Guild Wars 2

Straits of Devastation, first one of three Orr zones. 70-75 level map. There’s no orichalcum nodes either no dungeon. It has the most hardest God Event in my opinion – the chain is just too long. I never seen Balthazar temple uncontested, though it was bugged for two last weeks… But seems it’s working again (sorry for bunch of reports, Anet, but having karma and being unable buy stuff is frustrating).
Oh, and there’s no dragons to kill.

The only presence of living I’ve seen there so far is karma train (one), map explorers and those who have personal story quests.
Farmers are not interested in this zone, and the loot might be the problem – 80 level junk from Cursed Shore is still better than 70-75 level junk. Too much water for one map = less heavy ground under your feet. The only thing I hate more than zombies with stun is water zombies with stun. Lack of really epic events. Balthazar is not epic, just a pain to do.

It would be nice if Anet consider some ways of bringing heroes of Tyria to Straits of Devastation. 80 level junk and higher level mats from mobs will help. Some ori to make people visit this map. Bring a dragon and drain the sea.

I’m on Gate of Madness. Our Cursed Shore is full of people all the time and even Malchor’s Leap with its Lyssa is not a problem. But finding people for Balthazar is just… Impossible. He kills in two hits (80 full exotic necro >_>), reviving people is not an option (2 hits AoE) and 10 minutes timer is a joke. At least make Rally Waypoint free of charge during this event. Please?

go to sea of sorrows, tons of people power-farming karma in straits of devastation. far too many in fact, just farming the same few events over and over like mindless drones.

i hate all the orr zones btw. badly designed maps with annoying mobs.

Your server is full, so I can’t transfer here just to get this armor, sadly.

The karma train probably has more than double the players in all of melchors leap.

I just went through this map yesterday. These “chaos” maps with their winding twists and turns and non-linear travel is grossly irritating. I just got through it as quick as I could, don’t plan on going back. I went straight to the next map, though straight isn’t the proper term for travel on this map.

And so, my journey of finding uncontested Balthazar has begun.
Yak’s Bend. Contested.

Btw, about Orr’s problems. The whole Orr is the problem. Those zombies are just unbelievably annoying. They all have stun, pull, fear, daze, cripple. The respawn time is a joke. It less than 30 seconds. Sometime I like just wander around and explore places. No wandering around in Orr, only running from bloody zombies.

But nothing can be done about that. At least, there’s plenty of people in Cursed Shore, that can’t be said about other Orr zones.

I’m sure the whole “No wandering around in Orr, only running from bloody zombies.” was an intentional thing. Being an undead horde, and all.

Coming from Lore in GW1, Orr wasn’t going to be an amusement park filled with flowers if we ever reached it.

Though, with all those karma trains it is looks like an amusement park indeed. It just kids interested only in free candies and completely ignoring other nice stuff.

Oh, and a correction about Yak’s Bend Balthazar. It’s just bugged. Sigh =_=

The problem isn’t the sea, it’s the fact that the mobs are very dense in the sea and the map is basically one big maze in the west.

the problem with the orr zone is the orr zone…

it’s hated that much that you don’t see anyone around ever…just a vast wasteland of zombies.

the stuns pulls cripples that you get flung at you non stop just gets bloody annoying after the 3-4 time it happens in a row and you’ve made about 6 feet of progress and the mobs have respawned in that time..

i actually like the map…just not what resides in it, not fun and not challenging just bloody irritating.

and i would consider trying to solo a dragon a challenge even if it was doomed to failure it would still be more fun than battling the endless respawning zombies in orr that cripple stun cripple teleport pull cripple you to bordem and tediously moving forward slowly while trying to avoid as much as humanly possible.

then you have to hope that not every sodden waypoint is contested, sadly i found that all the one’s i’d been to were contested so it was a 20 min walk/swim back to where i was having to fight the same mobs and rince and repeat what i had to do above over and over.

screw orr.

that’s been my experience too. personally i hate how difficult it is to navigate the terrain. you literally have to run circles around obstacles to get anywhere, while dodging zombies left right and center.. and dont even get me started on the contested wps.. ugh

The place needs some more safe zones. Omg the undead there don’t leave you alone. Sometimes you want to chat you know. Also, it has 1 event everybody is doing continuously. The rest is ignored, probably because the general mobs in this area are not stopping until ur death and the other events zones are hard to reach because of it. And also, many of the other hard to reach places don’t seem to have much event activity anyway. What is the respawn rate, I don’t know.

The zone design seems like they went out of the way to make it annoying and unfun.

I’m still working on finishing the map there, but it really makes me hate GW2. I’m playing my ranger there, and the pet pathing reminds of 1999’s EQ.

You’re right about this map. The first time I came there (a month ago or so) it was pretty fun and epic joining the zerg in some of the events. Eventually events bugged out, skillpoints weren’t working, there’s no Orichalcums to mine, the loot is lower level etc. I really liked the Balthazar event, but apparantly it got stuck or something and completely bugged so I never returned to the zone cause of lack of incentives and broken content. Not sure what state the zone is in now, I prefer Malchor’s Leap or Cursed Shore if I decide to spend time on Orr.

once I get 100% map completion and finish my personal story (once tolkens are introduced late this month) I wont be returning to this map. I like the eastern part, especially the santuary with all the tamable ranger pets

I agree, Orr zones need some work in terms of loot drops, and nodes. I honestly have not ventured back to these three zones once I received map completion for them for the following reasons:
-For me, theres no point to kharma grind as the gear is not good looking at all, and the stats are terrible…seems PVP heavy stats, which right now doesnt perk the interest of a PVE oriented player.
-I get more money and loot to vendor from running dungeons, along with tokens
-Ori nodes are few and far between.

I havent been back there in about 2-3 weeks. Theres no point…unless dynamic events in these zones started to randomly reward a rare or something..then I might go back

Yeah, I like the downscaling in that respect because it allows me to play elsewhere and still get something out of it.

I am sure it’s less efficient blah blah but I can go to low level areas and still get 250 karma for each event even if it’s a level 3 event.

Anything is better than Orr at this stage. I think from a story point of view it makes sense, I will say that. But once you’ve gone through it and finished your story…which I might not even do on alts because it’s a really disappointing ending, the place is to be avoided.

I don’t go to Orr anymore with my level 80 ….done with it, don’t need it. Part of it I think is that the Orr zones as it is are too big. Orr in that style could’ve been one third of the total area. Now it’s just a massive annoying zone with too much distance between the temples.

I realize it’s supposed to be the doorstep of the Zhaitan stronghold and not have this zone as some walk in the park… but you could probably make it a little lighter by doing any (or a combination) of the following yet keep a similar effect:

- Lower the density: esp with pulls, knockbacks, drowning… it’s impossible to fight mobs sometimes without grabbing another 4+ in the process. It’s also the doorstep, not the Gates of Arah, so we could lighten up a bit and get progressively denser as we get closer to the end?

- Increase spawn time: to pull out a Jay Wilson reference, “double it”…

- Lower hp: some of these guys are surprisingly meaty compared to their counterparts in Malchor’s Leap or Cursed Shore.

- Don’t decrease the speed of characters while in combat. I’m sure people have noticed this and I never understood it. If I want to run through a pack because…. gee, idk, maybe folks don’t want to kill everything from A to B because doing so will end up taking all their playtime just to make the journey. But no, some cheap shot and now I move at practically half the speed (before getting slowed or tossed around like a rag doll). Combo that with leashes as long as half the map, and it’s basically navigating these maps at half speed the entire time only to have to kill 3+ mobs once you get to where you wanted to go.

Y’all need to take a look at this, play-test it, and really ask “is this fun?”.

I think that the story ending was pretty decent TBH, especially the arah story mode you do. I liked it. A little long in Arah, but I liked it.

While I agree theres too many bad zombies that want to hurt you in Orr, one every 5 feet…it adds to the flavor. Its supposed to be difficult, even though I cussed at my computer screens many times when I heard “Death…good” and suddenly get yanked back 10 yards.

I hope the new continents that they open up are a bit better and they learn from what didnt work in Orr. With that said, keep it hard!!!! I remember in Rift, going to ember isle as a semi-fresh max level. I would get pwned..hardcore. Good to be difficult.

Difficult does not equal cluttering the map with mobs. I would rather reduce the amount of normal mobs in half, and add more veterens or champions (not necessarily next to 3 other normal mobs..that pull would just be death for a solo player).

If Orr is hard, i cannot imagine the expansion zones if they come out. ring of fire = 4x Orr? i am not down with that.

i have been camping out at the penitent path for 3 weeks now, because i need karma for armor and it’s oddly the safest outpost i can reach with all the bot circles and other karma farming players. it also is the closest to the TP outpost (which is bugged this morning before i left for work)

Orr is definitely for party play. I hope the rest of my guild gets to Orr, so i can move on and see the rest of it.

Here’s a way, how to make Orr more endurable without Anet’s help.
Turn off all sounds. All of them. NPC, sound effects, environment. Even music.

And listen something nice instead. Music you like, podcast or a book. Doesn’t matter. You can play in complete silence and Orr still will be ten thousand times better than with all this mess of sounds.