To anyone who’s been working on map completion in Guild Wars 2, it should come as no surprise that some areas contain their fair share of buggy dynamic events and skill point challenges. Some bugs persist until the servers are reset or go down for maintenance, which can be frustrating for players who are trying to complete every zone they level in. It’s even more frustrating when some of these bugs seem so random. One skill challenge can be bugged one week, and the next, that one’s fixed, but a different skill challenge point then becomes bugged. Why are the bugs so random?

ArenaNet had a few words to say about this exact question over the weekend. Here’s what was said by Matthew Medina, Guild Wars 2 Content Designer:

To respond to this I can say that, yes, we’re aware of the general issues that have been reported with many Dynamic Events and skill challenges. They frustrate us as much as they frustrate you – most if not all of us devs are playing the game right along with you, and these content blockers can certainly be challenging to everyone’s enjoyment of the game experience.

I would like take this opportunity to clarify one thing I’ve seen discussed here on the forums and in game chat. It’s just not true that the higher level or other content wasn’t tested. It was. Thoroughly.

But even with the Beta Weekend Events and our own internal testing, there’s really only so much that we can do to simulate the number of times that events have to run in sequence once a game like Guild Wars 2 goes live. In particular, Arenanet has made iteration one of our key development philosophies which has the benefit of promoting the publishing of better in-game content, but which has the consequence of us doing many builds a day while we’re developing. In many cases the events that are breaking are doing so because of compounding errors that are hard to catch when you’re developing in such a fluid environment. We’re seeing a number of these blocking issues in events that have undergone extensive internal testing, but which have never needed to run dozens of times in a row, because of how frequently we developers were iterating and generating new builds.

We’re working as hard as we can to find and fix the biggest blocking issues, and it’s one of our top priorities to ensure that you can complete each map and play in events without running into these kinds of issues. We sincerely appreciate your patience, and your detailed reports on anything you come across that isn’t working as it should.

Next up in our series of Guild Wars 2 area completion guides is Diessa Plateau, the second charr racial area, intended for players between levels 15-25. The area’s home of some interesting challenges, included three jumping puzzles, a cow-flinging catapult, and plenty of old, decrepit ruins waiting to be explored. To get there, travel to The Black Citadel, and head north through Memorial Quadrant and through the portal.

These completion guides are intended to help players achieve the completion series achievements. We’ll just be covering the more difficult-to-find Points of Interest, all of the Vista Points, all of the Skill Challenges, and the area’s jumping puzzles. Also included is a humungous map, with every major Point of Interest (PoI) and Waypoint (WP) labeled. Points of Interest have black-bordered text, Waypoints dark blue. Renown (heart) quests are also labeled with their suggested level. This should help you decide on a path of adventure, if you so choose.

I’ve also labeled nearby portals to other maps as well as the entrances to the map’s secret jumping puzzles. When reading my tips for completing the jumping puzzles, make sure to take a peek at the pictures that are linked at some of the tougher areas.

With the help of Guild Wars 2 Guru’s community memeber carralpha, we now have a sliced up map of Guild Wars 2′s world map and where you should expect to go for each level range.

1-15: Zones adjacent to all major cities (there are 4 since Rata Sum and the Grove seem to share a zone for this)
15-25: Kessex Hills, west of Kessex Hills, west of Wayfarer Foothills and north of Plains of Ashford
25-35: Gendarran Fields
30-40: South of Blazeridge Steppes (this doesn’t seem right position-wise but that’s what I seem to see), Timberline Falls
35-45: Valley Headland
40-50: East of Timberline Falls, Blazeridge Steppes
50-60: NW of Blazeridge Steppes, south of Timberline Falls
55-65: Sparkfly Fen
60: Island SW of Lion’s Arch
60-70: The zone with the volcano SW of Ancient Dwarflands, Regrown Flame
70-75: NE Orr
70-80?: Northernmost Shiverpeaks zone (with the big lake)
75-80: NW Orr
80: W Orr

One observation that you can take from this new information, is that there appears to be only three max-level areas and only one of those three seem to be 80 only. What kind of activities do you think we’ll find in these areas and will there be enough things to do to keep the PVE players happy? Or are there some areas missing from this account? This size of the world map points to a lot of room for expansion.