Guild Wars 2

They managed to run gw events over a time frame, so as many ppl as possible could play and enjoy.
Now most of us players in Aus,NZ and Asia pacific, won’t get to play the event like it was intended due to the timing.
WE don’t want to watch youtube, we want to play the content as we should be able too , without being discriminated against because of were we live.
Thats all we are trying to get an answer on , yet I see we are being ignored bye Anet on the subject.

Since Halloween I keep getting annoyed when I see “one time only event, do not miss it, once in a life-time, be part of history, do not miss this”

I think this is a terrible way to introduce content for us who actually, you know… have lives outside of the house.

Post edited to remove a violation of the code of conduct.

worst update ever .. guild wars is not guild wars anymore … Did blizzard bought Anet or something?

When can we expect pandaland event please?

So now we know for sure that , cause we are in a different time zone and will miss out of the finale we miss out on one time rewards that go with it, gees this is a great business thinking on Anets part , who cares about Asia Pacific region, just cause they pay more for our game we won’t accommodate their time zone in any of our events or even let them have servers

This issue has been talked about over and over again, and I will miss the Friday event but tough luck, obviously it’s not everyone’s optimal time when they have the largest number of people playing during a specific time and choose to make it this time is a smart move. If they had been trying to alienate a specific time zone it is because you’re in the minority compared to this “optimal” time, they won’t do away with 1 time events by qq in forums so just deal with it.
/close thread.

The event will culminate in a big Finale on Sunday November 18, make sure you will not miss it. This will be a onetime only event chain that will run multiple hours, and it will kick off at noon PST (20:00 GMT). Again, this will only run once, so make sure you will be there!

Could someone please give us more information about the length of time for this event chain? 2 hours? 3 hours? 20 hours? Please…give us a more detailed information. If you can’t tell us exactly how many hours it will take, then guessing would be ok for me too. But please tell us at least something better than “multiple hours”…that could be any amount of hours!

If they make the event redoable and recurring then it would lose it’s point. It’s just a game, but having a big chunk of the current playerbase being able to think “Yeah, I was there, defending Lion’s Arc” is surely worth more than the whole playerbase being able to think “I finished an event that didn’t really matter anyway because it just happened again an hour later”.

Seriously, I’ll be watching Animal Collective so I won’t be here for friday, but you can’t get everything in life. We still get all the cool new content so what’s the deal? Anet had two choices, either make something really awesome for some of us or mildly amusing for all of us. I know what i would choose.

The very fact that people will only be able to do this once is what makes it so cool, and if you strip that feeling away from the event then what’s the point of having the event at all? I’d understand your kittening if the event was the only update this month, but we get a whole new map, dungeon and gear costing us no more extra than we have already payed, as well as the chance to invite our friends to play with.

Keep up the good work, developers. Some of us appreciate what you do.

They need to draw a distinction between superficial cutscene events like the one at Halloween, and events that actually include interactive content and/or loot. Those of us who might cancel a date for loot will feel a tad annoyed if it turns out to be another 20 second cutscene.

I’m fine with the times, 8:00PM GMT is perfect, just right after doing 3+ hours of revision from 5PM

“We run one-time events at the time where we have the highest concurrency.”
you guys are looking at it in 2 dimensions not 3. Europe servers exist in there own time with own concurrency North American Servers exist in separate time with there own concurrency. the two times greatest concurrency put together is your true concurrency. I myself am a computer science major……i sure do hope it doesn’t blind me to reality like it seems to have those i consider superior

Unfortunately for me, my good computer crashed and it’s now getting repaired but I won’t get it back until way after this one time event is done.

I’m going to miss everything, and I was really looking forward to it. And I did try to borrow a few of my friends comp for this weekend, but no luck there.

Although one time events are cool, it’s not when you have no choice in the matter to sit it out. So any achievements and rewards (especially achievements) will surely be missed.

Sometimes I wish these one time events, weren’t so one timish. Just going from the Halloween events, so many of them were so cool that it’s a bummer to see them go just because it was only meant for that period of time. e.g. Clock tower…

I’ll preface this with I’ll be able to be there for this weekends one time events. But I post this because I would not want to be one of the ones who can’t. And just becuse I can be there for this one doesn’t mean I can be there for future events designed to happen once at only one specific time and day. I fail to understand how making a one time event be at only one specific time and day is a good decision. It can still be a one time event for everyone who plays the game if the event occurs as an instance for a whole day or a period of days and then is no longer available. In other words everyone can only do it once but gets to do it when they are able to within the day or set of days the one time event is available. Once the one time event is completed they are placed back in the persistent world where the changes due to the event are at. Until then they are in an instance spawning point (like the intro instance for new created characters) and can’t do anything else until they complete the instance. Everyone wins here and the fact that others can do it before others doesn’t alter the immersion of those who already completed it because they aren’t seeing those who haven’t completed it do what they already did. Obviously this being brought up before the halloween event was too late for them to do that for this event. Hopefully it is not too late for future one time only events. We all payed for the game so it is only fair that we all get to experience all of the content created if we want to experience it.

does anyone know how big the new map is?? possible provide an outline of it so i can see. interested to see how i compares in size to current zones. usually you can see the shape from the shading in the map although im finding it hard with this map lol.

I don’t know.. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have influence on anything important on your character besides the experience. During the beta events, the EU crowd got the events at like 2-5 AM so we’d have to get up in the middle of the night in order to make it.

They already mentioned that the majority of their fanbase lies across the EU, so it’s fair to place the events within our timezone. In case we miss the events next time, too bad for us, but it seems like the reason they place the events when they do is because that’s when the majority of their fanbase is playing, but that’s just a wild guess.

My one concern is (sorry if it has been addressed already) how long will events be working on friday and saturday. So if let’s say I’m not at home today evening will I be able to play the content and complete 1st event until saturday 21:00 CET?

Dogblaster.6713:

worst update ever .. guild wars is not guild wars anymore … Did blizzard bought Anet or something?

When can we expect pandaland event please?

Oh come on! The only “One time event” things Blizzard ever did was just before an expansion and usually ran for a week. It never felt as important or as immersive as what Anet is doing in GW2.

I applaud how they are trying to make GW2 as “real” as possible. “One time events” is one way they can do it. Yes, it sucks when you can’t make it. Do I think Anet should have the start times staggered for each region? Of course. That would be the best and most fair way to do this. Staggering the events to 6pm PST for the US/AU region and 18:00 GMT for EU would allow the largest playerbase for each time participate. Doing it based on “most concurrent players” is not necessarily fair.

Thoughts?

We need a different mentality in the GW2 community. These one time events are awesome. It is unfortunate that not everyone can play through them, but…

If things go the way they are seeming to go, we should probably expect an event like this about once a month. There will be others. If you miss some one time events, there will be others.

I work, and go to school, and don’t have much time to myself usually, but I accept the fact that I may not be able to see every even. I personally believe we need more of this attitude.

Sniderbl.5916:

We need a different mentality in the GW2 community. These one time events are awesome. It is unfortunate that not everyone can play through them, but…

If things go the way they are seeming to go, we should probably expect an event like this about once a month. There will be others. If you miss some one time events, there will be others.

I work, and go to school, and don’t have much time to myself usually, but I accept the fact that I may not be able to see every even. I personally believe we need more of this attitude.

The thing is and the point so many of us are trying to make is nobody has to miss the events. All they have to do is encase them in an instance. Just like the intro one time only event we get when starting a new character. Foe these one time events you place the characters into an instance and they can do it any time. In fact this allows them to be a permanent yet still one time only so that all current and future players can experience the content. If they had done that with this weekends content this entire forum section wouldn’t be the one big hot mess of all negative posts and almost all negative feedback.

I was there for this whole weekend yet due to all of the bugs the only part of it I actually got to experience was the finale ancient karka chain. And that was epic and fun even though there was tons of long lag and many invisible players and enemies the whole time. At least the super boss wasn’t. And at least this event chain wasn’t bugged out like phase two in LA portion was. With all that said it makes me extremely disappointed that massive amounts of current and all future players didn’t and won’t get to experience it unless they listen to our feedback and instance it like how the intro instance is so that everyone gets to experience it. Otherwise all anyone can hope is that enough people caught the whole of the events on video to at least get second best experience.

For a game that’s sold worldwide to have an event that only a few time zones could reasonably join in the finale is plain wrong.
To prevent anyone farming these events you make it either a one off per account or per character if your feeling generous.
ie in the final event message you would get a key to the final chest.
Players could then farm the event but only open the chest once so no silly numbers of exotics.
You could then spread the load of the final event over a 24 hour period allowing all time zones a fair chance of getting in at a suitable time.
Pacific it was 12 noon UK was 8pm so far so good.
India a 1 am start then as you go east through China Japan to say Australia your starting around 4 5 or 6 am.
So what an Aussie to do wake at 6 play the event then head off for work.
Sry its not on and your only going to hurt sales in these areas.
I am convinced your Programmers are doing a top notch job with this game but someone has a few strange ideas.
Like introducing friends to the game on the same weekend as a major event.
So all the instability and bugged quests probably just turned them right off the game.

I’ve been thumbing through threads here to see if there was any news. I’m pretty much done with that though. I think I’ve read enough to firmly establish my opinion around.

BACKGROUND:
I got to do the event by hopping through overflows and ultimately catching up with someone who posted here in a seperate thread advertising invites to an overflow where it was about to kick off (thank you again TangyOrange). In the course of this third phase I DC’d 3 seperate times but kept trying to get back in and finally, following the third (which was a massive crash for multiple players in the event) I was able to get back in and haul kitten to the site of the final battle with the Ancient Karka at a mere 5%. We struggled to NOT kill it and allow for as many if not all to make it back in but ultimately it died and some missed out. The sheer frustration I experienced throughout this event has left me almost entirely without finger nails and has probably stressed me enough to take years off my cardiovascular life (kidding of course ;P). I did however have a ball though. Got my first 20 slot bag, made a little under 2 gold and 5 – 6 Ectoplasm.

OPINION FORMULATED:
One time events are fine and fun for those who can attend but certain things, as should be learned from this one, must be taken into account in the design.

First, keep them on the low end of server stress tolerance. Bare in mind that I am in no wise a computer programmer, I’m barely consider myself qualified to install a new graphics card or even format and re-install my hard drive. This just seems a no brainer to me though. Work well with in what you know 100% the servers can tolerate. For as many DC’s and issues had on this end, has anyone thought about what it may have been like IF even 25 – 50% more players had showed up than were able too? If too many more showed up we could have had a Tyria wide armageddon on our hands. I’m sure there’s an answer for this but I’m equally sure I’m not the one who knows it. A-Net surely has learned this lesson though and they have people who can provide the answer to this problem.

Second, the rewards were pretty out of line UNLESS there are events and tiers of loot soon to follow that will pretty much knock those exotics and precursors acquired down a peg or two from there current standing of top of line gear. If that’s the case then this was a fine idea as it allows the populations to approach a new tier of gear on pretty well the same footing. In that case though, there should be ways to advance gear to this level to follow in the very near future with at most a similar level of trials to acquire it. If that isn’t the case though, then you’re just bound to have a dividing line of haves and have nots drawn here, which, surprise!, is exactly what we have right now. Exotics are easy enough to aqcuire though, 20 slot bags are pretty huge for those who do not purchase gems but not that big of a deal, but Precursors? Ehh… maybe not so much (unless as stated above there is a new tier coming soon or if, in general, precursors are going to be easier to aqcuire in ways other than the one time event).

Finally, and I REALLY hate to say this but, there is an excellent lesson to be learned here from WoW – particularly the Ahn Quirag gate opening event. To sum it up, what they did there was put the burdon of deciding when this event would take place COMPLETELY on the player base. If anyone had any issue with the time of the event there was no one to kitten at but the community. It was one of those extremely rare instances of pure democracy. The community, divided on when and why they thought what time was best, made their cases and then the community as a whole got behind the time best for them as a whole. For the unholy abomination that game has since become since it’s “hey day” that was one place that head the nail squarely on the head.

Gee, that turned out a little long. I’ll try and sum up a little.

TO SUMMARIZE:

1. One Time events are fun and shouldn’t cease.

2. Clearly they can’t be stress tested in an open beta style, so maybe keep the hardware resource demand WELL WITH IN known and acceptable limits (assuming that is why so many DC’s, lag, bugs, etc. occured or at least was a major contributor to)

3. Keep the rewards with in reason. Mad King back piece – perfect. 20 slot bag and mediocre exotic accesory – perfectly reasonable. Items worth literally hundreds of gold (especially introduced into an economy were 10 gold, for those who don’t purchase gems at least, is a pretty comfortable amount), not so much. UNLESS the event and those items is also being used as a “clearing house” of sorts to make way and prepare for new gear.

4. If you are so inclined, take as much and as many of these major community impacting decisions (like when a “one time” event will occur) and put them in the hands of the community. It promotes the community actually behaving as a community and also pretty well squashes potential for massive revolt (as we’re seeing here) and removes your heads from the guillotine. Not saying people won’t complain (it’s an age old business axiom that, in general, the only time you’ll ever hear from a customer is when there’s a problem) but it’ll pretty much remove the teeth from the bite, well at least in the mind of most critically thinking people.

Keep in mind though, “you can’t please all the people all the time, yadda, yadda, etc. and so forth…”

At least for myself, this is an isolated event in the life of an MMO that has been around for about 3 months and is hardly an Earth (or Tyria rather ;P) shattering event. In general, most of the people claiming it was are either REALLY unrealistic in their expectations or are, at the least, engaging in hyperbole or extreme melodrama.

It happened, it’s over, it’s hardly beyond repair, and there’s a lot to be learned and applied to make such future events much better.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

While I think these types of events are insanely awesome, and I would never discourage ANet from doing them, I have to say that for those of us who actually have responsibilities and such, these limited events suck!

Agreed but if the rewards or less excessive and/or alternately made available as the hat from mad king event was then at least its more reasonable.
With this event many who didn’t have outside issues weren’t even able to take part, the servers weren’t up to it.

disagree on point 1. can change my mind though. all players regardless of timezone, etc. should have the opportunity to participate in the event AND have opportunity at the best rewards. this event did not fit that bill, but future ones should. * note that it would be very easy to have the ancient karka re-spawn, however only give the “good rewards” one time for each player/account.

the massive rewards i have no problem with. massive rewards to a select group of players in certain timezones i DO have a problem with. this tips the economy in exactly the wrong direction ANET was supposedly trying to prevent.

i really hope ANET learns from these mistakes otherwise they will lose players.

Oh yeah, and as far the potential for new tiers of loot (along with the already implemented in Ascended gear), I understand there are some complaints about a deviation from the stated goal of, “no vertical progression.” Honestly, I’m not exactly clear on this and I’m not sure many are. As I understand it, Vertical progress, gear wise at least, is tiers of gear progressing by having more powerful and greater stats.

What exactly is Horizontal gear progression though? Same level of stats but new skins? What else is left to progress through or to change? For my money and the over all guiding design principle of “casual friendly” though, progressing to new tiers of gear with greater stats is perfectly fine. In fact I’d say neccessary and expected because cosmetics just will not hold my interest for very long and I suspect I’m hardly alone in that.

In that spirit of “casual friendly” just make the new tiers attainable by the casual as well. If I can collect some karma and get with some groups doing DE chains in Orr, then I have a fair, easy, and “casual” way of attaining a full set of exotics. Or do some dungeons, farm mats and craft, so on and so forth. If from there we jump to 40 man 8 hour raids that have to be run week after week for months on end for the new tier above exotics then yeah, that presents an obviously “non-casual” path to the next tier and we’ve gone WAY outside of the “casual friendly” design goal. New tier above exotic is as easy to aqcuire as exotic though? What we have there is new gear content that remains “casual friendly” and I see no problem there or anything opposite of A-Nets stated design principles.

Additionally, this is the only type of REAL progress, at least as far as gear is concerned, that I can imagine. New skins? Not progress and not exciting, it’s simple CHANGE. It’s the difference between painting your Ford Focus a new color or buying a Cobra Mustang. I want the Mustang, not the paint job, as long as I can afford the Mustang. That’s just my opinion though of course.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We run one-time events at the time where we have the highest concurrency.

That makes perfect sense, if you could actually handle the number of people trying to participate. Many of us were blocked from what appears to be an inability of the servers to handle the traffic.

ScorpionX.6938:

disagree on point 1. can change my mind though. all players regardless of timezone, etc. should have the opportunity to participate in the event AND have opportunity at the best rewards. this event did not fit that bill, but future ones should. * note that it would be very easy to have the ancient karka re-spawn, however only give the “good rewards” one time for each player/account.

the massive rewards i have no problem with. massive rewards to a select group of players in certain timezones i DO have a problem with. this tips the economy in exactly the wrong direction ANET was supposedly trying to prevent.

i really hope ANET learns from these mistakes otherwise they will lose players.

I hope I’m not being counter to what I just posted but yes, I have to agree whole heartedly. To me, the gold standard of a “lay person” when it comes to computer programming (especially concerning an international MMO designed for 1,000s upon 1000’s), it doesn’t seem too difficult to put in the design feature that no matter how many times one character or one account (whichever way they want to go there), they get to loot the chest once. Sounds pretty similar to a “cookie” for web sites to me. If they have to maybe offer a few gold and a nice chunk of karma in liu of more items for repeating? Two gold and 1,000 karma maybe – even if I despised the event (which I didn’t, I loved playing it even in spite of the technical problems) I’d definitely do it again for that kind of reward. People who loved playing the event would probably happily repeat it for less even.

If that IS the case then by all means, give a fair and large enough window for this event to take place as much as is decided or neccessary. Everyone gets a shot, everyone gets loot, everyone gets to play and experience the content. So may protest on “philosophical” principles like, one time means one time, it was announced in advance or whatever, and that’s fine for an academic argument of ideals. In the real world of business though? There is really only ONE practical business “philosophy” – Keep a smile on the faces of as many customers as possible to ensure repeat business, good word of mouth advertisement and ultimately the greatest revenue and profit. Plain and simple.

I’m definitely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that much was learned from this event’s implementation as well. It’s only been a few months since release and the future changes that would make these kinds of events more fun for the players also have the benefit of making A-Net more money and a wider player base.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

We will give you more details once we get closer to the event, but wanted to give you an early heads up so you can plan accordingly.

While I think these types of events are insanely awesome, and I would never discourage ANet from doing them, I have to say that for those of us who actually have responsibilities and such, these limited events suck!

I’m glad that the content will be available past these events, but I wish there was some way of structuring these (or at least spacing them out) so those of us who can’t dedicate an entire weekend to Guild Wars 2, still have a chance to catch some of the coolness.

I agree, I think these events should run for a BIT more than 3 days for these very reasons.

Was this thread necessary to necro? I’m sorry, but I was screwed over as well, and I’m certain Arena.net gets the message so can we stop please bickering now. It sucks, nothing we can do and out of our hands. We’ve done all we can, albeit a bit over the top with the rage.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We run one-time events at the time where we have the highest concurrency.

Players need to start to realize that the game is not perfect at all. Be open minded, we know that Anet for sure have dozen of issues to puzzle out before they release this event (Time Issue).

I have issue in the time event as well, living in UTC+08:00 time zone gives me a hard time to catch up for that “one-time-event”. Knowing that the event will start at November 16 at 12:00 PM PST in my local time it is 5:00AM in the morning!!!

I don’t wan’t to nag like others do. I just want players to realize that the world is round, not flat and all people’s time are the same. "While Pacific time people eating there lunch and getting ready for the event, UTC+08:00 time zone and other area is having there bedtime stuff.

All Anet is doing is just for the sake of the “one-time-event” and the “time where we have the highest concurrency” obviously they have chosen the majority. Let’s just wait how Anet will handle this time frame issue.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We run one-time events at the time where we have the highest concurrency.

Unfortunately, you eliminated all of the Pacific and Asia areas due to time zone issues. When you run something at noon PST you have to understand that the Pacific/Asia area already has moved on to past late night and into the next day.

Poor planning as far as I can see and I don’t agree with your reasoning.

Additional point about limited or one off events it very much depends on their number.
This Karka one is the first such event so those who missed it are a little disappointed.
If however this became a fairly frequent part of the game say every month or 2 months then players will not panic so much at missing one.

Under those circumstances if you truly want them to be one off events then you need to rotate through the time zones.

That seems only fair.