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Guild Wars 2 players get a chance to head into the Heart of Thorns this evening—that is, if they’ve already got a key to enter into the jungle expansion’s closed beta. The test consists of three two-hour sessions staggered throughout the day. Players who found a rare portal during last month’s Dry Top and Silverwastes events will be able to create a new beta character to test out a small portion of the new expansion.
“Participants will be able to use a revenant—or any of the existing eight professions—to play a small amount of expansion story content, followed by two beta versions of outposts and their corresponding adventures in part of the Verdant Brink map,” explains a news post on the Guild Wars 2 site. “An early, partially completed version of the day/night cycle meta-event experience from Verdant Brink will also be available.”
ArenaNet says they’ll be adding additional participants, picked from email addresses subscribed to the expansion’s newsletter.
Here are the times of the closed beta tests:
– 11:30 am – 1:30 pm PDT / 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm CEST / 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm BST
– 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm PDT / 12:30 am – 2:30 am CEST / 11:30 pm – 1:30 am BST
– 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm PDT / 4:30 am – 6:30 am CEST / 3:30 am – 5:30 am BST
For those without access, the test isn’t under any NDA restrictions. That means you can expect the beta to be streamed by players during each test window.
MMOs are finding a home on console, and Neverwinter is seeing success over on the Xbox.
The MMO world is currently in a bit of a lull, but Neverwinter is reporting quite a bit of success following its launch on Xbox One.
According to the official site, over 1.6 million players have downloaded the game, creating some 2.3 million characters, and slaying over 1 billion enemies. They even put together an infographic to show it all off.
A public beta for an all-new player vs. player (PvP) mode will soon be available to all Guild Wars 2 players in North America and Europe.
Called Stronghold, the mode takes place in the Battle of Champion’s Dusk map and allows teams to play as pirates and knights while working to overthrow the opposing team’s lord. NCSOFT and ArenaNet hope to introduce new strategy elements to the mode by including NPCs that can be hired (sounding somewhat like Heroes from Guild Wars 1’s Nightfall campaign) to help fight enemy resistance and giving players options and new “strategic opportunities” to keep each player engaged.
This public beta will be accessible through Guild Wars 2’s Unranked Arena. The developer notes that classic PvP mode Conquest will still be available through the Ranked Arena. ArenaNet invites those interested to visit their official website to learn more. But, to get started in Stronghold, you’ll need to head to the Heart of the Mists, which can be accessed through the main portal in Lion’s Arch or through the PvP panel icon located at the top of your screen. Once you’re ready, queue for an Unranked Arena match. You’ll see Battle of Champion’s Dusk as the featured map; vote for it, hit “Accept” when your queue pops, and enjoy the battle! Conquest matches can still be played in Ranked.
Stronghold will be included in Guild Wars 2’s upcoming expansion Heart of Thorns and the beta will be available for 24 hours and will take place on Tuesday, April 14.
Those who choose to participate may use the character currently tied to their account.
To celebrate this huge moment for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, ArenaNet will also be streaming live for 23 hours nonstop, from 1 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday to noon Pacific Time on Wednesday. The stream will feature some of your favorite Guild Wars 2 livestreamers and shoutcasters, as well as appearances by ArenaNet developers! (Well, all except me of course)
Today, they’re worth quite a bit less. The tokens are in-game items which can be purchased for $20 and exchanged for gold or game time, with their value in gold determined by the market. Blizzard said last month that it would set an initial value and then let it fluctuate based on supply and demand. And fluctuate it has, with the Token shedding a full quarter of its worth in gold in a single day.
At launch, a $20 Token was initially valued at 30,000 gold, and actually pushed beyond that in the first few hours after release. But then it started to go down, down, steadily down, and now, according to wowtoken.info, your $20 Token now equates to 22,405 gold, more than a quarter less than the starting price.
The slump is not entirely surprising. As VentureBeat points out, the great likelihood is that players rushed to buy Tokens as soon as they were launched, then dumped them on the auction house to turn around some quick gold. And it’s not as though 22k is an inconsequential sum, either.
The potentially interesting part is what happens next: If the gold value continues to fall, players could be tempted to forgo their $15 monthly subscription fees in favor of Tokens, tradeable for 30 days of game time, purchased with gold. Will Blizzard take action to stabilize the market? My guess is that they’ll eventually settle into a sub-30k stability, but given how the Diablo 3 real money auction house turned out, a small part of me wonders if maybe WoW Tokens could have unforeseen effects on the way the in-game economy is balanced.
For more info on the WoW token system, follow this link!
