Guild Wars 2

I noticed this during Wintersday, but it effects the Lunar Festival as well.

These events do not allow friends who are already in a party to enter the same instance. Instead you spawn with complete random people.

In the Dragon Ball arena I want to play with my friends and guildies, not complete strangers. Please create the ability to recognize this when creating the instance.

This also should apply to the Snowball Fight in Winter’s Day, as well as all other holiday related instances.

Another added benefit to this way of forming a party is that the players will be allowed to chat and coordinate without the enemy seeing their text in general map chat.

Maybe some day you will. Until then, here’s the posts discussing it.

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245 QA Lead:

After the 2013 Toypocalypse there were changes to the game that broke the underlying functionality for Toypocalypse. For 2014 the team was trying to fix the bug (and really, they went up past the absolute last second to try and fix it) but ultimately had to decide between the activity working or being cut – it was that unplayable. It wasn’t a lightly made decision, especially since it had worked the year before and players liked it.

The team would still like to fix it but it isn’t a simple switch or anything. Reverting the change would break significant other parts of the game.

Soo…. I would rather queue with friends too, but I’d also like to be able to do the activity. It’s a rough tossup.

Gaile Gray
ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead

I just heard from the team about this, and it is an unfortunate but intended change. The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP and some Instance Activities. According to one of our lead designers, the change cannot be revisited for this year’s release. Thanks for your understanding concerning this necessary adjustment.

Bottom line: This was not a “choice.” This was not a decision made without thought, or carelessly, or in error. This was a necessary change that stabilized the game, for both PvP and Activities.
We understand that you would have preferred that this change not be made, but the cost of not making this change was too significant to let it slide. The change was necessary and as much as we regret any dissatisfaction that you may feel in relation to it, according to the designers it must remain in this state for this year’s release.