfer to Jade Quarry or leave, I don’t care for either of those arguments. All that restriction does is harm cross-server guilds. Of course, were guesting in, it may not be a concern at all, but with the lack of guesting…well. It’s a big problem.

Story quest difficulty. I don’t know what happened there, but it feels like they go all over the place. Some of them are just brutally hard. I’m saying that as someone who did a quest while 25 levels higher (with armor and weapons at my current level, traits all set up, elite skills, and so on) and I still got wrecked several times. It’s also sometimes extremely vague as to what you’re supposed to be doing.

It’s also very obvious that the higher level stuff was not tested thoroughly. It’s rather frustrating, too, because I’d say about a tenth of the events I run into in the 50+ level zones are bugged in some manner – enemies don’t spawn, escortees don’t move, they get stuck somewhere, etc. Several personal story quests have been bugged, though thankfully none I did. I’ve been diligently reporting bugged events as I find them, and they’ve done a lot of personal story fixes, so here’s hoping that they’re also working on the DEs as well.

All things said, though? I’m happy. I’m more than happy. I’m having a ridiculously good time in this game. I’m enjoying playing with other people (a rarity for me), I’ve got a great guild, I’m enjoying the story, crafting is stealing my life, dungeons are fun, and just…I’m having tons of fun. There is so much to do in this game – enough to keep me going for ages.

So two weeks into the game, I’d say it’s not perfect, but nothing ever will be. That’s not stopping me from having the most fun I’ve had in a game in ages, though.

What do you think of how Guild Wars 2 is going so far?

Just a real quick note – ArenaNet is holding several launch events in five cities across the US on September 1st, with employees present to sign all your GW2 memorabilia, giveaways for both physical and in-game items, and a raffle at each event for a Collector’s Edition!
Since no event was hosted near Verene (very sadly, I might add) I’ll be headed to the Austin event myself!  Expect pictures, and if any readers are going to the same event it would be awesome to meet and chat.

Today is the day that Guild Wars 2 has officially launched. It’s almost hard to believe that this day is finally here! Okay sure, for many of us launch was three days ago, but today is the official day that the game is available worldwide.

We’ve talked plenty about our memories of waiting for the game and the like, but that’s just us, the fans. What about the developers? The teams working on the game? What were their favorite memories? What was their favorite part of being involved with the development of Guild Wars 2?

I asked that one single question, and got answers from a variety of people who have been working on the game over the course of the past half of a decade.

So, ArenaNet, just what was your favorite part of being involved with the creation of Guild Wars 2?

Colin Johanson, Lead Content Designer

My favorite part of the experience was the very first Gamescom, when we showed the game for the first time! Not knowing what the reaction would be like going into it and knowing how long the flight home would be if it didn’t go over well, I approached the weekend with equal parts nerves and excitement. Thankfully the weekend went amazing; our fans were incredible and so much fun to hang out with that weekend. The flight home turned out to be a time to reflect on a successful weekend and look ahead to PAX one week later where we’d get to show the game again. That weekend really set the tone for all of us at ArenaNet when we truly knew we were on to something, and it has been an awful lot of fun ever since!

Jonathan Sharp, Systems Designer

My favorite part was getting to see the first real PvP come together.  The classes, our first map, the secondary mechanic, traits…it all came together and it felt soooo nice after years of working on the game.  The first PvP we had in the game was actually me and Izzy EMAILING EACH OTHER our moves…
Me: ”I mind wrack you with my Mes..”
Izzy: “Fine, I shield block with my warrior and close the space.”
Me: “I swap weapons and dodge backwards…”

Martin Kerstein, Head of Community

When we showed our reveal trailer at gamescom, and people were literally crying with joy in the audience.

Kevin Millard, Game Designer

The moment I realized management wasn’t joking when they said “we’re not shipping until it’s ready”.

Leah Rivera, Game Designer

I’d have to say my favorite part is right now! The adrenaline rush of addressing issues is they surface and the excitement of knowing that I’ll get to share this game with countless people is an amazing feeling. I’m very proud of this game and pumped to share it with the world. It is ready!

Stephen Clarke-Wilson, Server Programmer

My favorite part of being involved with Guild Wars 2 was developing a new thread dispatcher that’s different from the one standard one in all the books.  Oh, and working with all these great people!

John Stumme, Guild Wars Live Team Lead

My favorite part of development for Guild Wars 2 has been watching something so incredible coalesce so brilliantly into the game that it is today, from what it once was. I was involved with initial design for GW2 the first two and a half years before I took over GW1, and it still amazes me how just how far the game has come, and how much our intensely talented team has been able to accomplish. Things were very different “back in the day” compared to the fantastic game you see before you now. In the before-times, we spent a good deal of our time theorycrafting what the game would be, what would set it apart from everything else, and writing  content on the promise of things to come. I feel like I spent an entire year doing nothing but writing battle chatter for NPCs. I… don’t know if I have any ways left in me for one being to express the intent to harm another anymore. I count myself fortunate that I’ve been able to support GW2, and watch it grow from the outskirts looking in. That means I’ve still got the entire experience ahead of me to savor, the same as any fan, and I am looking forward to being a part of that along with the rest of you!

So there you have it, folks. We get to hear what they loved most about working on this game, as well as a few interesting insights into its creation (the emailing of moves is gold).

Also, thank you to Colin, Jonathan, Martin, Kevin, Leah, Stephen, and John for taking the time to answer these questions, as well as to Regina for allowing me to do this in the first place (and for taking the time to ask everyone and collect the answers!). You guys, and everyone there, are all amazing.

If you have not yet seen the Wayfarer’s Reverie quests in Guild Wars, do yourself a favor and go check them out.

Not because you get a Tormented weapon for completing them all…but because it’s a lovely, nostalgic look back at a game that many of us played for years.

I don’t think I spent an entire day in GW1 since I completed vanquishing Cantha – it’s been well over a year. I’ve completed the things I want to do, I’ve bought the items and armors I want, I’m at 45/50 in my Hall of Monuments, and I’m happy with that.

And yet that’s what I spent my Saturday evening and all day Sunday doing – playing Guild Wars. And I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun doing so.

Several members of my guild for GW2, I Can Outtweet a Centaur!, met up to do the Wayfarer quests. We had fun. We did stupid things while running from point to point. We spent 45 minutes failing at an easy dungeon because we wanted treasure. We sat under the Pale Tree, made jokes about all sorts of inappropriate things, and hung out in Eye of the North dancing while using hero tonics. And thanks to one of our guild members accidentally recording two hours of gameplay (and filling his harddrive in the process), we’ll have this on video forever.

We decided to do Fissure of Woe on Sunday afternoon. I had decided that I wanted to send off my oldest GW character, my Ranger and my nickname’s namesake with a set of Obsidian armor. I helped finance sets of Obby for three other guildies so that they could get the points for their HoM. This completely wiped out the remainder of the money I had in-game, but it was more than worth it. Almost anything would be worth having so much fun with such an amazing group of people.

But one thing that most of us realized during all of this…this is likely the last time any of us will really play GW1. We’ll still log in for events and the like, I’m sure, but the days of playing all the time are over. While this is because of Guild Wars 2 launching in a week and headstart being in just over four days…it’s really kind of sad. The GW-EN farewell party refered to it as an end of an era, and really…I can’t think of any better way to describe it. There will never be another game like Guild Wars again. It really was a one of a kind thing, a very unique sort of game.

But sometimes it’s time to move on. There reaches a point where you’ve done everything in a game, and it no longer holds the appeal it used to. I will always love GW1, but it will never again hold the same sense of wonder and amazement that it used to. It’s time for Guild Wars 2 to prove itself.

And so I say to you, my dear Guild Wars, farewell. And even if I don’t log in frequently, I will never stop loving this game. To everyone I have met because of this game – thank you, for so many things. You are all amazing.

I will see you all in Guild Wars 2 this weekend.

Five years now, since Guild Wars 2 was first announced.

Now, I haven’t been following it all that time. Five years ago, I had barely heard of Guild Wars at all – it was this game my brother and one of his friends played. My main memory of it at the time was my brother tackling his best friend in my store because his friend bought him a copy of Factions. I thought it looked interesting, but the whole “online game” part of it put me off – at this point I’d already tried both WoW and FFXI and hated both, so I wasn’t much into the idea of another MMO. He got really into it, and told me I had to try it. I decided, okay, I’ll give it a go. I made an Elementalist in Prophecies and played a bit, and it was decently fun, but didn’t grab my attention. So I left it.

About a year later, during the fall of 2008, a friend of mine started playing it. And got really into it. And insisted I had to play it. At this point, Prophecies was $20, so I decided why not. I’ll give it a go again. However, disaster struck – my mom’s computer decided that after running the game fine for ages it would no longer do so (and I had support completely baffled trying to figure it out), and my own computer was so old that it couldn’t run the game at all. My computer was also old and crappy enough that upgrading it was not an option. After a month or two of irritation, I managed to buy a second-hand computer from another friend and hurrah! I could run the game!

And history was made. Prophecies still had a hard time drawing me in, but a coworker bought me Factions for Christmas, and that was it, I was hooked. I bought myself and my brother both Nightfall that year just after Christmas. I got Eye of the North not much longer after that. I talked about it enough that my boyfriend bought the Platinum edition, and then I bought him a copy of Factions. When helping out at another store, I discovered they still had a Nightfall CE – and it was only $10! I bought it in a heartbeat. I managed to get the Factions CE online. I fell in love with the Dervish profession, and my Dervish became my main.

Then two things happened in pretty quick succession – the Guild Wars 2 announcement at gamescom in 2009, and me getting into twitter.

My first steps into actually becoming a part of the community began when I joined GuildMag as a designer for the magazine. My actual stint as one was rather on and off, and eventually I had to step down entirely as I simply did not have the time for it, but if not for that, and deciding to give twitter a try (I’ve had my account for ages but used to hate twitter) and following the other GuildMag members, I would not be writing this blog today.

The twitter community for Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 is amazing. Optimus writes a bit about it in an entry posted yesterday about the guild we’ve set up (which somehow I wound up as leader of!), but it was my slow involvement in the twitter community that gave me the idea of starting a blog of my own. Many of the people I had followed and became friends with were bloggers, and I enjoyed reading what they wrote, and I had plenty of ideas and thoughts of my own – so why not give it a try?

At this point, when I decided I was going to give blogging a try of my own, I’d been following Guild Wars 2 for almost 2 years. I’d heard of it before the announcement at gamescom, but there was precious little info. Still, I adored Guild Wars. Any sequel to it was something that would certainly pique my interest. Then gamescom 2009 came, and we got some info on it…and honestly, I was a bit put off at first! Persistent worlds? Oh, no! I loved how instanced GW1 was. I am, as a whole, not a terribly social gamer (which makes how things are now even funnier for me). I prefer to do things largely on my own, on my own schedule. I was also very wary of the idea of people coming along to screw up something I had been doing. I didn’t want to have to play with others people.

And that hesitation remained right up until I actually got to play during the first BWE. Now I realize that I was silly to be so down on that fact. But at the time it was a genuine worry.

I had fallen in love with the sylvari from the very first moment I saw them. I remember finding myself highly disappointed on how little they were ever shown and how little info about them we were ever given. When the redesign was announced, it made me even more impatient to see how they had turned out. I wanted to know their lore, what they believed, everything about them. I collected every bit of info about them that I could find, giving this blog a sylvari-themed name. While, strictly speaking, my blog is not sylvari-themed (beyond the name and color scheme), there’s no denying I do write about them a lot, and I rather pride myself in my knowledge of them.

And so in early 2011, I started up this blog. I began to write. I enjoyed it! At first I wrote a lot about Guild Wars 1, and I didn’t really set out to have any specific goals about my articles. I just wrote because I had thoughts that I wanted to express. I didn’t ever really share the blog around much, as I’ve always been afraid of showing off my stuff, worrying that what I write isn’t good enough and no one will care. And then, one of my early posts was retweeted by ArenaNet. It’s probably silly, but that fact put me over the moon. People actually did want to read what I wrote! And on top of that, the people working on the game, thought that what I wrote was worth reading!

At that point, I decided it was time to start taking blogging a bit more seriously.

It’s been a long road, but I feel I’ve carved myself out a small niche. I’ve scored an interview with some of the writers for Guild Wars 2, I was invited to help give away keys for BWE3, and mine and Dak’s posts about BWE3 were linked to in an ANet blog post. As a fan, who does this because I love it and I love this game and community so much? Those things are amazing. I’ve made a lot of friends, all of whom are amazing, and we talk about everything under the sun. We decided to start up a twitter community GW2 guild during BWE3, and wound up close to 40 members just over the weekend, and we decided to keep it going at launch. I got Dak interested in blogging – something that he’d never done before, and now I giggle whenever he flails about his posts getting linked around, because not so long ago at all I was in the same position he was – just amazed and surprised by it all.

And on top of that, blogging like this has made me realize what my real passion is.

So, thank you, ArenaNet, for making a game that has inspired such passion in people, and has given me years of amazing memories while just waiting for the game to release – and is sure to give us years more while playing the game.

This entry is for the fourth GuildMag blog carnival, “Five years of waiting“.