The Orb

The Lost Shores

With the release of the first main content release for Guild Wars 2; this blog gets an update. I'm ready, back from a much-needed break from blogging due to the transfer from work into the third year of university. Now that the blog is back going, I will get as many updates out as possible; the pictures from the previous group of posts will be altered (as promised) along with the addition of the twitter link on the right over the next week things should be back in order. Enough of "my story" and onto the main content of the post; The Lost Shores.

Back for More

Since the release of Guild Wars 2, there has been slow updates coming to this blog. I will be sorting this problem by bringing more and more updates here when I get the time. Guild Wars 2 really is as good as people were saying and it appears to have managed to live up to the hype in many ways, as you can see, the Metacritic score of 93 shows that it is great game in the eyes of the critics. I have read a great deal of the reviews and have generally seen a wide love for the game, however there does appear to be some complaints when it comes to the skills and combat. When looking over the combat and skills systems; it is clear that there are not many different ways it could be done differently which would generally increase quality.

Changes Are Coming

Now that the game is out; it seems that there needs to be some sort of community update on here linking different people together with useful links and news. To do this I have come up with a group of ideas and changes that could be made to improve the community aspects of this blog. What do you guys think? I will be altering the links on the right of the blog as soon as I get time, linking to many of the community projects so people have a centre point for everything the community are getting up to. Maybe add a forum or another form of community gathering as the blog *hopefully* grows.

Guild Wars Lore Joins Twitter

Guild Wars Lore has a Facebook and Google+ page, both of which need to get a little more attention I feel. Up till now, Twitter hasn't had it's own Guild Wars Lore page, but today; that has changed! Feel free to pop over to the Guild Wars Lore Twitter Page and give it a follow for news and updates. There will also be a new link coming on the right of the page soon.

The Countdown: The Official Release

Many of us have been playing for three days now and the final group of people have logged into Guild Wars 2 today. I have created my Norn Warrior "Rhaen Cheris" on "Desolation (EU)" and have been rather casual with my experience with the game. I have generally been exploring Tyria and have touched on many of the elements I felt that I didn't play enough during the beta events and stress tests, this has led to a surprise with the amount of depth in the reward system within structured player vs player.

The Countdown: Release

The Countdown: 1 Day

Less than a day from the release of Guild Wars 2 (for people who have pre-purchased the game) and the excitement rises still. ArenaNet have held another two stress tests which I have managed to completely miss, they were both only an hour long (with minimal extensions). In these tests the epic castle of "Ebonhawke" to the south of Ascalon was accessible, this wasn't an announced addition so was very easy to miss since the stress tests were so short. On the Guild Wars 2 website's news section; ArenaNet have also gave us an update on linking accounts, if you have a Guild Wars 1 account and have not linked it with your Guild Wars 2 account; you are now able to link the accounts using this link: Your Account. With that out of the way, lets get to today's topic - No Subscription Fee, the main and final element of Guild Wars 2 in this countdown.

The Countdown: 2 Days

Only two more days left before we'll be in Tyria! ArenaNet have posted another two posts over on the Guild Wars 2 website. The first detailing how ArenaNet have improved and optimised the performance of the game so far, as well as their plans to improve the performance further after the game has released since they will be able to use the data they receive from players during the opening weeks of the game's release. The other post is regarding the Hall of Monuments, how we get it and other details, read that here. Moving onto today's topic - Personal Story.

The Countdown: 3 Days

With what seems like the final stress test before release over (after being extended by two hours); the long wait for release it coming very nicely to a close. I played for the main four hours, played a good bit of structured player vs player and world vs world. I also made a few new characters. The stress test seemed very near release; the culling of textures and objects was fixed, there was next to no connection issues or lag, the "report bug" button was gone and we were getting our "Hero's Band" accessory in the mail for each character. There were still a few issues however, certain skills in the world vs world maps would teleport the player to the centre of the map, in the water and on many people's cases; the performance could still be improved. All in all, the release is looking good! Right, onto todays topic - The Mystic Forge.