Guild Missions: A Good Foundation

by Anthony Ordon on March 22, 2013

Yanonka

Last month we rolled out our new guild missions, open-world content specifically created with guilds in mind. That was just the beginning. We designed guild missions as a platform feature. It wasn’t enough to simply add some content for guilds to play and then call it done, we wanted to build the groundwork for future teams so they could extend and improve guild missions with relative ease.

Even though the guild content team is much smaller now, all of our previous members are now a part of those future teams, where they’ll be… you know, influencing the outcomes of those projects. ;) So while the guild content team is very happy to bring you this month’s update, we’re positively thrilled that even if we stopped working on guild missions today, this would be just the first morsel of many delicious guild updates to come.

New Mission Type: Bounty Hunt Training

One of the most exciting aspects of the guild mission feature is our ability to add completely new types of missions. And while the sky’s the limit on what these new types could be, this month we set our sights on something much closer to the ground level: the Bounty Hunt training mission.

This mission is designed to provide small and casual guilds with an avenue for accessing and unlocking guild content. The objective is simple: defeat one bounty target within fifteen minutes. Make no mistake, this is still very much a group activity, as tracking and defeating even a single bounty is no trivial task. Those players who belong to a one-person guild may still have to join forces with some other players for at least a limited run.

An important detail to note is that the Bounty Hunt training mission is automatically available to be built once the guild has researched Art of War Level 3. It costs 300 Guild Influence and 72 hours of research time. Instead of Guild Merits, 3000 Guild Influence will be rewarded. This ought to be perfect for the smaller or less active guild that can’t earn at least 1000 Influence a day.

Three New Guild Bounty Targets

The Tyrian authorities are happy to report that guilds are hunting down hundreds of bounties every day. But the nefarious criminals of Tyria haven’t been deterred, and now they’re hitting back hard. This month we’re bringing you three new bounty hunt targets that are more insidious, more deadly, and more elusive than ever before. Take a look at this bit of intel, if only so you’re not caught completely off guard when you have to adapt your strategy:

  • 2-MULT – This defective prototype weather golem has been storming around Timberline Falls. Target needs to be brought in for a software patch.
  • Big Mayana – This voracious hylek is wanted for questioning about a recent poisoning. Target is thought to have taken refuge in the canopy of Sparkfly Fen.
  • Yanonka the Rat-Wrangler – This rogue ogre is wanted for spying on and sabotaging various factions vying for control of the Fields of Ruin. Target is notorious for using pet rats to do her dirtiest work.

New Rewards

Extending guild missions isn’t limited to just content. We aim to improve rewards as well. To that end, a completely new set of weapons has been commissioned and made available at the Guild Commendation vendor.

And More…

Aside from new content and minor bug fixes, we’re also making as many incremental improvements to the usability of Guild Missions in general. For example, mission activation, success, and failure are now displayed in your guild’s history. We’ve also updated the descriptions of many bounty hunt targets for accuracy. Stay tuned for more to come in this department.

We’ll see you in-game!