Saturday, December 29, 2012

The 1 where we speak about our 2012 awards


Welcome back to Ask Massively. Here's your present: an edit button! What? You say you didn't get us something? Awww. Well, let's get back to the beneficial things, like your telling us how wrong our opinions are.

thatchefdude (& zaithnoc & cbv1020) asked: How can Guild Wars 2 be your game of the year & also runner-up for greatest disappointment of the year? I comprehend no gw2 gold game is perfect, but I would anticipate game of the year to not have adequate disappointments in it to warrant it a place as runner-up for disappointment of the year.

For the reason that voting.

OK, also as a result of one or two other factors.

I think individuals asked this question due to the fact they didn't realise we were taking a direct tally of the votes. Fifteen of our 19 staffers voted, & they all got to vote on something they wanted (there was no list of nominees to opt for from; the nominees were "everything"). So this is just a math game: It'd be pretty uncomplicated for pro-GW2 folks to put together sufficient votes to win best game & for its detractors to group-vote & rank it high for most disappointing. Yeah, I suppose I could have massaged those votes for consistency's sake, on the other hand I preferred to be honest.

The other thing is that the split between fans of GW2 and fans of The Secret World (runner-up for greatest MMO) is severe and polarizing. Personally, I think that a major innovative game shutting down is markedly more disappointing than a fantastic game not entirely measuring up to its launch hype, but hey, each staffer got to vote however he or she wanted, and adequate men and women voted for GW2 as a disappointment to get it on the list. It's that simple.

Worst-case scenario? Guild Wars 2 stays humble.

carson63000, NickSchipper, n13green, & Garlain asked (paraphrased): Why is Torchlight II the runner-up for Greatest Non-Time-honored MMO of the Year? It isn't even an MMO!

We in simple terms threw all of our "not so vastly" games in the running for this title -- non-time-honored MMO(FPS)es, Diablo clones, MOBAs, and so on. It made for a weird hodge-podge of an award. Is Torchlight II a traditional MMO? Not genuinely, no, however men and women play it like it were, and we wanted a category to reward all those weird not-quite-massives on the fringe.

joanromba, petersierra, & ManastuUtakata asked (paraphrased): Why is there no mention of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria? Is Hugely barred from talking about WoW and leaving all mention of it to its sister site WoW Insider?

There's no conspiracy; not enough staffers voted for WoW to earn it a top-two spot in any one category. It did score nominations for greatest expansion and greatest disappointment, just too couple of to win something (or lose something, in the case of largest disappointment -- several things, you just don't want to win).

LotOfSize asked: The Elder Scrolls Online was not even there for most anticipated MMO? Hipster much? Does everybody on Immensely wear scarfs & sip on their Starbucks coffee every morning also.

Voting for a bunnygirl-laden, space-cowboy MMO from a enormous, faceless, Korean super-business makes us hipsters?

The reality that TESO scored not a single nomination for anything suggests to me that the bulk of the staff either does not know the game plans to launch in 2013 or doesn't think it will happen and so stuck to Guild Wars 2 gold games about which so far more is known. Personally, as a substantial fan of the Elder Scrolls series stretching back to Daggerfall, I'm honestly looking forward to the MMO entry -- I'm just looking forward to WildStar (which won the award) even more.

Plus, I hate coffee.

Space Cobra asked: I am a bit surprised that Wildstar edged out ArcheAge around the Hugely offices, given my "feelers" out on some writers. Also, I am questioning who that "single staffer" is who offered up a unique game from the two top "MMO of the Year" possibilities, but I have my list of suspects!

I suspect the mixture of WildStar's sandboxy offerings and ArcheAge's hazy launch future in the U.S. had a lot to do with the result. However I will say that it wasn't genuinely close; ArcheAge barely squeaked in for quantity two thanks to the breadth of the competition. Other games nominated for the category? City of Steam, DUST 514, The War Z, Age of Wushu, and EQ Next.

You possibly can guess the odd-man-out for MMO of the year if you have been reading Hugely lengthy adequate. But I'll tell you the game: It was Wakfu, & you know what? I think that was a fair nomination, albeit it was sure not to win. It is modest, and a whole lot of men and women have probably never heard of it, although it's a genuinely clever & exquisite game with lots of innovative bits & unusual gameplay. Kudos to it and the voter for thinking outside the box.

Someone asked (I cannot keep in mind who or where!): Why didn't you let the community vote?

Honestly? Due to the fact someone at all times finds a method to cheat, plus the outcomes are worthless... except to the games that win and get to bewilderedly hoist the champion's banner for a year.

Besides, we know which games you guys like -- they're the ones you are paying for & talking about every day!

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Guild Wars 2 won the" most innovative game "award


Dear Guild Wars 2 players,supports and all friends pay attention to Guild Wars 2:

North American famous game portal - www.mmorpg.com released 2012 players vote top game result in the recently, this vote has nearly 100000 players to participate in, Guild Wars 2 with its constant innovation, subversion of the traditional philosophy, has won the support of many players, and eventually won "the most innovative game" praise.

As an MMORPG masterpiece, Guild Wars 2 is developed and released by ArenaNet(One of North America's top game production company). And welcomed by many Guild Wars 2 gold players once its open, not only win IGN 2012 players voting reward,but also voting as the best games of 2012 by time magazine. Win "the best RPG" and the "the best PC game" two awards in selection of GameSpot, what's more, it has won "the most innovative game" in mmorpg.com .

Monday, December 24, 2012

Guild Wars 2 Idea Artist Spotlight: Taylor Krahenbuhl


One of the newest additions to the ArenaNet concept art team, Taylor Krahenbuhl is a multi-faceted, multi-talented artist who understands the synergy between art & storytelling.

Q: Tell us a minimal bit about your background before you came to ArenaNet.

Taylor: I think I began drawing in the womb. For the longest time, all I can bear in mind is drawing & designing everything that I could get my hands on. Comic books, animation, illustration... anything that seemed fascinating to me at the time.

I began working professionally in 2006, largely for smaller freelance-type businesses doing storyboarding & character design. I got my feet wet doing value studies for particular sequences on the feature film Where the Wild Factors Are with my mentor & school professor Ryan Woodward. It was a storyboarding assistant gig with a tremendously short time frame, however it gave me an opportunity to see the story process from the point of view of a specialist who had been working in the business for countless years.

I studied at Brigham Young University, where I received my BFA in animation. While attending the school, I had a great deal of astonishing studio experience that genuinely shaped my desires & goals as an artist. I worked for Avalanche Program in Salt Lake as a concept artist working on titles such as Pixar's Toy Story three and Disney's Bolt. In 2008, I worked for a production team on a stop-motion animated film titled The Legend of Santa Claus.

After graduating from BYU, I was picked up by Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank to do storyboarding for a talent development program. It ended up being a writing, character-designing, & story-pitching tornado that was a excellent learning experience. I learned a lot about storytelling and striving for appealing character personalities in my styles.

After interning at Disney, I worked with one of a kind prospects as a freelance artist, doing mainly character designs & story sketches. Quite a few worth mentioning were a Tv-series pitch for a traditionally animated cartoon "Cheese Toastie Brain Monster" and an app set to come out in a few months titled, "My Beastly ABCs." I'm thrilled to come on board at ArenaNet as a concept artist.

Q: I love the watercolor impact in a large amount of your work - are you able to talk a little bit about your creative process and how you settle on an procedure to a piece?

Taylor: My design process virtually relentlessly begins with contemplating a silhouette/composition that appears distinctive and appealing to check out. I will sketch out on paper or digitally paint a number of different suggestions that give me a feeling of what the complete design will look like in just the silhouette form. The gesture, line of action, & personality of a character/creature ought to be solid at this stage. At this point I need to decide if I need to use color and render everything out or keep it grayscale.

Most of the time the degree of rendering on a piece directly correlates to the nature and time frame of the assignments. In the end, for me, it genuinely comes down to a feeling. I by and large try to ask myself if I have developed an interesting story in the end.

The tactic of having a more watercolor feel in my work came from experimenting with new brushes. I know that there are numberless methods of working. That is what I love about being an artist: you're consistently understanding.

Q: Do you find yourself returning to certain concepts, motifs, or themes within your work, or do your assignments genuinely dictate the types of items you explore?

Taylor: What I love about idea art is that themes, motifs, and concepts all seem to change dependent on the existing mood of the story in a Guild Wars 2 gold game or film. Right now, the notion department is targeting particular events specifically for Guild Wars 2 which I'd love to speak more about in due time.

As an artist, I find it refreshing to explore plenty of avenues before settling into a specific design. Regardless of whether the assignment is for an environment or a character, I find that referencing what other artists have done before, photography, or even paying close attention to what I am considering as I drive to work can all be amazing assets when exploring suggestions and themes.

Q: What are you looking forward to about working at ArenaNet?
Taylor: I wake up every morning wanting to tell stories; it is what drives me as an artist. I love the creative process behind designing a character, a world, a particular moment in a story, so I'm thrilled to bring my experience as a character designer and story artist to the ArenaNet team.

I'm also excited about working on concepts of characters, creatures, & environments, whether it's for the Guild Wars world or other assignments. Working in a collaborative environment with a lot of the most talented artists in the industry makes it possible for you to explore designs and methods of working that you never would have had the opportunity to do before.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Five defects of Guild Wars 2, it’s not so good


Guild Wars 2 was released on Sep,2012, it has win a lot of praise from the media, even some media appraise it as the best network game in year 2012. The famous American time magazine, select it as its ten year of video games. Not only the media, but also many people thought that this game has done a great job, the game art, game mechanism, and then to the flexibility and so on. Of course, each game has its defects; even the Guild Wars 2 is no exception. Recently, a media list out several deficiencies existing in Guild Wars 2.

Character creation process was magnificent; players can create any shape to your imagination game characters through the game characters editor. But when the players were filled with joy after entering the game, they do not know what to do. Role is very beautiful, which is what I want, but what can I do in the game? They are so confused. What kind of weapon is suitable for my character's talent? Not clear. Which treatment skills more suitable for me? Not clear. If I want to improve DPS, then my talent should double repaired or single? It is not clear.

Novice gw2 gold players started the game; they need some of the most basic guidelines to tell them which direction is correct. Not when they get to the full level, play with other players, the team found that copy with professional other players DPS is more than several times.

This post is from http://www.gw2gold.net/news/97_5094_five-defects-of-guild-wars-2-it%E2%80%99s-not-so-good.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Guild Wars 2 Wintersday Gift Boxes and Rare Item Chances


For Wintersday participants who are opening gift box after gift box in hopes of unwrapping a shiny Unbreakable Bell or Endless Tonic, Anthony Ordin gave players a advantageous hint on the forums yesterday. It appears the type of gift box doesn't matter when it comes to hunting for super rare goodies.

Originally posted by AnthonyOrdon

The modest, medium, important, giant, & personalized gift boxes all have an equal chance of dropping the endless tonic and the unbreakable bell. In actual fact, all the boxes (excluding MTX) drop incredibly comparable things at exceptionally comparable rates. The only reason there are different ones is largely related to crafting, so that lower level gw2 gold players can find and craft level-proper stuff from recipes & components.

Amazing to know! Also, in case you missed this developer update from early November, Magic Find isn't beneficial for opening these boxes, since it only works upon defeating mobs. Content hunting, Unbreakable Bell seekers!

Saturday, December 15, 2012

The war rages bots in Guild Wars 2


ArenaNet has banned 34,000 accounts in November.

Using tools called "complete" and careful observation, ArenaNet has banned over 34,000 accounts guilty of botting from Guild Wars 2, in the month of November.

"We have collected massive amounts of information on the habits of human players and bots" writes about Mike Lewis, the Security Coordinator. "We have used the help of specialists to build comprehensive tools able to skim the data and isolate the bot to delete. Automating this process has been a priority of the security team at ArenaNet, which can now reap the benefits of this work ".

"Another way to combat the phenomenon of botting is through observation manual. Our team of GM is equipped to monitor and detect game bots inside. We have a fairly large team in charge of patrolling the gaming world and eliminate these bots. "

Finally, Lewis emphasized the importance of feedback from gw2 gold players who would always be checked by the staff.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Mike Lewis, bots and Guild Wars 2


Guild Wars 2 is out now for more than three months. Over these months, a significant number of players are found facing the problem of the existence of bots in game (as a reminder, a bot is a program dedicated to third automate certain actions simple or complex, thus repeating and / or take advantage of a minimum without having to play itself). Special tools to identify these bots have waves of banning large, and Mike Lewis, safety coordinator at ArenaNet, offers today an article full of enthusiasm, explaining that efforts combined with the ArenaNet help the players to identify the methods used by the bots were determinants and are now bearing fruit, since the appearance of bots has been drastically reduced.

You can find the full article following this news.

Quote
Greetings, Guild Wars 2 players! For those of you who do not know me, my name is Mike and I am Lewis safety coordinator for Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet. One of my responsibilities is to actively combat bots in the game and I am proud to announce that we have made great strides in this area.

I would like to thank all our players have contributed to the success of Guild Wars 2. Unfortunately, the popularity of our game has attracted less pleasant elements of the video game world and their presence is felt throughout Tyria. I know many of you to see the impact of bots in the game, but know that we have the eye.

I am pleased to announce that the occupation of bots received a huge blow.

We have over time strengthened measures aimed at eliminating the bots in Guild Wars 2. This problem was one of our priorities since the game's release and our ongoing efforts to adjust have paid off.

During the month of November, we closed in Guild Wars 2 over 34,000 accounts for bots. We also observed at the same time as you, a significant decrease in the number of bots in the game in October, the number of bots reported globally each hour was over 2000, it is now 20, a much more reasonable figure.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who reported bots in. This information helped us make this gigantic step forward. As reflected in these statistics, your vigilance and systematic reports have been particularly effective and are very popular. Thank you for continuing to report all bots you meet, it allows us to permanently delete the gw2 gold game .I would now like to talk about the steps we have taken to put an end to these practices.

ArenaNet makes it a point of honor to collect and analyze data, the latter being the most powerful weapons in our arsenal to combat bots. We collected a large amount of information on the habits of normal players and automated players. We used a team of analysts to help us create comprehensive tools enabling us to pass these data to comb and find ways to isolate and close the accounts of bots. The security team at ArenaNet has focused on the automation of this process and we are now reaping the fruits of our efforts.

It is also possible to identify and ban bots relying on manual observation. Our GM team is able to monitor the game and 24h/24 to detect bots. We are therefore supported by a great team whose goal is to patrol the game, remove bots and improve our tools for automatic detection.

Finally, we are able to monitor reports of bots and investigate the matter as soon as the players submit. Thanks to our analysis and the possibility of a manual check, if necessary, our GMs are able to react quickly and effectively to reports of bots and ban accounts managers without wasting time.

By combining all its resources, so we have a formidable weapon and we will continue to develop and refine our tools and process over the months.
Thank you all for being so devoted to Tyria, to help us meet this challenge and make Guild Wars 2 the amazing universe he has become. We have made much progress in our fight against the scourge of bots and we could not have done it without you.

See you soon in the game!

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Time names Guild Wars two the top video game of 2012


What's the right video game of 2012? If you're Time magazine or are considering the headline of this article, chances are you likely know the answer. Time's site counted down the year's top ten video games, putting Guild Wars 2 at the top of the list.

The author seems taken with the gw2 gold game's dynamic event program: "All those events & hundreds more play out in real-time -- with, as Bono would say, or without you -- lending Guild Wars 2 the feel of a living world, and the kind of compulsive anyplace-you-go playability other MMOs only dream of."

Torchlight II also made it into the list at the quantity 10 spot, with the author saying that it delivered the same action-RPG rush of Diablo III at a third of the charge.

Buy guild wars 2 gold at gw2gold.net.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Much Professional And Safest Guild Wars 2 Gold Shop


Where to buy safest guild wars 2 gold without getting banned in December 2012 ? Mosts of guild wars 2 players must be interested in buying gold for gw2. However, an abservation show that lately there are lots of bots and ban account things happen for players who buy gold online. So if players need to buy gold online, one should be careful to choose a much professional and safe guild wars 2 gold shop,like guildwars2safe.com.

http://www.gw2gold.net/ is a famous online games gold facilitator,which provides cheapest gw2 gold at ease. As a Industry new professional leader of gw2 gold selling market. No matter where and what time order placed, they will give customers the fastest and safest delivery. Their best wishes is to let all players enjoy their interesting and exciting game life! 24/7 customer online service and transactional security guaranteed. The gold that they provide are farmed legally. Their world class customer service will make sure everyone satisfied with every order from them. Customers can feel free to contact their 24 hour live-chat support with any questions visitors may have about buying guild wars 2 gold.

They offer cheap gold service on all guild wars 2 servers including US & EU servers and deliver gold with no more than 30 minutes, big orders no more than one hour. They keep updating news and writing guild wars 2 guides every day, so visitors can get the information about guild wars 2 or gold news no matter when the time is.

They have passed the test and certification of McAfee, which is the most famous network secure vendor. This daily test will insure customers a safety shopping with no bots and no guild wars 2 account banned.

Right now, gw2gold.net team is under the leadership of a realistic and innovative, pioneering spirit to the spirit of private enterprise and to the quality of survival,operating in good faith for the country in a first-class product quality and value in terms of price. It's becoming more and more mature and professional in the industry to provide guild wars 2 gold never get account banned.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Guild Wars 2: Umstylingkits enable optical revision of your character


Thanks to two new kits you have in "Guild Wars 2" now have the opportunity to revise the appearance of your character.

You are among those who are with the visual appearance of their "Guild Wars 2" character dissatisfied, or would like your heroes undergo a graphics overhaul?

Then it will certainly rejoice to hear that offered through the Black Lion Trading Company now two Umstylingkits. The first kit is available for 250 gems and offers you the opportunity to review the hairstyle of your character. A complete all-round renewal is possible with the second and 350 gems expensive kit.

Beware "beauty specialists: At present there are in the black lion trade society Verschönerungsset: One can even when star stylist of their choice do let their hair for 250 gems or a complete beautification and (pst, but never say to the press, all grown naturally!) Umstylingskit for 350 Gems purchase, "reads from the official side.

"So if you are unhappy with the appearance of his favorite coulter has long been so full access to the character editor and change except the people and the name of everything."

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