Guild Wars 2

Question: When will Anet make the Clocktower JP harder? I would very much like to see a “Tribulation Mode” added. Perhaps the instance can give the options for normal and Trib mode?

Why did Mad King Thorn disappear for 250 years, then suddenly come back? If there is any lore behind this, I would like to know it.

What was the intention with the 20 Slot Halloween Pail and Mini Bloody Prince Thorn? Is there a reason that they cost so much?

Will the Lunatic Court be expanded upon in the story?

What were the seals needed to unleash the Mad King? The first was Queen Salma becoming Queen, but what were the rest?

Why does Mad King Thorn wear a pumpkin on his head? Also, will we ever find out where the pieces of his body are located, or have some sort of scavenger hunt to find them?

[insert everything Konig said here]

Will we be seeing any additional lore being revealed during this year’s Halloween? Such as the Bloody Prince making another comeback in another upcoming patch and facing his father. Or will this be reserved for next year?

It seems like Edrick and his father are both pretty mad. Is there any time when they got along? Seems like those 2 could get up to some really terrible mischief. Or maybe a family squabble that dragged in innocents?

How is the box made, and can we make new ones or destroy the existing one?

What are the magical powers of candy corn? Are there any other candies that have powers?

What drove the Mad King to his madness?

Who was the original inventor of Candy Corn in the GW universe and why is Mad King Thorn so obsessed with it?

Why are there only a few halloween weapon skins for this year and not 1 for every type of weapon?

I would like to know how the rules of the Underworld work. Supposedly Mad King Thorn was locked away in the Underworld, and could only visit the mortal realm during Halloween. But he has been slowly breaking the seals that keep him locked away. How does Grenth feel about all this? And is there any connection between Mad King Thorn and Dhuum? And where exactly is the Mad Realm located in the Mists? How much power does Thorn have over this realm?

Assuming the Mad Realm existed naturally, how did Oswald Thorn come to take control of it? If not, how did the Mad Realm come to be? Was it made for individuals with such lunacy as Oswald Thorn or did Oswald Thorn himself somehow make it, as we’re told that he had or knew powerful dark magic.

Questions were taken from posts below that I liked, credit goes to them for those questions.

why was the mask of the night chosen as the halloween hat this year? it doesn’t look spooky enough

also where is reaper’s rumble??

first thank you for taking questions before. Last stream I watched the chat was just spammed with GvG and you couldn’t see the questions.

1. Can we expect to see any new weapons, trait lines, or skills (aside from the anti toxin spray) this year? If not, do you have an expectation when you will start putting them in?

2. Are we going to start seeing some more enemies that are larger cemented in the lore already? As in more foes that players will recognize from the lore.

3. Was tequatl your answer for the PvE raids? If not anything you can tell us about this endeavor? If yes when can we expect another world boss to be buffed?

4. Anything coming in this year that you are particularity excited about?

5. Do you have any plans to get the players back into the zones that are rarely revisited in the open world?

6. Something I love about the open world are the meta and dynamic events. Sadly, I feel like their impact on the world isn’t that large. Do you have any plans to change current dynamic events and meta events to make them project that the world is living more?

7. Are there any projects that you are currently working on for the game that you think could be really big in terms of its impact on the player base? If so can you give us some sort of teaser?

8. Are there any problems with the game that you acknowledge and are working on fixes for (could by anything. Maybe fixes to balance, gameplay, lack of progression, etc) that you can say you are working on?

Did we actually kill Zhaitan or just defeat him?

I have to ask, What effects did our actions in GW1’s halloween quests have on Mad King Thorn’s return in GW2? Why did he disappear for so long just to re-appear now? Are all ponies invisible? or just Gum Drops?

In my opinion, the Bloody Prince events seemed lackluster compared to Mad King Thorn’s last year. Can we expect a grande finale from Edrick Thorn?

Edit: As a side note, will the Mad King’s history be available anywhere in Tyria? I’d think with him surfacing every Halloween again, the Priory libraries would stock their shelves with volumes about his reign, and I’d love to read them.

How do you feel about zerg trains, where players run in a big group killing monsters with minimal risk. Is that intentional? Will future events be more of the same? The mad king’s labyrinth is pretty much that, though it may have more players going down than the queen’s pavilion did.

Why do we have to grind so much to get new weapons these days?

Why are people asking questions that doesn’t actually have anything at all to do with the actual live-stream?
This is about LORE, nothing else.

Questions: What were the seals needed to unleash the Mad King? The first was Queen Salma becoming Queen, but what were the rest?

Why does Mad King Thorn wear a pumpkin on his head? Also, will we ever find out where the pieces of his body are located, or have some sort of scavenger hunt to find them?

Why was there so much reused content and still not bringing back Reaper’s Rumble when Lunatic was brought in? Enjoyed what was added just a little sad there wasn’t more. Makes me think seasonal events will mostly be repeats of past years.

• Did some of Edrick’s acts in life get attributed to Oswald or someone else? Given Ozzy’s reaction to Eddie burning down that last village, some of the things in his later life attributed to Oz seems out of place – particularly the towns who’s names got erased from history.
• Will the Painlord return next year?
• Will we get some more story next year, like we did last year, as opposed to 2 instances and a short story that tell us the final days of Edrick?
• Why remove the metas and dungeons from last year? GW1 had old content – even old stories – return yearly, without a fuss. Why couldn’t GW2 do the same for those who didn’t/couldn’t experience prior years?
• Why did the Mad King disappear for ~250 years? Why didn’t the Lunatic Court’s antics in removing the seals work? Will this be covered in-game next year (if so, shhh spoilers!)
• Since we got John Stumme present… any plans of furthering the story on GW1’s side? Particularly expanding the holiday storylines that were left unfinished (if nothing else)?
• Who was Wife No. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8? We know Zola and Lyrica (5 and 1 respectively), and we’ve heard of Henrietta and Estrella (though their numbers unknown), and it seems Edrick’s mother was none of the above four (unnamed and only known to be prior to Henrietta, Estrella and #8, and her death doesn’t match Lyrica and Zola’s deaths so she’s #2, 3, or 4 depending on which Henrietta and Estrella was).

The Mad King content in GW2 seems a lot darker than GW1’s Halloween celebrations were, and the Bloody Prince was darker still. (In particular I’m reminded of a conversation in the Mad King’s realm where Edrick accuses his father of murdering a childhood friend, and his father reminds him that no-one liked her and Edrick killed her himself.)

This is kind of weirdly juxtaposed with the plastic spiders.

How are you managing the tone of this storyline to ensure that the horror side doesn’t clash with the goofy side? It’s easy to imagine it becoming weird having researchers and kids enthusiastic about the return of an evil, vengeful spirit, and similarly with murderous tyrants from Tyria’s past building candy corn golems instead of something… sharper.

We have 3 “Goody” orders in the game, Vigil,Durmand Priory,Order of Whispers. Can we have an evil order that we can join to give the game more variety? I would like to join the Lunatic Inquisition or the Legion of Zhaitan or the Rotten Vegetables that opposes the pale tree.

A livestream about the game lore? YES PLEASE! I’ll be there with bells on!

Question: Will we be seeing any additional lore being revealed during this year’s Halloween? Such as the Bloody Prince making another comeback in another upcoming patch and facing his father.

Or will this be reserved for next year?

Konig pretty much covered all the lore-related questions I wanted to ask. The other questions I have below are basically not lore-related, but I’ll just put them here in case the devs do feel like answering them:

- Why did Mad King Thorn not bring back Reaper’s Rumble this year? Did he lose control of all the skeleton generators to Prince Edrick and Eddie doesn’t feel like sharing?

- What was the reasoning behind the vastly increased prices for Halloween content this year? I have my theories, but I’d definitely like to know the thought processes that went into this, and whether this is something ANet will look at for future festival content given the general backlash against it.

- Are there technical reasons behind why titles/achievements from Shadow of the Mad King could not be brought back? There are many players who would have loved a chance to experience the things that players from last year experienced.

Unfortunately I missed last halloween
Can I get the last halloween greatsword skin (i mean Greatsaw Greatsword Skin?in this halloween by any other method(not just from TP, thats too expensive to buy even somebody sold that for 1000g) . Looking forward to ur answer.

why Tassi speaks so lightly of Mad King “visiting LA every year”? first GW2 halloween introduced the concept that Mad King disappeared for 250 years, so I don’t see any reason for Tassi sounding this obvious, especially considering how powerful Mad King is and how much of a threat he can be left free.

Will the Lunatic Court be expanded upon in the story?

Lingering elements?

Let us discover the wives of King Thorn?

Is the son goes back even angrier?

Family reunion?

In what time the Kings Thorn will he rule?

Ooh, so that’s what those guys have been doing since GW1’s Beyond. I wanted to ask about the paragon update, but it’s unfortunately off-topic. I also miss asking them questions in the gw1 wiki. Good times.

Why do people ask questions that has nothing at all to do with the theme of the livestream…

It seems like Edrick and his father are both pretty mad. Is there any time when they got along? Seems like those 2 could get up to some really terrible mischief. Or maybe a family squabble that dragged in innocents?

Why did you choose such high numbers for any of the Halloween items? What is the reasoning behind making us (try to) grind that much?
10k and greater (of any of the temporary acquirable items, corn/fangs/etc) is pretty ridiculous (just like the jorbreaker requirement).

Also these:

Konig pretty much covered all the lore-related questions I wanted to ask. The other questions I have below are basically not lore-related, but I’ll just put them here in case the devs do feel like answering them:

- Why did Mad King Thorn not bring back Reaper’s Rumble this year? Did he lose control of all the skeleton generators to Prince Edrick and Eddie doesn’t feel like sharing?

- What was the reasoning behind the vastly increased prices for Halloween content this year? I have my theories, but I’d definitely like to know the thought processes that went into this, and whether this is something ANet will look at for future festival content given the general backlash against it.

- Are there technical reasons behind why titles/achievements from Shadow of the Mad King could not be brought back? There are many players who would have loved a chance to experience the things that players from last year experienced.

I know that these are supposed to be lore oriented questions, but Konig covered all of my lore questions and then some with his post above. So on that note maybe you could answer these if you know them or pass them along for me.

• Why was Reapers Rumble left out this year?
  • Will it be returning on the 29th?
• Why was the original Ascent to Madness not available again this year?
• What is the reasoning behind the current amount of candy corn needed for items this year?
• Will the Mad Memories & Mad Memories: Complete Edition ever be more user friendly? Will it move to the acheivement skin panel with the zenith, radiant & hellfire skins?

Thanks

When are you going to make gemstore and special skins and outfits unlocks like in GW1?

Why can’t I get this lore in-game?

Why, if some writer took the trouble to write a web-story, could we not have that, or something similar in-game?

Why are the new costumes not available in open world PVE? I know a lot of players would buy them (myself included) if you could wear them in combat.

There has never be any single word in the first staff posting about, that our questions must have to be “lore related”
They just say that the stream will be all about “Halloween and Tyria” No dumb word about the talk being “only about just lore”, so lore nerds, please take the morality sticks out of your * and learn to read, before you complain.

As long the question is basically related to any kind of content around the overall Halloween Events of GW2 or Tyria in general, everything is fine with that question.
Here are my questions I would like to see get officially answered, before the halloween this year ends…

1) Why don’t you let all newer players and all of us play the last years content.
Alot of peopler which had forcefully last year no chance on participating on the last yesars content, due to having had hacked accounts at the time when the event was running
With that question is meant, why don’t you let us work again on things like the master carver title,
You EVEN put in again pumpkins all over Tyria to carve them.
It makes no sense and it should have been really clear for all of you staff members of Anet, that if you don’t let us repeat the old content, that you will absolutely upset with that decision really alot of players which play GW2 from release on!!
Its not the fault of the hacked players that they had no chance on participating in the last years halloween, so why do you basically punish all older players with this decision?
The fault was lieing in the game itself, because the game had at release absolutey way too much security gaps which made it very easy for hackers to steal accounts, which was the reason, why GW2 had over the first like 6 months really alot of bot/hacker waves flooding the game

I don’t want to miss the opportunity forever to earn myself that title and especially the Mad Memoire back item as a result for my Necromancer only due to being hacked last year right at the time, when halloween was running … (lost basically 3-4 weeks of time until I got my account back and had at the day back then simply no character that was leveled good enough for the scavenger hunt)

2) If you can’t put in the scavenger hunt in its original form from 2012 back into the game, can we expect a new scavenger hunt version 2013 with slightly differernt tasks with the next patch on 29th October to earn ourselves the Mad Memoirs for this year?
Or at least put into the game some kind of crafting recipe or so, with that we can craft ourself one, for those that want to earn themself that back item just SOMEHOW.

3) I’ve seen you added a new repeatable achievement for the Lunatic Inquisition.
Can we expect that the Lunatic Inquisition Minigame becomes after halloween a new activity with new achievements attached to it, like all other minigames of the game got some?

4) Why are there only a few halloween weapon skins for this year and not 1 for every type of weapon? Please don’t tell me that your weapon design appartment runs already out of ideas, that you are only able to make just 4-5 designs and all other weapons left over receive no halloween weapons this year. Looks just weird to me.
So can we expect with the next patch that other weapon types get also their halloween weapons for this year?

5) Will you repeat now every year halloween only agai nand again and again in Lions Arch only, or can we expect from you in future halloweens also, that the other Towns like expecially Divinities Reach, the Pale Tree or Rata Sum get their Halloween Designs with content, that will be also located there and not permanently only Lions Arch.

See, I really understand that its obvious that you guys want to let LA work like the games “Main Town”, but currently all other towns are basicalyl “ghost towns”, because they have absolutely nothing, that is of any kind of interest, that draws permanently peopel to those towns to be there and do somethign there.

I know, the following question is nothing about halloween, but let it count as 1 exception.

Can we expect that you please finally move the asura gate to the fractals of the mist OUTSIDE of Lions Arch. Put that Fractal somewhere to a place, that is practically dead – the Southsun Cove for example, put the Fractals Entrance THERE, so that people want to continously visit that map and if you just use some kind of new living story patch to make it happen that the asura gate needs to get placed to a new place liek Southsun Cove, like some kind of crazy malfunction that can be only repaired there and to save LA from extinction through an overreacting massive Asura Gate Explosion, we move the gate to a save spot… something like that …
Make Southsun Cove only reachable through Lions Arch per Ship, that way people have to travel to that town in order to get to the Fractal Dungeon, removing the waypoints from Southsun Cove

RainbowSyrup.4130:

Why do people ask questions that has nothing at all to do with the theme of the livestream…

Because it doesn’t state the questions have to be about the theme?

People can ask what they want. It’ll be up to ArenaNet to choose what they want to answer…

Seconded on wanting to know more about Thorn’s wives!

Why did he burn Zola alive? What gruesome deaths did his other wives meet (and what were their names)? Who was the Bloody Prince’s mother?

what’s with the halloween mat requirements?

When and Why did the Charr and asura start celebrating Halloween? It is clearly a human celebration and I can hardly see either one of these races caring about human culture.

Assuming the Silvari picked it up because it looked like fun and, the Norn picked it up as another reason to have a Moot.

are we getting Ascended Armors in Kraits update?

Assuming the Mad Realm existed naturally, how did Oswald Thorn come to take control of it? If not, how did the Mad Realm come to be? Was it made for individuals with such lunacy as Oswald Thorn or did Oswald Thorn himself somehow make it, as we’re told that he had or knew powerful dark magic.

I would like to know how the rules of the Underworld work. Supposedly Mad King Thorn was locked away in the Underworld, and could only visit the mortal realm during Halloween. But he has been slowly breaking the seals that keep him locked away. How does Grenth feel about all this? And is there any connection between Mad King Thorn and Dhuum? And where exactly is the Mad Realm located in the Mists? How much power does Thorn have over this realm?

But perhaps more importantly, I would like to know more about Thorn’s castle, which we see floating in the distance, and about the Clocktower. What is the lore behind this mysterious keep?

Who was the original inventor of Candy Corn in the GW universe and why is Mad King Thorn so obsessed with it?

Perhaps this is me not knowing much of the lore, but I’d like to know how Halloween spread throughout all the races. Even quaggans dress up for it! (That quaggan pirate and his buddy the ghost quaggan totally made my Halloween.) Did this start as a human thing until other races met the mad king?

Slightly off-topic:
What was the team’s favorite part of bringing back the Mad King Thorn and what challenges did they face lore-wise trying to add in his son?

We’ve encountered the Mad King’s brother and son. Will we ever get to meet some of his wives in guild wars 2?

Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to go through these questions.

I really like what you did with Mad King’s backstory and his son, in Family Business.

What I’d like to know is, How many seals are holding Mad King Thorn in the Underworld. We know one broke when Salma took the throne, but why did that break a seal? What causes a seal to break?

Also, why did the Mad King go silent for 250 years? Last year’s story said it was the first time he was back in 250 years?

Also, What’s next? Are you guys planning to move this story forward once a year, or will we see more about the Thorn family? Another seal breaking perhaps? Before next Halloween.

Darkhayle.2473:

We’ve encountered the Mad King’s brother and son. Will we ever get to meet some of his wives in guild wars 2?

-waves hand-

Will the live stream be recorded and posted for those who can’t be around to see it live?
As there must be balance in worlds, Does the Mad King have the wits about him to fear things or does he just stand boldy against all? IF he does fear things, what does he fear?

cbizcut.5630:

Will the live stream be recorded and posted for those who can’t be around to see it live?
As there must be balance in worlds, Does the Mad King have the wits about him to fear things or does he just stand boldy against all? IF he does fear things, what does he fear?

Its usually recorded.

Ah yes, “and that’s basically all the questions we got concerning halloween from the forums”. They pretended that questions about the grind did not even exist.

Good job. Good job indeed.

My trust in the project of improving dev-players communication just went up a notch[/sarcasm]

Astralporing.1957:

Ah yes, “and that’s basically all the questions we got concerning halloween from the forums”. They pretended that questions about the grind did not even exist.

Good job. Good job indeed.

My trust in the project of improving dev-players communication just went up a notch[/sarcasm]

Maybe, just maybe, they didn’t answer those question existed simply because the stream was more about lore than mechanics? And technically they didn’t have much to do with Halloween as such, but rather about grind, which isn’t really specific to Halloween.