Guild Wars 2

This really isn’t a big deal, but I request that when you announce a special event that you state when it will end, as well. In the recent Wintersday post, it states that it starts on December 15th; however, nowhere can I find the ending date.

This happens nearly all the time, though sometimes by delving more into the release notes or elsewhere, I’m able to find that information. Please just make it easy by stating it right in the main line. ie. "Wintersday starts December 15th, and runs through xxxxx. Simple, eh?

It’s helpful in planning how much time you have for farming one needs to do to obtain the shiny, achievement, or whatever, that’s available during the event.

I see people asking in map chat: “When does the event end?”, and no one really knows.

Thanks!

They did announce them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Updates-about-Wintersday

The end date was announced last week: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Updates-about-Wintersday/first#post5863196

For some reason they frequently don’t have ending dates on their announcements. However they did give a date in a later forum post.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’ve noticed that you’ve had a few questions about Wintersday, and specifically about the Wintersday Presence Collection. We’d like to share the following info with you:

• Wintersday is scheduled to end on January 12, 2016.
• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.
• We will not be able to change the text that indicates it’s a Wintersday-only achievement, but you will be able to continue to imbide (in moderation, please – think of the dolyak children!) to gain that achievement.

Enjoy the festival and we’ll see you in the game!

Ah! Thanks for the information. I apparently didn’t read far enough in the posts.

I think my point still stands. Much easier if they just state the time period at the time they announce, so we know right up front and don’t miss it (as I obviously did) when its posted at another time or place.

Yeah you’d think they’d have the format down by now, but communication has been a weak point all along.

Ra Ra.9423:

Ah! Thanks for the information. I apparently didn’t read far enough in the posts.

I think my point still stands. Much easier if they just state the time period at the time they announce, so we know right up front and don’t miss it (as I obviously did) when its posted at another time or place.

Don’t blame you for not reading too far into some threads, and yeah, you’d think by now they’d announce the end date. If only so people can plan things at this time of the year.

Telemin.7380:

They did announce them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Updates-about-Wintersday

The point of the OP: why didn’t they mention the end date at the same time they announced the start date? It baffles me, too.

It’s been like this since launch… the end dates for events aren’t always clear enough.
In the past, people would complain the tokens they earned during the events couldn’t be exchanged anymore because the events finished ‘unexpectedly’ and the event-NPCs were gone. Anet later had to add special NPCs to solve that issue.

And..
Why can’t the end-date announcements be integrated into the game? Plus it’d make more sense that way, making the game more immersive, rather than having ppl find that out elsewhere outside the game. I personally don’t like checking websites.

Don’t they need to have a general idea of how much bug fixing they’ll need to do before committing to an end date?
Or shouldn’t they?

Ra Ra.9423:

Ah! Thanks for the information. I apparently didn’t read far enough in the posts.

I think my point still stands. Much easier if they just state the time period at the time they announce, so we know right up front and don’t miss it (as I obviously did) when its posted at another time or place.

This has been an issue since about halfway through Living World 1. At one point it was raised after every 2 week release, but it made no difference. They just stopped giving regular end dates. They occasionally remember to do so, but it’s rarer now than it was.

At least Gaile did get the info to us eventually

Tumult.2578:

Don’t they need to have a general idea of how much bug fixing they’ll need to do before committing to an end date?
Or shouldn’t they?

There’s no relationship between the planned end date for a festival and bug fixes.

While Gaile (<3 you, Gaile!) did indeed give us the end date for Wintersday, I do agree that ANet really should state upfront, right in their website release page, the date on which the event finishes. That gives us time to plan and organize appropriately for collections, achievements etc. in between dealing with work and holidays and family stuff.