Bring Out Your Dead

Yes, I’m a little slow getting this posted. Yes, I’ve been busy playing the game. 🙂

One of the first things you probably noticed was that, while the Guild remained intact, the Guild Capes and Guild Hall have gone missing. The capes currently cost 2000g and the hall requires a Sigil won from the Tombs, which I understand are currently between 2000g and 3000g if you want to buy one. Personally, I’m enjoying being able to see the back of my character for a little while while accumulating gold. It’ll probably take me a week or two to get the cape on top of things like armor and equipment. If you’d like to contribute to the cape fund, just send me a message in-game or leave a comment here.

The biggest change to the game on release is the movement of skills from the skill trainer to the quest givers, which I think is another great idea on the part of ArenaNet. It gives you both an extra incentive to explore all the content (if you needed that), and a way to unlock the majority of your skills without expending a bunch of skill points and gold. One note – in pre-searing Ascalon, most professions have three trainers – two that are talked about and one that is hidden away somewhere.

I’m planning on using three of the character slots to cover all six professions to unlock skills, while leaving one slot open for a PvP character that can be rebuilt as desired.

See you in the game!

For anyone who hasn’t seen this video, it’s well worth the 66M download. It captures as aspect of Guild Wars that I haven’t seen in any other video, and it does it very very well.

Here are a couple of shots of the fireworks and one of four guild members waiting for the end of the world by the fountain in Lion’s Arch District 1.

Violet Deepsky has produced another video of the ending moments of the April BWE. Thank you for taking the time and effort to put these together and for sharing them with the rest of us!

According to this article on Computer Games Magazine’s site, ArenaNet has announced that the final discs have been released to manufacturing, which means they will soon be in our eager hands.

They cut things somewhat closer than I thought they would, but all’s well that ends well. 🙂

A little over 5 days to go!

ArenaNet has posted the BWE special edition Fansite Friday, with descriptions of new features (lots of interface changes), a guild challenge, and tips on reporting problems in the game with /bug along with a list of some of the things they’re looking for in particular.

Less that 8 hours to go!

Gaile posted some news today that made me very happy:

Your guild names will be protected, as guilds will carry over into the release as they currently exist. I guess an exception could exist if no one in a guild obtained the preorder, and therefore there were no active members in the guild at the time the game goes live.

Otherwise, the most recent word is that you will find your characters in the game, with your guild alliance in place, come April 28th. (Or, for you lucky ones, April 27th.)

I was really hoping that we wouldn’t need to play the remake the guild game again.

Go ArenaNet! 🙂

4 days to the final BWE, 16 days to release!

There’s a new video out that features some gameplay, some Gwen on a rampage, and Gaile leading a run around Lion’s Arch at the end of the March BWE. The BOYD dancing monks appear for a few seconds starting at 4:24.

After following the link above, you’ll need to type in the passcode (that’s displayed in the graphic) and click the “Go Get It” button.