Hello, everyone,

I wanted to give you another of our Dev Team updates about all sorts of matters, both big and small.

First, I'd like to share some upcoming changes to the game:

• A new Challenge Missions Ladder is opening today (Tuesday). There will be a news post about this in a few hours, but we think you'll enjoy the special recognition and the means to see who's the best of the best on these missions.
• Up to 20 players per town will be able to show off their miniatures in town. I frankly didn't see this one coming, and I know it'll be really fun to be able to take your miniature for a walk through Ascalon City or Droknar's Forge. And can you say "Miniature Racing," anyone?
• You can now log out to the character selection screen, instead of the log-in screen. No need to enter a password every time you change characters. (I know a few people are going to cheer for the added convenience of this change. )
• Several changes have been made to the Skills and Attributes panel to offer you more customization options. Even little things like being able to swap the order of the skills in your skill bar will make things a bit easier, and there are several other functionality improvements beyond that.
• Two hero quests have been updated, Gain Olias and Gain Zenmai. Now, if you've done these quests, you'll not be able to redo them, but all character who have not completed these quests will find them new and improved.
• * Cantha New Year's Event ? Details have already been posted, of course, but there has been a change that doubled the reward in the Roller Beetle Arena. Now, rather than the top 50 players getting a special prize in the rollerbeetle racing events, the top 100 will receive prizes

Now, secondly, I have a message from the Design Team about changes to the team. Here's what they have to say:

After reviewing the play balance changes last week and looking over how players responded both in game and in forums, we?ve made a few adjustments:

• We?ve reduced the effectiveness of some Paragon defensive skills. In conjunction with the Paragon?s high armor, these skills were encouraging degenerate team builds.
• We?ve reduced the effectiveness of Paragon skills that inflict Deep Wound. Outside of these skills, we have not decreased the Paragon?s damage output.
• We?ve reduced the effectiveness of the Dervish form Avatar of Grenth. Even with our previous changes, this skill was overpowered compared to other Dervish elite skills and other Enchantment removal options.

We know that not everyone will agree with every change that we make, and more importantly, we know that every change we make risks hurting character builds that players enjoy using. Even so, it has become clear that the Guild Wars community as a whole has voiced support for us making changes more often than we have in the past and for having a game that supports diversity and encourages creative, active and intelligent play. With that in mind, we are beginning our next round of internal testing. Some of the things we?ll be looking at include:

• Paragon diversity and balance. Once we?ve had more time to see the most recent changes in effect, we?ll see if further changes are needed.
• Good PvE options for Mesmers.
• Bow skills for rangers.
• Ranger pet adjustments. We're pleased to say we have a rudimentary version of pet controls up-and-running on our test servers. We?re looking forward getting those into the live game as soon as we?ve examined all of the play balance issues this might introduce.

Depending on how things go, some or all of these might receive changes in the next play balance update. Let us know if there are other issues you?d like us to focus on in the next few months. We won?t always be able to make all the changes you ask for, but we always look into the suggestions and complaints we see on fan forums.

So, there's some news and... some more news! Hope you find this of interest, and naturally your comments and questions are more than welcome!

Some more nice improvements! I really like the idea of being able to swap characters without going through the whole logging in and out routine. It should be interesting to see the mini pets in towns - especially to see some of the rarer ones.

Wait, was there something wrong with these quests?

Finally we can change our characters without re-typing our passwords!

Indeed, we've all been waiting for this one for a while
Whoo! These points sound interesting .. can't wait to see what changes you make!

The pet controls sound particularly interesting .. can you give us a little more info on them? Pretty Please?

If I had to guess, I'd imagine waypoint flags similar to heros. We'll see.

As for the updates, I'm mostly indifferent. Sorry for anybody who liked to play a paragon. I'm still waiting some sort of decent in-game auction system (No, the trade tab on the party search isn't good enough). Removal of PvP players restricting PvE areas would be nice too. I don't bloody care about Europe winning, let me go to the places I want to when I want to! I doubt I'll ever see either of these though, so GW is going on the back-burner for a while.

Wow finally I don't have to log out I like that feature!

It was always silly that you couldn't 'show off' your miniatures that have no other purpose except to people you went exploring with.

And today's update that turned off the miniatures sound effects was QUITE welcome.

I'd rather just be able to pull up another characters inventory (maybe through a storage agent) and be able to swap things directly instead of having to use storage (which is tiny and full of stuff that should be easily mobile like keys) to move items between characters.

What's new here? Degenerate (FotM) team builds are par for the course, this is directly due to the limitation of skills you can carry at a time, making it practically impossible to have a balanced/flexible build. Even if you go with the old 'skill ring' metaphor, its a bit silly that I can swap weapon sets in a fraction of a second, but can't swap rings?

I never knew that Mesmers didn't have good PvE options.

Lets start with the same thing that people have been asking for since before day 1, some sort of Auction House, or at least have trader NPC's that trade anything and everything (without the massive 'profit' that they make today) available in the game.

Agreed with both points. It would also be nice to see items people have recently sold to the merchant too .. in case I sell the wrong thing, or be able to pick up something on the cheap that someone was ditching.

I really don't understand why there's no auction house yet

That one has always confused me too. I've seen requests for it dating back to only a few weeks after chapter 1's release.

If the auction house is too difficult programatically or expensive in server load, Amaranth's call for NPCs to cover all of the bases could be a great alternative if implimented well. Since the material/rune/dye trader model is already in place, I wouldn't think it would be too hard to extend this to weapon mods as well.

As for the weapon skins, the weaponsmiths in various areas could offer a handfull of different choices to reflect their area (Gothic swords in Zu Heltzer, Golden Pheonix blades in Divine Path, etc). They could be inscribable to allow the buyer some room customize. Prices, both in gold and materials, could also be varied, from inexpensive for mundane items to a few ectos and shards for chaos axes and the like.

One feature I would enjoy is a Guild Vault. This is how it would work:

• Guilds purchase a guild vault and/or additional storage space for it for massive fees (much the way they purchase vendors).
  
• Any guild member can donate an item to the vault. Once the item is donated it permanently becomes property of the guild (as in the donating party loses all personal claims to it). However, the donating player's name is inscribed on the item (for example, if I donated Brohn's Holy Rod, its description would be Brohn's Holy Rod [donated by Ronduwil the Red]) just for bragging rights.
  
• Any guild member can check an item out of the vault, but there are some strings (good and bad) attached to it:
  
  1. The item cannot be dropped, sold, salvaged, stored or traded. There are only two valid locations for it: back in the vault and the inventory of the player who checked it out.
     
  2. As the last statement implies, the item can be checked back into the vault by going back to the guildhall and putting it back.
     
  3. Whenever a player logs out, any guild items they were holding automatically go back to the vault.
     
  4. Guild items get the "customized" bonus when they are used.
• The guild leader and/or officers may purge items from the vault at their discretion. Purged items go away forever. This is to prevent people from maliciously filling the vault with crappy items.
  

I don't think this would be very hard to implement, and it would help emphasize the "Guild" in Guild Wars.

I am also puzzled by the "good PvE options for Mesmers" remark. The Energy Surge nerf probably hurt a bit, but my experience with Mesmers is that they are one of the most powerful classes there is (particularly in the late game).

The auction house would be nice, but I can see how it would be difficult to implement. How long would an auction stay good for? How many items can each player auction at a time? How long would it take the game to search for the item you wanted? There are serious concerns with scalability involved. They are not insurmountable, but I would prefer for the emphasis to stay on gameplay rather than on an online vending system. If the choice was between hosting an auction and hosting more alliance battles, I'd take the latter.