Tag Archives: Tempest

The Final Beta Weekend Event Begins October 2!

Heart of Thorns, Message of the Day, Predictions, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We’re excited to announce that our third and final Beta Weekend Event will be taking place starting at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Friday, October 2, and running until midnight Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Sunday, October 4.

These Beta Weekend Events are your opportunity to help shape the development process and the experience you’ll have when Guild Wars 2 is completed. These are real beta tests, and you have a real opportunity to make our expansion better with your feedback.

As a reminder, we’re not going to show everything from the expansion in beta weekends. We want to keep a strong sense of discovery and not spoil huge parts of the story ahead of time. We’re going to test enough to help us broadly understand how everything works and apply those lessons to the parts of the game we won’t be showing during beta weekends as well. For example, we’ll only ever be showing the first story chapter and parts of the first map of the expansion during beta weekends to ensure an entire world of discovery and excitement awaits you on launch day when you venture deeper into the jungle. After all, Guild Wars 2 is the game where the journey is the goal!

BWE3—Content Experience

Players who have pre-purchased the expansion will see a new button appear on the character-creation screen that allows them to create and play a fully geared, level 80 beta character of any race for the duration of the weekend. You’ll have access to four beta character slots to use. Due to large back-end changes to core systems that have corrupted some of the beta data, your characters from previous beta weekends will not be available for BWE3—everyone will be starting with fresh beta characters.

Players who have pre-purchased will be able to use their beta character slots to create our new profession, the revenant, using the full selection of core specializations, weapons, and legends. You’ll also be able to play with our new elite specialization system that grows your character professions into new elite specs. You’ll be able to try out all nine of the elite specializations:chronomancer, dragonhunter, reaper, tempest, berserker, daredevil, and herald, as well as the newly announced scrapper and our final elite specialization, the druid.

Beta characters will begin by playing through a brief shared battle in the Silverwastes that leads into the expansion jungle region, followed by the intro story step of the expansion. From there, they’ll land in Verdant Brink, the first map of the expansion. For our third beta weekend test, you’ll be landing in the same location that the second beta weekend took place in. We’ve expanded the nighttime events a bit to allow you to explore both the floor and jungle canopy in this part of Verdant Brink—and you’ll encounter new bosses who await you high above the jungle at night. You’ll be able to train your masteries in the jungle region as you play through the story and event content available in Verdant Brink.

We’ll also be opening up raiding in Guild Wars 2 for the very first time. You’ll find a brand-new portal in Verdant Brink right next to where you arrive in the map; this portal is a temporary entrance to our first raid! You’ll be able to form parties of 10 and enter the first raid wing, Spirit Vale, where you’ll go in search of a missing squad of Pact soldiers who disappeared while scouting an area north of the jungle. Here you’ll be able to take on the first encounter of our first raid wing as you search for the missing soldiers. This is the first of four total encounters in Spirit Vale—we’ll save the other three for when we activate the first wing in the live game so we don’t give away too many surprises.

Not only will you be able to take your characters to the jungle, but you can take them into the existing game world as well! Player vs. Player, PvE, or WvW—feel free to try out the new profession or elite specializations in Central Tyria with all your friends and guildies. To go along with this, we’ll have our map bonus reward system on for beta characters only to help players get a feel for how we’ll be helping keep the core game world relevant and rewarding with the release of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

We’ll also be turning on our new Stronghold PvP game mode for all players for the duration of the weekend, along with the new Mist Champion selection system. Players who pre-purchaseGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will have all the currently revealed Mist Champions automatically unlocked for them to use for the duration of the weekend.

BWE3—Feedback

So what kind of feedback are we looking for?

We’d love to get your thoughts on the revenant and all the elite specializations. We’d like your comments on the two new elite specializations, as well as the balance changes and updates we’ve made to the ones we’ve shown before. Were they fun to play? Did they change the way you play your profession in a meaningful way?

Did you enjoy the amount of vertical space available to play in for this part of the map? Are the new bosses fun to fight against? Do they add more to the night experience? Did you enjoy your time in general in Verdant Brink?

We want your feedback on what it feels like to play raids. Does raiding prove to be the true PvE challenge you were hoping for? Did you have to refine your build, discuss with your friends what builds they were running, and together define a strategy to overcome our first raid encounter? Did you fail the encounter multiple times until you eventually devised a strategy to learn how to overcome it? And most importantly, did you have fun?

We’re continuing to look for feedback on what it’s like to progress and earn Masteries over the course of multiple days of gameplay in the jungle and how it feels to use those Mastery abilities in the area provided. We’ve sped up the rate at which you earn Masteries deeper into the Mastery lines. Does the Mastery system feel like a system that works to provide meaningful progression? Does it make you care about experience points and Mastery points? Does it provide a framework you think we could add to regularly in live updates?

See You Soon!

Beta Weekend Events are a large milestone in the development of our expansion, and we can’t wait to play the game with you over the weekend and to continue down the path that bringsGuild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to release. After this beta weekend has completed, we’ll be just 19 days from the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns!

I want to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who has helped us beta test so far; the entire expansion (including the huge volume of stuff you haven’t seen!) is infinitely better because of it. This final beta weekend will help us identify the last refinements we need to address to make the experience even better, so thank you ahead of time to all of you who make it in. And remember—please make sure to share your feedback; it’s incredibly important to us!

We’ll see you in-game and streaming live on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel this weekend at TwitchCon!

~by Colin Johanson on September 25, 2015

Learn more about what we’ll be testing in the third and final Beta Weekend Event for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

Source: The Final Beta Weekend Event Begins October 2! | GuildWars2.com

 

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

Heart of Thorns Coming

Guild Wars 2, Heart of Thorns, Message of the Day, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Arrives October 23rd, 2016

Journey deeper into the Heart of Thorns

  • Mastery System
  • Heart of Maguuma (Maps, Challenging Content, New Beasts & Bosses, More Storyline & Events )
  • Elite Specilizations
  • New Profession | Revenant
  • GUILD HALLS!!!
  • PvP: Stronghold Game Mode
  • WvW: Borderland

Source: GuildWars2.com

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

The First Beta Weekend Event Begins August 7!

Heart of Thorns, Message of the Day, , , , , ,

Learn more about what we’ll be testing in the first Beta Weekend Event for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

by Colin Johanson on July 31, 2015

“I’m excited to announce our first Beta Weekend Event will be taking place starting at noon Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Friday, August 7, and running until noon Pacific Time (UTC-7) on Monday, August 10.These beta weekend events are an exciting opportunity for you, the player, to help shape the development process and the experience you’ll have when Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ is completed. These are real beta tests, and you have the real opportunity to help shape the expansion with your feedback.

We’re not going to show everything in the expansion in beta weekends; we want to keep a strong sense of discovery and not spoil huge parts of the story ahead of time. We’re going to test enough to help us broadly understand how everything works and also apply those lessons to the parts of the game we won’t be showing during beta weekends. For example, we’ll only ever be showing the first story chapter and parts of the first map of the expansion during beta weekends to ensure that an entire world of discovery and excitement awaits you on launch day when you venture deeper into the jungle. After all, Guild Wars 2 is the game where the journey is the goal!

BWE1—Content Experience

Players who have pre-purchased the expansion will see a new button appear on the character creation screen that allows them to create and play a fully geared, level-80 beta character of any race for the duration of the weekend.

Players who have pre-purchased may use their beta-character slots to try our new profession, the revenant, with all five full trait lines and all four core legends, including Shiro. You’ll also be able to play with our new system that grows your character professions into new elite specializations—you’ll be able to try out the chronomancer, dragonhunter, reaper, and tempest.

Beta characters will begin by playing through a brief shared battle in the Silverwastes that leads into the expansion jungle region, followed by the intro story step of the expansion. From there, they will land in Verdant Brink, the first map of the expansion, where about 25 percent of the total playable space of that first map will be available to play. You’ll be able to train your Masteries in the jungle region as you play through the story and event content available in Verdant Brink.

Not only will you be able to take your characters to the jungle, you can take them into the existing game world as well! PvE, PvP, or WvW—feel free to try out the new profession or elite specializations on the live game with all your friends and guildies. To go along with this, we’ll be turning on our map bonus reward system for beta characters only, helping players get a feel for how we’ll keep the core game world relevant and rewarding with the release of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

We’ll also turn on our new Stronghold PvP game mode for all players for the duration of the weekend, along with the new Mist Champion selection system. Players who pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will have all currently revealed Mist Champions automatically unlocked for their use throughout the weekend.

Progress earned by beta characters over the course of the weekend will be preserved between BWE1 and BWE2 so that you can continue testing where you left off.

BWE1—Feedback

So what kind of feedback are we looking for? We want your thoughts on how fun it is to play as our new profession as well as the elite specializations. Do the elite specializations feel like they are creating an entirely new role for your main profession?

The jungle content is predominantly the same content we showed to a small audience in closed beta testing earlier this year, but it’s more polished. We’ve done a lot of work to balance creature difficulty, and we’ll be looking for your thoughts on the overall experience. Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles? Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding? Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters? Warning—creatures will be more challenging than in the existing Guild Wars 2 world. (Note: This is not what we meant when we said “challenging group content” at the expansion’s announcement—we’ll announce the details of that in the future.)

You’ll also find that as daytime outpost events are completed in Verdant Brink, Adventures with fully functional leaderboards and rewards will be unlocked for play. We’re looking for comments on how well Adventures help accomplish the goals we set out for them here. And finally, we’ve done a lot of work since the closed beta test to continue progressing the nighttime meta-event within the jungle-floor-biome experience. Does night feel different from the daytime? Does it change the way you play while night is active? Is the nighttime meta-event experience that we’ve shown so far engaging and fun?

We’re also looking for feedback on what it’s like to progress and earn Masteries over the course of multiple days of gameplay in the jungle, as well as how it feels to use those Mastery abilities in the area provided. Does the Mastery system feel like a system that works to provide meaningful progression? Does it make you care about experience and Mastery points? Does it provide a framework that you think we could regularly add to in live updates?

We also want your take on how well the map reward system communicates rewards. Does it improve the experience of gathering materials if you’re working on building items that require specific crafting materials that previously had no clear place to earn them? Does it feel like it will help keep the core world we’ve built today still a place you’ll want to return to and play in, and do you feel rewarded for doing so?

Finally, we’ll also be looking for feedback on the changes we’ve made to Stronghold and the revenant since our last testing event, including the addition of weapon swap on the revenant profession and the new additional messaging for key events in Stronghold.

See You Soon!

Beta weekend events are a large milestone in the development of our expansion, and we can’t wait to play the game with you over the weekend and to continue down the path that brings Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to release!

While playing this weekend, don’t forget to tune in Saturday at 10:00 a.m. CEST (1:00 a.m. Pacific Time) to our WTS Championship event, live from the show floor at gamescom. The four top PvP teams from around the world will compete for bragging rights and $50,000 in prizes. We’ll also be announcing the details of one of our Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns features during the course of the tournament live on stream – you won’t want to miss it! You can catch the broadcast live on the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch channel, or catch up with a recording on the official YouTube channel after the match.

We’ll see you in game.”

Source: The First Beta Weekend Event Begins August 7! | GuildWars2.com

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader

Meet the Tempest: Elementalist’s Elite Specialization

Heart of Thorns, Message of the Day, , ,

“Welcome back, friends, for the next reveal! I’m Karl McLain, and this week we’re here to talk about the new elite specialization for the elementalist. With the coming of fierce enemies and Elder Dragons, you’ll reach deep into the elements in order to harness some of the most pure and dangerous aspects of natural magic and even infuse them into sound. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ will see the dawn of the tempest, a close-range specialization capable of blasting out damage and support as they charge into the fight against evil.

Pushing the Limit

While the elementalist has mastered the elements of fire, water, air, and earth, the tempest looks to extend the boundaries. With the design of this elite specialization, we’re aiming to add a more direct frontline support option that rewards precise positioning and the ability to turn a fight with sound decision making and deft blows.

Remaining attuned to an element for a period of time will now allow you the option to overload that attunement for a short while. Once you’ve attained a singularity with the attunement, you can reactivate it to perform a special channeled ability. These abilities are so chaotic and draining that they exhaust your current attunement, locking you out of it for a period of time should you move to another element. Before you ask, yes, the Fresh Air trait will refresh your exhausted air attunement and allow you to overload it much sooner.

Harness the Elements!

Each attunement will obtain its own overload ability, and here’s how they’ll work:

  • Overload Fire: Allow flames to leak out from your essence, building an infernal tornado over time that continuously damages and burns enemies while granting allies might. Successfully completing the ability leaves the tornado at your current location for a period of time.
  • Overload Water: Pull water into an aquatic bubble around you as you regenerate and cleanse conditions from yourself and nearby allies. At the end of the ability, your water bubble pops to give a larger heal to nearby allies.
  • Overload Air: Become a conduit of electricity, creating a nimbus cloud above you that repeatedly strikes nearby enemies, rending their armor. Successfully completing this ability leaves a lightning field at your location that strikes enemies in its vicinity.
  • Overload Earth: Rend the earth, bend it to your will, and take a ride on it, granting protection to nearby allies and crippling enemies. When you return to earth, deliver a tremendous immobilizing blast.

The Sound of Power

Specializing as a tempest will allow you to use eight new abilities as you wield their newest weapon—the warhorn. These abilities will assist in helping you both support your allies and create disruptive areas for enemies. While in water attunement, you’ll be able to unleash a moving water field that heals allies. Air attunement’s cyclone will pull enemies to a point, while its lightning orb will fire projectiles at all enemies within its path. Along with these and other skills, using a warhorn will also unlock the elementalist’s latent potential to share boons and extend their durations among allies.

Let Your Voice Be Heard!

With newfound abilities in audio mastery, you’ll gain the ability to use shout skills as utilities. Here’s the list of healing, utility, and elite skills you’ll have access to as a tempest:

    Healing:

  • “Wash the Pain Away!”: Heal allies, and cleanse conditions from them. This healing skill is a bit more unique, as it heals allies for the same amount that you are healed for outside of the initial healing when activating the skill.
    Utility:

  • “Feel the Burn!”: Sear your voice into the ground and cause continually growing flames to emit from that location.
  • “Eye of the Storm!”: Call the storm down on yourself and nearby allies, breaking stun on anyone affected and granting them superspeed for a time.
  • “Aftershock!”: Emanate a powerful earthen force around yourself, crippling enemies. After a short delay, an aftershock ripples forth, immobilizing enemies in its wake.
  • “Flash Freeze!”: Command the air around your foes to cool and harden, damaging and chilling your foes for a period of time.
    Elite:

  • “Rebound!”: This is the only arcane aspect available to the tempest. Using this arcane shout will affect allies in the area around you, causing the next ability they use to have a 25% reduced recharge.

Bolstering the Tempest

The elite specialization’s traits will have multiple options to promote defense, support, and overloading your attunements. Let’s delve a little into the tempest’s minor traits and a couple of major traits you’ll see.

  • Minor Trait One—Singularity: This minor trait unlocks the ability to overload your attunements. You’ll see multiple traits that beef up your overload abilities, such as Unstable Conduit, which grants an aura specific to your attunement when you successfully complete an overload ability.
  • Minor Trait Two—Speedy Conduit: You’ll gain swiftness while overloading an attunement, allowing you to move more easily around the battlefield. You can enhance this movement by equipping the Lucid Singularity trait, which cleanses and then reduces the duration of incoming inhibiting conditions by 100%.
  • Minor Trait Three—Hardy Conduit: Gain protection when beginning an overload ability. In order to use these channeling skills for damage and support, you’ll occasionally need to soak up a little extra damage yourself. If you so choose, this trait can be bolstered by a specific major trait in the line called Earthen Proxy. The effects of protection on you will be increased from 33% to 40% damage reduction.

Elementalists, you are called upon to unleash the inferno, drive the uncontrollable torrents, rain hell and lightning upon your foes, and harness the earth and ride it into victory. The tempest cannot be stopped; your enemies cannot endure. Press forward!”

by Karl McLain on July 23, 2015

Prepare for elemental overload as we reveal the next elite specialization!

Source: Meet the Tempest: Elementalist’s Elite Specialization | GuildWars2.com

Dungeon Adventures Guild Leader