Guild Wars 2

Probably social tools – server specific subforums, Guild search facilities, maybe ‘in house’ Guild profile pages.

Our characters will wake up in the ruins of the Hall of Monuments with a broken pot plant on their head, realising that everything so far has been a dream.

I think it’ll be minipets again, more stuff in the Gem Store & probably yet another event in Lion’s Arch.

This is all your-mileage-may-vary stuff, but I kind of agree that in the months I’ve been playing I still don’t really feel connected with the narrative going on in the game.

There are interesting ideas but the writing lets them down & any time I started to feel I was being drawn into the storyline there was a poorly characterised NPC to pull me back out again (usually, but not always Trahearne) by explaining everything away, leaving little area for narrative satisfaction/discovery. I get the idea that the humans are -supposed- to be portrayed as being caught in a deadly decadent cultural cycle, but it’s communicated very poorly through the storyline. They just come across as children holding the idiot ball who have -forgotten- great swathes of their own history (I’m still convinced it would have been better for a human to lead the quest to clean up Orr – it being an old human kingdom where human gods once lived).

In terms of the ‘tone’ I kind of find certain elements, like the Asura, have been flanderised into ‘goofiness’. In GW1 the Asura had a sinister edge, a somewhat blue-orange morality, perhaps with an element of desperation caused by being utterly defeated & driven out of their underground cities. In GW2 I found them to be reduced to an endless zany mad scientist trope. The absolute culture of individuality of the Norn was interesting in GW1, the idea that they were individualist to the point that it was difficult to get them to cooperate with each other was interesting. In GW2 they’re just sort of another drunk shouty Viking trope. The Order of Whispers is another example – I don’t feel they are anywhere near as mysterious as they were in GW1. They have garish uniforms & a cipher a toddler could work out (“X the X”). The Whispers leader in GW1 was very, very secretive. In GW2 there’s not really that element of mystery.

I kind of think the nature of antagonists/protagonists in the game isn’t very satisfying either – it’s very monodimensional. Each race has two factions within it & the relationship between them is pretty much black/white. In GW1 the White Mantle were interesting antagonists because initially, at least, there were shades of grey (the White Mantle saved Kryta from being destroyed by the Charr, but turned out to be an evil cult). The Mursaat were interesting because they were both inscrutable, but also acting along lines of alien logic that could be considered self-preserving rather than just muhahaha-evil. Even the actual muhahaha-evil Palawa Joko was a multidimensional character, quite prepared to ally with ‘goody heroes’ because it benefited him.

All this said, there were elements of comedy throughout GW1 & I think one of my favourite ‘missions’ was the Nightfall one where you got to participate in a festival & play games with the guests. At the same time there were parts of GW1 where the writing was just awful – Factions seemed to be something of a nadir in the series.

WhiteRose.6934:

Mesmers are purple because of Lyssa.

And mesmers were never bards, in any way. Paragons were the bards, mesmers were more like enchantresses and the like. Mesmers that you met throughout GW1 were also more royal or prestigious, such as your tutor in Prophecies. Most of the spells a mesmer cast, if not all, had a purple effect to them. It all goes back to Lyssa being the patron goddess of the mesmers.

Mesmers were/are a bardic theatrical class strongly associated with Lyssa. In GW1 they formed theatrical troupes and hung around places like Althea’s Actors Stage & Foible’s Fair. Norgu was a member of Lyssa’s Fools, a travelling group of actors in Vabbi. Much like with theatre, with mesmers it’s all about illusion, misdirection, glamour and deceptive appearances.

Swisha.2049:

AC used to be a nice relaxing dungeon to run with a casual group. Now it’s a F’ing grind like everything else except CoF p1.

Thanks ArenaNet for making this game that much more tedious.

Bravo

This. AC was always a fun, social, not so serious dungeon you could run with a mixture of people of different levels and abilities, make a bit of progress and do it within a reasonable evening’s gameplay.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

All new stuff in dungeons is going to be hard for the first few days. We see it all the time with new content – people fail and get knocked down when they aren’t used to that sort of thing, and they claim it is too difficult.
Give it a week or so for everyone to develop strategies, learn encounters, and build fundamentals, and they will claim it is too easy. Trust me when I say this, the numbers are punishing (but less than they were before), but knowing the mechanics will greatly mitigate the danger.

The only problem with this is that I’m not sure what strategies you can develop for the boss fight at the end of AC Path 3 when the ceiling fall is pretty much insta-wipe of the whole party and the encounter is entirely structured around an NPC (Warmaster Grast) who is supposed to provide a shield, but does not do this to instead focus on trying to hammer-melee the boss and either being killed in melee, or dying from the falling ceiling.

Sure, I understand the idea is to use interrupts, but there comes points in the encounter where skills are on cooldown and defiance can’t be cleared from the boss fast enough. Warmaster Grast doesn’t provide his bubble and the party wipes again.

The only strategies we came up with were to leave the path unfinished and decide to not play that particular part of AC anymore.

I tried the new AC explorable run tonight with a party of level 80 guildies of a mixture of very experience and moderately experienced MMO players playing a mixture of the three profession classes. Some of us have run AC pretty regularly over several months as a fun social event during the week. We didn’t particularly experience much extra difficulty in AC Path 1 and Path 2, other than maybe that we seemed quite spike-heavy damage and this caused us to get a bit swamped in necro adds to the Kholer fight. The changes in Part 1 & 2 mostly seemed like a nice attempt to make the narrative of the dungeon flow better and a not so nice attempt at increasing the time investment of the dungeon through padding fights.

AC Path 3 seemed fine, but the final boss fight seemed entirely broken. After an initial failure because Warmaster Grast decided to run off to fight tunnel gravelings, our subsequent attempts we tried to keep interrupting the ceiling fall skill to prevent it, but not once during our six other attempts did Grast spawn a shield bubble. He spent the entire fight trying to hammer to death Colossus and frequently was killed by the ceiling fall, along with the rest of us. Our best run got him down to around 55% health, but most of our interrupts were on cool down, Grast again did not spawn any bubbles and we were wiped by a ceiling fall. We just gave up in the end as we’d already been playing over 3 hours.

I think the idea of making the dungeons more interesting to play is a good one, but I feel the changes to AC have made it unfun. AC used to be a dungeon we could run in a nice, fun, casual workday evening with a group of mixed ability people of different levels of experience, from a mixture of servers and experiment with different builds, maybe some on voice chat, others not. It was a fun, not too serious way of playing an enjoyable side of GW2 that got people into playing a little regularly and rewarded them with a nice amount of money and maybe a new exotic sword and offhand, if not some new armour.

I think the changes have made it so that this isn’t possible any more, I think more than evidenced by the significant drop in the number of people wanting to group to play through the dungeon and the number of people roaming around that part of the map doing social things.I don’t really understand why every single dungeon has to be aimed at ‘hardcore’ people at the expense of encouraging wider participation and providing something of a gateway into how explorable dungeons work. The changes to mob and boss fights also increase the time commitment, which removes that kind of satisfaction you could get by doing all three runs in an evening, especially for newer people who feel some achievement in going through the whole run.

I don’t think the ideas behind the changes themselves are bad, I just think the implementation and some of the new mechanics are off-putting and not enjoyable.

Agreed with above, it’s been great fun this last week. I think my favourite part was finishing the JP with guildies last night – we’d sat down with a few friendly SBI’s at the end of the puzzle & we were stealth jumped by 2/3 naked SBI lady thieves who popped up in the middle of us, took a few swipes & vanished again. So funny!

Rekia.1480:

I love the picture in the store of the two humans wearing it. It’s so cute.

It makes my female charr look like the Big Bad Wolf wearing grandma’s clothes though.

I love this picture, it made my night! Thanks for sharing!

I know we’re only hours into the event, but I’ve really enjoyed the minigames, the snowball fights & the presents raining from the sky out in the world so far. I’ve been playing with a group from my guild & we’ve had great fun with the unwanted presents trader weapon skins (Pink Princess Wand, yus!). I’m really hoping to get one of the festive baby quaggans too! I can’t wait to see what happens when Tixx’s airship finally docks.

The additional banking tabs for festive items & the rare crafting items are a big help!

I think my only (minor) complaint is that the Wintersday outfit is town clothes & not an armour skin. My mesmer would have looked fantastic in it out in the field.

I hope you guys all manage to get some rest over the holidays before launching into the updates for January and February!

I’ve used the Heritage Light Armour with the mask from the Masquerade set with burgundy, blue ice & antique gold dyes. I kind of wish festival items worked with armour, like the outfit options in GW1, rather than being relegated to town clothes.

I think ANet has always blended influences within the ingame cultures, to a degree, but I think the following influences can be picked up from the lore, the ingame artwork & concept artwork:

Tyria:
Ascalon – North European / Germanic
Old Kryta – Mesoamerican-esque (via influence from Mursaat(?) ruins in region) / Elonan (via lore – Kryta established as colony of Elona)
Old Orr – Arabic influences / lorewise had direct involvement of gods
Present Kryta – Generic western European

Non-human:
Dwarves / Norn – Scandinavian
Charr – Steppes culture / vague Roman influences
Asuran – Indigenous culture / Mesoamerican-influences (via reoccupied Mursaat sites)
Mursaat – Mesoamericanesque

Elona:
Primeval Dynasty – Egyptian/Mesopotamian
Istan – Nubian / Punt / East African
Kourna – Mali / Songhai / Maghreb culture / weak Roman influences
Vabbi – Persian / Arabian / Ottoman Turkish

Cantha -
Canthan (Dragon) Empire – Han China / Korea
Shing Jea – SW China / elements of Tibet
Kurzick – Gothic / Germanic
Luxon – vague Greek / Phoenician / Minoan influences (& possible Margonite influence)

Dredge culture – Soviet culture
Sylvari – loose Celtic / Tolkien elven influence
Centaur – in Tyria seems to be Steppes culture, in Elona reflects a more desert nomadic influence
Tengu – Varies according to tribe – Tyrian tengu had a Mesoamerican influence, Canthan tengu had more Thai influence

“Light armour is just too manly and butch looking. I need more things to make me look like a lost member of a pantomime”

“Trahearne is such a well-written character. I’m really glad he’s picked me to be his dogsbody!”

“I feel that my choices in the personal story produced meaningful outcomes that had a lasting impact on the world”

Trahearne is an example (possibly the worst) of how ArenaNet can make amazing lore, fantastic locations and really interesting changes to the usual pattern of MMOs stealing lawn from Tolkien’s garden and then be let down by weak story writing that creates bad characters.

Trahearne suffers from the Mary Sue in a bad way, turning up out of the blue for anyone who isn’t a Slyvari and hijacking the personal storyline. He receives equipment and abilities his class isn’t supposed to be able to use. He is obsessed with Orr & appears to be -the- expert on it, despite Orr being a former human realm (presumably it’s another case where the humans have been hit over the head with kitten stick & forgotten everything that happened c.f. Ascalon). He is put into a position of leadership despite their being more experienced candidates. He also hogs the glory and suffers from a dull, arrogant personality that grates terribly after the very amusing Order mentors.

Some people have said all of these things are because player characters can’t -all- be the Hero Dragon Slayer, but to me Trahearne is a really horrible piece of lazy writing to avoid that. In effect Trahearne just demotes the player character to a UPS guy who wheels the Important! NPC to the next cut scene, clearing out the stabby monsters in the way, a negative unfun thing that was common in GW1. He also negates what ANet have said about the player having meaningful impact & development through the personal story. The story becomes about him, the player gets no credit & no recognition for anything they do (i.e. a Hall of Monuments, statue type thing). The characters from the start of the story (Lord Faren etc.) get ignored after you join an order, then the order is pretty much ignored after the Battle at the Fort. It just comes across as lazy writing to reduce the number of versions of a mission needed by just focusing on one unchanging NPC.

Azjenco.9425 had the best conception of how the Orrian chapter -should- have worked:

" When you got to Orr, you should have led your order through many campaigns. Meanwhile, Trahearne acts as a mediator between the orders, taking information from one to the other, and let them deal with what’s happening. The Vigil leads its forces on the forefront. The Priory uncovers arcane orrian knowledge and artifacts, granting the Vigil an edge in the war effort. The Whispers fight from the shadows, reconnoitering strategic info back to the Vigil, while assassinating key targets.

Trahearne should have been a intermediary, not a commander, while you lead the initiative on Orr. Uncovering info as Priory, doing espionage as Whispers, and taking the enemy head on. "

I’m hoping that Anet are listening to how disliked & unfun Trahearne is & write him out of the story, rather than force us to keep delivering him to cutscenes for the next 6 years.

My suggestion for writing him out would be something like that as he is a Necromancer obsessed with Orr & hauls around a powerful artifact, he is an ideal candidate for corruption by the Nightmare Court. Players have to work with their order to eliminate him & his cabal of sycophants to keep the Pact focused on fighting the dragons, rather than Trahearne’s obsessive & increasingly maniacal focus on Orr.

WasAGuest.4973:

Had to think about this a bit and then work out how to phrase it without it coming across as merely a complaint.

Immersion: Immersion is severely limited IMO. The game world is gorgeous and I can see a lot of care went into making it feel and look alive. Yet, when I create a Norn, Charr, Sylvari or Asura I walk into the game world dressed as a human? All the NPCs around me look like the belong IN the areas I am in. They look like they are actually Norn, Charr, Sylvari and Asuran… not the players though.
This completely removes me from the moment, breaks the 4th wall and kills the enjoyment of playing those other races. (Personal Opinion of course)

This is a big one. They always gave the impression that there would be a uniqueness to all the races, but there’s a major lack of differentiation in ordinary gear unless you start on the dungeon wheel. There ought to be racial specific starter armour & a set of racial specific armour that drops in appropriate zones (e.g. like how the Country Armour drops). I kind of feel the same about weapon skins, especially from vendors & that come out of the crafting process. I kind of wish there were more designs to choose from when crafting.

Tying in to what people have said above, the cities look amazing but feel kind of like empty movie sets with a generic stock of actors walking around. There’s nothing much to do in them. There are no real “social hubs” like taverns and there are no ‘specialised’ vendor locations, like in other MMOs where you have districts with buildings with certain types of merchants in (e.g. town clothing shop, wine shop, cheese shop). In GW2 merchants are largely just dumped in streets & sell mostly the same stuff. The lack of simple interactive things like chairs doesn’t really help. I was amazed, initially, walking around Divinity’s Reach, but at the moment there isn’t a lot of reason to go back to most of it at all.

Tybalt, Logan, Mad King Thorn & Palawa Joko.

It’d be a hilarious comedy-mayhem ride through Tyria and back, with Logan as the straight man.

Yeah, I think I remember reading a devchat thing saying that Abaddon is dead, dead. I seem to remember the remainder of the Margonites being hunted down by the Forgotten & parts of Palawa Joko’s army. Although there was one Margonite who had become an Apostate – maybe there are more?

Storyline NPCs you feel some kind of identification with. Ones in the storyline so far either get killed off or dumped after the starting zone. Perhaps the option to dump Trahearne on a faraway island somewhere & resurrect Tybalt et. al. ? Or more involvement from that group involved with the dungeons?

At the moment Mad King Thorn feels like the only other character who isn’t two-dimensional.

I think the waypoint costs are one of the biggest barriers to higher level characters going back to lower level places. It’s a shame really. I agree with the above poster about more quests along the lines of the scavenger hunt. I know it’s a return to NPC-hub questing, but I think it does make a more effective way of delivering smaller, perhaps more lore-rich, stories.

It’s a mysterious place. It’s been around since GW1, with the White Mantle & a cult of necromancers trying to break into it. The villagers nearby now talk about how a mage there has basically enslaved elementals to do work for them, but that they have a sense the elementals are angry & resentful.

It was an excellent event & I loved the nods towards Halloween events of Guild Wars 1. Mad King Thorn is a great character (with a fantastic voice actor) and I’m looking forward to seeing him again next October. I’m kind of hoping his old rivalry with Palawa Joko might resurface in some more fun events.

I loved the scavenger hunt & how it went into the story behind Thorn & the reward is a really nice piece of equipment. My only small gripe is that the book is soulbound & not account bound. I can’t wear both, so it would be great if I could pass the other book to one of my lower level alts.

The minigames were fun, the one-time event was a fun experience with everyone in Lion’s Arch & the opening of Act IV, especially all the jokes, was so funny.

Suggestions for next time:-
- more King Thorn
- more quaggans in Halloween costumes
- events in the racial capitals – it was kind of sad to see Divinity’s Reach devoid of Halloween items.
- reward items that are account bound & items which can be worn in combat, like the GW1 masks & hats.

From what I remember of the lore in GW1 (& it’s repeated in GW2 as well) Thorn was a former king of Tyria who was murderously insane. He had eight wives & I think killed most of them off & he had a long standing rivalry with Palawa Joko, the Undead King in Elona. He was overthrown by the Krytans, who hacked his body to pieces & burned his palace & courtiers. He was locked away in the underworld & the Lunatic Court has worked since to free him.

Events-wise, he used to show up at the Halloween finale & play ‘Mad King Says’, killing people who didn’t follow his instruction & rewarding those who did. He used to give out a different Halloween hat every year.

There was a mission in the Mists that revolved around the rivalry between Mad King Thorn & Palawa Joko.

The event in GW1 was a lot simpler. GW2’s Halloween is much more ‘fun’, especially with groups of friends. I’m still hoping that the Grand Finale might be a special Halloween Hat item.

I think exploring Divinity’s Reach for the first time was a bit of a ‘wow’ moment. I also loved finding the quaggan cave where the guard said their most important ‘treasure’ was & had a cute explosion shortly after. Accidentally dodging off a cliff was probably another moment!

One of my favourite things, though, has been finding all the little elements of continuity with GW1 that hint at what happened to the old protagonists & antagonists, as well as places like the ruined Hall of Monuments and the remains of the old White Mantle.

Red Falcon.8257:

I believe the majority of medium and heavy armor are very ugly, but if you do some mix-matching you can get something good like this:

Those look great! There are some interesting combinations you can make by mixing sets. It’s worth playing with the PvP lockers.

I also echo everything people have said about the need for more armour without ridiculous spikes / space marine shoulders & about the majority of light armour looking like bad halloween outfits / prom dresses / runaway carnival floats. I keep seeing NPCs in outfits I want, so I’m hoping they will become available eventually. And maybe fewer spikey platemail sets & more ‘clothing’-ish designs for light armour & medium armour wearers.

Another issue I have with the armour is the large amount of clipping going on. I’m not really referring to the clipping with weapons, but there are pieces of armour that clip with themselves or badly clip with the character meshes (like the Baroque mask). Again, some of the armour is really great, other sets just seem sloppy.

I also agree with the comment about the majority of higher end light armour being too WOW-ish.

The armour art is a weak area in an otherwise great game. There are a few really nice platemail heavy armours and a lot of the medium armour sets are really fun, but I think male light armour wearers have it the worst – it’s predominantly ugly or ridiculous stuff, from the crafted outfit of an Aladdin pantomime to the floofy skirted winged/feathered messes of the higher tier stuff. The exalted light armour is just a disaster.

I’m really starting to miss the elegant mesmer armour and selection of masks from Guild Wars 1. I’m very, very glad that I have access to the heritage light armour, as it is such a nice set and I’m sad there are not more like it. I’m just hoping that ANet might consider rehiring the designer who made the GW1 mesmer armours. Or maybe at least stealing some of the fancy hats of the medium armour wearers.

Of course this is one of those YMMV areas.

Hi Gaile!

I submitted my ticket originally on 12/09/2012 regarding an issue linking my old @ncsoft Guild Wars 1 account to my Guild Wars 2 account using the website. It keeps directing me to a broken webpage & refusing to link my accounts. After several circular replies telling me to change my GW1 details (didn’t work) & to send off all my account information (which was ignored in a follow up reply), I was told 5 days ago (14/09/2012) that the matter was being escalated to a senior person, but I’ve heard nothing since.

Ticket number: 120912-003177

I’m having the same issues when trying to link my Guild Wars 1 account. I enter my details & get redirected to a broken webpage:

‘This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
’ of undefined TypeError: Cannot read property ‘cancel’ of undefined at Templates\EJS\Account\link.approve.ejs:32:49 at Object.render (Library/core-template.js:185:15) at Object.reply (Library/sugar-reply.js:85:25) at Library/lib-troll.js:111:32 at Account/before.js:19:13 at Library/lib-troll.js:107:40 at Location/controllers.js:61:13 at Library/lib-troll.js:107:40 at Object.<anonymous> (Location/controllers.js:45:21) at Library/sugar-sts.js:125:72"/>’

I submitted a ticket, but it’s been over a week & I’ve had several circular replies from GMs saying that I wasn’t entering my details properly (this wasn’t true as I was using -exactly- the same details as I use to log into my GW1 account), one asking for all of my account details only to receive a reply that ignored them & the website error in favour of telling me I should use the website to link my accounts.

I had to sent a multiple page update to my ticket with all of the Customer Service responses over the past week back again. I finally received a reply saying my problem was being escalated, but this was over 5 days ago & I’ve still not heard anything. I’m kind of doubting, now, that I’ll ever be able to link my accounts as it seems to be something the Customer Service team can’t or won’t do & the ‘senior’ team are indifferent to.