Game updates:August 2005

August 2005 updates

• Tuesday 30^th of August (talk)
• Thursday 25^th of August (talk)
• Monday 15^th of August (talk)
• Thursday 11^th of August (talk)
• Wednesday 10^th of August (talk)
• Friday 5^th of August (talk)
• Thursday 4^th of August (talk)
• Wednesday 3^rd of August (talk)

Update - Tuesday, August 30, 2005

• Fixed rare server crash bug.

Update - Thursday, August 25, 2005

Elementalist

• Meteor: Lowered Energy cost to 5
• Fireball: Lowered Energy cost to 10 and recharge time to 7 seconds
• Chain Lightning: Increased cast time to 3 seconds; decreased damage to 10..85; changed recharge to 10 seconds; lowered maximum distance between targets
• Glyph of Sacrifice: Reduced recharge penalty on next spell to 90 seconds
• Mark of Rodgort: Reduced cast time to 1 second; increased duration of burning effect to 1..4 seconds

Mesmer

• Cry of Frustration: Lowered casting time to .25 second
• Mantra of Earth: Lowered Energy cost to 10
• Mantra of Flame: Lowered Energy cost to 10
• Mantra of Lightning: Lowered Energy cost to 10
• Mantra of Frost: Lowered Energy cost to 10
• Mantra of Recall: Lowered Energy cost to 10; lowered the amount of Energy you gain back to 3..28
• Signet of Humility: Changed the related attribute to Inspiration Magic; changed duration of effect to scale from 1..16 seconds based on rank in Inspiration Magic
• Shatter Hex: Reduced AOE to "nearby foes"; reduced damage to 30..120
• Hex Breaker: Reduced duration to 15..90 seconds
• Panic: Increased duration to 10..25 seconds; Increased AOE to "nearby foes"

Monk

• Healing Seed: Lowered Energy cost to 10; Decreased duration to 10 seconds
• Scourge Sacrifice: Now affects all adjacent targets
• Restore Condition: Lowered Energy to 5; reduced the amount healed to 10..70
• Healing Hands: Increased the amount healed to 5..30
• Draw Conditions: Added 1 second recharge time
• Divine Boon: Added 1 second recharge time
• Protective Bond: Energy lost per hit increased to 6..3
• Aegis: Now only affects party members

Necromancer

• Putrid Explosion: Increased recharge time to 5 seconds
• Consume Corpse: Decreased casting time to 1 second; increased Energy gained to 5..20
• Blood Renewal: Increased Health regeneration to 3..6
• Plague Signet: Decreased recharge time to 10 seconds
• Deathly Chill: Increased secondary damage to 5..50
• Dark Bond: Now affects all damage types, not just physical
• Barbed Signet: Reduced recharge time to 20 seconds
• Well of Suffering: Increased duration to 10..30 seconds; increased Health degeneration to 1..6
• Grenth's Balance: Reduced recharge time to 15 seconds
• Spinal Shivers: Increased duration to 10..40 seconds

Ranger

• Pets: Increased pets' run speed by 20%; increased pets' armor to 80 at level 20
• Crippling Shot: Decreased recharge time to 1 second; decreased duration of Cripple to 8 seconds
• Distracting Shot: Decreased attack time from .75 to .5 seconds
• Punishing Shot: Decreased attack time from .75 to .5 seconds; increased recharge time to 8 seconds
• Concussion Shot: Decreased attack time from .75 to .5 seconds
• Nature's Renewal: Modified to no longer remove all Hexes and Enchantments when cast; now doubles the Energy degeneration for maintained Enchantments
• Fertile Season: Reduced duration to 15..45 seconds
• Quickening Zephyr: Increased Energy cost to 25; reduced duration to 15..45 seconds
• All Spirits: The effects of Spirits no longer work on other Spirits (example: Fertile Season no longer adds Health and armor to other Spirits); also, when a Spirit is cast, it kills all other allied Spirits of the same type within its range

Warrior

• Dwarven Battle Stance: Increased duration to 5..11 seconds
• "I Will Survive!": Decreased recharge time to 30 seconds
• "I Will Avenge You!": Increased AOE to anywhere within your radar

All Skills

• Skills with a recharge time can no longer be reduced to 0 (example: if a spell has 1 second recharge time and you have both Quickening Zephyr and Serpent's Quickness active, the length of the recharge time will not drop below 1 second)

Note: All skill ranges are for Attribute Level 0 through 15. For example, "Fertile Season: reduced duration to 15..45 seconds" would indicate that with 0 Attribute points, the duration would be 15 seconds, and with 15 Attribute points, the duration would be 45 seconds.

Other Changes

• Improved Guild-versus-Guild matchmaking so that high-rated guilds are matched more quickly.
• Fixed spawns near closed doors in Underworld.
• Added two Resurrection Shrines in The Crag and improved respawning location so that the party respawns together at the nearest friendly shrine.
• Decreased match duration for The Crag to three minutes.
• Killing a pet in PvP no longer rewards Faction.

PvP Extreme Weekend Changes

The following faction rewards will be in effect during the Guild Wars PvP Extreme Weekend from 12:01 AM PDT on August 26th until 11:59 PM PDT on August 28th.

Arenas

• Unique Kill: 20 in Team/Competition, 10 in Shiverpeaks, 5 in Ascalon
• Victory: 25 in Team/Competition, 10 in Shiverpeaks, 5 in Ascalon
• Bonus for Five Consecutive Victories: 25 in Team/Competition, 10 in Shiverpeaks, 5 in Ascalon
• Bonus for Flawless Victory: 25 in Team/Competition, 10 in Shiverpeaks, 5 in Ascalon

Tournament

• Unique Kill: 20
• Victory: 100 in early missions, 200 in later missions, 400 in Hall of Heroes
• Bonus for Flawless Victory: 100 (same across all missions)

Guild Battles

• Unique Kill: 20
• Victory: 500 - 2000 depending on your guild rating (500 at rating 1000, 2000 at rating 1600)
• Bonus for Flawless Victory: 100 - 400 depending on your guild rating (100 at rating 1000, 400 at rating 1600)

Update: Monday, August 15, 2005

• Fixed rare crash bug with German text at the largest UI size.

Update - Thursday, August 11, 2005

• Improved traders so that they maintain more stable prices and closer spreads between buy and sell prices.
• Improved traders so that traders from all regions (America, Europe, and Korea) now buy and sell from the same stock and charge the same prices.

Update - Wednesday, August 10, 2005

• Fixed a bug that was making some desert teleporters unresponsive.
• Corrected flaw in Price of Failure skill that was causing missile attacks to miss their targets more than 25% of the time.
• Corrected Hundred Blades skill to deal damage accurately; previously it was dealing only 75% of its intended damage.
• Corrected Mind Freeze skill so that damage is dealt regardless of whether the caster's energy is lower than the target's energy.
• Corrected flaw in Mist Form skill that was preventing it from reducing damage from elemental damage attacks.
• Corrected "The Price of Steel" quest so that so that White Mantle always drop Ruined Armor for players on the quest.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the skill-swap dialog from disappearing after talking to Captain Greywind.
• Fixed several rare client and server crash bugs.

Update - Friday, August 5, 2005

• Fixed infrequent server crash issues.
• Fixed whisper and Friend's List problems that were occurring immediately following new builds.

State of the Game - Thursday, August 4, 2005

Because it has been a few weeks since we've posted a major update, we wanted to let everyone know what's in the works. Typically, a few weeks is a short amount of time in the development cycle of a game, but we know there are many people who play Guild Wars with such dedication and intensity that a few weeks without an update seems more like an eternity. Here's what's on the way...

Ascended Content

As I mentioned in my last open letter, one of our top priorities has been adding content for ascended roleplaying characters. It's on the way. We are now entering a testing and polish phase on Sorrow's Furnace and other new ascended content. The additions will include new quests, new monsters, new items and new accelerated sources of XP and rare items.

Character Advancement

We have been making significant strides in gathering and tracking data about botters. Our belief is that the better we are at combating bots, the more we are able to protect the economy for everyone. As we succeed, you can expect significant changes to the availability of high-quality loot for normal players.

At the same time, we have been able to gather and analyze a lot of data about how quickly players gain new skills and items through both PvP and PvE. This has allowed us to better gauge what improvements we can and should make. In coming updates, you should expect a significant increase in the rate of item unlocking and skill acquisition through both PvE and PvP. In other words, you will be able to get Faction, XP and rare items more quickly.

PvP Playbalance

Given the sophisticated nature of team builds and counters in Guild Wars, we expect to see trends in PvP, as one innovative build changes the landscape, encouraging the use of a counter, which in turn encourages the use of a counter. We have tried to balance Guild Wars to allow for this metagame without allowing the loss of balanced builds and diverse strategies. Since release, we've seen a number of trends come and go, including Warrior Monks, Healing Clusters, Lightning Spike, Enchantment Webs and Spirit Spam. Much, but not all, of the ebb and flow has been in keeping with our goals. Nevertheless, we know that improvements can always be made to playbalance, and we are watching to make sure that no one Flavor of the Month build comes to be too dominant or encourages play in ways that are not fun.

With this in mind, we have been testing a variety of playbalance adjustments internally for some weeks now. We will let players know in advance when playbalance changes are coming so that private tournaments are not disrupted too abruptly. We are also planning to announce our own schedule of ladder seasons and official tournaments. We will try, when possible, to implement most playbalance changes immediately at the start of a new ladder season. You can expect to see another announcement regarding playbalance changes in the near future.

We are also looking into improvements to individual PvP maps, GvG matchmaking for high-rated teams, and ways to ease the burden of needing exactly 8 players to GvG.

Observer Mode

We are looking forward to unveiling Observer Mode a short while after the changes we mentioned above. Through Observer Mode, players will be able to watch (with a time delay) any battles involving their own guild and any important battles going on in the Guild Wars world, such as rated battles involving high ranking guilds, battles near the Hall of Heroes, and the later stages of seasonal tournaments. We believe Observer Mode, along with far more detailed statistics for each battle, will enable a greater number of players to enjoy Guild Wars at higher level of play. And that means more fun for everyone.

James Phinney

Update - Wednesday, August 3, 2005

• Fixed several infrequent server crash bugs.
• Fixed a bug that was causing characters to stop displaying spell-casting animations if a skill was used twice in rapid succession.
• Amended display functions so that when unsupported video hardware is detected, the Guild Wars window properly unminimizes if the user chooses to play anyway.