Ultra's back! Ultra's back! Ultra's back! Ultra's back! Ultra's back! Oh … and raids are in game now. That's also something that happened.
Audio Version

What We Did This Week
 

Allona

Fungeons! We had enough people on that we ran two groups. TWO!
Guild missions! (Maven and MoCK) The Guild puzzle was a challenge for MoCK because we hadn’t done it before. It felt very satisfying to complete it!
Ran around on my Revenant for a bit. T’was fun!
Uh… PvP?
Spent a lot of time on Guild Hall stuff … it’s like maintaining another, shared character! There are levels and traits and everything!
Oh! Got the Glittering staff skin before they went away. AND bought a bunch of stuff while the sale was on. (I was weak)

Celeste

I totally…. did… stuff… yeah.
Worked on some GH contributions and moved a lot of my characters to the flax flarms so I can get flax for flax things >.<

 

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Report from Lion’s Arch
 
Spirit Vale Release
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/november-17-2015/

“Enter Spirit Vale, the initial wing of the first raid in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, and tackle the greatest challenge yet. Built on top of our action combat and dynamic event systems, raids in Guild Wars 2 are instanced, ten-player content designed to be the ultimate test of your skill. Gather your allies for epic experiences!”
You’re basically there to try to find a Pact squad that went missing. The plot is meant to be a side story to the HoT storyline and is happening concurrently without spoiling any main story beats.
Enhanced Squad UI implementation (more on that later… )
Legendary Rewards - Unlocks the collection tiers that will be used to fulfill the requirements for legendary armor. Ascended gear, minis, and unique weapon skins are also available as loot.

C: I haven’t raided /shrug
A: Ditto, but I look forward to trying it!

 
Guild Chat - Squad UI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10phy6s-aq8

Fractal changes coming in December (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/dungeons/Upcoming-Fractal-Changes) from John  Corpening & John Smith

“From fractal scale 1 to 50 the toughness stat of creatures will scale up with the fractal scale. Beyond fractal scale 50 the toughness stat of creatures will no longer increase with the scale of the fractal. This is to make damage builds more viable in higher level fractals.”
“In this iteration of Fractal changes we will be increasing the drop rate of ascended gear from your Fractal dailies with an emphasis on high level Fractals rewarding more ascended armor.”
More XP in boss chests “This experience counts towards earning your Masteries for Central Tyria, and increases both for more difficult Fractals as well as with increased Fractal Scale.”
More liquid rewards i.e. Gold

Trevor Bennett, Branden Gee, Jon Olson (all Gameplay Programmers)
Squad is for a single leader organizing a group of players to perform a task
Raid squad - limited to 10 and everyone can invite to the raid
Regular Squad - lead by a person with a tag

sub groups

up to 15 subgroups per squad
you can move yourself to a different subgroup
if the commander wants, they can lock subgroups to prevent people from moving/switching/joining

see total supply
max 50 ppl
broadcast squad messages

can go to whole squad or specific subgroups

boons application

subgroup > your kennel (pets/minons/gadgets) > other players kennel