Game updates:2024

2024 updates

• Tuesday 14^th of May (talk)
• Friday 3^rd of May (talk)
• Thursday 2^nd of May (talk)
• Wednesday 1^st of May (talk)
• Monday 22^nd of April (talk)
• Wednesday 10^th of April (talk)
• Monday 8^th of April (talk)
• Tuesday 26^th of March (talk)
• Friday 22^nd of March (talk)
• Monday 18^th of March (talk)
• Thursday 15^th of February (talk)
• Monday 12^th of February (talk)

Update -- May 14, 2024

I want to add some clarity around our policy regarding addons. Our general policy is to prohibit addons that provide a player with an advantage over another player. To increase the specificity of this policy with respect to GW1, I want to make it clear that using any addon in PVP violates the policy.

Using addons always has risk. ArenaNet does not support any of these tools and using one can cause undefined behavior, especially now that there are more internal changes being made to the game. That said, I have been in contact with the GwToolbox developers. They have worked on a new interface to the game that should be more resilient to changes. And I asked them to ensure that Toolbox is not active in PVP maps which they have also done. As such, GwToolbox in its current state is permitted for use in PVE maps, though ArenaNet reserves the right to change this determination in the future.

We plan on adding this policy clarification to ArenaNet’s Code of Conduct in the coming weeks. As a side note, I am aware that there is an outdated user agreements in the GW1 client and am working on updating it to match the current agreements, which are available at arena.net/legal.

"PVP Maps" includes at least the following competitive maps and their lobbies:

• Random Arenas
• Fort Aspenwood
• The Jade Quarry
• Alliance Battles
• Codex Arena
• Heroes' Ascent
• Guild versus Guild

Thanks for your attention,

Stephen Clarke-Willson, Game Director, Guild Wars

Guild Wars Wiki notes

• "PVP Maps" also includes Ascalon Arena, Shiverpeak Arena, Shing Jea Arena, Sunspear Arena, Dragon Arena, Zaishen Challenge, Zaishen Elite, Zaishen Menagerie, Ascalon Academy (PvP battle), Rollerbeetle racing, Costume Brawl, and Dwayna Vs Grenth.

Update -- May 3, 2024

• Server maintenance build.

Update -- May 2, 2024

• Server maintenance build.

Update -- May 1, 2024

• Server maintenance build.

Update -- April 22, 2024

Happy 19th Anniversary!

As many of you know, I've been part-time game director, programmer, janitor, etc., for Guild Wars since 2018. I'm happy to report that starting two weeks ago my time allocated to Guild Wars changed from 10% to 80%. I'm very excited to focus much more of my time on Guild Wars. I'd like to thank the studio leadership for working with me to figure out how to allocate my previous duties and roles to other staff. I'd also like to give a shout-out to other long-tenured staff in the company who have helped me with their knowledge of how and why things work the way they do in Guild Wars.

I'd like to set your expectations appropriately - there is still a lot of work to do on our back-end systems so not everything I do will be visible to players. But I'm happy to say I've recently spent more time in-game and fixed some long-standing problems. The game is still in "maintenance mode" and there are no plans for new content. That said, I hope to improve your overall experience with Guild Wars and I'll see you in game!

Stephen Clarke-Willson Game Director, Guild Wars

Update -- April 10, 2024

• Fixed a bug where ctrl-clicking on your XP bar (which announces your XP level and progress) when at max XP would crash any game clients that received the message.

Update -- April 8, 2024

• Fixed a bug where loading a character with 4,294,967,294 internal XP would crash the game client as soon as any additional XP was added.
  • Now, anytime a character would gain additional XP which would exceed 4,294,967,295, that character will instead receive zero XP and remain in the game.
  • This new behavior appears as "+0 XP" (rather than the XP earned) floating above your character and will appear only for extremely old characters.

Update -- March 26, 2024

• Dishonorable has been re-enabled.
• Leech reporting is only disabled in Random Arenas.
• The maximum number of times a player can Report (of any type) is now 20 times per 24 hours (previously the limit was 50).

Update -- March 22, 2024

• Server maintenance build

Update -- March 18, 2024

• The leeching system has been disabled due to abuse of the system by bots.
• A player can now only resign a match once every 120 minutes, also due to excessive abuse of the system by bots.

Stephen Clarke-Willson, Game Director, Guild Wars

Update -- February 15, 2024

The title music has been updated to commemorate 6 years of uninterrupted service without downtime. The title music now features:

• Prophecies Theme (remastered at a higher bitrate)
• Factions Theme
• Nightfall Theme
• Eye of the North Theme
• Various pieces of ambient music

Upgrades

Over the past six years, we've introduced numerous upgrades to the game, all accomplished without any downtime:

• Enhanced graphics with extended draw distance, more detail, and anti-aliasing support
• Camera field-of-view improvements, particularly beneficial for large or vertical displays
• Chat upgrades to mitigate spam
• Expanded friends list capacity
• General latency enhancements
• Establishment of a new datacenter in Korea to better serve players in Asia and Oceania
• Introduction of the 15th Anniversary Weapon Set
• And many other miscellaneous improvements.

Thank you for your support.

Stephen Clarke-Willson, Game Director, Guild Wars

Update -- February 12, 2024

• Server maintenance build.