Ahmtur Arena

This page contains information about a Guild Wars component or feature that has been removed or replaced. The information on this page does not apply to the game as it currently exists.

Ahmtur Arena
Region	Vabbi
Victory condition	King of the Hill
Party size	4
Allowed levels	20
Priest/Obelisk	No
Effect	None

The Ahmtur Arena outpost

The Ahmtur Arena (called Random Arenas Test inside the Gw.dat files on the loading screen, and /365 as game map ID location) −probably named after Prince Ahmtur the Mighty− is an arena that was cut from the retail version of the game. Battles in the arena were 4v4 King of the Hill matches.

The view of this area seen from above (on the World Map or Mission Map) seems to have the shape of a pyramid, although once inside it's simply a terrain elevation of several steps, with a defensive structure in the center like the ones outside the Dzagonur Bastion citadel.

The first version of the battleground (back in January 2007) was a central platform, surrounded by water (like in the Grand Court of Sebelkeh), with the surrounding walls lined with piles of gold (like the courtyard of The Hidden City of Ahdashim where the Shakor Firespear boss is located), and is connected through two bridges with carpets that are where each team of players starts.

The second version (which happened at some unknown point after January 2007) was redesigned. The defensive turret and terrain elevation were removed and a confined fighting area where players can move around was added in the center of the arena.

Discovery

A post created on December 10, 2006 via the now defunct IncGamers/GWOnline forums started to generate curiosity between the community when a user claimed to have come across an article from a wiki that mentioned the place, suggesting that at least the map area was already discovered/unfogged prior to that time. Because the rest of the pages have not been backed up in the Wayback Machine it is impossible to extract more information from that thread.

The wiki mentioned by the user was not specified in the thread, but presumably could be the unofficial Guild Wiki (according to the Talk page), but as the history of edits of its database is irregular, the logs have been lost or deleted and so it is impossible to know exactly the date of when the first photo of the map was uploaded there.

With the January 11, 2007 update, which prepared the servers for alpha testing for Guild Wars: Eye of the North, a bug was introduced that made this arena accessible from Random Arenas. For about 20 minutes this new map was the only one played in Random Arenas and Team Arenas, but it didn't reward with Gladiator points for each victory (possibly because it was still in testing mode and had no features implemented). Shortly after, ArenaNet removed access to the map when they realized it was accessible (probably when people started to share screenshots of the place in the forums of that time, see External links section).

Although it's not specified (or was omitted on purpose), the removal was probably done in the January 19, 2007 update, eight days later. The first hint of this would be that this update changed the default saving format of the screenshots to .JPG, while the screenshots that are preserved from that place at that time show the players' chats/logs and it can be seen that by default those were saved in .BMP format. The second hint would be that this update also removed the Scarred Earth map from rotation and made several PvP changes that can be seen in the Changes for this Weekend's Testing Event section, although they have no apparent relationship with each other −except the fact of removing two PvP maps− could be related to the explanation Joe Kimmes gave in 2018 on the Guild Wars 2 official forums (check Trivia and Gallery sections below). That the alpha testing was going to take place was something that was announced publicly, with players being aware of the matter, which was one of the related-alarms regarding the map that started to spread through forums when people discovered that the map had been leaked off the alpha test servers.

At some unknown point after the January 2007 when it was removed, the center of the map was updated quietly, removing the defensive turret and the floor elevation to change drastically the terrain, adding a confinement battlefield with doors, a fountain, stairs, bridges and two statues in the middle (the statues are the same models that can be found in Sunspear Great Hall and The Astralarium, one is the statue with shields and spears stuck in the ground and the other the soldier/warrior that holds a giant planet above him like the titan Atlas). It is unknown if this silent modification of the arena was done because it was going to be playable in a future after they discovered that the map was leaked by mistake in Random Arenas, counting on the fact that it had maintained the same appearance throughout the development and full lifetime of Nightfall, being only a plain terrain with nothing inside. Perhaps this modification is what Joe Kimmes was referring to in 2018 when he gave that explanation regarding that the arena's testing was not finished.

Getting there

There is no current way of accessing it.

An outpost click point was never created in the "live build" of the game (although it exists privately in the offline "test build" for the developers because it can be seen in the map), there are no arena guards to transport you to the location either (although there are two possible routes where -lore speaking- a character could arrive at the place, see the Gallery section below) and the brief access period due the bug via Random Arenas/Team Arenas was fixed/removed when ArenaNet realized about it.

Purely speculation based on the terrain and lore of the game, the access to this place could have been from two places: the outpost could be accessed via the river that is located above the library in Halls of Chokhin (from the Holdings of Chokhin area) which flows in that direction, and the arena through the labyrinth of underground tunnels that The Hidden City of Ahdashim is formed by (which entrance is in the Dasha Vestibule) and with which it shares design. The treasures of the princes are stored there in massive quantities and the construction of the place is identical.

In the same way that The Hidden City of Ahdashim was used as a fortified gorge to protect the princes of the region during the reign of Palawa Joko (which entrance is hidden behind the Dasha Vestibule, initially also hidden behind a wall that was camouflaged with the environment and that the player must approach to destroy and reveal), which was also used as warehouse to keep their wealth, gold and gems, and because both places share the same construction design, as Kachok mentions in The Madness of Prophecy, the Ahmtur Arena was built on top of an ancient temple that was destroyed in the past, in the north of the map, and from which before the disaster a Monk stole the Lost Scriptures. The Ahmtur Arena was also built with a defensive turret in the middle, like the ones in the Dzagonur Bastion, implying that these two locations are currently hidden places to protected the princes against external threats.

Another theory shared by a member from IncGamers/GWOnline related or connected the NPC Mehkun (which had the appearance of a purple spirit) and the Cairn of Stones with the Monk of the legend, although this is not confirmed either since both were silently added and removed from the game and had no interactive purpose implemented.

Trivia

• The temple mentioned by Kachok in The Madness of Prophecy quest is not the Ahmtur Arena, but an older nameless temple that was destroyed an unknown time ago. The Ahmtur Arena was built above that same debris ground some time after.
• This area was created during the development of Guild Wars Nightfall, as can be seen −for a few brief seconds− in the minute 50:35 of "The Making of Guild Wars Nightfall" video documentary, available in the DVD that comes with the Collector's Edition of the game.
• Although the map was developed for the Nightfall campaign, it never made it to the public version of the game, not even for the official release, and remained hidden through the whole Nightfall lifetime until it was discovered accidentally through Random Arenas due the bug mentioned above, when ArenaNet −by mistake− uploaded the map in the live build of the game when they were preparing the alpha testing of the servers for the Guild Wars Eye of the North release.
• According to Joe Kimmes in the official Guild Wars 2 forums, this area was never actually finished, the artists weren't done with the map, and testing was never completed on it for balance and bugs, but sometimes unfinished stuff slips into te live files (which is what happened and the reason why it was discovered that it existed).
• The outpost itself for the arena has never been made accessible or seen (the bug transported the players directly into the arena itself, ignoring the passage through the PvP outposts, as it was done in the old days of the game), but like many PvP maps that load part of another map connected to them, the outpost could be seen from a distance within it. No screenshots exist though, because third party tools that allow free camera mode to reach the place did not exist at that time.

Bug.There have been reports of people being able to access this arena through Random Arenas and Team Arenas.

Gallery (pre-update)

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  Ahmtur Arena location map via Holdings of Chokhin (fogged).

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  Ahmtur Arena location map via Holdings of Chokhin (unfogged).

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  Ahmtur Arena location map via Holdings of Chokhin (imagined route).

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  Ahmtur Arena imagined connection with Dasha Vestibule.

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  Ahmtur Arena imagined path through The Hidden City of Ahdashim.

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  Ahmtur Arena seen briefly for first time in the documentary "The Making of Guild Wars Nightfall", minute 50:35.

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  "Random Arenas Test" loading screen. Shared by Darksbane, via The Guild Hall Forums (January 12, 2007).

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  Blue Team side showing the place. Shared by Darksbane, via The Guild Hall Forums (January 12, 2007).

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  Red Team showing their entrance, the carpet bridge and the map. Shared by Etrik, via Guild Wars Guru forums (January 13, 2007).

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  Surroundings full of gold, treasures and water. Shared by Etrik, via Guild Wars Guru forums (January 13, 2007).

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  Alternate perspective of the walls. Shared by Etrik, via Guild Wars Guru forums (January 13, 2007).

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  Alternate perspective of the treasures and giant gems. Shared by Etrik, via Guild Wars Guru forums (January 13, 2007).

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  Front view of the entrance to the platform's battleground. Shared by Kaelten-gpuser, via Guild Wiki (August 27, 2007).

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  Hidden City of Ahdashim's chamber courtyard resemblance. Identical construction and assets, but with the carpets missing.

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  Joe Kimmes commentary, via the Guild Wars 2 official forums (May 25, 2018).

Gallery (post-update)

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Notes

• The post-update screenshots of the arena in the gallery look bad because they don't have all the textures properly loaded, and a map browser tool in early development has been used. If the map could be accessed directly from the game it would look normal.

External links

• The Making of Guild Wars Nightfall video documentary, minute 50:35.
• December 10, 2006: Found this on another site (backup) ― via IncGamers/GWOnline
• December 11, 2006: Mysterious Temple Area Discovered (backup) ― via IncGamers/GWOnline
• January 12, 2007: ANET started testing outside alpha server?! (backup) ― via The Guild Hall Forums
• January 13, 2007: Random Arenas Test ― via Guild Wars Guru
• July 18, 2007: Ahmtur Arena (History / Talk) ― via Guild Wiki, the unofficial wiki

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	Random Arenas
Outposts:	Random Arenas
Annihilation arenas:	Amnoon Arena • Ascalon Arena • Churranu Island Arena • D'Alessio Arena • Fort Koga • Petrified Arena • Shing Jea Arena • Shiverpeak Arena • Sunspear Arena
Obelisk Annihilation arenas:	Brawler's Pit • Heroes' Crypt
Priest Annihilation arenas:	Seabed Arena
Kill Count arenas:	The Crag
Out of rotation arenas:	Ahmtur Arena

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