Guess the 3rd Year Presents!

Gaile has made a page over at the official wiki where community members can guess what the third year birthday miniatures will be. Here is the link to that page.

Birthday miniatures are a Guild Wars tradition that started when the earliest made characters (April 28, 2005) turned one year old. Any character that has a birthday will receive a birthday present. The birthday present item contains one random miniature from the set of that year's birthday presents. A character created one year ago will receive a birthday present containing a miniature from the 1st year set, regardless of campaign or type (yes, PvP characters can receive birthday presents).

On April 28, 2008, Guild Wars will be celebrating its third birthday having sold over 4,500,000 boxes.

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Update - February 12, 2008

A minor update was released today bringing the Guild Wars build to 25,242. There was only one "substantive" change where a few of the NPC Archer positions on the Isle of the Dead were moved around. There were also a few small graphic glitches that were fixed; the biggest being (according to fansite murmurings) a bug that affected Cynn's dress.

The reason for the uproar, is that most people had no idea what could have been changed on Cynn's dress, and so people believed it had to do with ArenaNet finally removing her easter egg. The easter egg is that Cynn is actually wearing a thong, which you can see by clipping the camera through the dress. A lot of people were pretty upset with the thought of losing the special easter egg, obviously near and dear to their hearts. Thankfully, the fix did not affect her underwear.

Also of note .dat explorers (people who look through the huge data file in the Guild Wars directory) believe that the Design-A-Weapon Contest weapons are finally in place. Gaile had mentioned that the dev team might sneak them in for players to find for themselves like the Totem Axe was released. So if you are out and about this weekend, keep your eyes peeled for some new weapons.

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ArenaNet's "Exploit" Request

Gaile stopped by in light of a back and forth discussion concerning how Guild Wars has been so sound when allegedly (according to one vocal forumgoer) the security is surely lacking.

She gave a list of helpful tips, but the most important is to "gather all the details you can about the exploit and send an email to community@arena.net." [source] Also make sure you don't leave yourself in the dark of the Hyperbole Spa. [source]

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Guild Wars 2 Beta

Many a discussion on the Guild Wars forums involves the upcoming beta for Guild Wars 2, set to debut in some form in the second half of 2008. Gaile Gray recently showed up to bring light to a few things on the beta...

Let me give you the scoop on testing, or at least as far as I
am able. First, it's very early for us to have plans for testing, and in truth,
we really do not have firm plans in mind yet. There are many ways to run a test,
and we may -- in fact I suspect we will -- have several kinds of testing for
Guild Wars 2. I'll provide info, but it's scant, and I'll be sure to call out
what is my belief or my instinct, rather than actual formal plans.

Alpha Test: I strongly believe (just an opinion, here, not an
official announcement) that we will have an alpha test. An alpha being what an
alpha is, if we have one I also believe that such a test would be a closed one
with all legal protections in place, such as a Non-Disclosure Agreement, etc. If
we have an alpha test, it may consist of existing alpha testers -- some of whom
have been with us for a few years now -- or it may include other people. It may
be one size throughout the entire testing period, or it could grow over time. As
I said, even for an alpha test, it's early yet to have formalized plans and we
haven't really discussed this matter in enough detail for me to know exactly how
we will proceed.

Beta Test: I am sure that we will have a beta test. After all,
the co-founders themselves have been saying "Beta testing in the second half of
2008," and I set some pretty serious store in what they say. Now, they may have
some plans in mind, but I do not know them yet, so I cannot provide any details
about the beta test or tests. When I think about it, though, there are several
ways that a beta could take place: (1) A closed invitational beta test, (2) a
closed randomly-selected beta test, (3) a restricted/closed beta event system,
or (4) an open beta event system. We've held beta events in the past, and they
have been tremendously successful, so I guess that we might do something like
that again. Beyond that, we could use any or all of the other systems or devise
something outside of this list.

I know, that's not a lot of info, and I'm sorry. I'll be
postin' as soon as I can!

Oh, one more thing: Unless we say otherwise, we are not
currently seeking and with regret cannot accept applications for testing Guild
Wars 2. If we do get to a point where we want to make an outreach for
applications, believe me, we'll make that known! In the meantime, we're grateful
for the interest in testing, and I'll post when I have more info on the subject.
Thanks a lot.

[source]

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