I eneded up going on a bit of a rant so I have outlined this in order to make it easier for those looking for specific information.
~~~Technical/History~~~
First let me say that I was constantly crashing both in and out of HoT zones ever since I returned to the game. Prior to leaving I would crash after a few hours of playing but that was no big deal. Back then I was also able to run with medium-high custom settings and still get 30-40 fps. This was acceptable to me though it may not be for some. Prior to returning I had upgraded my video card and was shocked to find that I was averaging about 12 fps with the same settings while sitting in town and would get something like 2 fps while doing things such as the meta in DS. Dropping ALL of my settings to the lowest possible setting has yielded no boost in fps in town and I am around 8 fps in DS. I even tried swapping my video cards back out and the results were even worse.
After crashing out on the final CS in DS last night and the following run failed horribly I was inordinately upset to say the least. I resolved to install the 64 bit client, which I did this morning. I got absolutely no fps or performance boost of any kind from installing it however I did notice that I was able to remain online for over 3 hours before crashing and this did include a run in DS. However after that crash my client didn’t want to start up again. After rebooting I noticed that I was once again crashing more often. This, however, may have been due simply to the fact that I was running the meta in DS back to back.
So after finally having run it enough times and opening enough pods to get my machetes down to a manageable number I thought to myself 15 is doable and proceeded to open pods. At only 5 pods in my game disconnects and puts me back at the log in screen. Assuming that this was simply a network disconnect I immediately log back in. I was gone for no longer than 30 seconds! However when I got back I was in a different instance of the DS map and was unable to rejoin the instance that I had disconnected from. That is when I got this odd network message, which made no sense and ended up here.
~~~Fundamental Views~~~
Though I understand the outcry for ArenaNet to make it possible to reenter a map after having been disconnected I think everyone is missing the simple fact that in every other aspect of the game, to my knowledge, you do an “event” you get a reward. That may be in the form of an on screen chest or a physically manifested chest in the game or both and that is it. This new content where you get “keys” as rewards is about the most idiotic thing I have heard of in 16 years of MMO gaming (across MANY different games).
~~~Begin Rant~~~
You spend 30 minutes trying to make sure everyone gets into the same map and getting the map organized. This is followed by an hour and a half, IF you are extremely lucky to get in with a skilled group, doing the events. Once you have completed the event chain you then have to sort your inventory of all the junk you have collected as fast as possible and buy any items that you may need quickly while hoping you have enough room before going to open pods. For the task of opening these pods you are given 15? minutes. These pods are not even all located in the same place and some of the places are hard to get to and/or need certain mastery in order to get to. On top of that, it isn’t like you can teleport directly to the outside of these places no you have to teleport to a waypoint close to them. Then you run around, hoping not to get killed by the random mobs and bosses even, while you try to open these pods. Not only that but you are probably going to have to try to sort your inventory yet again WHILE preforming this task. While these pods contain other items as well the Crystaline ore that you get from them is now used as both a currency and a crafting item. Supposing you use all of your machetes to open the pods you are looking at an average of about 15-20 ore per run. Now you must hurry back to the vendor at the very end of the map and hope you can make it there in time to buy what you couldn’t afford on your previous visit which took place immediately after killing the final boss.
Assuming you have made it through this tangled mess of tasks that in and of themselves should have a reward associated with their completion but obviously don’t, you then spend the next thirty minutes sorting through this tangled mass of items that you have somehow barely managed to fit in your inventory. All in all you have just spent a good 3 hours of your life for about 20 items and if you are lucky a few gold! Not only that but you can’t even buy ANYTHING for less than 50 ore plus some coin on top of that. To make matters worse some of these items cost upwards of 250 ore while others, the runes to be specific, cost 100 ore chances are you need 6 of them! That brings the total just for a set of runes to 600 ore. 600(ore)/20 (ore yield per run)*3(hours per run)=90 hours or 3.75 days worth of time. I guess you best hope that you don’t need more than a single set.
~~~Closing Statements~~~
Please tell me that I am not the only one that sees the sheer idiocy in this.
Again sorry for the rant but this is probably the one thing keeping me sane right now due to the fact that the one thing that would normally keep me sane is driving me insane.