Game updates/20070927

Update - Thursday, September 27, 2007

Imperial Herald

• An Imperial Herald may now be found in the Great Temple of Balthazar. Players may consult the herald for details about the Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack Promotion, which is active through Noon PST (-8 GMT) on October 31, 2007.
• The Imperial Herald will periodically have new topics and announcements to share.

Ebon Vanguard Special Ops

Several new encounters are available from Captain Langmar.

• Players who have rescued Captain Langmar from the Charr Flame Legion can find her in Grothmar Wardowns, just outside of Longeye's Ledge.
• Captain Langmar can provide a Charr Battle Plan Decoder for use with Encrypted Charr Battle Plans.
• Successfully decrypted plans can then be brought back to Captain Langmar in order to launch a Special Ops encounter.

Anti-Griefing Measures

To help counteract undesirable PvP behavior, a Dishonorable Combatant system has been added to the game and a series of Arena time limit changes have been put into effect. In addition to these measures, we will be evaluating a new Report Command feature from September 28th to the 30th, after which it will be disabled pending further testing.

Report Command

Players can now use the /report command to report other players for inappropriate or anti-social behavior.

• Targeting a player and typing /report or /report followed by a player's name will open a new report dialog panel. From this panel, you can report a chosen player for leeching, botting, spamming, using abusive language, or having an inappropriate character name. Reports will then be relayed and reviewed by the Guild Wars Support team.
• You can report a player for leeching if you’re in the same Random Arena, Alliance Battle, or Competitive Mission as that player. If at least half your team reports the same player for leeching, that player will be stripped of XP and faction rewards for the battle. See the "Dishonorable Combatant System" section below for more details. Note that you can only report members of your own party or team for leeching.
• Reports of botting, spamming, abusive language, and inappropriate character names will be relayed to and reviewed by the Guild Wars Support team. Note that reporting a single player multiple times for the same offense will not expedite or influence support team attention.
• A single account cannot use the /report command more than 50 times in a 24-hour period.

Dishonorable Combatant System

To discourage experience and faction leeching, intentional stalling of arena matches, and leaving matches in Random Arena, Alliance Battles, the Jade Quarry, and Fort Aspenwood before they are complete, a Dishonorable Combatant penalty system has been put into effect.

Dishonor

Dishonor points affect game types that have randomly formed teams such as Random Arenas, Alliance Battles, and Competitive Missions.

• An account may be given dishonor points for leaving a PvP match prematurely, for leeching experience or faction, or for falsely reporting teammates for leeching.
• Players who leave a PvP match prematurely will receive 5 dishonor points.
• If a player is reported for leeching, that player will receive 2 dishonor points for each report against him. Players who report a team member for leeching without a third of their team also reporting that player will also receive 2 dishonor points.
• Any account that has accumulated 10 or more dishonor points is given the Dishonorable status, which is displayed as a buff icon on screen. While affected by this status, no characters present on that account may enter any PvP missions.
• The Dishonorable status remains in effect for 1 minute for each accumulated dishonor point. This status cannot be removed by logging out or changing characters.
• When the duration of the Dishonorable status has expired, characters on that account may once again join PvP missions.
• Dishonor points will remain on the player's account for a total of 60 minutes. If further dishonor points are acquired during this period, that account is once again given the Dishonorable status, though for a longer period of time.
• To clear dishonor points from an account, a player must go 60 minutes without accumulating any new dishonor points.

Arena Time Limit Changes

To discourage players from deliberately trying to prolong Team Arena and Random Arena matches unnecessarily, the following changes are now in effect:

• Standard Annihilation matches now have a time limit of 8 minutes.
• Priest Annihilation matches now have a time limit of 12 minutes.
• When a match’s designated time limit expires, the team with the highest total morale will be declared the winner. In Priest Annihilation maps, if both teams have equal morale but only one team has a live Priest, the team with the Priest will be declared the winner. If neither of these tie-breakers applies, both teams will lose the match.

Revised Gladiator Title

With the introduction of the Dishonorable Combatant system, we’ve made some changes to the Gladiator title track that will make it more reasonable for average players to attain the track's titles. In the new system, we have multiplied the number of Gladiator points required for each title rank by four, and Gladiator points will now be earned in the following increments:

• Players will now receive 1 Gladiator point for every 5 wins in an arena.
• Each additional 5 wins after the initial point is earned will give players an added bonus Gladiator point. Thus, players also earn 2 Gladiator points for their 10th consecutive win, 3 Gladiator points for their 15th consecutive win, and 4 Gladiator points for their 20th consecutive win.

• The Gladiator point bonus is capped at a maximum of 4 bonus points. This means that players who continue to be victorious after 20 consecutive wins will continue to earn 4 Gladiator points each time they win 5 additional matches.

To compensate for the adjusted difficulty of the Gladiator title, players' current Gladiator points and Gladiator title ranks will be adjusted.

• All current Gladiator point totals will be multiplied by 6. Thus, if a player had rank 5 of the Gladiator title with 350 Gladiator points, that player will now be rank 6 with 2,100 Gladiator points.

The adjusted Gladiator title ranks are as follows:

Title rank	Points needed	Title name
1	100	Gladiator
2	200	Fierce Gladiator
3	400	Mighty Gladiator
4	672	Deadly Gladiator
5	1120	Terrifying Gladiator
6	1864	Conquering Gladiator
7	3100	Subjugating Gladiator
8	5184	Vanquishing Gladiator
9	8640	King's Gladiator
10	14400	Emperor's Gladiator
11	24000	Balthazar's Gladiator
12	40000	Legendary Gladiator

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the griffon in the Eye of the North quest "Cold as Ice" to become unresponsive at times.
• Fixed a bug in the Eye of the North quest "Plan A" that prevented anyone but the player who turned in the plans from completing the quest.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally caused wurms to lurk and not resurface.
• Fixed a bug that prevented rainbow phoenix pets from evolving into dire pets.
• Fixed a bug in the Eye of the North quest "Crystal Method" that prevented players from obtaining additional Eldritch Crystals from the Eldritch Ettin once they had defeated him the first time.
• Fixed a bug that caused some players to enter a district with the wrong language when entering an outpost from an explorable area.
• Fixed a bug in the Eye of the North primary quest "The Elusive Golemancer" that occasionally caused the first worker golem to stop following the players.
• Fixed a bug in the Eye of the North primary quest "Blood Washes Blood" that occasionally caused Egil Fireteller to stop following the players.
• Fixed a bug that removed the first PvE-only skill from a player's Skill Bar when any other PvE-only skills on the bar were rearranged.
• Fixed bugs in the Alliance Battle maps "The Ancestral Lands" and "Kaanai Canyon" that allowed defenders to close broken gates.
• Fixed a bug in Guild Wars Nightfall that allowed party members who did not meet the requirements to be turned into wurms.
• Fixed a bug that prevented new Eye of the North players from reaching Boreal Station if they logged out during the introduction cinematic.
• Fixed a bug in the Eye of the North primary quest "A Gate Too Far" that prevented Norn guards from resurrecting.
• Fixed a bug in the Underworld that incorrectly awarded completion for the quest "The Terrorweb Queen"[sic] if the player had previously completed the quest "The Demon Assassin." This error prevented players from being awarded the Underworld Hall of Monuments trophy.

Miscellaneous

• High Priest Alkar will now offer and reward the Eye of the North quests "Destructive Research" and "The Destroyer Challenge" in both the Battledepths and the Central Transfer Chamber.
• Fixed the bow type of the Stygian Recurve Bow so that it matches its name.
• Starting on Tuesday, October 7, players in the UK and Germany will be able to purchase character slots and the Guild Wars: 1 Million Edition Upgrade from the Guild Wars In-Game Store using telephony interactive voice response (IVR) billing. Players in the UK will be able to purchase the Guild Wars: 1 Million Edition Upgrade from the Guild Wars In-Game Store using premium-rate short messages (SMS).
• Elixir of Valor now grants a 10% morale boost to the entire party.
• Players who attain rank 8 in the Eye of the North Allegiance title tracks may now receive a veteran buff when they speak to a bounty NPC. These buffs do not give reputation points, but instead award an allegiance bonus every 25 kills.
• Players will now receive notification when they have successfully completed the requirements for the "time attack" or "boss bounty" hunt challenges.
• Updated the scaling of the User Interface so that it more appropriately fits resolutions below 800x600.
• Two new masters have been added to the Isle of the Nameless: the Master of Damage and the Master of Interrupts.
• The green exclamation point over Olaf Olafson has been changed to a repeatable primary quest icon for the "A Gate Too Far" quest.
• Players are now rewarded with Dwarven reputation points for completing the repeatable Eye of the North quest "Kilroy's Punchout Tournament" from Gunnar's Hold.
• Adjusted gates on the first and second levels of the Heart of the Shiverpeaks dungeon to prevent an exploit.
• Made changes to the Fissure of Woe quests "Defend the Temple of War," "The Wailing Lord," "The Eternal Forgemaster," and "The Hunt" to prevent errors from occurring when the party completes the quests prior to accepting them.

Guild Wars Wiki notes

• Fronis Irontoe's Lair and Secret Lair of the Snowmen now add 10 points each to the Master of the North title track.
• Fixed a dye problem with Paragon Asuran armor.
• Bug: Chinese, Japanese, Polish, and Russian descriptions of Gladiator Title are wrong (it still says "1 point for 10 wins")