Talk:Release

Is "Game Release" the appropriate name?

To me, a game release is what Guild Wars 2 itself is. The release of a game. Compared to Guild Wars 1, for example.

This page mentions new content that is smaller in scope that what would even be expected from a game Expansion, which itself is smaller than a Game Release. Would it not be more appropriate to name this page "New Content Releases" instead? Or simply: "New Content".

If the intention of using the word "game" is to mean "of this game", what other types of released content for GW2 are there that are not of this game? This wiki is only concerned with this game, after all. --Alad 21:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

It's the official term. —Dr Ishmael 21:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the picture, I hadn't been on the official site's main page for some time. I see that it's Anet that is creating this confusion by calling the updates "game releases" and giving them two different names: "month/date update" on the menu, and the "mini content" name on the page the menu takes you to. I think it would still be useful for this wiki to not just copy information already available on the official site (a link is sufficient for that), and to call those monthly updates content listings by the "month/year update" name on these pages, especially since it's easier to find what you want that way, and if that is another reason, because Anet use that naming convention themselves on the picture you posted. A search for a "mini content" name like Halloween can then lead to the more general "month/year update" page or a dedicated page which doesn't talk about the whole update's unrelated features. I'm talking about creating a clear distinction in this wiki between those named events and real new features of the game. --Alad 22:55, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Several names for these updates could have been used ("game updates", "content updates", "content releases", "monthly releases", etc), but the name chosen was "game release". A game release doesn't have to only mean "a brand new game released to the public". Most MMOs have their own terminology for major content updates: EQ2 uses "Live Updates" and WoW uses "Patch #.#"...both of these games also associate a theme name to these updates ("Qeynos Rising" or "Hour of Twilight"). The Secret World uses both "Patch #.#" and "Issue #", which correspond to each other...the issues even have names: "Big Trouble in the Big Apple". SWTOR does it also...Patch #.# with a name like "Terror from Beyond". Heck, EVE Online calls their major content updates "Expansions", and only gives a name to them like "Retribution" and "Crucible". As with EQ2 and WoW, many MMOs have turned to naming these releases with something other than numbers, since it gives the update a more "episodic" and living feel as if they were releasing another part of a series instead of a flat game that doesn't grow or evolve. ArenaNet sorts the updates by month on the game release page, but each update is given a specific name likely for similar reasons (these four months are called a Living Story, after all).

In the end, though...Guild Wars 2 is an extremely complex game with multiple teams working on different, relatively isolated parts at the same time, and multiple facets may be updated (and previously announced) in a single game release that have little to no relation to each other or the theme and are collected on the wiki's page for each month's game release. These are collected from the main game release page on the guildwars2.com site, the release's patch notes that are distributed, as well as interviews and players. These pages are intended to collect this info and provide a high level "at-a-glance" look at the various features of the release, listing the major and general updates players might be looking for and providing quick details on significant additions or pieces that would otherwise get lost, while leaving the nitty-gritty details to the patch notes or other discussions. Vahkris 15:38, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

As it turns out, somebody at Anet was listening after all... :) --Alad (talk) 19:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I like the new release page (name works either way, we were just going by the official name), and I love those new release boxes. Makes me want to put them in the table. Vahkris (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, they would be really good at giving you a quick idea of what each release is about and for finding one at a glance, although the table might potentially get quite long after a while. On the other hand, it wouldn't get to the ridiculous lengths of guild trek locations any time soon, so perhaps that might not be a big issue after all. 22:50, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

If needed, we can always reformat and collapse the releases in groups(although I don't believe it'll get that problematic for a very long while). I know some don't like doing that, but I think it's a viable option when you're in 2014 and thinking about collapsing the 2012 section and the F&F arc releases, for example. We'd need to take them from screenshots, though. They overlay the date and release name onto the background image, so just saving the image doesn't work. Vahkris (talk) 23:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

ordering

Should we reverse it, so the most current/relevant content is at the top and found without scrolling? It's not a big issue yet but it'll get worse over time. -Auron 00:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

was going to suggest this--Relyk ~ talk < 02:14, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Also thought of that, past releases are essentially historical content... Mediggo (talk) 06:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Done, I was thinking about it as well. In fact, I was wondering if this table is the best way we could list the releases, although I couldn't think of a better alternative; the images are nice and all, but you can't search for a release's name any more, while the launch dates will be duplicated. If only there was an easy way to set a background image... 10:19, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Release schedule

"Since the game was launched, ArenaNet has offered a new release approximately once a month."

Not so accurate anymore now is it? :D

--69.80.64.129 19:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Splitting??

I would like suggest to split this page up in Release and a new page "Releases in 2012" We allready have 13 releases linked and with the new announcement to have new releases every 2 weeks things will clutter up quickly. I can do it myself but its a big change so I wanted to hear opinions first. 195.240.63.18 13:04, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it'd be better to have a single archive subpage instead of separate pages per year. If you're looking in the archive you're less concerned about it being long and cluttered. Either that, or in the short term we could collapse earlier years/story arcs. Vahkris (talk) 13:08, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I think one page is best, with prior years collapsed. Splitting stuff up just makes it more difficult for people to find. —Dr Ishmael 14:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Good thinking Ishmael!!. I didnt think bout the show/hide options. uuuuuhhhhm. do you know the wiki code for it?? 195.240.63.18 15:58, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Ish knows the code for everything. Even the things no one has thought of yet. --Claret (talk) 16:18, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Just apply the "mw-collapsible" and "mw-collapsed" classes to the table via {{STDT|mw-collapsible mw-collapsed}}, adding them to any other classes already on there. —Dr Ishmael 16:51, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

When I mess with that, it's causing some errors with how the background color (the mech2 class) is working. Expanding it causes the year header to lose the background color until scrolled off the screen or highlighted (at least in Firefox). Also the far right edge coloring is lost in the rest of the table. Code changed: {{STDT|mech2 mw-collapsible mw-collapsed}}. Example Vahkris (talk) 17:46, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Your sandbox example looks OK on Chrome/Apple Mac. --Claret (talk) 18:00, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Once we split it by year, there won't be any need for a subheading, so that bug won't matter. —Dr Ishmael 18:18, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Updated it to split by year. Subheading issue obviously gone, still seeing the disappearing color on the right edge of the table for Firefox. Vahkris (talk) 18:28, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Initial and mid-month release

I think we need to distinguish between the initial month's release and the mid-month release, to try and help any confusion on the releases that I've been seeing. The initial month's release has been sticking around for the full month, whereas the mid-month release has been there for two weeks, with both ending at the same time. If we were to start referring to the first as the initial July release or something like that, and the second as the interim or mid-month release, maybe there would be less confusion. I'm trying to figure out ways to get the info across that the second release is still part of the first. Vahkris (talk) 13:32, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

The way I see it is that at the beginning of the month, the “real” release comes and the mid-month one is just an “add-on”, or a second act, to the same release. Both are created by the same Living World team in the same Living World part after all. poke | talk 13:38, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with making them different. The task of the wiki is to document the game as it is. Arenanet is announcing e.g. cutthroat politics as a separate release and if you look at arenanet's release page you don't see them handling mid-months different then initial months.195.240.63.18 14:08, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd be wary of calling them by the month names. Anet specified that they are bi-weekly releases, not semi-monthly. That means that over time, the releases will become de-synced from the months; e.g., if we follow the pattern through to October, that month will see 2 initial releases, on October 1 and October 29.

However, I do agree with identifying them as Act I and Act II of an overarching storyline, because that's how they fit together lore-wise. —Dr Ishmael 14:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

True, leaving the month off is best, that was not the best way to write that. My intention was more distinguishing between the initial release and specifying the second one as the second half of that (unless we're told of something special like how Flame and Frost was four months of the same arc) instead of a completely different release. ArenaNet doesn't specifically handle them differently on the website, but they do handle them differently in-game (which is what we document), since the first release's achievements, story, and content persist through the second release. To me that makes it relevant enough to warrant noting the two as a set. The fact that both releases are done by the same Living World team makes it even more relevant that they're two parts to the same content. Vahkris (talk) 15:23, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

"both releases are done by the same Living World team" Exactly, I should've mentioned that in my post too. I do like how they handled the naming of the F&F releases, and I wish they could have continued that format. Secret of Southsun / Last Stand at Southsun is close (at least they both mention Southsun), but the last 2 storylines have had no relation between their Act I and Act II names. —Dr Ishmael 15:34, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a chance (I, for one, would hope so), that each "release" will be available for a month, with 2 of them overlapping all the time. It seems to me that 2 weeks is a bit short for many people who still have characters to level up, or can't play regularly, for example. --Alad (talk) 22:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

We already saw that with the Sky Pirates update - that content was only available for 2 weeks (other than the permanent content like Not So Secret). —Dr Ishmael 22:24, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Temporary/permanent items and achievements

Would be nice to have listed which items and which achievements are temporary (eventhough it is obvious to most players that all the achievements under "living world" are temporary).

Category:Discontinued items for items that can no longer be obtained, can use some work though. We have a historical parameter on the achievement table templates, but that's not really accurate as achievements aren't temporary since you keep them once you get them.--Relyk ~ talk < 12:13, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Complete list of features

While this page does show the most important few features in each release, it's more for navigation rather than actually finding out what has changed in the game; on the other hand, Game updates are way too thorough for that. If you're looking for the middle ground, the releases' pages have a nice overview section, but with the ever-growing number of releases and for the sake of easier searching, it might be useful to have a separate page with a list of those notes as well. Would anyone be opposed to having a subpage of Release like this? 20:39, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

The way it's presented doesn't make much sense to me, the little tag words before items are arbitrary and key articles related to the release don't help much. If we wanted an overview of permanent and temporary content added to the game, we would have that page instead of an overview of the releases. A brief description of the release like with the featured article would take the same amount of space and give players a better idea of the features and content from the release.

I like including the features section for all the releases on a page in any case.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:22, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

The reason I added those tags was to try to better identify the type of feature, because just shouting Candidate Trials or Molten Facility at a new or returning player doesn't help them much; I took inspiration from the German page on this topic. They are somewhat arbitrary, just like the choice of features to display is very subjective.

Having said this, I don't like the way this page is structured. I think we still need a short overview of the changes in each release and we should continue to distinguish between permanent and temporary additions, but I agree that this table isn't exactly ideal. A brief paragraph might be better, but bear in mind that a wall of text could be counterproductive to the goal of making a quick overview. 09:07, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I've created the subpage with the lists at Release/Features and I've also added which features are permanent and which temporary, which means we don't necessarily have to distinguish between them on this overview. If we'd like this page to have short, succinct paragraphs as overviews, it might look like this. I tried it without the table, but it looked a bit too plain and required more whitespace to be clear; it's just a suggestion, though. I didn't get to add the paragraphs yet; to be honest, I'm not even completely sure if this is the right way to go. Nevertheless, if anyone with better writing finesse would want to, feel free to edit that page. In any case, I'd like to hear your opinions. 20:19, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I've finished the suggestion for the change to this page and I honestly think it would be quite an improvement. Any comments or ideas? Anyone opposed to this change? 22:48, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

This change completely ruins the usefulness of this page (for me at least). It worked great as a high-level, here are the main bullet points for each release. If anyone then wanted to find out more about a release, they could then navigate from this page to that release. All I'm seeing are many more words to give very little additional information on each release. 10:01, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

You can never please everyone; on one hand there's "key articles related to the release don't help much", on the other there's this. One of my main problems with the previous version is that it was basically only helpful if you already knew what the features are, whereas for those that the page is primarily made for it was just an incomprehensible mess of links that doesn't really tell anything. Luck, Queen's Gauntlet, Super Adventure Box, Molten Facility, Fractals of the Mists, we know what those are and so saying the names is enough for us but a newcomer has no idea and he shouldn't need to click on every single link to get one. Also, the link lists sometimes felt a little limiting; releases like Queen's Speech, Bazaar or Lost Shores had a ton of new features but making a list of all of them would be too long, and some things don't really work in that way, such as "magic find is removed from equipment in favor of the account-bound luck", "several jumping puzzles and mini-dungeons were added" or "the fight against Tequatl the Sunless is revamped". And last but not least, half of the releases tend to be about the story, which the lists completely omitted. It was fine as of The Razing when I first added that table, but every single release since Retribution largely depends on the story. It doesn't need to be extensive, we have Living World summary for that, but it should provide some basic context. Besides, the page is growing at a very fast rate and it was getting to a point where you would use Ctrl-F to find a feature you're looking for anyway and I tried to write the overview so that this still works. By the way, Release/Features has the bullet-point lists of features all in one place. In any case, if you have an idea how to make a compromise between both approaches, I'd love to see it. 10:56, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Alternative release nav images

The new release nav images we take from the release page backgrounds are nice and all, but personally I find them a bit too dark, and as we can see with the April 2014 Feature Pack, we might not even get those consistently. And since I don't think we can rely on us to photoshop them each fortnight, I'd like to suggest an upkeepable alternative by using the original concept art and putting either shadow or a box behind the text to increase its readability; you can look at them and compare them to the current versions on my sandbox page. I think the shadow one would be the best of these, but does anyone have a better idea or thoughts on the matter? 18:41, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

The drop-shadow looks nice, but the specific CSS you're using there seems just a smidge too bold, in my opinion. —Dr Ishmael 19:09, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

None of the backdrops are edited or photoshopped? I made April 2014 Feature Pack because we lacked the normal backdrop.--Relyk ~ talk < 19:12, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

@Dr Ishmael: I turned it down a bit, does it look better now?

@Relyk: Nope, the previous ones weren't edited, by us anyway; they were taken from the background of the release pages like this one, but the feature pack has a different page layout without one. 19:41, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Dropshadow's good. 20:06, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

@Noxx, that wasn't a question.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:12, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the shadow looks good now. —Dr Ishmael 20:26, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

css gradient shadows. http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/#000000+0,000000+100&0.84+32,0.17+90;Custom

{{Custom CSS|css=
div.release-gradient {
background: -moz-linear-gradient(-45deg,  rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 0%, rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 32%, rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 90%, rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 100%); /* FF3.6+ */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right bottom, color-stop(0%,rgba(0,0,0,0.84)), color-stop(32%,rgba(0,0,0,0.84)), color-stop(90%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17)), color-stop(100%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17))); /* Chrome,Safari4+ */
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(-45deg,  rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 32%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 90%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 100%); /* Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ */
background: -o-linear-gradient(-45deg,  rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 32%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 90%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 100%); /* Opera 11.10+ */
background: -ms-linear-gradient(-45deg,  rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 32%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 90%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 100%); /* IE10+ */
background: linear-gradient(135deg,  rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0.84) 32%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 90%,rgba(0,0,0,0.17) 100%); /* W3C */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#d6000000', endColorstr='#2b000000',GradientType=1 ); /* IE6-9 fallback on horizontal gradient */
}
}}
<div style="position:relative; width:206px; height:60px; overflow:hidden;">
<div style="position:absolute; left:0px; top:-34px;">[[File:The Battle for Lion's Arch aftermath concept art.jpg|280px]]</div>
<div class="release-gradient" style="position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width:210px; height:70px;"></div>
<div style="position:absolute; top:10px; left:13px; font-family:EasonPro, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color:#95c9da;">{{#time: F j, Y | 2014-04-15 }}</span></div>
<div style="position:absolute; top:28px; left:13px; font-family:CronosPro, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-right:60px; line-height: 1;">[[April 2014 Feature Pack|<span style="color:white">April 2014 Feature Pack</span>]]</div>
</div>

No photo-shopping required. /-176.26.107.213 20:18, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I added IP's suggestion with linear gradients and I must say it doesn't look bad at all. 21:58, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Note: The gradient hides the link from the image itself, although to be honest it wasn't working properly with long release names anyway. 22:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, the link on the image is probably confusing to many readers - the image is a link, then both lines of text on the image are also links, LINKCEPTION or something. I'd say remove the link from the image.

Also, could you put a tad more spacing between the two lines of text? It looks a little cramped, especially on the Origins of Madness one, where the 'J' almost touches the 'T'. —Dr Ishmael 22:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

if you wanted the link, and it sounds like you don't, you could sling a blank/transparent .png file over the top. (or use a file for the gradient.. meh) -176.26.107.213 22:42, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Done. And no, not really, I always found the link to be rather confusing, especially because of the date linking elsewhere; I didn't have it in my original proposal either, so I'm fine with it gone. 22:56, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) With the new season starting, I think it's high time we changed these images to something easier to read and a bit better looking. I have updated my sandbox page with the new releases and I'd love us to finally decide which one to choose. I personally prefer the gradients, somewhat closely followed by the shadows, but any of them would be better than what we currently use, in my opinion. (I will be away for a while now but I can't edit the wiki's style sheets so someone else would have to implement them anyway.) 19:56, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

My vote would be for the drop shadow; it keeps the fonts clean while keeping as much vibrancy/visual surface to the background image as possible. -Kymtastic (talk) 22:40, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I was the IP. Gradient works for some but looks totally meh on others, especially when one follows another with obviously same effect. I've delinked the image, + changed text colors to work with new shadows. -Chieftain Alex 23:48, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Style Guide/Template

Is there a style guide or template for how release pages should be structured? Looking through past ones it looks like they are inconsistent in how they are laid out. I think if there was a style guide or template for release pages it could be a lot friendlier to editing and give both active users and random users an easier canvas to work with when they try to document all the features and returning content. I'm talking about simple things like breaking down content releases into things they usually contain (gem store items, meta achievement track and rewards, in-game items (soveriegn weapons, recipes etc), event specific tokens and acquisition methods, new features, returning features, permanent content, temporary content etc. If we can come up with a basic lay out based on how we know ArenaNet structures their content (assuming we don't already have one) these pages can be filled much faster and it would be easier for the community to see a red link and fix it. Druid 15:54, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Before I just edited it, we only had Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Release formatting - which was formerly blank. I've just added what I expect to find on a release page. That'd do imo. (you can quickly get to our formatting stuff by going to GW2W:FORMAT (almost memorable), and then scroll to the categories at the bottom + theres a link to Category:Formatting guidelines.) -Chieftain Alex 16:39, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I never got around to writing it up did I. P&P is linked to in the bottom right corner of the front page as well.--Relyk ~ talk < 16:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Festival of the Four Winds Season 1 or 2

I was just wondering if there's a discussion somewhere as to whether FotFW is Season 1 or 2. I was surprised to see it under Season 1 on the Releases navbox and in the strange limbo spot here on the Release page, as it seems to have directly laid the foundations for the meatier Season 2 updates (Aerin, for example, and the Zephyrites' large involvement in Dry Top) more so than continuing the Lion's Arch Attack story. Also, FotFW came only about a month and a half before S2, versus 2 months after S1. I'm beginning to look at dividing NPC /dialogue pages up by Season, which is what started this line of questioning. My instinct was to stick the April features pack on the end of Season 1 and FotFW at the start of Season 2, but if this is the decided format wiki-wide I'd like to carry it over to the /dialogue archive process. I do see that the release isn't part of the Season 2 story journal and understand this may be the defining factor... though I'd venture to call it a Prologue in that case. Really, I'm just looking to document an answer before I go ahead and organize things one way or the other. Thoughts? Thanks! -Kymtastic (talk) 22:40, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Festival of the Four Winds is a special event and not considered part of either season.--Relyk ~ talk < 02:51, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Good to know. Yet, we have at least two formatting places (Releases navbox and NPC /dialogue archive pages) where it's an impractical use of space to separate the release into a unique category. In these cases of "must choose", where does it fit best? -Kymtastic (talk) 19:15, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

reverse chronological

Why is this page reverse chronological? While I dislike that format in general, I understand that it makes sense in some cases - it just doesn't seem to make sense in this case. This page isn't Game updates, where the purpose is to make it easy for readers to find the most recent update notes. This page's purpose is to document all of the past releases, and in that context it makes more sense to me for it to be "normal" chronological so that readers can easily scan through everything in the order it happened, rather than making them read backwards. —Dr Ishmael 15:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It was discussed earlier on the page when the change was made. The idea was to have the most relevant content (the current release) at the top so it can be easily found. Since we haven't had an "official" release in a while (since the Lunar Festival and Specialization patch weren't releases or Feature Pack), it seems much less important to have it this way, right now especially. Vahkris (talk) 21:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I specifically looked for past discussions... completely missed that. Grr....

Anyway, if we want to keep the "most recent" release at the top, outside of the tables, that's fine. But the full list doesn't need to be backwards in order to meet that requirement. —Dr Ishmael 22:55, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Considering the current situation where the top of the page doesn't reflect recent additions to the game anymore, I'm fine with going back to the original ordering, as long as we do keep the top updated with the most recent release (maybe just transcluding the featured articles would suffice?) and we have a direct link to the bottom of the table there. 11:01, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Feedback 2015/09/10

Since the last living story update (13/01/2015) up to today (10/09/2015, 01:15am gmt) no major content updates have been release so that makes almost 8 months, not bashing on anet, I'm simply stating the truth. In the page it says " The time span between releases ranges roughly from two weeks to two months. " This is an exception to that so it must be noted for future reference.

What about adding entries for unnamed major updates and expansions?

I've been wondering about one thing concerning this page for a while now: should we try to keep to the official definition of releases to the letter and essentially just mirror this list, or should we treat it as a timeline of major changes in the game for returning players?

I'd understand the sentiment that a page called Release should adhere to the official list of updates refered to as releases; however, it can also work as a history of the development of the game, a list of major features added and changed over time, and I'm inclined to say that that would be more useful. The reason for me writing this is that I was wondering if we should add

1. major updates that added feature-pack-style changes to the game without being given a release name or page (namely the specialization and Lion's Arch rebuilding update), and
2. boxed expansions and the update that comes with them.

This is roughly what I have in mind:

February 10, 2015 Lunar New Year	Special event Return of Lunar New Year festivities, including Dragon Ball Arena
June 23, 2015	Major update Specializations, hero points and spirit shards Added resistance and quickness boons, taunt effect and reworked condition intensity stacking Lion's Arch rebuilt from Scarlet's attack, Princess scavenger hunt
October 23, 2015 Heart of Thorns	Expansion pack The Magus Falls jungle region, adventures and new storyline Mastery system: hang gliding, precursor weapon collections, mentoring and others Revenant profession and elite specializations: dragonhunter, herald, berserker, scrapper, druid, daredevil, tempest, chronomancer, reaper Stronghold game mode in structured PvP Desert Borderlands map, Shield Generator and reworked structure upgrades in World versus World Guild halls and reworked guild currencies, upgrades, chat and missions Map bonus rewards Action camera mode

(Raids, squad changes and new legendary weapons will come at a later update and so would be listed in that one.)

So, I would probably like to add these to the list, but I'd like to hear your opinions first. Do you think these entries should be left out or included? 18:02, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

This article is for the literal list of releases you can find on the official website. The official list of updates is handled on game update. Neither one is suited for what you propose. We can maintain a "Game update overview" that uses the same format as releases but used for major game updates. The releases would be a subset of the major game updates, so it would be simple to generalize the {{release table row}} to any game update and tag it with a type for release, major update, event, and expansion.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:42, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue about the fact that these 3 updates aren't listed on the official list, but I'd just like to say that I wouldn't want hair-splitting to get in the way of actually useful content and information. The term release and the distinction between them and other updates is rather arbitrary, and nothing in-game really supports it; I remember a similar debate about special event dungeons and whether Tixx's Infinirarium, SAB, Canach's Lair or Scarlet's Playhouse should could as dungeons or not, and while there were ways to test their official status as such through the API or the use of tonics, the actual results didn't really make it on the wiki and we just sort of winged it the way it made the most sense at the time. (IIRC, SAB shouldn't be one but the Playhouse should, which the Dungeon page doesn't reflect.)

Sometimes categories aren't as clear-cut as we might want them to be, just look at the distinction between the two seasons and other releases, which the official list, this list and the nav all categorize differently. If we define a release as "a game update that introduces content pertaining to a theme or event; these themes include holiday events and narratives that tell a story of the world of Tyria", then these three should qualify easily. The update notes on the official forum call many more updates releases, and when combined with Living World notes and such a long list of changes, the only thing missing to be a 100% release is a catchy name. And let's be honest some releases brought way less changes. Lunar New Year is even listed on {{Releases nav}} and no one seems to care that it's not on the official list, it fits there.

The wiki should document the game, not the website. The primary purpose for this page is to serve as a concise overview of major game changes over time for returning players; leaving some updates out while making a gap (Scarlet attacked LA → Halloween in the rebuilt LA; so the rebuilding itself isn't important?) will make this page lose that function. Making a separate "Game update overview" page is pointless when 99% of its potential content is covered here already; there aren't tens of other updates that we could cover, these three above are the only ones I could think of.

But whatever, if you honestly believe that a player looking at this page is not looking for that information at the same time and really only wants a list of updates with a flashy website and wallpapers, then so be it, I won't be causing an edit war... 00:04, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't see how a release is arbitrary when the official site explicitly states what the releases are. You are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. The game and the official website are considered canonical sources by the wiki. The purpose of the page is to provide information on the releases. Making up a definition out of convenient isn't a reason to make such changes. We can have a page that provides an overview of past game updates for returning players, but this is not the place to handle it.--Relyk ~ talk < 08:29, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

If that's the case, then you might want to remove the link to Lunar New Year from {{Releases nav}} as well, since it isn't supposed to be there and obviously no one wants it there. And while we're at it, we really shouldn't be adding our own notes to updates, because it's a list of changes taken from an official source that we're adding stuff to just because we feel like it's useful, that it represents the state of the game better and that it continues with the theme of the page, although if it's not on the forum posts, it clearly doesn't belong there... You might think that I'm being sarcastic and unreasonable, but I'm absolutely serious; just read the previous sentence in italics again, what is the difference?

Nevertheless, making a separate page is clearly the way to go, considering how different their content would be... 16:13, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

---

On a more serious note, I'll try to better explain my original intention for this suggestion. I find it silly to include the destruction of LA over several rows and then just offhandedly mention rebuilt LA at a following release, especially when the rebuilding was a part of such a major update while also revamping traits, changing personal story, ading boons and effects and changing condition stacking; it could very easily be a regular Living World release because the changes warrant it, and yes, you're right that it technically isn't since ArenaNet was busier with making a flashy website for HoT rather than for this, but apart from that it's the exact same thing as the other releases on the page, or at the very least it's closely related. Similarly I find it silly to include Blood and Madness reprise but not the Lunar festival. And I find it silly to eventually include raids and new legendaries as new amazing features of a future release, while silently ignoring the other HoT stuff.

People come to this page to get the sort of overview of how the game changed over time, and these 3 entries are the final puzzle pieces to get the whole picture. I don't really care if the page is called Release, Game updates overview or Flarblegarble IV, as long as the page is easy to search for and easily accessible from places like the front page; but I find it not silly but outright stupid to duplicate the same content over 2 pages with such minor adjustments. If you can find a better way to list this information without duplication then great! But I really don't like the idea of forcefully omitting stuff like this from the wiki only so that we can zealously follow one definition of releases (again, the forum calls more things releases than the list). 00:01, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) So, after a long time and after forgetting about this discussion, I stumbled upon it again. I decided to leave the unnamed updates be (even though the spec+LA update does deserve a spot there imho, I won't force it in, and Current Events make things confusing anyway). However, I noticed that the official website does indeed list Heart of Thorns under the Releases menu and since "The game and the official website are considered canonical sources by the wiki", there's really no more reason to leave it out anymore. 18:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Release with no Patch Notes

So while running around fixing some broken links, I discovered that there's no April 1st news/notes/patch notes for the release of Super Adventure box. Based on what I can tell from the German wiki's update notes, it seems like it was actually added into the game with the March 26th, 2013 patch, though it wasn't mentioned officially at the time(we have some wiki notes mentioning the achievement category being added for SAB). The first time I found it being mentioning in the English patchnotes/here is on March 31st, 2013, though I have no idea where those notes came from as I don't see them in the forum section for patch notes. I'm wondering if we're missing some notes for the release based on what the German wiki has or if we should just set the link for Super Adventure Box's release notes as the 31st since that appears to be the first official mention of it. - Do_odleplex 18:34, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, there are no update notes for 1st April 2013 because there wasn't any update that day. It is generally believed (or maybe it was data-mined) that SAB was actually put into the client during the previous big update on 26th March, but as it was originally an April Fools' joke, there wasn't any official mention about it at the time. If I remember correctly, the release website for SAB has leaked a day early, but when it came to the in-game update itself, it simply started as if it were an event. And from the recent Reddit AMAs, it seems like they might start other future festivals similarly as well.

I wouldn't move the date, though, in fact I would just remove the links if the update page doesn't exist or is completely unrelated. (I'd swear this was already the case before, though...) 1st April was still the day the event was officially launched and there are no alternate release notes to link to anyway. It shouldn't really matter when the in-game assets were technically put in – we don't actually even have to know that, and besides, it doesn't even have to come from a single update, according to data mining more SAB models are occasionally being added to the game, so if SAB world 3 eventually happens, should we link to the earliest known use of one of its models? (No, we shouldn't.) All that matters is when the update becomes playable. 19:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks for explaining, it's greatly appreciated. =) - Do_odleplex 19:48, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I finally got around to add a parameter for this, so now the update link can be disabled or even redirected to another update (some update notes come a couple days before the release starts). 12:02, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Feedback 2018/08/02

Festival of the Four winds to be added--209.93.129.0 01:24, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out! G R E E N E R 02:21, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Roller Beetle Racing

Shouldn't Roller Beetle Racing be listed as a release here? ~ Fishrock ^(talk) 18:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I personally wouldn't be opposed to it, I've suggested something similar in the #What about adding entries for unnamed major updates and expansions? section before, but there were only 2 people in that discussion with opposing opinions, so it never got anywhere. The opposing idea was that only updates listed under the Releases menu of the official website are eligible for this page. Expansions have since been listed on the website, but there are actually several other updates that could fit among the others by bringing bigger gameplay changes, such as the Specialization + Lion's Arch rebuild update, the Djinn's Dominion, Asura Arena and sigil/rune revamp update and the aforementioned Roller Beetle Racing update.

It does make sense, given that "Release" is an official term, to follow the official lists; on the other hand, even ArenaNet is much more generous with that label on their forum posts, and it wouldn't be the first time the wiki sacrificed a little bit of hair-splitting definitions from one of possible sources in order to bring more useful fitting information to the users... 23:39, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I decided to finally put these unnamed updates with major gameplay changes or additions to the list as well. There have been a lot more of them lately, they are useful to the reader looking for this sort of information, the forum posts still call them releases and after the addition of All or Nothing: Requiem to the list on the official Release web page—which is definitely not a game update at all—and the fact that Super Adventure Festival 2019 appears in the header but not in the list below it, I'm no longer interested in considering the website as the only source of truth to the detriment of usefulness and common sense, just like the Jumping puzzle page I mentioned earlier. 15:07, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Should the original Guild Wars 2 release be added to the table with similar key features breakdown?

The idea serves mainly to complete the purpose of the page to encompass full chronology of the game. --Genie (talk) 05:55, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I will agree with added them, (if possible got those release back) -- Wong8888 (talk) 12:54, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, why not, it was a release after all. There are some other releases still missing too, which I have discussed with Konig and been wanting to add but a little bit busy recently. ~Sime 14:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Reverse the chronological order of releases

It was apparently suggested and done in 2013 but was reversed to the old-release-first a couple years later (both by Noxx). With the page becoming hella long, seems like a no-brainer to start with the most recent release. Most people would come to check what has been added lately instead of reading about the Karka invasion. --Genie (talk) 13:17, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty neutral on this. I can see arguments for both (chronological order makes sense for the current section grouping, reverse chronological puts relevant content first). An alternative could be to have a widget which scrolls this page down to the most recent section by default on first load? -Chieftain Alex 13:53, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I would avoid anything that scrolls the page automatically without the user's request, but that's a good point about the grouping. Even at the moment it can actually be confusing which releases belong to and require an expansion, and which are available to all (festivals etc.). This would be even weirder in the reverse order. Probably needs some kind of strong indication, a "JW expansion cycle" label/banner or an element connecting these rows to the original expansion header. I suppose we should consider this regardless of the chronological order. --Genie (talk) 14:26, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

As you might imagine, I'm personally quite torn on this issue. Both the reversing and reverting started as suggestions on this discussion page. I probably favour the chronological order a little bit more, since I feel it's a bit more intuitive at first glance. As a compromise we added the "Skip to the most recent release" link to the top, although I imagine many people don't even notice it. Another alternative might be to list the most recent expansion cycle at the top and everything else chronologically below it (whether hidden by default or not), but that would probably be even worse. Or we could split the page into the Elder Dragon Saga and... whatever we are in now, as the page might be getting to the point where it's quite long and bloated to begin with. But I'm not sure about any of those options, so I left it be all this time. However, if we reach a new consensus for the page's format, we could change it, although I'm not sure there is any single best option out there. Besides having a checkbox at the top to change it for each user individually, but that would probably be quite a lot of work... 16:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

We could bake the following into a checkbox?

// Set the mode
var mode = 'reverse-chronological'; // 'reverse-chronological'

// Sort rows (less than comparator)
$.map( $('[data-table-sortkey]'), function(v) {
    var rows = $('tbody tr[data-row-sortkey]', v).get();
    rows.sort(function(a, b){
        if (mode == 'chronological') {
            return Number(a.attributes['data-row-sortkey'].value) > Number(b.attributes['data-row-sortkey'].value);
        } else {
            return Number(a.attributes['data-row-sortkey'].value) < Number(b.attributes['data-row-sortkey'].value);
        }
    });
    $.map(rows, function(row) {
        $(v).children('tbody').append(row);
    });
});

// Sort the tables
var tables = $('table[data-table-sortkey]').get();
tables.sort(function(a, b){
    if (mode == 'chronological') {
        return Number(a.attributes['data-table-sortkey'].value) > Number(b.attributes['data-table-sortkey'].value);
    } else {
        return Number(a.attributes['data-table-sortkey'].value) < Number(b.attributes['data-table-sortkey'].value);
    }
});
$.map(tables, function(table) {
  $('[data-filter-control-id]').append(table);
});

-Chieftain Alex 17:55, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

But that probably wouldn't reverse the sections, would it? We'd probably have to put everything into one big table, or am I not reading that right? 18:44, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Edit: Never mind, I somehow missed that you are swapping the tables as well. I'm not sure entirely what that would do to the headings and table of contents, but if that works, that might just be the way to go. 05:43, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Hopefully more people will share their thoughts on this over time, but for now we seem to not have a strong consensus for major changes. That sorting option is very nice, no idea if people will actually use it or it will just bloat the UI. So, to sum up: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. --Genie (talk) 14:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)