From the Editor's Lab - Volume Four

In the latest thrilling episode of From the Editor’s Lab, we announce the winner of our “Name that Feature” contest, discuss the new look of GW2Hub, and shed some light on our upcoming plans. All this and much more awaits you below!

Introducing the Black Lion Underground

Following the entry period for our most recent contest, our writing team met in our top secret HQ to discuss the various entries we received. We were truly impressed by the feature titles and concepts presented by our community, and I personally wanted to thank each of you who took the time to pitch your concepts.

I’m pleased to announce that community member Ayelet is the winner of our Name that Feature contest, for the Black Lion Underground entry. This new feature will be penned by our resident economy expert  and will provide players plenty of insights as to market trends, tips on what to sell vs. salvage, and how to maximize your in-game earnings through the trading post. We have some great plans for this new feature, and I’m truly excited to add it to our regular content lineup.

GW2Hub v2.0

Earlier this summer I announced my intention to revamp the graphics on GW2Hub as part our ongoing commitment to improve the user experience on the site. One of the primary goals was to retain our unique identity, but address a number of things that kept me squinting following the launch back in March.

In a perfect world, that kind of undertaking could be handed off to a separate web development and design team, with me providing oversight and direction for the project while retaining a sharp focus on providing unique content for our readers each week. In reality, I wear an awful lot of hats and spend countless hours behind the scenes to help transform GW2Hub into the unstoppable juggernaut that it was always intended to be.

As you’ve likely noticed by now, the first major revamp was implemented this week, and we have even more changes and improvements already in the works. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a complete amateur when it comes to web design (my degree focused wholly on more traditional artistic mediums) but thanks to the feedback, support and encouragement of our writing team, the site is now one step closer to my vision for it.

With a lot of the heavy lifting out of the way, the next major update for the site will be focused on improving our commenting system and forums. Both are areas I feel could use some improvements, and provide a better user experience for our community, so be on the lookout for v2.5 to roll out sometime in the near future!

This Isn’t a Podcast, Bookah

A common request from our community has been to make the site more media rich. While I can’t reveal all of our secret plans in that area just yet, what I can say is that our team has been hard at work behind the scenes to come up with some stellar concepts that I think you’ll enjoy.

First up, we’ll be rolling out an audio experiment that isn’t really a podcast, but leverages our knowledge and expertise to address major trends or aspects of Guild Wars 2 that we feel are worthy of a heated discussion amongst our writing team. In fact, I’ll be putting on yet another of my many hats today to work on editing the audio and packaging our first roundtable discussion for mass consumption, so be on the lookout for our little experiment to hit the site over the next couple of days.

Community Spotlight

Now that some of the dust has begun to settle following the GW2 launch, we’re looking to spark our Community Spotlight series back up, and are actively seeking candidates who would be interested in writing guest editorials for the column. For aspiring writers out there, this is a great opportunity to have your work published and consumed by thousands of your gaming peers.

While we’ve been putting our feelers out to find some of the great, hidden writing talent out there, I’m also all about being open and direct with our community. If you have a burning topic you’d be interested in writing about for our Community Spotlight series, send an introductory email with the subject line “Community Spotlight Submission” along with a description of your proposed subject to sardu[at]tentonhammer.com. While I can’t guarantee that all submitted work will be published, I do feel strongly about giving fans a platform for their voices to be heard outside of forums or other random corners of the web, and look forward to hearing from our readers.

On that note, it’s that time once again for me to scamper back into my secret underground laboratory to put together our next contest, and continue working on a series of guides that will hopefully provide players some better insights to their options when it comes to endgame armor sets.

• Sardu