Pumping Irony

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

Most of us are anxiously awaiting news of Guild Wars 2, which has been pushed back to sometime this millennium. But wait! Arena.net still has a small team dedicated to Guild Wars and they slowly push out new goodies. This latest update was a huge deal for the game’s 4th anniversary. Take a look!

Storage upgrades are awesome! Don’t forget to get your free storage pane before May 31st! In addition to four new storage panes available for $9.99 each from either the in-game store or the NCsoft store, they’ve added another bag slot to our characters. The new bag is called an “equipment pack.” The smallest one is a 5 slot bag and costs either 2.5 platinum or 100 gold and 1 Gold Zaishen coin. Characters can run Zaishen Challenge missions to collect coins for bigger equipment packs. The Large Equipment Pack is 20 slots and costs 100 gold and 15 Gold Zaishen coins.

The Hall of Monuments has been upgraded to be able to display achievements from both individual characters and account-wide!

A new zone called the Zaishen Menagerie has been added near the Battle Isles where players can store all their charmed animals! I never leveled my ranger, so I could be way off-base here, but I think the way it works is that rangers can charm, then level, an animal but if they charm a new animal they lose the first one permanently. This Zaishen Menagerie lets you drop off any charmed animal and they can roam around freely and if you want to switch to a different animal, now you can do it! The only real downside is that, unlike the Hall of Monuments where you can bring in other players to view your achievements, only your character and charmed animal can enter the Menagerie.

The Menagerie itself is a good-sized area with varied terrain, ranging from forests to beaches and even a volcanic tunnel. There are Master of Winds NPCs liberally placed who will cast Windborne Speed on you, giving a brief 33% increase to run speed.

Other services include a $9.99 purchasable pet unlock pack which unlocks all common pets. Prestige pets still must be earned legitimately! There are also some trainer NPCs which will unlock individual pets or pet evolution tiers in exchange for either Balthazar faction or gold and Zaishen coins.

Nicholas the Traveler, long thought lost in the Searing, has resurfaced! He’ll be traveling to random cities in each campaign setting, providing new content for those who manage to find him! This is a great way to provide “new content” simply by re-using the existing content for new rewards.

Finally, more transaction-based upgrades for the in-game and NCsoft store, such as character renaming and style changes. The character rename is a simple $14.99 transaction and it’s done. The style thing is a major change, though. This lets us mix and match styles from each campaign into a single character! Purchase Makeover Credits from the store, then visit the Stylist NPC to finalize the new style for your character. Two types are available: a normal Makeover Credit will let you change the appearance of one character, and the Extreme Makeover Credit will let you change the gender as well! Each is priced the same at $9.99.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Guild Wars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.