Guild Wars 2 Newsround - January 23

There’s a real buzz surrounding Guild Wars 2 at the moment. Tomorrow is a day many of us have long waited for and like most fans, we need things to read to pass the time. Luckily the community has been churning out some awesome content as well as raising some brilliant discussion threads this week. I’ve picked out three of the main things that have caught my interest.

First on the list and the star of the show are a series of user interface mockups from Gradinar Razvan, a Senior User Interface designer. The areas he’s redesigned include the following:

Looking for Group Panel & the related tabs Character Panel Guild Tab The Story Journal & the related tabs Created a Lore Journal & related tabs

Visually all his redesigns are wonderful and although they’re image heavy, they do reflect Guild Wars 2’s art style very well. I really loathe the current user interface for the Character Panel especially because it’s so bloated and cumbersome to use. Although I don’t agree with all Gradinar’s decisions, what he’s provided is a rational and clear design choice that’s free to be improved upon. The Reddit community provided some brilliant feedback and he made a great effort to reply to as many people as possible. For me, a user interface has to have speed at accessibility at its heart. It needs to provide pivotal information at a glance but have depth should you need it.

The designs that Gradinar have presented sometimes provides too much information or too little. The Character Panel throws the kitchen sink at the user and although I think it works, it does feel busy. As for the Guild Tab, I think it looks lovely but as someone who has managed a guild in the past all I need to know in addition to what we already have is what class is online and where exactly those players are. Better yet, we really need a taxes and tithes system.

Lastly and the star of the show is Gradinar’s Lore Journal. Not only is it beautiful but I and no doubt countless others have been asking for this for so long. To be able to read up on characters and their back story, wonderfully presented in this fashion would be a dream come true. I think Gradinar deserves a huge amount of praise for what he’s done simply because he’s taken the time to do it to such a high standard. I hope ArenaNet are watching.

Next on my list is an article by GuildMag titled Ascension The Hard Way. In it Starconscriptor discusses at length the possibility Ascension, the ritual of it and what has become of Rytlock. In the editorial, Starconscriptor also talks about the possibility of the Ritualist making a return.

The possibility of the ritualist may even be subtly hinted at by the Heart of Thorns trailer’s voice over, which states that new insight will be necessary in the upcoming war, just as Rytlock’s tease begins. Ritualists communed with the spirit realm in order to work their magic, relying on an insightful understanding of the powers of their ancestors.

I remember reading a long time ago bout how ArenaNet shelved the Ritualist because the Engineer made the class redundant. Bundles were replaced with Kits and Spirits were replaced with Turrets. The problem is that the Engineer lost all the flavour that made the Ritualist so desirable. If ArenaNet did bring the Ritualist back, I think I’d actually abandon every class I currently have and pursue it immediately.

Lastly, a new Commander’s Compendium has been posted over on Reddit that I think is pretty awesome. It’s currently being slammed for traffic so you might have to wait a while but Hamster 101 has done an awesome job. World versus World doesn’t get enough attention and it’s great to see the community not only upvoting, but bookmarking it for future use. I'm really hoping that ArenaNet pay WvW some attention as it has huge potential but it's still such a blob-fest that I can't stand to play it for very long. 

That's it for this week but don't forget - stay tuned for a serious amount of news tomorrow morning when ArenaNet take to the stage at PAX South!