Guild Wars 2

So the demo map is 1/3 the size of the actual map and corresponds pretty well to 1/3 of any of the old maps. As well, the demo gives you an overworld look at the xpack are which seems to be about the same size as HoT’s overworld. Mounts make the world feel even smaller from there.

Anet just gotta keep breaking my heart. peace

notebene.3190:

Honestly, what was the point of that?

I tried reading your post but this was really the only thing I found worthwhile in it. I think you should meditate on it.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Duhh I need everything spelled out for me because despite wanting to engage in a discussion about the game I can’t be assed to keep up on relevant info

lol

Wanze.8410:

Well, you´re still here, so all seems fine to me.

Yeah, just superimposing whatever you need onto people to back up what you want to believe certainly isn’t evidence of a deluded person. :P

Omne.4603:

WTB response from Colin.

I just read the article linked in the op.

Did I really just read a whole paragraph telling me how ‘syncing up the servers with the power of night and day’ is this great new innovation bravo anet? Jesus Anet is bad off if they need to pass off the concept of timing as some new innovation.

Dervish would be a good reason to log in.

Two years for one drop. I’m thinking back to all the “no grinding” promises and it’s just lol.

zeromius.1604:

Think about all that Living Story content that you got to enjoy as an early adopter that newer players don’t.

Okay, this was pretty funny.

Things can be announced by devs without them getting fired if the company as a whole approves it. The question is why doesn’t Anet have anything approvable to say?

Logged on to Tarnished Coast today, everywhere was dead. Used to be one of the biggest servers but now you’re lucky to see anyone in the open world.

GW2 is dead, if it wasn’t the front page would be shouting about something other than selling a lot of games 2 years ago and winning some awards even further back than that. GW2 keeps going on sale as well, never a good sign.

I just checked the game out again. Anet, I’ve been with GW since prophecies and I’ve stuck by through the good and the bad, but you are truly letting me down. This living story is like something a particularly unimaginative teenager would write. I don’t write that to specifically insult anyone but it is really, truly bad. Who is kidding who at Anet to let this pass?

I’ve come to go through a dreaded ritual every month where I check the GW2 page for anything interesting, and leave empty handed. Today I actually logged in and just couldn’t care. I’m no game designer, I can’t tell you what to do better, but as professionals is this really the best you can do? Are we being unreasonably critical? Are there mitigating circumstances? Can we get any sort of honest communication about where this is heading? What happen to the open developers who wanted to share the design process with us?

Dude, you gotta take care of those adds.

Nayru.4537:

No weapon should be account bound, only soul bound.

Think of the poor Engineer who loots Dusk.

And the pact are also struggling to establish a forward base in the Straits of Devastation well after you get to Caen Shadowfain. It’s kind of a lot to ask that the entire gameworld change every time you advance.

They’re undead, just tell yourself they’re too stupid to know the guy they’re talking to is dead. Same for the Svanir, except in my case that would be easier to believe. :P

Should Precursors and Legendaries be account bound on acquire? I think so. At present they’re huge swingers in the economy, driving up prices across the board. Even worse, seeing a legendary with it’s associated effect is becoming commonplace, lowering the desire to even obtain them and removing quite a bit of the mystique they have; anyone with a credit card can get one with enough desire without ever having to leave LA (as a matter of fact, of 15 Eternity owners I asked, those that replied unanimously said they’d purchased theirs with a credit card, and most went on to identify it as gold purchased through 3rd parties!), and with 3rd party sellers out-competing A-Net on gold prices, the odds of that money ever seeing A-Net’s pocket, and therefore being put back into the game in the form of improvements, is not difficult to imagine.

Binding the precursors might bring back the mystery, with not every individual capable of finding a precursor necessarily willing to put for the effort to turn it into a legendary. It would also take away a large reason for players to turn to 3rd party markets for gold, since some of the coolest items (and therefore biggest sinks) being removed from the economy.

Botting is a large issue, and needs to be addressed, but precursors themselves are a symptom that could be easily cured to the net benefit of us all.

As it stands the only thing a Legendary tells you about someone at present is that they have a credit card, not that they’ve done a lot.

Soul bind precursors and I think you’d solve a lot of problems with different parts of the game.

Prophecies was terrible and people were questioning the future of the game then. Factions and Nightfall turned it into my single favorite multiplayer game of all time.

Guild Wars 2 is terrible and people are questioning it’s future. I assume the expansions/content updates will turn it into my new favorite multiplayer game of all time.

So what I’m trying to say here is yeah it’s kind of lame at present but that’s par for the course.

There are four tiers to autonomy we can see in the risen as laid out by the story:

- The Eyes/Mouths/Toenails of Zhatian have moderate autonomy and can think forthemselves a the level of a person but are still bound to Zhaitan’s will.

- The combatant risen, those with the tools necessary to combat effectively, have almost no autonomy except that which allows them to fight in Zhaitan’s name against Zhaitan’s enemies without his conscious command, and organize allies into the fray. Risen despoiler/corruptor/giants etc.

- The non-combat humanoid risen, villagers and the like, still fight for Zhaitan but aren’t bent toward his goals typically, they have what might be considered less than zero autonomy and are basically meat puppets. When not actively craving human flesh their minds kind of go into autopilot, going through familiar motions that have been hardwired throughout their previous lives.

- Wild risen, clams/chickens/grubs and the like, which are essentially machines and perform the same repetitive tasks until they wear out.

You guys are way off, here, I took the liberty of highlighting the map for you guys so you could accurately see the features as laid out. Istan is clearly just off the coast of Elonia, the risen Orr is apparent and the only real problem with modern Kryta is the squished-in feel of the Sea of Sorrows.

It takes more effort and thought to kill a group of risen than it did to kill Zhaitan. What happened to the bosses of GW1 that would tear apart unprepared groups?

Hell, subject alpha, a failed experiment by one krewe, could probably mop the floor with Zhaitan if there was a way to spawn them in the same room.

Chiming in to say Treesus is really aggravating, from his awful voice acting to his complete naivete when it comes to anything and everything. It’s devastating hard to care about him, and very easy to resent him making every decision (under the guise of “consulting the player” with his options.)

At present, Ctrl+Shft+H removes the hud, which is good for roleplaying as it removes a lot of clutter that might otherwise take you out of the game. This is nice, but it’s not very easy to do anything in this mode! I’d like to suggest a roleplaying mode, one where pressing a combination such as Ctrl+Shft+R removes most of the hud, but leaves a miniature skillbar (perhaps in the corner?) A minimalist life gauge + endurance bar, and only the text entry box (not the full chat box, just the portion used to enter text.) Optionally could be a minimalist party list, for those who want to get their PvE on but keep things on the RP.

Secondly, are there any significant barriers in the way of a first person camera? I’d like to be able to take a walking tour of some of the amazing locations in GW2 from my character’s perspective!

I believe Koss on Koss is just a reference to a real book that was written called “someone on someone”. I really wish I could remember who “someone” was just so I could give you the actual title.

A-Net has a very strong interest in story (most of the main storyline aside, unfortunately) and we should keep in mind that with A-Net, larger storylines are often crafted from smallers ones on the fly, but also that A-Net isn’t a stranger to throwing out the pieces and slowly putting it together in front of us. I feel the uncategorized fractal is very obviously part of a larger overall story, one that connects Dessa’s origin, her ‘boyfriend’ (I can’t get over that, haha), the consortium, and the fractal itself.

So what do we know? Here are the facts, along with some reasonable extrapolations in my opinion:
- Dessa is an Asura who comes from a Tyria (probably ours) during a time between the end of GW1 and several years prior to the beginning of GW2. The evidence for this is her reference to Lion’s Arch as a pirate city, which was only ever true during the intervening time between games. We think she isn’t from the future, as she uses older model golems and for sanity’s sake we’ll rule out some kind of retro-futurism.

- Dessa is disturbed by the events of the uncategorized fractal, and noticeably has to pull herself together through the events. She maintains a cool disassociation during the fractal, a tone that is missing from all other fractals. Clearly she is avoiding something, that isn’t entirely common to Asura, especially Krewe leaders.

- Dessa, at some point, loses a loved one because of events set in motion by the Consortium. We also know the Consortium has kept an eye on her, and for some reason has opened a portal to her lab in the mists. Dessa is under the assumption that she is receiving official aid, and is not aware that it is through the Consortium. It could be that the Consortium wishes to use Dessa’s research to make a killing in the vacation market, who wouldn’t want a vacation to an infinite variety of exotic locales located just steps from home…

- Within the uncategorized fractal itself we encounter a large Asuran ruin, filled with old-model golems modified into companion pets by a male Asura who is clearly suffering from some sort of mental debility and it is very strongly suggested that it was brought on by extended solitude. He even goes so far as to disbelieve the existence of our heroes as they fight his catbots. He references some sort of accident, using words such as screaming, falling, etc.

Now, with this information I’d like to make a guess:

First, the raving asura is someone close to Dessa, possibly a former Krewe member but more likely her lost boyfriend. Something happened to him, likely a mishap with the Mistlock device (I’m assuming the mistlock is the name of the machine Dessa uses to lock on to fractals) which ejected him into an unknown fractal. Did the Consortium push him into testing the limits of the device in their avarice? She does hint that the Consortium led him to his fate, suggesting that she was not the decider in that scenario. Now, to me this is a very good start but it also raises an interesting question: Why doesn’t Dessa request a rescue, no matter how insane he is wouldn’t she want him back? The entire theory kind of falls apart under that light. Tentatively, we could say that the accident locked him into the fractal as a disturbance, and we all know how disturbances need to be handled, unfortunately. Could we be extracted before the full execution of our duties to save the life of a loved one Dessa can no longer reach? In this scenario, the actual location of the fractal is secondary to the inhabitants, it could be this was Rata Sum years after some cataclysm, but there simply isn’t enough info yet, and to me that question starts getting answered by answering the ones we have already. I’m sure we’ll be revisiting this fractal again in the future.