New Designer, Updates, PvP, XTH, and more! courtesy of Linsey Murdock

so do the skills change every match? That would be super awesome.
Is it like a daily thing? That would be stupid and terrible.

Dont understand why they are getting rid of ta though. Whatever.

My guild has used Sealed Deck for some fun scrimmages. As noted in Linsey's post, this is not something new, to Anet or the players either one. That does not, however, mean everyone knows what it is. Without doing much work, here is a link that may help some people learn about it that don't know yet what Sealed Deck is:

http://sealeddeck.teamlove.us/index.php

I have been waiting for Sealed Deck to be announced for ages now, finally they are going to release it. Should bring a nice new addition (and fun element) to GW. Finally may persuade me to hang up the 'ol PvE boots and defect to the Dark Side

Overall, gg Linsey and co. for giving us a more detailed heads up than normal. Hope this is a new direction ANet is taking now in being a touch more informative.

Sealed deck sounds interesting. I'm wondering, how large a pool will the builds for the sealed deck be taken from. Will there be a core set of skills and or builds that are distributed, or will players be given any of the many skills in game.

I mean, in order to run these bars, I'm assuming the player would need the skill unlocked on the account? If so, this means to participate in every possible sealed deck arrangement, you would need to unlock every skill? Or maybe you are just given access to the skill for that particular match, even if you don't even own the campaign that skill is from?

Well thanks for the info...WTB pvp skins for pvp.

TA gone: Take that, you cheapass meta-only-or-GTFO teams! Something was definitely bad when every RA team i got into disbanded as soon as it reached 10 wins.

HB gone: I admit it: I really started to hate this format after a game or ten. It's way, WAAAY too defensive.

Bring on the random! No longer will you be able to count on your broken builds for insta wins. Time to actually grow some skill.

Not good news for me...I was halfway to Cobra

I think that this update is great!
First thing, that the XTH is getting up again is good, and bumping us to the next-highest bracket is just FTW!
Being able to spend Z-Coins on PvP skins will also allow casual PvE players to get PvP skins, wich will make it much more balanced!
It's sad that Team Battles is being removed, but Hero Battles is fine.
And the Sealed Deck thing, thats cool, probably the coolest update ever!
I play the game, Magic: The Gathering, and draft/Sealed Deck every friday, and it is one of the most entertaining things i've ever done, when this gets to Guild Wars, it will be even better!
Also, i think that a lot of these updated will make it much more newbie friendly, so we would get more people to play the game!
Great update Linsey!

Thank you, Linsey. This sounds very good.

IF you can remove syncing from RA, it would be VERY good to remove promoting of TA in RA. I'm hoping that you can handle all the stress of all this work.. Best of luck to you. Regards.

Just had a really horrible thought.




For the love of god, please do not make the Sealed Deck format involve capping shrines. It is the most boring, repetitive and mind numbing PvP objective ever made.



Other than that, I'm quite excited. I think RA might just kick you out after 10-20 wins if it can't go on to TA, otherwise if you somehow fluked an amazing team you could just mega farm for hours.

Thank you, Linsey for the news. While the XTH has been nice, don't feel too bad if it can't be fixed. I have benefited nicely from it in the past, but have been earning more keys with Balthazar points doing FA & JQ than I averaged with XTH. The rest of the GW player-base can do the same (buy keys with Balthazar Faction points).

Welcome to Robert. The extended gwguru family seems to have lost their manners and mostly ignored your joining the team. Like most families, we have good and bad members, so bear with us. A new perspective will refresh everyone's thought processes.

I haven't ever tried TA or HB, as I felt they required more skill than I possessed. I might give the new Sealed Deck a try though, as it appears to somewhat level the playing field.

I am glad to hear that you are being allowed to automate as much of the repeating content as possible. With the fall/winter events quickly approaching, I hope you can get it up and running before they begin and eat into your time.

I also appreciate the new attitude towards releasing "coming up" information to the community. The feedback you receive before you have invested a lot of time into something should also help your team organize their priorities.

WTH is sealed deck actually ;/

Something that's been explained multiple times in last 6 pages

That was such a great post. It's nice to know what's going on, and what we can look forward to.

Very promising message, looking forward to sealed deck =)

I keep getting disappointed in this week.
Shish,the update is a big meh.
Oh they are doing something they should have been doing years ago.
Great.

Linsey,

Thank you so much for all the hard work you and the Live team have put forth in the updates and fixing the the XTH. Good job all!

But at least they are doing it now and telling us too beforehand.

This is the kind of update I have been waiting for. Although I once enjoyed team arena it has been too empty lately to find a good team. I hope that a team can keep going in random arena because if you are only going to get 3 points at a time the gladiator track is going to take a lot longer to get. Good Job.

/signed

I love Costume Brawl with all my heart - but that was mainly because it was a form of Sealed Deck. Now that actual Sealed Deck is coming in, I'd really like to be able to concentrate on finding creative team builds, not "find as many run skills as possible for mini AB".