Mystic Spiral [MYST]

Ever since we announced the Guild Wars 2 Pre-Purchase program and Headstart Access, we’ve had a lot of questions about how name reservation will work for existing Guild Wars players. Here’s how it will work:

Character names in the Guild Wars universe work differently than they do in most other MMOs. Whereas in most MMOs character names are unique only within their world/server, in Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, character names are unique across the entire game. In Guild Wars 2, when a player acquires a name like Wizardex, he or she is acquiring it across all worlds. Clearly this places more importance on grabbing the name early.

Today no one actually has the name Wizardex, because all character names from the original Guild Wars were two words or more. All one-word names will be up for grabs at the start of the Guild Wars 2 Headstart Access period. But there are currently 20 million two-word names in use by existing Guild Wars players. We need a policy that allows dedicated players to hold on to their established names, while freeing up the bulk of names for the rush of Guild Wars 2 players who will come into the game at launch.

Thus our policy will simply be as follows: to preserve your character name from Guild Wars into Guild Wars 2, you must be an active Guild Wars player (more on that below), and you must create a Guild Wars 2 character with the same name as your Guild Wars character during the Headstart Access period or on launch day.

After launch day (and after we work through support tickets filed on launch day), we’ll free up the millions of unclaimed names for new Guild Wars 2 players to use.

To implement this name reservation system, we need to build a list of the character names of active Guild Wars players that we’ll reserve through launch day. We actually need to build that list a few weeks prior to the launch of Guild Wars 2.

So we’ll use the following very generous definition of active: Guild Wars players will be considered active—thus having their Guild Wars names reserved and available to claim during Headstart Access and on launch day—if they have logged into the game at least once between January 1, 2012 and the day we build the name reservation list.

We’ll warn the community before we build the list, but that’s irrelevant, because there’s no reason for anyone to wait. If you want to reserve character names from Guild Wars into Guild Wars 2, log in to the original game now so we know you’re active!

We’ll see you in-game,

The Guild Wars 2 Team

Go to Source

Meet Ameranth, a sylvari who shares the same sense of wonder and curiosity about her world as her kin—and yet who stands out because of how she has chosen to act upon it. You see, she decided to satisfy her curiosity by seeing Tyria firsthand, walking from one end of the land to the other.

In Guild Wars 2, you’ll find her as far away from the Grove as Black Citadel, eager to see all there is to see in Tyria. Ameranth is joined by her faithful sylvan hound, Anna, and if you happen to run into her, she’s more than happy to tell you about their journey. “Ever since emerging from the Pale Tree, I’ve had the itch to see what the world has to offer. And what better way than with my own two feet?” she’ll tell you.

While Ameranth and Anna are an interesting pair of NPCs in their own right, it’s the story of how Ameranth came into being that is truly fascinating. You see, Ameranth is a real person. She is Kelly Wells, the mind (and feet) behind Adventure Awaits: The Story of a Woman and Her Dog.

Kelly, who goes by Ameranth online, is a longtime Guild Wars player who was inspired by her character: “One day I was playing Guild Wars, running around in Ascalon, helping pig farmers round up their pigs and little girls find their flutes, and I thought, ‘Man, I wish I could live here. Just running around, seeing the land, helping people in need, and having adventures.’ Then came the epiphany: Why the heck not?”

Read the rest of this entry »