Guild Wars 2

Hello GW2 players.

So yeah…as the title says…thinking about reinstalling. The WoW pre-expansion void of emptiness has set in and I am bored out of my skull in there. So…what’s going on around these parts? I see Lion’s Arch is up in smoke or something…anything else special going on since I left (which would be right about the time “fractals” and ascendant gear was put in…at the end of that event with the crab monsters…)? Did they ever fix those precursor items you need for legendaries to where you don’t have to flush endless items into that mystic toilet or whatever it was? Any new zones or activities for max level? A bit more than memorizing orichalcum spawn points and farming the same three dragons over and over might be nice. I don’t expect much dungeon running since I am coming back alone. Love the pvp here though.

So yeah…if I come back what do I need to know?

Well…let’s see…Lion’s Arch was attacked by crazy lettuce.

As far as I know (I rarely bother with it) the Mystic Toilet still involves flushing all your hard-earned gold down the drain.

No new (permanent) zones have been added. The only new activities have been the two week living story features that come and then poof, gone.

Ascended gear expanded from jewelry to weapons and armor too. Crafting levels went up to 500 on most disciplines to allow Ascended crafting.

WvW had some work done on it. A new Edge of the Mists map was added for players to beat each other up on while they wait for a spot on a borderland. Borderland maps were also modified a bit.

The same dungeons pretty much (one new path in Twilight Arbor). Maybe a couple more Fractals tossed in. Most new fancy skins introduced have been Gem Store only.

Crazy lettuce eh? I assume you’re referring to those Sylvari (sp?) folk. Or if it really is crazy lettuce it would be worth it coming back just to see that one.

Toilet and no new zones sucks to hear…especially for you regular players. Crafting sounds nice though…I like how the GW2 system works. WvW I barely scratched the surface on because it was such a lagfest most people could barely play it. Did a good bit of…whatever you call battlegrounds in this game…know it has a special term but…yeah its gone.

Kinda surprised so few new dungeons…figured they would get their endgame fixed up. I expected a slow start…WoW had the same problem in the early days…but yikes. Shame too about the gem store skins…I imagine its great for some people that don’t have much time to play (I am actually in that boat) but I still preference getting the cool kid clothes by blood and sweat beating of in-game face. Ah well.

I sort of think you’re missing the point. They have their end game fixed up,. except for people who are insisting what end game is/should be. Plenty of people are playing a lot of content on 80th level characters.

People seem to be laboring under the assumptions that most people like dungeons and raids, but that’s not actually ever been proven.

Anet has been doing stuff in the open world. Some of that stuff stays, but most of that stuff goes.

For example, the new Tequatl and Wurm fights are giant open world event that require some organization. The new path of Twilight Arbor is one of the harder dungeon paths in the game, and better than most of the other dungeons from my perspective.

The new jumping puzzle in Gendarran is pretty hard too.

But the stuff that’s really been happening, for a lot of people, is the living story.

The game has become pretty achievement centric. If you like getting achievements, you’ll probably like it more than if you don’t.

There’s all sorts of ways to farm since you left. Champs now drop champ bags, dungeons give at least 1 g guaranteed (in explorable mode), there are five new Fractals, but somehow, on the living story update days, I end up in overflows for a week.

Someone is playing the game.

I’m all for less emphasis on dungeons and raids…that’s why I bought this game in the first place…it promised the hope of something other than running the same bosses in the same scenery every day to get magical points for magical items in a neverending arms race. At the time I left though most people seemed to be doing just that…unending dungeons with very select world bosses being killed and every other champion being flat out ignored. And specifically at the patch period I left in the pinnacle update to the game was just more dungeons (fractals) with a higher tier of loot…ascendant. Gear treadmill realized.

If however they’re doing more open world stuff and getting people out of dungeons and into the scenery (if I had anything to praise about this game other than the pvp…it was the world itself) I will embrace that wholeheartedly. I always wanted to kill every champion…every boss no matter how hard or obscure (that floating eye thing in Orr)…but there was zero interest 95% of the time. Your mention of champion bags intrigues me…hope that means people are more willing to fight wherever, whenever.

Achievements I can take or leave…I say that having a metric ton of em done in my main MMO. I suppose they mean something different here…so I can get behind it.

Either way I will find out myself…reinstalling.

There’s a big feature patch coming at the beginning of April that everyone’s getting hyped up for and the living story season 1 just ended. The sPvP scene is getting a huge overhaul with a ladder system with seasons, new game modes, a big balance patch, runes and sigils are getting a complete rework, they are phasing out glory for gold, and more. People are expecting a new continent unlocked, new commander and guild features, and just a bunch of new stuff. I wouldn’t put all your hopes and dreams into the patch but supposably a lot of changes are in it as well as awesome new features. Sounds like a great time to jump back into the game.

I was already installing anyway but you sold me Cush…this will be my cure to the boredom. Now to figure out how badly my previous build has been changed and how best to adapt.

Meh, if you’ve played the game then you’ve already played it. You’d basically be coming back to grind gold for stuff.

So why not just grind gold in WoW while you wait, why take the lesser route.

Cush.4063:

There’s a big feature patch coming at the beginning of April that everyone’s getting hyped up for and the living story season 1 just ended. The sPvP scene is getting a huge overhaul with a ladder system with seasons, new game modes, a big balance patch, runes and sigils are getting a complete rework, they are phasing out glory for gold, and more. People are expecting a new continent unlocked, new commander and guild features, and just a bunch of new stuff. I wouldn’t put all your hopes and dreams into the patch but supposably a lot of changes are in it as well as awesome new features. Sounds like a great time to jump back into the game.

None of that will happen, next patch is epilouge and the one after is wvw season 2 (this will kill the lower pop servers)

There is no reason not to reinstall GW2 as there is no subscription for doing so. One of the benefits of the game is being able to take breaks and come back whenever you feel like, be it a few days or a few years later. However, if you’re asking whether you should become heavily invested in the game or not, then you should wait a month or so until anet decide to release what plans they have for the game and what they want to expand during their second season of the living story.

I won’t spoil anything for you (in case you care), but the ending revelation of this last update infers that during the next batch of living story updates we will see new permanent open-world areas and content. If you want to be spoiled, then there should be plenty of forum topics floating around.

As to what has been added since the Karka event, most updates have been either bug fixes or temporary content for the living story (I suspect this is because they were testing the model and didn’t won’t to fully commit themselves to it yet, but we will see). However, a few notable things have been added since then.

1. An Achievement reward system – Every 500 achievement points you get will net you a chest which will have some notable rewards in them. You will get some convenience items from the gem store, some gold, some account-wide permanent buffs, such as increased exp from killing monsters, increased gold from monsters, increased karma gain from events, and increased magic find. every 1000 AP (Achievment points), you will get a choice of a unique weapon skin that you can obtain as many as you like at any time. Every 3000 you will get a choice of a unique armor skin that has the same accessibility as the weapons. Speaking of which…
2. Magic find has been revamped. There are now no longer any armor pieces that give magic find, but by salvaging blue and green rarity items you will get essence of luck, which you can consume to increase your account-wide magic find.
3. There is now an account-wide wallet, which will hold all of your currencies in the game.
4. There is a “looking-for-group” tool implemented into the friends list. Opening it up will allow you to select different areas of the game you’d like to advertise for (champion farming, dungeons, story-instances, etc), and then you can either join a current group or wait for someone to join yours. For dungeons, groups typically fill up within a few seconds to a minute. It’s really, really quick.
5. Fractals of the mists have been updated, as has agony resistance to a degree. After level 30, there will be instabilities that will plague you throughout the entire run. What instability you get depends on what level you are on. Additionally, 2 new dungeons have been added as well as 2 new bosses. Rewards have also gotten better (though, regular dungeons are better if you want rewards).
6. A new WvWvW map has been added, named edge of the mists. It was designed as a waiting room where you could play WvWvW in while you wait to exit your queue to actual WvWvW, but you can enter them at any time. They are 3 hour matches on a single, borderlands-sized map where you fight 2 other enemies. Teams are decided based on what color your WvWvW pairs are for the week, and your server will be automatically paired with other servers who are the same color. Your enemies also follow the same pattern, so you are effectively fighting people from 2/3 of the regional servers and fighting alongside the other 1/3. You may also enter these matches at any time, and they act as overflows that you can join your friends on.
7. PvP matches now reward gold.
8. They are removing the gain of PvP glory on the 18th of this month, so after you get in you may want to spend it on the new PvP glory vender they added near the armor merchant. They are removing glory to exchange it with a different reward system which will come later. Eventually, Gold will be the the universal currency for PvE and PvP.

With that, you are now informed with what has been added to GW2 since you left. I may have missed a thing or two, but you get the picture.

-Cheers!

Charak.9761:

Cush.4063:

There’s a big feature patch coming at the beginning of April that everyone’s getting hyped up for and the living story season 1 just ended. The sPvP scene is getting a huge overhaul with a ladder system with seasons, new game modes, a big balance patch, runes and sigils are getting a complete rework, they are phasing out glory for gold, and more. People are expecting a new continent unlocked, new commander and guild features, and just a bunch of new stuff. I wouldn’t put all your hopes and dreams into the patch but supposably a lot of changes are in it as well as awesome new features. Sounds like a great time to jump back into the game.

None of that will happen, next patch is epilouge and the one after is wvw season 2 (this will kill the lower pop servers)

Umm? Yes it is going to happen and I wasn’t talking about the next patch or the WvW season. But yes there is another WvW season coming which should be fun. I’m talking about the feature patch that is changing sPvP (yes the things I said were true) and the other ones aren’t set in stone but some if not all of them will happen in this patch. That’s including the balance changes. I was not talking about the maintenance patch on the 18th of this month. I’m talking about the feature patch which if you watched the twitch stream for gw2 you’d see that it is releasing at the beginning-mid April.

Cush.4063:

I’m talking about the feature patch which if you watched the twitch stream for gw2 you’d see that it is releasing at the beginning-mid April.

Not that I’m arguing with this, but which twitch stream is this? There are many that Anet puts out.

^The latest Ready Up…broadcast last Friday, I believe.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

^The latest Ready Up…broadcast last Friday, I believe.

Boysenberry.1869:

Well…let’s see…Lion’s Arch was attacked by crazy lettuce.

As far as I know (I rarely bother with it) the Mystic Toilet still involves flushing all your hard-earned gold down the drain.

No new (permanent) zones have been added. The only new activities have been the two week living story features that come and then poof, gone.

Ascended gear expanded from jewelry to weapons and armor too. Crafting levels went up to 500 on most disciplines to allow Ascended crafting.

WvW had some work done on it. A new Edge of the Mists map was added for players to beat each other up on while they wait for a spot on a borderland. Borderland maps were also modified a bit.

The same dungeons pretty much (one new path in Twilight Arbor). Maybe a couple more Fractals tossed in. Most new fancy skins introduced have been Gem Store only.

You forgot to mention that the ascended requires an enormous grind especially for gold for materials that are still too RNG – esque to obtain the normal way and that’s if they had enough mats to begin with to get over the 475 hump to reach 500.