Guild Wars 2

They just released this blogpost
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/living-world-2013-the-year-in-review/

Not sure if anyone else posted it yet but here you go

• 4 releases of the current living story remain
• A “feature” only patch when the living story arc has ended

The last time they announced an epic event, I got Lord Faren in a speedo.

Please no more epic events.

An epic event that will rock Tyria to its very core awaits you in 2014.

I want to get excited about this so badly, but a few months back (around Dragon Bash time, I think) a dev said something to the effect of “We know living story got off to a slow start, but some big and exciting developments in the story are coming!” Of course, the big and exciting developments were that Scarlet was behind these wacky alliances.

When we as players read something like the above quote, I think many of us think along the lines of elder dragons, am I wrong?

Peetee.9406:

The last time they announced an epic event, I got Lord Faren in a speedo.

Please no more epic events.

+1

Peetee.9406:

The last time they announced an epic event, I got Lord Faren in a speedo.

Please no more epic events.

Hmmm, and the not so epic events got us Kasmeer in a bikini. It’s still to early to see a pattern though.

Facepunch.5710:

An epic event that will rock Tyria to its very core awaits you in 2014.

I want to get excited about this so badly, but a few months back (around Dragon Bash time, I think) a dev said something to the effect of “We know living story got off to a slow start, but some big and exciting developments in the story are coming!” Of course, the big and exciting developments were that Scarlet was behind these wacky alliances.

When we as players read something like the above quote, I think many of us think along the lines of elder dragons, am I wrong?

Pretty much how I feel at this point. It feels like the phrase has been overused to the point that people associate it with being “not so epic.”

Though we do know that Scarlet will be dying off sometime in the future. So maybe that will be the epic event. Then there will be dancing in the streets I do believe. :P

“The addition of the final pieces of Ascended gear: Ascended armor.”

So does this mean that Jewelcrafting will never make it to 500? Seems…odd that Jewelcrafting and Cooking get stuck at 400…and don’t give the full 10 character levels, if I have read the complaints correctly…

Yes, we can purchase trinkets with laurels, but crafting them would be nice as well. Multiple options for acquisition, just like with exotics. I’m sure it would make some people happy…

What is Scarlet trying to do? What is the motivation behind her actions? What are the “do not touch” devices? What will Scarlet do with the knowledge she has gained from her various collaborations?

1.) Ruining Guild Wars lore as well as our gaming experience.
2.) The ruination of all that was dear to Guild Wars players.
3.) Plot hole machines.
4.) Ruin Guild Wars lore and our gaming experience even more so.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

“The addition of the final pieces of Ascended gear: Ascended armor.”

So does this mean that Jewelcrafting will never make it to 500? Seems…odd that Jewelcrafting and Cooking get stuck at 400…and don’t give the full 10 character levels, if I have read the complaints correctly…

Yes, we can purchase trinkets with laurels, but crafting them would be nice as well. Multiple options for acquisition, just like with exotics. I’m sure it would make some people happy…

Collin did say something about legendary jewelry in the future so i imagine that’s when we will see that get bumped to 500. Cooking I am not so sure about.. perhaps they’re planning to tie cooking 500 recipes with the mystic forge, wvw, fractals and dungeons? Would be neat if they did it somehow.

The blog just seems like more marketing hype over all which i don’t think will be enough to keep players who are fed up or losing/lost interest+faith in Gw2. Personally i just want more viable+desirable traits for all classes and new weapons for said classes and or a new class entirely and more interesting forms of pvp in the future but that’s just me.

They should really revamp their marketing…

Sure throwing out buzzwords like crazy gets an effect, but you have to be able to back them up.

After a year i hardly feel anything epic about Guild Wars 2 anymore, since they are using these words in these ways.

Sure, for them it is the next step in their developement etc. However for the average player it is just that: patchday

The living world so far is from epic. There are “interesting” parts, but the overall experience is lackluster.

It is nice that they at least give us an ending for the current story arc and i hope they learned from the problems there.
Scarlet is not bad on paper, but what we got was pretty catastrophic… they f***ed it up, even if there are people who can appreaciate her and the direction they went with the story (yes, even i see the light in there)

I just hope they are wise enough to include failsaves and back up plans for their next “Arc”.

“…to ensure we put out features we think are the best for the game in the long run.”

this bit is kinda scary.

It was indeed a rather interesting post, and it does seem like my guess that “the end of Scarlet” will be in March is correct. More specifically 4th March.

Also nice to see that they actually talks about stuff that didn’t make it, instead of just ignoring them and hope people had forgotten about it.
The feature only release does seem quite nice as well, looking forward to it.

So no new features (ie. precursor scavenger hunt/crafting) till at least mid-ish March (assuming still 2 week intervals for the last 4 releases, starting Jan 21st). Well that kinda sucks. Hopefully the story is worth it (though I doubt it).

lordkrall.7241:

Also nice to see that they actually talks about stuff that didn’t make it, instead of just ignoring them and hope people had forgotten about it.

Eh? All he mentioned was stuff (that didn’t make it) was still in testing, which we already knew. He didn’t actually talk about any specific stuff that didn’t make it.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

“The addition of the final pieces of Ascended gear: Ascended armor.”

So does this mean that Jewelcrafting will never make it to 500? Seems…odd that Jewelcrafting and Cooking get stuck at 400…and don’t give the full 10 character levels, if I have read the complaints correctly…

Yes, we can purchase trinkets with laurels, but crafting them would be nice as well. Multiple options for acquisition, just like with exotics. I’m sure it would make some people happy…

Yeah, thats pretty much how I read it. Jewelcrafting at least isn’t going to get to do Ascended stuff. Cooking still could possibly get 500, but not sure what else it would need.

skullmount.1758:

So no new features (ie. precursor scavenger hunt/crafting) till at least mid March (assuming still 2 week intervals for the last 4 releases, starting Jan 21st). Well that kinda sucks. Hopefully the story is worth it (though I doubt it).

quote…. i want to cry ç_ç

skullmount.1758:

Eh? All he mentioned was stuff (that didn’t make it) was still in testing, which we already knew. He didn’t actually talk about any specific stuff that didn’t make it.

Exactly, but he could have decided to not mentioned them at all, and simply let them “be ignored”. Now at least they are admitting that they failed to deliver what they had planned and explained the reason behind it.

Stinja.9612:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

“The addition of the final pieces of Ascended gear: Ascended armor.”

So does this mean that Jewelcrafting will never make it to 500? Seems…odd that Jewelcrafting and Cooking get stuck at 400…and don’t give the full 10 character levels, if I have read the complaints correctly…

Yes, we can purchase trinkets with laurels, but crafting them would be nice as well. Multiple options for acquisition, just like with exotics. I’m sure it would make some people happy…

Collin did say something about legendary jewelry in the future so i imagine that’s when we will see that get bumped to 500. Cooking I am not so sure about.. perhaps they’re planning to tie cooking 500 recipes with the mystic forge, wvw, fractals and dungeons? Would be neat if they did it somehow.

The blog just seems like more marketing hype over all which i don’t think will be enough to keep players who are fed up or losing/lost interest+faith in Gw2. Personally i just want more viable+desirable traits for all classes and new weapons for said classes and or a new class entirely and more interesting forms of pvp in the future but that’s just me.

Hmmm, I suppose with the advent of legendary jewelry and precursor crafting, we could see jewelcrafting 500 for jewelry precursors. I’d still much prefer to be able to craft ascended jewelry, instead of having to collect fricking laurels for it. Variety being the spice of life and all that. I guess we’ll see. If we holler loud enough, they might acquiesce to our desire for more acquisition options for ascended.

As for cooking, I haven’t a clue what they’ll do for that. Honestly, I felt they were silly for upping crafting to 500 to begin with, they could have simply made ascended another ‘tier’ at the 400 level and made us have to work for the recipes (ie, complete some quest or task to attain it) rather than simply buying it like we can exotics.

I too would like to see more traits, more skills, and more weapons. I’m not big on a new class, or even a new race, since they have more than enough to balance currently.

I also look forward to new areas to explore and new modes of pvp. JQ, FA? Please please?!

I guess all we can do it wait and see what 2014 brings us.

Hmmm… Would have been nice to have included at least a hint of what will be in the features release.

Features is such a broad spectrum term that means different things to different types of players.

New features, quality of life tweaks for current features, new quality of life tweaks / fixes. All of those phrases could be applied to several aspects of the game from the Trading Post to crafting to guild missions to guild controls to living story replays to dungeons to world bosses or dymanic events, build templates etcs. Too broad a term to get excited yet.

I think this would be an excellent opportunity to do something truly collaborative and let the players begin giving feedback on some the features before its too late to change them.

All in all a quick focused blog post about the goings on around here.

It will be good. I for one am happy that Colin gave us this post now as opposed to multiple forum posts on January 1st asking where the State of the Game address is. This way we get a heads up on what’s happening super early.

The patch today is going to be legit anyways. Tons of new stuff to do. I will be in sPvP until the new Scarlet stuff comes out.

Xar.6185:

Hmmm… Would have been nice to have included at least a hint of what will be in the features release.

Features is such a broad spectrum term that means different things to different types of players.

New features, quality of life tweaks for current features, new quality of life tweaks / fixes. All of those phrases could be applied to several aspects of the game from the Trading Post to crafting to guild missions to guild controls to living story replays to dungeons to world bosses or dymanic events, build templates etcs. Too broad a term to get excited yet.

I think this would be an excellent opportunity to do something truly collaborative and let the players begin giving feedback on some the features before its too late to change them.

All in all a quick focused blog post about the goings on around here.

It would have been nice if they did say what some of the features would/could be. But I can see why they didn’t. Just look at the threads about how certain things didn’t get done from their other post/blog/article about thing to come in the second half of 2013.

Xar.6185:

Hmmm… Would have been nice to have included at least a hint of what will be in the features release.

And then something happens to make the specific feature hinted about impossible to implement with that release, and we will have a kittenstorm on the forums with people shouting about ArenaNet being liars.

I don’t really think anyone would want that.

lordkrall.7241:

Xar.6185:

Hmmm… Would have been nice to have included at least a hint of what will be in the features release.

And then something happens to make the specific feature hinted about impossible to implement with that release, and we will have a kittenstorm on the forums with people shouting about ArenaNet being liars.

I don’t really think anyone would want that.

I agree (just look at the threads about the last article they posted, the one about the second half of 2013), but there has to be at least a couple things they have nailed down to be ready for it. Things that they know/plan on definitely having done at that time.

Oh, I think they have planned on having everything in their plans done at that time, but things happen.
The only thing they could really say with absolute guarantees is things that are already done, and if they are, why not release them now instead of waiting?

skullmount.1758:

So no new features (ie. precursor scavenger hunt/crafting) till at least mid-ish March (assuming still 2 week intervals for the last 4 releases, starting Jan 21st).

Well, there’s a good side in this.

Now i know for sure that until mid-March there won’t be anything worth to look foward to get back on Gw2.