Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the responses. I’d played through the story once in 2012 and remember feeling waves of emotion related to the Risen and the lost souls. On a replay recently though, I didn’t get the same feeling. Perhaps due to different story paths in the Orders.

Has it been explained anywhere (maybe in novels) what a Risen is or how one is made? Beyond the obvious use of Zhaitan magic, does it involve the spirits who belong to the bodies? Were we fighting spirits trapped inside their corrupted bodies, forced to do Zhaitan’s bidding, or were we just fighting mindless corpses and the spirits who once inhabited the bodies are safely in The Mists?

All comes down to the cost:content ratio. Therefore I will not be prepurchasing since there is nothing to show how much content will be in the expansion.

I updated the OP to reflect that.

It’s still a mess. I replied to that thread twice and since I believe I have a better business model I want it to get more exposure by having its own thread.

And I forgot about the conversion. That would drastically destroy the economy. They can still offer it digitally in the gem store but force it to cost real money instead of gems.

Newcomers to Guild Wars 2
Purchase the Heart of Thorns complete package for $50, which includes the base game. Enjoy everything that veterans have

Owners of Guild Wars 2
Prepurchase a Heart of Thorns expansion upgrade for $40 (immediate real money, not gems). Character slot included when you prepurchase digitally. Once the game is released the character slot will not be included.

Easy fix for a huge mess.

EDIT: Edited to reflect below posts about gem-to-gold conversion.

Why don’t you let us buy the expansion from the gem store like Living Story 2? You can still make a prepurchase model in the gem store, keep one serial per account, and control the price for players who already own the base game.

I would play the game more often and prepurchase HoT if it was offered in the gem store as an upgrade. Buying it bundled with the core game is useless for me since I already own the game. Offer it as a digital upgrade and make it 45 bucks and throw in a character slot if we prepurchase it digitally.

Orimidu.9604:

Gaile, while I appreciate the concerns addressed, I have issue with your business model. I understand the reason for packaging the core game and all expansions together for the full $50 price, but what about the loyal players who follow your releases as they come? The ones who make enough gem store purchases to pay for ten Guild Wars 2 serials?

If you release two more expansion packs and bundle everything together, new players make one $50 payment for everything. However, veteran players make four payments over time: say, $50 for the core game, $50 for Heart of Thorns plus core game, $50 for Frozen Spirit plus HoT plus core game, and $50 again for Rising Tides plus FS plus HoT plus core game. That’s not including the payments made to the gem store for living story content and other various things.

How is this at all fair to the veteran players? Character expansion slots don’t do enough justice. We can buy them for 800 gems currently, that’s around 10 bucks.

Quote because easily missed.

Gaile, while I appreciate the concerns addressed, I have issue with your business model. I understand the reason for packaging the core game and all expansions together for the full $50 price, but what about the loyal players who follow your releases as they come? The ones who make enough gem store purchases to pay for ten Guild Wars 2 serials?

If you release two more expansion packs and bundle everything together, new players make one $50 payment for everything. However, veteran players make four payments over time: say, $50 for the core game, $50 for Heart of Thorns plus core game, $50 for Frozen Spirit plus HoT plus core game, and $50 again for Rising Tides plus FS plus HoT plus core game. That’s not including the payments made to the gem store for living story content and other various things.

How is this at all fair to the veteran players? Character expansion slots don’t do enough justice. We can buy them for 800 gems currently, that’s around 10 bucks.

Not offering refunds for people who bought the game over a month ago. But you’re right, it’ll never happen because nobody here wants to go through the trouble. I was thinking of the deceptive advertising when a CA popped into my head. Mainly switching up the wording of their FAQ.

So. Who among you has the guts to file a class action lawsuit for this? I bought GW2 when it was 10 bucks back in March/April, but it’s way beyond the 30 day notice now. 10 bucks could have gone toward HoT. Personally I’ll be waiting for the inevitable sale when not enough people buy the xpac, but I’d love to watch the fireworks of a class action suit, especially since there seems to be a case for one.

All good points. Thanks for the input, guys. I think at the MINIMUM, they could add some new conversation dialogue between NPCs in the outposts. Something that starts with “With Zhaitan gone, what happens now?” and the conversations providing extra lore to the ongoing Orr events. It would be rather simple for ANet to record some conversations and slap them in a patch—the only trigger to activate them would be completion of Victory or Death.

Ideally, some new events to reflect the passage of time would go in. But this will likely not happen.

With Zhaitan gone and it being at least a year after his death, what will happen to the current Orr region once HoT comes out? Most of the Risen should be gone. I have some proposals:

Proposal 1: Allow players who have defeated Zhaitan to choose between entering “Uncleansed Orr” and “Cleansed Orr”. This will allow players to continue existing temple meta events and also retain the current map and scripts.

Proposal 2: Cleansed Orr Map

In the new Orr, some vegetation has returned, as well as moss, fungi, and other plant life that grows in a saltwater-soil covered land. The Pact has outposts and the races of Tyria have all dedicated a small amount of resources to preventing Orr from being taken over by Corsair ships, small bands of Risen left over from Zhaitan, as well as new enemies. However, because of Mordremoth, there isn’t as much defense as there could be, and new meta events count on players to keep the outposts and temples safe.

This would be a good opportunity to tease the Deep Sea Dragon’s minions. With Zhaitan’s territorial influence gone, the DSD is now free to send scouts ashore without fear of meddling in another dragon’s affairs. Orr is still a very central place for magic, and the DSD would definitely be interested in taking over an old dragon’s nest.

I kind of get your point where some of the “testers” would spend the entire time just trying to break out of the testing area and not find any more important bugs, and also that it would be a waste of time to break out since the borders would be removed in the full expansion.

But one big aspect of the game is clipping. If a model that exists in the testing area is able to be ‘ghosted’ through, or jumped over when you’re clearly not meant to, then it will exist in the expansion as well and possibly cause trouble.

pdavis.8031:

Mikhail.4961:

The serpent in the Garden of Eden however was (as far as I know), in the text that Hebrew tradition contributes to Moses who wrote Genesis, and that was almost one thousand years after Gilgamesh.

A bit off topic. But concerning Moses and the Writing of Genesis.

While Hebrew/Jewish tradition does hold that Moses wrote Genesis long long long after the events themselves, there are some who believe that while Moses was on Mt. Sinai communing with God, and recieving the Ten Commandments is when he recieved that information. During that time Moses asked to see Gods face. God told him that he couldn’t see His face, or he’d die. So God showed him His back instead. It was when Moses saw the back of God, he was actually looking backwards in time, and was able to witness those events himself.

Of course it’s just a theory, but interesting nonetheless. However, the Epic of Gilgemesh was certainly written a long time before the book of Genesis, and in the order of written works, it’s usually the earliest that takes precedent. (At least in historical matters)

Oh wow, that’s interesting! I’ve never heard of or seen the “God’s back” story beyond the one verse about it in Exodus. It doesn’t appear to exist in the modern Old Testament versions. What’s the source for that, if any?

Still no email for support ticket:

Hi, support ticket 1433490 was submitted April 12 and hasn’t been answered yet. I want access to my GW1 account!

Where did Tyrians get the word ‘dragon’ from? In our world, the term is nigh universal and almost infinite. The earliest use of the word is ancient greek, but even the Chinese and Norse had equivalents—all of the words: drakon, draco, etc, point to a large serpent. Theoretically, the origin of the word “dragon” in our world comes from the Biblical story of Satan.

Tyrian Humans have no such history to rely on. Yet the word ‘dragon’ is also universally accepted by every race in Tyria. No races ask, “what’s a dragon?” Where did the word come from?

I thought magic always existed in Tyria but Abaddon gifted humans with the ability to use it? If the reverse is true then there is a plot hole in Tyria not having magikittenil Abaddon, but the dragons existing long before they arrived.

Anyone else remember the good old days where to get the best weapon/armor in a game you did a series of trading quests and an occasional difficult secret dungeon?

Hi, support ticket 1433490 was submitted April 12 and hasn’t been answered yet. I know there’s been a high volume and there’s no immediate need for action, but if a dev member would be gracious enough to PM me about this, they’d have my gratitude!

Retired? I don’t want to retire. This is MY story dangit! I won’t be happy if I don’t have an experience like Zhaitan. Planning attacks, counseling Trahearne, being a bigger part of the war beyond doing missions for an Order…that’s what I’m here for.

Came in late to the party. I know the bundle will be back hopefully soon, so here are the questions:

1. Is S2 worth the money? Good story, good gameplay? I’m not too interested in achievements but I love following stories.

2. What is the price of the bundle in comparison to each separate episode? (1600 gems total separately, I know that)

3. How much of Season 2 is personal? I want to continue following the Pact in my position as Commander. In fact I’m hoping HoT is like what Factions was to Prophecies in terms of new content.

I’m not going to spend a week of my playtime in two zones out of the several available. I have more fun things to do than grind the same zone and same enemies over and over. I like variety and still have map completions to do. So I will not be ‘trying’ to get into the closed beta. Hope Anet gets good feedback from the 1% of their playerbase that only plays in Dry Top and Silverwastes.

I’m inclined to agree with the point on the dragons having no knowledge of the Mists before gaining servants that had such knowledge. Another point: the Orrian Mirror. Since an Eye of Zhaitan was able to manipulate it, then the dragons have to be able to manipulate other magics such as the Foefire. However, if the dragons must truly rely on their servants to manipulate magical artifacts and spells, then there is no way for them to touch the Ascalonians because there is nobody alive who can dispell the Foefire let alone control the ghosts it created.

Durmand Priory Living Story line, perhaps? This is definitely something they’d want to know.

The Ascalonian Catacombs house the corpses of the long dead, before the Foefire was used. You ca hear commentary on it in AC itself and in the Charr’s intro story.

That’s the best explanation I gather, that dragons simply cannot turn souls themselves. It’s fortunate Zhaitan never reached Ascalon. The Charr would have been wiped out with the amount of corpses in the catacombs.

You could also ask, “can the dragons control the magic of Orr?” The Foefire is a spell of Orrian origin, after all. Is it possible for Kralkatorrik or any other dragon to control that sort of magic and turn Ascalonian ghosts into minions?

Even better, considering it may be possible for Orrian scholars to find a way to end the Foefire’s effects, I can see this tying into an expansion.

I’m currently playing through the Sylvari PS and I’m liking it a lot more than the Human tracks. Couldn’t get into the Asura track, and I have to say I’m enjoying the “family” feeling, especially the Mirror, Mirror quest. There’s a big difference in daring rescue missions depending on who you’re rescuing from. Centaurs are ‘meh’ but going to Orr at Level 20? Madness!

What’s your favorite PS combination? Were there any tracks that hit you in the feels? Do you think there are specific combinations that tie the story together better?

Hi, support ticket 1433490 was submitted April 12 and hasn’t been answered yet. I know there’s been a high volume and there’s no immediate need for action, but if a dev member would be gracious enough to PM me about this, they’d have my gratitude!

My display monitor is 1920×1080, so it’s native.

Konig, thank you very much for the corrections and added speculation! I’ll have to see what this Hidden Arcana is all about. Sounds like my questions may be answered in Heart of Thorns!

I’m playing the game at a resolution of 1920×1080. All of the loading screen images are very blurry and look watercolored. I’ve seen the same images on the wiki and they’re all high quality, very different.

Is there an option I’m missing ingame to load the images at a better quality, or is my resolution the issue?

Abaddon and the Five True Gods are the giftors of magic to Tyria correct? Dragons regulate that magic and keep it in balance, unless I’m mistaken. While the dragons do pose a huge threat to the races of Tyria and the very way of life, what will happen to Tyria if they’re all destroyed? It seems as if there will be a magic overflow (or a massive reduction in magic) causing all of Tyria to become an apocalyptic state.

Will the Five True Gods return to stop this calamity? If in-game characters know this information, why haven’t there been a rise in support groups ala our real world groups that support preservation of the world’s natural ecosystem (global warming)?