Fresh Guild Wars announced  
 
GDC 2007 New add-on and complete new game coming your way  
By Theo Valich in San Francisco: lundi 05 mars 2007, 06:36
NCSOFT HAS ANNOUNCED t he development and release dates for regular annual expansion of Guild Wars universe, and not too surprisingly, that this expansion will be the last throw of the dice before its successor appears on the market.  
The add-on will be known as Eye of the North, and stands to be released in Q3 of 2007.  The price of the add-on is not known at the time of annoucement, but it will be less than already present campaigns. In order to play the game, gamers must own at least one of the already released GW campaigns, like Nightfall, Factions or Prophecies.  
Eye of the North brings a conclusion what happened in Tyria after Guild Wars: Prophecies ended, and as such - is 100% oriented towards games with characters of maximum level. We know GW gamers want the numbers, so here they are: 18 new multi-level dungeons, 40 new armour sets, 10 new Heroes and massive 150 new skills, out of which 50 belong only to PvE (Player versus Enviroment).
 
 
Enter the end of Guild Wars 1 and beginning of Guild Wars 2...
On the other hand, there are Guild Wars 2. This is a full sequel and will be released in 2009-10 timeframe, with a public beta being released sometime next year. This game will be set several hundred years after GW: Prophecies and Eye of the North, but the main drool factor will be zone-wide events (read, open war in DaoC and Alterac Valley style), combined with refined control system, oriented for action and ease of use. Playable races include Humans, Charr, Norns, Asurians and Sylvarians. Level cap is set, but it is not known at the time, while characters will now progress through the game in a more sensitive way.  
The graphics engine will be brought up to date with latest graphics developments in 2009-10, so you can expect a game engine which will offer unrivalled graphics features in world of MMOs.  
NCSoft's roadmap now should be pretty clear, as far as GW world is concerned: GW1 add-on, GW2 public beta, GW2 final. Next 18 months will be very busy for these guys.

Just a quick word to let you know that we haven't made any official announcements about Guild Wars in, oh, a couple of months. Sure, there's a little *ahem* info circulating this week. But you guys know the drill: Until we say it, it's not official. I can tell you that some of what you've read is right, some of it is wrong, and quite a bit of it is misleading. Unfortunately, we can't offer a fact check quite yet.
 
The good news is that the top game publications in Europe and the U.S. are preparing feature articles with major Guild Wars news -- I wasn't joking when I said a few days ago that I think it'll knock your socks off. In the U.S., PC Gamer will begin delivery of the May issue to subscribers on March 15, and it will be on newsstands on April 3. European magazines, including Joystick in France, PC Zone in the U.K., PC GamePlay in Benelux, Games Machine in Italy, and PC Gamer in Germany, will reach subscribers and newsstands before the end of March.
 
Knowing you guys, no matter where you're located, you'll be sharing the info from your regional magazines, and that's great. I want to make sure that I let you know, this isn't some small feature -- I would boldly say that any Guild Wars player would want to buy one of these magazines, subscriber or not! In part this is because they'll offer great articles with a lot of cool info. In part it's because the magazines will give you the chance to adopt your very own exclusive new miniature. Check our website for more info tomorrow!

Hello,
It's time for another official Dev Update, straight from the Guild Wars Design Team. Hooray! This week, we'll be making some changes, including a modest number of skill balances and an alteration to Hero Battles. So here's the latest news, with an outline of the upcoming changes and a note about the why's and wherefore's of each. So here we go...
Upon reviewing the first half of the Celestial Tournament, we’ve decided to balance some skills to improve the competitive environment. These changes will take effect after 12:01 PM PST on Wednesday, March 7 to allow completion of Round 4 of the tournament.
This permanent update addresses critical balance issues within the tournament and is not a temporary weekend implementation. We are still working on a larger play balance review in preparation for next weekend’s event.
Ritualist
The following skills have changed:
* Gaze from Beyond: increased casting time to 2 seconds.
* Spirit Burn: increased recharge time to 8 seconds.
* Lamentation: increased casting time to 1 second; reduced damage to 15..75.
When these skills were first implemented, they required the caster to be very close to a Spirit in order to use them effectively. We recently changed all such skills to work at a much greater distance, though they became too powerful. Our intention is for these skills to remain effective but not be out of scope with other damage-dealing options.
Necromancer
The following skill has changed:
* Discord: increased casting time to 2 seconds.
We have been pleased to see Discord useful in a variety of PvP and RP situations, but its rate of sustained damage output is excessive. Increasing the casting time lowers the damage output to a reasonable amount while giving opponents an opportunity to use general purpose counters such as interruption and Condition/Hex removal.
Assassin
The following skills have changed:
* Shadow Prison: increased Energy cost to 10.
* Blades of Steel: decreased maximum damage bonus to 60.
Shadow Prison was simply too powerful for its cost, thus the increase to its Energy cost. The damage from Blades of Steel was out of scale with that of other dual-attack skills. We hope that these skill changes will encourage build diversity for Assassins and Warrior/Assassins, and we believe both of these skills will remain viable but not superior to other options.
Mesmer
The following skill has changed:
* Wastrel’s Demise: increased casting time to 1 second.
With a ¼ second casting time, this skill was too fast and powerful as a source of follow-up damage.
Hero Battles
We’re taking this opportunity to make a change to Hero Battles. Currently, very defensive builds are capable of holding the center shrine, needlessly slowing down games and homogenizing strategies. As a result, we’ve made the following change:
* Capturing and holding any or all shrines on the map now contributes to your morale. The center shrine now grants twice the amount of positive “pip” arrows on the morale meter than other capture points. The secondary benefits associated with these shrines will remain unchanged.
We feel this change will impact movement, tactics, and build creation in a positive manner and will generally make battles more competitive and interesting. With the upcoming Hero Battles ladder on the horizon, we felt a need to improve this format before the ladder is put into place. We will continue to monitor this venue and adjust this mechanic as needed.
 
So that's it! As I mentioned, this update will be streamed into Guild Wars sometime tomorrow afternoon. As always, your thoughts are welcome, and we invite your feedback on these changes after you've had a chance to try them out and see how they function in the game.