Hello, everyone! I’m Isaiah Cartwright, lead designer on Guild Wars 2. I wanted to talk to you about two upcoming changes to the fractal dungeons: reconnect and party-tier improvements.

Currently, if a party member disconnects from a fractal dungeon run, they are unable to rejoin, which can cause a lot of issues for that player and their party. Our new system will allow players who disconnect to reconnect to their party and jump back into the dungeon. We certainly understand how frustrating this situation can be, and would like to apologize for the delay on this fix.

We’ve also made a few changes to the way party-level restrictions work. Currently, players who want to join a party are limited to the lowest fractal level in the party. This makes it difficult for lower fractal-level players to find parties, so we’ve modified the party-level restrictions to allow players of any fractal level to group up. At party creation, players can choose any fractal level up to the highest fractal level in the party. Upon completion of the fractal run, all players equal to or lower than the chosen fractal level will have their fractal level increased by one. All players above the chosen fractal level will gain karma, but their fractal level will not increase. Rewards from the fractal will be based on players’ personal reward level as long as the reward level is equal to or lower than the chosen fractal level. For example:

Player 1 (fractal level 2)

Player 2 (fractal level 21)

Player 3 (fractal level 21)

Player 4 (fractal level 21)

Player 5 (fractal level 53)

Player 2 makes the party and sets the fractal level to 21, and the party goes on to beat three fractals. Here are the fractal-level results after the run:

Player 1 (fractal level 3)

Player 2 (fractal level 22)

Player 3 (fractal level 22)

Player 4 (fractal level 22)

Player 5 (still fractal level 53, but gains karma for helping)

The goal is to allow everyone to play together and make partying less restrictive for everyone. We plan to ship these two features at the end of January.

Thanks for playing!