Wintersday’s Toypocalypse began yesterday, and with it, came a new way for players to instantly join in on the fun. The event activity comes with an automatic grouping feature, similar to the one used during the Bell Choir and Snowball Mayhem PvP holiday activities. This is good news for players who are looking to run the event with random players, but ArenaNet left out one very important ability– the ability to join as a preformed party.

Many players were quite surprised by the lack of such a feature, especially considering the fact that partying with friends is the best way to group for most of the dungeon content in the game. ArenaNet issued a response later in the day on the official forums:

Originally posted by ReginaBuenaobra (Source)

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Like Snowball Mayhem and the Bell Choior, the Toypocalypse is an activity. They are using the same systems, and these systems do not permit joining by party. Unfortunately due to technical limitations and time constraints before the holidays, we cannot change it. We understand that this is not ideal for people who wish to play in the same party and who are finding it difficult in random groups. We will be adjusting the “Toypocalypse Cancelled” achievement so that you will need to keep only one gift dolyak alive. We do not have an ETA on when this change will be live. Thank you for your feedback. We have been listening, and we will take your comments on board for future game updates.

As part of the Wintersday update, Lionguard Lyns, the Captain’s Council Commendation vendor that was added during The Lost Shores update, was disabled from allowing players to purchase items from her station in Lion’s Arch. Players were originally told that the vendor would be available during Wintersday, but it seems that the re-addition of this NPC will take place after the holiday comes to a close. Here is the dev tracker announcement, which was posted on the official forums yesterday:

Originally posted by ReginaBuenaobra (Source)

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We do not have an ETA on when Lyns will be accepting commendations. To clarify about timing: this will not happen during Wintersday, but in a future game update. Sorry about the confusion, everyone, and thank you for your patience.

On the official forums yesterday, sc0rn’s Commander, Honnor, left a clever variation on a classic holiday tune for WvW players to enjoy. Yes, you read me right. With Wintersday here and the holidays right around the corner, what better way to celebrate the season than with a little nighttime WvW prep? Figure out what song what I’m referencing yet? I know– I’m being pretty cryptic.

Here it is: ‘Twas the Night Before Reset!

’Twas the night before Reset! front gate to supply house,
Nothing stirred in the Garrison, not even a mouse;
The Backpacks were hung, ’round supply hut with care,
In hopes that St. Tinker* soon would be there.

The Guilds were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of Golems danced in their heads.
With Fortify done, and a full colored Map,
They had all settled down for a long winter’s nap;
When beyond the outer gate there arose such a clatter,
The Commanders JUMPED UP >:( to see what was the matter.
Away to the Walls, they flew ready for the clash >:(
Tore open there Backpacks! and threw up Guild stash!

Keep reading to see the rest!

For Wintersday participants who are opening gift box after gift box in hopes of unwrapping a shiny Unbreakable Bell or Endless Tonic, Anthony Ordin gave players a helpful hint on the forums yesterday. It seems the type of gift box doesn’t matter when it comes to hunting for super rare goodies.

Originally posted by AnthonyOrdon (Source)

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The small, medium, large, giant, and personalized gift boxes all have an equal chance of dropping the endless tonic and the unbreakable bell. In fact, all of the boxes (excluding MTX) drop very similar things at very similar rates. The only reason there are different ones is largely related to crafting, so that lower level players can find and craft level-appropriate stuff from recipes and components.

Good to know! Also, in case you missed this developer update from early November, Magic Find isn’t helpful for opening these boxes, since it only works upon defeating mobs. Happy hunting, Unbreakable Bell seekers!

Out in the wilds of Tyria during Wintersday are Mysterious Presents. They show up on the map as little striped candy symbols, and like Shadow of the Mad King’s candy corn nodes, they can be looted by everyone. There’s also a twist, however. To get to the real present, one must first kill the mobs that pop out from the large box. They’re essentially presents-in-a-present. These mobs that pop out are random, and every day of Winstersday a new mob type will be featured in the boxes. The previous featured mobs still have a chance to pop out, as do bands of Skritt attackers.

Some of the mob types inside the boxes definitely hit harder than others, and players may even find that they need a little assistance in clearing the groups out. To make matters worse, there are a few presents that are currently bugged, and spawn mobs that are the incorrect level. These presents may spawn monsters as high as level 69 in a much lower area. Anthony Ordon, Game Designer, confirmed this over the weekend on the forums.

Mike Lewis, Security Coordinator for ArenaNet, directed a newly-released developer blog toward the community yesterday regarding the ever-present war on botting in Guild Wars 2. There’s some good news! It seems that a decisive blow against the game’s botters has been dealt during this past month. Here is what he had to say:

“In the month of November, we terminated over 34,000 accounts for operating bots in Guild Wars 2. Moreover, we have observed a serious decrease in the population of bots in the game – and so have you, our players. The number of bots reported every hour worldwide has dropped from more than 2,000 in October to a much healthier 20 as of this writing.

I want to take a minute to sincerely thank everyone who has reported bots in-game. Your information has helped us make this tremendous stride forward. All your diligent reporting has paid off; as you can see from these statistics, your vigilance has been deeply effective and is very much appreciated. Please continue to report any bots you may run across in the future—these reports are key to our ability to remove bots from the game.”

Mike Lewis went on to discuss some of the methods that the ArenaNet team uses to extinguish player-controlled bots. Maybe the herds of Ranger-bear trains will move on to different pastures now? We can only hope.

We’re always about expanding the community at Junkies Nation and we ran across this website today called Gw2lfg.com! It’s a way you can look for a group, cross realm, instead of standing around in game twiddling your thumbs. The more people who use tools like this the easier it becomes to get things done. So if you’re playing later today and you need a group, given this tool a try.

It’s pretty easy to set up. Click on “New LFG” and put in your information. There have been reports of someone replying to you within minutes.

For players affected by the bug-filled, final stages of The Lost Shores world event, ArenaNet has began distributing Karka Chest rewards through the mail to players who are coming up as qualified on their end. The team is using a script to figure out who exactly is eligible for this reward. Gaile Gray, ArenaNet Support Liaison, is currently asking for players who have not been mailed this reward, yet know they are eligible for one, to contact customer support.

For the full forum post, click “Continue Reading.”

Wintersday is coming, and the December holidays are here to bring us all a little cheer. For the whole month of December, folks on the GW2 Guru forums teamed up with members of the GWOnline forums to bring Guild Wars 2 fans an unofficial fanart-filled advent calendar to celebrate the month of Wintersday!

Each day of the month reveals a shiny, holiday-inspired fanart (example above!) which were all created by artists from the participating communities. If you’re an artist who’d like to create a piece for the calendar, the awesome creators of the calendar are still accepting artwork.

Without further ado, check out the advent calendar! It’s full of cute and coos!

After yesterday’s Guild Wars 2 Update, quite a number of items became broken due to the update. Jumping, for one, which was fixed in a quick hotfix later that same night. One other broken item currently affecting players is the last fight in the Cliffside Fractal. Robert Hrouda, Content Designer, made a post on the official forums warning players, and offering a possible workaround that sometimes does the trick to making the fight unbroken again. Here’s what he had to say:

Originally posted by Robert Hrouda (Source)

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Problem: The Novices aren’t spawning during the final boss fight, prohibiting players from charging the hammer and breaking the seal.

We’re aware of the problem and are working on it. It does not effect 100% of the players. If you engage/agro the Novices before the boss takes the hammer back from you at the start, that seems to cause the issue when it does happen.

Meanwhile we have found a workaround while we try to resolve the problem with a patch. If the entire party wipes and restarts from the checkpoint, it could fix the problem.

Players have since reported that the suggested workaround does not always work. With any luck, ArenaNet will fix this issue as soon as possible.

Yesterday we received confirmation on the official Guild Wars 2 forums that players who were affected by the various bugs during The Lost Shores event will be granted a retroactive reward if they were unable to loot the final reward chest. ArenaNet hasn’t given out the specifics yet, but the reward will be granted to players even if they haven’t contacted customer support, and will be mailed to players sometime early next week.

Here is the full announcement:

Originally posted by Mark Katzbach (Source)

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We have confirmed that we can provide everyone who did not have the opportunity to loot the chest with a reward for their participation. All affected players will receive a reward regardless of whether or not they have contacted Support. We’re working very hard on this, and you should have a reward in your in-game mail early next week.

ArenaNet hosted a live developer Ask Me Anything (AMA) chat on Reddit yesterday which was headed by Chris Whiteside, Studio Design Director, and President Mike O’Brien. Quite a few issues were tackled, but one of the most interesting was without a doubt Chris Whiteside’s reply regarding the addition of ascended gear, the brand new tier of gear introduced in November’s update.

Ascended gear is a controversial issue within the Guild Wars 2 community because it’s a new tier of stat-influenced gear in a game that was largely promoted as not having tiers of progression-based gear. A large amount of players gave Guild Wars 2 a try because they were tired of the gear treadmill prominent in almost every single MMORPG right now, and with this addition, those same players wondered what exactly was on the developers’ minds. There was little warning when the feature was added, and because of this fact, most players assumed ArenaNet had simply decided to go against their original philosophy.

Over the holiday weekend, we received a brief update on one feature that’s always pretty important to a successful, longtime MMO– name changes. The ability to change a given character’s name ranks up there in importance with server changes generally, yet ArenaNet hasn’t said too much about the feature as of yet. We now know a little more on where the team stands on adding the feature, and what type of currency it will involve:

Originally posted by Gaile Gray (Source)

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That feature is on the “to do” list. It will be a feature that you can purchase for gems, as I understand it. There are some complex interactions between characters, accounts, and the whole back-end, so it’s more complicated to get it going than it might seem. But it assuredly is coming to the BLTC in the future!

A feature like this would indeed be a solid addition to the gem store.

ArenaNet is still busy collecting feedback from the aftermath of The Lost Shores’ weekend event, but for the meantime, Chris Whiteside, Studio Design Director, shared a few words regarding the event and the future of Guild Wars 2 in a developer blog post. He took the time to thank players who participated in the event, and spoke of both the positive and negative feedback the team has seen. Here’s the part referencing the negative feedback:

Having said that, we’re also aware that there were certain aspects of the event that could have worked better than they did, and thanks to your excellent feedback we’ll be working toward strengthening this type of content moving forward. At ArenaNet, we always try to push the boundaries of how we build online worlds, and we thank you for your patience and collaboration as we pioneer into unknown territories. We’ve seen people saying that they really liked the principle of using events to unveil new content, but we need to tighten up the methods by which they are deployed. We take these comments to heart, as it is our goal to always deliver content of the highest quality.

The comment about ArenaNet needing to “tighten up” their event deployment methods is 100% right, and it’s a good sign, in my opinion, that the team is admitting to it. Chris Whiteside went on to discuss the immediate future plans of the development team. Keep reading to see that list.

Between The Lost Shores event’s frequent bugs, the fact that it was a one-time only deal, and the somewhat tedious nature of the event’s final phase, many players were left wanting for more after Guild Wars 2′s recent one-time world event. Do one-time events deliver more frustration– especially if bugs are introduced– than excitement? Was the event pushed out too soon? These are good questions that ArenaNet is currently looking for feedback on. The team has released an anonymous survey that participants can use to deliver their feedback on the event.

In the survey are some perfect questions the team needs to take into consideration, including a question asking players to rate how enjoyable one-time events in general are. The premise of one-time events may be awesome, in my opinion, but there are glaring factors such as bugs, server lag, and the simple fact that not all players are able to participate in a one-time fight, especially when that fight takes place in a game that is very much global.