Over the weekend, Cameron Dunn, Studio Tech Director of ArenaNet had an update for the guilds out there that are still experiencing issues as a result of a bug in Guild Wars 2′s guild leadership system:

First of all I want to apologize for the radio silence on this issue. I should have kept everyone up to date with our progress in tracking this down, and sadly I didn’t. I apologize.

However, I have some good news. We are pretty sure that we’ve found and fixed the bug with guild leadership. The fix will be going out in the next build.

I can’t officially tell you when the next build is, but let’s just say that you don’t have to wait very long from this point.

Once this bug is fixed, hopefully both the entirely missing guilds and the guild permissions problem will be things of the past. We also have a solution in the works for restoring missing influence, but that’s something the community team can tell you more about as it becomes official.

Apologies again, and I can’t wait to get this next build out and make everyone’s experience better!

Good news on a fix coming for this long-standing issue.

If you enjoy playing melee or know someone who does, you’re probably familiar with two in-game combat messages when it comes to the burrow areas of Explorable Ascalonian Catacombs and quests involving destroying supply carts and similar items– “Miss” and “Obstructed”. There’s a bug that’s been around since the beginning where melee and physical damage weapons seem to miss more often than not when it comes to facing these dangerous enem– er, objects.

Robert Hrouda, Content Designer of ArenaNet, acknowledged this bug yesterday on the official forums, and had a few words to say regarding it:

We’re aware of this problem, and it affects more than just the burrows. There are certain gadgets where if you stand still and melee attack them, you miss or get the obstructed pop-up. However if you continue to move around while attacking, you hit it. This is most apparent during “hundred blades” type skills that require your player to stand still.

We’re aware of it though, and trying to fix it.

With any luck, a fix will come soon. This bug can make completing Explorable Ascalonian Catacombs with certain group configurations pretty difficult. At least for the moment, we have another tactic to try and overcome it, as well. Solution– run around like an idiot attacking a dirt pile with a giant sword– got it!

For players who play a Guardian character or go up against them frequently in PvP, here’s an interesting bit of info that you may have already realized– the visible range of the Shield of Absorption bubble (for shield offhand) varies based on the racial size of the character who’s casting the ability. This essentially means that charr and norn absorption bubbles will appear much larger than asura absorption bubbles (check here for a comparison).

Does the size of the Shield of Absorption bubble affect the actual range of the spell? The answer to that question is a definite no, as confirmed yesterday on the official forums. Here is what was said by Karl McLain:

Hi there, I’d like to clarify a bit on this issue (and figured I’d do it in the original thread):
The size of the actual skill is the same, regardless of race. What I see in the video is that the asura’s first Shield of Absorption pushes back its maximum (and closest) 5 enemies, then the next Shield of Absorption pushes the rest out of the skill’s radius. The skill’s visual effect is what’s dependent on the size of the character and will be fixed shortly, but the actual area of the ability is static.

The video in reference is this video, which was referred to in the original thread. What some players presumed to be a knockback difference as a result of the size of the character hit boxes is actually just a result of the second Shield of Absorption knocking back the closest available five targets, which were farther away than the five mobs that got knocked back during the first cast.

To anyone who’s been working on map completion in Guild Wars 2, it should come as no surprise that some areas contain their fair share of buggy dynamic events and skill point challenges. Some bugs persist until the servers are reset or go down for maintenance, which can be frustrating for players who are trying to complete every zone they level in. It’s even more frustrating when some of these bugs seem so random. One skill challenge can be bugged one week, and the next, that one’s fixed, but a different skill challenge point then becomes bugged. Why are the bugs so random?

ArenaNet had a few words to say about this exact question over the weekend. Here’s what was said by Matthew Medina, Guild Wars 2 Content Designer:

To respond to this I can say that, yes, we’re aware of the general issues that have been reported with many Dynamic Events and skill challenges. They frustrate us as much as they frustrate you – most if not all of us devs are playing the game right along with you, and these content blockers can certainly be challenging to everyone’s enjoyment of the game experience.

I would like take this opportunity to clarify one thing I’ve seen discussed here on the forums and in game chat. It’s just not true that the higher level or other content wasn’t tested. It was. Thoroughly.

But even with the Beta Weekend Events and our own internal testing, there’s really only so much that we can do to simulate the number of times that events have to run in sequence once a game like Guild Wars 2 goes live. In particular, Arenanet has made iteration one of our key development philosophies which has the benefit of promoting the publishing of better in-game content, but which has the consequence of us doing many builds a day while we’re developing. In many cases the events that are breaking are doing so because of compounding errors that are hard to catch when you’re developing in such a fluid environment. We’re seeing a number of these blocking issues in events that have undergone extensive internal testing, but which have never needed to run dozens of times in a row, because of how frequently we developers were iterating and generating new builds.

We’re working as hard as we can to find and fix the biggest blocking issues, and it’s one of our top priorities to ensure that you can complete each map and play in events without running into these kinds of issues. We sincerely appreciate your patience, and your detailed reports on anything you come across that isn’t working as it should.