Guild Wars 2

Did some tests with the Anomaly transformation.

/sad just does the emote, nothing else.
Your body gets left behind when you become an Anomaly, downed in place.
Touching your body puts you back into it.
There is a flashing tether between you and your body, which alerts proximity to it.
Leaving the map in the form puts you back in your body.
Players can attack you in the form. Killing you puts you back in your body.

I feel like there’s gotta be something we can do as an Anomaly as our next step, but it’s hard to figure out when players actively hunt you down and kill you.

I chose Priory, and I have a feeling most people did. I wonder what the imbalance will mean for future events.

That’s what I think too. I wonder what role the Consortium is going to play in future updates. This kind of reminds me of the live content like Flame and Frost from Season 1, and it makes me think we could be getting live content along with the replayable story content.

We also know now that becoming an anomaly means making yourself vulnerable to attacks from players, and that you have a flashing tether to your body, which gets left behind wherever you turned into the anomaly.

It looks like with powerful enough magic, absolutely.
In GW1, the Necromancer class’s minions were never intelligent, but those of Vizier Khilbron often were, like poor Prince Rurik. Zhaitan also uses this to his advantage in the GW2 core story.

“Burden of Choice” is an achievement line/“permanent” quest unlocked by coming in physical contact with one of the Sad Anomalies that appear during play. It explains the anomalies and gives us a reason for all those Bloodstone Slivers we’ve been finding.

EDIT: I just realized this is brand new content, so spoilers below!

Burden of Choice

It follows the Pact Commander as we consult the Durmand Priory to figure out why we are seeing these anomalies and screaming in agony at random times during play. We recreate a “Shadowstone,” a piece of ancient Seer technology which, in theory, should stop these visions and contain the excess magic we have taken on lately. Then the game presents us with a choice.

You can either use the Shadowstone on yourself or hand it in to a Consortium merchant who claims he can not only make better use of it, but offer you some Krait Oil that will temporarily suppress your symptoms for a nominal fee.

The whole time you play through this quest, the achievements remind you that you are taking “permanent steps” in completing it, and at the very end, a confirmation screen ominously tells you that your choice is permanent.

The Anomalies

Now we also have Magic Rifts opening around Tyria, and we’re finding that by using a device found buried in a pond, we can be teleported all around Tyria. We’re also finding that under certain conditions, we can turn ourselves into anomalies.

Now all we can do is play the waiting game! These are my questions:

1. What reasons could there be for not putting this in the main LS storyline?
2. What do you speculate could be the results of this choice?
3. What does this mean with the anomalies? Who are they if they aren’t just manifestations of unbound magic? Were souls released from the bloodstone?

I love the story and the lore of Guild Wars, and when I returned after a hiatus due to work and school, I had missed about all of Season 1 and most of Season 2.

I’ve read the write-ups, the wiki, and watched recap videos, and I’ve paid for the missing S2 episodes because I am especially invested in the story. I believe it isn’t good to have to go through so much work outside of the game just to figure out what is happening. It’s a punishment to players who sometimes have to put the game down for a while, and it is not a huge incentive to pick it up again.

Several friends of mine recently bought the game before the sale and are opting out of bothering to understand the story despite their interest in it because they’d rather not pay more money on top of what they just spent. They’d rather buy bank upgrades instead.

I suggest either giving the content of both seasons for free because they were promised to be free content, giving it away with Heart of Thorns, or requiring a pass that would give permanent access to all Living Story past and future.

I believe having to pay for a pass would be against the goals of GW2’s design, but since it does add up over time to be a decent amount of content with achievements, I’ve left the suggestion there.

The LS leads into Heart of Thorns, making it make sense, and it gives context to gem store skins making them more attractive, so why not include it? Please don’t spring more payments on new players when the game was promised to be “buy once and play without subscription.”

Thanks for reading this wall of text! And great job on Season 2!
I just want it to be more accessible.

The old ugly asura faces, but they overhauled the whole race to make em cuter, so that’s probably not going to happen.

It’s been said that the magic has to go somewhere when a dragon is killed, so presumably the land and the Risen are good sponges for that. I imagine it’d be the same with Mordremoth. And the Living Story is building up to something in the long term, implying that all that magic goes into Tyria and it’s eventually going to mean something really terrible is going to happen.

I think the “kill it from the inside” solution would be great for Mordremoth. For Kralk, I think Zojja recreating Snaff’s device with Glint’s offspring would be a much nicer way to bring closure to Destiny’s Edge and give Tyria some hope. I imagine going inside Kralk would result in your body getting ripped apart by a torrent of magic.

shadowfanatik.5160:

personally I’m kind of hoping Mordremoth ends up being so big we kill him from the inside out, kind of like the giant worm from GoW2 only with less chainsaws and a more epic conclusion

Maybe turn his physical body into a dungeon

This would be SO awesome. The last boss being that toothed maw with the eye from the trailer would be awesome too. I just don’t want it to be as anticlimactic as the Zhaitan fight. I was really disappointed that I had to just hit some mobs, then spam 1 on a cannon. It wasn’t the spectacular fight against an elder godlike force of nature like it was hyped to be.

Season 2 was definitely a success. My only complaint is that I had to pay for what I missed. It’s a monetary punishment for having school or work, and I only paid because I love the GW story and lore. My friends though who are new to the game decided to opt out of all S2 content besides Silverwastes because they didn’t get it or didn’t want to start from the end and have to pay $10 on top of the $40 for the game. They bought the game right before the sale.

S1 I can’t say, because I missed it.

I’d also love to know how I became “boss” of Destiny’s Little Edge, where these characters came from, and generally how we got where we are. Please don’t make me pay more money on top of the expansion just to figure out how I got where I am.

I’d like the expansion to come with both seasons free.

Ashen.2907:

Honest question as I have not yet played an engineer; does that class not have access to blind, interrupt, dodge, stealth, Aegis, etc? Any of those has the potential to negate a huge damage burst.

They do have access to most of that, though often walled behind different kits that must be switched to, aimed, and cast (or set up over several seconds in the case of stealth) all while getting interrupted and burst down ourselves. If you’re fast and can keep distance for a few seconds, it works well, but if the conditions keep getting taken off or turned into buffs, we aren’t doing much damage while we mitigate physical damage.

I’m not saying condi’s underpowered, but I don’t believe for a second that we’re out of control or can’t be easily controlled one on one. The OP even says that ze has no problems one on one with beating a condi user.

First of all, I think it’s reasonable that you should lose when outnumbered by two condition users.

Second, condition mitigation is possible even against an Engineer, as I main one and I find people constantly cleansing them/turning them into buffs immediately and then bursting me down in two seconds despite my high toughness. We may have a little power, especially with Sinister gear, but usually due to the other stat combos, all we have is our condition damage. If being able to completely mitigate it and burst us down is “fair” then we have a problem, because I can’t completely mitigate huge burst physical damage.

I’m a casual player who gets to log in during winter and summer between work and school and everything else. I’ve been working towards a legendary and feeling pretty good about it, just needing the precursor and the T6 mats… And this is a little discouraging. I guess I need to work for gold then.

Probably Cantha. I loved the Elonian people and cultures and all the cool stuff with the Realm of Torment and the more secret history of the Six. However, the Six are gone and the land itself in Cantha was so much more interesting. Plus, the Kurzicks and Luxons were extremely cool. I got really tired of “desert” and “grassier desert” really fast in Elona. The packed cities and Petrified Forest and the Jade Sea were far more interesting to explore. Plus Cantha could mean Tengu. It’d be as easy as a big political move or magical catastrophe plus Bubbles moving further south for Tengu to migrate and establish a city.

I’d enjoy seeing a Tengu city under construction in an expansion, watching it get built into a full-blown one through Living Story after.

I agree, and I think S1 could be included, or at least a recap cinematic.. All the build-up will mean nothing for all the returning and new players that expansions bring (ESPECIALLY with Guild Wars games). Who’s Scarlet? What’s a ley-line? What’s this weird drawing with all the spheres? Why does no one seem to trust each other anymore? I have to pay more money for this? I just bought an expansion!

I don’t think the 2 week schedule is the LW’s problem anymore. I feel I’d be less satisfied waiting a month for 40 minutes of content than getting 20 every two weeks.

Priorities:

1. Have fun with my guild
2. Map Completion on my main
3. Upgrade the guild to start missions and more storage
4. Build Quip
5. Wait for Season 1
6. Get more ascended gear than the one trinket I have on my main

I’ve been playing GW since Prophecies was released with family and friends, but I’m a student, so I missed Season 1 besides Flame and Frost part 1 and most of Season 2. I like GW games because I can easily put them down and pick them up later. I also play it mostly for the story (besides the fun gameplay).

Unfortunately, the Living World system means I had to pay ten bucks to get the episodes I missed; and I’ll have to pay even more to catch up on S1 when that’s released, on top of the likely $30 or $40 I’ll have to pay for Heart of Thorns to make sure I know where my head or my heels are in the story. I think Living World should be free.

That aside, thanks Anet for the continued innovation, the move back to cinematic cutscenes, the ever-improving texture work to keep the game beautiful, and for keeping players like me in mind with the general content.

I really don’t want to have this.

Maybe two weeks ago, Crystal Desert was beating Fort Aspenwood and Isle of Janthir. FA was in a close second, though, and made a plea on the forums for a server team-up. So most of IoJ’s WvW guilds switched to FA, and the stacked server then made a huge comeback. By that point there was too large a point gap to fix, but they still demonstrated how unbalanced and frankly unfun it is when two servers gang up on you.

Twylla Night.1792:

I prefer to keep my gear stats private. I seem to have a different play style than many people and, while it works well for me, others don’t seem to understand (without a ton of explanation) how it works. People assume that if I’m not playing something standard, then I don’t know what I’m doing. I’d rather avoid all that and keep my skills and gear stats private.

I wouldn’t mind finding out skin names, though!

This. If it was just skins, I’d be okay with that, I think.

Word on the Wayfarer Foothills says the popular theory among players I’ve talked to points to the Dredge, but personally, I figure after 250 years Primordious has carved new tunnels or found long forgotten ones to break onto the surface, since trying to overcome the dwarves clearly wasn’t working.

Besides, dragon activity is what drove the Norn from the north, so what would bring the few that remained but more serious activity? Earth and sky as enemies sounds to me almost like volcanic activity, though it couldn’t be a full size volcano or else we’d all be affected across Tyria. These vents seem to herald volcanic activity, though, which is always connected to the Destroyers.

The problem tends to be clipping. Beards going through masks, tufts of hair coming from helms. It’s doable, but would take a lot of work.

For centuries, famous Norn have embraced the cold out of sheer macho manliness. Olaf Olafson, all those guys who used to hang around shrines and give you blessings if you decide to fight them in Guild Wars: Eye of the North… and now Rëdd Ülfrictsön, son of Ülfrict the Redundant, son of Ülfrict, the Redundant.

Seriously, though, it’s a ton of fun to run around in the Shiverpeaks without chest armor, letting those tattoos show and not letting the often bulky medium armor coats cover up the manliness. Only one Norn chest armor that I can wear as far as I’ve seen (Norn cultural tier 2 medium armor) actually exposes your chest like the Norn of the first game.

When I do dungeons, WvW, and PvP though, I don’t want to harm my team by not wearing chest armor.

Can we get a “Hide Chest Armor” option?

The Asura came from underground everywhere. Eye of the North showed us that the Asura have gates under every continent. They were spread far and wide, though the center for everything for them was the Central Transfer Chamber. When it was discovered that the statue that bled magic in the chamber was an Elder Dragon, the Asura were able to establish themselves on the Tarnished Coast.

They were able to do this without a huge expedition on foot above ground because of the huge span of their network.

We also learn from the villagers that the elementals sometimes seem to act like they don’t want to be slaves to the village, but they keep going as if they’re forced to.