Viridian

Hello everyone! Most of you have been around for a long time and know, that OpenCommunity has always supported charity – and we have always organized events to support charity fundraisers, like Community Weekends or even entire Community Weeks. We love fighting for a good cause and we are in fact quite experienced ourselves when it comes to organizing such events. Still, joining with Gamers Giving Back and participating in their charity events as one of the European hosts, seemed like a step up into a bigger world and we were quite excited about it. However... ...getting a glimpse behind the curtains doesn't always reveal what you expected and sometimes you have to realize that you don't like what you see. (I know that many of our commanders felt the same after joining one of our teams.) Partnering up with Gamers Giving Back has been in many respects an amazing experience, mostly because it feels great to be part of an event that spans more than one continent and because it feels like we can achieve so much more. It has also been incredibly frustrating, infuriating and disillusioning. There are too many points of dissent between us and Gamers Giving Back to think that a cooperation between us could be anything but frustrating for both sides. Matters recently escalated, but because many of us have been looking forward to Pink Day in LA, we would normally have preferred to wait until after the event before ending our partnership. However, having the dubious pleasure of reading through some of the correspondence between @Lelling and some members of Gamers Giving Back, I don't see any other possible response but to part ways with Gamers Giving Back immediately. In my opinion their conduct was so far beyond the line, it was almost comical to read, and there is no way I could approve of us continuing to work with them while pretending all is sunshine (and Lelling continuing to work his ass off) – even just until after Pink Day – under the given circumstances. How Lelling himself will react to this is (obviously) up to him, but as OpenCommunity we won't organize anything in cooperation with Gamers Giving Back anymore. We are still hoping to continue doing Tyria Pride, and otherwise would like to spend the rest of the year building friendships and enjoying ourselves. If you have any questions or thoughts, join us on Saturday, September 21st at 18:00 CEST for our 6th Community Assembly. We'll be answering questions and hopefully will be able to have an open and constructive discussion about how to proceed from here. Separating from Gamers Giving Back doesn't mean we will stop doing other charity events, but it's just not on our radar right now. We want to make it absolutely clear that we're not trying to become a "competitor" of GGB (if such a thing exists in the world of charities), but we are curious about any ideas on what kind of activities or events we could do and what kind of causes you all would like us to support! We hope to see you all on Saturday!

I am often amazed at how easily @Lelling gets hyped when he discovers a new and so far unused cool feature of our community software, immediately being enthusiastic about the many things we could do with it to improve our website's usability. It's a character trait I myself don't share, as I don't get easily excited as it is, but particularly definitely not where it concerns our community software (IPS). However, I think very few people can be completely immune to being affected by those sparkly eyes in light of a new discovery and the sense of exploration of newfound possibilities(*). One of the things I felt this most strongly with is our software's Club feature. Clubs are amazing! We originally looked into this feature already quite some time ago as a nice-to-have for our member guilds, but we later realized that clubs can do so much more. Besides them offering a more customizable experience for our members, the administrative possibilities grant us and club leaders so much more freedom compared to what we used to try with forums. Within a club, the leaders can freely decide what content they want to include (be it their own forums, gallery, calendar,...) without having to ask one of us to add it for them. They can promote (or demote) other members to moderators or leaders, without the need to inform the staff about it in order to get a role assigned to the newly promoted member through IPS' rather unwieldy permissions system (or revoked). The number of advantages seems endless! But, although we knew that this feature was really awesome, there was always something else to take care of, so we postponed releasing it again and again over the past year. Clubs became relevant again when we stopped organizing events and the autonomous group formed, as we wanted to provide them with whatever they might need to get them started, but at the same time wanted to give them as much independence as possible right from the start. We didn't know which of the things we would have to offer they would want, but we thought a lot about it nonetheless. Calendars While we were looking into the club feature more to figure out how to incorporate independent groups like Players vs. Events (the autonomous group) with as little administrative overhead and as few dependencies as possible, one of our main concerns were calendars. Luckily, Clubs can have their own calendars (did I mention Clubs are amazing?), but what we considered problematic is, that in order to add events, a person would have to be registered on our website. For a group that would in the future probably acquire both members and commanders without any affiliation with OpenCommunity, that felt like a restriction to us. Unexpectedly, IPS has a solution to this problem: iCalendar Feeds! It is possible to link an iCalendar feed, for instance from a Google Calendar, to an IPS-internal calendar, which makes it (sadly only almost) unnecessary to still edit the calendar from within our community's website. This is awesome! It would allow independent groups complete control over who can edit their events through an external calendar application completely separately from our community software's needs. So Lelling and I tried it out and it actually works! When IPS kicks you in the butt ...after a fashion. As Lelling once put it (not literally): Every time you want to do something with our community software, you eventually come to realize that what IPS can do is almost what you would need, but then it fails quite spectacularly at doing it in a way that would actually make it usable as is. So, it can import events from iCalendar feeds ...but does it keep them up-to-date? What happens when there is a new event, or an old one is deleted? ...well ...??? One of the most annoying facts about IPS is, it is seriously badly documented to the point where you can't actually call it documented anymore. After observing our test feeds for a while, we at first thought it doesn't update imported calendars at all – which would make this quite a useless feature, as this would mean that we would have to manually refresh imported events by clicking on a little "refresh" button in our administrator panel every now and then. This would also mean that only Lelling and I could do this, as we are the only ones with access to said panel ...IPS, just why?!? Why implement something as awesome as importing calendar feeds, but then stop short of that final little step necessary to actually making it usable? It could have been an amazing discovery, but ...nope. Call me selfish, but I don't actually see myself clicking through all our imported calendars every couple of hours. So, now what? Well, writing a plugin that automates the update process seemed like the way to go. However, after reviewing the actual code on my local copy of our website, I learned that IPS actually does have a task that updates calendar feeds! What?!? But why doesn't it update ours then? And here is where IPS developers apparently yet again failed to think things through properly before implementing them ...it does update feeds. Every four hours, it looks for the feed that is most out-of-date and updates that one feed. One calendar. Every four hours. The more calendars you get, the more out-of-date all of them will be. IPS, you are truly a work of art. So, I ended up writing yet another plugin to make up for IPS' design flaws anyway. The good news is, importing events from iCalendar feeds now works (almost) as it should, and we will be able to use this feature in the future! Thanks for reading! (*) Just to prevent any misunderstandings – I very much appreciate this, as I find it quite engaging and derive a lot of motivation from it!

I think it really is important to remember, that every single commander and we as the staff do what we do in our free time. Naturally, having free time is important, because normally it is meant to relieve the mind (and the body) of some of the stress caused in other areas of our lives - be it at our jobs, studies, or by for example family issues. It is also time that we need to engage in social interactions and to maintain the important relationships in our lives, particularly with the people we are close to, because those are the people on whose support we will be able to count, should we ever be in a situation where we need it. The last thing that we want from the activities we pursue in our free time, is that they instead add to the stress. It's not that stress is always bad, but there needs to be a positive balance, and I don't believe any member of the staff has felt that in a very long time. What happened instead is, that - all other issues aside - we were available to both commanders and our members pretty much most of the time. With all criticism and complaints about all the mistakes we've ever made and all the personality issues we (supposedly) have, I hope at least that is something that is undisputed - if we were needed for something, we were available. Eventually OpenCommunity with all it's issues and administrative and organisational needs had so far intruded upon our private lives, that we actually didn't feel like we had a private life anymore. I believe it is hard to not realize that something has gone seriously wrong, when someone is forced to deal with organisational problems related to events while physically at work. And I believe the words "Hang on. This is something I need to respond to." have very special meaning to my husband.

Hello Skalda, we honestly don't expect you to have any specific builds prepared. The only important thing to keep in mind is, that your build should fulfill the role you sign up for. What that means is that if you for example sign up to a raid as a damage dealer (DPS), your build should be designed to primarily do damage and you should aim to mostly have gear with stats that would help with that (for example Berserker or Viper stats depending on your damage type). Otherwise, what skills and traits people choose can be very personal and depends a lot on your playstyle. If you join our raids, feel free to experiment with your skills and traits to find out what works best for you. Note: Increasing your survivability by adding toughness/vitality stats or taking traits is generally not necessary, as we have dedicated healers/supporters focused on keeping you alive, while a lot of incoming damage can be avoided by for example dodging or generally dealing with the mechanics of an encounter. Personally I like to experiment with my builds and sometimes share and discuss them with my friends through the Guild Wars 2 Build Editor. I am sure it's not everybody's thing, but I believe it is worth looking at it at least. Feel free to share your build as well, maybe to get some feedback, should you decide to come up with your own! If you don't know how to come up with your own build or don't want to, you can look at for example the Snow Crows website to get a general idea of how raid builds look, but should keep in mind that their builds are designed for speed clearing and this amount of optimization is not necessary, if you just want to enjoy raiding with friends for the fun of it, and certainly not required by us. You can check out their Elementalist builds here, and their Thief builds here. You can also look through their guide section, as they give some hints on how to deal with specific situations that can be quite helpful. I hope to see you in a raid soon! Cheers, Viridian

Because there was a question about how the privacy settings affect what other members see on the profile, I made a small change. When you view your own profile, there is now a button at the bottom labeled "View as Stranger". This lets you view your profile page as other members would see it so that you can easily test whether nothing is visible that shouldn't be. Additionally, your account name on the profile sidebar and hovercard are now shown in red, should the account be completely hidden from other users. I hope this helps ?

Many of you are probably wondering where the overall Achievement Points of your accounts are ? It is correct that they aren't displayed currently. Here's the reason (it gets a bit technical): When requesting information from the GW2 API, it only gives you the Daily and Monthly AP. In order to get the overall AP, you need to retrieve a list of all achievements an account has. This list only gives you an ID and a tier, but not the points, and it is a long list. We then need to obtain the list of all available achievements and go through it to figure out how many points the achievement on that tier is worth and then add all that up. This gets a bit complicated when looking at repeatable achievements. Because of this, and because we thought other things are currently more important, we decided to deal with that later. So overall achievement points will be added in a future update ?

Hey everyone! During the Community Assembly in January we announced some changes and new features that would be available on our website shortly. After a multitude of unfortunate delays ? we are now finally able to release the first part of the promised new content ? Our primary aim is to simplify registration and signups for group events, like raids, fractals and dungeons. In order to make the changes we have in mind possible, we need to add some functionality to our existing website first. This extension is the base for those changes. It includes: Guild Wars 2 Accounts Members can now add their Guild Wars 2 accounts to their profiles. Accounts can be specified either manually by name, or even through an API Key. This feature will eventually replace many of the fields where players have to keep manually entering their account names, including the raid signups. If entered by name, accounts will be verified by our staff members manually (which might take some time). Guild Wars 2 accounts are displayed in the profile sidebar and member's hovercards. There is an option to keep the account completely hidden from other members. Administrators and Moderators that might need to know your account name (like members of the Raid Team when you sign up to raids) will still be able to see it, though. Guests do not have access to your information. In order to add a Guild Wars 2 account to your member account, go to your Account Settings. There should now be an extra tab called "Guild Wars 2 Accounts". Enter your data and click "Save". API Keys We've added GW2 API integration to our website, so members are now able to activate GW2 API keys for a number of extra features on the website! Entering an API Key allows members to show additional information about their account and their characters on their profile pages. All of the information can be either fully or partially hidden from other members. If you want to check out what can be displayed before adding anything, you can look at my profile. Basic Builds Basic Builds are a minimalist approach to getting to know some basic details about what kind of character someone signs up to a group event with. They allow our group leaders to quickly decide how to set up a balanced group when processing signups to group events. Basic Builds can be added to your member account from the overview and are afterwards visible in your profile. You aren't limited to our predefined builds, but can freely create any other builds you might also have, or add those created by other members. You can read up the details on the About Basic Builds page. Basic Builds aren't used yet, but in the future you will be able to sign up to group events simply by selecting an appropriate build - so no more hidden comments and copy & pasting your information from previous signups ? If you have any questions about any of the changes, or encounter a bug, please send me a message or reply to this post! I hope you enjoy the changes ?

It's time to unveil our new monthly Screenshot Reenactment Challenge! But first, we'd like to announce the winner of April's Screenshot Challenge! Congratulations to @Datura87 ?! Enjoy your complete set of all underwater precursors ? The rules are the same as always: The locations can be on any map, including Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire maps The locations are accessible by running, jumping, gliding and using basic mount abilities (no leaps, Griffon mounts or other tricks required) Cheap tonics or bundle items that can be obtained through the trading post or from vendors in the world may be used Character race / class matching is not a requirement, a 100% match can score you points, but original solutions will also be rewarded Only one entry per person is allowed, in case multiple screenshots were posted we'll judge the first one submitted You have time until May 31st to enter your screenshot We'll be judging the screenshots in two different categories: Recreation: How closely did you match the location and what the people in the picture are doing? This includes emotes, number of players, use of bundle items (if applicable), but also camera angle, field of view, day/night and such! Race / class matching will only be used in the event of a tie. Creativity: If you thought it would be too boring to just recreate a screenshot someone else already made, you can decide to rather work with the theme and hand in some original interpretation! What you can win: We'll be giving away an RGB Torch Pack ?, containing the Bloodstone Torch Skin, the Dragon's Jade Flame Skin and the Glacial Torch Skin! And here's our screenshot for May 2018: Raiding the Stronghold Good luck and have fun o/

Since there have been some questions about this, I'll clarify the intention of the prize We are talking about normal, craft-able ascended items - not precursors or special skins. The intention of the prize as stated was to give the winner something useful, thus it is focused on the functionality

January has passed and as we enter into February it's time to unveil our new Monthly Screenshot Reenactment Challenge! But first, we'd like to announce the winner of January's Screenshot Challenge! Congratulations to @llandshark, who won a Mini Karka Hatchling, a Karka Helm Skin and a Southsun Remembrance Package! Enjoy The rules are the same as always: The locations can be on any map, including Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire maps The locations are accessible by running, jumping, gliding and using basic mount abilities (no leaps, Griffon mounts or other tricks required) Cheap tonics or bundle items that can be obtained through the trading post or from vendors in the world may be used Character race / class matching is not a requirement, a 100% match can score you points, but original solutions will also be rewarded Only one entry per person is allowed, in case multiple screenshots were posted we'll judge the first one submitted You have time until February 28th to enter your screenshot We'll be judging the screenshots in two different categories: Recreation: How closely did you match the location and what the people in the picture are doing? This includes emotes, number of players, use of bundle items (if applicable), but also camera angle, field of view, day/night and such! Race / class matching will only be used in the event of a tie. Creativity: If you thought it would be too boring to just recreate a screenshot someone else already made, you can decide to rather work with the theme and hand in some original interpretation! What you can win: We wanted to give away something useful and because of that decided that this month, you can win an Ascended Piece of Armor or an Ascended Weapon of your choice! This is a bit complicated, as ascended items are account bound, so we will supply you with everything you need to craft it yourself. You will however need the appropriate crafting discipline on level 500 and should you choose a stat combination where the insignia/inscription is account bound, you'll need the recipe. But other than that we'll cover all the materials you'll need. And here's our screenshot for February 2018: Who let the Slublings out?!? Good luck and have fun o/

What GW2 Raidar does Unfortunately you cannot argue against something, without at the same time advertising it, so here it goes. GW2 Raidar is a website that analyzes all uploaded arcdps log files and among other things compiles statistics on how popular certain professions at certain encounters are and how well players on average fare when playing those professions. Just to prevent any misunderstandings, I don't have any problems with this part of what the website does. However, I strongly object to the next part. When a member of a squad uploads a log file, GW2 Raidar compiles a statistic for this particular attempt. This is automatically added to the list of encounters the individual squad members have participated in, so in essence automatically shared within the squad. It also at this point creates a link, which can be shared with anyone, even outside the squad. This is something that can't be prevented. What this in essence means is, that any squad member can make this statistic publicly accessible and freely share the data with anyone (GW2 Raidar isn't the only website that creates shareable links like this, but I'll stick to this site in this post). If you don't want just anyone to know how often you got teleported at Vale Guardian or Cairn, you can adjust your privacy settings to at least not show your account and character's name. However, players that were in the squad will obviously still be able to deduce who you were. How to prevent your account/character name from being publicly shown I wish website providers would finally properly understand how privacy settings are meant to work, because this should be the default setting. It is unfortunately not. (Moreover, "private" should in my opinion mean that my data isn't shared at all, not only that my name isn't shown... oh well.) Anyone that wishes to set themselves to "private", will need to create an account and link an API key for an existing Guild Wars 2 account. Step 1: Create a Guild Wars 2 API Key for GW2 Raidar Step 1-1: Go to API Key Management Log into your Guild Wars 2 account here and go to the "Applications" tab. This will give you an overview of all your API Keys. As you can see in the screenshot, I have already created a key for GW2 Raidar. If you haven't, click on "New Key" to create a new API Key. Step 1-2: Create a new API Key Enter a name for your new API Key. According to GW2 Raidar's rules, this name must contain "gw2raidar" in some form, but it is case insensitive and can contain additional symbols. The only permission you need to grant is "account", which is required for all API keys anyway. Anything else is unnecessary. Once you are done, click on "Create API Key". The new key should now be listed in the overview. Mark and copy it. Step 2: Create a GW2 Raidar account Go to GW2 Raidar and click on "Register" (the link should take you there). Enter Username, email address and a password (twice), as always when registering anywhere. I don't think you need to worry about providing an email address, so far the site has never sent me any and you don't need to confirm your registration. Paste the API key you created in Step 1 into the field reserved for it. Click on register. Step 3: Adjust your privacy settings When logged into GW2 Raidar, click on your username to bring up the user settings. Here you can for example also add additional Guild Wars 2 accounts, should you have more than one. Adjust the privacy settings. There aren't many options. Your character and account names are now not shown to others anymore. As an afterthought Different people have different reasons for raiding. For some raiders, this website is an awesome tool and very helpful. For others it is shocking and scary that their performance data can be shared without them even being aware of it. In my opinion it should be up to each individual player to make the decision to participate in the website's program for themselves. I am sure nobody can deny that when used with malicious intent, the site could potentially cause quite a lot of harm to individual players. It would be nice therefore, if we could respect each others wishes and before uploading or sharing any data via this site (or any other, for that matter), ask the members of the group whether they are all ok with it. And if they are not, just skip uploading the data for that one raid.

Addendum to the Raid Etiquette: On the Subject of “DPS Meters” The subject of DPS Meters has been widely discussed and has been brought up frequently in OpenCommunity raids as well. Therefore we have decided to make an official statement to clarify the intention behind our rules and clear up any ambiguity there might be in them. Why we are against DPS Meters There are community members which have expressed concerns about DPS Meters being used in our raids. OpenCommunity is meant to be a place where members treat each other with kindness and respect. It is meant to be a community that strives to create a positive and supportive atmosphere within Guild Wars 2. This responsibility lies with every single member and all of us agreed to this upon joining the community. Ignoring other members’ concerns, discomfort, or even fear is very far from that - and it starts with members being afraid of being told that their concerns are unjustified and silly already when they are considering voicing that they have them. We are not trying to restrict our raiders when asking them to not use DPS Meters in our official raids, but are trying to protect those players that have concerns but find themselves unable to express them. Players that do not share concerns about DPS Meters have considerably broader possibilities to gain access to raids than the other way around. Consequently, we wish to be there foremost to help those players that are made uncomfortable by DPS Meters and the toxicity level in the general raid community. This is a choice we as the Raid Team made when we formed. What this means In official raids You do not have to share our agenda or our views. However, if you do want to participate in our raids, you will nonetheless have to abide by our rules. If you find yourself unable to do so, then please feel free to go elsewhere to raid. Our rules are not subject to discussion. In any other raid It is up to your own conscience to decide how to handle DPS Meters or anything else that would be subject to concerns in our official raids. It doesn’t concern us and it is not our place to meddle. Sharing Log-Files We discourage the use of DPS Meters in our official raids, but we obviously have no means to force players to not use them. However, sharing log files created during an official OpenCommunity raid by a DPS Meter addon, let alone in a way that makes the data publicly accessible, is in violation of not only the OC Raid Etiquette, but the General Community Guidelines, specifically A.III and indirectly D.II and is therefore not something we can tolerate. Should we either be made aware of or find out ourselves, that such data has been shared somewhere, the person who uploaded it will be prohibited from joining any further official raids.

The new raid is happening! \o/ ...and we want to of course explore as much of it as we can! To give us all plenty of time, we will not schedule any regular raids for the entire week. Instead, we'll send in a team of brave explorers to scout the terrain and bring back as much intelligence as they can manage on what awaits us inside. If you want to be part of the company of pioneers, you can sign up to one of the expeditions we will be launching throughout the week. Don't be sad, however, if you aren't picked as a member of the team right at the start. As there tend to be loads of casualties in the course of all great explorations, we will need a lot of fresh adventurers to make up for the losses in between and you might get to join in later. If you don't feel confident or brave enough to join the explorers, or don't get a spot right away, you can still join in the HYPE by listening in on TeamSpeak and keeping up with their progress... and casualty reports. Or you can try to launch your own expedition with other adventurers you meet on TeamSpeak... no promises though, only very few raiders are brave enough to step into The Unknown. The Masterplan! (a.k.a. the Expedition Schedule) A list of all expeditions you can join can be found on our Raid Schedule, but here's an overview for your convenience Please read the raid description of at least one of them before signing up, though, as there is additional information contained! Tuesday 19:00 - 23:30 CET: New Raid HYPE! 00:00 - 03:00 CET: New Raid HYPE! EXTENDED Version Wednesday 16:00 - 19:30 CET: The Exploration Continues! 20:00 - 23:30 CET: The Exploration Continues! - Ever Onwards 00:00 - 03:00 CET: The Exploration Continues! - The Final Battle (of the day) Thursday 16:00 - 19:30 CET: Delving Deeper! 20:00 - 23:30 CET: Delving Even Deeper! 00:00 - 03:00 CET: Is there a bottom to this?!? We might add further explorations later that week. If you can't be there for the entire duration, you can sign up anyway! We might loose some players in between and will need to replace them, so it is good to know who to ask (And yes, we are aware that some of those raids are technically already on the next day. We just decided that for us the next day is after sleeping ) Join us on TeamSpeak! Even if you won't be able to participate, you are welcome to join the raid channel on TeamSpeak to listen in and to be available should a spot open up. However, as the participants need to concentrate on the raid, please do not interrupt, even if there is silence in the channel for a while. The active raid channel will be heavily moderated if necessary. We know it is normally considered polite to greet people or say your goodbyes when leaving, but in this case, please don't! We will also create a channel to hang out in with other raiders, so that you can share news or find some teammates to explore the new raid with on your own. Preparing for the Expedition! As most of us are going to devote our full attention to the new raid starting Tuesday evening, I am sure a lot of us would like to get the clearing of the "old" encounters for this week out of the way before that happens So at least for the people crazy enough to already start gaming in the early afternoon (like us), we've scheduled a special kill run here. Join us and lets wipe the floor with those pesky old-timers That's about it in regard to the plan! Don't forget to pack your warm underwear and chamomile tea, because it looks like it's gonna be cold and... Let's do this thing! \o/

As far as I can tell, you've been accepted and verified in the Raid Discord, but not the general OpenCommunity Discord this thread is about You could consider joining it as well, to get information and event notifications that are not purely raid related