Guild Wars 2

While I am certain the GW2 fanboyz and fangirlz will give you a rousing round of applause I can barely muster anything better than a golf-clap for the event. IMO time would have been better spent correcting known issues and building content for those of use at level 80, but as most people and sites have already surmised that will come in the form of an expansion pack so the Anet can make more money.

I did really enjoy the event, one of the best holiday MMO patches imo. I found it a bit short, should run a full two weeks i think. I was out of town for some of it and skipped an act due to that. You’ll never account for every vacation but two weeks is not too long for an event either.

I think the Mad King armor set should definitely have a unique skin. No doubt about that, its the only dissapointing thing about the event for me.

The event seems VERY focused on random rare drops. That’s actually fine with me, but I would prefer if there were some costly but definite goals to work towards while farming the rare drops. This time the intermediate stuff was all for the crafting. Would have liked a Mini pet you get from the forge for like 50 of each rare ingredient and 1000+ candy (however you make the candy part possible, maybe 4x 250 makes a big bag of candy first).

Hair clipping with the witch hat has to be fixed!

Ok here is my 2 copper.

Tower: Next time, I’d like 50 charr not be in my face.. that is not fun at all but rather frustrating, please let me see my character, thanks.

Pumpkin achievement: boring as all hell, I can’t believe I actually finished this up today. Yes, optional and all, but seriously boring, I would expect these kinds of achievements from Blizzard, because that’s all they have in their events and I HATE them with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I’m also a bit OCD and want to get all the achievements so of course I do them anyway… sigh.

The 2 mini games: Not bad, all in all a fun experience but the maps are just way too huge and running around trying to find the last person who is hiding behind some wall on the very edge of the map is such a borefest half the time I just exited out of the game. What is fun about running around doing nothing for 5 minutes?

Labrynth was cool, I liked running around with everyone and at least that made carving less of a chore (more of this, please) but of course it’s no different than all the other zerg fests with boring boss mechanics but that’s for a whole ’nother discussion.

ToT bags, I love that there is a (supposedly) small chance of getting EL tonics out of them. I probably had over 1k opened and got nothing of real value but at least it gave me something to dump all my candies on. All in all loved this, but more drops couldn’t hurt.

The mad king fight was pretty awesome, as with anything it got repetitive after a while but very good representation and jumps always add difficulty, though they could have been a lot harder in that regard. The only thing I’d ask for here is a story mode, I was really hoping for one tbh.

My closing statement will be, nothing short of what I’d expect from an ANet holiday event which are always top notch compared to any other MMO out there. And don’t give in to the QQ about mad kings tower, us “hardcores” (it really wasn’t THAT hard) also like a challenge.

I just played an emote tutorial, aka “Mad King Says,” aka the dumbest major event ever in an MMO, for which I finally got something vaguely Halloween-y for the first time during the entire thing, a hat that I can only wear with the town clothes that no one wears. It’s a fitting conclusion to a Halloween I found intriguing as a spectacle but ultimately boring, confusing, off-putting and otherwise far less fun than normal pve and pvp.

The story and lore are the best part. But ANet failed to explain most of it in-game. Most of the events made no sense. Again and again, ANet had to fill in the blanks on these forums, just like it’s doing yet again today on Mad King Says. No one understands the timing and they have another Mad King Says type event that is not in fact it. It’s just incompetent storytelling and game-managing, a stark contrast to the regular game content.

The thrust of the event was to grind for worthless items, particularly candy corn, while observing flashy spectacle. It did not feel like an actual Halloween event in terms of letting the player participate in a special social experience. Dressing up, let’s face it, most of us would have to pay real money to do. (Witness the infamous Black Lion chest scam.) Trick or treating? Sorry, that’s only for NPCs. Etc. What we got was pvp in bizarre, ill-explained circumstances, and several gigantic grinds. And enough candy corn to clog the trading post for the next 12 months.

I think the event succeeded in its main goal, which was to provide flashy, no-brains-necessary, mediocre content updates to keep people playing and therefore spending on chest keys and costumes. I think it failed in what interests me, which is experiencing something of the cutting-edge quality and coherence that marks the rest of the game. I sampled everything and got my title and all that. But I finished it all as soon as possible and then ran off to have the real fun, which is grinding a monthly and doing world completion. I also didn’t spend a cent on the game, which will either make ANet totally uninterested in my opinion or totally obsessed with how to seduce me with the next event. My advice on the latter: Explain goals and scenarios clearly in-game, and be honest about your sales pitches.

Thank you ArenaNet for creating a superb Halloween seasonal event for us.

Minus the RNG (Ran “Madness Ascent” 54 times in the end without a single Halloween Exotic, whereas two people I know got at least one within 3 runs), this week would have been perfect. Even so, it was as close as I was realistically hoping for.

Please don’t make jumping puzzles an integral part of any future dungeons or instances, unless you reverse the inherent disadvantage players with large Norn or Char characters face.

Given the size of some of the jumping puzzle areas/ledges etc. these puzzles penalize large characters. You should not design a game where legitimate character choices turn out to be major performance blockers.

If jumping puzzles cannot be fixed through better design and fixing various camera issues, then please keep jumping puzzles completely optional and provide alternate paths towards instance completion.

Can you imagine the QQ if Arenanet released a dungeon where short players could not complete it because the could not shoot over a strategically placed barrier?

My char is only level 20 at the moment so I was not able to complete all Halloween activities. I hope that next year I will be able to, when this content will be back alongside new one.

I loved Clock Tower, it took me two hours to complete it first time, but next attempts were much easier. I wish there would be reward each time, for example if you could complete whole Mad King set with this event

Been playing MMOs for a really long time, and this was certainly one of the best events i’ve had the pleasure of joining in on. Everything was really enjoyable, especially my very unsuccesful attempts at that dern tower.

Thank you kindly, and i definetly look forward to future ones..

I would like to say that the event was pretty much awesome. However, I feel that having a seasonal event only running over 1 weekend is kinda meh. I think a lot of people (including myself) would have been able to actually feel like they had a shot at the ‘big prizes’ if it started 3 days earlier.

I got the achievement, was happy I got it. But knew not even to bother for any of the other prizes because there was just no chance with how much time I have.

Either way it was a lot of fun, but I hope AreaNet seriously considers that for at least a few people there is really only two gaming days a week.

Most of the events were awesome. Act 1-3 were great but act 4 is way to much of a let down. Cant even compare it to guild wars 1 where the event would go on for a half hour. this one is way to short. and no rock paper scissors with the mad king. the 4th act just seemed lackluster.

From what I’ve seen of it, it’s quite well done, which is why it’s a shame that you can’t get all the achievements necessary for the title ‘Emissary of the Mad King’ as of the start of act 4

A huge thank you to all the awesome content creators, writers, programmers, technicians, community managers … everyone at ArenaNet, for creating a spectacular and truly special Halloween event.

You guys have set the bar very high and I can’t wait to see what you have planned for Wintersday. Also, a very special thank you to all who created those amazing costumes! I’m a proud owner of the Witch outfit, which is just too good! Thank you for the costume brawl – it’s a lot of fun.

$0.02

Overall I really liked the event. I loved mining for candy corn, and I had fun seeking out the haunted doors before the MK dungeon came in. I’m a fairly new players and all my alts are in their 20s, but I found that thanks to other players I could still get the scavenger hunt done on the characters I wanted, so no complaints there (although I wouldn’t object to making future events a bit more low level-friendly) – I did rely on a guide to figure out where to go, though, since I hadn’t really explored most of the areas where you could find ghosts. At first I thought everything would be in Lion’s Arch so I was pretty confused – some clarity would’ve been appreciated, but thanks to guides that wasn’t such a huge problem.

The atmosphere was beautifully done and I have the wallpaper on my desktop right now. It’s gorgeous.

I don’t really care about farming for rares so I don’t have any complaints about the MK dungeon, though it seemed a little… buggy or strange overall. First time I went in there was the Mad King Says thing, but I never got it again after that. Also, I once went in to the MK already spawned right next to the entrance, which was quite odd. It’d have been nice if the one-time only surprise had been clarified to be a cinematic, would’ve saved some grief overall.

Clock Tower I have a love/hate relationship with, but my only real criticism is that it’s too difficult for the average (or the disabled) players for the short amount of time during which it was available, so an easy/practice mode with no rewards or just the permanent addition of the puzzle (not likely) would’ve been appreciated. If anything, please try to consider keeping very challenging puzzles within the game itself and available year-round and making event puzzles less challenging. That way, nobody’s left without a challenge, but nobody’s left feeling pressured to do something quickly or feeling left out, either.

The way BLCs was handled was pretty bad, in my opinion. Telling players they have a chance is very vague, though this issue was addressed when MKCs were released and the chance was specifically stated to be rare. I don’t believe the gamble was worth the reward regardless, not even from a practical standpoint – the most expensive skin is going for around 68g right now, which if you get 60s per 100 gems would cost around 11.5k gems – it’s $10 for 800 gems, so that’d be worth $143.75 in gems. Some people spent more than that and got nothing, some people spent nothing and got that (and subsequently can get $143 worth of gems with virtually no effort). That’s basically shafting players with actual money to spend in favor of lucky players, which even if you don’t believe is unfair is a bad business model overall. That price can only go up, so a lucky player gets a far better long-term investment than one who actually put money into the game (in particular since most other chest rewards are account bound so you can’t use them to offset the cost of the key).

One viable option would simply be to make the items from the chest available in the store for a reasonable price, and make those account bound, while keeping the rare chest drops free to trade.

The event overall was also quite buggy. The most damaging bugs were quickly fixed, but there are still buggy spots in the Clock Tower, for instance (jumping into the clock and getting warped back to the entrance, for one). Bugs can really kill the fun because they’re not something a player can fix, but I understand devs are probably focusing on content right now since GW2 is still a fairly new game. Still, better QCing seems to be in order.

In spite of the problems I still think this was a great event. We were given a lot to do and there was something for everyone. It’d be nice if everything could be for everyone, but in the absence of that, having at least some activities be doable by everyone is pretty great.

The whole series of events was great, and thank you so much for bringing Mad King Says to GW2!

I’m glad to see the things I loved from GW1 come forward to the new game, it makes it feel a lot more like ‘home’.

I honestly thought that this event was executed perfectly. Unfortunately, I didn’t login for the Ascent to Madness / Act 3 part so I wasn’t able to complete one of the achievements (and therefore I can’t get 100% achievement for this event, which really bugs me).
I really thought that being pelted by candy corn elementals was hilarious.
Here’s hoping that I can get this achievement some other time!

I was extremely surprised how much detail went in to the Halloween holiday events; ANet could have given us nothing aside from a few pumpkins here and there, but they out did themselves.

The only thing I will say is that I do wish the ghost finding was more elaborate. I’m a sucker for lore. Still; absolutely fantastic.

Overall, I thought the event was a lot of fun. There was a lot of stuff for players of any level to do, and while the best rewards were only for level 80s, there was still some nice loot to be had. While I never completed the clocktower, I thought it was still a great idea. My only real gripe was for how short of a time the dungeon was up—since I can’t be on very often, I barely got to run the dungeon at all, and to be honest, I was lucky to get that time. It probably would have been better to keep it open for another couple days, or made it available earlier.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun! Please keep up the great work.

I enjoyed everything with this event. Best Halloween event in a game I’ve played. The jumping puzzle was the best part for me. Difficult but not too hard. When I finished it I was so excited. Like others have said the beginning with everyone packed together made it more difficult for some but I enjoyed the fact we were all trying it together and able to chat to each other.

I would suggest to keep the events available to as many players as possible. Making the hunt for the books in high level areas made it difficult. I was able to do it on my level 9’s with help. I also helped a lot of people too. Maximum level 20 areas would be fine for most I believe. Makes it exciting but not too difficult.

To everyone else I would suggest to have fun and don’t assume what will happen so you won’t get worked up about it and be disappointed if it’s not something you assumed it would be.

My feedback on the Halloween event:

Artwork/Scenery:
I was quite impressed with the quality of the decorations for Halloween. Little touches like the lights being bats, the intricate pumpkin carvings, and especially the Trick or Treating kids (I want to huggle those costumed Quaggans! ) really made the event. The Reaper’s Rumble and the Clock Tower were visually stunning too.

Minigames:
I didn’t spend much time in either Reaper’s Rumble or Lunatic Inquisition, but they were a lot of fun. I do feel that the rewards for participating (along with other minigames like Keg Brawl) need to be buffed however, with more XP, karma, or even Glory or coin being given out for wins/losses. Currently it feels that playing these minigames is not as rewarding as standard PvE play (let alone farming), which is not the kind of feeling you want to have during an in-game festival.

Scavenger Hunt:
This was one of my favourite activities during the festival. I loved the lore provided as part of the quest, although I think choosing to place several of the ghosts in mid-high level areas was a poor decision as it made it unduly difficult for lower-level characters, effectively penalising them if they choose to adopt a playstyle where they play multiple alts instead of just focusing on one main character. Fortunately, it’s possible to still get to all the ghosts with the help of other players, and I was quite impressed with the general helpfulness and courtesy shown by other players in assisting weaker characters to get to these locations.

One part of the Scavenger Hunt which had a lot of promise were the hidden locations which give out pToT’s. I thought this was a brilliant move, and it’s a shame that the ones in Lion’s Arch had to be removed due to people farming them. Fix them so they can only be activated once per character, and bring them back for next year.

Clock Tower:
Ahh, the Clock Tower. Has anything else caused such division and partisanship in the GW community before? Speaking for myself, I absolutely loved the Clock Tower. It was extremely challenging to start off with, but as you got better and better with practice it filled you with a great sense of pride to keep on going while watching others fall by the wayside. And when you finally make it to the top and find the chest? Well, few things in gaming have filled me with that sense of accomplishment in a long time. The Clock Tower easily ranks as one of my favourite things from the Halloween event.

That said, I can understand how it would be extremely difficult for some players who have not had experience in platform gaming before. While I don’t believe the Tower should be drastically lowered in difficulty, I think it wouldn’t be amiss to give players a bit more time in running the puzzle. That little pause at the beginning while waiting for the gears/rubble to blow out of the Tower is about 2 – 3 seconds that could help give players a bit more breathing room, and give more experienced players more of a cushion to grab the chests going up the tower. It would also allow players to spread out a bit more during the run so that they’re not forced to huddle in a tight zerg and thus make it more difficult for smaller characters to see themselves.

After Josh Foreman’s (in)famous quote about only expecting 5% of players to make it to the top, I’m very curious to know how many people did manage to complete the Tower.

Part 2:

Ascent to Madness:
I loved this dungeon! The fact that it can be attempted by just about anybody and still have a decent chance at completing it means that elitism is not (much) of a factor, and it also serves as a good dungeon to cut one’s teeth on if a player has never tried a dungeon before. I do wish that the first-time reward for completing it was per CHARACTER, however; I would have loved to get a 10 Slot ToT bag on each of my characters. I’m not sure why it was per Account. Perhaps this could be changed for next year’s Halloween.

Achievements:
While I wouldn’t have minded it being necessary to carve pumpkins and complete the Clock Tower as well to get the Emissary of the Mad King achievement, I’m content with it being the way it is, otherwise it would be too unfair on those who don’t have good platforming skills.

Rewards/Items:
I kind of wish the various Mad King armors were easier to get, but since they can already be sold on the TP, this doesn’t really need to change.

I’m more disquieted about the whole fiasco surrounding the Black Lion Chests and the Halloween skins. While I didn’t buy any keys or skins myself (as I wasn’t particularly fond of any of the Halloween skins), I’m very disappointed that they were tied to a RNG system. Yes, you can buy them on the Trading Post, and yes, they can drop from the Labyrinth, Mad King’s Chests and Ascent to Madness chests (very good move there, ANet), but these other options should have been there from the start and clearly communicated. Lots of people poured money into buying keys when they probably wouldn’t have had they known there were other ways to obtain the skins.

I was quite surprised that the craftable Halloween weapons were so hard to get. They’re practically mini-Legendaries in their own right! It’s good that players can craft them year-round, however. It gives people who really like those skins something to work towards, and since they can drop from the Ascent to Madness chests, I think they’re sitting at a fair point as far as rarity is concerned.

Overall, I thought the entire event was fantastic! There was lots to do, and various activities to satisfy a wide range of players. There were some things that could have been done better, especially with letting players know where to go and how to start (but this was fixed shortly into the event with the Mails); I trust ANet will learn from them and do them better next year though. I look forward to seeing what you have planned for Wintersday!

Why do you guys put in so much work designing the Greatsaw Greatsword skin and ignore other weapon skins? I mean look at the effect on the great sword compared to the scythe staff and severed dagger skin.

Besides the visual effect, why not have a severed arm sticking out of the great sword as well?

It was a good event. Only problem I had with it was the skin drops. Not the exotics.

Totally loved Lunatic Inquisition. Please please please make a permanent version of it.

The only complaint from me about this event is that it is ending. Seriously though, I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this event. The mini-games, achievements, bosses, special items. It was a blast and I can’t even begin to express how happy I am that I got to be a part of it.

This is the most fun I’ve experienced for a Halloween event in a MMO! I thoroughly enjoyed the Mad King and all of his events, and I can’t wait to have him visit Tyria again next year. ANet, you outdid yourselves!

I loved everything, even the Clock Tower which I found to be addictive.

Feedback on Lunatic Inquisition:

I enjoyed it. Initially, I only enjoyed playing the Lunatics, but as I understood how to time dodges (and use my skills) when running from a Lunatic, I started to enjoy playing as a villager as well. Below, I will list some of the problems/bugs I’ve come up against.

Problems/Bugs:

- Veteran creatures are very weak (dying in 2 hits)

- Someone was able to climb the wall from the V-shaped crack Northwest of the map, near the Bone-Collector NPC (Note: I’m not very good at it, so I was not able to, but I saw someone do it at least twice)

- The Black Goo is supposed to blind the Lunatic, but it doesn’t have any effect on them. They can still hit while blinded.

- The speed boost (and other passive class benefits, such as the Guardian’s Aegis) that some classes have access to make the game unfair

- I met someone who was able to stealth constantly whenever I used the “Mad King Command” skills. I thought they were using a cheat/bot during the time and reported them. However, after playing today, it seems that the stealth skill recharges instantly under a certain condition (when a Lunatic uses that Mad King Command skill on a villager?), which I’m still unsure of. I think that should be in the description of the skill.

LA looked neat, but overall, the event was terribly vague with regards of what to do. Did about half of act 1, and just stopped bothering with it entirely.

I loved the event! I can’t wait to see what future events ArenaNet has in store.

>(^.^)<

Disappointed.

Sure, the event as a whole was decent enough fun, it felt weaker than any event in GW1 though. And honestly, I feel like besides the hour or two it took for me to earn the memoir book, I should of just been playing GW1’s Halloween event instead of GW2.

The Halloween Rewards should of been earn-able through actual work, not dumb blind luck. For a game that touted pushing envelopes a little in terms of its design, it actually feels like it is falling further back onto the stereotypical “Asian F2P Grindhouse” style of RMT-dependent celebrations and legendaries that are only legendary in grind (I’ll not touch on my issues with legendaries here, suffice to say though that World of Warcraft does a far and above better job in handling their legendary items, specifically ones like Fangs of the Father or older ones such as Thunderfury or even the epic hunter bow or priest staff in Vanilla WoW).

I’d say drop the idea of the bloody lotto chests first of all. You want to sell costumes? Cosmetic flair? Fine. Yet don’t lock it all behind some cash shop bait like the black lion chests. I’ve been iffy on these things as it is, and the Holiday implementation associated with them has just completely soured it as a whole. I hate how STO puts all the new fancy ships and everything behind their lock boxes, or how Champions does the same with its costume pieces and such, I don’t want to see it spreading personally.
On that matter of skins and black lion chests, was there any significant reason why it seems like of the melee weapons, the greatsword got the most attention? The scythe and 1-handed sword look okay, yet didn’t receive nearly as much work as the greatsword did, like the additional bits of animation and sound effects, not to mention intricate detail.

A return to the token system (like in GW1) would be much more player friendly. And if you do want to lock the skins behind a paywall, then for the love of god just let people buy them off the shop. You’ll catch more flies with honey than what some might call a bait and switch, and if it is so important you can easily restrict the cash-shop bought skins to be account bound.

Otherwise? Besides wishing that the mad king’s armor wasn’t apparently just a copy-paste of an already existing armor set, or that the Ascent to Madness was still available via an NPC asking if we’d like to witness the King’s triumphant and brilliant loss or something similar? Decent enough. It has failed to motivate me to actually log in though, and the whole debacle with the Black Lion chests has turned me off from ever paying to open them. I’d rather sell them at a great loss on the auction house now if it means getting them out of my inventory.

Also, maybe add some mini pets that are also not locked behind the paywall perhaps? Specially if you are forced to buy them twice in order just to get one more pet?

I like everything but the skins being in the BLC. Next time just put them in the gem shop or as a drop that I have a decent chance of getting.

I thought all of the events associated were fine except for the clock tower, which had the difficulty scaled way too high for what is supposed to be a fun holiday event.

However, I felt that the drop rate on the Hallowe’en goodies was extremely bad and very disappointing. It’s led to profiteering by people who are selling the extremely rare skins for 50+ gold now. I’m not against capitalism but I felt that this was supposed to be a fun event to do on a lark and get a couple of items to remember it by. It doesn’t seem appropriate to turn it into a gold grab by lucky players.

I would have liked to have gotten a weapon skin to play about with.

admcd.4503:

I thought all of the events associated were fine except for the clock tower, which had the difficulty scaled way too high for what is supposed to be a fun holiday event.

However, I felt that the drop rate on the Hallowe’en goodies was extremely bad and very disappointing. It’s led to profiteering by people who are selling the extremely rare skins for 50+ gold now. I’m not against capitalism but I felt that this was supposed to be a fun event to do on a lark and get a couple of items to remember it by. It doesn’t seem appropriate to turn it into a gold grab by lucky players.

I would have liked to have gotten a weapon skin to play about with.

AN should put a 5g cap on how high a player can sell a skin halloween skin.

Onshidesigns.1069:

AN should put a 5g cap on how high a player can sell a skin halloween skin.

Basic economics fail. Fixing pricing in legitimate markets in such a way that demand exceeds supply will cause the creation of unregulated illegitimate markets.

That is, people will stop selling on the TP and negotiate it privately through mail trades, leading to trade spam and opportunities for fraud.

GregT.4702:

Onshidesigns.1069:

AN should put a 5g cap on how high a player can sell a skin halloween skin.

Basic economics fail. Fixing pricing in legitimate markets in such a way that demand exceeds supply will cause the creation of unregulated illegitimate markets.

That is, people will stop selling on the TP and negotiate it privately through mail trades, leading to trade spam and opportunities for fraud.

Someone wants to rip someone else out of 50g.

I’m pretty annoyed with the skins and getting stupid tonics from chests. Never going to buy keys again screw that.

I loved it! There was so much content here! If this wasn’t a time-limited event, most game developers would sell this as downloadable content add-on or small expansion. I loved the art style and re-themed Lion’s Arch. I had zero, repeat ZERO, luck obtaining any interesting, useful or unique Halloween skins or items but don’t mind too much. I have a bank full of candy corn for crafting down the track. I just wish I had more time to devote to the jumping puzzle…

The pumpkin carving was a bit a bit grind-y and boring if you completed it in the first phase, and bugs with the doors into the Mad King’s realm were annoying.

All in all the event was extremely entertaining. Bring on X-mas!

Now I know why so many of these posts are positive. It’s because anyone who posts anything negative gets their post deleted and you receive an infraction also. That is just pathetic.

Absolutely loved that Halloween events, but I am very very disappointed that that event was so short. A lot of us other responsibilities and I couldn’t play most of the days of the event. I did manage sneak on and was able to complete the book scavenger hunt and was trying to get the Emissary of the Man King achievement, except the that you ended the Ascent into Madness Dungeon early. Am very disappointed I really wanted to see the dungeon. I would love to see future events be at least two weekends or even better two weeks just for those who might have something come up and can’t log on for a couple of days.

I think overall it was a bit “meh”.

My primary complaint would be a near total lack of in-game direction.

My other complaint would be the Clock Tower not being solo. Now I don’t particularly like jumping puzzles (the idea that I have these 2 completely free things called HANDS that I am unable to use is probably the primary immersion breaker), and they’re a bit less fun when done in an engine that isn’t well suited for them – like both TORs and GW2s. Basically, failing a jump because your foot or shoulder clipped an invisible piece of geometry is…not good design. And that happens a lot in GW2 jumping.

But beyond that, the fact that in the 20 minutes or so I spent trying to do this I simply was unable to see my human character (so I had really no idea where my feet were), and could only sometimes see where I was supposed to jump to taught me that a grouped, timed jumping puzzle in GW2 isn’t something I’m at all interested in doing.

Act 3 and fighting the Mad King was easily the highlight of the event, and I found quite fun (did it around 8 or so times on Sunday). Since I wasn’t able to play much longer, and was unable to play Monday, I am a bit peeved that when I log in after work tonight it’s been removed.

I found the Labyrinth and the 2 PvP fights decent (the Labyrinth if only as a farm spot for candy corn), with the ghost PvP fight way more interesting than the tower defense one. Not bad additions, I think.

The scavenger hunts – I used a guide (as I was pressed for time when I did them, and wasn’t sure if/when they’d be removed). No idea if the clues were useful or not.

Pumpkin carving – won’t finish it – but seems rather uninteresting.

As for keys and chests and the farming – just a massive grind that I honestly don’t have the time to do. I “think” I have enough of the Halloween-only items to craft the staff one day, but am not sure (and not sure if recipes will still be learnable next week). But one of my major disappointments of GW2 is the sheer amount of massive grinds for, admittedly, useless (apart from looks) items.

I did not spend any $ for gems to buy keys, as since the chests are a huge RNG gamble, I felt any $ spent would be a complete waste of money.

Act 4 and Mad King Says – having just completed it – was pretty lackluster. Whenever he moved and culling kicked in, when he talked his chat bubbles didn’t appear and his voice didn’t play, so the only way to know what was happening was to use the quest window. I got gold and a hat (that’s town only, so pretty useless) and when I wear the hat, my character is bald.

I would say it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t awesome.

And the best part was only available for 2 days.

Props for the FOV fix, though. Without that I wouldn’t even be able to play GW2 but once a week, for a couple hours max, without giving me a days-long mild headache.

admcd.4503:

I thought all of the events associated were fine except for the clock tower, which had the difficulty scaled way too high for what is supposed to be a fun holiday event.

However, I felt that the drop rate on the Hallowe’en goodies was extremely bad and very disappointing. It’s led to profiteering by people who are selling the extremely rare skins for 50+ gold now. I’m not against capitalism but I felt that this was supposed to be a fun event to do on a lark and get a couple of items to remember it by. It doesn’t seem appropriate to turn it into a gold grab by lucky players.

I would have liked to have gotten a weapon skin to play about with.

Funny I thought capitalism encompassed more than just lotteries or “lotteries” that DISfavored a few. And the other events apart from MK get a “meh” from me at best. And I am not into jumping puzzles at all, even if the payoff is an exo.

Great job overall, I agree that RNG should be tweaked a bit, as it left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. I also agree that if the exotics are going to be so hard to craft, then Anet should either 1) publicize that you can get them as drops, and mention that crafting is more of a long-term goal for after the event, or 2) totally separate what can drop and what needs to be crafted.

Edit: Also instance the clocktower for solo and allow us to bring in friend if we want others there. This would avoid the visibility problems that many players have.

The amount of work Arenanet put into the event and everything added was amazing. I sincerely hope the clocktower becomes a yearly staple for people to try their luck against every halloween. The theme and the events were wonderful with a very cool backpack reward.

The level adjustment system allowing any level to enjoy it was very well done and satisfying. I really can’t think of anything but praise for the event.

The rewards on the other hand needed some adjustment. In particular all the weapon skins. Those available in game permanently are prohibitively expensive (100 lodestones? 40 elonian wines?), to then have them randomly drop from the chest at the dungeon (dungeon was amazingly fun btw) was disappointing. I would have very much liked to get one, but the RNG wasn’t in my favor and they are incredibly expensive to forge. Maybe eventually, but it felt like the already rich players could do it with ease, and a few rare lucky folks but most people were left dry in the water.

The black lion chests also severely needed to be done in a manner that rewarded people for money spent. Consider people who spent real money on them (myself) and got absolutely nothing. (also myself). It just left a very bad taste that did dampen my enthusiasm for the event (still had fun), but the skins shouldn’t be so rare that they do not drop at least once for somebody who spends $40 on keys.

I hope you guys take note of the areas that people were very dissatisfied with, but otherwise this event set a standard for amazing holiday events that other games should follow. Had a blast.

elsbeth.3567:

Witness the infamous Black Lion chest scam.

be honest about your sales pitches.

“Discover the secrets of the Black Lion Chest”

Yeah, I discovered that I’m a complete kitten for actually spending real money on this crap. Thanks Anet, you’ve successfully gotten the last cent from me for your gem store.

I feel like I just got scammed…

Please make Halloween goods account bound, a lot of people are already up to their get rich quick schemes.

You tried to cram way too much content in too short a time period. I really wanted to be able to complete it all, but between traveling, the hurricane, and it being a holiday in my religion, there was no way. I don’t see why this couldn’t have been a month-long event. Even two weeks would have been better. Giving the last act a 24 hour window on a day where people are likely to be busy is just silly.

The content you have is good, even the frustrating clock tower puzzle. But it’s just not enough time. Extend the event next year, and make this stuff obtainable again in the future. I didn’t even come close to getting all the achievements and would like to be able to finish it in the future.

I really enjoyed most of the event. I loved the way things were done over for Halloween, such as LA and the crafting screens. I loved the costumes available in the gem store for a fixed price and absolutely hated what you did with the RNG on the chests. I have not and will not ever buy keys simply because you don’t know what you’re paying for and I don’t buy things unless I know what I’m getting. If you had more stuff available in the gem store instead of just by random chance, I probably would have spent more money.

The quests for the books were fun but I didn’t do the last one on a low-level character (which some folks complained about). It reminded me that, overall, there is an incredible lack of decent back armor pieces in the game.

The labyrinth was head-scratcher: was there a point to it? It had no story and there was nothing to do in it but run around and zerg stuff. That’s fun up to a point but it gets old quickly and unless you’re in a group you get owned. The knockbacks and interrupts were a little ridiculous.

I really enjoyed the Inquisition and the Rumble, but the instructions for the Inquisition were not clear at all. The most basic thing: that you begin playing as a villager and become a ghost if you die wasn’t explained and I had no idea what the hell was going on. I can tell someone thought that was supposed to be obvious, but it wasn’t at all obvious to me (which means I wouldn’t be the only one, and no, it doesn’t mean I’m stupid, either).

The clock tower. Yeah, I only lasted 30 at the most on that. Nothing to do here. I’m torn about it because while I understand how you’d want to make content only the most skilled players can complete… I dislike it because I’m not one of them.

I loved the glow-in-the-dark and plastic mobs: what a fun idea (especially the “Made in Tyria” on the spiders).

The candy corn thing was cool, but I didn’t appreciate having normal nodes commandeered by candy corn because it made normal metals harder to farm. At one point I needed platinum and was grumbling at all the candy corn I was running into when what I wanted was platinum. I realize it’s probably much easier on the dev teams to do it that way, but still…

Also the horrific story of the Mad King didn’t jive at all with what a fun guy he suddenly became in Act IV. Suddenly he’s a comedian and we’re all playing Simon Says with him? Really?

So… there’s the good and the bad, as I see it. Overall it was great fun and I loved it. I’m really looking forward to future holidays in GW2. Especially if they don’t involve RNG baloney with chests and keys.

Just disappointed i missed the Mad Kings Dungeon. But did everything else, although am giving up on the trick or treat bags as i know i cant get the Mad King Emisary, was unaware that there were a specific 5…even got the clock tower

Otherwise had good fun, doing the scavenger hunt with level 20’s was a real adventure!

IMO… The event was mostly awesome. Anet really went all out, and it shows. I’ve never seen such an impressive holiday event in an MMO.

However… Maybe next time, keep the rare items out of it. Holiday events should not be about luck and grinding for items which are “supposed to be rare.” They should be much more all inclusive. Whether items are difficult to attain, or depend on RNG, it creates a divisive atmosphere that just has no place in holiday events. It’s not what holiday spirit should be about. It really dragged the event down, and that’s especially sad, given how well done the event was, in every other way.

Overall I was very impressed; this was my first Guild Wars holiday but it did a great job of introducing me (and other new players) to the neat traditions and lore. I had a lot of fun collecting candy corn, getting the memoirs, and playing the Mad King boss fight with friends (even low level ones since you were awesome enough to scale the Mad King’s Realm) for treasures.

I had a lot of fun with the Clocktower too – it was hard, but the reward was worth it and so was the experience. The height differential between players was really my only complaint. I enjoyed competing with other players, just not the fact that I couldn’t see my character in a really large group. I feel like the Clocktower would have been fine exactly as is if it only had a smaller cap on how many players were in each instance of it.

Really, on the whole, the only lasting complaints I have about the whole event boils down to one I have with the game in general:

It would be really nice not to re-use the same designs for exotic tier armor. I was disappointed when I heard that all of the Six Gods’ exotic armors looked exactly the same, and so did the GW1 Character’s armors, but I was really surprised when the ‘Mad King’s Armor’ was the same model as a pre-existing set too.

It really takes a lot of the fun and incentive out of questing for that particular exotic armor if you don’t even get a unique model out of it. Exotic armor would be more attractive to game towards if they were all exotic, and while I understand this might not be feasible for all of them, I feel like holiday/event exotics should be unique for sure. It didn’t have to look exactly like Mad King Thorn’s armor (after all, there’s a skin for that), but something based on him or his Lunatic Courtiers would have been really awesome.

Beyond that, it was an excellent event, and I really look forward to the next offering because I enjoyed buying a new skin and playing with friends this time.

First, I should note that my participation in this event was quite limited due to various reasons:

- Confusion: it took me awhile to figure out what the heck was going on ^^;
- Level: My characters are levels 33 and 28 and have not been anywhere higher level than the Kessex Hills.
- Lack of Skill: I am just plain awful at jumping puzzles, to the point that some vistas give me trouble. I didn’t even attempt the event one(s?).
-Lack of Interest: I don’t do PvP, so costume brawl didn’t interest me.
- Event Items: the books are pretty neat, but the clipping bugs me. I find town clothes largely useless, and the some of the weapon skins are great, but they seem so out of reach I didn’t even consider them an option. Overall, the rewards didn’t motivate me very much.

That said, I did enjoy this event, and I think it was very well planned! Very impressive, in fact! What I enjoyed in particular:

- Mad King’s Labyrinth: took me awhile to figure out what the heck it was (I thought it was a PvP zone like the mists at first, lol). Unless you’re following the zerg, I found it very dangerous for my level 28 character, but I enjoyed fighting the Halloween mobs (plastic spiders = awesome) and the area in general.

- Mining for candy corn: silly, I know, but I got a kick out of mining candy corn while out leveling!

- ToT bags: like with the candy corn mining, this was a frivolous little thing I thought was cute. Would have been more fun if it wasn’t 90% candy corn. :P

- Decorations: both in Lion’s Arch and out of, I thought these were nicely done and really added a nice atmosphere. ^^

Overall, I was surprised by how much of this event was designed for higher level and/or more skilled players, and I admit it disappointed me a bit that there weren’t any unique pieces of gear that I could obtain for even my low level alts as a “souvenir” of sorts. I’m not talking an amazing armor set, but just something little like, say, wristlets with tiny pumpkin on them, one of those medium armor scarf-mask thingies with a skull pattern, or a small circlet with a spider in the center. Then again, I guess that is what the town clothes are for (hi, free devil horns!). If only I actually used those. :/

I guess I am too used to the other MMO’s I have played, where events were designed so that everyone could easily jump into the event and get the most basic event item(s), but there was more to it and alternate/fancier versions required some work and possibly a higher level character. I do think it is awesome that the event had some challenges and high level activities, but I think I’d have liked to see a little more to do and to get on the lower level/easier end.