Thursday Jan. 19th Update

Update - Thursday, January 19

Attention citizens.

The Tomb of the Primeval Kings has been overrun by the enemies of Balthazar. The Zaishen Order recognizes that many of you may wish to help conquer this foe. While this is admirable, only those truly devoted to the teachings of Balthazar should attempt to enter the Tombs.

Those wishing to become as great as we, the Zaishen, should take heart. Members of our order await your arrival at the Great Temple of Balthazar. We will train you in the ways of war, so you may continue the personal squabbles that seem to consume so much of your daily routine.

If you truly wish to better yourself, take the ship to the Great Temple, and hone your skills with the Zaishen.

May the blessings of Balthazar follow you on your journey.

-Commander Kuro of the Zaishen Order

Guild Wars: Factions
Free-For-All PvP Weekend

With this update, we roll out the first parts of Guild Wars: Factions, including the new login and character selection/creation screens, boat travel between continents, and a weekend sneak preview of the two new professions. (The weekend event lasts from Friday January 20 8:00 am GMT to Monday January 23 7:59 am GMT.)

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.

New computer AI challenges:

- Training Arenas: a series of four maps designed to teach the basics of PvP and Arena Combat. Beat all four maps to unlock the Zaishen Challenge on your account.

- Zaishen Challenge: an Arena where you can play the computer AI team of your choice on the map of your choice. Beat five different computer AI teams to unlock the Zaishen Elite Challenge.

- Zaishen Elite Challenge: the ultimate AI challenge. See how far you can get in a series of random Arena matches against increasingly difficult AI teams.

New unlocking of existing PvP types:

- Win five-in-a-row in the Random Arenas to unlock the Team Arenas on your account. (Existing accounts have the Team Arenas unlocked already.)

- Win five total games in the Team Arenas to unlock the Tournament (Heroes' Ascent) on your account. (Existing accounts have the Tournament unlocked already.)

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.

- In the Burning Isle guild hall, NPCs now take the high path to avoid lava when Victory or Death occurs, and Flame Cursed Sentinals no longer drop loot.

- The Guild Lord's Amulet of Protection now interacts correctly with Deep Wound. (See Fansite Friday #62 for more information about the Guild Lord's Amulet of Protection.)

Miscellaneous improvements:

- When a party leader uses Map Travel in a town or outpost, his entire party travels with him to the new map.

- During PvP matches, the Party window now displays your team color.

- Skill icons for Enchantment and Hex spells are now displayed with a small marker in their upper-right corner.

- Text descriptions and icons of various magic item upgrades have been improved.

-The location and visibility of hint popup windows can now be modified using the Customize Layout interface.

Miscellaneous fixes:

- Ghosts in The Underworld are no longer considered fleshy and will not leave exploitable corpses.

I'm speechless...

thank you for posting this..lim at school and i cant get on there - can't wait till i get home though!!

Sweeeeet

So bunking off work early

Hope my boss doesn't play GW

Yes!!!

I'm probably stupid but this update has not downloaded for me when I started GW.

same im at school.. but this doesnt start till tomorrow right not today?

I haven't the time, but I had a very quick look just now - no new login screen, and no option to create assassin/ritualist just yet; it's probably going to be tomorrow (Friday). Nothing seemed to download for me either. I used my existing account (not tried with that event key yet)

Edit: I think there are some new goings on at Tombs, though can't be certain since I've not been there in ages before today.

so this update first come into play from friday right? nothing is updated as of now...

theres a sticky at the beginning of this check it out.

Miscellaneous improvements:

- When a party leader uses Map Travel in a town or outpost, his entire party travels with him to the new map.


Uh is that going to be a major exploit? I mean say I take a fresh new player and warp to Droks, is he gonna be dragged along?

If not I think its a good idea

Should be tested. If that is how it is than Droknar running can be done by anyone who has beaten Dragon's Lair.

My thought is the warp only works in the player already has the town unlocked.

Thats the only way it makes sense, or a guildie can take your lvl1 to Ember Light Camp to buy all the skills (sans elites) for use at Ascalon arena lol.

wow well forge running is dead warp him to all the places..lvl 1 forge armor and at hells precipe

good catch...I'm pretty sure that Anet have made it so that people will only be able to travel this way if they already have the town marked on the map.... question is then what will happen if the partyleader tries to warp to a town that one or more of the party members haven't been to yet...

1) warning message saying that you cannot fast travel to the place because party members does not meet requirements(having the place marked on map)

2) said party members are left behind in the dust, while the rest of the party travels :-S

number one is the most likely sollution and the best one...

Nothing has changed for me...is it PvP chars only?

It'll make defend kryta easier. All meet at ToA and Map to LA.. Maybe

Most exciting thing in there for me is the players vs AI tournaments.. Now where did I put that FF7 soundtrack CD..

I think this update is gonna encourage a lot more people into PvP. I would imagine some people were turned of it as they may have thought they werent good enough to compete (me included). Now you can practice as much as you like against AI opponents.

Or how about annoyance? Despite having a noob leader in THK, you almost complete it (as in, already took out Mursaat Boss), but since the noob pissed us off, we scold at him and he teles back, taking everyone with him...
So, now we have to be nice to the "leader", even if he has no clue what he does, he doesn't let the monks recharge and aggros everything on sight.

Note to self: new idea for fun...

training camps sound kewl.. but a bit iffy.. for my ranger all i do is target click space bar.

Login has changed and i'm downloading. New characters are obviously not available yet.

read again. he can only do this in outpost/town.

New update has 400 files, im dl right now, pvp to the xtreme!

WOOT! Just got the New Build message...HOLY HELL IT LOOKS AWESOME!



New Character select screen

gah this sucks.. im at school.. only 10 am.. 3 pm here i come

Damn. The new build pwns. Expecially the character login + creation screens.

"Or how about annoyance? Despite having a noob leader in THK, you almost complete it (as in, already took out Mursaat Boss), but since the noob pissed us off, we scold at him and he teles back, taking everyone with him..."

The update note says
"- When a party leader uses Map Travel in a town or outpost, his entire party travels with him to the new map."

Note the, in a town or outpost part, so no problem.

OHH soo different

LFP for Black hole

OMG I'm freakin out! It's too cool!

AHHHH 1000 files in LA!

Your joking? gonna take me ages to dl..

1,400 files left in Droknar's Forget?

Have they changed everything?

Nope not joking...1,172 files for me to DL when I warped to LA.

Wow, I really like the new style and layout of the menu!

It took me like 5-10min for the update when you open gw.. LA gonna take me probably 20min.

This is how the backdoor into Droknar's was fixed. Before, if you won 10 times in the Competition Arena (in Lion's Arch), you were teleported to the Team Arena (in Droknar's). However, if you tried to team up with someone that had Droknar's unlocked and have them run you into the town, it would leave you behind if you didn't have Droknar's unlocked.

I don't think that A-Net would miss that obvious of an exploit.

OMG the game interface looks waaay better now.

My chars are wearing pre searing armour in the menu, is that a bug?

It has to update like the info.

I like the black background of the windows now

Wow, you can fight on the Isle of the nameless

oh ok, anyone know how much in total MB the LA update is? It will help alot.