Guild Wars 2

I don’t mind the wait to get the commendations, but, yeah, we need new GMs and they really need to fix some of the bugs in the current ones (Yanoka, for example). Unfortunately, this seems to be just another feature that was created and abandoned like dungeons, environmental weapons, etc…

Can we PLEASE hide shoulders on outfits? There are a few more I would really like to buy, but I don’t like the shoulders on them, so I won’t (e.g. Taimi’s, Nature’s Oath, Fancy Winter, Crystal Nomad).

Liked this episode a lot. The previous episode, I enjoyed the story, but didn’t like the actual content (those fights…). This time around, I’m enjoying both, though the map feels too big.

Two pieces of feedback, one more subjective than the other:
1- Please stop destroying Dragon’s Watch. You made me care about these characters and now you’re making them all hate each other. Pls no.
2- The endings for most of the episodes this season have felt really abrupt. We get a big reveal or a cutscene or something and then we’re just left standing by ourselves with the mastery point for completion. Example: Braham cracks the tooth, “Story complete, see ya in three months.” Same with yesterday’s story, though this wasn’t AS jarring as the Braham episode since we chatted some with Taimi after.

moonstarmac.4603:

RDarken.2495:

…

Last night, I went to complete the Caladbolg quest again on another character. Didn’t realize I couldn’t do the scavenger hunt twice, looked up what I needed to do: Crafting.

…

If you want the other skins you can take the Caladbolg you got to your home instance and “reforge” it for 1000 unbound magic. This is the fastest way I’ve found…and less expensive.

Thanks. I was trying to get one of my other characters an ascended weapon, though

RandomWolf.3986:

Because what’s better than to sunk thousands of hours into crafting? Surely that’s a great strategy.

It’s their way of forcing players into grind. Not only it is a huge waste of potential and opportunities, it quickly makes the game feel repetitive, monotonous and unrewarding. There’s nothing rewarding about farming the same-old-same-old stuff when you could’ve used those hours to do something else and way more entertaining.

Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel. I think back to epic quests in EverQuest and I wish there was something more like that to build a Legendary.

paperclip.7014:

But getting the the professions to 500 can be a bit boring.

This, and the gold sink to level, are the biggest problems for me, really. I could maybe stomach doing 1-2 in the case of a legendary, but with the change to Fractal Ascended gear, I would need to do it more than that.

I don’t mind some RNG, honestly. But the drop rates on Ascended gear seems SO low. I’ve only gotten I think three drops in all my time in the game (playing since early access). Two of which have been more recent, since I’ve finally broken into T3 fractals. But I hit a wall there because I didn’t have AR high enough, so I couldn’t get into T3, so I couldn’t get Ascended gear to raise my AR, etc. Hoping to see some more now that I can do a good chunk of T3.

I was excited when I read about the legendary journeys, but that has turned out to be mostly just another crafting barrier. There are lots of cool things in the game I would like to work toward, but with so much gated behind crafting, I’m personally not going to achieve a lot.

I’m not saying nothing should be available for crafting, just that I wish there were more things that didn’t require it.

EDIT to add: RE: Economy. Do folks actually find that the economy is healthy and in good shape? Not asking this sarcastically. From my perspective, the economy is pretty poor, but since people brought it up, I’m wondering if people are happy with it the way it is.

I’m not a fan of crafting in most games. GW2’s system is definitely more fun than a lot of games I have played, but it’s just not my thing. Why is it that so many items, especially end-game items, require max level crafting?

Last night, I went to complete the Caladbolg quest again on another character. Didn’t realize I couldn’t do the scavenger hunt twice, looked up what I needed to do: Crafting.

Okay. I’ll do some fractals, to see if I have enough to get some armor or weapons from the merchant. Looks like the merchant was changed recently so now you need 500 crafting in different professions to get armor, weapons, etc.

Mawdrey, legendaries, ascended gear. This is the only game I know of that forces a specific playstyle (i.e. crafting) if you want the best gear in the game. Can we get some systems in place (and revert the change in fractals) for those of us who don’t want to craft or am I in the minority here?

I really don’t understand why people have a problem with Marjory. I have more of a problem with the way the PC responded to her. In response to her saying, “I’m going to keep an eye on this person we don’t trust,” I would have ACTUALLY said “Okay, thank you. Be careful, call me if there’s any trouble.” End of story. I wouldn’t try to forbid her from doing something, good grief. Just like threatening to kill Caithe in HoT – barf. Totally out of character imo.

Palador.2170:

Lots of people could pull off the disguise, but who can absorb all that bloodstone energy? It’s a pretty short list, if we stick to the people we already know.

Personally, I think it really IS Lazarus. Or, rather, 80% of him. The attempt to reform him worked, but part of him is missing. That would explain why he’s as powerful as he is, and yet acting much different than people expected him to. Maybe it’s even been replaced with something else, something that mellowed him out some.

His evil got left behind :P

If the goal is getting at Aurene, I wonder if it’s connected to Kralk. Do we know the full extend of Kralk’s powers? Could illusions be part of it? Or could Kralk have absorbed some of Mordy’s mind powers + whatever its existing powers are.

Reaching, but first thing I thought of.

I’d like to make some constructive comments on the story aspects of this episode (and some apply to other most recent episodes, as well).

The power spike of NPCs was really strange in this episode. For one, I find it odd that other mesmers have all these super powerful skills that we, as players, do not (at least not yet): Anise, Jennah, and Valette can all portal seemingly wherever they want, Jennah can murder people with a snap of her fingers, white mantle mind stab creates multiple attacks. I also find it strange that this episode had so many mesmers.

I’m really disappointed in the evolution of Dragon’s Watch. I loved DE 2.0, so seeing it shattered like this and seeing my character being kind of a jerk to folks like Marjory is just weird.

My biggest gripe with the last couple of episodes is the abrupt endings. Braham declares he is going to crack Jormag’s tooth. We get a cinematic of him doing just that. And then the “Episode complete” box pops up and we’re standing in a cave alone in silence. This thread is completely ignored this episode. Cracking the tooth is a big, big deal, especially for a Norn PC.
Similarly, this episode we find out Lazarus might not actually be really Lazarus. We talk about it with Canach shortly and then… that’s it, it’s over. I get that these are short stories, but, imo, the endings need some work to feel less jarring.

Crescendo Forte.4821:

• As time goes one, fewer people will need to come to missions, because they have fully geared their characters and no longer need commendations. This means that fewer people will want missions and more people will be forced to or turn to mindless farming in Ember Bay/Bitterfrost. This is a natural decay that should be refilled by new players.

Totally agree that we need more missions (especially puzzles), but I need to disagree with this one point. Sorry to be nitpicky, but remember that, aside from commendations, players also get a bouncy chest which pretty much always includes at least one rare. So you’re getting a chance at ectos (if you salvage), a chance at mystic forging something, or between 20-50s per mission.
You don’t even need to successfully complete all the missions: Races, as soon as one person completes, everyone gets the chest; Trek, as soon as you personally complete it, you get the chest.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Lakemine.3014:

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

The final fight in Frozen Out is very unclear as to what you’re supposed to do- or maybe it’s just me. I’ve only seen bits of what people have said, are you supposed to have the champion run over the minions? At what point? I ran around with him for five minutes, moving him all over the place and he never seemed to take any damage.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

When you agro him, every about 10s or so, a red arrow will show up under him. The red arrow indicates where he will run, kinda like the charge the Bloomhunger does, just with a red arrow showing where. You want the little adds between him and you, so he runs them over. There are 4 little adds to each ice core. When each of the 4 adds are killed by the ice beat running them down, the core will break and Braham will run over and pick up the scroll and say its the wrong one. Rinse repeat till the last ice core is down, then Braham picks up the last scroll, shoots the fire arrow and removes the 99% reduced damage buff, and then just dps and CC as normal. Watch for the freeze tell, raises his chest a bit and his charge, the red arrow.

Click spoiler for it. Hope that helps.

The fact that this is so hard to figure out without help is a major issue. The game does a horrible job of indicating what to do in that fight. And the tell for the freeze is way too subtle in the craziness that is going on.

Agree that it could be better. I figured out it had something to do with the charging, but I thought I had to make it charge into the ice blocks, not the elementals. This was reinforced by a couple of things:
1- At one point, I saw that one of the three were gone and Braham said “Try another one!” Which made me think I had to get rid of the blocks.
2- When it ran into one of the elementals, I was behind the block. It shattered the elemental and the block shrank at the same time the boss collided with the block.

I’m really disappointed in the story this season. I LOVED season 2, I also really liked HoT (liked the story, the pacing, everything – I couldn’t stop playing because I HAD to see what happened).

What was with the ending? Short cutscene, then a pop up that I’ve completed the story. It all felt really abrupt and now we have to wait how long for further developments? There was no sense of resolution at all with this episode.

The dragon revelations from Taimi are awesome. I love that two dragons are active at once. I understand, to some degree, Braham’s attitude, but I don’t really understand why he seemed to be mad at us before we even said anything. Most importantly, I hate how my character is acting. You’ve made such great characters with DE 2.0. So why are you writing them out and making them hate us?

I couldn’t stand Logan or Zojja, but the rest of the original DE was fine. I never doubted Caithe’s intentions and yet, my character threatened to kill her at the end of HoT. I trust Majory – why did my character try to forbid her from going to Lazarus instead of thanking her for keeping an eye on him? Why was I condescending to Braham instead of trying to reason with him?

I’m really, really disappointed with the way this story is going – and story is one of the things that keeps me in GW2.

Yeah, there are a few outfits I really wanted to buy, but the shoulders turned me off. If I could hide them, I would have bought. Taimi’s outfit, for example.

I actually like 1 and 2 /shrug

This worries me. I don’t WvW with a guild, so I rely on the bigger guilds to be commanding. If those guilds decided to move to a new server, it could seriously gut WvW for me.

Is it not possible to match servers based on WvW participation? If a server is 50% full, but only 5% of people play WvW, matching them with a server that is 70% full wouldn’t necessarily make for an unfair matchup for a server that is 80% full, but has high WvW participation (for example).

I had MAJOR deja vu in this fight. Went only slightly better than last time
The dragons gaining powers is awesome. Never expected that.

The one thing that bugs me is my characters reactions. I wasn’t mad at Caithe in HoT. I trust Marjory and wouldn’t tell her not to follow Lazarus. I just don’t like those reactions.

Is this a known issue and is it being fixed? I notice it all the time, finally thought to get some screenshots. Minor spoilers, as I took these in the first part of the new patch (simulation). To be clear, this is not just an issue I am seeing with these enemies, but have noticed it for quite some time.

http://i.imgur.com/M8L96zY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oTKUiIj.jpg

I left the combat log in there so you can see that the damage is from the ground target and not an enemy (and all enemies are dead in this screenshot).
I stood in place and just capped a bunch of screens so I could actually capture the damage numbers.

In the first one, I am standing close to the circle, but outside of it. You can even see that the negative effect is shooting out at an angle to hit me.
In the second, I am pretty far outside of the circle and still getting hit by the AOE.

Thanks for including us! I LOVE Destiny’s Edge 2.0. I never really liked the original DE (mostly Zojja / Logan). If you end up bringing that group back, I hope it will be like the original GW, where you give us a choice on who to assist (e.g. Heroes of Ascalon or the newest group of henchies for that chapter or letting us pick our heroes when those were introduced).

I often find myself very clearly outside of enemy AOE indicators, but still getting hit, especially with knockdowns. This is most clearly evident to me with Mushroom Stompers: I can be far outside of the red circle indicator, but they will still land directly on top of me.

Is this just me? Is it a lag thing? It happens quite often.

PopeUrban.2578:

The thing is, GW2’s loot economy is based around drooping and salvaging large quantities of items. In order to pay out what feels like good loot for killing stuff, the “trash” greens and blues have to be somehow manageable without requiring people to visit a merchant every 5 seconds.

In order to cut the number of bags, they’d have to seriously increase the number of inventory slots be bag, or offer some sort of median vendor payout for said bags.

Increasing inventory space doesn’t solves the “click all the things” issue, and offering a vendor payout for unopened bags would just feel like a penalty for people not willing to open the bags and loot things “properly”

Without completely changing how the loot>materials>crafted items economy works I can’t really see a better option than what they started in the HoT maps, use less bag types so at least when you’re looting the bags stack better. Anything else would require not just an overhaul of loot, but of the whole loot and crafting systems to a point it wouldn’t be worth the headache and require stupid amounts of resources to to band-aid somethings that’s a pretty core part of how the game’s economy works.

Plus, I like taking the down time to open a bunch of bags. It’s like when you’d trick-or-treat as a kid and then come home and inventory all the loot. It’s kind of relaxing after several hours of murdering stuff.

Why can’t mobs drop the approximate amount of gold and/or mats instead of useless gear we have to sell? Add blues and greens to merchants (I think they actually may be already), so newer players can buy it if they want it, give the rest of us the raw results. ez pz

Drives me nuts. +1 for fewer boxes. Just remove Magic Find already if the whole thing is to prevent MF from affecting loot.

I vendor pretty much everything that I can’t deposit as material or isn’t at least rare.

So much junk in this game.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Randulf.7614:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Here’s the quote from the Reddit AMA. Basically it’s because they’re too busy right now, but it’s not ruled out for the future.

Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet
It’s a cool suggestion. But, sorry, we’re not working on a key ring. We’ve got a full plate with other development, and as I said above, my priority is for us to do a great job on the things we’re already tackling.

True but the quote is over 2 months old, when they pulled everyone onto the quarterly update. It may still apply, or they may have added it into the schedule since.

It’s only been 2 months, and If they haven’t restarted the Legendary weapons process that we paid for then I’d say they’re still busy.

The legendaries got canceled
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Legendary-weapons-6

Redenaz.8631:

I don’t mind the crafting, although I have to admit that I used GW2crafts.net to get through it all as efficiently as I could. I did a little “normal” crafting for a while, but it seems very tedious to craft a little here and a little there as you level up.

It’s a bit odd that, because so many end-tier crafted goods are account-bound, the game pushes everyone to master every crafting discipline. Your friends and guildmates might help you speed through some time restrictions, but once you reach exotic armor, you’re really on your own from there.

Yeah, I GW2 crafted my way up to 400 weaponsmith on one character. Mostly because I wanted Vision of the Mists. I was going to bite the bullet to get to 500, but a guildie gave me a walkthrough and it really turned me off

wolfie.7296:

(it’s a free bump don’t complain. ) And you do you said you don’t mind grinding for one-two months..that’s a lot of time.

haha thank you

Nah, I didn’t say I like grinding. I said I would prefer slowly working on a longer quest over a period of two months than having to craft to achieve something like Mawdrey. Not sitting in Silverwastes for hours each day, but go in there, run the event, get a small part of it. Repeat until I have enough. Like getting a Torment weapon back inGW1.

Well, to start, I didn’t say I liked grinding. Second, I don’t really know what your point is or really why you felt the need to post at all, since you aren’t really adding to the conversation.

I’m not a crafter. I have disliked crafting in nearly every game I have played: The only exception I can think of where I actually ENJOYED it was Vanguard; I tolerated it in LotRO. If a game requires that I craft, it is not a game for me.

In most MMOs, I can just contribute to a guild / friend who will craft on my behalf. That is impossible in GW2 for most “end game” things (Mawdrey, ascended armor, legendaries, new precursor system). When I heard about the new precursor/legendary system, I was really excited. I thought back to getting my epic weapon back in EverQuest: A huge, long quest I could chip away at over time, that required some difficult encounters, teamwork, and some farming. We got some of that, but then a whole bunch of crafting.

Am I the only one turned off by this kind of thing? I’m not asking for it to be easy or handed to me. I’m just asking for a way to accomplish the same things WITHOUT having to craft (and, in my case, without having to grind tradeskills up to 500, THEN go through the crafting process required). But I would rather farm some hard-to-get items for a month or two than to spend a month or two farming the gold necessary to craft items to get the thing.

Merry.7290:

Treks: 5 man not doable with large guilds. Players have to do them in small groups at different times. Some report no rewards.

If you have people stand on a single point WITHOUT activating it, it should work. Basically, you get people to trigger all but one of the points – have remaining members stand on the last point. One person triggers it, all should get rewards.

Lunaleigh.4673:

In order to get credit for the guild at the rush, needed people to go through the end flags one at a time and zigzag through the end flag by calling guildies one at a time.

I’m not sure the single line thing works. I crossed by myself yesterday (I was first YAY) but did not trigger it. I had to run back over it to get it, but it could just be lag. Lag has been awful.

Yeah, our guild used to take us about an hour to complete; today it took us two and a half because of bugs and stuff. We ran puzzle three times, and one member did not get the reward any of the times – even when we made sure only people without rewards completed the events.

Honestly, these aren’t even fun right now…

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ve tried to cut back some of the visual noise of some of the “noisiest” skills to make it easier to see what’s going on in combat with multiple players/mobs on screen.

Pleeeassseee let this be substantial.

Kuulpb.5412:

Barsity.9408:

Kuulpb.5412:

I know it seems like Arenanet doesn’t care, but at the current moment, they are trying to fix a UI that will affect a HUGE percentage of their PvE Playerbase,

Why does ONLY Pve matter? Seriously… once again my Mike O’Obrien post comes into play. kitten THAT!

Kuulpb.5412:

yes messages might have been Helpful, but that is the past, so They are working to make UI compatible with their PvE content, and I’m sure at some point in the future, After they schedule specific events and etc etc, they will do a WvW based feature Patch or somehting that will make it somehow better, Such as More Maps, Maybe the possibility of more servers fighting eachother at once? hmmmmmmmmmm?

They have been awful at announcing betas for WvW content…. And should have just released it to all to see real “server” beta’ing for realsies. The fact they only selecte certain accounts/guilds for WvW means they give no kittens about beta’ing it for real.

You’re forgetting, The expansion is PvE Based. THE LIVING STORY. Anyway, as I read earlier in this thread, This is one fo the first LONG downtimes of GW2 in 3 years, thinking over it, yes It is. And Moaning about WvW on “reset night” because “you want to be so pro” or you enjoy it, isn’t going to help anyone. Take my advice, get a drink and calm down. Wait for Arenanet to finish their repairs. You’re blowing this out of proportion by claiming Arenanet doens’t care about wvw or Mike O’brien doens;‘t or whatever. They may HATE wvw for all w eknow, but they do it anyway because it’s a playstyle they have. At the moment they are working on somehting else, and later they will work on somethign else. Just stay calm and please stop ranting about how you think this is outrageous that Anet had downtime.

Agreed that the hyperbole is unnecessary, but who knows what Barsity has going on his his life. Maybe reset night is a bigger deal to him than it would be to you, you know?

And, again, it is probably pretty frustrating to get locked out of your favorite part of the game on the best night to play because of a beta you aren’t participating in.

I don’t think the issue is so much that it’s a couple of hours of downtime. I think the problem is that it’s right in the middle of prime reset time. For T1 servers, and folks who exclusively – or almost exclusively – play WvW, this is kind of a big hit to their playtime for the week/month/whatever. The best action is typically during reset nights. So I can understand the frustration of WvW players who are affected by a beta they are not even participating in.

This thread….

ANet is far from perfect. GW2 is far from perfect. There is a lot I could say about ANet’s policies or history that isn’t exactly positive. But what I can say that’s positive is that they have made two games I have played the crap out of, probably more than I’ve played any other game. I expect the same is true of many of the folks replying to this thread. You wouldn’t be as salty if you weren’t invested in the game.

To the folks saying that ANet will drop raids in favor of whatever the next big thing is… Who can blame them? Just look at the responses in this thread alone and you can see why they might stop working on one part of the game to focus on something else or a new part of the game. Players are really quick to jump on them and get angry about what they did wrong or what they should be doing that they aren’t. Then they try to appease those players by making changes and other players get mad because they stopped supporting this or focused on that instead.

How about we see what raids are like before we get all angry about them?

Dawdler.8521:

Waaaaaat particle effects is fiiiiine.

Look at the bright side. At least you’re not engineers.

I just don’t understand how there can be screenshots like these and folks at ANet look at them and go “Yup, this is exactly how we want it to look!”

I don’t think that’s really true. Back in the day of old PCs, in games like EQ, you had raids with tons of people. Granted, the game wasn’t designed to be as flashy as GW2 is, but you could still limit or turn off the particle effects that appeared. That way you could not only keep your PC from crashing, but could see what was happening.

It’s kind of silly to me to have active combat like GW2 has and then totally obscure it in a sea of effects like is common.

Wow I didn’t know the northern lights were in this game! So cool!

Will there ever be an option for us to do this? The game is beautiful and it drives me crazy that I can’t see it in combat. It also makes it very difficult to see “red circles” or really avoid attacks at all. I can’t even find my own character in this screenshot I took earlier in the week:
http://i.imgur.com/CkvIaBt.jpg

Name: The Order of Dii [Dii]
Gameplay: Just about everything!
Server: Jade Quarry
Region: NA
Website: http://dii.enjin.com/

Who we are:

• Dii is one of the oldest Guild Wars guilds still in existence: We just turned 10, having gotten our start in Diablo 2
• A medium-smallish guild: 50+ active members, peak concurrency of about 15-20
• A tight-knit group of friends, with a flat hierarchy
• No required play times or donations & we only ask for 50% repping – we understand real life and in-game obligations
• International guild, majority of members in American and European time zones
• Weekly guild missions for members & guests
• Active forums/chat at our website

You:

• Are a friendly 18+ person who likes to play PvP and/or PvE
• Can be casual or hardcore (we have both types in the guild), as long as you have respect for other people’s play styles
• Are willing to represent Dii at least 50% or your in game time
• Are looking for a group of friends to play with at your leisure
• Like a good laugh, are no stranger to the occasional dirty joke or crude language
• Do not throw a hissy fit if your team “fails”

Leaders:
shadowlurker.3956, satomz.9712, SirJack.4760

Easiest way to apply is at our website (dii.enjin.com), but we have a bunch of leadership available to help! Feel free to reach out to any of the leaders above!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

FYI GW2 is not F2P, it is B2P. You would have to spend money on these expansions in order to take advantage of them, no matter what.

Factotum.2093:

Third, saying “the base game is included for free” is just a lame attempt by the marketing department to rephrase “you must buy the base game again even if you’ve already bought it and played through all of it”. It’s frankly insulting to existing players, and shows the same kind of attitude that cost Blizzard several thousand customers (when they started adding “free extras” for new players, and making existing players pay more for them). But even Blizzard had the basic decency of selling stand-alone expansions at a price lower than the “battle chest” (game + expansion package).

Conspiracy theory hollaaa

Also, as posted above, GW2 was $60 at launch, so it’s really quite frankly believable that the expansion is $50 on its own – ie. $10 less than the base game as at launch (which is what people are bellyaching over in the first place).

ReaverKane.7598:

Its simple math. New players who by choice decided not to touch GW2 so far will get GW2+ HoT for 50USD.
Old players who have been supporting the game, and are the ONLY reason there’s even an expansion will have to pay more than double for the same content.
Fair? I think not.
And yeah we got to play it for longer? So what? Again it was their choice, and pretty much to me Arena Net is rewarding those who chose NOT to support their game early on.

This is just silly – you got to enjoy the game for almost four full years – you got what you paid for. Don’t be jelly that new players only have to buy the expansion.

Chasind.3128:

KPOBb.8476:

I don’t get the Veteran entitlement position.

There is no entitlement. But for those of us who have already owned gw2, payed 50-75$ for an entire game are having to buy the entire game again + HoT expansion for 50$ which is a slap in the face. There is no stand alone version of just HoT to buy. You have to re-buy the entire game + HoT. Atleast in GW1, the expansions itself were entire games & it was worth the extra 30-40$ bc you were automatically given an extra char slot. (except for eye of the north. )
We don’t really even know if 50$ for HoT is even worth it. Anet is just money hungry & it shows. They don’t give players who already own gw2 the option to just buy the HoT “expansion”.

Okay, but ANet said $50 is the cost of the expansion and that the base game is being included for free so new players do not have to buy both. So the argument that the cost includes both is invalid – and the posts accusing ANet of lying are kind of silly.

Kitsune.1902:

The comparison is not relevant in my opinion because the distribution of costs is very different. Without subscription, the game has to nickel and dime the revenue through cash shop for the most part. You can’t really compare the sub fee plus expansions, to the expansions of F2P or B2P games, without taking account the role of the cash shop.

This same reasoning is why I bring them up at all Kind of funny we have differing positions based on the same reasoning hehe
For me, my point is that P2P games have a guaranteed revenue stream (and some even have cash shops in addition to monthly fees), but GW2 does not. That is why I say it is ANet doing something nice for players, as they are literally taking money out of their pockets, as opposed to saying “To play HoT you must pay $40 for the base game + $50 for the expansion.”

I understand where you’re coming from now, though.

ReiCH.6273:

If it’s just a small amount of money, can you please gift me one HoT code? Your generosity can keep me in the game. Thanks a bunch.

When I said “small amount of money,” I was referring to the cost of a character slot and/or the delta between the price people think the game should be and what it actually is.

ReiCH.6273:

Especially the more serious questions about the actual amount of content we’ll be getting (number of zones for example, number of events, adventures, challenging group content etc), the average time required to complete the story, how many and which we’ll be getting from the new legendary list, all the specializations, and -ultimately- a release date and a complete feature list, so the company can be held accountable towards its customers. People should know what it is they’re buying and when it is expected to be available.

As I said, this is a totally reasonable reason not to preorder.

Kitsune.1902:

Well certainly you are ‘entitled’ to your opinion, but I question the accuracy of your statements. Altar of Malice is the newest expansion for EQ2, and at least on steam it doesn’t include anything more than that particular expansion.

I imagine they stopped doing it upon the switch to F2P (I never really played the game, so haven’t followed it), but they did do it. Looks like Destiny of Velious was the last one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest_II_expansions#Destiny_of_Velious
“Destiny of Velious is the seventh EverQuest II expansion pack. The expansion also gives access to all previous released expansions and adventure packs.”

Kitsune.1902:

Like I’ve said on earlier post, it is indeed common practice to make bundles of previous expansions. BUT. That generally includes only the old expansions, not the newest one.

But don’t we always praise ANet for doing things outside the norm? We’re always so happy when they break the rules and make things cheaper (“no subscription fees”), so it really shouldn’t even be that surprising for us that they’re doing this.

Kitsune.1902:

As for subscription MMOs, the comparison doesn’t seem relevant because their whole business model is completely different. They are also exceedingly rare these days. WoW and FFXIV come to mind, and that’s about it. ESO just went to buy-to-play model, and Wildstar is moving to fully F2P model this fall.

I don’t understand why the comparison is irrelevant: They are MMOs and we are talking about the cost of the game. To play WoW or FFXIV, you have to buy the game, plus pay a monthly fee. Also, similar to the move by ANet, WoW made all expansions except the latest one built into the core game, so all you’d need to buy to jump in would be the latest expansion:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15355237075

I guess the real lesson for ANet here is to not try to do anything nice for their players.

ANet is including the base game as a courtesy to new players. This is not a new practice: EQ 2 used to include not only the base game, but ALL previous expansion packs with each expansion. I can understand someone who purchased the full game recently being frustrated, but most of the complaints are from “veteran players” and are just plain ridiculous.
The morning of the E3 stream, feedback was “hype”: “I can’t wait to preorder,” “Please take my money,” etc.. Preorders are released and now the hard work of all the developers is being spat upon over a small amount of money. Nothing about the game has changed.

Just because we got char slots with each new CHAPTER of GW1, does not mean we are entitled to one for free here – in fact, the only true “expansion” of GW1 did not come with a free character slot. ANet never once told us to expect a character slot – if you did, your disappointment is not ANet’s fault.

I do not think ANet is perfect, not by a longshot, and I question/“boycott” some of their business practices (like paid RNG). I can totally understand not wanting to preorder yet because we do not know enough about the game, but this level of negativity is disgusting and, frankly, stinks of the entitled gamer attitude. Let’s not forget that ANet is a business and, therefore, needs to make money so we can play. Keep in mind that some MMOs have a monthly subscription in addition to requiring the purchase of their expansion for $40+.

I hope ANet sticks to their guns on this. I’m getting the Ultimate Edition. I cheaped out on Prophecies and still regret not getting those gloves.

Yeah, honestly, I wish ANet would cut the paid RNG down. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were RNG about which Shadow Dyes you get, but I won’t pay money for the chance at the item I want. Assuming I win RNG to get a Shadow Dye, I still have to win the RNG for the shade I want. It feels like throwing money away to me.

Same with Black Lion Weapon Skins. I just won’t put any money toward keys because they only have a chance to let me pay for a skin I want. I’m happy to support the game and pay for the skins and cosmetics I want, but real money RNG is not cool with me.

Nice post, Chipsy!

We’ve been hanging in there. In fact, I am having even more fun now than I was in T2. Once we get a little more organized and people join TS more regularly again, I think we’ll be even better!

/signed

This would be nice