Arenanet is serious business. They are policing this game tremendously and they are doing a great job of it. Not only have they been banning people for using excessive language (which was hilarious by the way) they are taking people down who abused a bug in the game. There were certain karma vendors and an exploit that allowed you to buy weapons for 60 karma when they should of been around 63,000 karma. People were buying 100′s of these weapons and then heading over to the Mystic Forge. Here’s what Anet had to say on the subject:

Today we banned a number of players for exploiting Guild Wars 2. We take our community and the integrity of the game very seriously, and want to be clear that intentionally exploiting the game is unacceptable. The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game. We intended to send a very clear message that exploiting the game in this way will not be tolerated, and we believe this message now has been well understood.

We also believe and respect that people make mistakes. This is in fact the first example of a widespread exploit in the game. With this in mind, we are offering the members of our community who exploited the game a second chance to repair the damage that has been done.

Thus, just this once, we will offer to convert permanent bans to 72-hour suspensions. Should those involved want to accept this offer of reinstatement, contact us on our support website–support.guildwars2.com—and submit a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab. Please use the subject heading of “Karma Weapons Exploit Appeal”, then confirm in the body of your ticket that you will delete any items/currency that you gained from the exploit. You should submit only one ticket. Once you have done so, we will lower your ban to 72 hours, and following your re-activation we will check your account to make sure that you have honored your commitment. If that commitment is not honored, we will re-terminate the account.

This is a first and final warning. Moving forward, please make sure you that when you see an exploitable part of the game, you report it and do not attempt to benefit from it.
We look forward to seeing you in game,

Yours Sincerely,
Chris Whiteside- Lead Producer ArenaNet

Other people have been getting banned for exploiting parts of the game. For example, a popular streamer was buying cooking materials for cheap karma, combining them, and selling them for a large profit. So this should be a warning to everyone out there: if there is a part of the game that seems too good to be true, don’t take advantage of it. You’ll get the bannhammer.

This is the current status of the most important issues we’re tracking with Guild Wars 2 live service.

Account security – We’re seeing an uptick in reports of account theft and attempted account theft. We believe hackers are using databases of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and pre-existing trojan horses, to search for matching Guild Wars 2 accounts which they attempt to compromise. To prevent this, we have temporarily disabled the “reset password” feature, and we’re working to bring email authentication online. To protect yourself, please ensure that you use a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you don’t use for any other game, email account, forum or web account.

There has been a rash of phishing emails, scams and hacks that have plagued GW2′s launch. Well, Arenanet has not been sitting idly by as they are working on different solutions. They have come up with a list of precautions that you should take and are actively working on something that should help secure your account more.

Guild Wars Account E-mail Authentication is a new feature that we’ll be introducing to Account Management that will provide you with extra security by requiring you to verify every login request from a new location with your e-mail account.

Whenever you attempt to login from a new location, we will send an authentication request e-mail that contains both a description of where you are logging in from, and a link you click to authenticate the login request. We decided to implement this as a mechanism that anyone can benefit from, since it’s free and easy for anyone to sign up for a secure e-mail account. Keep in mind, when you click on your authentication request e-mail, we will never ask you to enter any login information. Verification requests are only sent after you attempt to login, not before.

See the Account E-mail Authentication article in the Guild Wars 2 Knowledge Base for detailed instructions on how to take advantage of this feature.

You can find the rest of the article here.

JUNKIES NATION has a program for all of the leet junkies out there called Premium Junkies where you can subscribe to all the Junkies sites where you will get access to special contests and most importantly no ads!. Not only that, you’ll also help support the JUNKIES NATION network with your contributions to help us grow the network and create more content and expand to your other favorite games!

Here’s what you get:
No ads shown on any JUNKIES NATION website.
Access to exclusive Premium Junkies contests for computer hardware and software and other game swag.

So how much does it cost?
Not much at all! It’s only $3 US per month or $25 for the whole year.

So how do I sign up!?
Follow THIS LINK to our sign-up page!

If you’re a Ranger and looking for a specific pet, go no further, here is a full list of all the Ranger pets and where you can find them. Continue reading for the full list.

Mesmers are a tricky profession; they were one of the last to be introduced and almost universally thought of as underpowered through the vast majority of BWEs. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Mesmer is a very fun profession to play and actually quite powerful if you understand the fundamentals. With the buffs they received just prior to the launch they achieve parity with other DPS classes by the time you achieve level 80, or jump on one in sPVP.

Mesmers are extremely dependent on traits, much more than any other class. For example, using arbitrary, made up numbers, an Elementalist starts off with 80% of its full potential and gain the last 20% of its power via traits as he or she levels up to 80. The Mesmer, on the other hand, probably starts off at 40% of its full potential and their traits give it 60% of its strength. Because a bulk of a Mesmer’s damage is based off of illusions one way or another, there are a series of traits and skills that make them do more damage and survive longer that are essential to almost every build.

It’s Monday morning and GUILD WARS 2 is live! Now that head start weekend is over, it’s tip to share some knowledge with all you gamers out there.

PRO-TIP #1: If you’ve got a ton of stuff in your inventory and you want to save some of it in your bank, you don’t have to transport all the way back to a city to deposit it! You can gain access to your bank account via any crafting station. This serves two purposes: 1) You can deposit any crafting pieces in your bank when you are finished crafting and bring them out as you pick it back up later, and 2) you can use the crafting station is a pseudo bank teller.

PRO-TIP #2: You may or may not know that every single crafting material is categorized as a “collectable”. Your inventory space may be getting short, so you can right click on any collectable and select “deposit collectable” which puts it in storage. Here’s the best part, it does not use your typical bank slot. Every collectable in the game has it’s own slot in the collections tab. You can store up to 250 items of each type.

So while you’re out gathering and collecting you can deposit them whenever and where ever you are which keeps bag space open.

Let’s take this one step further. Click the gear icon in the top right portion of the inventory window. A drop down menu will appear where you can choose to deposit all collectables. Quick, easy, and efficient inventory management.

Psst, over here! Just in case, you know, you’re taking a break from the game– I’m here to distract you from work, er, chat about Guild Wars 2! Or specifically, headstart. The game’s off to an interesting start so far. I say ‘interesting’ because– let’s face it– not everyone has been pleased with their headstart experience. Despite ArenaNet managing to pull up the servers exactly when they said they probably would, it seems the servers had a hard time keeping up with the player load, and produced quite a large number of issues and game lockups.

Over the course of the weekend, players have experienced issues with logging in, staying logged in, account validation, guilds/guild membership disappearing, the trading post, the Black Lion Trading Company, HoM deliveries, WvWvW, and more. At the same time, not everyone experienced every issue, and in fact, quite a few players experienced a weekend of worry-free gaming. Some players were able to put in about seven hours of stable playtime before problems arose, and for the most part, those same players were able to log in a couple hours later. Not bad, right? Perhaps. But let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

During the final Beta Weekend Event, I got a chance to play among the trees and frolic in the leaves as a sylvari. While doing so, I explored the sylvari starting area– Caledon Forest. The area is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in the game so far. If you choose to explore Caledon Forest, you’ll find plenty of lush foliage, underwater treasures, and forts gleaming in the sun along with dangerous enemies, sharp terrain, and swamp creatures. As a bonus, most of the events and storylines are quite enjoyable. I highly recommend a scenic tour– just, uh, be sure to take a few weapons or spells along on the journey.

Now, Guild Wars 2 isn’t really a game where walkthroughs are needed, and in fact exploration and running off the beaten paths is sometimes encouraged and extremely rewarding, but I do think there are times when a rough guideline of sorts can come in handy, especially for players new to GW2 and many of its unique mechanics. With that philosophy in mind, I have created a guide of sorts for the Caledon Forest area. Its emphasis is on the renown heart quests, and suggests a path that branches them together. Players are free, of course, to follow whatever patch they choose– that’s the beauty of GW2– paths can vary quite considerably. I’ve also included a nifty map of the entire area, showcasing points of interest.

Part 1: Tutorial and Introduction

Regardless of your choice of your personal story, as a human, your tutorial level will start you with a quest to protect the people of Shaemoor. Directly in front of you as you start out is Corporal Beirne, he has a green quest icon, and is calling out for your assistance. He will request that you head to the Inn, which is a simple enough beginner task. Just continue south and run to the large green star on your mini map.

I don’t recommend deviating from this goal, because there’s not a lot of value in Guild Wars 2 to grinding mobs. There are plenty of level 1 centaurs that are attacking the village, however they yield approximately 2 exp per kill, and you need 2,000 exp to hit level 2. Also, because you’re in the tutorial level, they do not count as kills towards your achievements. Along the way, however, do be sure to talk to villagers and tell them to go to the inn for their safety. You will be rewarded with 2 Karma points for each villager that you send to the inn.

This FAQ explains what you need to know about gear and how its attributes are distributed. I'll predominantly aim this at level 80 equipment as we can talk about all equipment rarities. The reason for this FAQ is:

• To explain how attributes are distributed at level 80
• To answer some common misconceptions
• Illustrate the methods and difficulty of obtaining equipment

If not stated, the tables in this FAQ are from the GW2 wiki or self made.

Disclaimer: This faq is based on fact or logic based on evidence. Nothing is assumed because we all know what 'assume' does to you and me. As such, there may be other ways of obtaining gear or additional information not known to us at this time. However, I do not wish to speculate as this only causes confusion. If any pertinent information is sent to me that will improve this faq then I will update it.

If you’re interested in doing your own Guild or Alliance Spotlight, please check out the instructions here.

Defeating the bosses quickly in structured PVP maps can be a crucial factor in deciding which team will come out on top. But how do you defeat such formidable foes quickly, while keeping yourself healthy enough to survive surprise attacks from the other team? How long should it take to kill Svanir? What skill combination and build will do it quickest and where can you test your build before entering sPvP?

Watch the video after the break.

If you’re interested in doing your own Guild or Alliance Spotlight, please check out the instructions here.

If you are looking for an EU based friendly, casual, multi-gaming community then please read on about the Pandion Knights, a community that has been around for over 10 years.

A Bit of History
The Pandion Knights was setup over 10 years ago by a group of friends. It was setup because we wanted to play games online but most communities we saw either had a huge set of rules etc to agree to, or they were very competitive and serious. (One even required you to request holiday!)

We wanted to form a community where people could come back from work, study, family life and simply play some games with like-minded people.

Over the years the community grew and grew playing a variety of games from the FPS classics of COD and Battlefield to the MMO’s we all know like Everquest, STO, World of Warcraft, Rift, SWTOR and more recently The Secret World.

Our upcoming big game will be Guildwars 2, wich we already have around 100 members in our guild.

Now this is a work of art.
Send us any other videos with synchronized emotes and we’ll toss them up on the front page!

With the launch of Guild Wars 2 just (approximately) 2 Days, 17 Hours and 34 minutes away, you’re going to want to get ready. There is no doubting that if you are going to be there as soon as the servers are going up, you don’t need any game-day launch strategies from us. You have your maps, your gameplans, your strategies to gain power already set. However, there may be one thing you have considered: Repairing your game client!

Keep reading for two very important tips.