The Waypoint - It Begins!

It was 65 years, 3 months, and 25 days ago today when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. And exactly one month ago, many of us were logging into the Guild Wars 2 headstart weekend for the first time to embark on an epic journey with members of Tyria’s answer to the Beatles, Destiny’s Edge. It’s hard to believe that much time has already passed, yet it still seems somewhat surreal that Guild Wars 2 is finally a live game after so many years of anticipation.

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of experimentation, be it with various builds for my necromancer, or testing out the many possibilities of what we can do as a fan site to provide a meaningful service to gamers in the modern era. We’re well aware that times have changed, and the glory days of simply writing about a favorite game and having that be enough to resonate with a wide audience are slipping through our virtual fingers.

The first true gamer generations have grown up, have busier lives, and less free time to sit down and read about their favorite hobby. But we’ve also been conditioned for instant gratification both through that very same hobby and in the ways mass communication has devolved into the lowest common denominator.

If you can’t say it in 140 characters or less, it isn’t worth saying. And why write out a detailed description of something fantastical or worth learning about when you can simply toss a video out for the YouTube community to feed upon? I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with these things; they’re simply a sign of the times.

Thus the experimentation I alluded to earlier.

One month ago we as gamers collectively embarked upon a journey into the amazing world that the talented team at ArenaNet poured their hearts and souls into for the sake of keeping us entertained. Today I’m about to embark on a new journey with my fellow writers here on GW2Hub, and I hope you decide to join us for the ride.

Just like Sgt. Pepper, I’ll be teaching my band to play using the tools of a modern gaming culture, and tuning them to suit our needs not unlike an assortment of finely crafted instruments. Each person of the team will contribute in various ways, be it through video, audio experimentation, our favorite Tweets from the previous day, or even a collection of random things that made us laugh in /map chat. And if you’re a fan of good old fashioned writing, don’t worry; we’ll continue serving up some amazing editorial content along the way as well.

- Sardu

The team at GW2Hub has been exploring Tyria with an eye for any areas that might point to future content updates, or in the case of today's video, a perfect location to play host to a festival mini-game. Given that this is most likely a moa racing track it's highly unlikely that there will be rollerbeetle racing here, but we can dream, can't we?

The location shown in the video is no doubt familiar to anyone who has spent much time scampering around Lion's Arch to work on map completion or otherwise. Many areas of the city do seem to be custom built as the future homes of festival mini-games, but the city also has a number of interesting areas that our team will be researching in greater detail in future episodes.

Last night while I was contemplating the various ways I planned to reign doom down upon the doomed heads of my doomed enemies in World versus World, it occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly sure which of the four maps could benefit from my vampiric precision the most. Each had a queue so I assumed that our troops were out in force, only I had no idea which one to queue for.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a “view map” button on the World vs. World Stats and Bonuses window so that you could know which map your world needed reinforcements on the most? It would sure beat waiting in a queue only to discover you should have chosen one of the other three maps instead…