Says it all

The support Mesmer

The Birthday Card

My Brother is a graphic designer. This is the card he gave me for my 40th.

Computers - Start learning guys

CS101 teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a zero-prior-experience audience. Computers can appear very complicated, but in reality, computers work within just a few, simple patterns. CS101 demystifies and brings those patterns to life, which is useful for anyone using computers today.

In CS101, students play and experiment with short bits of "computer code" to bring to life to the power and limitations of computers. Everything works within the browser, so there is no extra software to download or install. CS101 also provides a general background on computers today: what is a computer, what is hardware, what is software, what is the internet. No previous experience is required other than the ability to use a web browser.

The guild I play with.

http://www.the-unnamed.com/home

European Championships

 Real Sports:

 

My Feedback on BWE2

Guardian In WvWvW :

Its survivable, it has good utility –Its useful to have Guardian in group – sometimes it helps a lot.
However there are issues.
Solutions:
Shorten cool downs on shields, walls and dome abilities. They are quite useful, but they are quite short, and on long cool downs.
Convert Wall of Reflection to a dome, to make it useful in gate sieges.

Guardian Weapons:

Mace – Shorten the casting on protector’s strike
Sceptre - 1200 range is needed
Shield - Now shields armour is too low, compared to overall armour
Staff – Make the Staff’s Line of Warding absorb projectiles. Or lower the cool down and the duration, making it an ability you can use more frequently but remain balanced.
Rework the staff a bit.
Increase the speed of orb of light.
Another suggestion for the Staff – Make the staff more like the trident in general.

Symbols:

Guardians really need symbols that can “move”. Maybe bound to a Guardian like an aura. The fact that the boons are applied over time is making them considerably weaker to comparable buffs from other classes. Symbols are poor for most situations. They are placed on the ground at your location and give little in terms of benefits unless you are inside of them, which means that you must stay in an area little bigger than your character to benefit from the symbol. 

Health:

This is too low for a class that will be focused a lot, Guardians are tied with the lowest base health in the game

Mobility:

Signet of Judgement 240 range – Way too small -> Radius of 450
Symbols 120 range – Completely Ridiculous -> Radius of 450
Protectors Strike(Mace) 130 range – Completely Ridiculous -> Radius of 300
Sanctuary 120 Range – A bit too small for a long cool down -> Radius of 200

This will make the above abilities useful and still call for the Guardian to be mobile in order to maximize his usefulness.

Traits:

The honour tree traits are poorly distributed, the shout options should be available in a lower tier.
Signet of Mercy – Make Signet of Mercy heal more than one ally or lower the cool down.
The trait that gives allies 30 toughness does not stack from multiple guardians, it should.

Downed:

Downed State needs to be changed for the next BWE, its very poor.

BWE2 Guardian Footage

PVP - The Crux, Choice

I have been reading the Guild wars 2 forums and I notice a common issue accross multiple threads.

Complaints I have read:

I can not queue with friends.
I have to do the tutorial every time i create a character for pvp.
I have to go into the mists to queue for pvp rather than press a button like GW2.

The responses have been less than helpful. Claiming that they are not large issues. sure they don't take time but they do however remove player choice.

It is a common theme in MMO, developers restrict choice to make things easier for themselves or so content they have an emotional connection to is not bypassed.

My solution:

Give the players the chance to choose if they want to do something.

Choose solo or grouped queuing.

Be able to Queue from mists or from the interface.

Be able to repeat or skip the tutorial.

My main critics m of the new trait system is based on this. The old system gave me more freedom. it was nerfed to suit developers inability to balance. Bring back choice.

Give you customer choice and freedom.

PvP Tournaments Guild Wars 2

• Introduction:
  • If you want to play as a team with your friends, then tournaments are a great way to do that!!! Down the road we’ll have multiple types of tournaments with varying levels of rewards, but this weekend we’re showing our Free Quick Tournaments!!!
• Maps:
  • All tournament games this weekend will be on Forest of Niflhel. Down the road, there will be more variety for maps, but for the weekend, this will be it!
• How to join a tournament:
  • ONE MEMBER of your team should talk to the “Tournament Master” npc in the Heart of the Mists (PvP Lobby). This will start the process of making your roster!
  • Select Quick Tournament (Free) and hit “Create Roster”. Only one team member needs to do this! ?
  • The roster leader can then add friends, party members, or people in the PvP Lobby to the roster! Other members of the roster must accept the roster invite in order to join the roster. All roster members can invite additional members once they have joined.
  • Once your roster is ready (5 players total), the roster leader can press “submit” to submit your roster for the tournament.
  • Wait for your tournament to start. Once your roster is submitted for a tournament you will have a new “Tournament” icon in the top left hand corner of your screen.
  • You can mouse over this icon to see the current state of the tournament (waiting to submit roster, the number of teams submitted for the tournament, etc). We will add more info to this icon after the beta weekend!
  • Each tournament will be 8 teams and 3 rounds. If you lose you are out, but you can talk to the Tournament Master to join another tournament. If you win, you move on to the next round, until a victor is decided!
  • You will return to the lobby after each round of the tournament. If you lose, you can join a new tournament. If you win, you will be alerted when the next round begins!
  • Rewards are distributed based on performance once a tournament is complete. You will not receive rewards until the entire tournament is finished.
  • Once the tournament is ready to being, or a new round starts, you will be prompted to join. You can go immediately, or you can finish what you were doing.
  • Both teams can start a match early by making sure all 5 players from each team have checked “ready”. The game will start automatically after a certain amount of time if this does not happen, in order to keep all tournament games on the same time schedule.
• Tournament rewards:
  • 1st place – 1 Gold Chest, 300 glory, 300 rank points
  • 2nd place – 1 Silver Chest, 200 glory, 200 rank
  • 3rd place – 1 Copper Chest, 100 glory, 100 rank points
  • 4th place – 1 Copper Chest, 100 glory, 100 rank points
  • 5th place – TRY AGAIN! ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!
  • 6th place – YOU CAN DO IT!!!
  • 7th place – KEEP AT IT, YOU ARE JAWESOME!
  • 8th place – I BELIEVE IN YOU, NOTHING CAN STOP YOU!!!!!

Guild Wars 2 Structured PVP

PvP Combat Basics:

• Buying new gear
  • You can buy all the basic weapon types available to your profession for free. You can try weapon combos by getting items from the vendors and equipping them while you are out of combat. You can change the look of your items by getting chests, which contain aesthetic variations on all the basic weapons. All weapons can be augmented with sigils, which you can get from the weapons vendor in the PvP lobby.
  • Rings and accessories have been removed. We are ONLY USING THE AMULETS NOW IN PvP, so once you get an amulet, that’s all you need!
• Conquest
  • The first team to 500 wins. Make sure that you’re trying to fight inside of the capture points to maintain control. You can also “bait” your opponents to fight in the open, and try to get them to fight you in areas of the map that help your team, but hurt your opponents. Scoring for secondaries.
• Maps
  • Explain Siege and Forest secondary mechanics.
• Stomping
  • Learn when to stomp! If an enemy is down, they can get up on their own if you leave them. Be sure to stomp an enemy when you have the chance, or their allies might revive them! Stomping can also rally allies if they are downed when you stomp your foe, and have done damage to that target!
• Revive
  • This is the other side of the downed experience. If an ally is down, try to revive them as soon as you can so they can get back in the fight. But only do so when it’s safe! If you’re being attacked, defend yourself, defeat your enemies, and then try to rally your allies when you’re able.
• Healing
  • Be careful when using your heal! It can get you out of a bad situation, but once you use it, the recharge will keep you from using it for a while. Use your heal wisely!
• Dodging
  • Dodging is available any time you have at least HALF of your endurance bar! When you dodge, you evade any incoming attacks/projectiles, so try to time y our dodges when you see large AOE’s coming, or powerful enemy attacks!
• Melee vs ranged
  • Melee, on average, does more damage than ranged attacks, but range obviously has the advantage if it can keep melee attackers at distance. This is where conditions, blocking, and good use of dodging come in! Let’s break down a simplified version of how this works in game:
    • As the melee player:
      • You want to be sure to get into melee so that you can dish out the pain on your opponent. Then you want to use snares/immobilizes/knockdowns to keep your target close. It’s also a good idea to carry a ranged weapon as your second weapon set so you can finish off targets at range!
      • Example: Let’s use Sword/Shield warrior as an example. You know your opponent wants to snare you or keep you at range. You can dodge towards your opponent, use Savage Leap, and then dodge again. This will give you an evasion, a movement, and then another evasion. Once you’re close to your opponent you can use your Shield Bash to stun your target, and then use Hamstring to keep them in melee. Most opponents will try to “flail” and use any knockback or snare they have available, so you can predict this, and use your Shield Block to prevent these skills from hitting you.
    • As the ranged player:
      • You need to find a good balance of keeping your opponent at range while also dishing out the damage. If you just do one or the other, you may lose the fight. If you see an opponent doding towards you, DO not fire your snares/knockbacks. Save them until you know they will land. If you see them getting too close, don’t forget that you can use your own dodge to reset the range of the fight. Try to use your dodges and snare skills to keep the fight at a distance.
      • Example: Let’s use a Longbow Ranger as our example of a ranged class. If you see someone coming to attack you, try to get them to run through a Barrage on the way in, which Cripples. You will need to use skills 1, 2, and 3 for damage, and your goal here is to get them to use their heal. You can use Point Blank shot in a few different ways in this matchup, depending on what you need. You can open with it to keep your opponent at range, and combo it with Barrage to make sure your Cripple lands. You can also save it as a “oh crap!” button in case your opponent is pressuring you too hard. Lastly, you can damage your opponent and then watch for them to heal, and interrupt the heal with your Point Blank shot. In addition to all of this, you need to use your dodges carefully. Sometimes you may want to use them at the start of a fight to maintain distance, or you may need to use them mid-fight to get away from your opponent.

Classes:

All PvP professions have a default template they use. Now I’ll walk you through each of these templates and how they work! Remember that you can change these templates as you see fit, so try new things, explore new builds, and most of all, have fun!

Warrior

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Axe/Axe and Rifle
• Healing skill: Healing Surge
• Utilities:
  • Stomp
  • Endure Pain
  • Signet of Might
• Elite: Rampage

Axe/axe will allow you to quickly build adrenaline and spike targets with Eviscerate. If your opponent is too far away, don’t be afraid to switch over to rifle to finish them off at range! Stomp is a great all around skill (you can use it to protect yourself, to interrupt enemies trying to stomp allies, etc). Save your Endure Pain until you need it – it can save you, but it has a long recharge. Activate your Signet of Might when you need a big spike in damage.

Guardian

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Mace/Shield and Staff
• Healing skill: Healing breeze
• Utilities:
  • Stand Your Ground
  • Merciful Intervention
  • Bow of truth
• Elite: Sanctuary

Mace and shield allow for a LOT of defense if you’re being targeted. Use your Staff when you have allies around, as it works well as a support weapon. “Stand Your Ground!” is great for stopping enemy control effects against you and your allies. Bow of Truth can keep conditions off of you and allies, and don’t be afraid to activate your Virtues (F skills) skills depending on the situation. Proper use of “Merciful Intervention” can turn many battles, and this, combined with your Valors, makes this a great support build.

Ranger

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Longbow and Greatsword
• Healing skill: Heal as One
• Utilities:
  • Signet of the Hunt
  • Spike Trap
  • Sharpening Stone
• Elite: Rampage as One

The default template for the Ranger allows you to play a very balanced style – you can handle yourself in melee and at range. Use your Greatsword if the enemy gets too close, and swap to Longbow once you can establish range between you and your target. Sharpening Stones and Spike Trap will both give you some more condition pressure from your utility skills, and Signet of the Hunt lets your pet add a lot of damage to a spike.

Engineer

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Rifle
• Healing skill: Healing Turret
• Utilities:
  • Rifle Turret
  • Rocket Turret
  • Tool Kit
• Elite: Supply Crate

This build allows the Engineer to shine as a “holding” class. You’re able to use your turrets to add damage to any fight, but you have to keep your enemy close to them in order for them to be effective. Tool Kit compliments the turrets and allows for more control. Your Rifle also has great control skills on it. All of this (combined with Supply Crate as your elite) adds up to a build that allows the Engineer to hold an area against multiple foes until allies can arrive to help.

Thief

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Pistol/Pistol and Dagger/Dagger
• Healing skill: Hide in Shadows
• Utilities:
  • Spider Venom
  • Signet of Shadows
  • Haste
• Elite: Basilisk Venom

Dual Pistols and dual Daggers provide the Thief with a lot of versatility. And that’s exactly what this Thief build wants – the versatility to pounce on targets of opportunity. Spider Venom is a great way to shut down an opponent’s heal skill – when they go to heal themselves, they will receive less healing if poisoned. Basilisk Venom can be used in many ways, to interrupt a heal, to prevent the revival of a teammate and to keep an opponent in place. Signet of Shadows can be used to stop a foe so you can retreat, or it can be used to stop a foe trying to flee. If you find yourself stunned, use your stun breaker – Haste. It also allows you to attack faster (to make sure you land your poisons at the key time) and speeds up how fast you revive allies and stomp foes.

Elementalist

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Staff
• Healing skill: Glyph of Elemental Harmony
• Utilities:
  • Signet of Fire
  • Arcane Power
  • Mist Form
• Elite: Tornado

As an Elementalist using a Staff, you’ll be able to do a little bit of everything, but you’ll have to use your attunements well to fit the situation. Signet of Fire and Arcane Power will increase your damage output and Mist Form functions as one of the best escape skills in the game (it’s also a stun breaker!). You won’t be able to stand up to too much damage, so be sure to use your control skills to keep enemies away from you. If your opponents leave you alone, you’ll be able to cause considerable area damage in fire attunement, but you’ll be vulnerable while doing so.

Mesmer

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Scepter/Torch
• Healing skill: Ether Feast
• Utilities:
  • Illusion of Life
  • Null Field
  • Veil of Invisibility
• Elite: Moa Morph

Tricks, tricks and tricks. That’s what you’re all about as a Mesmer. You don’t want to stand toe-to-toe with other classes if you can help it, but you can punish your opponents for not paying attention. Illusion of Life allows you to revive allies for a short time if they’re downed – just when your enemy thinks they’ve taken an ally down, plant some doubt in their mind! Null Field is a versatile skill that can rip down pesky boons, or keep conditions off allies. If you allies need to get away from enemies, or if you want to plan a surprise attack, you can use Veil of Invisibility to turn the odds in your favor. The ace up your sleeve is Moa Morph. You can use it to shut an enemy down so you can finish them in a weakened form, or you can use it to greatly hinder an enemy while you retreat to a safer position.

Necromancer

Starting loadout:

• Weapons: Axe/Warhorn
• Healing skill: Blood Fiend
• Utilities:
  • Spectral Armor
  • Poison Cloud
  • Bone Fiend
• Elite: Plague

For a caster, you’ll feel pretty durable as a Necromancer if you use your Death Shroud well. If your Death Shroud is low, be careful and don’t get in over your head, but when it’s full, try to draw as much attention as you can – you have extra life that you need to dispose of! The Axe/Warhorn combo will allow you to have a lot of physical damage, as well as some utility from your Warhorn skills. Spectral Armor will allow you to deal with being spiked. Poison Cloud is a great way to deny space to enemies – if they stay in it, they’ll be poisoned, and all their heals will be decreased – helping you to win the attrition battle. Your fiends give you some added damage, and don’t forget to sacrifice them when it suits your needs.

Desolation Server Rated - Undefeated in WvW

The ArenaNet Blog has a table of EU Servers from the last beta.

EU World	Wins	Losses
Augury Rock	6	0
Fort Ranik	6	0
Desolation	6	0
Gandara	4	2
Far Shiverpeaks	4	2
Whiteside Ridge	4	2
Jade Sea	4	2
Riverside	3	3
Ring of Fire	3	3
Ruins of Surmia	3	3
Abaddon’s Mouth	3	3
Istan	3	3
Underworld	3	3
Blacktide	3	3
Kodash	3	3
Elona Reach	3	3
Vabbi	3	3
Fissure of Woe	2	4
Magus Falls	2	4
Sharp’s Corner	2	4
Kodunur	1	5
Kourna	1	5
Petrified Forest	0	6
Aurora Glade	0	6

Lets keep it that way.


They use a version of the Glicko system.

The Glicko rating system and Glicko-2 rating system are methods for assessing a player's strength in games of skill, such as chess and go. It was invented by Mark Glickman as an improvement of the Elo rating system, and initially intended for the primary use as a chess rating system. Glickman's principal contribution to measurement is "ratings reliability", called RD, for ratings deviation.

A higher Glicko rating implies more skill playing chess.

Both Glicko and Glicko-2 rating systems are under public domain and found implemented on game servers online (like Free Internet Chess Server, Chess.com and SchemingMind). The formulas used for the systems can be found on the Glicko website.

The RD measures the accuracy of a player's rating. For example, a player with a rating of 1500 and an RD of 50 has a real strength between 1400 and 1600 with 95% confidence. Twice the RD is added and subtracted from their rating to calculate this range. After a game, the amount the rating changes depends on the RD: the change is smaller when the player's RD is low (since their rating is already considered accurate), and also when their opponent's RD is high (since the opponent's true rating is not well known, so little information is being gained). The RD itself decreases after playing a game, but it will increase slowly over time of inactivity.

The Glicko-2 rating system improves upon the Glicko rating system and further introduces the rating volatility σ. A very slightly modified version of the Glicko-2 rating system is implemented by the Australian Chess Federation.

RIP Ray Bradbury

Latest Guild Wars 2 interview material

Some highlights from reddit.

P5. How come Guardians are the only Profession that are limited in range abilities? Everyone else has true-ranged skills, but Guardians have skills that can't go up inclines/ledges (they don't travel through the air, but on the ground)!
I actually updated those skills since the last BWE. Give scpeter a try I tried to make this the ranged option, particularly in WvW for Guardian.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon

PVP1. Are there any plans on making a PvP type that can transit into an eSport?
Please give our automatic tournaments a try this weekend. This is our first step towards e-sport. :)
PVP2. It's been previously stated that spectator-mode for PvP won't be available until sometime after launch, any idea about an ETA when we can expect it?
It will be based on how simple it is to add and how requested it is. :)
PVP3. Can we, or are you planning on implementing - a way for players to duel each other?
We intend to have dueling post release, but when will depend on how demanded it is and how easy it is for us to get it into the game. ECHO!

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon

There were a number of problems with the old system that we felt required a change. We believe this new system keeps the spirit of the old system, while actually working better in the long run. Here are the problems we believe this change solve:
1) Best builds were all 30,10,10,10,10. There was always a super strong trait in every line which made each player only put 10 points into that trait line and still gain a very powerful benefit. In the new system this will still be true, but it will be tempered because people will be giving up going 20 or 30 points into multiple lines. This has allowed us to shift traits around so that more of them get play at different levels, meaning they don’t all have to compete against each other at tier 1.
2) This system is so much easier to balance. It is not reasonable to make 12 equally useful traits, particularly given how some of them had niche effects. Making 12 equal traits is harder, takes longer and ultimately leads to some traits seeing a lot less use. Finally an important point is that balance creates more choice as well because unbalanced and bad builds aren’t really options. The old system created a very small subset of über-builds which stomped out a lot of the good builds along with the bad ones.
3) Opportunity Costs are what make interesting choices. Trait tiers allow us to split the traits. 6 allowed in slot 1, 10 (6 tier 1 and 4 tier 2) allowed in slot 2, and 12(6 tier 1, 4 tier 2 and 2 tier 3) allowed in slot 3. The final 2 tier 3 traits are "elite"-like, in the sense that you can only ever have one of them on your build at once. If I'm making a damage warrior I am going to put 30 points into strength, same as every other big damage warrior, but now those characters are all guaranteed to be split at least in half forcing you to not take one of the two exclusive final traits. Before, anytime a character went 30 points in a line they were taking the same 3 (maybe 3 out of 4) traits.
4) Option Shock. New players at level 20 were clicking on a trait line for the first time and seeing 12 options which was very overwhelming. This gives them a bit of a reprieve to pick between a smaller number of traits at first and then learn more as they have played their character more.
5) Putting 30 points into a line left you with a climax of picking the third most interesting trait which did not feel good. Players want to feel like that decision to go 30 is a big decision and that when they make it they get to make a big decision that simply could not happen in the old system. Now when you commit to 30 points you are rewarded with an important choice as well as options that you didn't previously have.
Finally, these are not the final balance numbers or often even the final traits/functionality and we will be iterating on this system as we move towards release. I know for certain there are already a number of changes I wish I could have made before this weekend, but they will have to wait until next time. If you had a really fun build before this change and it is lost now, post it in our beta forums and we can figure out how to make it viable. The intention here was not to remove fun, good builds but to create more viable builds that will increase the variety of characters in the game. 

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon

The gap between T1, T2, and T3 should be noticeable but not game breaking. There are plenty of builds that I currently run that do not use T3 traits despite going 30 points in a specific line.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon 

The plan for guild cap is that guilds will be able to gain influence to up their cap. How this will work is not exactly determined yet, but the current limit of 100 is lower than the maximum a guild will be able to achieve.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon 

We intend to support spectator mode at some point, but right now we are focused on core features to get the game into your hands so that you as the players can help us determine the course of future updates.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon 

In this BWE we are introducing tournmaments which will allow you to PvP with friends. We have also made some improvements to the hot join games allowing you to follow friends into games via a chat link and will continue to improve these now and after release as well.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon 

Tournaments, which are in this BWE, are the equivilent of GvG in GW2. Players will be able to form teams and enter the most basic form of tournaments this weekend. More tournament support is incoming.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon  

Oh yeah we fixed the UI so you can see all traits in a line before spending points! :)

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon  

This was a bug and should now be working as intended. Some of the problems may stil exists but it is our intention that WvW is on equivilent footing reward wise in every way to PvE. 

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon  

The plan for guild cap is that guilds will be able to gain influence to up their cap. How this will work is not exactly determined yet, but the current limit of 100 is lower than the maximum a guild will be able to achieve.

Jon Peters - Systems Designer - Jon  

Guardian changes in Beta Weekend two

Beta Weekend Event 2 will begin on Friday, June 8^th, at noon PDT (GMT-7) and will run until Sunday, June 10^th, at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).

I have heard that a new, tiered trait system will be in place for this beta event. How much it will affect us and our chosen builds remains to be seen, but it will certainly place additional restrictions upon how we’re able to customize our Guardians.

I hope this isnt the case, I like the multiplicity of options?

Asura still not playable. BOO.

Some Tuffmudas