From the Editor's Lab - Volume Two

With the third and final beta weekend for Guild Wars 2 behind us, we’re finally in the home stretch leading up to the game’s launch next month. While the team at ArenaNet busies itself putting the finishing touches on the game, the team here at GW2Hub is also kicking into overdrive with a mountain of exciting things for you to feast your eyes on over the coming weeks.

Read on for a quick look at the wacky projects we’re working on heading into August, an introduction to our latest team members, and a first look at the Fan Site Fight Club. All this and a whole lot more await you in the second edition of From the Editor’s Lab!

Introductions Are In Order

This past week has been a pretty exciting one for Team GW2Hub. The biggest news is that we’ve added the writing talents of two of Ten Ton Hammer’s veteran contributing writers to our team. Given the aggressive schedule I have lined up for the next month, these guys will not only help us meet my nutty goals for the site, but allow us to roll out even more original content each and every day until the Guild Wars 2 launch and beyond.

Up first is Xerin, who likely needs no introduction for those of you who have been following Ten Ton Hammer since our humble beginnings. He’s helped lead our writing teams for World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and plenty of other titles over the years, and is one of the most knowledgeable people out there when it comes to MMOs.

Guild Wars fans may also know Xerin thanks to his many exploits as the "Spectacular Insane Leader" of Angry Businessmens [aB], or his infamous role in the creation of the original 55 Monk build. Needless to say, Xerin has taken more than a few trips around the Tyrian block, and is a major boon for the team.

Along with Xerin, we’ve also brought fellow Ten Ton Hammer contributing writer jeffprime (also known as Prime) into the GW2Hub fold.  Prime has been a part of my team on a number of community sites over the years including Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and most recently on our SWTOR fan site, Swtorhub.com. A former hobby shop owner and major tabletop gaming enthusiast, nobody knows their way around an RPG like Prime!

Moving Mountains (of GW2 Guides)

As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve begun building up our massive library of Guild Wars 2 guides immediately following BWE3. If you count all of the individual guides to ranger pets, we’ve published a whopping 50 guides this week alone, and that’s just the tip of the ice burg. Over the next month we’ll be building up the most complete and wholly original collection of GW2 guides found anywhere on the net.

To help keep the entire affair from becoming an unruly beast, be on the lookout for some navigation improvements, and brand new guide portals and menus to be hitting the ‘Hub this week. In the meantime, don’t forget to bookmark us and spread the word that one of my goals is nothing short of GW2Hub becoming THE leading source for GW2 guides and info, period. We’re off to a great start, and are gaining speed daily.

Spammers Suck

One change I regretfully had to implement this week is that we’ve temporarily disabled anonymous commenting on the site. The short version is that 99.9% of all spam we’ve seen up to this point is via anons attempting to shill their stolen watches and handbags, and unfortunately this is the most direct method of cutting the head off the beast until our toolbox for combating the lameness expands.

While it means we’ll no doubt see less active discussions on articles in the short term, it’s also the best thing for the long term health of the community. We will allow anon commenting again in the future, but in the meantime I would also thoroughly encourage the anons out there to take a few minutes to register here on the site. A little undead bird told me that we’ve got some kickass giveaways planned for the near future that you’ll need to be a registered member to enter, so you’ll only be doing yourself a favor by registering early…

The Fan Site Fight Club

Structured PvP tournaments are cool. Watching live streams of sPvP tournaments is even cooler. But do you know what’s cooler than both of those things combined? Getting to watch live streams of the staff from your favorite GW2 fan sites going head-to-head in sPvP!

That’s right folks; the GW2Hub team will be throwing down the virtual gauntlet and challenging the staff from our fellow fan sites to some structured PvP tournaments once the game goes live. The matches will also be streamed live in all their glory for your viewing enjoyment, so be on the lookout for the full details next month as well as a tournament schedule and list of participating sites.

On that note, it’s that time once again for me to scamper back down to my hidden underground laboratory to whip up another batch of awesome for our fellow GW2 fans.

Have fun and rock on,

• Sardu