GuildWars Network - Official interactive site

Wanted to toss this idea around for some time now.

I own a PS3 and I know other people owning XBoxes and so on. These consoles offer an online presence of the player via officially supported forums that are directly linked to their player account.

On the PlayStation Network you can see your list of ingame friends, you can browse information about your achievements (trophies) and other ingame account data and you can compare them with the achievements/ingame data of other people on the network.

Also everything (the community/the forum/the interactive online features) are official and well supported and integrated with the game console or specific games.

So how about a GuildWars network? Where you would be able to connect with your ingame account and where you could be given options like those described above?

This will enhance the community greatly I believe.

PS: I really tried to use the search function of this forum, but I miserably failed (after waiting for over 1 min for search results to return and then not being allowed to search again for xx seconds or so). If this is a duplicate thread do whatever...

Steam

Any news if they'll allow us to add old account or not?

^
I think that feature would only be with new products. Add via retail boxes.

I really wish Anet would allow Steam that kind of integration, it would be *KILLER* to just load up a friend's community page and browse their achievements (titles etc) that way.

Trival achievements such as completing missions or master mode quests (or even time played) could all be done through steam where in game title implementation isn't feasible.

Go on Anet.....

Isn't Xfire enough?



The program itself integrates very nicely with GW - and certain community reps are known to have links with Xfire...

Xfire was conflicting with GW for me. It stopped me mapping. Apparently it's a bug that a lot of people were experiencing.

Not sure what xfire does but the playstation network allows me to do anything from knowing which of my ingame friends are online, to pinging them with forum messages, to comparing the number of titles I have on my accounts with the number of titles they have on their account... to adding a new friend to the ingame friend and network friend list and etc.

This gives a lot more opportunity for interaction that just seeing how many hours someone spent in the game. And several sites offer activities you can do online without being logged into the game.

For a GW example you could browse the web and start forming a party and when the party is formed get in game and play.

Or I don't know. Similar ideas to enhance player interaction.

EDIT
Trading could be another idea. It could be directly linked to your account inventory and you could sell and buy things by just browsing the web. Usually you don't want to spend time when you're playing to spam WTS/WTB messages for hours. You could do that online.

I guess ... imagine the possibilities...

The playstation network is pretty terrible.

So, no.

The other difference is that those are for more than one game, so it actually has some minor use.

But the xbox network is pretty successful. Just gave those as example of how the gamer community is extending from ingame to online/the web. They shouldn't literally implement PSN or whatever for GW. Read my suggestions again and think a bit out of the box if you may.

Xbox Live also has a monthly fee because there is a cost associated with the resources required to run a good service rather than a crappy one like Steam/Xfire/PSN.

I have XBL and had PSN for a short time. There were only a few times I compared achievements with friends because I was curious. More often than not, the only reason I use it is to play games online not compare meaningless stuff.

tbh both the PS and Xbox networks are rather... err basic.

I don;t quite see what would be new if they intergrated this feature. Like people said you could use Xfire to look up the majority of these details, and why would you want to form parties when your not actually playing the game?

OK this is not about PSN or Steam let's quit discussing about them

1. Why would you want to be ingame spamming "WTB/WTS" on a trade channel when the same could be done when you're logged into a forum and online from anywhere? And save the time you got for playing to actually play?

2. Same reason for forming parties. Maybe I am waiting for friends and I want to read the news before they come. If I see the party is ready I could stop reading the news or whatever I am doing on the web at the time, log in game there I go play with them.

3. If you had that extra data about ingame achievements you could challenge people if you're a PvP player or I am sure they can come up with some system around this to allow people to interract online on the site and then get ingame for a quick combat.

4. Maybe if I see an ingame guildie/friend is about to max party animal but he still needs 250 points, I could give them to him....

5. Maybe ingame friends that you haven't exchanged email addresses with would like to contact you when you are offline to invite you for a party, and the way to do that would be through this forum.

Etc etc

EDIT
6. Maybe you are on vacation or without direct access to a game client and a friend would need an item (weapon, shield etc) from you. You could just send it to him from this online portal without having to start the game.

7. Guild management could be all done on such a portal site. You may switch your guild and they may offer proper support for guild officers and leaders to review candidatures for guild members and manage guest status online.

8. Guild officers and leaders could look at your profile and see your achievements and all, etc.

There are so many things you could do without being in game and all of those make sense to extend the community outside the game client. Am I the only one to see the potential here?

EDIT 2
9. The ingame chat could be linked with a web chat and you could appear available for ingame chats and have access to the guild chat/alliance chat even when you're not ingame. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to chat while you're browsing the web/forums.

Shall I go on or just apply for a job at ANet? lol But really think of all the possibilities!

Two things:

(1) How small of a program do you think it'll be to run a game client that has access to more information that the game client has already for a single user?

Check other guildmates' title tracks? Who can do that now, anyways? So lets build a whole program in order to check other peoples stats? Neat, yes. Possible, no. I'd rather the Guildwars people work on....Guildwars?

(2) How small of a footprint does Guildwars make anyways?

Trade weapons when not logged in? Why not just log in and trade? You've access to the internet, you've access to the game, right?

Holy hell, just ALT+Enter, read your news, game client open, chat away, trade stuff, wait for your guildies to get online.

Isn't that where Guild Guru comes in? Besides, Anet should've added an Auction House to begin with.

Did you ever heard of Alt + Tab?

PvP is for boring people.

You could do that without your silly program.

Because forming parties with people who aren't logged makes sense! "Hey, lets do a full HM DoA run with those offline people!"

You're not suppose to play Guild Wars when you're on vacation. Please look for the nearest detox clinic.

Because Guild Management in Guild Wars is very detailed, right?

Obviously people without achievements are noob!

Yes.

Again, Alt + Tab.

Please don't. You'd RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up this game more than it already is.

You sir gave me a good laugh and you obviously have issues. Do you feel better now? "Yay I showed him well! Got this one too! His idea sucks cause I say so and I am the most brilliant mind ever. And I don't need to bother justifying why it sucks, it just sucks cause *I* say so." Quite original, never saw anyone like you before.

If you have comments about the ideas feel free to make them, I haven't invited you to judge myself or my ideas, nor are you in any position to do so, or accept/reject ideas. Do you believe yourself to be some sort of dictator and things happen only if *you* find them worthy? lol Grow up, you're most likely insignificant. As well as I am.

But at least I am insignificant with ideas, you?

To address the only point on which you made some sense:

About guru being the place to trade, it is to an extent but there are huge limitations:
- as a seller you do not have access to information about items in your account storage - this could be linked to your account automatically
- as a seller you need to take a screenshot of the item you want to sell, add extra description - inconvenient to do each time, again if the official website you offer this functionality you would just browse you inventory online, click an item and say the price you want to see it and all official information about the item you sell will be automatically displayed to potential buyers
- *big issue* if buyer lives in australia and you are in europe after you agree on the forum you need to log into the game at a time convenient for both, when the sell transaction could just be approved by a web click or automatically (for buy outs) without you even being awake/at the computer/playing
- reliability - people could not pretend they sell stuff they don't even have since info would come from their account storage directly
- fresh data - a sell listing would be available only if the item is still on sale

Only those and they would be quite an improvement to the very basic form of trading we can now have with the guru forum.

And one last point. Unlike you I don't consider GW is work, so yes I usually play more when I am in vacation, because it's a game and it's fun. I take a vacation from work, I'm not at the point where I play GW so much that I need a vacation from GW as it has become alike work. And so, yes I would like to be able to do stuff when I am away from a computer with a guild wars client installed. Because it would be fun to trade or give items to friends or etc. if a friend just happens to ring me to tell me he wants to play a build with a party and he needs some item I have. This is what friend communities mean: random and spontaneous interactions. And ANet should make it easy for this kind of interactions to happen.