Wintersday events in Guild Wars
Wintersday is being expanded this year in Guild Wars, with the Eye of the North sporting some festive decorations for the first time. Lt. Thackery is the man to talk to inside the citadel, as he’s directing the festivities.
The Polar Bear mini-pet also makes a return, along with the Candysmiths, who can fashion special weapons, armor, and other unique items from the rewards you can gather from Wintersday quests. Completing The Strength of Snow or Straight to the Heart quests and you can gain the Polar Bear as a random drop from the Wintersday Chest that appears.
The usual tonics are also available, along with some new and potent brews. New this year are Summoning Stones, allowing you to summon a snowman or grench ally to help your party on the quests.
The full run down of events and items can be found on the official Guild Wars Wintersday page.
Wintersday events start today, Friday 19th December, at 8am GMT, and run through until noon on January 5th. The Wintersday Grand Finale, where you can claim your special festival hat and aid Dwayna or Grenth, starts at 8am GMT on Thursday, January 1, 2009, and repeats every three hours until 8am GMT on Friday, January 2, 2009.
With new quests and collectible items, this year Wintersday promises to be the largest festival so far in Guild Wars. So head to Ascalon City, Lion’s Arch, Droknar’s Forge, Kamadan, or the Eye of the North, and enjoy a happy Wintersday!
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- The new Guild Wars storybooks
- Wintersday is coming - win some Guild Wars prizes!
- Some changes coming for the Hall of Monuments
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The new Guild Wars storybooks
The idea of storybooks originally came in with the Eye of the North expansion. Guild Wars: Factions introduced the idea of Factions, whom you could work with, earning faction points and Title Tracks, opening up access to exclusive items and missions. Storybooks built on this by allowing you to record your completion of specific missions and dungeons - once a certain number had been completed, you can hand the storybook in to an NPC and claim some faction rewards. The full the storybook, the greater the rewards.
This was a great idea that not only added extra depth to the storyline, but also gave you an opportunity to boost your Title Tracks and faction standings, pimping out your Hall of Monuments. With recent game updates, ArenaNet have introduced storybooks covering the three main campaigns.
Before I go any further - many of you reading this will be thinking “Awesome! I’ve completed all three campaigns, I’ll have some new storybooks insta-filled for me! Epic win!”
No chance. Any missions completed before the game update that introduced the storybooks - on November 13th 2008 - will not be recorded. You’re going to have to go back and do them all again. In Hard Mode, as well, if you want the Hard Mode version of the relevant storybook completed. Gutting - such grind is totally unwelcome.
There are four main storybooks:
- The Flameseeker Prophecies - available in Normal and Hard Mode, this covers missions in the Prophecies campaign, starting with the D’Alessio Seaboard mission.
- Shiro’s Return - available in Normal and Hard Mode, this covers missions in the Factions campaign, starting with the Vizunah Square mission.
- Night Falls - available in Normal and Hard Mode, this covers missions in the Nightfall campaign, starting with the Consulate Docks mission.
- Young Heroes of Tyria is only available in Hard Mode and covers the early missions from all three campaigns.
In the next few posts I’ll be looking at each storybook in turn, detailing which NPCs will hand them out, what missions need to be completed, and what rewards you can expect for each completed storybook.
I liked the storybooks in Eye of the North - they added more depth to the Guild Wars storyline for a PvE player like myself. They also provided a more entertaining way of progressing Title Tracks - with no requirement to hand in a fully completed storybook, you could pick and choose your favourite missions and dungeons to replay.
However, I think forcing players to have to redo all the missions from the three main campaigns is overly harsh. Prophecies has been around for many years now, and most players will have completed all the normal storyline missions - and many will have done the Hard Mode ones as well. My Title Tracks can all do with a nice boost, but having to replay all of Guild Wars again leaves me feeling a bit underwhelmed.
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- It’s Halloween in Guild Wars
- Some changes coming for the Hall of Monuments
- Elite Skills for Elementalists in Eye of the North
- Warrior Elite Skills in Eye of the North
Double rewards weekend
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Just a quick note for all PvPers - this weekend sees double rewards and bonuses in Guild versus Guild battles. So waste no time getting out there burning and pillaging 
There’s also a very good State of the Game article up, featuring an interview with Guild Wars Guru’s Billiard. In it he talks about the challenges of arranging and running GWG’s excellent GvG Challenge. If you’ve ever thought about running your own tournaments or contests, you’ll find this an insightful and interesting read.
Head on over to http://eu.guildwars.com/pvp/article/sotg_gurucup/ and have a read.
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GW:EN — Released
Guild Wars: Eye of the North went live today at 12:00 a.m.
ArenaNet has issued an official press release.
NCsoft® and ArenaNet® have launched Guild Wars: Eye of the NorthTM, the first expansion to the Guild Wars® franchise of subscription-free, online roleplaying games. Guild Wars players who purchase the expansion can access Eye of the North content through any of the multi-million-selling Guild Wars campaigns–Guild Wars, Guild Wars FactionsTM, or Guild Wars NightfallTM. The expansion also includes an innovative feature that allows players to take achievements they have earned over the years with them into the forthcoming Guild Wars 2TM.
Guild Wars: Eye of the North, continues the subscription-free business model pioneered by ArenaNet. The expansion is now available at the Official Guild Wars In-game Store and at Plaync.com, as well as from retailers in North America and Europe, for an expected suggested retail price of $39.99.
Last night, we celebrated the game’s launch as it became available to players worldwide. This was a unique experience, because every other game that I’ve worked on has gone on sale in retail stores at about 9 a.m. (or whenever the store opens) on Monday or Tuesday morning. Any celebration would usually occur when the final build was submitted to the publisher, often a month or two before the game was released, or a short while after it appeared on store shelves. However, last night, we massed in an open part of the building along with the other NCsoft offices from around the world who joined via video conference to count down the final seconds before players were allowed to experience Guild Wars: Eye of the North. Games tend to go out with a whimper rather than a bang; the last few weeks are often dedicated to tracking down the remaining critical bugs before sending the game off to be manufactured. It was nice to give Guild Wars: Eye of the North the send off it deserved.
See you in Tyria.
GW:EN — Preview Roundup
The release of Guild Wars: Eye of the North is rapidly approaching. Previews for the game have been posted at a number of different websites.
GW:EN is available for pre-order, or, if you don’t own any of the Guild Wars games, you can pick up Guild Wars Platinum Edition which also includes the original game.
Guild Wars third year anniversary retrospective: Nightfall and Eye of the North
Filed under: Fantasy, Galleries, Guild Wars, Events, real-world, Events, in-game, Guild Wars 2, Free-to-play
In October 2006 Arena.net answered those expectations with a brand-new campaign, still lauded to this day as the greatest addition to the series. Guild Wars: Nightfall introduced yet another entirely original campaign setting. It also added the Hero mechanic into the game, allowing players the opportunity to level up their fully customizable NPC allies. Capitalizing on the momentum of that release, the series’ first real expansion was unveiled for players in August of 2007. Last year’s Guild Wars: Eye of the North added a bevy of new ways to play the game, and paved the way for the upcoming Guild Wars 2.
Today, in honor of Guild Wars‘ third birthday, we’ve got a retrospective on the two most recent explorations of the original game concept. We’ll offer up some imagery from the past, reflect on how the game is today, and look ahead to the future of the series. Click on through to explore the history of Guild Wars, and don’t miss our other retrospective on the first two boxes in the series!
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Guild Wars tops 5 million sold
Filed under: Fantasy, Guild Wars, Business models, MMO industry, PvP, Guild Wars 2, Free-to-play
A bit behind the times with this, but better late than never: Guild Wars cracked five million boxes sold late last month! NCsoft is (understandably) pleased, and there’s a lot of crowing in the official press release. That number includes every box in the whole franchise, of course, so that’s spread out across Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North.
That’s a pretty outstanding achievement, with the game having originally launched back in April of 2005. Back in the day, just after World of Warcraft had launched, the idea of a US publisher succeeding with a game that didn’t require a subscription was considering crazy talk. With Guild Wars 2 already in the works and now five million units of the original out and about in the world, I’d say that kind of talk is now quite debunked.
While it doesn’t look like there’s any sort of in-game celebration going on, the site has a few details for other community-type things. The February Championship series results are in, if you care about that sort of thing. They’re also running a contest right now, if you have an eye for design, looking to get players making brand-new weapons for inclusion in the game. The weapons from the 2007 design-a-weapon contest are fantastic, so good luck to any budding artists out there.
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MMORPG.com’s Eye of the North review highlights player discontent
Filed under: At a glance, Fantasy, Guild Wars, Expansions, Professions, Reviews, Endgame, PvE, Opinion, Guild Wars 2, Free-to-play
A review was recently posted at the MMORPG.com site for Arena.net’s latest Guild Wars release, Eye of the North. While I personally have been enjoying some of the new content in the expansion (and the Wintersday event) there are definitely some concerns among the players about the Eye. Beyond reviewing the game, Jeremy Star’s piece does a great job of running down some of the biggest issues I’ve heard in discussions with other players.
He specifically calls out Arena on the biggest problem with Eye of the North: that many players don’t think this is an adequate stopgap between late 2007 and whenever Guild Wars 2 will be released … but the whole experience teases the in-development title. Asura, Norn, Dwarves, and Charr are all over the North, but none of them are playable. The Hall of Monuments is a big deal with bonuses you’ll get to use at some point in the indeterminate future. The expansion sounds and looks great, but it’s just not up to the standards of previous releases (especially Nightfall).
With this release and the closing of GuildCast, are these dire signs for Arena’s game? Are players going to maintain interest in Guild Wars until the spiritual sequel goes live?
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