Guild Wars 2

Let me begin by saying yes, I have all the achievements for the event. I even reached a point on clock tower where I finished more than I failed. So I’m going to organize my feedback around those achievements.

Halloween Hunting – killing the Halloween mobs
This was such a gimmee achievement once the Labyrinth opened that I don’t feel anyone who wanted it didn’t get it. As an achievement, I think it works really well for getting the Bartle-type achievers into the Halloween event. The Labyrinth also had some decent mini-events in it, and decent loot tied to those events which drags in people who play for the shinies (can we pretty please have Skritt as the next playable race). Heck, even socializers got something out of this as the family-sized candy corn elemental required getting a bunch of people to show up and help kill it.

Pumpkin Carving – click on all those pumpkins scattered pretty much everywhere
This is actually one of the best balanced time-wise achievements I’ve seen ANet stick in the game. I say that because I never went out of my way to farm pumpkins to carve and yet still had no problem completing the achievement. I just played like always and when I saw a pumpkin, I’d take a moment and click on it. In exchange for that little bit of effort, I have a shiny Master Carver title for my sword-axe wielding warrior even if she sees ‘carving’ a bit different than just pumpkins.

Trick or Treat bags opened
Pretty straightforward and at this point, you could complete it for about 30 silver or so.

This is a good place to also bring up the eating candy corn that was a part of an achievement. I would have done that one just to watch my sylvari ranger puking over and over again. So…gravy that it was actually part of something with value.

It’s a Mad King’s World – go see ALL THE THINGS!
As an achievement, this is another well balanced one in that you don’t actually have to do any of the events, just go find them. Pretty much aimed at explorers. As for the events themselves, the two activities were both pretty cool. They could use a lot better instructions tho as it was confusing the first time most people did either trying to figure out exactly what was going on. The clock tower…well…that’s its own achievement and really needs its own somewhat length discussion.

Mad King’s Clock Tower – run up a clock while thinking very bad thoughts about Josh Foreman
The first time I ran this jumping puzzle, I died on the starting platform because I started the same way I do all jumping puzzles. I stared at it a bit trying to figure out my path. The second, third, fourth, tenth, bazillionth time I died was because freakin’ Norn and Charr made it impossible to see my toon after the puzzle piled us all back together on that annoying pause. Now, I like Norn. I have Norn friends. Heck, I have a Norn alt. (I do not have any Charr alts as I’m not forgiving those half-cat, half-cow bastages for The Searing).
Back to the tower…I ran this initially a few times and then thought to myself, “Self, this can wait.” Then I went and did other stuff for a few days. I suspect I saved myself much stress via this decision, especially as I’ve read quite a few of the um, critiques of this puzzle.
After finally running out of other things to do, I came back to this with an absolute dedication to completing it. I put myself in my zen-mode where I simply do not got frustrated and started running it. I figured out that I could get away with waiting for the horde to jump ahead of me at the pause and still keep ahead of green chompy stuff. I figured out I could take my time on some of the trickier bits provided I didn’t screw up and go slow on the easy bits. I figured out I could prolly pay someone to sneak into ANet and put vaseline on Josh’s keyboard as payback. Most importantly, I finally figured out how to get to the top repeatedly.
So when it was all said and done, I really liked this puzzle. At the same time, I’m 100% sympathetic to people who can’t and who feel cheated by having such a difficult piece of content included in a holiday event which most player feel should be about fun.

The other achievements were pretty much just show up things, so don’t really need any feedback.

Now stuff not achievement related:

Costume brawl – (okay so it has an achievement). Silly fun. Completely unbalanced. Plastic spiders suck. The mummy and skellies rock. I really doubt anyone cares at all about the balance. The food fight never made sense. Again, I don’t think anyone cared that much.

Mad King Says – again more silly fun and you get a silly hat as a reward. I will gladly admit that every time he’d get a bunch of people to do something without saying, “Mad Kings says” I would laugh out loud for reals.

The Biography of the Mad King scavenger hunt. – I loved this bit. I’m a Bartle KESA so explore-y stuff is really big with me. I loved the little ghost scenes and reading up on just how much of a bastage the Mad King was. The reward was even rock solid as well as back items have a premium on value, and this particular one fit half my alts (I have 8 of ‘em). I even noticed the color change around characters who leave the burning book visible which led me to do run to the Lion’s Arch jumping puzzle for an experiment to see if it was an actual light source (it is…albiet a fairly weak one). So big kudos on this.

The Halloween themed weapons
I’m not a good person for giving feedback on this. While I’m huge on getting my alts to look good, I’m not making any Halloween-y looking alts. Even my necro already has her staff picked out (the one sold by the pirate karma vendor at the end of the Lion’s Arch puzzle). So I really haven’t given these much thought. I did make some good coin selling the skins and weapons I did find, so I’m happy about that. Otherwise, meh. And as for the amount of mats that go into the recipes. Whatever. even after giving all the kids in Lion’s Arch diabetes, I still have over 1000 candy corn left, several stacks of all the ‘rare’ Halloween mats, and no desire to make anything other than the food stuff using ’em.

Another note of concern, but I suspect is more game-engine related overall was the day all the event chains to open the doors bugged. But like I said, this is an engine overall problem as it isn’t just the Halloween events that keep breaking.

Overall, I’d say the Halloween event was a big success. I had a lot of fun with the whole variety of things that happened, and I think there was enough different things to do that I’m sure most people found something they liked. Of course, I do sympathize with people who got frustrated with the Mad King’s Clocktower as it does seem odd to stick something hard in the middle of something most people expect to be simple fun.