For those of us who are diving headfirst into Guild Wars 2 from other MMOs that don’t feature microtransaction/cash shops, the idea of such a shop in GW2 may still taste a little bitter on our tongues. We’ve all heard the horror stories of games drifting to unwanted pay-to-win territories, and we’re all hoping that ArenaNet avoids going anywhere near that path. Will the company succeed? I sure hope so. They’re doing some excellent things with their cash shop. Still, my eyes remain sharp to the changes being made to it. As a result, I’ve been tracking the shop’s differences between beta weekends.

Every beta weekend event has seen some pretty large changes to the in-game gem/cash shop. Since BWE2, it now sports a new name: Black Lion Trading Company. For those interested in tracking the changes made along with me, here are the changes made between BWE2 and BWE3.

One of the aspects of leveling in Guild Wars 2 that players are most looking forward to is the game’s dynamic event system. Let’s face it, questing in a static world gets pretty boring, and the promise of dynamic content– content that actually shifts, changes, and presents danger to us– seems like a breath of fresh air to us after years of plugging away at killing boars and wolves. A game world that actually comes to life based on the acts of players in the area? The ability to make a difference in this world? Sign me up.

The system sounds fantastic on paper, and has proven to be enjoyable in beta for most players who have taken part, but some remain skeptical. Why? Because we’ve heard the promise before. We’ve seen it in other games. Warhammer Online’s Public Quests are advertised as dynamic events, and so is a large portion of RIFT’s content. RIFT is an interesting comparison here, because RIFT’s dynamic content is one of its main focuses. RIFT is about, well, rifts. And huge, planar invasion forces. And zone events that can make an entire map gloomy until danger subsides. Despite all this, however, RIFT’s dynamic content is very different from Guild Wars 2′s. Let’s talk about how.

Guild Wars 2 has eight crafting disciplines to choose between, and players can have two. They can also have all three of the gathering disciplines, which thankfully aren’t tied to any of the crafting trades. Players can choose to become a jeweler as one of their crafting disciplines, which allows the player to craft jewelry– amulets, rings, and earrings, as well as upgraded gemstones to use in equipment. Both will be undoubtedly useful in GW2, and hey– every profession benefits from shiny things, right?

Mining and logging are the two gathering trades essential to the jeweler discipline. Logging may not seem useful on the surface, but one of the gems needed– amber– is found while chopping down logs. Gemstones are randomly found while mining and logging all types of gathering nodes, and the chances of finding them can be raised by using special gathering tools. The appropriate gathering tool must be equipped while gathering (luckily all three– mining pick, logging axe, and harvesting sickle– can be equipped at once), but they do run out as you use them. For long gathering sessions, keep a few stacks handy.

We got a chance to ask Guild Wars 2 Lead Designer, Eric Flannum, a few questions about the game ranging from World vs World, class balance, PVP vs. PVE progression and more. We’re very excited to share this with, especially on the same day that Arenanet has announced that the game’s launch is August 28, just two months from now!

GW2 Junkies: Guild Wars 2 has some amazing character models, ranging from gigantic norn to tiny asura. With any competitive MMO, players worry about hit boxes and how character models affect gameplay. Since a player can get hit by stray damage, how have you designed the hit boxes for all the varied sizes and shapes that GW2 has to offer—asura are short, norn are tall, charr are wide (and low to the ground when they are running), etc.?

Eric Flannum: Every player character in Guild Wars 2 has the exact same sized collision cylinder. For asura this means that the cylinder is larger than they are and for norn it means that it is smaller. Very early in the process of making the game we knew this was going to be the case, so the min and max sizes of our races are heavily influenced by this.

Last week we explored some of the flora and fauna of the Maguuma Jungle. We went over some of the monsters you’re likely to find there and how the Asura and Sylvari survive in such a harsh environment. Then, at the end of last week’s column I let out a bit of a teaser about what I’ll have going on the next few weeks; The orders of Tyria.

The orders are a design decision by ArenaNet that helps bring the races together to the common goal of defeating the elder dragons. Where the lower level story missions are almost exclusively race/background specific, the higher levels will be based off of the player’s choice of order (I say almost because I haven’t seen one, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there). This serves a dual-purpose design wise. This enables the developers to reduce the content needing to be written from 5 races and multiple backgrounds down to 3 orders and multiple backgrounds. Subtracting two might not seem like very much until you realize they aren’t additive; they’re multiplicative. The second purpose is to bring the players together regardless of race to help each other as the difficulty of the content ramps up. This will effectively increase the player density in the higher level areas where it will be more needed. The more players having epic battles at the fringes of civilization give the player a sense of epicness and character progression.

Never underestimate the influence of guilds in MMO’s. There’s a reason why many MMO developers hold summits and conferences to share information and solicit feedback from guild leaders. Being in a close knit guild helps to bring the multiplayer aspect of these games to the players. Guilds mean so many different things to different people, some people value the friendship of their guild mates, while others value the skill and competency, and others still value just having people who share common interests in their guild chat. Regardless of the reasoning, most people would agree that guilds help to foster community, as they give players a reason to come together, even if that reason is as simple as meaningful conversation.

Here are 5 reasons why I love the Guild System in Guild Wars 2. Keep reading to find out what they are!

Guild Wars 2 has all of the conventional classes like Warrior, Thief and Necromancer but it also has the best class ever, the Engineer. Every game has people swinging swords and casting fireballs, but what every fantasy game might not have is a gun toting, turret dropping, kill-it-with-fire badass. Welcome to Guild Wars 2 and it’s the Engineer. This class comes equipped with guns, rocket launchers, a mixture of alchemy and different gadgets up his sleeve that makes a Warcraft Gnome jealous.

What are the four big reasons to play an Engineer? Keep reading to find out what they are.

My name’s Devin M. (Xerelin). I’m a new writer on staff here at GuildWars2Junkies. I’ve been brought on board here to bring everyone a new weekly column called, “Discovering Tyria”. The idea behind it will be to go into detail about certain aspects of the game such as lore, the elder dragons, minigames and puzzles, and the three orders players can choose in the game. I’ll start off the new column this week with an introduction of myself and then move on to one of the lesser known areas in the game, the Maguuma Jungle.

There’s been a few things floating around the internet regarding an explorer’s flag. We’ve seen some datamining data on Curse’s database site (seen in the picture to the left). It appears that there are little meta games where players can put on their explorer’s hat and try to find the farthest point in the world and claim it as their own.

It seems that there is also an inclusion of in game ladders and rankings that you can see in game. This is something we haven’t even seen yet, but it appears we’ll also be playing GW2 for high scores! This is something recently seen in Rift, and we’re happy to see it coming for GW2 as well.

There have also been rumors of treasure maps as well. Keep your eyes out here at Guild Wars 2 Junkies for more info!

While the official Guild Wars 2 forums were still active after the second weekend beta event, there was a player-made topic asking for wish lists of features and fixes players most hoped to see before GW2 launches. The thread had some great ideas and suggestions for the developer team. Guild Wars 2 is looking very impressive even though it’s still in its beta stages, but there’s always room for improvement! In fact, many of these features are seen as almost necessary to some players.

We thought we’d post some of the ideas from that list and find out about other features and fixes the community would like to see implemented. Feel free to post your ideas in the comments section!

Player vs. Player is always a hot topic when a new game comes out. Arenanet has been talking about their player vs player in Guild Wars 2 for quite sometime and I decided to dive in and start to poke around their matchmaking competitive systems.

In Guild Wars 2 all inter-player battle takes place in a special realm called the Mists. Ironically enough, based on some lore digging and NPC chatter, the Mists are also the after-life (uh-oh). There are two ways to take part in player vs player while in the Mists. They are as separate and distinct from one another as PvP and PvE.

One of the greatest things about Guild Wars 2 when it comes to character customization is the dye system. Not only can you change colors on the fly, there is a wide variety of colors to choose from; once you collect all of them of course.

One industrial gentlemen decided to collect as many dyes as possible and hunt the Trading Post for anything he had missed. Take a look at the image to the left and you’ll see how diverse the system is. The best part is that this isn’t even a complete list!

What do you guys think, is this enough color! Link up some screenshots of your best looking characters, if you have them, and share your favorite color combinations.

With the BWE2 being over, we are starting to sift through a ton of great videos. Today we find one of Team Legacy spending a ton of gold on Siege Golems and see what the can do with them. The video is incredibly interesting!

Team Legacy (www.teamlegacy.net) on Crystal Desert server bought 100 Golem blueprints, gathered thousands of supply from 3 different keeps over 30 minutes and built an army. Check out our exploits in the final night of the beta.

Continue reading to watch the video.

The Gem Store has seen a facelift of sorts since the first beta weekend event. This past weekend, we saw its new version, now known as the Black Lion Trading Company. A good amount of the items are the same, but there have been a couple significant changes. The store UI itself has been redone, for one thing. The new UI is easier to navigate, and the art is more in-tune with the rest of Guild Wars 2′s UI artistic elements. Most items have new graphics, and some have new names as well.

Among the added items is the rumored character slot expansion, some nifty glasses and sunglasses, a partial Trading Post summon item, a multiple-buff booster pack, and a “Box o’ Fun”. The Style tab, especially, is beginning to expand. Read on for more information!

ArenaNet announced for the second Beta Weekend Event, several features that they have made to the game since the last time players entered the world of Tyria.

One of the items that stands out to me is Improved Overflow Servers. In the first Beta Weekend Event, there were significant problems getting together with friends. According to ArenaNet, they’ve implemented a new party UI that notifies you when party members are in different overflow worlds. This is a great start, doesn’t fully rectify the problem of having people separated to begin with.