User:Regina Buenaobra/Journal





Planned Outage: UPDATED - 09 August 2010
Planned Outage - August 11, 2010

The planned move of the Guild Wars live database for Tuesday, August 10th, has been postponed to Wednesday August 11th, 2010. This was done to ensure that the process meets our high standards for quality.

On Wednesday, August 11th, we will be moving the Guild Wars live database to a new data center. This will require a temporary interruption in service beginning at 12:01AM Pacific time on that date. Service may be suspended for up to 24 hours, although we will do everything we can to expedite the process. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding during this rare interruption!

Planned Outage - 05 August 2010
On Tuesday, August 10th, we will be moving the Guild Wars live database to a new data center. This will require a temporary interruption in service beginning at 12:01 AM Pacific time on that date. Service may be suspended for up to 24 hours, although we will do everything we can to expedite the process. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding during this rare interruption!

[This message will also go out on the Network News web page this afternoon, but I wanted to post here as well.]

Out of Office - 04 May 2010
Just wanted to drop a little note here to let you all know that I'll be out of the office for a few days. Of course, Martin, Stéphane, and Emily will be around as normal during my absence. :-)

ArenaNet Blog is Live! - 27 April 2010
If you haven't already seen by the posts on the forums, Twitter, Facebook, and many big gaming news sites, the ArenaNet blog is now up, and the first post is a Design Manifesto about Guild Wars 2, written by Mike O'Brien.

On the wiki a couple years ago, people mentioned more than once that we should have a blog. I completely agreed with this. Many of you know that I've been quite involved in blogging for a while, as a hobby. A lot of blocks had to fall into place before the blog could become a reality, so you can imagine how great I personally felt about launching our bog today. :-) So, please add the blog to your RSS reader and stay tuned for more great posts!

The response to Mike's blog post has been really positive, and the community has really come through on spreading the word through Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and so on. Last week, I mentioned that we'd be releasing some information this week. I also asked you all to Digg, Facebook, and tweet about it if you liked what you saw. And so many of you did! In thanks for all your great efforts, I tweeted a brand new screen shot of the Elementalist (from the @guildwars2 Twitter), which I had posted on our Flickr stream. You can check that screen shot out here.

There's more to come this week, so keep your eyes open!

Live Team Update - 23 April 2010
We’re just writing to let you know that Linsey Murdock, our Live Team lead, is currently sick and will be out of action for a little while as she gets better. This means that we’ll have to roll out certain parts of our War in Kryta updates later than we had originally planned. This is unfortunate, but as we’ve said in the past, game development is a dynamic process and we’re just going to have to adapt to circumstances. We’re all wishing Linsey a speedy recovery!

Skill Balance Preview
We've just posted a skill balance preview. You can check that out on this page. Mesmers get lots of love!

Community Team News
In Community Team News, we've got Stéphane, our French Community Manager, in the office for a few weeks. He managed to be on one of the first flights out of the UK after the volcano hit. :-) So we've been hanging out, and also having him get a feel for ArenaNet culture and the development environment.

More War Stuff - 09 April 2010
I'm going to expand on the post I made yesterday. :-) Everyone was so super busy just before and after the War in Kryta landing page and the game update went live. Just before we release something new to the public, there's this nervous energy going around. We're on the edge of our seats, trying to wrap things up, checking and double checking text, and making sure all our ducks are in a row... I couldn't sit still long enough to make a coherent post, especially when we were all hitting F5 on the forums and checking everywhere to see what people think of it, and looking for anything we could bring to the devs' attention. :-)

This small promotional campaign has been so much fun for us on the Community and Web team. It's been so much fun participating in this with some of our most ardent and passionate fans, who there right from the start, unraveling clues, and looking for the next steps. When the War in Kryta page was published, and later when the game update went live... It was thrilling to see such a positive and enthusiastic response. :-) This one of the many reasons I love my job--seeing so many people happy and excited. :-)

The main folks driving the viral promo campaign, me, Martin, Emily (web), Dave (web writing), and Ryan (graphics)--we all had such a blast. It was awesome, coming into work every morning, seeing another half dozen or more pages pop up on forum threads after the latest update to the campaign, and reading about all the great theories people had about solving some of the clues. We were impressed by how quickly clues were uncovered. If we ever do this again, we'll have to make things more difficult. ;-)

We're going to use the War in Kryta page to supplement and enhance the in-game experience, so I hope you will enjoy the War Chronicle updates from Murro.

War in Kryta - Repeating Content?
The community team has noticed a few questions floating around regarding the new bits of content, and whether they're repeatable, so I'd like to clarify these issues.

The encounters between Peacekeepers and Krytans appear to be on-going, and as aggression between Peacekeepers and Krytans increase, you may encounter them more than once. However, specific moments may be shown to your character only once.

The Trial of Zinn is viewable once per character. If you are in a party with another player who hasn't see the trial, you will get to see it again, even if you are playing on a character that has already seen it. And of course, you can always watch it on another character that has not seen it yet.

The plan for these updates is to be a continuation of the game's story, so that it will be available to people who play in the future.

Upcoming Balance Update
Live Team is working on a play balance update. As before, we will give you all a preview before the changes are in the game. We plan to have this preview ready for you to check out relatively soon (TM)--i.e. in the next week or two. But just to give you a small teaser: we're working on some changes to Mesmers in PvE. So stay tuned! :-)

War in Kryta - 08 April 2010
War is coming to Kryta: http://www.guildwars.com/warinkryta/

Welcome Stéphane and Emily! - 02 April 2010
We’re extremely excited to announce two new members to the Guild Wars Community Team—Stéphane Lo Presti and Emily Diehl! Stéphane will join ArenaNet as our French Community Manager, reforging a valuable link between the studio and our French-speaking fans. Many of you may already know ArenaNet veteran Emily Diehl for her work as producer on our websites and wiki. Now she’s joining Community, where she’ll help Martin, Regina, and Stéphane cook up lots of interesting plans for the upcoming year. Be sure to stop by Stéphane and Emily’s wiki pages to say hello!

Meanwhile...
I hope you've been enjoying the small hints of what's to come this month. :-) We've all been super happy that it's making you all excited, and that the small hints on Facebook and the web are really inspiring you to do awesome things like make White Mantle and Shining Blade propaganda 'posters', create hash tag forum games, and even taking that participation by using the #obey and #dismantle hash tags on Twitter. I can't say exactly what's in store, but keep your eyes peeled. ;-)

Back From GDC - 18 March 2010
Greetings! :-)

I returned from the Game Developers Conference a few days ago, and I've been trying to catch up on everything at the office since last week.

If you haven't already seen, Massively.com interviewed our Art Director, Daniel Dociu, after his presentation at the Game Developers Conference: http://www.massively.com/2010/03/16/gdc10-arenanets-daniel-dociu-discusses-the-art-of-guild-wars-2/ I hope you all enjoyed the release of new concept art that came along with that article. There are several pieces there that you've never seen, which we released in that slide show, so the enthusiastic reception in the community is a big thrill for us. :-) The slide show video included in that article isn't the last of the concept art. We will be releasing the other parts of that concept art slide show in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on our YouTube channel. :-)

GDC was incredibly awesome. :-) I was not there in an official capacity for ArenaNet (we did not have a booth or anything like that). Rather, I was there to volunteer behind the scenes. The Game Developers Conference is a professional conference, not a fan or consumer conference. One of the absolute highlights of the conference for me was all the great conversations with Guild Wars fans who want to get into the industry. Those conversations were incredibly gratifying, and I truly enjoyed interacting with all the Guild Wars players I met. Also, It was kind of cool to be recognized randomly on the streets of San Francisco and approached enthusiastically by our excited fans. :-) My only regret about GDC was that I did not have time to meet all of our fans. I will not dismantle all hopes of meeting more in the future, though. I like to be positive. :-)

One of my goals for the conference was to attend as many sessions as possible to expand my own professional knowledge, as well as to, I hope, bring back information and knowledge that the company will find useful. So this week I have spent a potion of my days furiously typing up notes.

Meanwhile, during the same time I was in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, Martin hosted a small community meet and greet in Seattle during Emerald City ComiCon. According to Martin, we had a small but strong showing of enthusiastic Guild Wars fans and a lot of our developers turned up to speak to them. So it sounded like a great night at the pub, and a good time was had by all. Kristen, Katy, and Matt had a great showing at Artist's Alley at the comic con, which was great. Kristen tells me that she was very busy during the convention, which is super. :-)

To those of you who met us at the Game Developers Conference or at Emerald City ComiCon, thank you for introducing yourself to us and for showing your support.

If you've been following our Twitter and Facebook over the past couple days, you already know about the Developer Showdown. Thank you to all of our fans who've supported us in the Escapist March Developer Showdown. We're up against Zynga (the developer of FarmVille) in the first round. Voting for round 1 ends this Saturday, so if you haven't already, help us solidify our lead against them! Of course, I wouldn't presume to make you obey any request like this, but we do appreciate your support if you give it! Thank you for your awesome support and participation so far! It's a marathon, not a sprint, so we'll be up against another developer next week!

In Live Team Land, our team continues to work on current and future projects and of course regular maintenance. If we have information to share about future updates, we will let you know. Otherwise, I can't speak to specifics.

That's what's going on in my world; I hope you are all well. :-)

Cheers!

A Few Cool Things to Share - 03 March 2010
Our staffers not only keep busy working really hard on Guild Wars 2, but they continue to hone their creative skills and have some fun in some really great side projects, which they do outside of work, on their spare time. As you all probably know, having interests and activities outside of work is just part of having a good work/life balance. After all, we don't want our developers burning out.

If you've been keeping an eye on our social networking accounts, some this will be old news to you, but I thought I'd do a quick recap on some recent postings.


 * Three of our ArenaNet writerly folks have collided in a side project: Jeff Grubb wrote the short story, Scott McGough provided voice talent, and Angel McCoy provided the publication. Listen to or read Jeff's short story "Happily Ever After" at Wily Writers!
 * Last week, we asked our ArenaNet Facebook fans to help us name our football (soccer) team! You may have heard of our soccer team, which I've mentioned a few times here on my wiki blog. To check out the ideas our fans suggested, take a look at the Facebook event page.
 * A few of our great artists will have tables at Emerald City ComicCon! You can meet Katy Hargrove, Kristen Perry, and Matt Barrett at the con. For more information on their appearance, head on over to this page.
 * But that's not the only thing happening in the Emerald City that weekend. That's right! You can have an opportunity to meet some of our staff at a meet and greet outside the convention, at a local pub. To RSVP for that event, just go to the event page.
 * The amazing Daniel Dociu will be giving a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Saturday, March 13. His talk is called "Guild Wars: The Artists' Vision" and is one of only five sessions that attendees can go to with a GDC Expo Pass.

And finally, I just wanted to let you all know that I will be at the Game Developers Conference all next week (from March 7 - 14), so Martin will be taking care of things on the community side whilst I'm away.

List of Guild Wars / ArenaNet Social Networking Accounts
* ArenaNet Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ArenaNetInc * Guild Wars Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GuildWars * Guild Wars 2 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2 * Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/ * ArenaNet Twitter: http://twitter.com/arenanet * Guild Wars Twitter: http://twitter.com/guildwars * Guild Wars 2 Twitter: http://twitter.com/guildwars2 * YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/arenanetofficial

Preliminary Skill Update Notes Are Up - 19 February 2010
You can find them on the Skill Update Preview Page.

Xunlai Tournament House Retirement: Follow-Up – 17 February 2010
We would like to address the question that some of you have about the distribution of the May 2009 XTH points, which were distributed on June 18. Technical issues occurred with the May 2009 points distribution, and not everyone received the accurate number of points and some did not receive points.

Like I posted on July 1st, the accurate distribution of points was directly linked to us being able to fix the Xunlai Tournament House. As we have made the decision to retire XTH because of the issues with the backend code, this also means that we cannot distribute those points.

Having said that, the Zaishen Order is currently looking into Kun Shao's bookkeeping, and they will assist in sorting out his records--meaning we will put an NPC in game that will give each Guild Wars account a fixed amount of points. Each account can pick up those points from the NPC one time only.

We will let you know once he has arrived on the servers.

New Xunlai Tournament House Information - 10 February 2010
After much analysis and discussion, we’ve decided to permanently retire the Xunlai Tournament House.

Initially, we took down the Xunlai Tournament House due to recurring technical issues that caused incorrect Tournament Point distribution each month. We conducted an exhaustive investigation into the backend code that runs the Xunlai Tournament House to see what we could do to fix these issues. After careful evaluation, we concluded that it wasn’t possible to redeploy the Xunlai Tournament House at the level of quality that our players expect without completely rebuilding it from scratch. To do that, we’d have to take away vital resources from the Guild Wars 2 team. Given the circumstances, we decided it was more important to keep our focus on Guild Wars 2, and permanently retire the Xunlai Tournament House.

This was a tough call for us to make. We’ve greatly appreciated the community’s enthusiastic support for XTH. We know that this decision will disappoint some players, and we apologize for that, but ultimately we believe this was the right decision

Upcoming Bug Fix - 1 February 2010
We're going to run a build later today to address the issues with Precision Shot and Quickshot (and we will add the missing "or" to RoF).

Running a build will wipe Observer Mode, so if you want to archive any matches from this month's tournament, please do so now.

Thank you. :)

Login Issues After Game Update - 28 January 2010
We're aware that many players found themselves unable to login to the Guild Wars servers after the update. We're aware of the issue and the team is working with all speed possible to address it.

We apologize for this inconvenience, and we'll get people back online just as soon as the problem is isolated and taken care of.

Emergency Fix is Live - 28 January 2010, 16:39
The login issue should be fixed now.

Preliminary Skill Update Notes - Version 2 - 25 January 2010
Heyo. Just to let you all know, an update to last week's preliminary skill update note has been posted here: Feedback:Skill update previews.

Preliminary Skill Update Notes – 21 January 2010
To facilitate user discussion of these skill update previews, a dedicated space has been created at Feedback:Skill update previews. Users can feel free to discuss these previews of upcoming changes on the associated talk pages.

Important Message from GSU Team About Account Security - 20 January 2010
NCsoft has published a message from our Game Surveillance Unit today, regarding account security. For the full message, please go to the NCsoft web site.


 * German translation
 * French translation
 * Spanish Translation

Skill Update
The next skill updates will be rolled out in stages. First, GvG skills will be updated, and this will come next week, before the Monthly Tournament. We will release preliminary patch notes with details of those GvG changes later this week, so that those participating in the Monthly Tournament will have some notice of the changes. Please note that these preliminary update notes are subject to change, and may not reflect the final changes that you will see next week.

Our team is targeting February for the next set of skill updates. The changes previously mentioned are planned for inclusion.

Wintersday Re-run
We are planning on re-running Wintersday in the last week of January, starting on January 29th, with the finale on February 7th. There will be a festival hat NPC collecting Candy Cane Shards in exchange for this year's Wintersday hats, so if you miss the finale, you will still have a chance to collect the hat.

Update - Monday, January 18, 2010
Here are the update notes for today's patch. Update notes to follow on the web site.

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed a bug that caused Battle Priest Calibos in Zos Shivros Channel to path incorrectly.
 * Fixed a bug that caused the Doppelganger to use Vampirism.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented costumes from being hidden in some PvP outposts.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented costumes from displaying on the inventory panel in some PvP outposts.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented heroes from receiving experience from Zaishen Challenge Quests.
 * Fixed the in-game link to manage NCsoft master accounts.
 * Fixed a bug that prevented in-game password reset requests for @plaync accounts.

Miscellaneous

 * Clarified the password-reset confirmation message.

Festival Hats - 1 January 2010
We're aware of the reports that some players have not received hats in Kamadan, and our team is investigating. We apologize to those who did not receive the hats at the appointed time.

So far most of the reports appear to be about Kamadan. If anyone did not receive a hat in Lion's Arch, our QA team would appreciate reports about that, as it would help with their investigation. (For me, personally, I was in Lion's Arch, and I did get a hat, but it's possible that others may not have received theirs.)

The following info would really help our team:
 * What town were you in? Example: Lion's Arch or Kamadan.
 * What district? (approximate is fine if you don't know the exact number) Example: American District #34; German District #2.
 * Did the event take place? That is, did Grenth and Dwayna have their battle, did you get presents, etc?
 * Were you in the town before the finale "battle" started, before Grenth and Dwayna appeared?
 * Which hat would you have gotten? That is, which diety won the battle?

This information is being collected at the link above.

We're sorry about the inconvenience and annoyance this is causing, and be assured that we are looking into it.

Update 1 - 10:46 PST - 01 January 2010
The game has just been updated with the following bug fix:


 * Fixed a bug that prevented some players from receiving festival hats.

Update 2 - 01 January 2010
We will be re-running the Wintersday event at a future date (TBA).

We apologize to those who did not receive the festival hats at the previous distribution times, and for all the inconvenience caused by the bug.