James Ackley and The Sounds of Guild Wars 2

Over at the Guild Wars Guru forums, a conversation about the sounds in the Guild Wars games and player’s wishes for sounds in Guild Wars 2 was met with a surprising reply by James Ackley, ArenaNet’s Audio Director, via Regina Buenaobra which you can read in full here! There’s talk of footsteps, which I’ll admit to loving in most games, if done properly of course. Also environmental and ambient sounds were a big hit in GW with me (My guild hall has a very nice waterfall that is just nice to listen to while chatting with friends and guild mates!). To say the least, I hate ArenaNet for mostsome of the things they do, but I do love it when they come through in a lot of little ways like this. Kudos for the community involvement, James and Anet!

News Flash! AVATAR Makes A Lot of Money Opening Weekend! Guild Wars Mortgages My Soul

Thank you Captains Obvious and Duh. So, yes, AVATAR was released this past Friday and despite harsh winter conditions (at least here on the East Coast) people flocked to their local theater en masse. Over the weekend the film managed to rake in $232.2 Million, and for a movie that cost $300m that’s pretty damn good. Not record breaking, but pretty. Damn. Good.
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Happy Chocolate Hangover Day!

And, I guess, normal hangovers are included…oh and Day of the Dead. No, not the movie. Anyway, regardless, you may have either drank too much alcohol, ate too much chocolate, or both. Me? I just had too much sugar while playing Guild Wars for their Halloween event. It seems ArenaNet finally got around to adding some horrifying quests for the holiday and they were a welcome addition to the festivities, which leads me to believe Wintersday may get something new as well. Hopefully.

Anyway, aside from that, I have yet to get Windows 7 on my computer, only because, as you may have guessed, I am lazy, but I got the student upgrade which has had problem after problem after problem, but that won’t happen to me. I can’t be bothered with this stuff not working. That and MS sorta fixed it by releasing the ISOs.

Oh, and, with it being November, not only do we get to set out clocks an hour back, I get to look forward to the Friday after thanksgiving, and the Monday after Black Friday, oh, and the first week of November! All of those days will have absolutely fantastic sales going on in stores around the states and online, and I will be poor shortly there after. Of course if it’s anything like last year, my wallet will keep warm. Or maybe it’s not just me and Black Friday is dying.

Guild Wars 2, The Artbook That Steals Souls

ArenaNet has finally let loose of its Guild Wars 2 art book that was originally only given out at this past PAX! All 127 and 1 glorious pages of fantastic concept art for Anet’s upcoming MMO, Guild Wars 2, can now be yours, if you pay for it, as it will not, I repeat, NOT, be bundled with the Collector’s Edition of the game, which has left me to ponder, “What could they possibly throw into the CE to make it worth while?” The original Guild Wars art book was the only reason I got the Prophecies CE on the first day of release! I suppose we shall soon see, but if you want to wait and look at something else, after the bump are 5 pages from the book I need to go buy!

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End of Weekend Notes, Lazy Is But A Word

And lazy is what I yam, and I yam what I yam. or something like that…anyway, while I’ve been out doing website things and other projects and being dragged back into Guild Wars kicking and screaming like a spoiled brat not wanting to go to the doctor’s office, I’ve been keeping an ear or three to the ground waiting for more news of Guild Wars 2 and other praise-worthy geeky-ness.

I read and watched some good Q&A with Anet Heads and designers about Guild Wars 2 which you can check out over at theGuild Wars 2 site which has everything from talking about underwater combat to new pvp systems to what was learned from the original Guild Wars. Still talking about GW2…

New concept art and two wallpapers have made there way to the public and to my harddrives amirite which range from “Oh, that looks neat,” to “Oh, that looks bitchin’!” in terms of awesomeness. Check ‘em all out on the Guild Wars 2 site. Yeah I’m too lazy to link for you.

Let’s see, what else to talk about, I guess I could bitch about Comcast sucking, but that’s too easy. Oh oh, Aion using GameGuard as their “hacker free-for-all prevention” program instead of…anything else, but again, too easy. Well I’ll just leave it at that and wait to find something truly god-awful to complain about before…complaining…again. Or I’ll just post more GW2 news in hopes that ArenaNet will forgive me.