I finally completed Divinity's Reach!
One of the Transformations I got the other day. Way cooler than the Boar, haha.
11/12/2012
11/06/2012
Thirty Tips for Playing Guild Wars 2
Like any good MMORPG, Guild Wars 2 is really bad at explaining things. So, I've collected thirty helpful tips, every GW2 gamer, should know. It's stuff I always see people asking in map chat so hopefully you'll find it useful.
Easy Travel
In each of the game's capital cities - Rata Sum, The Black Citadel, Divinity's Reach, Hoelbrak, and The Grove - you'll find a purple portal that leads to a 'hub' called Lion's Arch where you'll find more portals leading to each race's capital.
Organise Tour Inventory
If your inventory is cluttered up with collectibles - for example, the Rytlock Brimstone pet that comes with the deluxe edition of the game, or crafting materials - click the cog icon at the top right of your inventory and select 'deposit all collectibles'. They'll then be sent safely to your bank.
Gathering XP
If you see a gather point, like a tree or some crops, always take the time to harvest them. Not only can you sell the materials or use them for crafting, but it earns you XP. In 'farm' areas with a lot of harvest points, you can earn a tidy amount of experience for little to no effort.
AOE Auto-Cast
You don't have to aim AOE spells manually. Just tap the ability's bound button twice and it'll cast wherever your mouse pointer is.
Change Your Colours
You can change the colour of your character's clothes/armour at any time. Press H to bring up the hero screen, then click on the colour dropper icon above your gear. You start with a basic set of dyes, but more can be found as random drops - some of which are rare. You can also buy dyes from the gem store, find them in PVP reward chests, or purchase through the trading post.
Map Completion Rewards
Before you leave an area, make sure you've completed all hearts and skill challenges, and found every vista, way-point and point of interest. Filling the completion bar 100% earns you a chest full of quality, level specific loot, and coins to use at the mystic forge in Lion's Arch.
Linking Items
If you want to link to an item in the chat window - perhaps to trade, or just to show off - hold shift and click on it. It'll appear as a link that people can hover over to see the full stats of your item.
Switch Weapon Loadouts
When you reach level seven you'll be able to switch between two weapon loadouts during combat. For example, giving a ranger a sword so he can flip between ranged and melee combat instantly. Your secondary weapon set can be found immediately below your main one on the hero screen. Press the tilde key to change between them.
Revive Your Allies (and strangers)
If the area around you is safe, always take the time to revive fallen players. Not only is it a nice thing to do generally, but it gives you as much XP as killing a common enemy. The more players who hit revive near someone, the faster their health bar will regenerate.
See Who's Following You
On the contacts screen (press Y), there's a tab called 'followers'. Here you'll see a list of players that have added you to their contacts list. You can add people to your own list, and see their status, without them having to approve. With the followers tab you can check if you missed any friends, or if you've picked up a creepy stalker.
Vista Jumping Puzzles
Most vistas are hidden or put in hard to reach places. If you can't find your way up to one, wait for another player to come by and watch them. They might figure it out first, allowing you to trace their route for yourself. If no one's around, ask in the local chat window. Guild Wars 2 players are mostly a helpful and welcoming bunch.
Chain Attacks
Most melee weapons have 'chain attacks'. When you hover over the basic attack on your quick-bar you'll see three 'stages'. If you use the ability three times in a row, you'll create a combo and deal extra damage/conditions. This can be interrupted by some enemy attacks.
Trait Training
When you reach level 11, you can buy your first (adept) training book for 10 silver. Look for the green book icon on your map for the trainer specific to your profession. They can usually be found in cities. When you use the book, you can access your traits through the hero menu.
Dynamic Events
Orange quests are dynamic events. The more you take part, the better your reward. Whenever one flashes up on the map, it's always worth getting involved. The progress bar, unlike regular quests, is collaborative. All players doing the quest add to it by completing objectives. Often these will contain the same objectives as heart quests, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone.
Unlocking Weapon Abilities
Whenever you switch to a new weapon for the first time, it'll only have one basic ability. To unlock the rest, kill mobs. It doesn't take long to fully reveal all of a weapon's powers, which means you can switch weapons at your leisure without having to worry about wasting time dedicating yourself to one specific type.
Remember to Dodge
If you're fighting an enemy up close, don't just stand still like in most MMOs. Double tapping a direction key will make your character roll and evade. The yellow bar above the red health orb is your energy, and you won't be able to evade if it's empty. Some abilities combine an evasive roll with an attack, which is useful if you're low on health.
Auto-loot Option
Be sure you check the 'auto loot' option in your preferences. This means that when you press F to loot an enemy's corpse, the items will automatically be added to your inventory (providing there's space).
Talking to NPCs
Always talk to NPCs with unique names (as opposed to 'farmer', 'hunter', etc.) Often they'll trigger a dynamic event, or offer some other useful information.
Target Cycling
The tab key is your friend. When you hit it, it'll automatically target the nearest enemy during combat. If you're attacking an enemy that's further away with ranged abilities, then another mob comes up close, hitting tab will immediately switch your aim to them.
Karma Points
Whenever you complete a heart quest, you don't have to turn the quest in, but always make sure you talk to the NPC with the golden heart above their head. They'll have items on offer that can be purchased with karma points (the purple triangle icon), some of which are of a high quality. There are also 'cultural weapon' karma vendors in capital cities. Once you've hit level 40 you can buy rare weapons/armour from them in exchange for karma points.
Reveal Map with Scouts
Look for the telescope icon on your map. This is a scout, and talking to them will reveal a large area of the map and give you details of the heart quests in that area. You can also uncover the map (as well as way-point vista, etc. icons) by simply walking there.
Claim Your Rewards
When you complete a quest, you'll receive a mail from the quest giver containing an amount of coins. Remember to click the 'take all' button to claim it. You can delete messages from your inbox, but don't worry; the game won't let you delete mails that have an attached reward.
Level Auto-adjust
Your level is dictated by the area you're in. If you're a level 60 character and you decide to go questing in the starting area for one of the races, you'll be reduced to the same level as the newbie players there. This means you can still take part in quests you missed/skipped and it won't be a waste of time. You'll still get appropriate XP and loot for your level. To find out if your level has been reduced, look at the bottom left of the screen. The green number is your adjusted level.
Overflow Servers
If you're wondering why you can't find your friends, or why the chat window is full of all different languages, you're probably in an overflow server. Look at your mini-map under the area name. If it says 'overflow' then you're in a multi-language 'holding' server, waiting for a space to free up on the real one. Once you're in properly you can meet up with your buddies.
Underwater Combat
At the bottom right of your hero screen you'll see your underwater gear in blue. Upgrade these as soon as you can, because the starting gear is weak. You can buy harpoons or spear guns (depending on whether you prefer ranged or melee combat) from weapon-smiths or karma vendors. Better breather masks also come with minor stat boosts.
Hide the Interface
You can disable the HUD for taking screenshots. To do so, press ctrl+shift+H on your keyboard. Pressing the print screen button will dump a shot in your Windows docs folder in .jpg format.
Gathering Tools
To activate gathering nodes you'll need a sickle, pick, and logging axe. You can get these from vendors, and they're equipped on the hero screen just under your accessories. Better tools allow you to harvest better materials. Even if you don't care about crafting, it's still worth harvesting things. Trees will occasionally drop minerals (nuggets, pebbles, etc.) that you can add to weapons and other gear to upgrade them. Chop every tree you see out of habit.
Draw on the Map
Hold shift and left click on the map to draw on it. Party members will see your lines (which fade slowly) which you can use to plan out your questing route or highlight secrets.
Share Items Between Characters
Your bank is account-wide. This means you can dump items in it as one character, then retrieve them as another. You can't mail items directly to your other characters, though. There's no in-game trading, either. If you want to give a party member an item, just mail it to them.
Buffs and De-buffs
Boons are status effects that benefit your character. Conditions are negative status effects. An example of a boon is fury, which gives you a 20% critical chance increase. An example of a condition is bleeding, which inflicts a set amount of damage per second. In more common MMO terminology, these are basically buffs and de-buffs. You can find a full list of conditions here, and a full list of boons here on the official Guild Wars 2 wiki.
11/05/2012
Halloween Event In Tyria
I can't believe I missed out on so much of this event! After playing games like Lineage 1 & 2, WoW, Runescape and many others, I was under the impression this was another dull "event". Damn was I wrong about that. Guild Wars 2 has been, by far, the best MMO I have played and with each new event or update I am completely blown out of the water. This Halloween will be one event I will not soon forget. As I mentioned before, I only wish I had started it sooner.
Playing with a Warrior has been a lot of fun, but as all warrior classes go, they tend to bore me over time. Nothing against the game it self or the class, I just never feel comfortable with the warrior class. Originally I was under the impression that Tanks and Healers were sort of out of the equation but I did remember there being a Guardian class. So I made one and I am now giving him a try. Seems kind of cool so far, I'm only level three, I just love the way I can use his shield as a weapon. Mmmmm shield weapons!
What did you guys think of the event? Let me know in the comments below!
9/10/2012
ArenaNet Reopens Sales and Releases New Video
NCsoft, the world’s premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) and ArenaNet, developer of the renowned Guild Wars franchise, announces the reopening of sales of this year’s number-one hit title, Guild Wars 2.
9/09/2012
Update 13
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Skills & Traits
Mesmer
- The Prestige – Fixed a bug so that Burning duration no longer amplifies when additional enemies are present.
Ranger
- Beastmastery Trait: Instinctual Bond – Now grants 5 seconds of quickness to the player’s pet and can only occur once every 50 seconds.
- Pets can no longer be revived using the “F” prompt. This is because you can either use F4 to swap pets which will bring that pet back alive or you can wait until you are out of combat at which point you pet will revive automatically. We felt it was doing a disservice to Ranger players to incentivize them to spend a long time reviving their pet when it was a very inefficient thing to do and happened after combat anyway. This will also help clear up “F” to interact functionality.
Guardian
- Tome of Wrath – Removed Stability, added Retaliation; increased the health of the transform
- Zealot’s Fervor – Players can now move while casting this skill; increased cast time to 2 seconds; reduced maximum targets to 5
- Judgment – Knockdown is now 3 seconds
- Tome of Courage – Removed Stability, added Protection
- Heal Area – Base heal increased by 33%
- Pacifism – Reduced maximum targets to 5; increased cast time to 2 seconds; reduced daze duration to 2 seconds
- Shield of Absorption. The second half of this skill will now unlock in PvE.
Story
- “Bad Blood” – Exiting the conversation will no longer arbitrarily lock the player into a choice
- “Mirror, Mirror” – Adjusted difficulty.
- “The Hatchery” You can no longer do the final step before doing the intermediate steps.
- “Dredging up the Past” – Fixed blocking bug during the first step.
General
- Fixes for various blocked events and skill challenges.
- PvP games played/won will not increment in activities.
- Fixes for various map bugs that allowed players to get out of the map.
- Interact “F” should use the following priority:
-Your current selection
-Loot
-Revive/Stomp
-Anything else
Updated the recipe for Superior Rune of the Ranger to match the rarity of other Superior runes.
Update 12
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Engineer
- Updated the Engineer’s Firearms trait – Juggernaut. New text for the trait: You gain 200 Toughness while wielding a Flamethrower. In addition, gain might for 15 seconds every 3 seconds, as long as you remain in this weapon kit
- Fixed a bug with Go For The Eyes. It can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
Mesmer
- Fixed a bug with Signet of Illusions. It now give phantasms 50% more health instead of 300% more.
General
- Fixed a bug that should help resolve almost all of the broken skill challenges players have been running into.
- Ranger pet swap recharge is now the same in and out of combat. This closes an exploit with swapping ranger pets to generate very long buffs.
- Ranger pets should now immediately use their F2 skills when told instead of first performing an auto-attack.
- We discovered a bug in Monthly achievements that was causing some players to complete in August while others did not. We ae forcing completion on all players who are currently at 100% to even out this bug for those players who have completed their monthly achievement. In the future, monthly achievements will turn over on the first of the month at midnight UTC. Daily achievements also roll over for all players at midnight UTC.
- Fixed numerous events and event chains that were blocked.
PvP
- Max Glory cap per PvP match is set to 350. You now receive an achievement for reaching this cap in a given match. This closes an exploit that was letting players farm hundreds of glory per match by trading wins.
Story
- Fixed a blocking issue in “Forging the Pact.”
Crafting
- Players can now do the production portion of crafting without having to pull the resources from their bank. Note: Discovery still requires use of the bank. This is something we would like to change but decided that getting part of the way there was better than making players wait for the entire fix.
- Fixed a bug with the recipe for Ginger Pear Tarts that excluded Dough from the recipe.
- Increased the karma costs of all Bulk Cooking Materials.
- Increased the refinement costs of all Wood Planks from 2 logs to 3 logs.
- Yellow Dye recipes now include Onions instead of Celery.
- Adjusted the ingredient costs on Dye recipes.
- The following Cooking Materials are no longer sold for Karma and are now acquired through drops, gathering nodes, or loot bags: Butter, Chocolate, Vanilla, Chili Peppers, Thyme, Black Peppercorns, Cinnamon, Bay Leaves, Walnuts, and Oranges.
Update 11
Saturday, September 8, 2012
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!
When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and if you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.
If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.
You can find more tips for keeping your Guild Wars 2 account secure in this article.
Update 10
Friday, September 7, 2012
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!
When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.
If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.
Customer Support
Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.
Hacked accounts
If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We're resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.
Email authentication
Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location. With this feature, hackers can be prevented from logging into your account even if they guess your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it on their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.
Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions if you need to turn off email authentication on your account. Keep in mind that, with email authentication off, your account security relies on you using a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.
Password resets
Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren't working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.
Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions to reset your password. Please choose a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.
Support forums
The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.
Last Night's Update
We largely resolved the capacity constraints with parties and guild functionality, which were causing symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travelled between maps, and guild manipulation not working. Note that, while capacity constraints are now addressed, there are still some specific issues we're working on with parties and guilds. In particular, there's an issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons, which we plan to address tonight.
We fixed issues with the storyline steps "Fury of the Dead," "Grisly Shipment," and "In The Ruins."
We changed the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.
Tonight's Update
We'll fix the issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons.
We'll fix issues with the storyline steps "A Light in the Darkness," "Estate of Decay," "Explosive Intellect," "Rumors of Trouble," "The Lost Chieftain's Return," and "Tribunes in Effigy."
We'll add an option to stop queueing for your home world, for players who want to remain on an overflow server indefinitely without being asked.
We'll add an option to report an account for sending spam or otherwise inappropriate in-game mail. Edit: This option will be added in tomorrow night's update, not tonight's update.
Coming Soon
Some players' monthly achievements didn't correctly reset on September 1 at 00:00 GMT. To allow those players to collect the next monthly reward, we will reset the monthly achievement of any player who is already at 100% for the month as of tomorrow night's update.
We're working on a fix for PvP tournament rewards.
Trading Post
Trading Post item and gold delivery was slow for part of the day today due to a network connectivity issue between data centers. Delayed gold and items are being delivered; check your "pick up" tab.
Gem Purchases
We found some cases where players didn't receive items after purchasing them on the gem store. We have records of all occurrences and are in the process of refunding gems to all affected players. Note that refunded gems will simply be added to your account's gem balance.
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.
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.
Next software updates
The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don't expect significant downtime tonight, but the game may be unavailable for 20-60 minutes during a software update.
Update 9
Thursday, September 6, 2012
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!
When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.
If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.
Customer Support
Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.
Hacked accounts
If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We're resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.
Email authentication
Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location. With this feature, hackers can be prevented from logging into your account even if they guess your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it on their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.
Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions if you need to turn off email authentication on your account. Keep in mind that, with email authentication off, your account security relies on you using a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.
Password resets
Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren't working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.
Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions to reset your password. Please choose a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.
Support forums
The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.
Last Night's Update
We largely resolved the capacity constraints with parties and guild functionality, which were causing symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travelled between maps, and guild manipulation not working. Note that, while capacity constraints are now addressed, there are still some specific issues we're working on with parties and guilds. In particular, there's an issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons, which we plan to address tonight.
We fixed issues with the storyline steps "Fury of the Dead," "Grisly Shipment," and "In The Ruins."
We changed the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.
Tonight's Update
We'll fix the issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons.
We'll fix issues with the storyline steps "A Light in the Darkness," "Estate of Decay," "Explosive Intellect," "Rumors of Trouble," "The Lost Chieftain's Return," and "Tribunes in Effigy."
We'll add an option to stop queueing for your home world, for players who want to remain on an overflow server indefinitely without being asked.
We'll add an option to report an account for sending spam or otherwise inappropriate in-game mail. Edit: This option will be added in tomorrow night's update, not tonight's update.
Coming Soon
Some players' monthly achievements didn't correctly reset on September 1 at 00:00 GMT. To allow those players to collect the next monthly reward, we will reset the monthly achievement of any player who is already at 100% for the month as of tomorrow night's update.
We're working on a fix for PvP tournament rewards.
Trading Post
Trading Post item and gold delivery was slow for part of the day today due to a network connectivity issue between data centers. Delayed gold and items are being delivered; check your "pick up" tab.
Gem Purchases
We found some cases where players didn't receive items after purchasing them on the gem store. We have records of all occurrences and are in the process of refunding gems to all affected players. Note that refunded gems will simply be added to your account's gem balance.
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.
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.
Next software updates
The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don't expect significant downtime tonight, but the game may be unavailable for 20-60 minutes during a software update.
9/08/2012
Update 8
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
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!
Customer Support
Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.
Hacked accounts
If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We're resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.
Email authentication
We will soon provide a secure method on our web site for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it for their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.
Password resets
We will soon provide a secure method on our web site for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren't working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.
Support forums
The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.
Trading Post
The Trading Post is now available to all players. Items and gold deliveries that have been delayed should arrive soon. Please check your "pick up" tab.
Parties & Guilds
We're working on capacity constraints causing issues with parties 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 deployed fixes in last night's update and will deploy additional fixes in tonight's update.
Note that guild upgrades and guild influence are world-specific. If you move your account to a new world, you'll see the upgrades and influence that your guild has on that new world, not the upgrades and influence you previously saw on the old world.
PvP Tournament rewards
We're still working on the issue with missing PvP tournament rewards.
World v. World event rewards
Event rewards for Dolyak caravan escort events in World v. World will be disabled until further notice.
Storyline steps
In tonight's software update we will fix issues with the storyline steps "Fury of the Dead", "Grisly Shipment", and "In The Ruins".
Downed mode camera
In tonight's software update we will improve the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.
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.
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.
Next software updates
We'll perform a significant update tonight at midnight Seattle time, during which the game will be unavailable for approximately one hour.
We'll perform maintenance on the Guild Wars 2 wiki tomorrow night, during which time the wiki will be unavailable for approximately one hour.
Update 7
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
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!
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 Sunday, September 2. If you have an older ticket for a hacked account or blocking login issue 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, "Blocking Login - Ticket submitted <date> - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number of your existing ticket), and we will prioritize your existing ticket.
EDIT: we have a modified procedure for ensuring that your ticket is correctly prioritized. Please read this thread for instructions.
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.
Trading Post
We've addressed capacity constraints, and the Trading Post is now available for all users!
Gem Purchases
Some customers who purchased gems experienced a delay in delivery of those gems to their account. This issue has now been fixed and all gems have been delivered.
Parties & Guilds
We're working on capacity constraints causing issues with parties 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 will deploy a software update tonight and another tomorrow night that will improve these issues.
PvP Tournament rewards
We're still working on the issue with missing PvP tournament rewards.
World v. World event rewards
We're temporarily disabling rewards on Dolyak caravan escort events in World v. World while we work on rebalancing them.
Storyline Steps
In last night's software update we fixed issues with the storyline steps "The Battle for Fort Trinity" and "Shell Shock".
Item descriptions
In tonight's software update we'll fix issues with item tooltips and chat links. Tooltips will now properly show names of item upgrades. Chat links will now properly show names of transmuted items, weapon/armor suffixes in names, and quantities of stackable items.
Forums
This afternoon we brought the official support forums online for testing. We'll roll out additional forums in the coming days.
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.
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.
Next software updates
We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next software update tonight at midnight Seattle time. We'll perform a significant update tomorrow night at midnight Seattle time, during which the game will be unavailable for approximately 60 minutes.
Update 6
Monday, September 3, 2012
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 (edit: after tonight's software update).
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.
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.
Update 5
Sunday, September 2, 2012
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!
We're prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of customer support requests. If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions.
As of this writing we have completed all prioritized support tickets for hacked accounts and other blocking login issues submitted prior to Friday, August 31. 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.
Over the past three days we've received approximately 8,500 new support tickets related to hacked accounts and other blocking login issues, and we've resolved issues to get approximately 9,500 players back into the game (most from tickets submitted prior to Friday, August 31). We're aggressively ramping up our customer support team, with 28 new support representatives starting today and more coming online in the next few days, to provide the fast response times our customers expect.
Scanning Accounts & Email Spam
Yesterday, three malicious users each changed the account names of their own Guild Wars 2 accounts thousands of times, scanning through lists of email addresses stolen from other games and web sites, presumably to determine which email addresses were available (not already used for a Guild Wars 2 account) and which were taken. It obviously shouldn't be possible to change your own account name so frequently. We temporarily disabled account name changes and have now restored but limited them to prevent this.
To the thousands of people who received emails stating, "the email address for your Guild Wars account has been changed," and are not even our customers, we sincerely apologize for the spam. Please be aware that your email address is on a list of account credentials that hackers have apparently stolen from other games and web sites and are systematically scanning.
To Guild Wars 2 customers whose email addresses are being tested by hackers but not stolen, thank you for protecting your account by choosing a new, unique password for Guild Wars 2. Even though your unique password should protect you, we think you deserve to know if hackers have your email address on their list of credentials stolen from other games and web sites, so we'll send you periodic notifications when we see hackers testing your account.
Reset Password
We're leaving "reset password" disabled for now. Please contact customer support if you forgot your password.
We believe hackers also have lists of compromised credentials for email accounts, and we don't want to allow them to login to a compromised email account and then use "reset password" to steal the associated Guild Wars 2 game account.
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.
Because you have to first validate your account email address by clicking on a link in email in order to enable this feature, you should be able to receive email messages from us. If you don't see email authentication messages, check your spam/junk folder. Be sure not to flag an email authentication message as spam; if you do, your email provider may prevent all 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.
PvP Tournaments, World Transfers, Character Creation/Deletion
We experienced multiple outages of PvP tournaments, world transfers, and character creation/deletion today, and ongoing issues with PvP tournament rewards. We're working to address these problems.
Parties & Guilds
We've made significant improvements today to capacity constraints that have caused issues with parties and guilds. However, players will still notice some intermittent issues with party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working.
Trading Post
We're still working on expanding the Trading Post's capacity to handle the huge volume of requested trades. We had the Trading Post down for maintenance earlier today but currently it's online and available to all players. We're still working on some issues, in particular buy and sell commands sometimes appearing to hang although they actually succeeded. We know the Trading Post is a big part of the game and we're working around-the-clock to restore full functionality to all players.
Storyline Steps
Players have reported blocking issues with certain storyline steps. We're preparing fixes for "Stealing Secrets", "A Grisly Shipment", and "The Battle for Fort Trinity", hopefully for tonight's update, and are investigating issues with other storyline steps.
Worlds & Overflow
We created three new worlds in each data center this week, and are periodically increasing the capacities of existing worlds 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.
Exploits
As promised by lead producer Chris Whiteside, this afternoon (72 hours after the bans) we removed the account bans from those customers who were involved in the karma weapons exploit and who correctly submitted appeals agreeing to delete the items. Anyone who remains banned, follow the instructions in the linked post and we'll get you back in the game quickly.
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.
GM Actions
Here's a summary of recent GM actions to police the game. In the past 24 hours we permanently banned 292 accounts for RMT-related botting and spamming, and suspended 23 accounts for using very offensive language or names.
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.
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.
Update 4
Saturday, September 1, 2012
We're doing everything we can to protect you. But to protect you in this case, we have to start with, "the hacker knows this person's account name and password; now how do we keep him from stealing the account?" That's hard to protect against. Don't let it get to that point. Please immediately change your password to a new, strong, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.
Hacked Accounts - Our customer support team is prioritizing tickets from customers with hacked accounts or who are otherwise blocked from logging into the game. If your account was hacked, please follow these instructions for submitting a ticket, to make sure that your ticket is correctly prioritized and to make sure you're submitting all the information we need to restore your access.
For hacked accounts, expect a response within 72 hours. As of this writing we're working on tickets submitted August 30. If you submitted a hacked account ticket on August 29 or earlier, and haven't received a response yet, your ticket may not be correctly prioritized. In that case, please submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Hacked Account - Ticket submitted August 2x - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number), and we will prioritize your existing (August 29 or earlier) ticket.
Reset Password - We're leaving the "reset password" feature disabled for now. If you forgot your password, please contact the customer support team.
We're leaving this disabled for now because we believe that a significant number of customers are unaware that hackers have the passwords for their email accounts. If we enable "reset password", a hacker who can get into an email account can use that access to get into the associated Guild Wars 2 game account.
Email Authentication - A feature we use to prevent hackers from gaining access to an account even if they know the account name and password. We suffered an outage of email authentication mails today, preventing players from authorizing logins from new locations. This is now resolved. When you receive an email authentication message, or any other email from noreply@guildwars2.com, do not mark the email as spam! If you do, your email provider may prevent you from seeing any future email authentication messages.
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, party members not joining dungeons together, and guild invites not working.
Trading Post - We're periodically opening the Trading Post for testing. This morning it was open to all players for six hours. As of this writing, the Trading Post is offline so we can apply further bug fixes and performance improvements.
This morning during testing, some users purchased items and didn't immediately receive them, or sold items and didn't immediately receive the gold. We do have record of these transactions and are working on completing them. Check the "pick up" tab on your commerce panel to see if your transaction has completed.
PvP Tournaments - tournaments were temporarily disabled today. We have now restored them.
World v. World - matches are now updating daily. We're running 24-hour matches to balance servers.
Worlds - We added three new worlds in Europe on Thursday, and three new worlds in America on Friday, 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 and exploits - It is our policy to permanently ban accounts engaged in botting and exploits, and we're ramping up to do that. 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. (This email address is for notifying us of emergency exploits. We cannot respond individually to questions sent to this address.)
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.
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.
In the beginning, God created Tyria
Welcome, to the very first un-official fan-site/guide/news blog for Guild Wars 2.
If you have any information that you feel belongs here or that you think would be beneficial to the Guild Wars 2 community, then please click the Submit button and tell us what you know!
If you have any information that you feel belongs here or that you think would be beneficial to the Guild Wars 2 community, then please click the Submit button and tell us what you know!
8/31/2012
Update 3
Friday, August 31, 2012
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.
Tournament PvP - We've taken Tournament PvP down for maintenance as we're working on fixing a few issues.
8/30/2012
Update 2
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Here are the things we're doing to protect your accounts.
-We have the "password reset" feature temporarily disabled. If you need to reset your password, contact our customer support team.
-We now have email authentication turned on for all players with verified email addresses. With this feature, even if someone guesses your password, when he tries to login from a location that you've never logged in from before, you'll have an opportunity to approve or disapprove of the login through an email check.
-We've noticed that hackers who discover a working email address and password combination don't always immediately exploit the compromised account. We sent email to everyone whose account has been suspiciously logged into asking them to immediately change their email address and password.
-We will also be sending email to all customers whose accounts have been unsuccessfully tested by hackers. -We strongly recommend that these customers create a new, unique email address for their account.
-We left in-game mail disabled for another half-day, because it's difficult for hackers to loot accounts when both in-game mail and the trading post are disabled. Keeping mail disabled this morning to prevent account looting gave us time to get email authentication turned on for all players, and gave players time to secure their accounts. But we will be turning in-game mail back on soon, so we ask everyone to quickly secure their accounts.
Email authentication - We started ramping up email authentication after last night's server update, and it's now enabled for 100% of players with verified email addresses. Email authentication provides a high level of security for everyone, and can provide an even higher level of security when combined with two-factor email authentication. Here's how you can set that up. Create a new unique Google or Yahoo email address solely for your Guild Wars 2 account. Verify that email address with Guild Wars 2 to turn on email authentication. Then follow the instructions at Google or Yahoo to enable two-factor authentication for all logins to your email address.
Parties, guilds, etc. - We're working to address problems with parties, guilds, and other social features, which 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 and guild chat failing intermittently.
Overflow servers - 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". Note that this functionality is sometimes intermittently unavailable due to the issues with parties and guilds noted above.
We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.
Botting - Yesterday we applied 72-hour account suspensions to 500 players who were running bots. We're continuing to detect and ban bots. Soon we will ramp up to our normal policy of applying permanent account bans to anyone who runs a bot.
Exploits - If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net.
This morning there was a widely-publicized, newly-introduced exploit in which specific cultural weapons were selling for one-thousandth of their normal price. We fixed it with an emergency build this morning. We want to thank the vast majority of players who became aware of the issue, responsibly reported it, and did not exploit it. However, a smaller group of players did significantly exploit it, each purchasing hundreds or thousands of these weapons. We permanently banned 3,000 accounts of players who substantially exploited it, and applied 72-hours bans to another 1,000 accounts of players who mildly exploited it.
In-game mail - In last night's software update we fixed the potential abuse of the in-game mail system that we identified yesterday. We kept in-game mail turned off for another half-day while working to secure accounts against hackers, since in-game mail can be used to loot an account. And we kept in-game mail turned off while responding to this morning's exploit. We're now ready to re-enable it, and will do so this afternoon.
Trading Post - Yesterday we tested Trading Post with a random 15% of players. This test helped us gather valuable data to fix important bottlenecks. This afternoon we will test Trading Post with a random 25% of players, and then work to ramp up from there.
Tournament Rewards - We're working on fixing tournament chest rewards. Because this requires substantial testing, we do not have an estimated release timeframe to provide at this time.
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.
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.
8/29/2012
Update 1
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Email authentication - Email authentication is a feature that notifies you if someone tries to log into your account from a location you've never logged in from before. Thus, even if someone guesses your game password, he can't log in unless he also guesses your email account password. You can make email authentication even more secure by using an email provider that supports two-factor authentication, such as Google or Yahoo, and taking advantage of that. We're currently preparing email authentication and intend to deploy it in a phased rollout, starting on Thursday, August 30.
Parties, guilds, etc. - Parties, guilds, and other social features are periodically failing. This causes issues such as party members not appearing on the map, and party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps. This happens particularly during times of peak usage. We're working to fix related problems and mitigate this issue with each subsequent update.
Worlds - Many worlds are filling up. We're keeping the number of worlds constrained so that worlds stay well populated even after the initial surge of high concurrency. However, we will add worlds as necessary. As of Wednesday, August 30, all German language worlds are full and all French language worlds are at high usage, so we're adding two new German language worlds and one new French language world.
Overflow worlds - During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while many characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow maps. If you want to play with a friend, but you’re not on the same overflow map, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". Note that this functionality is sometimes intermittently unavailable due to the "parties, guilds, etc." issues noted above.
Trading Post - We're working to bring the Trading Post back online. To help test, we've temporarily made it available to a random 15% of players, while we work to resolve remaining capacity constraints that will allow us to open it to everyone.
Edit: We have completed our live testing of the Trading Post for today and the Trading Post is now in maintenance for all players. Thank you everyone that participated; this test has helped us tremendously.
In-game mail - We detected a potential abuse of the in-game mail system and have temporarily disabled in-game mail to prevent any such abuse. We'll reenable it soon, hopefully in tonight's update.
Edit: The fact that in-game mail is disabled means that it's currently impossible for account hackers to loot stolen accounts, so we're going to leave it disabled for just a little while longer, while we work to ramp up email authentication.
Botting - We'll start substantial banning of bots on Wednesday, August 29. Since we're currently seeing widespread casual, unsophisticated botting, we will start with 72-hour bans for first offenses. In the coming days, as we address the casual botting problem, we plan to switch to our normal policy of permanently banning anyone who runs a bot.
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.
Next software updates - The next update of the game server and back-end server software will take place tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform the update. We expect this update to have fixes for email authentication and in-game mail. Our continued work on the Trading Post is not tied to game updates, so we will continue to test Trading Post updates throughout the day.
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