Guild Wars 2

Hello Gaile, you might want to check your post in the news subforum that you have linked (replying here as I cant do it over there):

[…]If after six hours you find that you still do have your Hall of Monuments rewards, please contact Customer Support for assistance.

I have the feeling that part is missing a “not” as I dont think you want people that have all their rewards to contact support in a few hours. I believe it should be clear for most people what is meant but some might understand it wrong. Unless you want support to get spammed with “I still have my rewards”-tickets in a few hours.

old screenshots? I have a lot of those, I can even dig as far back as the first prerelease Beta Weekend event. looking at them now I have way too many screenshots of way too many occasions, hard to narrow it down to 1 or 2 but I managed to decide on 2 from the first day of the 3-day-headstart (25th of August 2012):

the first one is of my first trip to the Hall of Monuments to get the stuff I earned, only a little bit disappointed that I could not open my old Xunlai-Chest to grab my Materials and such as well
the second one is from my first trip to Lions Arch, admiring the Lionstatue and the fountain around it, not knowing what the poor thing would have to go through

I think what most said is true, that for the expedition to claim the hall you need HoT players, but the hall should be open to people without HoT after it is sucessfully claimed. for the services in the hall: most are the same you can get by going to the guild initative in lions arch and as that is available to everyone once HoT launches everyone should have access to the services you have there in the guild hall as well. just if there are some HoT specific services a guild can unlock later for the hall those might be blocked to players without HoT.
but if claiming and/or entering a guild hall requires to have HoT-access still needs some clarification from the devs, which I hope we will get before the release (and please let everyone at least enter the guild hall after it is claimed, it would otherwise break up the guilds in HoT and coregame players).

tobascodagama.2961:

I’m assuming that the other Legendaries will be released on a similar schedule as the raid wings.

that is possible, but for me it sounded more like at least half of the new legendarys are still WIP. we will have to see when we will actually get them.

we will get the full maps, stories, modes, specializations and so on at the relase date. the only thing they give us later are Raids and the new Legendary weapons (if I missed something, please tell me).
the first Raid will be gated at 3 weeks after release because according to the related post they want us to have the chance to explore and get used to the new content for a while so people are ready when the raids drop – as some parts will require that we have learned some masteries like gliding to survive. I guess this should also allow some players to be ready for raids without completly focusing on gliding mastery or whatever may be needed and rush for it.
for the new legenarys: we only get 3 at first, with more coming in the future but without any ETA, and those 3 will come with the raids, I haven’t heard of a specific reason why but I assume that some part of the crafting process may be connected to raids.

I don’t think Waypoints need the Ley-Lines to work and the network of Waypoints isn’t built on the Ley-Lines. But waypoints use magic and are connected, building a network through which magic flows – similar to ley-lines. if something is strong enough to block the magic flow of the ley-lines it stands to reason that it blocks the waypoint-magic too – because the magic flowing through the waypoint-network should be far less compared to the amount of magic flowing through ley-lines.

additionally in my opinion setting up a working waypoint should work better or worse depending on how well magic can flow in general in that specific region (ley-lines are just really great and important flows of magic, not the only ones). This could explain why the placement is important and any change in it – be it strong and deep enough to affect ley-lines or just something like an asuran laboratory that disturbs the magic in close proximity – can make a change to waypoint locations necessary to ensure that the network continues to work.

My idea on the thing with the vines:
they could be spreading along or even through the ley-lines consuming magic. on places where a waypoint happens to be on one of those ley-lines the vines extend to the surface and start to suck up magic from the waypoint and therefore the waypoint-system as well, interfering with the network around the affected waypoint. And thinking of the size some vines in Drytop have compared to the ones at the waypoints, we are probably just seeing quite small branches of the main structure of vines that could be advancing underground (even those in Drytop could just be bigger branches of the main structure).

on a side note: could it be that the Zephyrites crashed because they rely on magic to fly and Drytop was mostly sucked dry of magic, similar to how there are air pockets that cause turbulences for planes?