Guild Wars 2

We’re currently more of a casual guild, and have a number of members playing the game for the first time and anyone is welcomed to join us to either learn the game with us or to provide a veteran presence.

Feel free to add me up in game, and I can send you an invite if you’re interested, or simply talk/answer some questions you might have. (To those who aren’t aware, the forum name is also the account name, which you can use to add people in game.)

After reading the OP and what Crimson Clouds has posted, I would agree that making a vanquish for each zone would not be very viable as there are a lot of enemies and some of them can be in quite obscure places.

Instead, may I suggest that you change it to dungeons instead? Maybe make it a new mode for each existing dungeon in which there would be generic bosses and mobs around. The mobs would all be elite, and there would be a few champions around and maybe a legendary as a “final boss” as per dungeon tradition. In this mode however, you must clear all mobs, bosses and trash to claim the reward.

I believe this would (or should) be an abuse of the LFG system, so it may be reportable. If it’s a repeated occurrence, and/or if one of those PuG’s submits a support ticket with more info on it about you and your guild, then you will likely receive some form of punishment. I would not condone this kind of behavior myself, as it is selfish and very inconsiderate.

Some easy and obvious alternative would be to either have that one guild mate change armor, ask another guild mate to kill the spider queen then switch out rather than tricking an innocent, or simply not use the stacking approach.

I believe there is a 3(?) day period wherein new members could not access the guild bank; not sure if this restriction is only for withdraw or if it affects deposit as well.

Other than that, I am not sure what the cause could be as there isn’t much information to work with.

What I find unfair is that when people don’t read or follow this thread and expect other forum goers or even Anet to take them seriously.

Also, things are not “unfair” just because you want it and it’s not given to you. It’s unfair when you expect things to always go your way and complain when it doesn’t.

Been on Sea of Sorrows since 3-day head-start.

I believe that the population is an indication of how many accounts call that server their home rather than how much people are on that server at the moment. Anet claims they’re more complicated than that, but that’s the simple version.

Shylark.4951:

Right now my Luck is at 23% and I am level 42… I have used them since I first got them I think 100 luck points gives 1%…

This number increases as your Magic Find grows, requiring more luck per +1% MF.

That kind of system would in fact make even more people get 21 or more precursors from all the grinding and trains and stuff they already have and will probably come up with if that is implemented. While the more casual players will still be stuck with nothing (or at least less than those). This kind of system favors those who have more time to do mindless grinding in that it gives them an unfair advantage. Personally, I’d rather see someone with 21 precursors and myself with none and know that that was just due to RNG rather than him grinding his kitten off because he can.

Note that I’m only using precursors as a reference point since that is the end of your loot chain.

I don’t think there’s a way to change a character’s race at the moment (nor do I think there will ever be due to personal story and all that). From a game-play perspective, racial skills, personal story and appearance are the major aspects of where race is involved.

I would caution you from simply deleting characters as there may be future implications that you may or may not realize. Some of these are a character’s age (for b-day and titles), trait system overhaul (which many people seem to find annoying), and the loss of all soulbound items (effective or literal).

Take some time to decide whether or not changing your race is worth deleting your previous character. If you have an extra character slot, you can just create a new character and keep the old one should you ever decide you liked Asurans after all.

…I really don’t get your logic. There are far more armor skins (sets or otherwise) than outfits, far far more than 4 times. So why is it that you fixated on the 20% of people wearing them? I would say the amount of sales those items have gotten in the gem store would be a better approximate, but then that data is only for Anet, as does the decision of whether or not those outfits are good or not. Further more, this brings us back to your initial post: Anet hasn’t made all that much outfits to begin with. What are you complaining about?

Your next paragraph is fine (somewhat) if you were arguing for them to release more armor sets alone, but does nothing when you argue that outfits are the cause of them not doing so. I don’t really know how much armor skins are out there, or if how much they’ve added (not really an armor skin aficionado), but they have released a lot of weapon skins along with the LS2 if that helps.

You’re comparing two very different games to design armor for. Designing armor for humans only is a lot easier than having to design for five races, clipping and all that. This also doesn’t really help your initial argument, which you’ve yet to make any significant case for.

JUN YANG.4328:

as you say the last armor they come out its April. now its mid-Oct. some player they like to wear their outfit. let me ask you. how many percentage will be? i count less then 20% most people still like mix and match.

Okay. I’ll assume you didn’t take my advice on the reading bit, so I’ll bite… How and where did you get that 20%? And correct me if I’m wrong, but I highly doubt that liking armor sets to mix and match and wearing outfits are not mutually exclusive. And to answer your question, I wouldn’t know because I don’t speak for the entirety of the GW2 community. What I can say is that I’ve seen a fair amount of people wearing the Halloween outfits lately (whether they recently bought those or are just putting them on for the spirit of the upcoming event is beyond me).

Also, that’s for the gem store full armor set that I can think of. Dunno ‘bout you, but there are a lot of armor skins out there that aren’t in the gem store.

JUN YANG.4328:

anet can you stop making outfit. can you more care about player and not money!!

outfit not = armor skin or armor
you selling 700gem for 1 outfit instead of armor skin. The true is that save up your labor fee to make big profit.
(1 outfill need 1 design but 1 amor skin need 3 design.)

if armor skin selling for 800gem in the first place , outfit should only cost 300gem

i want new armor skin to do mix and match. todays skin its too limited .

let me ask you guys how long you havent seen a armor skin show up on TP?

I would ask that you try to read this little sticky in the Guild Wars 2 Discussion subforum.

I believe the outfits they made available in the gem store for Halloween are not new ones but ones that were released in the previous years’ events. So they haven’t really been making a ton of outfits either. Last armor set that I can think of off the top of my head for the gem store would be the Incarnate Light Armor from the April 2014 Feature Pack.

Also, Outfits are not like armors. They may not be able to be mix-n-match’d, but they are available to all your characters (more accessible now after the Sept. 9 Feature Pack) and do not cost transmutation charges to re-apply. So I would think the 700 gems is a fair price for that.

Three simple letters that make up an acronym is likely the cause of all this: R N G.

Sorry to say, but your personal experience does not equate to a large enough sample size to properly determine how well the RNG system is working. I for one rarely ever get any rares let alone exotics since day one, and I’ve been playing from the betas and the 3-day head-start; although I will admit I’ve taken breaks every once in a while, but that’s not the issue.

If your luck is taking a turn for the worse, I would just like to say that there are some of us who have yet to taken a turn for the better.

Here is a post from Gaile about server population, albeit a bit dated.

As mentioned above, with the recent changes the only thing servers are used for is to determine allegiances in WvW. Aside from that, you can do most everything with anyone from the same region and benefit from guild buffs regardless of what server you are in (again, as long as you’re in the same region).

Then it’s simply because of how the skills are designed. The auto-attack skill is there regardless of what the off-hand weapon is (if any at all). I would imagine it’d be an annoying task to program characters to alternately shoot from either hand if they had dual pistols equipped but never when something else or nothing is equipped in the off-hand. Same for any time a character may dual wield two of the same weapon class (ie. dual swords/axes/maces/daggers…).

That is likely due to your auto-attack skill being skill number 1, which is assigned to your main hand weapon (in case of dual wielding).

You may change your auto-attack skill to a different skill (right click on desired skill), but be aware that in most cases only the 1st skill has no cooldown or initiative cost. So if you do do that, your character won’t auto-attack at all and would automatically use the auto-cast skill whenever possible.

Yeah, if you’re still learning sPvP, it would be better for you and for your would-be teammates if you practiced in Custom Arenas first, maybe with a few guild mates or friends.

Solo Queue is ranked matches, and as bad as verbal abuse goes, it does have some rationality as people do not like losing ratings because someone was still learning how to play or how each map works.

Edit: Not condoning verbal abuse or anything, just stating their reasons.

As people have pointed out already, servers are only used to determine WvW allegiances. As WvW can get very intense especially in the Tier 1 servers, entering as a new player may not be the best decision. Even if you’re with a large zerg all the time, it doesn’t help you learn to play the game or your class. Pick a low tier server that does well in their tier so that you can still get decent buffs from your WvW server.

The megaserver system has made you able to reap benefits from your guild no matter what server you are in (as long as you’re in the same region, NA or EU) and also enables you to play along side people from other servers without the need to guest over all the time. The issue you are having (full servers) is not a direct result of the megaserver system (at least not to my knowledge or opinion).

Server population is determined by a number of things (and I don’t think the amount of people currently online in that server is one of them). The simplest way to look at it is the amount of accounts that call that server their home server. In that sense, it makes sense that the top tier servers are always full, as people tend to flock towards the winning servers more.

While this inconvenience may frustrate you, you need to understand that this is not something that Anet has full control over. If they don’t cap server populations, then you might soon see servers in the lowest tiers nearly empty while the top tier ones being over populated that you can’t even enter WvW because of the long queue.

If you want to WvW with your friends and family, either ask them to move to a less populated server or simply be patient and wait for the server to open up some space. I am not 100% sure, but I have heard that Anet does occasionally increase server caps. Otherwise, being in a different server does not impede your ability to play ANY other aspects of the game with your friends and family nor does it prevent you from contributing or benefiting from any NA guild.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I’m not entirely convinced on that. If I recall right, the very reason why Anet abandoned GW1’s skill-picking and the ability to dual-class was to make the game easier to balance, so on this front, it should be actually easier to design new skills because there’s less possibilities and interactions to consider.

If a new profession comes out in GW2, we wouldn’t need new armor models. We don’t have profession-exclusive armor.

In terms of story, your personal storyline for each race was combined together at the second half of the PS, after the Pact arc, so any new storylines would most likely be the same for all races.

The reason why we don’t get as much skills as in GW1 is probably also to do with how skills are learned and used in GW2 as compared to GW1 than it simply being a balancing issue.

If a new class comes out, it’d have to be one that brings a unique and sensible addition to the array of classes. At the moment, the classes they have already cover pretty much most of the conventional RPG classes that fit into the theme and lore (at least from my perspective). Would it be great to have a new class? Sure, as long as it doesn’t seem half-baked and fits well into the lore.

If they introduced a new race, their personal story shouldn’t be about fighting Zhaitan. If so, they’d not only have to add a new story to that new race, but also change all the stories of the existing races to include this “sixth race”. They wouldn’t have a “representative” in Destiny’s Edge, who introduces the player to the three orders. They’d also have to add/change npc’s from that race to the Pact soldiers to make it more realistic. All this in my opinion shows how unrealistic it is to add a new race with their personal story similar to the original five’s.

Most enemies do telegraph their attacks (aside from their basic attacks), so it may just be an issue of learning how the enemies move and act if it’s a general case. If it’s a specific case, then stating where you’re having trouble with may help in others giving more specific advice.

On a side note, what class are you running, and what stats do you have on your gear?

Ashen.2907:

I was not replying to the OP’s comment about the elements you mention. I was pointing out to the poster I quoted that not competing with someone is not the same as being engaged in teamwork with them.

As to competing to tag mobs, I see it almost every time I play GW2. Not to the same degree as in some other games though..

The post you quoted to reply to is from the OP (check the username), that’s why I said OP. They also said the opposite of competition, not the lack of competition. Those are different.

If you meant competing to tag mobs as in when 80’s go to lower level zones and just kill mobs too fast for newer players to tag, that’s unfortunate, but like you said to a much lesser degree than other games. I personally try to only attack mobs that lower level people tag when I’m in low level areas and there are other people around me.

Bloonis.9528:

In a game with clear roles, a tank will die if the healer is sleeping. Yes, that needs cooperation to succeed. In Guild Wars, cooperation is limited to everyone going over to the downed person and pressing the action key.

Also, almost every dungeon in Guild Wars can be done solo. I don’t see the cooperation needed here. In other games, no dungeon can be completed solo. In some , you can complete them with a couple lesser people but they have to be really well equipped, a game side that is also missing from Guild Wars. It is extremely easy to gear up. It should be easy, but not that easy.

When all the pve content can be done with any class and any build, the importance of the classes and builds is zero. In other games, you can’t complete anything without a healer or a tank.

Your post sort of contradicts itself since what you’re mostly stating is about dungeons and even in GW2, without the proper build (and to a lesser extent class) it would be a tall order to solo dungeon paths. This means that for the majority of the players, they will require a full party to complete said dungeons in the first place. Also, another thing that is different in GW is that gear is not the almighty divider amongst players, but rather skill. You cannot simply overpower enemies (for the most part) with just higher numbers, but you’ll need to learn what the enemy does and act accordingly.

Your trinity of healer, tank, dps logic doesn’t work in GW2 because of how the game was designed. Cooperation between those three in other games are usually limited to instanced parts of the games, wherein the party is formed beforehand and the roles are defined. In the other parts of the game however, that trinity is not needed (at the very least not to the extent of when inside a dungeon).

Ashen.2907:

A lack of competition is not a definition of teamwork. My employer is not competing against Anet, that does not mean we are engaged with them in any form of teamwork. My character working on an event chain in one zone is not engaged with a character in another zone just because we are not competing against each other.

I agree with much of the OP but there is competition between players in PVE. The reward system ensures it.

Those are drastic cases which serve no purpose, really. I think what the OP meant was that instead of people fighting over tagging mobs or trying to complete their quests or gathering resource nodes, they can instead help each other out. The lack of competition between players can help create an environment where cooperation is prevalent.

See someone downed fighting a Champion? Jump in and revive them then help kill the Champion and you can reap the rewards from it.

See someone defending an outpost by themselves? Rush to their aid and get credit for the event.

See a rich orichalcum vein surrounded by mobs that someone else is fighting? Go help kill those mobs and you can both mine the node.

It doesn’t mean that there won’t be people who would ignore downed people, or people doing an event or fighting mobs and just run pass them to gather the node, but those are player problems not the game’s.

Since there’s a distinction between soul-bound items and account-bound items already in place, I doubt they would make soul-bound transferable between characters in the same account (since that’s what account-bound items are).

Rewards from leveling are not meant to be salvaged or sold, not too sure on the mystic forge bit. I would suggest you to try to see if you can select those items for the forge first, and if so, you may just get a fourth item to go along with it.

Always happy to hear people enjoying the game rather than simply complaining about it. Your points hold true for me as well. Although if you do try sPvP, I would suggest try it out on custom arenas (with maybe a few friends) first, as with any sort of PvP in any MMO, things can get a bit heated in there.

If you’re playing to learn a class, I wouldn’t suggest playing in EotM as it’s mostly just train farming there. Try playing through regular PvE, maybe run a dungeon or two with friends and guild mates.

As for which class to play, maybe look into Elementalists (though they can be hard to play for some since they are quite fragile) for high DPS and AoE’s with some support (water) or maybe Guardians with good support and pretty decent DPS and AoE’s (and they can wield greatswords).

As fun as playing as Skritts sound, there are a lot of problems with that. As mentioned a few times above, they’re not the most intelligent creatures around, and will only have a decent intellect when there are quite a few of them gathered together. This makes individual heroes very unlikely.

The second is their culture. They aren’t heroes; they’re thieves. On almost all occasions wherein Skritts help the Pact in the personal story, they act as thieves, scouts, or other non-combat covert ops. They’re fun to watch and interact with, but they aren’t playable race material.

Edit: The closest races that could be made playable are probably the Tengu or Kodan, and maybe the Centaurs (from Elona, or if the Modniirs can make peace with the humans) due to their more established and unified presence.

Vix.6730:

These are the kind of excuses which has put GW2 into a wretched state. We can’t have no new zones because they are persistent and Anet may have to work harder? Utter nonsense. We can’t have new skills because the bases are covered? More nonsense. The skill system in GW1 was perfect. Players would spent eons cooking up unique builds. You had the freedom to make what you wanted to make. So what if Anet spent more time balancing classes, the game was fun. Players enjoyed themselves. If it wasn’t for the incredible success of GW1 there wouldn’t be a GW2.

The excuses you relay to indicate a lazy developer. If you don’t believe this read into why dungeons will no longer be made. Your answer awaits.

I like how you completely missed the point of my post because it was out of context. Excuses? What I said are not excuses, they are the reality of things. I never said it was impossible to do or that Anet is right to not do those, I simply stated that they are more complex and thus should not be compared to GW1 timeline.

Go compare it to WoW timeline or something if you want a better comparison. How long did it take for them to finish up Vanilla WoW and then move to Burning Crusade? 2 years after they announced it. That is how long it takes for a big company to pump out a good expansion for a persistent world. Now imagine the task to do that for something like GW2 where each zone has its own set of events and stuff running independently. That is not something you can just say you will do in a few months like for GW1. Don’t go calling stuff “utter nonsense” when you clearly have zero understanding on what I am talking about.

As for the skill system, you’re talking about a completely different aspect to it. What if you had to either pay gold to unlock skills or go do certain tasks to learn them like the trait system does currently for the traits? Because in GW1, you don’t learn skills by simply using skill points in your hero menu. It can’t work like that because the way skills are used in these games are different. If your answer to this is to make the way skills work the same as GW1 then that’s no answer that’s simply you asking for a new campaign in GW1.

Your last statement in the first paragraph doesn’t even connect to the previous parts.

Again, I am not making excuses to indicate lazy developers, I am stating the difference between the very nature of GW1 and GW2 and why you shouldn’t say “Well, GW1 had this, this, and that! Why can’t GW2 have those?” Simply because it doesn’t work like that.

All your post shows is that you’re unsatisfied for some weird reason and that you believe attacking people who have a difference in opinion to you helps.

Based on your responses, I don’t think you’re that open minded to accept counter-arguments. So good luck with feeling frustrated/angry/miserable/whatever it is. Your logic fails to make any sense to me, so I bid you a good life.

Where are you getting those info from? Could you link them? Cause I don’t recall any of those… If you mean the every 2 weeks for a LS2 update, I already said they probably paused that for the September Feature Pack.

GW1 and GW2 are fundamentally different games. It’s easy to design lots of explorable areas when they are all instanced as compared to a living breathing world in GW2. As for classes and skills, GW1’s system of skills made it more difficult to gain skills and was centered around skill combinations. With the backlash of how the trait system was reworked, I don’t think Anet plans to make the skill system similar to GW1. The current classes in GW2 also have almost all bases covered, so there really isn’t much else to add to those classes that wouldn’t ruin lore or immersion. Your arguments fall short when you take actual context into play.

Weren’t they talking about Guild Raids or such in the CDI already?

Most of what you said basically can be summarized into a request for raids and raid type dungeons (like Aetherpath). Your complaint on how dungeons are run are more for the community than Anet; Anet isn’t the one telling them they should speed run stuff.

I don’t think Anet ever promised any new classes, skills, or what. They promised a living world and so far, I’d say they have delivered quite well. I believe they also promised no expansions, so… the fact that there isn’t an expansion means they’ve kept their promise.

Most of the regularly added stuff is for the gem store, but that’s really because those are the easiest to make. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe there are different teams for making gem store content and LS content.

The pause in the living story probably had more to do with the September Feature Pack then whatever conspiracy you believe it to be.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

But I’m not just focussing on LS1 and SAB. I gave those as examples among a list of many issues. I gave a list of basically everything that people have had, and currently have, issues with that I can think of.

You’re asking me to ignore a part of the history of the content updates when giving my opinion of what the future of content updates holds. You also labelled a different criticism of ANet as a “jab”, rather than a criticism, even when I explained why it was relevant to the context.

It seems that you’re actively trying to give ANet as much benefit of the doubt as possible. This is fine until you take it so far as to actually criticise people for pointing out things they’ve done. By all means champion LS2 as a sign of a bright future. I’d love it to be one. But you can’t jump on me for giving facts in order to explain the skepticism that many of us have towards ANet’s direction for the game.

If you read my post carefully, you’ll see I said you focus on those, not solely focusing on those. There is a difference. If you want to do like you said in a previous post: to give the full story, then you must give both the good and the bad parts. So far, most people who post simply post about the bad parts, disregarding any good that Anet has done. So much so that I tend to simply give the good parts some attention.

Again, I never said to ignore them, but to give more focus to LS2 rather than LS1 and SAB. Your opinion is your own, and I’ve already stated that if you choose not to shift focus then I will not try to dissuade you any more.

I called your criticism a jab, because it is a criticism that is out of context. In your argument, you start off by explaining how LS2 is in your opinion a small part of a larger picture and jump to how Anet places “superficial band-aids” and how LS2 is supposedly one of those. There is no connection between the two. How does LS2’s role in the bigger picture lead into Anet’s reputation? That is why I called it a jab.

I give Anet the benefit of the doubt because they have shown that they are changing how LS2 runs as compared to LS1, not simply for no reason. I am not criticizing you for pointing things out, but rather on not giving the full story as you so claim to do so. You arguments are better than most posts that simply say the game is dying and give no reason or cause, but I am stating that you’re missing out on some points. Whether you agree with me or not, I will no longer argue. I am simply stating my point of view.

Posts that say they are frustrated because they thought GW2 could be this, that, or something else are entirely unarguable because they do not serve to give any purpose above simply stating the poster’s dissatisfaction. There is no discussion to be had. So I am not singling you out because I want to bash you, but rather because your posts are actually something that can be built upon.

Here is a general guideline on Anet’s policies in these regards.

Edit: Also, be aware that some of the things that drop may be account/soul-bound.

The server only matter when you’re interested in playing WvW. With the megaserver, PvE play can be done across servers and map instances are not separated by servers. Even guilds and their upgrades are accessible to all members across all servers within their region (NA, EU, and China).

CrashTestAuto.9108:

We can’t just hit the reset button because of LS2. What happened before that is still relevant to understanding what ANet’s approach to content is, and also relevant to community feeling towards GW2 (which is VERY important to the future of the game).

Moreover, LS2 is not only small, but it is a small part of a bigger picture. SAB is still turned off, we still have no idea of what is coming in the future, and we have no indication that we’ll be getting large permanent content updates beyond the LS. Moreover, ANet have developed a reputation over the last two years for putting superficial band-aids over bigger problems, which LS2 plausibly represents regarding permanent content, and the OP should be given that information.

Yes, LS2 is a step forward. But it isn’t so big a step forward as to justify ignoring everything else that has happened in two years. We can and should give the whole story, but what I said is definitely part of that story.

It isn’t a reset button, but rather a shift in focus. I never said it was irrelevant to understanding Anet’s approach nor was it irrelevant to how the community feels. I said it was irrelevant to give as an example of what they were doing for the future. You cannot use LS1 as an example to say that all (or a majority of the content) they will ever give are temporary content.

For your second point, LS2 is arguably the largest part of the content releases (at least for the permanent ones). SAB is not really part of the main game; it was a game within a game. Is it sad that it is currently off? Yes, but that doesn’t diminish what GW2 is. Other parts of content updates are the recurring events (festivals and holidays) and they are “temporary” by nature. The way GW2 moves forward (or for most MMO’s in fact) is by their lore and story; that makes the LS the largest part of the picture. As for the “superficial band-aids”, that has little place in this discussion than to take a jab at Anet. There will always be problems within MMO’s; although they may seem easy to fix to players, they may not necessarily be so to the developers. You must understand that and learn to move forward. The LS2 is in my opinion not one of these “superficial band-aids”; it is a shift in direction. If the shift you want is for Anet to release expansions, then that is a personal issue.

It is currently only the beginning of that step forward, how big it is is not to be determined by what is has put out in less than half the time LS1 has had. As I said before, I never said that we should ignore everything else, but we should look to LS2 as a beacon of hope (so to speak) as to what Anet could do.

The full story is that although LS1 was made up of mostly temporary content, LS2 has promised to bring more permanent content and has so far delivered (albeit only a little bit in the little time it has been out). I choose to focus on the more recent events of the story and use that as an indication of what is to come; if your choice is to continue to focus on LS1 and SAB then that is your choice, but we will simply have to agree to disagree as there is little chance either of us will convince the other in that scenario.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Which is fine, but we have two options in answering the OP:

1) Speculate about what ANet might do.
2) Give information about the history of the updates thus far.

Yes, it is entirely possible that after Wintersday we’ll be playing as Tengu in February and taking them to Cantha in March. But the only information we have available is the past and present. In the past and present, the vast majority of content has been temporary, with LS2 offering a small amount of content which doesn’t really have replay value over four months. Heck, they haven’t even bothered to turn SAB back on, so we can hardly conclude that they’ve abandoned temporary content.

Again, if LS1 had been released alongside new maps, new classes, paid expanasions etc. then its temporary nature might well have been embraced for making the world feel alive.

See, you’re stumbling back into the same pit as before. LS1 is season 1. It’s done. Over. No longer relevant in determining the future. They’ve stated that they want LS2 to be different, so there is no point in you pointing to LS1 as a point in your argument. Would LS1 have been better with new maps, classes and a paid expansion? That’s arguable, but not the point of this discussion. If that’s what you want to discuss, maybe make a new topic.

Speculating what Anet might do is similar to wistful thinking in that we could either have been luckily correct or horribly wrong. The history of information we should be giving the OP is that LS2 has been different than LS1 and that Anet has stated that they want LS2 to have more permanent content that is available in the Story Journal. LS2 was promised to have permanent content and it has (at least in my opinion) delivered. Is it content that all the players would want to play? Not quite, but then what is?

There has been a shift in direction, however small, and I believe that bringing up information before that shift is really irrelevant to determine the future. That of course doesn’t mean that those events are irrelevant overall. They aren’t there anymore; they are done with; there is nothing we can do anymore. Even with the Story Journal, I can see how adding LS1 events to that would be difficult if not impossible. Instanced versions of LA, Kessex Hills, and other places would require you to still have more than five player attempting those events.

Presently, the current LS has given us permanent content. That is a good sign for the future. Will there still be some temporary content? Recurring ones like festivals and holidays most likely, but temporary content like in LS1 not quite so. At least I would like to believe it to not be so, and given how LS2 is playing out I would say that seems to be the case.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Context is often everything, but so is jamming words into people’s mouths. I never said, nor implied, that other MMOs didn’t have seasonal festivals. In fact, I’ve explicitly said in two posts now that the seasonal festivals are justifiable. That you’re taking things I haven’t said, and used them to suggest I was implying something I outright said the opposite of, is kind of a problem.

There has been, and is, much temporary content, and the LS2 does not make that not the case. It certainly doesn’t make the problems caused by the year and three quarters prior to the LS2 go away. Four short chapters, and about half a map don’t suddenly render the majority of the content since release non-temporary, even if you choose to define “appearing once a year” as such.

So, if you’d like to address the things I say, rather than criticise me and then tell other people I actually meant something else, that’d be appreciated.

To address what you’re saying, the OP was asking about the future of the game, not the past. To bring up something that the company has more or less admitted was not working (making Living Story temporary) is nothing but digging up the past mistakes and offering it as an excuse to prove a point you believe to be true. Anet has since made the LS2 a permanent content; whether this kind of content is your cup of tea is a personal issue and you shouldn’t bring it up to discuss the game’s future (bring it up if you want to discuss your future with the game). It does not render the past content as non-temporary, but it does offer the possibility of more permanent content moving forward which is more important in the context of this discussion.

As you’ve stated, the previous LS ran for almost 2 years while the new one has only had a couple of months. To compare the two now would be irresponsible. You must also realize what a Living Story implies: that it was made to change the world we play in. This doesn’t mean that each chapter has to be in new locations; in fact it makes more sense for part of the changes to be in locations we already know. Since a lot of players complained about them being temporary, only leaving behind their aftermaths (look at LA and Kessex Hills), Anet made them permanent but to do so had to make most of the major events instanced. The world is still changing though with the aftermaths of the events (look at Concordia and Iron Marches).

While having new races would be fun, refreshing, interesting, and all that, they have to do it in a way that makes sense lore-wise. Simply adding new races/classes simply to entice players is a sign of desperation, imo.

The five races we have now are there because they are arguably the five most dominant races in Tyria. It wouldn’t make sense for Quaggans to be a playable race when they aren’t really the aggressive type. Would they be fun to see running around? Yes, and that is why we have the costume brawl tonics. Skritts are even less likely, as stated many times in the story they are not the brightest of creatures, requiring to group up to “share” intellect.

The closest race Anet could release as playable is probably the Tengu (having united their squabbling tribes and formed a unified if a bit xenophobic nation), and I believe they’ve stated that they’re opting to focus more on the five races they already have rather than introducing a new one.

Tachenon.5270:

You can’t say any of the current content isn’t temporary. With NPE they removed content from the starting zones and from the personal story. It was permanent content. Now it’s gone. Which means, no matter how you try to wiggle out of it, it was only here — temporarily. Therefore: temporary content. Not originally intended as such, sure, but it sure as heck turned out that way, eh?

What content will become temporary next?

This really seems like a nitpicking that’s just grasping for straws in all the wrong places. Most every MMO has removed some content at some point with their updates; that doesn’t mean their contents would be considered temporary. I think what you need to understand is that when people say “temporary content”, it is supposed to mean content that the developers have intended to be in the game for a limited time, not content that was there but is not anymore.

If you’re using the second of the two definitions, then there is no way to know which content is permanent or ‘temporary’ until after it is confirmed to be ‘temporary’. This makes it so that ALL content is potentially temporary, which is just a ridiculous way to look at things.

The mechanics with regards to a server’s population is stated to be more complex than simply how many accounts call that server their home server, but that is a good means to measure it. This is not an indication of the current amount of people connected to that server. Having said that, this means that you will need to wait for people to transfer out of the server before you may join (unless others join before you).

This mechanic was put in place to deter people from simply flocking to the top servers while leaving others completely empty. As Sea of Sorrows is a top ranking server in WvW (4th overall, and top in NA tier 2), the wait to get into the server may be quite long.

One alternative is for your friend to transfer out of SoS and join you in a different server, but if you’re dead-set on joining SoS, there is little anyone can do. You will just need to wait and hope some people move out.

Zaxares.5419:

Maybe try the Guild Recruitment forum? There might be an all-female guild looking for new recruits there. Good luck in your search.

If not you could always make one and advertise it there and maybe in game. Good luck as well on your endeavor.

I believe most, if not all events will scale in difficulty with more people, but I don’t think it affects the level of loot. Leveling with a group is generally pretty easy, unless you’re met with a group event. Typically these involve a champion that is more difficult than the normal mobs or a large group of enemies with a few “weaker” champions. These events are also much more complex than regular ones.

You can relearn your character simply by playing around with your level 80. Read up on your skills and traits, and maybe test run on some lower level areas first. Don’t do anything too demanding until you feel like you know what you’re doing (it’ll be good for both you and the people you play with).

You may also opt to roll a new class and while the NPE and the new trait system introduced last April have received many criticisms (mostly from veteran players), do not let those color your experience beforehand. If it happens to not be what you’d like or expected from GW2, then simply continue with your level 80 Guardian.

If you don’t mind a smaller more casual guild, feel free to add me up (I am in Sea of Sorrows server, NA). If not, you can always try asking in any of the five racial capitals or in LA for any guilds that are recruiting.

Welcome back to Tyria.

When you open the first portal, you have 60 seconds to open an exit portal before the first one closes. When the exit portal is opened, both portals stay open for 10 seconds, but can only transport 20 people across. The maximum range at which you can open portals is 5000 units in PvE/WvW and 6000 in PvP.

Having said all that, you don’t have to walk to open the next portal. You may WP to a near enough location (within the 5000 range in PvE) to open the other portal. In your example, the Mesmer traverses the mini-dungeon till the end, opens the entry portal, WP’s to a nearby WP and opens the exit portal.

If you play as the same race and make the same choices (both in character creation and during the personal stories themselves), then you can play the mission once and have it count for both of you. One of you will start it, and once it’s done, the other one will have the option of whether or not to proceed with their own story and stay in the same chapter. Obviously, if you’re planning to play through the story together, they should choose the former.

If you play different races, then one of you may go into their race’s capital city (which is just by where you start after the initial instance) and find and head into the Asuran Gate that leads to Lion’s Arch. Once there, you will find yourself in a plaza with five gates that each lead into each of the race’s capital city. So all you’d need to do is enter the gate with the appropriate race (of the character of the other one) guarding it to enter their race’s capital city and be able to meet up there.

The only thing it would take away from is that you will have to play through each of your own stories separately.

Well, my advice is to find people (or perhaps a newbie friendly guild) to play with. As for the guild that invited you, did they teach you about how to go about representing them? Or what representing means? There are some functions in game that can be quite foreign to people new to MMO’s, and it would be much better for you to join a guild that can teach you about these.

Not sure what time zone you play in, but feel free to add me in your friends list (open contacts with “y” as default, and enter Elsdragon.5109 into the add friends space) and if we’re on at the same time, I can help you out some more.

One advice I can give is to get an Endless Common Clothing Tonic to get a better view of your feet and where you stand. Sometimes, being able to make a jump or falling to your death/frustration may be as simple as positioning. There are a ton of those tonics in the TP and they cost very little.

When having difficulty, it may help to have a friend or guild mate come with you so you can watch them do the jumping bit (hopefully slowly). It also helps to know there are effectively two “kinds” of jump: move + jump and jump + move. The first will get you across larger gaps, but may not be ideal for climbing upwards (like up ledges) as the height of the jump isn’t that high and can sometimes make your character ‘bounce’ backwards. The second is more for climbing upwards since it lets you jump higher than the first. When attempting the second kind, it can sometimes be beneficial to not have up against the ledge when you try it. Take a step back and try to jump.

Other than those general advice, all I can think of is the one you already know: practice.

Good luck to you, and may you get that shiny star by your character name that only others can see.

Interesting, where did I allegedly state you were ignorant?