Guild Wars 2

Overall I thought this was a nice event. Especially the conclusion was nice. Its good to get some proper rewards for doing such a large scale event. I was quite relieved to see a chest pop up after the boss.

The first day how ever was a lag fest. I think for these kinds of large scale events, the number of players should probably be restricted to much less players per instance of Lion’s Arch. The huge number of players and effects reduced the whole battle in Lion’s Arch into a slide show, and most of the time the Karka enemies were completely invisible. I would prefer it if the game would hide the tons of players that are not me, and their combined spell-effects, rather than hide the things that can kill me. I also noticed several players crashing out of the game. I wonder if any pc’s at all were able to run that battle smoothly.

The following quests were fun. I like these sorts of scavenger hunts. I also like how most of these quests are near Lion’s Arch. And I feel the hints were much clearer now than during Halloween. Plus I liked the star-indicators for the important event npc’s. Its a pity that I did not get to complete ANY of them, due to several key quests being stuck on my server.

When releasing one-time events that run only for 3 days… please in the future put them through more rigorous testing first. Most of us have little enough time as it is. If a quest is only available for 1 or 2 days, and is bugged throughout one of those days, chances are many of us will not be able to complete the quest chain. When you release a one-time event, the quests should not become stuck.

The new area turned out beautiful, although I was hoping it would be bigger. Still, there’s two jumping challenges in there, which I’m a big fan of. The most difficult one, and possibly also the most hated one, could use some optimization though. The effects of all the combined geysers cause severe slowdown on lower end pc’s and laptops, making platforming a lot harder than it needs to be.

The final event felt quite epic, and it took a long while. Unfortunately the lag and low frame rate often made it impossible to dodge or even see incoming Karka, while we were fighting our way up to place the bombs. Again, most enemies were invisible due to graphical overload.

I enjoyed the different mechanics during the second event, like launching rocks from geysers, igniting volcanoes and releasing a rock slide on the ancient Karka. The sequences in between however were quite tedious, because the ancient Karka would spawn endless hordes of enemies that were like small bosses on their own. And while driving the ancient Karka back to its lair, it would repeat this sequence several times along the way. Then the final battle was fun, and I liked the ending cinematic. It was a nice touch.

And great rewards. So mixed feelings about this one. In the future, better testing of the quests (so they don’t become stuck) and better optimization (so enemies aren’t invisible) would be preferred. I hope we’ll see more of the Sea of Sorrows, since a whole patch is still left unfilled, and I hope the areas between Kaledon Forest and Sparkfly will finally become connected.

And what happened to the heart quests?

I enjoyed the 3 day event overall. Just some comments and suggestions to improve on future one-time events like this.

PROS:
- Three day weekend event, there was a fair amount (not overwhelming) of quests you could do and it was manageable and in areas where low-level characters could reach.
- Fractals dungeon – fun, fun, fun!
- Southsun Cove – new exploration area, new critters to kill, nice drops (e.g. level 400 crafting mats), I enjoyed the new crafting materials and recipes you added to the game.
- Karka hatchlings latching onto your face – that was totally hilarious, it reminded me of the movie Alien, and I screenshot myself being latched on.
- Events in Southsun Cove – the events were not too bad, I enjoyed the one where the npc needed karka eggs for her omelette…her edgy unstable voice, dialogue, and appearance was hilariously creepy and I totally LOL’d for a good few minutes. She’s so crazy! lol
- Ancient chest – nice rare and exotic loot, I was not expecting to see them drop, was expecting some souvenir from the event, similar to the Mad King book, but after spending 3 hours dodging, rezzing and dying, I think some nice reward was necessary. It was a nice change and because it’s a one-time event, it’s not going to turn everything upside down and significantly affect all players and the market in the long-term.

CONS:
- Lag – it was fairly laggy during phase 1, and during parts of the Ancient event in phase 3. When zergs concentrate on a champion boss, my fps = 5.
- Phase 1 – Noll was bugged and I had to wait until the next day to complete it.
- Champion and veteran bosses shooting out that AoE poison thing and killing a dozen of players all in 1 go…not fun from a repair bill perspective. But I suppose level 80 bosses shouldn’t be too easy to kill so perhaps this is to be expected…
- Champion and veteran karka bosses – all players targeting this including myself, but when it dies, I always get no experience, loot or credit.
- Because of the lag, when enemies pop up on my screen, they are invisible and I cannot see or target them, but I see other players targeting some massive invisible blob. I don’t know if this is a bug or some graphics overload on my part, but if this issue can be resolved, that would be great. This has happened to my friends too so I know it isn’t just me.
- Phase 3 – I am glad this is a multi-hour event and not ones that last for <1 hour. That way, people who log in late can still participate.
- Players from EU, Oceanic and Asia – I feel bad for them because if they wanted to participate, they’d have to wake up at odd hours of the morning. You should set up event start times according to the continent/region.
- Ancient chest – it should stay a bit longer for those who disconnected, crashed, or died and decided to waypoint and run back (but missed chest because it just disappeared). I wonder if there is a way for the chest to know who participated, and won’t disappear until everyone has claimed it…or if it is able to know who participated and have not claimed the rewards, it disappears and automatically mails them the rewards. That way, no one will be sad that they missed the rewards.

Overall, it was a fun event and I was glad to have participated! Can’t wait for the Christmas event and I look forward to more events like this!

I liked the Lost Shores content. The island is beautiful. As a possible level 80 area to farm in, aesthetically it’s a lot more pleasing than Orr. Such a contrast, so that’s great. The karka themselves are a pain to fight sometimes but the density is better than Orr and the CC and pulls on the mobs isn’t as rage inducing, so those things were great changes. The mob diversity could do with a bit of work (especially now that there is lore to support the decrease in karka numbers).

The story/lore of the new content was really weak. I want real villains, not these animals that just attack. I want something that makes the event feel special to the world of Tyria, something that can actually think, that has complexity. This content was really boring from a story point of view. I liked the slight depth to Canach and him being a second born, but so much of the rest of the lore to this event felt like it was tacked on at the end.

The organisation and information to guide me through the event was very poor. I had no idea there was going to be karka attacks after the first one on the Saturday (in Caledon and Kessex). Had I known I would have participated. I was probably online at the time, I have a tendency to ignore my mail (I get so much from spam bots and DE completion, personal story steps etc). It was confusing to log in and get mail for an event which had passed. I also don’t like that phase one content got locked off when phase two began. I decided to skip out on it until the bugs were fixed. When it was working I couldn’t even begin it because the crate part was removed. I understand it was never bugged, but many of us don’t want to start collecting items for something we can’t complete, we will save our inventory space for when we can do it. I also didn’t get to do the other scavenger hunt because I thought it was also bugged. So much content for this one time event, I was present for the one time event and I still missed out on about half of it.

The karka event sin LA were tainted by lag so I won’t comment too much on them aside from the second one being somewhat underwhelming because of similarities to the first.

Establishing the island would have felt more meaningful if I had felt there was more of a purpose to us being there in the first place. In Orr we have a clear mission. On the karka island, it just felt mechanical to me. I wasn’t really sure where to go because some events were spawning as the “main” event continued. There seemed to be no known NPC to lead us through – maybe next time have an actual character to symbolise the player forces, someone who can carry the exposition of the story and make the player confident they are beside the important person. A little bit of a speech from some well known NPC would give the story more relevance and help guide the key moments better. As it was, the ship arrived at the island and the zerg rushed off. No NPC speech, no purpose, no co-ordination. Just run out and zerg. I saw Canach in chains but it the story was very underplayed. The only cool part in my experience was the bridge, everything else was a mad zerg rush which trivialised my participation and the challenge.

The final event was cool for the most part. Aside from massive culling issues (invisible karka wiping whole zergs) and the lag, the combat was fun. A variety of objectives that took a long time felt like this was something bigger than usual. The reinforcements phases sucked so bad, but all the others were fun. This was better than the finale of Arah story mode, but I’m sure there’s room for improvement.

Aside from the technical issues, I think the biggest issue I have with this content is cohesion. There seemed to be very little. I can’t help feeling that the whole event would have benefited massively from one small thing – personal story. Had most of this content been delivered in the form of personal story I suspect I would have had a much better experience. There would be less lag, there would be less culling issues, my input would matter more, the chaos would allow for better controlled and focused opportunities to deliver story, dialogue and exposition. The karka attacks in Kessex and Caledon as welll as the scavenger hunt could have been more like a personal story step and participating could be singular (or in a party) rather than in a zerg. Zergs really are not fun, the destroy most content, they don’t improve it. The arrival on the island could have been introduced with a cut scene or dialogue and then swapped over to a better staggered progression across the island (possibly divide focus so less people in once place) etc. Personal story would also allow you to limit how much of this content is one time only (destroying parts of LA could be one time, but other stuff can be done in personal story). This would allow more people to participate at different times. Things like the Ancient Karka could be on a timer to repeat an hour after it’s defeated.

The rewards were simply too much. The account bound stuff is fine (to an extent, although the method of obtaining it is a bit unfair to some). It’s specific to the event and a nice souvenir. They are account bound so I can’t get rich from them which I like. I didn’t like the free exotics and legendaries. It might help alleviate the exotic scarcity but it’s incredibly unfair and it overshadows the rest of the event.

I had an ingame mail notifying me of the follow steps and the attacks in Caldon and Kessex. If you ignore your ingame mail then yea, you missed that. But I find ingame mail to be the best way to reach the players in-game, since most people dont actually follow the forum/website/twitter while playing, so imo they did that right.