Guild Wars 2

I have enjoyed it so far. The Model Zephyr Sanctum is annoying as only available on T1 vendor pane so you end up with large groups of people standing around waiting for the map to reset which is annoying for other players trying to compete in the map events. Reminds me of the Raid gate being in Verdant Brink originally so players wanting to complete the meta would have to find a map where there were not large groups of players waiting at the Raid gate and not doing events. I can’t see why the model cant be available at every tier or just on it’s own panel.
I don’t know why mission into the cave has to be such a grind of elite enemies. And I can’t work out the mechanic for the Ice Beast at the end, is it like the previous battle with the sample ice creature? Is it a straight grind? The mechanic is confusing and not explained very well. I new map is fun, but now I have piles of elixir ingredients in my bags, cant sell them, they are soulbound so can pass them to other alts, they just take up space. Could at least be sold to vendors for a small amount just to be able to clear unused ingredients.

I love the map, most of the story is ok, I think first part was great, Aurene is cool, and cute, but last part ruined everything. Braham was always a kitten, but now he’s just ridiculous. Acting like selfish, angry teenager contradicting himself. I wish I could slam him right there with my hammer and tell him what commander means and what I and others sacrifised so far to kill two dragons.
More items that are stuffing our inventories. Come on, really? Can’t you come up with a solution to that already? Give us special bag just for event items or something.
Once again mobs with CC on AA. One mob jumps on you with hammer every two seconds and knocks you down, second mob rushes into you knocking you down, thrid farts, knocking you down… and they keep doing just that.
final mission was not explained at all. Fight just starts and you don’t even have time to take a look what’s happening.

I’m really hoping there’s a simpler way to get my alts into the new zone than running through that first story. It was fun the first time (apart from Aurene bugging once during the penultimate part of the story), but I suspect that something that long is going to get very old, very quick.

So far, one dislike: it seems you can’t log out at some point during open world story steps and hope to continue the next day. I mixed the elixir, entered the Bitter Cold, broke the frozen waterfall and reached the entrance to the next story instance behind it. I noticed the time and decided to call it a night and continue there today. No such luck, I froze to death before I could do anything after I logged back on. I guess I have to make a new elixir?

The new zone is excellent. The story is progressing reasonably well, though I am partly reserving judgement until I see some of the payoffs.

The two major problems I have are that the instances don’t seem as much fun this time around. The concepts are OK, it’s just that on the first walkthrough it is not at all obvious what needs to be done. Also, the amount of time it takes to knock out those oozes makes it more tedious than anything.

Also, inventory bloat is getting way out of hand. Not only do we have berries, we also have Svanir disguises (in three pieces), bits for the elixir and a portal stone for the egg chamber.

Overall pretty good episode. Very nice new map and fractal.
Gating the new zone behind a mastery was not very good decision imo.
As always not a big fan of cutesy stuff, babysitting a dragon and angsty Braham.
Where is the option to knock out Braham for being a brat? And option to let others to babysit a dragon?

mbhalo.1547:

Gating the new zone behind a mastery was not very good decision imo.

Where exactly did that happen?
Got into the new zone without the mastery just fine.

Other than that i’m not finished with the story yet but found good what i saw so far.

Aurene bugged on oozes, I died a bunch because she won’t move even after I clear mobs, she despawned and wouldn’t come back. Wasted over an hour on just that part. No anvil outside the instance, had to hop to guild hall because Tarir was contested. Could have been handled better.

Gave up on this because I can’t progress and I’m less interested in redoing it. I have no opinion of the rest of the episode because I can’t even get to it. Not fun = not done.

+ I’m very impressed by Bitterfrost Frontier. The new zone is very atmospheric, especially the “Griffon Old Growth” with the tall trees. It was really funny to explore the map and I think I will spend a lot of time there in the next weeks. Bitterfrost Frontier and Ember Bay are my favourite maps so far! Thank you so much for your hard work!

+ I was never interested in the story missions, but this was the first time that I enjoyed the story. Aurene is so cute and it was really funny when she wanted to play hide-and-seek! And the mission where you have to collect materials for the elixir was funny, too. I had a lot of bugs in the HoT story, which was very annoying. But I didn’t notice any bugs in the story since Bloodstone Fen was released, which is a great improvement in my opinion!

+ The new Minis are adorable and I love the new title. I think it’s cool that the title matches with the Mini Chicken.

+ I like the heart quests on this map.

+ All Points of Interests and Vistas are easy to get. First I was a bit annoyed, because I thought I need to do the story in Bitterfrost Frontier with each character for map completion. But yesterday I found out that you don’t need the elixir to reach the Point of Interest in “The Bitter Cold”.

- In my opinion no one should be forced to play story missions in order to reach a new map. I’m sure there are a lot of players like me who are not interested in story missions, no matter how good they are. I’m always so excited about a new zone and I can’t wait to explore it… and I just want to go through a portal to enter a map. I want to decide myself whether I want to explore a map or do the story mission first.

- I think the beginning of the story with Aurene is a bit difficult for solo players. It took me 30 minutes to complete it.

- Bitterfrost Frontier is very large (which is good!), but there are far too few waypoints. Sometimes both waypoints are contested. I think there should have been at least three or four waypoints on this map OR the waypoints should never be contested.

Most important takeaway from my perspective: Please stop stuffing our inventory with soulbound items you don’t want to delete because they’ll be hard if not impossible to get back. The Exalted Portal Stone needs to be account-bound. The Svanir disguise needs to be both account-bound and combine into a single item once you have all three pieces. Heck, there’s no reason I can see why the Rift Stabiliser couldn’t be account-bound.

franzi.8513:

- Why is there no Mini Juvenile/Baby Griffon in the Gem Store? They look so cute and I would like to buy one

Because you can get it from the heart vendor in the Griffon Old Growth region. :P

LordEnki.9283:

I’m really not happy with more wasted rewards (Maguuma mastery books) that I cannot collect because I’m being punished for not wanting to do raids. Please consider changing this block. I can’t earn XP for spirit shards in Bloodstone Fen either. It’s a horrible block and it just continues with each release.

I hate getting wasted xp too. I too am not wasting my mastery points on Raids because if we are going to be forced to do Raids to get legendary armor (as it is the ONLY way of getting it – you can’t “play how you want”), then I’m simply not going to do Raids. Ever.

Same goes with this. Just because I refuse to Raid, my XP rewards get wasted because I’ve maxed all the other tracks. I mean, what’s the point in offering wasted XP? Give us a few winterberries instead or something and I’ll be happy. Options would be nice, lol.

There is so much that was awesome with the new map.

• Exploration was great. A mix of central Tyria exploration and completion enhanced by some use of the new masteries. I really enjoyed it.
• Diverse scenery in the snow environment was well done (intensity of the snow storm, underwater, the hot springs, the massive trees).
• Rewards seem much better (mini dragon, gauntlets, fractal skins, tonics, minis etc).

I do think it has a couple issues.

• Inventory items for the elixir and the icebrood disguise are tedious to carry around. Doing it more than once is something I really hope is patched out.
• The elixir itself feels like it should be a mastery. It’s basically the poison immune mastery from HoT, no-one wants to make an elixir every time they access part of the map.

Other than the ooze part on the first mission I really liked this story, I like how the bosses weren’t just hack and slash. The new are is fun, though it gets old running around it. Braham has turned into a charactuer of a character though,. Over all good story though.

Storywise, weakest episode.
Story instances have too many damage sponge enemies.
A person I don’t like got even more annoying.
An epic premise destroyed.
Unexplained McGuffin.

Yeah, that kinda sums it up.
The map and everything sourounding is great, though

Idk if it was my computer, but after the last mission when it jumps to the cut scene it did not make any sense to me how it jumped from one thing to another.

Also, you really need an option for hi resolution, that cut scene looked soooo ugly on my monitor, I would have preferred it to be with in-game graphics than the low res scene.

Edit: On the positive side: yes, this map is the most beautiful so far and the map events and hearts are really cool. Great job with that!

I have to say, I haven’t played much of the new map yet, but this episode is really good. The big forest is absolutely beautiful and I love the kodan/quaggan area. I still have no idea what the events on the map are so I can’t comment on that yet.

As for the story, I LOVED the first instance when you get to train Aurene in tarir. It just feel amazing to me. I really hope we get to do some more stuff like that with Aurene in the future before she is ready to fight with us. However, please, please, PLEASE stop putting open world stuff in as ‘story’ content. When I play the story I only want instances. The open world stuff just feels like a grind to get to the next instance which is usually the end of the episode unfortunately. The story itself, as with every patch, is way too short however what there actually is there is always very well done and is engaging from the start to the end of all instances, however few of these there are. There really does need be more story though, as it is pretty much the only thing I get really excited about as far as pve goes. Double the length per patch should be fine, I don’t care if we get no new map if we have story that long.

In general, I would put the patch at maybe a 7/10, which is good, but some things, like story length and how it is delivered to us really need to be improved on.

This episode was really poor, the story was dragged out by having to do mini farms to progress, then having elite mobs in the story to again just drag it out. The last story step was really annoying too, the spider part was just the worst. After killing all the eggs, I then had to kill 3 more elite HP bags. It really sucked all the fun out of it.

The new maps looks really nice, I’ve not really done it for the events yet, but I feel having 2 waypoints is too few for the map size.

Bottom line is this is the worst so far, the other 2 episodes where great, this one feels very lacking, and just made up of things to slow you down because there is very little in the way of story.

i just lost 1mill karma trying to buy winterberries from woomulla. ended up getting 15 instead of the 380 it was supposed to give me. thats my experience with the story so far.

Frozen Out needs a Boss reset mote for the achievements. NEEDS.

Now you have to redo the entire thing every time you slip up, made worse by the notion that the enemies are annoyingly difficult to kill. Spending 20 minutes mashing through veteran and elite mobs to have one go at this guy is just annoying.

Elixir should be a mastery or at least an infinite potion. It also feels underused.
Please remove armor parts drops after story step is completed >_>.
Map itself is good. No idea why underwater layer exists tho.
Last instance needs a checkpoint for the last boss fight.
How do I murder Braham?

Also!

What does the new mastery do?

I completed everything without it. Aside from opening chests, does it do something else?

Im finding instances to be very frustrating. I have died 3+ times on the abomination solo because I was hit by his huge, fast AOE before i could dodge.
A lot of the fighting mechanincs are not well teligraphed, again the abomination losing his daze meter and riving aroound looks like thats the time to do damage. At least it is with other bosses and champs. But it turns out thats when you need to get away and heal.
A lot of the instances are near unbeatable for me, as a randomly speced mezmar. And when they are beatable they take way too much time then they should. Its really putting me off and I doubt im going to be able to finish this LS update.
I do like the map, and its amazing the amount of polish in it. Its just the instances are ether bugged or unbalanced for solo play.

Map is good. Except for the elixir and disguise needing to be reacquired, which in the way it is implemented is just plain annoying (please, don’t increase the number of unnecessary items in inventory anymore)
Story is subpar, unfortunately, especially when compared to episodes 1 and 2.
I was seriously put off by insistence on introducing annoying mechanics to story boss fights.
Oh, and Braham’s getting fast to the top of my “NPCs i don’t like” list. Though at least he’s unlikely to beat Scarlet for the first position. Scratch that, i don’t want Anet to treat it like a challenge for their storyliners.

JaeleCt.3967:

i just lost 1mill karma trying to buy winterberries from woomulla. ended up getting 15 instead of the 380 it was supposed to give me. thats my experience with the story so far.

Same here, although i only lost around 200k karma trying to buy 100x winterberries and only getting 5. Very expensive berries.

The thing that really grinds my gears about the latest episode, is the lack of a retry mote during the final story instance.
It got rather tiresome trying to get those two achievements, that I just gave up.
Having to listen to Braham’s complaining for few hours without a way to skip it just got annoying.

Also, where is the buff, that shows you what achievements are you lacking from the story instance? I really hope these are just some bugs, that need to be fixed.

Other than that, this episode has been rather good.

I really dont like the new map. Its a pit of annoying mobs with annoying abilities. Endless chill, freeze, stun and svanir shockwaves that shotgun. Other MMOs have feelgood areas, like auric basin but without mordrem riders, why cant we have it in gw2? Why is every new mob more annoying? Loosing control of your character isnt fun. Please stop the stun, launch, pull, whatever madness.

ps: the frozen dragon looks awesome

The story is short, boring, and Braham is incredibly annoying. I like the map though, it’s quite nice. 2/10 for the story, 7/10 for the map.

I’m really disappointed in the story this season. I LOVED season 2, I also really liked HoT (liked the story, the pacing, everything – I couldn’t stop playing because I HAD to see what happened).

What was with the ending? Short cutscene, then a pop up that I’ve completed the story. It all felt really abrupt and now we have to wait how long for further developments? There was no sense of resolution at all with this episode.

The dragon revelations from Taimi are awesome. I love that two dragons are active at once. I understand, to some degree, Braham’s attitude, but I don’t really understand why he seemed to be mad at us before we even said anything. Most importantly, I hate how my character is acting. You’ve made such great characters with DE 2.0. So why are you writing them out and making them hate us?

I couldn’t stand Logan or Zojja, but the rest of the original DE was fine. I never doubted Caithe’s intentions and yet, my character threatened to kill her at the end of HoT. I trust Majory – why did my character try to forbid her from going to Lazarus instead of thanking her for keeping an eye on him? Why was I condescending to Braham instead of trying to reason with him?

I’m really, really disappointed with the way this story is going – and story is one of the things that keeps me in GW2.

I wanted to enjoy the zone more, but getting from place to place was riddled with packs of enemies that seemed to catch me even at full Swiftness. Near constant Chill and the more-than-occasional Freeze, which can’t be broken with a stun break, just made the zone absolutely annoying. I’m over the constant hard-CC that the devs think makes for a challenge. Which, by the way, those mushrooms should have stayed in Magus Falls. Seriously. Some of the most irritating, one-note creatures followed me into content that really should have shown some progress. And they all explode now, not just the soldiers.

For all the frustration, I’ll probably have much nicer things to say once I sit down all day tomorrow and really dig into it. Glad to see the other Ascended trinkets in the new zone. ( Even though jewelcrafting has been utterly worthless for years. ;_; )

The overall story was great with its fun mechanics that made me think and try new techniques rather than just mindlessly bash the boss over and over. One minor issue is that the rate of elite slimes spawning was a bit too excessive because it just felt like a grind without rewards by the 3rd slime generator.

The map was even more amazing, it felt like becoming more immersive because you had to now walk to most places so I was able to enjoy the scenery and engage in its content more regularly. I suggest new maps should continue this line of development because it forces the player to engage in the content and give them time to enjoy the beautiful graphics of the map designers. (The pre-lvl80 content I did not get to enjoy it as much because of the availability of waypoints making it very commonplace for me to just skip those events).

I also greatly relished that the enemies weren’t just mind-numb units that I can skip without taking much damage but have to actively kill them if I wanted to survive with Zerker gear. I feel like this would allow for more diversity in armor-sets and allow many casual players who don’t prefer to have all Zerker stats, to invest in more diverse armor stats.

On a final note, please keep producing these types of content! I love that the mobs aren’t mindless and can kill you, you actually have to walk around more to enjoy the scenery and engage in events and it’s good to see that story quests actually require some thinking to overcome them rather than directly provide us with direct clues that lead to unmemorable encounters.

The plot of ep3 was okay for me. The pacing of the story did feel dragged out and a bit slow compared to the other episodes- most of what you’re doing is gathering a bunch of mats to make a potion that allows you access to the final boss area. A lot of it sort of felt like mundane filler content. There were some mild irritants such as the constant chills and CC put out by mobs, but overall, I didn’t feel that anything was overtly designed badly.

I personally liked the Aurene training part. The concept of fostering this nascent, playful, and adorable baby dragon that will one day grow up to become a world changing power was a neat touch.

As for Braham, I felt that his character development was believable (while being quite irritating). He is young, stubborn, hotheaded, and is unable to cope with the death of Eir. The death of a loved one is definitely a world shattering experience. I can tell he is blinded and consumed with hatred towards the dragons, and seems to be taking his rage out on everyone and the entire world. The ending of ep3 has me worried for Hoelbrak- its denizens will follow Braham to their doom.

I liked the story! It felt a little short, and a large part of it seemed to be doing gathering quests before continuing on with the “actual” story, but nonetheless it was good and fun to finish.

The map is very pretty, some parts of it are breathtaking, but it suffers from two flaws in my opinion.

• Lots of mobs everywhere due to pretty constant small scale events. Nothing wrong with this except it means there aren’t very many places where you can just stop and admire the map itself without drawing aggro from some stupid mob.

• Not a huge fan of the effects going on in that map. I hate the sandstorm event in DT, and this map has a very similar effect with an even greater uptime. If it could be toned down some that would be awesome

Overall pretty nice update

I like the map. I love forests that are covered in snow so +1 from me.

The story is still lackluster in my opinion. I really don’t care about Braham as a character but the last part of the episode made me hate him for some reason. Why would I ever want an immature bloke in my guild?

The last part was pretty boring and I didn’t like the level/boss design. -1 on that one.

10/10! I played yesterday and did not encounter any note worthy bugs.

Getting to spend time with Aurene was a huge bonus. Along with the mini achievement, getting to play catch with her was really awesome. To be honest, I was hoping for even more mini games with our hatchling to keep bonding. Possibly turning them into dailies?

I run a full ascended minstrel druid, so although the gauntlet training was quite long, it wasn’t difficult.

Are you going to make it to where we can feed the extra fish dinner to Aurene since she’s been eye-balling it?

New map is gorgeous. Again, I’m not sure if there was a patch before I got on, but I managed to enter it without the new mastery. Glad to have a place to purchase ascended breathers and trinkets/back piece.

Only issues is that the berries/wood/crystals would be better off placed in our wallets instead of taking up bag space or bank space. That would help a lot.

The new map looks great on first sight. The first story instance is great (as long as you don’t have one of the many bugs I have seen here). But unfortunately after playing for 6 a 7 hours I am not so happy. Reasons for that:

1. The last two story instances are bad. I couldn’t finish the second to last instance on my Ranger because I killed all the larva before the boss died. No other larva spawned so I had to abandon the instance. No idea if that was a bug. But the whole idea behind the fight didn’t really work for me. A common problem with many boss fights lately.
2. The last story instance was boring. Far too many elite mobs, not enough story. Rox part in the story is non-existent. I think she should be there, but not in the way it is currently implemented. The boss-fight is really boring. Maybe the idea looked great on paper, but in reality the fight isn’t fun.
3. I think the map looks great. I don’t really like frozen maps, but this one is beautiful. But some mechanics are annoying. Dragon’s Teeth Hot Springs in particular is an absolute disaster. The main event there will always fail and that means that half of the time you can’t see a bloody thing.

Like so many LW episodes (the first) part of it is great, but the whole is disappointing. The same was the problem with HoT. It seems ArenaNet can’t make enough good content to fill a LW episode or an expansion.

The only reason why I still play GW2 is because the base game is so good. And gets improved even after 4 years. HoT and the last 2 LW seasons are not a reason to play GW 2. I gave up hope that the situation will improve. I would love to see ArenaNet go back to what they originally made: A very good, relaxing MMO. And not a game with very difficult (story-) encounters. That is not what I am looking for. As a result I don’t spend any RL money on the game. If ArenaNet want to see any money from me they have to change their strategy. Until then I will play basically for free. And when the next expansion comes out I will probably quit the game. Because I am not going to buy it based on the current development.

This may seem really negative. But I had a lot of fun earlier today. I can probably get another 10 hours or so out of the new episode. But I think that ArenaNet could (and should) have made more of this episode.

Missions feel like they’re designed by an intern: overambitious, overloaded with overtuned mobs, sprinkled with gratuitous AOE, and capped with poorly explained gimmick bosses. Who thought five waves of assorted wolves, combined with garbage raining from the ceiling, was interesting encounter design? Apparently the same person who put the same scenario in with spiders and oozes.

That stupid elixir only lasts a day? Seriously, are you luring newbie dungeon masters in from local high schools to design this stuff? Dailies are one thing. Dailies as a gatekeeping device is quite another.

Before I forget, there’s that torch. Pretty, cute schtick with the hotbar, but it’s confused a lot of people because (drumroll!) its functionality is really badly explained! You’ve really been deforming the definition of ‘tooltip’ here, and in the final Aurene event, and whoever rubberstamped that needs to be spanked.

I blew three Mastery points on the torch, and I don’t think I’ve used one since, hours of play later. It seems pretty much irrelevant, outside of being a key for iced-up chests. It gets in the way when I go to fight, I have to go back and pick it up again, and it needs to be recharged at specific places on a map that is -notably- short on waypoints and other forms of fast travel.

I’ve enjoyed the first two chapters of LS3, but this is startlingly poor design.

This is simply the best! Great map: diverse, beautifully designed, well balanced, perfect layout, fun content, excellent items and farming options, no annoyances, great story-telling and atmosphere, nice new ideas (the Kodan torch and skills, for instance).

So, here’s a quick summary of what I don’t like about it (it’s a short list):

• Braham’s new armor (can’t stand Marjory’s, either, btw)
• Braham (whiney, confrontational, stupid)
• Aurene miniature (too small in size, please fix, since it was costly to craft!)
• dialogues (sound/speech) often overlap, so it can get quite chaotic (maybe bring back the cinematic full-screen dialogues?)

Bieeanda.3781:

I’ve enjoyed the first two chapters of LS3, but this is startlingly poor design.

Have we been playing the same bundle? I hate the Ember Bay map (although it has nice content and some laughter). This map is so much better and more fun than Ember Bay or Bloodstone Fen.

Rose Solane.1027:

Like so many LW episodes (the first) part of it is great, but the whole is disappointing.

I disagree. Season 2’s second half was so much better and more exciting than its boring first couple of missions. I, for once, think that this is the most exciting content so far. But I guess you can’t please everyone.

I just wanted to thank you that you’ve made it possible to buy the parts for mini-aurene in the TP(even if they prices are still ridiculous high right now, →i wanna beat that greedy sellers in the face(40g for one part, serious?, it should be around 15 or so max. since 5gold for recipe + ingredients 5g + effort 5g, but don’t worry it will be that cheap soon), instead of having to skill 5 jobs to lvl 450.

:)

For story achievements, please be consistent on putting which episode they belong to in the description. You have at least a few this episode which did not have that leading to confusion on how to get them done.

For the part of the story where you cook the ingredients, put a green marker where players are supposed to go. I see map chat that consistently has players asking where to go and unless they’ve been there already, they’re not going to know how to get there.

When you copy & paste rewards, please make sure that they are independent of what you copied. This is the second time that a reward has been blocked from use as a result.

Thank you for the save points in that first instance. It made trying to get past the bugged ooze generator a little more bearable.

Second day of gathering stuff for an elixir that does not work( ie doesnt provide the buff but consumes the materials). So…when do i get to progress in the story? This is almost as bad as The Dragon’s Reach desaster. Just that not every player is affected.

I had a blast playing through the story and getting diverted to various things in the open map. Took me all day and I still haven’t done everything (though I’ve sorely depleted my unbound magic reserves).

I enjoyed the arguing parts of the story because a lot of the story to this point has been about the power of friendship, as it were, and while I prefer RL for people to get along too much niceness in a story can eviscerate its impact. Along those lines I do feel Aurene is maybe toooo cutesy as others have noted, or at least too mammalian. I don’t hold to the idea that ANet’s dragons have to be just like traditional dragons … they do become more forces of nature than big tough lizards … but perhaps there should be a little more serpent, a little less puppy going on?

Pacing: Now we have several instances of an episode in which the first part is slow and peaceful (the DR party, Eir’s funeral, and dealing with Aurene). This works just fine on a first run through when one is savoring all the details. However, I fear for my attention span after multiple alts and achieve attempts.

I would say my only real negative here was the Abomination boss fight (the ice beast fight was confusing but at least I one-shot it). I was annoyed that missing even one grub blast meant the boss could not be killed at all. And it was easy to miss, as I was on a squishy Daredevil so kiting the boss into the grubs without getting killed myself was very hard. I finally managed by using a shortbow for aoe. But what really sucked was that leaving the instance to reset the grubs put me back at the central wp. That may be so my character can’t end up afk in a place where he’ll die on his next log in due to loss of the elixir, but I’d rather take a death there and wp once than have to run from the wp many times in a row.

So I guess my one “please fix this” request is getting sent to the kodan village on any instance exit. Even using the mountain top thermal tube to skip most of the mobs on the way involves a frustrating run during multiple boss fight attempts.

Tekey.7946:

Locking a part of the map behind RNG Black Lion Chests is not acceptable.

If there’s no other way to get to the Bitterfrost Vantage Point other than buying keys, it’s a shady move. Please stick to cosmetic and convenience items.

I got a key from completing the new map, and got the Bitterfrost Vantage Point in that chest. You’re not missing much. I mean, it’s very pretty up there, but it’s also a tiny ledge with a cherry blossom tree dropping petals on a few rounded jotun stones with a view out over misty clouds. Five people there at once would be a bit crowded.

As the pop up description says, this teleport thing does not take you anywhere with services. I’d say it’s just an alternate to spending your unbound magic on a teleport scroll (I’d have to check if it’s soul or account bound, actually, but I am fairly sure it’s account).

I will concede the gliding point, though it would be faster to wp or scroll in to ground level than to glide down from there. But as far as opening a map area … here. This is literally all there is there and it doesn’t even unfog a map piece as far as I can tell.

Doghouse.1562:

I’m really hoping there’s a simpler way to get my alts into the new zone than running through that first story. It was fun the first time (apart from Aurene bugging once during the penultimate part of the story), but I suspect that something that long is going to get very old, very quick.

Use the scrolls. You can buy one for each of the new maps at each of the vendors in each map. Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay and now Bitterfrost Wastes. 50s and 1000 Unbound Magic. That’s what I do for alts who I don’t want to take ALL the way through the storyline again. (Though I will)

RyuDragnier.9476:

Vyrulisse.1246:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Liked the new map, though the story was a bit barebones here compared to the other ones. Braham…if you wanted to make us hate him enough to kill him off, you’ve done a perfect job of it. Please, if you continue with this, let him fail and then let the commander punch him onto the ground and then tell him the names of everybody who has died since Claw Island who played a role in the story…to hit home that we know better than anybody what it’s like to lose people. Because right now he’s insufferable and I quite literally want to kill him off.

That’s another thing. A.net is having Braham act like we haven’t lost people close to us. We’ve lost many friends on the way, including our closest one in Trahearne (who we had to kill personally). Like Trahearne as a character or not but he was placed as our character’s closest friend throughout the story.

On another note, it seems like Rytlock has taken the role of closest ally or maybe even Caithe considering how she seems starry eyed with you right now because you forgave her. It also seems like Rytlock is the only “adult” in the group.

It makes sense, Rytlock already had to deal with Snaff, so he has cooled down significantly on that front. Which makes me wonder if they’re trying to pull a Rytlock with Braham, with him having to come to terms with the death. He may be projecting blaming himself onto us, even though it was nobody’s fault but Faolain’s.

Caithe we only really forgave I believe because she went through all this crap to protect the egg, so she wouldn’t betray us on that front. Plus if Aurene absorbed most of Mordy’s power, technically she’d be able to control Caithe if necessary.

Little minor differences as a Sylvari I feel Caithe was forgiven since as a Sylvari I understood the nature of the hunt.

As for Aurene controlling Sylvari I don’t think Anet thought of that because the remaining Elder Dragons should also either control Sylvari akin to Mord or create their own hybrid Sylvari.

Also many characters have died who are considered close to people

In Brahams case he was never close to Eir at all so it literally doesn’t make sense in fact out of all the people that have died it seems the ties between him and Eir outside of being biologically related are the weakest of them all.

I really really enjoy this Living Story HOWEVER, the achievements are really annoying. The Delicious Desserts NPC is disabled?? Why? FIX IT, please!

Otherwise, I’m loving my baby Aurene!

One other thing. WHAT IN THE WORLD is the purpose of the water in this zone? OK, I had to go down there to talk to the Quaggan lady. OK, it’s pretty. But really, that’s it? No events? No hidden mastery commune points? No big roaming champions to beat? No hidden tunnels or ruins? Not even a point of interest?

Its almost like the water was included just to have a 3rd “lower level” on the map, and to include it in the trailer. And the enemies down there are THICK, with lots of Veterans too. I appreciate at least having the unbound magic bubbles, but it seems you could have done so much more with the water here. As it stands right now it annoys me when I fall into it accidentally and my Flesh Golem goes on cooldown

Ok…..hopefully you devs have a bit of time to read. (tried to see if I could keep it short but…..im a wordy person and I’m newer to the forums.

This episode was ok.

The Map: The map was fun. Most of the mobs being overtuned or downright lethal was refreshing. Kept me on my toes. (DD thief main for life!) (Bloodstone Fen was only annoying because of the 6000 range idiots, and Ember Bay only had the jade morons, which I just skip) The mastery felt kinda just added on. The thermal tubes are not placed well, nor the updrafts. And not enough waypoints, to few. (Though….if you explained from a lore perspective why there are few, it makes sense. Just annoying is all.)

Gameplay of the storyline instances was ok. Loved the beginning with Aurene. Being the oldest of 12 kids, I’m around them all the time and…well that’s spot on how they act lol. And the little jump on the Lumminate at the end was adorable. Rest of the gameplay was just normal as always, run here, run there, staby staby pick up random stuff, (Which I agree with many others on here, please stop with these soulbound storyline specific items that just clog up our inventories, just have the storyline progress “like” we picked up said item, or have the item get removed once were done.) and then go to the next storyline part. The abomination fight was ok.

Now…the last fight…..and I don’t care…….MAN I LOVED IT!!!! Like someone else said, SOOOO many things going on at once and trying to take it all in at once AND dodging like crazy, had SO much fun. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I just kept going around in circles and figured out the mechanics, and then BOOM got the 5 minute achievement. First try. LOVED IT. Now I will say, I COMPLETLY understand why MANY others hate it. Have many guildys, who even joined up together, have trouble with it and hated it.

I do have a question though for the dev team I would like answered. (Either in a official forum post or even a PM is fine) Are you adding raid mechanics or things similar to them to solo and Living Story content to get people used to them for if they go into raids? I mean I like it and its fine by me. But it seems like most others don’t like it.

For the storyline itself. Yep, felt to short. And I wish for a storyline heavy chapter soon, even if its mostly in maps already ingame, (I don’t need a new map) just to get answers to the MANY questions we have. For Braham going and dissing us at the end. What is funny is I didn’t get mad at him. In fact I understood him completely. I have gone through similar circumstances in real life, and know what he’s going through. A mom that was never there, yet EVERYONE praised and respected her. He didn’t, because she was never there for HIM. But then just as he is starting to warm up to the idea of liking her again…..she dies. And not just death by age, but a horrific, traumatic death IN FRONT OF HIM. He is filled with rage, grief, anger, disappointment, hating himself for hating her, hating opening up to get hurt. He just wants it to END. Emotions and grief are railroading logic and reasoning atm. Which…..I know from personal experience and people I know in real life and ones I work with, MANY people do themselves in traumatic instances. So it made sense. And…..its long for this one. sigh I’m a idiot and too wordy, hope you guys read this all and the next one!