Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 is the first MMO I’ve really played. I bought Aion a while ago and did not play it all that much. I’ve become addicted, I took my time getting to Level 80 and now I’ve started a ranger that I’ve also been playing on. I’m still doing so much with my Lv80 thief and this is the most beautiful game I have played.

I’ve been looking forward to the Halloween event since I saw the trailer, and I’ve been disappointed again and again by the contents.

I’m Australian, I work full time. This means I get about 2 hours a day to play Guild Wars 2, this wasn’t too bad because I did so much in that time, jumping puzzles, a dungeon if I can. It was okay because there was no rush and no reason to get to Level 80. I enjoyed taking the game slow and exploring, I didn’t feel pressured like in other MMOs.

During the Halloween acts you were able to find hidden spots (diving board in LA) where you can find ‘suspicious location’s and get 5 Personalized Trick or Treat bags, this made me feel a bit better about not being able to spent hours everyday trying to farm up the limited time craft mats needed for the exotic weapons/recipes. The only one that’s worked for me was the diving board one in LA, the ones in old Lion’s Arch did not work and I spent about 5 candy corns before I realised this.

I then went to other hidden spots everyone discovered and posted on Reddit, upon discovering the spot I had other people pick up the bags that I had found because they got the ‘suspicious location’ first and I spent about 10 more candy corns trying to find the location again before getting so pissed off that I quit the game for the night.

The Mad King’s Clock Tower jumping puzzle was awesome. I love a challenge. I’m not going to blame my failures on anyone else. Except for the fact that despite being a Norn I was tiny next to the Charrs and other male Norns next to me that I had trouble finding myself amongst the crowd and ended up either missing a jump or just lagging behind trying to find myself. The initial first jump where you had to wait on a platform with everyone for the clocktower to be struck by thunder was where I always failed because I could not see anything. I would’ve loved it if I could do the puzzle by myself and then it’d just be me failing because I’m slow and have bad reflexes not because I’m Australian playing with 300 ping and around 20 other people.

So I came home yesterday after having dinner out – Act 4! Awesome. Friend asked – did you get the Witch’ kitten “What hat?” I asked. He gave me instructions on how to do it. I went to Lion’s Arch, I couldn’t find the Mad King, I couldn’t find anything. So I ran around trying to collect some more candy corn and mats as I found out that the event will be over by tomorrow, and ended up spending all my gold on buying the mats.

I got up at 6am this morning to try once again to see if I can do the Mad King Says and get one more event-specific item before going to work. I had no luck.

By now the event is over, I’m about 3 gold poorer than when I started, I hope that one day I will have enough gold to finally craft the Halloween exotics I had spent all my money on.

I’ve felt frustrated at the clock tower, disappointed that I got nothing out of this event except for two back pieces that clips with my hair and 2 rolls of toilet paper.

I have a 4 day weekend due to public holidays and I was hoping that the GW2 Halloween Event would last until then so I can finally play it, but no. When I go home tonight I will be playing the Dota2 Halloween event because in the 1 hour I’ve played of it last night I felt so much better than I have this entire Halloween I’ve spent in Guild Wars 2.

I apologise for this sounding like a huge kittening session, I loved every second of Guild Wars 2, but I can’t bear to play this game for at least the next week because I feel that I’ve nothing to come back to.

I came out of the event about 8 gold poorer, but I spent it on things I liked/needed/wanted. If you think of it as going to the carnival that arrived to town, it all makes sense. Its a festive event, and I’m happy to spend gold during it.

I don’t understand, why’s it so important?

Its not even over yet.

The gold wasn’t the issue, I’m happy to spend it. I can make it all back eventually. But I got nothing out of it, I couldn’t make the clock tower – fair enough, my fault; I couldn’t get the Witch’ kitten– my fault that I have a full time job and only get a few hours a night to play. I ended up getting the two books, one of them is as good as the storyline backpiece that I got at level 60, the other clips with my hair.

For me it’s over. I’ve left for work as of 4 hours ago and I won’t get home for another 5-6 hours. Understand that I’m Australian and your night time is my day time.

It seems like a lot of your frustrations are due to simple misunderstandings or not being patient enough. In regards to the PToT bags from suspicious locations, other players can not steal your ToTs. You just activate the location for all people to use. They go away naturally after a time, so if you’re not quick enough (~20 seconds) then you’ll have to scan for them again.

As others have pointed out, the event isn’t over. The times you were looking to do Mad King Says may have just been poor timing. The Mad King goes through phases continuously while in LA. He does 6 minutes of Mad King Says (the time you want to be at to get your Witch Hat) then instigates Costume Brawl and leaves for another 5 minutes. He reappears to walk about LA to tell jokes for a good 10 minutes or so. He disappears again for another 5 before doing the “trick” phase of his cycle. Another 10 minutes will go by and he disappears for a small time. He’ll briefly pop up around LA instigated more Costume Brawls before repeating the entire cycle, which he does about every 45 minutes.

If you have time now, then log into LA and simply ask people how long ago was the last Mad King Says played. This would give you a rough estimate on when to expect for him to do so again.

If you read my post above you’ll know that I can’t play GW2 for the next 6 hours and by the time I get home it will be over – It’s already November 2 here.

Yesterday was pretty much rush home, go to LA, couldn’t find anything. Tried to find a guide, couldn’t find it. Panic after finding out event will be over by tomorrow, buy as many mats as I could afford, go to sleep. Wake up, try to find Mad King again, found him walking around telling jokes, unsure of what to do. And now I’m at work being annoyed at the fact that I didn’t get sufficient time to do anything I wanted to.

I don’t have the time to spend 10 hours trying to do the Clocktower, I don’t have the time to spend 10 hours trying to farm up all the mats. And I certainly do not have the time when Act 4 only lasts a day, on a week day. The whole event I felt rushed trying to do as much as I can in the small amount of time I have, complete opposite of how I’ve been playing the game.

I understand that to get rare items you have to work for it, but because of time zone differences and having a job I didn’t get to enjoy this event as much as I wanted to and it felt more like a chore than something fun.

I am sorry that you had irl issues that prevented you from participating in the event, and I really don’t mean this to sound mean spirited…

You self admitted that you have only played this mmo, I can tell you from years and years of experience in many mmos that this halloween event was one of the largest, most well thought out, and coolest holiday event any mmo has ever done. That’s not to say it didn’t have a few problems (I wont list them because they aren’t important to the point, but yes they were there). This may have been a disappointment for you personally due to your life issues interfering, but that doesn’t make it Anet or Gw2’s fault. Had you had some patience you definitely would have gotten a hat, and been able to do several of the event – at least to experience them if not to fully complete every thing. The largest thing that I gathered from your post ( and if I’m wrong then I apologize) was that you simply misunderstood or had little to no patience to learn what was going on or how to participate. That is simply a fault on your end. There is a wiki full of information and players are generally very helpful to people that want to figure out what to do for an event. Had you taken a few minutes on the wiki or asked around you would have had a much easier time and spent less time being unsure of what you could do or how to do it.

That said – they have placed an NPC in the game where you can get your hat if you didn’t get one from MKT.

Again, I am sorry that real life stopped you from enjoying one of or the best holiday event in a mmo, but that does not make it anyone’s fault. Simply bad luck on your part, and faulting Anet for that is just wrong and wholly incorrect. The time difference sucks, but I can tell you having a few in-game friends from your area that the time difference made few issues for them. You have to remember that regardless of what date it is for you – all the events and times are server based.

Halloween will come next year, and Wintersday is coming up soon. I do hope you get a chance to experience these events more so in the future.

I can also tell that Araneyl hasn’t played many other MMos either, this was one of the worst implementations of a Halloween event I’ve personally seen. On ‘paper’ it sounds good, it just was executed and constructed poorly, and there can be easily 5 maybe more reasons why.

1. Crippling bugs and issues through-out the event
2. Gambling/Lottery system for skins
3. Significant issues with the dungeons (MK being one of them)
4. Clocktower was far harder than it really needed to be
5. Event was shorter than any other MMo
6. No support/care for people affected by Sandy
7. Required very excessive amounts of grinding (Master Carver Title for example)
8. Event was too hardcore, casual players and people who work etc..was overlooked

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

this was one of the worst implementations of a Halloween event I’ve personally seen. On ‘paper’ it sounds good, it just was executed and constructed poorly, and there can be easily 5 maybe more reasons why.

1. Crippling bugs and issues through-out the event
2. Gambling/Lottery system for skins
3. Significant issues with the dungeons (MK being one of them)
4. Clocktower was far harder than it really needed to be
5. Event was shorter than any other MMo
6. No support/care for people affected by Sandy
7. Required very excessive amounts of grinding (Master Carver Title for example)
8. Event was too hardcore, casual players and people who work etc..was overlooked

I agree with you. I have played many MMO’s and many events have been done well in other games. I think your short post summed up much better than I could have done, the issues I had with this event. I love GW2 as a game, but I’m very disappointed with ANet at this point because of the poor event handling – mixed with other things I have felt are still being handled poorly the event was just the last straw. I’m going to have to take a break from the game and go play other stuff for a while. I’ll come back to the game at some point.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I can also tell that Araneyl hasn’t played many other MMos either, this was one of the worst implementations of a Halloween event I’ve personally seen. On ‘paper’ it sounds good, it just was executed and constructed poorly, and there can be easily 5 maybe more reasons why.

1. Crippling bugs and issues through-out the event
2. Gambling/Lottery system for skins
3. Significant issues with the dungeons (MK being one of them)
4. Clocktower was far harder than it really needed to be
5. Event was shorter than any other MMo
6. No support/care for people affected by Sandy
7. Required very excessive amounts of grinding (Master Carver Title for example)
8. Event was too hardcore, casual players and people who work etc..was overlooked

I don’t agree with most of this.

1. Didn’t see crippling bugs but saw a few. Still got through it all.
2. You didn’t have to participate if you didn’t want to. I tried a few, didn’t win and went on my way.
3. Again, not discounting there may have been bugs, but, I and my guild made it through.
4. Your opinion. Tons of people enjoyed something with a little difficulty to it finally. For the record I didn’t complete it but I had fun trying (and some laughs along the way)
5. There are other longer events and other shorter events. “any othe MMO in history” is a stretch. We were notified well in advance and were able to plan.
6. Sorry about the storm (have family there) but Anet caters to the world not just one section.
7. Only if you wanted to. I think people take this a little too seriously. It was an addition to the game, that we don’t pay monthly for.
8. No. Just no. I work, have 2 young daughters, take care of my house stuff, travel for business, etc. I have a full busy day and still found time for the event and had fun. From the other responses it sounds like you made it hardcore. (grinding etc)

I’m glad this wasn’t a simple give everyone everything for almost nothing. It allowed me to pick and choose how to participate. If I chose not to then I knew what I was missing. Too many people want everything a game has to offer for little or no involvement. They cite their personal lives as reasons they should be granted an exemption. This is wrong. Just because we have busy lives doesn’t mean a gaming company that caters to millions should craft what it does just for us. It means things here might not be right for us and we may need to seek other entertainment forms that give us what we’re looking for as well as fit our lifestyles.

Erm…I work full time (an hour and a half away from my house no less) and have, at best, 2 hours a day to play as well and I got every single achievement, an entire bank tab (literally one whole tab) full of Halloween items, and most of the gold I spent I got back. I didn’t buy mats for the special weapons, so that wasn’t an issue.

It sounds to me like your problem was an inability to prioritize better. I didn’t bother with the suspicious locations as it only took me about an hour to master the clock tower. I just farmed that from that point on and got ToT bags at the end and candy corn I could give to trick or theaters for more bags. Even if you couldn’t do the clock tower you could have farmed the Labyrinth. I guarantee you would have gotten more candy corn and ToT bags and had more fun doing that than running around scanning suspicious locations that you looked up on Reddit.

If you have a limited amount of time, but you want to get as much out of the event as possible, prioritize your tasks. Simple as that. You only disappointed yourself here.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I can also tell that Araneyl hasn’t played many other MMos either, this was one of the worst implementations of a Halloween event I’ve personally seen. On ‘paper’ it sounds good, it just was executed and constructed poorly, and there can be easily 5 maybe more reasons why.

1. Crippling bugs and issues through-out the event
2. Gambling/Lottery system for skins
3. Significant issues with the dungeons (MK being one of them)
4. Clocktower was far harder than it really needed to be
5. Event was shorter than any other MMo
6. No support/care for people affected by Sandy
7. Required very excessive amounts of grinding (Master Carver Title for example)
8. Event was too hardcore, casual players and people who work etc..was overlooked

Putting aside that a couple of those things on your list are legitimate (it was obvious the content wasn’t properly play-tested, and I hope that Anet does so in the future), half your “list of problems” is either subjective, or downright manipulative.

2. Anet doesn’t get a monthly fee from its playerbase, so there needs to be a way to drum up gem sales. I’m sorry if you feel gipped because you didn’t get your special snowflake pants in a chest, but there are plenty on the trading post that you can buy if you didn’t win anything.

4. I completed the clock tower dozens of times (I lost track after the first 6-8 runs), between my Norn, Sylvari, and Asura. “Harder than it needed to be” is so subjective that listing it as an “issue” for the halloween event is laughable. It was intentionally created to be difficult, and even though there were some bugs to be worked out, you not being able to complete it doesn’t make the tower a bad event.

6. No MMO anywhere is going to bend over backward for people who are affected by a natural disaster. If they did it for people affected by Sandy, it would be a PR nightmare if they didn’t do it for every single future natural disaster where they have customers. Not only that, but you can’t force the entire playerbase to suffer through an event that is arbitrarily extended for the sake of a small fraction of players, especially when you’re trying to prepare the servers for a new event that’s going to show up less than two weeks later.

7. No part of the event was “required.” Between the labrynth, two pvp games, Ascent to Madness, and the costume brawl thing, there was plenty of content for those who didn’t want to do any grinding. The fact that there was a grind present for one part of the event does not diminish the rest of the event. You chose to do the grind, so suck it up.

8. See #7. The only “hardcore” part of this even was the tower. And maybe the scavenger hunt, depending on whether or not you caved and searched google.

Greyfeld.7104:

6. Not only that, but you can’t force the entire playerbase to suffer through an event that is arbitrarily extended for the sake of a small fraction of players, especially when you’re trying to prepare the servers for a new event that’s going to show up less than two weeks later.

Just a correction – Sandy covered 20 US States, that’s not even counting those in Canada or the Carribean that have been affected. Millions of people have been and are still affected by this storm. So it’s not a “small fraction” of people, please try to be more considerate.

Aside from that though 2 days is not enough for some players. I know some people can sit in game for hours every night, but it’s not unreasonable to ask that something be around for the full extent of an event’s duration to give everyone a chance to log in and play. Had I been home, I would have obviously found time to log in and do the dungeon. However, life happens and I was not home for a few days. I would have happily done the dungeon earlier in the week or even on the 31st had it been available.

I was about to ragequit because of this event. Then I thought about my mmo options and realized it wasn’t that bad haha. It’s the best of what’s out there, and it’s a newborn game. I think I mostly felt disappointed because the rest of the game (except for the horrid dungeons) is pretty darn cool, and I feel like it didn’t really live up to the rest of the game.