This is just all of you guessing, noone really knows because Arena Net have not cleared it out. And there is endless of threads asking the same thing. So unless you are from Arena Net i appreciate your effort, but i really want the answer from them.
The link maddoctor gave a timeframe on the GW2 homepage.
I agree a quick confirmation should have occured since we know they read the forums and thus seen the question, but the answer was provided on their releases page.
It is not a specific date and imo i can not even begin to understand why we never got one. It would be a good communication which any other game i played always given and as far as i remember we also got in this game in the past, so why the heck not this year. Just one of the small things that annoys me. I want to be able to plan my game time and knowing when something starts and ends is one of those things that makes my game time easier.
I know it usually ends on the first Tuesday after Halloween. But that would make this year’s the shortest Halloween event in the game’s history, wouldn’kitten
31 – 18 = 13 days up? With just two weekends? Do I have that right?
Considering the drop rates for new items from the ToT bags are quite low (relative to last year), there hasn’t been much time for those of us trying to collect them the hard way (i.e., farming and opening bags) to try our luck.
I hope we get some kind of word on this! I do love the Halloween stuff in GW2. I look forward to it every year. This year, it wasn’t quite as special as, say, two years ago. But I don’t care! I still want to play it.
(Gaile, please, pretty please, grace us with your presence and a reassurance…)
Considering the halloween offers in gemstore are all ending tomorrow, there is a 99% chance of Halloween ending tomorrow
I mean, Gem Store offerings typically run for a week and then a new set rotates in. That’s normal. Just as last Tuesday’s rotation didn’t imply the end of SotMK, so this Tuesday’s doesn’t either.
2016: 18 Oct – ? (possible: 1 Nov; probable 8 Nov, see below)
Pattern
Ends during the first week of November. (One exception.)
Scheduled updates occur on Tuesdays (very few exceptions since launch)
That suggests 1 November as the most likely date. However, when GW1 had live updates, ANet rarely ended a holiday-themed festival the day after the official holiday. I expect that it will end on 8 November. (There’s a redditor who claims to have a screen shot of Gaile saying it would not end on the 1st, but no screenshot was posted to the relevant thread.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Ends during the first week of November. (One exception.)
Scheduled updates occur on Tuesdays (very few exceptions since launch)
That suggests 1 November as the most likely date. However, when GW1 had live updates, ANet rarely ended a holiday-themed festival the day after the official holiday. I expect that it will end on 8 November. (There’s a redditor who claims to have a screen shot of Gaile saying it would not end on the 1st, but no screenshot was posted to the relevant thread.)
Thanks for the well-conceived prediction and thorough commentary, Illconceived. I hope the pattern and rumor are enough to convince the Bayesian pantheon to make this a good prior (after the fact).
(person) Has it been announced when halloween ends as I was on vaca until a couple of days ago and am hoping its not tomorrow so I can finish things?
Gaile Gray It does not end tomorrow, as far as I know. We should have more information soon.
(person) Thank you for the reply, there was a rumour going around from reddit that it did so I was worried, I need to go and get my cat familiar now!
I’m unable to find this anywhere else, even on GW2’s twitter or anything.
I’m honestly a little bit annoyed that ArenaNet won’t offer any information about when the event ends. At least it seems likely that tomorrow won’t be the last day. But WTF—how can people know whether to spend their stuff/wrap up achievements if there’s no information about when it will end?
Hypothetically: if I have 4 achievements I’d like to finish before it ends, then learning the end date will allow me to plan accordingly. If the end is tomorrow, I could cram everything in now. But if it ends a week from now, I could plan to do them at a leisurely pace (as many players are wont to do).
Not telling us the end date is a recipe for disappointment, for anyone who has adult life obligations, or anyone who assumes (reasonably!) that November 1 is not the end date.
2016: 18 Oct – ? (possible: 1 Nov; probable 8 Nov, see below)
This pattern shows it more than likely ends tomorrow the 1st.
2012: 11 days, ending first week of the month
2013: outlier
2014: 15 days, ending first week of the month
2015: 12 days, ending first week of the month
2016: 13 days (if tomorrow), ending first week of the month
Either way, plan for it to end. You won’t be disappointed this way, and excited if it continues.
2016: 18 Oct – ? (possible: 1 Nov; probable 8 Nov, see below)
This pattern shows it more than likely ends tomorrow the 1st.
2012: 11 days, ending first week of the month
2013: outlier
2014: 15 days, ending first week of the month
2015: 12 days, ending first week of the month
2016: 13 days (if tomorrow), ending first week of the month
Either way, plan for it to end. You won’t be disappointed this way, and excited if it continues.
Unless you crammed in achievements and gave up doing things you would have enjoyed doing better only to find out it didn’t end and now you gave up doing what you wanted to do for nothing.
2016: 18 Oct – ? (possible: 1 Nov; probable 8 Nov, see below)
This pattern shows it more than likely ends tomorrow the 1st.
2012: 11 days, ending first week of the month
2013: outlier
2014: 15 days, ending first week of the month
2015: 12 days, ending first week of the month
2016: 13 days (if tomorrow), ending first week of the month
Either way, plan for it to end. You won’t be disappointed this way, and excited if it continues.
Unless you crammed in achievements and gave up doing things you would have enjoyed doing better only to find out it didn’t end and now you gave up doing what you wanted to do for nothing.
Well, not nothing. Not only would you have all your achievements done and over with but you can now go and do all the things you enjoy.
A win win.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
2016: 18 Oct – ? (possible: 1 Nov; probable 8 Nov, see below)
This pattern shows it more than likely ends tomorrow the 1st.
2012: 11 days, ending first week of the month
2013: outlier
2014: 15 days, ending first week of the month
2015: 12 days, ending first week of the month
2016: 13 days (if tomorrow), ending first week of the month
Either way, plan for it to end. You won’t be disappointed this way, and excited if it continues.
Unless you crammed in achievements and gave up doing things you would have enjoyed doing better only to find out it didn’t end and now you gave up doing what you wanted to do for nothing.
Well, not nothing. Not only would you have all your achievements done and over with but you can now go and do all the things you enjoy.
A win win.
But if they had known that it would have been available longer they wouldn’t have crammed it in and instead been able to do the activities at a slower pace and enjoyed the process. Instead of cramming and burning themselves out on the activities.
Most people would choose to do things that they find fun and I doubt many people think cramming in the activities for the achievements is more fun than doing at them at a leisurely pace.
2016: 18 Oct – ? (possible: 1 Nov; probable 8 Nov, see below)
This pattern shows it more than likely ends tomorrow the 1st.
2012: 11 days, ending first week of the month
2013: outlier
2014: 15 days, ending first week of the month
2015: 12 days, ending first week of the month
2016: 13 days (if tomorrow), ending first week of the month
Either way, plan for it to end. You won’t be disappointed this way, and excited if it continues.
Unless you crammed in achievements and gave up doing things you would have enjoyed doing better only to find out it didn’t end and now you gave up doing what you wanted to do for nothing.
Well, not nothing. Not only would you have all your achievements done and over with but you can now go and do all the things you enjoy.
A win win.
But if they had known that it would have been available longer they wouldn’t have crammed it in and instead been able to do the activities at a slower pace and enjoyed the process. Instead of cramming and burning themselves out on the activities.
Most people would choose to do things that they find fun and I doubt many people think cramming in the activities for the achievements is more fun than doing at them at a leisurely pace.
But now they don’t have to worry about not getting achievements or any rewards because they missed days because of illness, work etc. It’s done and now they can do what they want for the rest of the holiday.
It sort of depends if you see it as a glass half full or half empty.
(And truthfully there wasn’t all that much to do. I spent a half hour to an hour a day doing the holiday stuff and got the achievements done a couple days ago. The rest of the time I did whatever else I wanted. That’s not exactly burning out or cramming).
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
It would be sweet if the Shadow of the Mad King event was extended into November a bit, as intimated in another thread – possibly until the 8th for us late-comers this year.
Interesting bug reported on Reddit. The OP said his guild got a message of a new build the night before the previous build that started Halloween and now his guild has gotten another message of a new build. The bug announces a new build and disables features of his guild.
Knowing the date of when the event will end does have an impact on a persons schedule. So yes it does matter. Yeah if a person cant fit in time to play before Nov. 1st or Nov. 8th it really doesnt matter, but was that really the issue here?
Some sort of calendar thing like the one wow has (for personal and world event stuff) would be nice to have. It could clean up confusion which seems to spur, at least every year (not only) halloween event happens.
This is just all of you guessing, noone really knows because Arena Net have not cleared it out. And there is endless of threads asking the same thing. So unless you are from Arena Net i appreciate your effort, but i really want the answer from them.
This is just all of you guessing, noone really knows because Arena Net have not cleared it out. And there is endless of threads asking the same thing. So unless you are from Arena Net i appreciate your effort, but i really want the answer from them.
The link maddoctor gave a timeframe on the GW2 homepage.
I agree a quick confirmation should have occured since we know they read the forums and thus seen the question, but the answer was provided on their releases page.
This is just all of you guessing, noone really knows because Arena Net have not cleared it out. And there is endless of threads asking the same thing. So unless you are from Arena Net i appreciate your effort, but i really want the answer from them.
The link maddoctor gave a timeframe on the GW2 homepage.
I agree a quick confirmation should have occured since we know they read the forums and thus seen the question, but the answer was provided on their releases page.
It is not a specific date and imo i can not even begin to understand why we never got one. It would be a good communication which any other game i played always given and as far as i remember we also got in this game in the past, so why the heck not this year. Just one of the small things that annoys me. I want to be able to plan my game time and knowing when something starts and ends is one of those things that makes my game time easier.
The official release page clearly states “nearly two weeks”. What more do you need?
And the exact same text was used in 2015 and 2014, without any specific dates. So in 2016 it’s the same as the previous 2 years.
The Shadow of the Mad King, our annual Halloween festival, returns for nearly two weeks of ghoulish capers, spooky fights, and holiday fun! Gather together with the citizens of Lion’s Arch to enjoy another year of tricks, treats, and terrible jokes.
Same text… (in 2014 replace The Shadow of the Mad King with Blood and Madness)
Speak for yourself! i cant wait till it ends. Everyone is obsessing over farming these tric-or-treat bags, which makes it really hard to find groups to play other content. Ugh i hate that mindless and repetitive farming. GW2 got me used to metas that has a story and events leading up to events with a big fight at the end, screw this non-GW2 style farmfest that comes with Halloween.
For the OP, like others stated, pretty sure it ends today. Best wishes farming all the loot you want/need. (Though it would have been very nice of Anet to give a more concrete end date, instead of being somewhat vague with it.)
This is (and has been) one of my biggest issues with Guild Wars 2 since launch. How can you not tell people when events are going to end? How hard can this be? Why should we always be left guessing?
Some people want to budget their time and do things over the longer haul and I’m one of them. This year I rushed through the achievements because I had no real idea how long it was going on. If it goes for another week now I’ll be annoyed because I could have done them at my preferred rate.
This is something that should never happen. We should have a definite ending date on limited time content and achievements. And furthermore we should have access to that information in game.
This is (and has been) one of my biggest issues with Guild Wars 2 since launch. How can you not tell people when events are going to end? How hard can this be? Why should we always be left guessing?.
Strangely it used to be the reverse. They went through a period of giving exact dates and even had meta achievements with countdowns. They stopped about 3 years ago and never once to my recollection responded to huge number of feedback threads about bringing back end dates.
Here at least they did state it was a 2 week event on the main site, but it is clear many of us missed that and a quick note of clarification would not have gone amiss. I really hope this is the final time we need to feed this back and they either be clearer with dates or just update any of the multitude of threads where players have missed the info.
Of course, we still don’t know when Halloween ends. We just know it wasn’t today.
Some people are going to predict the 15th, because we had a patch today … and ANet traditionally has gone at least two weeks between their planned updates. I’m going to stick to the 8th.
edit: Gaile posted the end date about 15 minutes after this post: it’s the 8th
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
We wanted to let you know that the Shadow of the Mad King (Halloween) festival will end in one week, on November 8, 2016. I hope you have a blast — as I know I will — in this final week of the festivities.
Please pass on our feedback though about providing end dates. It is something asked for a lot for festivities over the years and would be useful to the community.
3 weeks is technically “nearly two weeks” — just not anything close to what most of us mean when we use a phrase like that.
I suspect it was copypasta from a previous year and that whoever wrote it kept asking their boss, “is it going to end on the 1st? or the 8th?” and their boss kept responding with, “we don’t know yet, we don’t know yet — stop asking! just keep it vague and we’ll fix it before we post” (and of course, it wasn’t vague in the right way and they forgot to adjust it before posting)
tl;dr I try not to get too hung up on blog posts, unless they offer specifics.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
3 weeks is technically “nearly two weeks” — just not anything close to what most of us mean when we use a phrase like that.
I suspect it was copypasta from a previous year and that whoever wrote it kept asking their boss, “is it going to end on the 1st? or the 8th?” and their boss kept responding with, “we don’t know yet, we don’t know yet — stop asking! just keep it vague and we’ll fix it before we post” (and of course, it wasn’t vague in the right way and they forgot to adjust it before posting)
tl;dr I try not to get too hung up on blog posts, unless they offer specifics.
To be honest the main page for the release doesn’t have a time frame only the text on the summary release page list has it.
The text after you click on the release page is this:
Shadow of the Mad King, our annual Halloween festival, returns with ghoulish capers, spooky fights, and holiday fun! Gather together with the citizens of Lion’s Arch to enjoy another year of tricks, treats, and terrible jokes.
on the release list the text is:
The Shadow of the Mad King, our annual Halloween festival, returns for nearly two weeks of ghoulish capers, spooky fights, and frightening fun!
So you are probably right, someone did a bad copy paste. But I have a feeling they messed it up because they weren’t sure their new system of Black Lion chests would be ready in time or not. Anyway more festival time!
The Shadow of the Mad King, our annual Halloween festival, returns for nearly two weeks of ghoulish capers, spooky fights, and frightening fun!
Start date: October 18 + 2 weeks = ends today
Epic. Gaile proved you wrong. Totally unexpected, wich makes it even nicer Sorry but this is kinda funny in positive way! More halloween, and the person thinking he knows it all proven wrong! You Mad King says: hahahahaha.
Legendary weapons can be hidden now!
No excuse anymore for not giving ‘hide mounts’-option
No thanks to unidentified weapons.
The Shadow of the Mad King, our annual Halloween festival, returns for nearly two weeks of ghoulish capers, spooky fights, and frightening fun!
Start date: October 18 + 2 weeks = ends today
Epic. Gaile proved you wrong. Totally unexpected, wich makes it even nicer Sorry but this is kinda funny in positive way! More halloween, and the person thinking he knows it all proven wrong! You Mad King says: hahahahaha.
No. Gaile proved wrong their own release page, if they post misinformation on their official website about release dates that’s not my fault.
Are you kidding me?!! Wow. Well, this information would have been nice to have LAST NIGHT!! Before I spent all of my corn cobs in anticipation of the event ending after 2 weeks, like it said it would. I could have kept trying for the shadow raven!? I am going to be sick. What a waste.
Thanks for the disappointment. Why is communication so hard?
There are a lot of working parts in a game, and things can interweave. Festivals are only part of what we’re offering, what we’re working on, what we’re releasing. So sometimes, giving an end date is not possible, when looking at the Big Picture™. As a player, I certainly understand the desire for a finite period. But as a member of the dev team, I can see where that’s not always possible. I’m happy we were able to give the week’s notice, and that we didn’t do — as some players seem to have expected — an unannounced closure at Midnight this morning.
We wanted to let you know that the Shadow of the Mad King (Halloween) festival will end in one week, on November 8, 2016. I hope you have a blast — as I know I will — in this final week of the festivities.
Enjoy!!
Gaile, please send sincere thanks to whoever made the call to keep SotMK up for a whole week past November 1.
I had two big “tentative deadlines” announced last week (don’t even ask what it means)… for this week.
Knowing that I have another few days to get my achievements in—without cramping the fun—is super, super nice.
Sorry but this is kinda funny in positive way! More halloween, and the person thinking he knows it all proven wrong! You Mad King says: hahahahaha.