Obey or Dismantle – Riddles To War

At the Game Developer’s Conference, two unusual fliers surfaced. One was for the White Mantle and the other was  for the Shining Blade. They had QR Codes which lead to the Guild Wars website. At first I dismissed this information. It was too ambiguous. However, more details have started to surface. Also, the presentation of these clues is deliberate. The Guild Wars community has been given a series of riddles. Is this just to build hype? Heh, probably… but perhaps there’s more to the mystery. By monitoring the clues, perhaps the community can better prepare for war. It seems that the White Mantle and Shining Blade will do battle.

One of the ways to prepare is to hit complete Prophecies (Chapter 1) or Eye of the North (Chapter 4) to see the new Shining Blade Camp. Heh, since TANK (my only Guild Wars character) was deleted and recreated as a Ranger, I have neither campaign completed. Will I complete Prophecies and explore the Talmark Wilderness?

What about you? Have you decided to revisit Guild Wars to check out the latest activity? Apparently, there’s a relationship brewing between Lieutenant Keiran Thackeray and Gwen. That’s cool. I’m not jealous. Even though I didn’t get around to finishing my “Lost In Ascalon” storyline, there was not supposed to be a love interest between Gwen and Photics.

If you’re still deciding if you want to get involved in the latest mystery, this is what got me interested…

  • http://www.guildwars.com/bladecamp/

It seems like a nice black & white image… but there’s something hidden in this artwork. With a digital imaging program like Photoshop, a bump in the saturation will reveal a hidden message. It looks like this…

To reveal the secret message... Photoshop > Image > Adjustments > Variations... and then bump the saturation until you see the red text.

The /warinkryta web address leads to a blurry image.  I tried a bunch of Photoshop tricks on it, but I didn’t see any clues. I even looked at the file in a text editor to see if there were any clues inside. It seems that the road to this mystery is intentionally blocked. I hit refresh on my browser and I noticed that the image was less blurry.

It's looks like a Mortal Kombat / Street Fighter versus screen. With the Orange color for the Mantle and Purple for the Shining Blade.

Is this enough to re-energize the community? I have a simple test for that. Who wants to join up with me and finish Prophecies? It’s been a long time since I’ve completed a PvE mission with another person. Usually it’s just the heroes, the henchmen and me! The five year anniversary is about three weeks away. I should be able to finish the rest of Prophecies in time. Heh… with lots of time to hit that F5 key… heh… refresh… yup… still a blurry image.