User:Endrosz/noteworthy updates 2006

Update - Thursday January 19, 2006

Guild Wars Factions Free-For-All PvP Weekend

All high-level PvP has been moved to the Battle Isles, which can be reached using the ship off the coast of Lion's Arch. On the Battle Isles, you'll find a new explorable area with Training Arenas, NPCs who can help you test all aspects of your character's build, updates to existing PvP Arenas, and all-new Zaishen Challenges, where you and your friends can practice against teams of computer AI opponents. All of this content is now organized into a natural progression, so that players can experience the basics of PvP before moving on to advanced challenges.

Changes to Guild Combat Mechanics

• Five minutes after Victory or Death starts, both teams' Guild Lords will now rush out of their base to engage in combat.

Update - Thursday March 2, 2006

Guild Battle Updates

• Added silver and gold trims for the guild capes of tournament season winners and runners-up.

Update - Thursday, March 9 2006

Arena Combat Updates:

• Teams in both Random and Team Arenas can now be matched against opponents from anywhere in the world.

Update - Wednesday April 26, 2006

Titles

Players will now be able to earn titles, which can be shown to other players. Use the Titles tab in the Hero panel to select a title for display. Only titles toward which you have made any progress will appear in the list.

Titles apply to a single character or a whole account, as appropriate. A player can display only one title at a time but may earn any number of titles. Many titles have multiple levels, with each new level indicating an increasingly difficult level of achievement.

Sample Titles:

• Canthan Explorer. You must explore 60% of Cantha to earn the first level of this title. (Character based.)
• Skill Hunter. You must capture 90 Elite skills to earn the first level of this title. (Character based.)
• Gladiator. You must have 25 win-streaks of 10 consecutive wins in the Random Arenas maps to earn the first level title. (Account based.)
• Champion. You must win 50 high-rated GvG battles to earn the first level of title. (Account based.)

Guild Scrimmages

Guilds now have the ability to fight scrimmage battles. Scrimmage battles occur between two groups in the same guild hall and do not count toward ladder standing. To initiate a scrimmage, a group of one or more players must initiate a guild battle and choose "initiate a scrimmage match." Any other group of one or more players in that guild hall may then choose to join the scrimmage battle, which will initiate after a short countdown.

Update - Thursday April 27, 2006

Cantha Awaits

• Alliance Battles

Updates

• Introduced a new command: /resign. This command allows a team to forfeit a mission as a group. All party members must type "/resign" for it to take effect.

Update - Wednesday October 25, 2006

New Features of Guild Wars Nightfall

Skills and Attributes

• Your characters can now change their secondary professions whenever they are standing in a town or outpost. PvP characters can change to any secondary profession, while Roleplaying characters can change to any profession that character has previously learned.
• You can now save and load templates containing Skill Bar setup, attributes, and professions. This allows you to switch a character between different roles quickly, and to share your strategies with your friends.
• To save a Skill Template, click the disk icon inside the Skills and Attributes panel, then click “Save to Template.” The template will be saved to a small file in the Templates/Skills folder below the Guild Wars installation directory. You can copy this file to other computers, share it with your friends, or post it on the Internet.
• To load a Skill Template, click the disk icon, then click “Load from Template.” You can load any template that matches your character’s primary profession.
• If your character doesn't have as many attribute points as the character who saved the template, the attribute levels will automatically be adjusted down for you.
• If your character doesn't have access to skills that were saved in the template, those skills will appear grayed out.

Equipment Templates

• PvP characters can now save and load Equipment Templates containing a complete set of armor and weapon selections.
• To save an Equipment Template, click the disk icon inside the Inventory panel, then click “Save to Template.” The template will be saved to a small file in the Templates/Equipment folder below the Guild Wars installation directory.
• To load an Equipment Template, click the disk icon, then click “Load from Template.” You can load any template that matches your character’s primary profession.
• Loading a template will replace your character’s current weapons and armor, unless your character is using weapons or armor that were acquired through roleplaying.
• If you load a template that uses item upgrades that are not currently available on your account, the items that require those upgrades will not be created.

Equipment Builder

• Equipment can be made for any PvP character, including PvP Heroes, using the new PvP Equipment panel.
• You can open the PvP Equipment panel whenever your PvP character is standing in a town or outpost by clicking on the PvP Equipment button within the Inventory panel or by pressing “J” on your keyboard.
• To create an item, click on the portrait of the character you would like to build the item for, then select the tab for the type of item you would like to create. Choose the item, upgrade components, and color from the list of available selections.
• If you would like the item to be equipped immediately, select the “Equip Immediately” option before clicking “Create.” The new item will be placed onto your character, and the old item that your character was previously wearing will be destroyed. If you choose not to equip immediately, the new item will be placed into your character’s inventory instead.
• Items created with the PvP Equipment panel cannot be upgraded or salvaged.

Armor Insignias

• New armor crafted in Elona or through the PvP Equipment panel can contain swappable insignias, which provide the same types of bonuses that previously were permanent parts of the armor, plus new bonuses that are being introduced with Nightfall.
• With the use of armor insignias, you can now mix and match different armor bonuses with different armor appearances. Additionally, the use of insignias simplifies the process of creating armor with the PvP Equipment panel because you can choose the armor appearance and bonus separately.
• Outside of the PvP Equipment panel, you can only place an insignia on a piece of armor if that armor has a blank insignia slot. Certain types of armor crafted in Elona include blank insignia slots.
• Like other types of armor upgrades, insignias must be unlocked on your account before you can use them in the PvP Equipment panel. Because some insignias are replacements for bonuses that used to be inherent properties of PvP armor, those insignias are already unlocked on your account.
• Because insignias allow you to place bonuses on certain types of headgear that could not receive bonuses in the past, some existing high-end headgear from Tyria and Cantha is being updated with this build to include new bonuses.

Weapon Inscriptions

• New weapons found in Elona or created through the PvP Equipment panel can contain swappable inscriptions, which provide a variety of weapon bonuses and enhancements.
• Like armor insignias, weapon inscriptions allow you to swap bonuses between different items you acquire by playing through the roleplaying content, and they simplify the process of creating items with the PvP Equipment panel by enabling you to choose the base weapon and the weapon bonuses separately.
• You can only place an inscription in a weapon if that weapon has a blank inscription slot. Inscriptions and inscription slots are sometimes found on rare weapons dropped by monsters in Elona.
• Inscriptions must be unlocked on your account before you can use them in the PvP Equipment panel. Inscriptions that provide bonuses that were previously inherent bonuses of PvP weapons are already unlocked on your account.

New Item Upgrades

• Shields, wands, and focus items created through the PvP Equipment panel or found in Elona can now have upgrades applied to them.
• Shields can have a Shield Handle upgrade plus one inscription.
• Wands can have a Wand Wrapping upgrade plus one inscription.
• Focus items can have a Focus Core upgrade plus one inscription.
• These new upgrades are equivalent in power to inherent item bonuses that were found in previous campaigns.

New Salvage/Upgrade System

• Salvaging an item with upgrade components now gives you the ability to pick which item you would like to salvage.
• If you salvage an item to extract a magical component, there is now a 50 percent chance that the base item will not be destroyed.
• When you upgrade an item with an upgrade component, you now see a preview of what that item will look like after the upgrade.

New Dye System

• The new dye system improves the appearance of base dye colors and mixed dye colors. The new system is used when you newly apply dye to an item. Existing item colors are not affected.
• Newly crafted armor now starts out gray. If you dye it to another color and then later want to restore it to its original appearance, just dye it gray. Vendors now sell gray dye instead of dye remover.
• White and brown dye colors are now available as loot drops.
• Silver is now an equipment color option during character creation.
• A new Dye Preview panel lets you preview the effect of dye color combinations on your items before applying the dye.

New Damage Interface

• The new Damage Monitor panel shows all skills that your opponents have recently used against you. You can hover the mouse over any skill icon to get a tooltip explaining that skill.
• The numbers that float above characters’ heads are now bigger, and use different animations to help distinguish between damage, healing, and experience.
• When an enemy uses a skill against you, the skill icon will display next to the damage number. The Options panel allows you to switch from displaying skill icons to displaying skill names.

PvP-Only Character Creation

• The PvP character creation process has been simplified. During character creation, you now choose only the character's primary profession, character appearance, and name.
• Newly created PvP characters start off with a set of equipment and six basic skills for their primary profession, so you can start playing immediately.
• To outfit your PvP character with other skills and equipment, you can use the new Skill and Equipment Templates systems.
• So that your PvP characters have immediate access to skill and equipment swapping, new PvP characters you create now start in the Great Temple of Balthazar once you have unlocked Random Arenas on your account.
• You can still access Zaishen Basic Training by walking from the Great Temple back into the Isle of the Nameless and talking with the Master of Paths.
• First-time PvP players must complete Zaishen Basic Training to gain access to the Random Arenas and to gain the ability to purchase unlocks from the Priest of Balthazar.

Henchmen Controls

• Henchmen controls are now available on the Compass. To direct your henchmen, click the Henchmen button on the Compass, then click anywhere on the Compass or in the world to select where you’d like your henchmen to go.

Improved Hero/Henchmen AI

...

Gameplay Changes

• Armor swapping is now disabled during PvP games.
• Certain situations that caused players to get stuck and not be able to move have been fixed, and a new command “/stuck” has been introduced to help players free their characters if they become stuck.

Title System Changes

• The Treasure Hunter and Seeker of Wisdom titles now confer a benefit to players who earn them. For each rank of either title earned, the chance of an item not being destroyed when salvaging a magical upgrade component is increased by 3 percent from a base of 50 percent.
• The Hero, Gladiator, and Champion titles now confer a benefit to players who earn them. Gaining ranks in these titles increases the maximum cap of unspent Balthazar's faction. The cap increases by 2,000 faction points for each of the first five ranks of the Hero title and 5,000 faction points for each subsequent rank, and the cap increases by 5,000 faction points for each rank of the Gladiator and Champion titles earned.

Materials Storage

• The Materials Storage panel, which was previously a feature of Guild Wars Factions, is now available to all players.

User Interface Improvements

• While forming a party, you can now control+click on your Skill Bar to announce your skill setup to your party members.
• In all types of PvP, the new score screen option “Team Status” shows a summary of the Health and morale of your entire team, including allied NPCs.

Update - Friday October 27, 2006

Heroes

• Heroes are NPC party members who can join your party, level up with your character, and use weapons, armor, and skills of your choosing. You recruit Heroes by completing certain quests and adventuring throughout Elona, but you can bring only three at a time into your party. Since you and a friend can each bring three Heroes into a mission, two players can now complete any eight-player mission.
• After recruiting a Hero, you can use the “Add Hero” interface in the party formation panel to invite the Hero into your party whenever you’re standing in a town or outpost.
• If you and another player both invite the same Hero, one of them will be the “real” Hero who will interact with NPCs in cinematics and other scripted sequences, and the other will be an “imposter” who will use a generic name for the duration of the mission.
• Whenever you control a Hero, you will see a button next to the Hero’s name, which you can click to bring up the Hero Control panel. This panel provides advanced options for direct control of the Hero. You can use it to adjust the Hero’s AI mode between fight, guard, or avoid combat, to order the Hero to cast a certain skill, or to order the Hero not to cast a certain skill unless directed to do so by you.
• Whenever you control a Hero, you will also see a button on the Compass that you can use to give orders to the Hero. To use it, simply click the button, then click anywhere in the Compass or in the world where you would like the Hero to walk.
• Heroes level up like players do and acquire attribute points at the same rate, except they do not need to complete quests to gain their final 30 attribute points. Instead, they get 15 bonus attribute points when they reach level 10, and another 15 bonus attribute points when they reach level 15.
• Whenever you recruit a Hero while playing through the campaign, that Hero becomes unlocked for use with your PvP characters. Heroes that you recruit also come with skills, and those skills become unlocked on your account when you recruit the Hero.
• Heroes don't maintain their own inventory of skills. Instead, they are able to use any skill that you have unlocked on your account.
• Heroes don't maintain their own backpack or inventory of items. Instead, you can drag items from your inventory onto a Hero to equip him. Your Heroes can use weapons that you have customized for yourself.
• Hero Trainers, located in various locations around Elona, will teach you a skill (and unlock it on your account for use by your Heroes) in return for a Hero Skill Point. You get a Hero Skill Point each time you gain a new rank of the Sunspear or Lightbringer titles.
• Hero Armor NPCs, located in the outposts of Challenge Missions in Elona, can craft upgraded armor for your Heroes in return for certain items that you can acquire inside the Challenge Mission. Players can find enough of these items to upgrade their own Heroes, but not an unlimited supply, so we encourage players to spend these items on their own Heroes rather than selling them or giving them away.

Hero Battles

• Hero Battles are a new PvP game type that allow players to compete head-to-head for the first time.
• Each Hero Battle pits one player and his three Heroes against another player and his three Heroes.
• To access Hero Battles you must unlock at least three Heroes onto your account. If you haven't already unlocked the first three Heroes, just complete Zaishen Basic Training with a PvP character, then talk to the Priest of Balthazar, who will give you free unlocks.
• To enter a Hero Battle, travel to the Hero Battles outpost on the Battle Isles, invite three Heroes into your party, then click “Enter Battle.” You will be automatically matched against an opponent of similar skill level.
• To win, you must score 20 points before your opponent does. You get one point for every enemy you kill, and one point for every 30 seconds that your team holds the center shrine.
• There are also a number of strategic points around the map, which can grant you a strategic advantage against the enemy if your team controls them.
• If neither team has scored 20 points when the game clock reaches 10 minutes, the game goes into sudden death, where the next team to score a point wins.
• There is no death penalty on this map, and all players and Heroes respawn every 30 seconds.
• Players get 20 Balthazar's faction for each point scored and 100 faction for winning.

Update - Wednesday December 20, 2006

Party Search

The new Party Search panel allows you to advertise when you’re looking for a group to join, and to search for other players and parties to join you. With the Party Search panel, you can join up with other players even when they are in a different district from you. In any town or outpost, press ‘P’ to bring up the new Party Search panel. If you’re the leader of your party, or if you’re not in a party (all solo players are treated as parties of one), you can use the “Seek Party” checkbox to add your group to the list of available players and parties, and to advertise what you’re looking for. As a party leader, you can select another group and click “Join” to propose merging with that group. After clicking “Join”, you will see a question mark icon next to that group indicating that you are waiting for a response from them, and they will see an icon next to your group indicating that you have invited them. If you receive an invitation from another group, you can select that group and click “Join” to accept the invitation, merging the two groups. If you accept an invitation to join a group which is currently in a different district from you, your group will automatically travel to the other district. If you are alone, you will travel immediately upon clicking “Join”. If you have other people traveling with you, the game will provide a 10-second countdown and give each player the option of canceling.

Reconnect After Disconnect

While playing in a mission, explorable area, or PvP game, if your game client loses its connection to the Guild Wars game servers due to Internet connectivity issues, or if the game client or your computer crashes, you will have the opportunity to reconnect to the game servers and resume exactly where you left off, for a period of ten minutes after the disconnection. During that ten minute period, your character will remain in the world. If your character was performing an action like attacking or spell-casting at the moment of disconnection, your character will complete the action. If your character was in a party, the other members of your party will be notified of the disconnection. You must reconnect from the same computer that you were playing on when the connection was lost.