Guild Wars 2

I am voting that the event was great on many levels. Especially after so much content on the Halloween event.

I am amazed at the efforts Anet is putting into the content of this game.

Background: We have two copies of the game and play as a 45yr old dad, 10 yr old daughter side by side for most of the events.

I have a lvl 80 guardian and she has a lvl 40 ranger.
Phases 1, 2 and 3 were all fun for us. She got off school on Friday and had the weekend all planned for us to be part of the events. I do think that Anet knows how excited players get about these events….and they are aimed correctly for younger players.

Phase 1 and the Phase 2 that lead to the FOTM where hard for us to do because of the lag, but overall once the zones were running the next morning we got to be part of each one. It was good that you could catch up and do these events later or at least go see the areas later and there was no real “missing” the content. My daughter loved the new jump puzzles and we spent most of our time doing those over the weekend.

For the final Ancient Kraka battle, together we must have rezzed other players 400 times during the final event. Our strategy was to hang back and just rez players over and over while firing at range at Kraka. We both got our last 100 Kraka kills “monthly event” during the event and at the end she was happier to dance on the Ancient Kraka Corpse than the treasure chest at the end because we finally got it done. She was actually a little dissappointed because they were lvl 80 rewards – however, once I explained we could sell some of them to get gear for her level she was very happy. The happiest reward earned was the 20 slot shell box.

Like I said at the beginning – we had fun trying and doing everyone of the different events that were part of this weekend. The lag was rough on each of the events, but is expected when there are so many people at once….the final battle was very EPIC.

Great job and we look forward to the next one.

Panic Team One

I think one-time events are an awesome idea – they should just last for longer. I would say a week at a minimum, and the “Phases” like the Investigation stuff should be phased or instanced like the personal story is and not be only on certain days.

Having the large group events is fantastic but I think the non-group events like the Investigation should really be up to the player to do on their own time.

Thats all really, just stretch the event out for a few more days.

Hawks.5736:

I think one-time events are an awesome idea – they should just last for longer. I would say a week at a minimum, and the “Phases” like the Investigation stuff should be phased or instanced like the personal story is and not be only on certain days.

Having the large group events is fantastic but I think the non-group events like the Investigation should really be up to the player to do on their own time.

Thats all really, just stretch the event out for a few more days.

So do exactly what they are doing, but make the in between parts longer? That solves nothing.

/signed

Why not use the solution you already came up with for GW1? Consider the Mad Kings arrival – it happens every two hours for an entire day. Sure this means that some folks can’t participate because they are doing something else for the whole day, but you’re going to get far more people able to participate.

Also, if it’s too laggy on the first attempt, just relax and sign out and try again two hours later. IT’ll create a smaller server demand spike too.

Hmm, an idea that benefits both the paying customer AND the company providing the service.

Vuce.7982:

zzled.9125:

Matt Witter.6982:

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.

The above quote was taken from the WvW forums regarding “Night Capping” by Matt Witter (Game Designer, ANet). Please apply the same logic to World Events, especially if you’re giving out drops like legendary precursors. Please stop the “one-time” events tied to a specific time of day. There are lots of suggestions on this forum about how to get around it. Implement phasing on a character/account basis, let it run repeatedly for a week or a month, etc. The rest of us might not be playing during peak concurrency hours, but we’re paying customers too.

Thank you.

Anyone who disagrees with this is a troll and an idiot.

Signed.

Or the people disagreeing know what an MMO is meant and designed to be. Maybe, just maybe… the idiots are the people trying to bend and twist an MMO to be something its not.

Ryuujin.8236:

War Siren.2346:

This isn’t life, this is a video game one in which I paid for. It’s kind of messed up that my recreational activity is now causing me more stress than my actual job.

If this is the case I’d advise you find a new game.

You have to understand these events are genuinely world changing. Go to Sunwhatever cove, and look around, talk to the NPCs of lions arch. Compare it to what it looked like 2 days ago – the events actually reshaped the landscape and it’s characters.

This kind’ve permanence and feeling that the players participated in something that had an impact in the history of Tyria isn’t possible in a repeating event. Other MMO’s don’t have any meaning when they’re like “congratulations you beat some random evil”… 20 minutes til story arc resets and you can all go and beat some random evil… again.

As for saying you paid and thus deserve it, that isn’t true in ANY business in the world. If you pay money but there is a schedule and you miss the schedule, you miss out.

You could still have that happen, I mean hell they could have a main event then after it’s done have an NPC that sends you to a phased version of the event so people could still do it. You can still have everything you like and make it so everyone can do the content.

Also the rewards were ridiculous, you should never get progression gear from a one time event it should be purely cosmetic stuff like weapon and armor skins maybe a fancy title…. things that don’t give people an unfair advantage economically and game play wise.

2nd event → 2 times I lagged out while in battle, the third time it worked. 3rd event I couldn’t even login to particpate. I don’t get it why Anet is doing so badly at server load managing. Always, when something new is coming, only lags. One-time events execerbate the situation due to heavy server load, because everyone wants to participate. Please learn from your mistakes and let those events (if very special) be character or at least account bound so that everyone can participate and get his part of the cake.

The better question is WHY, in a game genre with persistent worlds, 24/7 gameplay, people in time zones all over the world, people with varying schedules and play time, would you EVER have events that occur one time at specific times that works for a small number of players?

And why, in a skill based game, do you hand out ridiculously powerful and valuable loot to zergs and luck in such events?

Said events, if they must be done to propel story or new content, shoud be done the way legendaries were SUPPOSED to have been done – appearances only. It should be something cool to attend, and that’s it.

It should not be something where people can brag about getting 20 slot bags, exotics, and precursors just for being able to be there. That’s just garbage and that irritates people. Some would be upset if it was just missing cool visuals or a cool event, but throw in ridiculously valuable loot and now you have a lot of irritated players.

Horrible, horrible, inexcusably horrible design and execution IMO.

I think that I really like this game, and I definitely really like the kinds of ambitions for it that are being shown off with attempts at things like these events.

But due to the timing of and problems with this event, I was able to enjoy (and “enjoy” is a stretch) all of about 3% of it, despite logging on to play on each of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I am extremely disappointed, as I had been looking forward to new content, and already feel like I’ve completely missed it.

I was able to put hours into the game on each of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but because of a combination of my only being free after the official event times and various bugs, I didn’t get to complete anything other than the Noll event for the karma jug and even there it took me about 7 tries and 45 minutes just to get the kill credit on Noll when he was finally back up and working. That’s it. That’s all I got to do. Miyani’s quests were closed. I logged on as soon as I was free yesterday, but the event was all over unless I wanted to try to hop around overflows to find one where it was still running. (A ridiculous scenario to have to face.)

I took the boat down to Southsun Cove just to see/confirm/explore and get down there to discover in mapchat that there’s really nothing left to do. One person is nice enough to mention a tip about an unguarded rich orichalcum node as consolation for those of us who missed it. Now at this point, I’m thinking, wow, that’s a sad consolation …but I’LL TAKE IT! (Because otherwise I’m just standing around on this deserted beach.) The tip was unclear as to location, though, so I go to whisper the tipper for clarification… and boom, now even my chat won’t work. I’m getting errors every time I try to whisper. Logging out/in, changing characters, etc. doesn’t work. This was all very frustrating and basically led to my giving up on playing this weekend or enjoying the event at all.

But I think my single greatest frustration has to do with the response to these kinds of problems when they emerge. I think ANet has done a lot of really impressive things so far to demonstrate that the group cares a great deal about delivering a quality product and experience with this game. And I have no doubt that when things go wrong, you all are working very, very hard to set them right. But that said, as a player, the combination of (a) game mechanics not working as intended, and (b) the lack of any single, consistent, and reliable source of information coming from ANet about the problems/fixes means that I DON’T KNOW WHAT I DON’T KNOW. That is, as a player, it’s very hard to know when something is actually broken, or is working as intended, or where the heck to turn to find these answers. And, if I don’t know what questions to ask, (which I honestly don’t even know without consulting things like Dulfy.net, thanks to the sparse-to-the-point-of-absurdity quest/event hints, previews and instructions,) I’m just sitting here, knowing that there’s some event – that it has something to do with X environment and X NPC’s – but unable to even employ the standard video gaming method of learning through trial and error, because with so many bugs present, I know that I may very well be trying the right thing, but failing nonetheless. The forum is … well it’s external to the game for one thing, which is hardly an answer to in-game problems, in my view. But, it’s also very poorly organized. If there are major, game/event defeating bugs standing in the way of players’ progress and rendering all the information that ANet has been disseminating for days and weeks about said event untrue/misleading/irrelevant, then that news should be displayed on a big banner on the front of the forums. (SERIOUSLY. PLEASE!) I should not have to dig around between bug reporting forums, event forums, UI forums, and all the other options that may or may not be the right venue, and then search through posts to see if my issue has been addressed. There needs to be one page that I can go to for a comprehensive, continually updated news on what’s broken/working during these events. And ANet should be the one starting such posts, rather than releasing this kind of information as a response to some user’s complaint post! It’s just so disorganized. That you folks bother to read and respond to forum conversations is super cool, but honestly, it’s not particularly helpful for the average casual user. Please, just give the company one, coherent, responsive, easily-located voice on these subjects. It would make the fallout of problems so much easier to digest for frustrated players.

Oh also, please no more broken one-time events. That is 0 fun.

Kallout.5289:

Vuce.7982:

zzled.9125:

Matt Witter.6982:

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.

The above quote was taken from the WvW forums regarding “Night Capping” by Matt Witter (Game Designer, ANet). Please apply the same logic to World Events, especially if you’re giving out drops like legendary precursors. Please stop the “one-time” events tied to a specific time of day. There are lots of suggestions on this forum about how to get around it. Implement phasing on a character/account basis, let it run repeatedly for a week or a month, etc. The rest of us might not be playing during peak concurrency hours, but we’re paying customers too.

Thank you.

Anyone who disagrees with this is a troll and an idiot.

Signed.

Or the people disagreeing know what an MMO is meant and designed to be. Maybe, just maybe… the idiots are the people trying to bend and twist an MMO to be something its not.

How an MMO is supposed to be?! An MMO is a game that is ment to be enjoyed by everyone who payed to play, not some real life simulator like you keep wishing it were. If that were the case a single wound could kill, once you died the game is over and you only get one character. So please take your own advice, stop being an idiot that is trying to bend and twist an MMO to be something its not…

Mufflarn.2137:

Well the fact is that nobody did have to pay anything for the this FREE content update, the 60 dollars you spend when you bought the game didn’t include this free content update so the “we paid for this” argument isn’t anything to come up with. Besides if you missed it this time maybe you will get to do the next arenanet puts out and then someone else will miss it, they can’t satisfy everyone.

Then don’t put the free content in for anyone. Spend the time on things everyone can enjoy instead, or on making the next expansion. But you know they won’t be doing that and are happy to sit on your pedestal preaching because you are in a timezone that isn’t impacted by these poor design choices. For myself and other Australians the final event ran from 2am Monday morning to midday, which isn’t really conductive to anyone with a job participating.

They can satisfy everyone very easily by making the events run over a whole week or comprise solo / group quest zones, rather than one time buggy zergs.

Poor form ANet. Very disappointed with this event.

zzled.9125:

Matt Witter.6982:

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.

The above quote was taken from the WvW forums regarding “Night Capping” by Matt Witter (Game Designer, ANet). Please apply the same logic to World Events, especially if you’re giving out drops like legendary precursors. Please stop the “one-time” events tied to a specific time of day. There are lots of suggestions on this forum about how to get around it. Implement phasing on a character/account basis, let it run repeatedly for a week or a month, etc. The rest of us might not be playing during peak concurrency hours, but we’re paying customers too.

Thank you.

even though i stayed up late and managed to complete the questline and get some valuable (albeit useless to my guardian) loot after 3 hours of slogging, i’ll still sign this as we’re all paying customers. with the kind of execution i’ve been seeing this last month, i won’t be surprised if they do an event at 0300 monday morning, therefore:

/sign

I’m disappointed in their “if you snooze, you lose” mentality and approach to these. It’s not right that dedicated players get snubbed because their world doesn’t revolve around Guild Wars.

I too loved Lost Shore (especially day 2 when we pushed in their territory).

There were bugs (investigation quest), and problems in the final event, but overall I really enjoed myself and thanks ANet for this.

Also, I love the dynamic of the new Karka. The veterans with their shell and rolling attack are just plain fun (animations too, how they move). And what about the grabing ability of the younglings, I love that hehe.

Great job !!

Carbon Flash.2697:

I’m disappointed in their “if you snooze, you lose” mentality and approach to these. It’s not right that dedicated players get snubbed because their world doesn’t revolve around Guild Wars.

Even those whose lives do revolve around GW get hurt if their timezone is wrong. This approach is quite simply wrong.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This is why most MMO’s do 1 boring content update every 6 months. When they try to do something fun and exciting a small group of people just have to go and ruin it for everyone.

They announced this event 3 weeks in advance. They sent out emails, forum posts, facebook posts, twitter updates, etc.

If you didn’t attend the event it is your own fault not Anet’s. If it really meant that much to you then you would have planned it into your schedule. 3 weeks is more then enough time notice to plan these things. Most important events in real life don’t even get 3 weeks notice.

Yes the end chest got good items. You know why? Because you same people who come and complain about everything spent the last 3 weeks since Halloween talking about how the event rewards suck and you got nothing worthwhile. Well guess what, Anet listened to you and gave good rewards to everyone, now you are complaining that the rewards were too good and you want other people to have crappy rewards and only YOU want the good reward.

Finally, there is no possible way to give EVERYONE the same good reward. You know why? Because if everyone got 2 named exotic weapons those weapons would be completely useless, they wouldn’t even sell for the amount they salvaged for precisely because EVERYONE would have one. The ONLY way to make something valuable is by making it a rare drop that only a few people get, that’s how the market works. Heck even if they straight up gave everyone 100g in the chest, that wouldn’t make anyone any richer, it would just increase the price of everything on the market. What you people are proposing as “solutions” would destroy the economy, make everyone have a crappy reward and you’d all come right back here to complain some more.

/signed.

Happy customer here!

I liked it. Aside from not being able to play because of being disconnected. I rather fight against the karka than the risen any day.

I have to agree with OP. I just recently got this game and was happy to participate – it was awesome. I had a hard time managing to keep up with what was even happening – let alone know when these events were happening, most I had just learned from other’s speaking in Map. Making this a one time event was a horrible idea that caused so many of the problems to begin with. Only happening once? Everyone has to be on for it – lagging and dcing to the point you miss out on the event or rewards. Can’t make the event or didn’t even know it was happening? Tough luck. If you want to do these events that are so awesome or so epic, make it for a week. If you’re worried about it being jam packed for the first day and a ghost town on the last, do scaling based on how many players are there. If you want people to only experience it once or encourage them to do it more often – give them smaller rewards based on the character they’re there on (Or at least some money to repair after getting Vet rolled.)

Had fun with the event.

Pry won’t play again though if this happens again.

I liked the events a great deal, and I survived my frustration with never finding Kanach or whatever his name was, and missing the Miyami questline. I missed phase 1 at work, did phase 2 but never found a chest (if there was one), and did phase three along with my son, who ended up as the naked necro, but we both got the chest (the avg loot – no pre).
But I still had fun.
I feel really bad for the people who could not play, and worse for those who got DC’ed, and I hope there is a way to sooth that.
Overall, I think the whole thing was over-ambitious. Anet tried really hard but bit off too much too soon. I think there are lessons to learn, and I hope they are not along the lines of ‘ignore these ingrates."
I think one-time happenings are cool but just do a cinematic and then let people do a join an anytime instance, even if there is a wait like there was for WvWvW in the early days.
The big zergfest was fun but DCs are not. Make it manageable on the server side, minimize the instant wipe from culling, scale the foes and the zerg to numbers we
(and the servers) can handle – all that would be playable and fun.
Spell our ’per player’ or ‘per account’ and enforce it.
I think Anet can make content just as epic even if scaled down. “The world has changed” doesn’t have to be 300,000 players or bust.
For the Anet folks – Illegitimum non carborundum – not proper Latin but appropriate to this occasion.
Keep dreamin’ that dream – GW2 is a great game, blemishes and all. A lot of us are having fun every night.
Maybe we are not PVP gods with 900g and a stash full of legendaries, but we have fun, kinda like you intended.
PS – the headcrabs were pisser.

They clearly told everyone when this was taking place. If you couldn’t make it for the event it’s not their fault.

rehBaron.7380:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This is why most MMO’s do 1 boring content update every 6 months. When they try to do something fun and exciting a small group of people just have to go and ruin it for everyone.

They announced this event 3 weeks in advance. They sent out emails, forum posts, facebook posts, twitter updates, etc.

If you didn’t attend the event it is your own fault not Anet’s. If it really meant that much to you then you would have planned it into your schedule. 3 weeks is more then enough time notice to plan these things. Most important events in real life don’t even get 3 weeks notice.

Yes the end chest got good items. You know why? Because you same people who come and complain about everything spent the last 3 weeks since Halloween talking about how the event rewards suck and you got nothing worthwhile. Well guess what, Anet listened to you and gave good rewards to everyone, now you are complaining that the rewards were too good and you want other people to have crappy rewards and only YOU want the good reward.

Finally, there is no possible way to give EVERYONE the same good reward. You know why? Because if everyone got 2 named exotic weapons those weapons would be completely useless, they wouldn’t even sell for the amount they salvaged for precisely because EVERYONE would have one. The ONLY way to make something valuable is by making it a rare drop that only a few people get, that’s how the market works. Heck even if they straight up gave everyone 100g in the chest, that wouldn’t make anyone any richer, it would just increase the price of everything on the market. What you people are proposing as “solutions” would destroy the economy, make everyone have a crappy reward and you’d all come right back here to complain some more.

/signed.

Happy customer here!

Im glad you dont work a job on Sunday’s and live in a timezone that was applicable for playing. Quite a shame many cannot be as lucky as you…

Loosifah.4739:

They clearly told everyone when this was taking place. If you couldn’t make it for the event it’s not their fault.

Your right, its not their fault that people live in other countries or have working commitments that keep them from playing. That doesnt mean they have to schedule events in such a way that these people cannot participate. 3 weeks notice isnt going to change that people live on the opposite side of the world. 1 time instanced events (just like story) available for a limited but extended time do fix that though.

RoxBuryNine.4210:

Thank you for at least trying to get out new content. It’s threads like this that prove that no matter how poorly something is done, there are people who will appreciate it.

Very much agreed.

I like the idea behind the whole “one time event” schtick, but after Halloween and Lost Shores I’m actually dreading what they have planned for December.

/signed

I agree with this. Because of the nature of my job, I have to work all day on weekends, which means that I will never be able to participate in any of these events ever. I was excited when I got home last night to learn that things were still happening until it all got broken and, when it wasn’t broken and I was finally able to do it, they patched the game in the middle of the kitten fight!

Because of the rewards, I felt compelled to do the event and I was legitimately angry when I was cheated out of it. I was even madder when I realized that the fact that I even got half of an opportunity to do the event was a fluke in the first place.

I actually like the idea of one-time events. I think it’s a really cool idea for the game, but you have to have some limits. Don’t put any good loot in there. That’s just mean and disadvantages players who, by no fault of their own, cannot attend. I mean, the 18 slot bags? That’s one thing. A small thing. Not such a huge deal. But dramatically increased drop rate for legendary precursors?!?!? Do you have any idea how much that screwed up the economy in favor of the people who were allowed to do the event? Yeah, legendary precursors went down in price, but they’ll go right back up and all that’s changed is that the people who didn’t get to do the event are stuck competing in the marketplace with other people who suddenly are like 5 times as wealthy.
So, no fat loot on these one-time events just make it have the same loot table as a standard champion or offer some town clothing item like you did in the halloween event or provide a standard loot table chest or something like that.
And if you really feel the need to provide awesome drops, that’s great! But you had BETTER make it so that EVERYONE can participate. And that means repeating events many times.

Ok, so I was frustrated that I was unable to participate much in the event for this weekend… but I can’t blame anyone for that. I’m recently divorced, I only get my kids every other weekend, meaning 2-3 days every two weeks, and as it turned out, this was one of my weekends to have my kids.

So, I missed out on almost everything. Sigh…. But again, no blame assigned here, just… frustrated at the timing, and the shortness of the event. Couldn’t they make these events week-long instead of weekend-long?

Oh well. Again, no blame assigned, mostly just frustrated at the timing.

Anyway, the little bit I WAS able to do, however, seemed broken. For instance, I had to go talk with that NPC after you threaten Blingg or whatever his name was… you know, in the hanto camp I think it was? Or where ever. Anyway, when I arrived, he was lying on his back, like he had just been defeated… or he was taking a nap. And I couldn’t get him to talk to me, and continue the investigation.

I had a few other issues like this. And then, of course, I heard about the awful lag monster attacking Lions Arch and such….

I think what I really dislike is the event was so short, when they ran into the seemingly inevitable problems, they had little time to correct issues, meaning lots of people who had limited time ended up missing out, which is unfortunate.

Anyway. If I had had all weekend, I suppose I’d have a different opinion. I just wish it had been longer, the way halloween was. One weekend just doesn’t feel like enough time.

/signed

ANET Motto’s : LIFE for PLAY, DIE for GAME, no matter how hard the reason about “peak time customer’s”.

for one time event in 3am at monday morning? and event finished at 5 – 6am? please, im gonna kicked badly from office.

so welcome Anet.

What I liked
- Interesting event involving many people, love these
- The world feels a little bit more dynamic, things actually happen
- Lag(both network and fps) during stage 2 and 3 were very much improved compared to stage 1 invasion. Still not perfect but was a lot better for me
What I didn’t like
- The event took way too long and had too much fillers. Like others mentioned, the reinforcements were taking way too long to kill simply because they wouldn’t die.
- The rewards were very inconsistent. Some got precursors valued 200G while some(me) got a total of 2.5G out of this. The loot was cheap and useless for my class/es.
- People who got disconnected at the last moment didn’t get a reward at all. Really sucks spending 3 hours on sunday night to get nothing.

What I’d like to see for future zerg events is improved performance. The game has trouble rendering so many effects so maybe allow us to cut the spell effects of friendlies? Less particles should bump fps a bit. This should allow the battlefield to be more visible too. Right now all the effects fill the screen and I have trouble finding myself.
If the rewards are based on random numbers and not performance(which imo it should not be in such a zerg rush) make the rewards more balanced. Major price drop in precursors shows that it wasn’t all that rare of a drop during the event.
At least reward others with 25% gold or loot of similar price.
Finally, please send the loot in mail. So if you did enough participation you get the reward even if you can’t get the chest. This is a one-time event and not a dungeon after all.

Well, dynamic events that happen only once and change the world forever are one of the greatest features of this game. It gives you the feeling of persistance. If you are there or not, the world evolves.

That said, the current implementation could be improved a lot.
1) Of course we know that technical problems generally ruined this event. This can’t happen in future.
2) Rewards. Giving an item that can’t be gained otherwise in the game (exotic accessory) and items that are generally expensive (20 slot bag and 2 named exotics) is a big punishment for all those that couldn’t participate. The event wasn’t so hard or time consuming (if not for technical problems that is) that it is viable to give such loot to ppl. Some jumping puzzles are harder, yet less rewarding. I don’t like that.
3) ppl that paid for the game are missing content if they don’t log in for a specific time. While it already happened in other games (WoW during release of new expansion) we can see that people don’t like to miss on content.

I don’t understand why arena net is so much against phasing. You already have overflows which somewhat defeat the world persistancy. You already have problems meeting friends on different overflows. Why not 2 versions of each location? Before some event and after some event? Those from after the event can travel back in time, by clicking the join in the past button on their party members.

This simple thing that you probably already have mostly implemented by having overflows will solve the current problems with locations: They don’t fit my personal story. Example: I defeated Zhaitan, why so many undead in orr? Because of me the pact between human and charr was made. Why there are still dynamic events near ebonhawke that indicate the pact has not yet been made?

This also would solve the problem of one-time events that you can later replay by for example talking with NPC that witnessed what happened. Ok, there are some problems like event scaling. It should be huge which means you need a lot of players, but if such NPC told the story only once in a while and you could subscribe, then problem solved.

Voqar.2349:

The better question is WHY, in a game genre with persistent worlds, 24/7 gameplay, people in time zones all over the world, people with varying schedules and play time, would you EVER have events that occur one time at specific times that works for a small number of players?

Very well said. It just goes to show how stupid it is to have 1 time events that the majority of the player base can’t even participate in.

I will excuse Arenanet this time and I hope they are getting the feedback and have the data to show that doing 1 time events is actually a bad idea, they need to make it so that the vast majority of the play base have an opportunity to be a part of it, and the only way to do that is to have it repeatable several times each day over several day period. If they continue to make these one time events only happen when ~20% of the player base can actually play, I will take that into consideration in how much more money I will spend in giving to Arenanet. Right now I am going to spend $10 a month on Gem whether I need them or not, to support Arenanet in making new content, but If it gets to the point where I can never be a part of these 1 time events because of real life, I will drop my commitment in paying then $10 a month, to only getting Gems when I actually need them. I want to support Arenanet, but I need to feel like they are supporting me as well, and doing 1 time events in the prime time only is not supporting me at all.

I LOVED the event! It was really cool with Phase 2 how we were clearing the beaches and discovering this new island as a community. My guild and I split off from the event zerg and were just exploring. It felt REALLY cool to explore this map knowing it was brand new to everybody.

The event finale was awesome too. A tad bit long, but it felt epic. The chest at the end was filled with rares/exotics for me which was a SMART move ANet. Loved it!

Loved the event and had no major issues. No, I didn’t get a pre-cursor and honestly, I don’t care. Just thought ANet would want to hear this…

/signed.
this was by far one of the most frustrating things i have ever experienced in my entire mmo life. not to mention i basically did the event almost 3 times and got dc 2/3 times and on the 3rd time server reset.

this was the best way to attract new customers…….said by no one ever.

Wow, I go to town, come back and there are 60 replies!!!! I usuually post on a HiFi forum where I might get two replies in a day.

I had to smile about some of the comments as I have no idea what a precursor is, so I probably haven’t got one and certainly don’t care!

It is great that others had fun too.

Ramélie

My one time event experience:

Get home late at night excited to complete the event. Was informed that it was over and non-repeating, but that if I was lucky I might find it on an obscure overflow server.

Later in the night I get lucky enough to have a guildy find above obscure overflow server and join him. Kill bugs for 2 hours rezzing probably 200 or so people in the process (people can’t get out of poison puddles apparently).

Server bugs out, almost everyone from guild gets booted including myself. Log back in on a different overflow server which has the event already completed.

After a bit of searching find another overflow on the early stages of the event so I bring my friends to this new server. Another hour or so passes and we recieve the announcement that there is a New Build Available and our client will restart in 3 minutes.

I preempt the timer hoping to rejoin my party on the server we are currently on before we are all booted simultaneously. Upon relogging the event is reset.

At this point I said screw it. It was 1am central already and I was fed up the whole thing. So, despite investing 3+ hours I got nothing but frustration from the whole thing. Terribly executed.

I thought this extra content was a wonderful thing! I really enjoyed the big event! ANET, you are amazing and I appreciate you doing your best to give us something fun to do. Please ignore all of the selfish people who have nothing better to do than complain because they couldn’t make it or because they didn’t get a pre legendary. I did not get one and I was still super excited and happy with the event and the rewards. Keep up the good work

I loved:
+ getting an event like this
+ the basic idea and plot
+ the monsters and monster designs
+ all of the new content
+ an invasion of Lion’s Arch
+ the fact that I could show this game to three of my friends, all of whom will most likely return. (Didn’t show them the event-content, however, only ran around with them in Queensdale)

I was unhappy about:

- lag making the events unplayable (I was there in LA when it started. I left at 9.15 because I could not do anything)
- Noll. I did not get to talk to him, even once
- it being a one-time event and me being a father and teacher, so not being able to participate as much as I would have wanted to (for work reasons), and now it’s gone. Still, kudos to ArenaNet for setting up an event like this.

Stuff I’d like to see changed:
a) more Server-power. I mean, seriously, you did after all manage to make the game run smoothly at its opening weekend, so I think you have the know-how to get this to work.
b) If you set up a quest-line like that, set up more NPCs for players to run to than just one, maybe in different places. This way, you won’t have 100 players standing in a circle around Noll, waiting for him to restart, trying to keep to talk to him and thus keeping him broken.
c) Nope, that’s pretty much it.

It seems to me we have a nomenclature problem here. “One-time event” could easily describe an event that happens during one specified period of time but repeats during that time. Example: one-time event on 18 November runs every hour on that day.

What this was: a one-start event.

Bring on the one-time events! But, please, no more one-start events.

At the very least, an event that only runs once and people could miss due to a lot of reasons, shouldn’t give out very valuable items just for being there.

That’s just discriminating among players based on random factors.

It should be in the spirit of halloween hats, and after running “live”, it should be available in personal instances for a week or so for everyone to enjoy. They could put it like if some NPC that was there is telling you the story of how it went and you find yourself living the event thru their words.

And then you get your cosmetic reward.

The way it went it seemed like some cheap form of ad for the newly invited players. “See it’s candy land here, you do an event and you could get a precurson some idiot paid 400g for on the TP”.

See the thing I am wondering is if they did not have the loot at the end if more people would be upset?

Phase 1 was laggy as hell but was somewhat “ok”. Phase 2 I waited around in an overflow for about an hour and nothing happened just got the boat icon to go to the new area nothing happened. Phase 3 I was confused where to go until I got the mail so I run over there…..and boy was that event boring. Idk if it was because of all the culling or what that made it boring but it felt like just killing endless same mobs for 2 1/2 hours. Hell the part where I said enough we were running as a group and all of a sudden like 5 vet and 1 champ big guys spawned out of nowhere and rolled us all down….whole zerg gone because nobody could see them or they magically spawned right there to avoid them. I even took a shower came back ran like 10 feet to the zerg went and made me food and just followed the zerg while they killed while watching youtube videos because I was just bored and wanted it to end.

Now during my overflow everyone was complaining and kittening etc not liking the event as it was dull. As SOON as they get the chest…..everyone who was complaining was all happy saying how much of a wonderful event it was and that they had fun. So they can push long boring buggish events on us as long as they give us wonderful loots?

So that makes me wonder how many people hated this event all through it but now all of a sudden OMG I LOVE YOU ANET BEST EVENT EVER!!!11 Because they got good loot at the end.

Lost Shores was awesome, however…

There were too many players.

We have seen already that the game engine has trouble dealing with a large numbers of players in the same area. This severely impacted the overall experience for everyone involved.

In future, I feel that it would be wiser to reduce the maximum map population for a given event zone in order to give a better overall experience to the end users. At many points the game was nearly unplayable even on higher end gaming systems. Unfortunately you can’t effectively fight invisible enemies and this was the leading cause of the mass wipes that many experienced.

Otherwise well done. I think valuable lessons will have been (and will be) learned from this event and I can’t wait to see what else you have planned for the future.

P.S. Perhaps you need to consider providing more opportunities to start the main event when it is a one time thing. Launching a new wave every hour for three to four hours would give more people the opportunity to take part in the full experience. You already have the technology for this in your server design. The tricky part would be locking players out from repeating once they have started, although this is (in theory) a simple matter of adding an event status flag to a players account. I believe something like this may have worked better for the first and last event phases and helped to ease some of the population issues.

lunabaguna.8293:

This post reeks of fallacies. They dont hate anyone, they monitor trends in population and place the events during times when the largest amount of people typically play. .

Exactly. They basically say, screw everyone else who doesnt play when we want them to.

Here to add my voice. Outstanding event. Already trying to figure out when/what the next non-holiday event will be

My favorite things about the weekend:

- The end event. Yes it was long and some could be toned back (reinforcements); yes there were technical issues; but the event itself was amazing and really felt epic.

- Fractals of the Mists. If you deleted everything else in GW2, Fractals would be a decent stand alone game that I would pay $60 for.

- Fight mechanics and complexity. The karka roll (needs to be a new Charr dance, btw), the karka self-buffs (which could be removed or stolen to make the fight easier), giving mobs confusion, etc – it made (makes) for fights you really need to think about.

Again, had a blast. A few hiccups – that Im sure Anet is aware of and working on – but still a great weekend.

I would like to see what ANet has to say about how many people are upset about having a one off event that most people can’t take part in. I want to also know if this is how they will be handling most of their events. So I know if I am gona look for another MMO. I have dropped 250 bucks on this game in the past 2 months and not being able to take part in this content feels like a slap in the face. Want my support? Then change how events are done. FYI, I would unsubscribe right now if I could to show how I feel and I know I’m not alone in this. I came to ANet to get away from Blizzard type games where only 1% of the population gets access to all content. I feel lied to.

/signed. If anet is serious about keeping this game afloat, they will listen to their customers.

I enjoy the one-time events. In fact, they have brought me back to GW2 multiple times after falling out of it. They just need to be executed a little better.

Really, and people who think that they just shouldn’t happen period are stupid. Don’t play them. Go do a dungeon instead if you want the same monotony that exists in EVERY OTHER MMO. Seriously, you’ll get about the same reward for the time spent.

I think it’s funny that before even one-time events are over people are jumping on the forums flaming them. Some players just want anything to complain about, especially when it takes them out of their comfort zone from years of other-MMO playing.

I appreciate that Anet is making the game feel alive and bringing players together with these one-time events.

P.S. ANet did you forget your game is global? That there is many time zones that have bought this game? I get real life is not fair, but I expect my games to be.

Also I think it is bad for the servers to try and force everyone on at one time. The Lag for the first two phases (the ones I able to scheduled RL around to play GW2 at a time I never am able too…) I experienced some pretty horrible lag and whatnot.

Just a thought, probably would be better to stagger the event so that it happens two-three times in a day but a player can get rewarded once for it.

I thought this event was amazing. Thank you Anet for this great event with an epic battle between man kind and a new threat. Would love to see more events like this. It felt like an actual battlefield fighting the karka with the environment and people dying all over the place. My favorite part was when we were assaulting the karka nest in the beginning, when we would push the karka further in then they’d push us out, felt like they were really fighting for their lives.

Fractals = Awesome. Seriously this is what I was hoping for the dungeons and I love them.
First Event = would have been excellent if not for lag issues. Was difficult to get kill credit. Always happens in anything you have too many people in one spot. I had to swap instances to get one that was barely playable.
Story quest line = would have been good if not for the bugs
Last Event = fundamentally flawed
New Area = good. jumping puzzles are fine, new ranger pet appreciated. Land/art etc all great but I suspect that the lack of variation on enemies may reduce it’s longetivity.

Suggestions/Plea:
Never ever run a one time event that is less than 24hrs.

This is a game played by people all around the globe. You effectively marginalise a huge chunk of the player base by doing it any other way and it’s not ok. You stuck it to us again by having reportedly large rewards for the players that could get in.

I love gw2 as I loved gw1 but you need to fix the issues where so many people end up in the same place creating a lag fest.
The story bugs seem strange and it was extremely disapointing not being able to complete them (and not to mention that once I did complete it I couldnt do the last event and hence got nothing).

I absoluletly love that there is effort and new content going in here – but please do not alienate parts of your player base by making events exclusive – or expecting people to need to take days of work etc.

So, juding by the headline the OP rather wants no one-time events because you can potentinally miss them? Talking about logic. The single phases should have been longer, though.

Thank you, Anet, for trying something different then all the other MMOs!
It was awesome!