Guild Wars 2

Simple solution to add an NPC which trades these tomes for other character items (not the same as shard trader). just as with all the endless other currencies.

It is indeed Annoying and very boring to complete the map and do the all the hearts even on 5 characters. not to mention 11. it is also time consuming, preventing us from doing more rewarding or interesting stuff. i like the HoT content, like to PvP, like to do the Meta Events, i just can’t find to do all that and still progress other chars which i made almost 5 years ago. repeatdly doing the same hearts over and over again, being forced to the low worth loot compared to HoT and Living story maps. just to get gifts of exploration? i agree with the OP. such kinds of map exploration unlocks and rewards should be account wide. while special achievement gifts should be untied and cut off from repeatable grind. i actually don’t have problem with running to unlock WPs around the maps but rather with the repeatable boring and boring again and again repeat of Hearts and low level content.

BobbyStein.2315:

I can empathize with having a busy life and not always being able to fit my gaming schedule in between work, home life, and social commitments. Your comments are not lost on us.

We’re exploring some ideas for the future, including a system that would allow certain bits of Living World content to be accessed independent of the release. Plans and designs have not been solidified yet, so I want to temper your expectations. But if you have any opinions on the matter feel free to let us know. We’re already looking at ways to leave some LW content behind to evolve Tyria and improve the game. This would be one element of it, should we decide to build such a feature.

In My Opinion it would be an interesting idea for Arenanet to consider to release an Annual Expansion pack which includes all the Living Story events as Permanent Content. Playable in a similar way as the Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack…
though the Titles and Rewards should be achievable for those who will chose to purchase such Content Pack/Expansion.

such solution would be financially good for Arenanet, as well will solve almost all the issues being raised by so many players, who just can’t schedule their life with the Living Story Schedule.

agreed. i have been observing similar effects on different computers, the only pattern i see is this being related to last patch. behaviour is identical when ever event gets larger, the Latency seems to grow. it is not the first time such thing happenns after a patch. and players are only advised to query with their ISP’s who have nothing to do with this issue.

User from Israel here. this issue started after the february Patch.
No Frame Lag.
Skill Activation Lag and Chat Lag.
Bigger events suffer from Larger Lag.
Sometimes Client Disconnects, many times not, after events finish, all Lagging Skills get Charged and Game Becomes Playable again.
(Most of the Events done during the Mega Lag, are missed, and not Credited for, including lost Chests for Bosses).

This Lag issue started for me 10 days ago.
in crowded places/events the lag makes it impossible to accomplish any big group event,
in places such as crowded Champion with Chest. the Skill activation starts hanging for minutes, sometimes random skill passes. most of the time the events finish without me being credited for them. its like playing in ghost mode. just exactly in the video posted above.
soon after event ends and players leave the place, all the lagging skills activate and play returns to normal. it happens now on every map. not specific place.
since the buggy and Laggy Karka patch, after it was fixed, game and lag were normal.
this time the issue started right after the end of February Patch.

Was Happening since pre release, is still happening now. OooOooOooOooOoo Sound, if you keep playing no to lose the Dragon Chest Client will Crash eventualy after few minutes. that is if the lag will not crash your client first. Amazingly since September nothing really was done about this issue. it happens mostly in places/event with large amounts of players such as WvWvW sieges, or Dragon events such as Claw of Jormag but also in Orr Shrines. i stopped bothering reporting since in the end it is always “my” fault if not my ISP’s.

disconnected 3 times! once managed to return to same server, then on second time after doing 2 hours of events disconnected and got thrown to overflow. done demolition squad there. disconnected again. couldnt return. when returned event was over! no chest. no finale. nothing. all the time spent lost for nothing.

by the way. the same happened in the Phase 1 start event in Lions Arch. every Disconnection reset any progress i had. final time when succesfuly returned lost the finale too.

the Points are back… BUT! in the process i lost 19 points. before the update had 1989. during the bug they dropped to 1540. then i earned 10 points from Daily PvP and WvW and Daily. today when i logged. it showed 1980 Points. so 19 points lost.

i still can see the original amount of points on the log in screen it is 1989. but in the hero panel it dropped to 1541

Prior to the update i had 1989 achievement points. (they were still visible on the main log in screen, then when i entered i see in the hero panel that they dropped to 1541!
reported the bug through the in-game system. (it still shows 1989 on the main screen)

did this happen to anybody else?

i believe that the Gem market should be a sole trading channel used by Arenanet to fight and control the Botters and Gold Sellers.
Gem Market should never be free market economy!
many of those who cry loud for free Gem Market are Speculants and perhaps are even the ones who are responsible for the Gem Prices rising! its the fox who is crying he is hurt while the “cure” will be allowing them to sell their cheaply bought gems to players in a free market. since they can not compete with the current Gem to Gold difference they beg the system be changed. if that is not an attempt to manipulate the system i dont know what is.
for many years i said that Arenanet should have put an NPC to sell Ectos to players in always a cheaper rate than gold sellers. such a mechanism would have a ruining effect on the Proffesional Botters/Farmers Gold traders. they would have been running continously into lower and lower and thus not profitable exchange rate.
the Gem market is a good idea. but it has its flaws. its biggest flaw is the fact that gems can be exchanged back into gold. thus can be traded. so why not instead trying to cheat the Gold Sellers into a semi manipulated gem market wouldnt Arenanet start selling gold instead? always a cent cheaper than the gold sellers? atleast this will produce some REAL income to Arenanet. (games such as Second Life, offer such Gold trade system for years now, and they seem to have found the exact point of stability between real money coming in to Lindens going out) if Gems were supposed to be just Tokens to allow purchase of items found in every in game store, they should have not be made tradable/exchangable back to gold, to begin with.
TLDR:
If you want to fight the Gold Traders, Arenanet should simply sell gold in slightly better rate. and make GEMS fixed price tokens for in game store items. (which cannot be traded be traded between players, just like game store items in GW1).

a Monk… a Monk… All My Kingdom for a Monk!

in case you are running MSI Afterburner to display fps. try to disable the program, and run the client again. i had few such incidents today. the screen was black, the GW2 music played. and the only way to get back was killing application in task manager.
i have AMD 6870 card. did system restore, game worked fine. re-installed Afterburner, the Same problem Returned. turned it off —-> game working normaly.

try to check which of the programs/applications that may interfere your AMD drivers are running while you try to run the Game Client. in my opinion you have one such program trying to override Catalyst settings.

10/4 update solved the problem for me.

Change the ISP.
an ISP that can not deliver you a steady router connection and is clueless regarding this has a serious service problem.

are you using a dialer to connect to the internet, or is you router always connected?

do try the overclocking. your i7-920 begs for it. you will see a huge difference in benchmarks too when you go above 3.2-3.4. this might turn some critic frequency block that might be whats disturbing your system. i cant promise it will give you more than 20fps in WvW but it surely will perform better than how it is now. and as you already can understand even the newest chips struggle with the WvW multi mass zerg processing. so even 18-20 there would be acceptable.
(the only place i feel huge fps drops in WvW is during Gate zerging, under the hot oil… but i never died there cause fps drop made me unresponsive)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-920-overclocking_11.html

anyway, good luck every fps you gain is worth it.

this is weird… i run this game on a Q6600 Intel, which is way older than yours. and also weaker. i get everything between 60fps down to 20 during Zerg events. when the average in pve is 35-42. something in your system doesnt work right. card perhaps?
did you try to overclock your CPU a bit? it might help squeeze some more fps from it.
my specs:
Windows 7 64 Ultimate
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4@3.4
8.00 GB DDR2 RAM
RADEON HD6870 1GB GDDR5 (Sapphire)
TT TP 600W
(just to be fair, my other AMD Phenom II BE 560 x2@x4 (2 cores unlocked) is bit faster than the overclocked Q6600 with a 4870gpu)

if i were you i would try to seriously overclock the i7 920. it should be able to do 3.6-3.8ghz with a medium range aftermarket cooler like cm212+

Overheating CPU’s have a protection commonly known as Throttling. i am not going to explain that here, but as example: when my CPU is reaching 105.1C (yes) a process of frequency scaling starts, which slows down the cpu until it reaches acceptable temperature. Every Cpu generation and brand has its own set temp limit point.

45C In your case… is almost cold.

if its the PSU fan that is failing, dont bother on fixing it, its either quite old PSU, hence its real performance is much lower than the Nominal (500w). in such case replace it with a new one, and from a known manufacturer (Corsair, Seasonic, TT, Antec etc) and get one with a 80 Bronze label or up (Silver, Gold, Platinum, those mean the efficiency of the PSU is higher).

one last thing, you can also download a program called OCCT from http://www.ocbase.com/
and stress test your system independently of any game. test the Cpu Gpu and PSU.
this program is used by overclockers to monitor system stability.
a stable system is a system that passes all the tests without shutting down.

before replacing the PSU, you should check if the Cpu Cooler fan is working fine and doesnt not have dirt or hair that make it work slower, then check also the PSU fan. and sniff the surrounding area for any burned smell, overheated dust has distinctive scent) old and dirty fans are among the first causes of such problems.
if the shut down reason is the CPU you should feel a the performance going down for few seconds before the shut down, in many cases it comes with a blue screen.
in case of PSU the shut down is always imediate.
since you say you can play for 20 minutes or so… it means there is a overheating problem somewhere. and the defense mechanisms shut your system down.
old PSU can also be a reason. as they drop 10-15% in performance every year, if the PSU was 500w (400watts really) brand new. it may be delivering properly only 300-320w after 3 years. happens quicker and more frequently with Generic made PSU’s.

yes. it seems the last maintenance solved the Lag in Israel. there was no Lag and no Disconnections after the Servers Returned.

This also proves that there was no ISP and no Hardware Problem on our end.

7th day of lag and almost unplayable game here.
i really hope that the coming server maintenance will restore things back to order and playability.

Chronomancer…

i am sorry but i can not recommend you to purchase any AMD system for GW2 playing pruposes right now. anyway this specific one you link to is also quite outdated (looks like deadstock/overstock remains to me).
since you dont have many choices, any current Intel I3 or I5 system will perform much better.

(and if you insist on going on with AMD. then get a 990X/GX/FX chipset main board.
and in few weeks a new Piledriver processor).

the Penitum D 830 Smithfield is what is bottlenecking your card.
you cant compare it to the E2200 even though the C2D will also be on the lower end of performance scale in GW2. it is still much faster cpu than the Smithfield. at the same frequency the E2200 will do twice the operations of the outdated PD830.
so yes. its about time to ditch it, and upgrade yourself with a new set of
CPU/Motherboard/Ram.

No Raven, this Lag issue is now wide spread and continent crossing. as you already know.

just put your mouse on the right side edge of the map and left click it (not on any features, just on the space there) then when you will see the cursor changing into a hand icon try to drag it back down while the mouse button is pressed all the time.

Since thursday night 27,9,2012 Lag made the game unplayable.
we are posting dozens of posts, pingplotter screen shots, pings.
everything shows 100% packet loss when it comes to GW2 servers.

what funny is that Chat is not lagging, The Trade Post isnt lagging, Fps are not dropping, but its impossible to play due to activation of skills sometimes lags for 5-10 seconds. if it last more than that it can even get to 50 seconds and then a disconnection.

we talked with the ISP. and its service provider. we tested pings to many other games servers in North America, all pings returned with reasonable and well playbale results.
we checked firewalls, routing settings. we run different computers.

but No. GW2 servers refuse to accept our pings!

Country: Israel
ISP: Bezeqint (30m cable connection)
Server: Gate of Madness

Why no one official is replying here?

seriously, Guild Wars 2 is becoming the new Crysis!
i can see how Arenanet is going to get a lot of free advertising with all the future tech/computer websites benchmarking each and every GPU and CPU to GW2 demanding standards!
and the eternal question “can it run Crysis?”
had officially been changed to “All good, But… Can it Run Guild Wars 2?”

pinging to 64.25.38.192 with 32 bytes of data
Request timed out
Request timed out
Request timed out
Request timed out

Ping statistics for 64.28.38.192
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

Pings to all other destinations are fine and normal
ISP says it is not blocked by them
Router double checked – status fine. no port blocking. firewall off.

i remind that the game worked fine since pre release until friday 28.9.2012
nothing on my system or other computers changed.

if Arenanet/Ncsoft or whoever runs the servers insists it is ISP problem, please contact the specific ISP’s and tell them what and how to unblock. if its not ISP problem, stop sending people in circles to ISPs that send us back to you. this is ridiculous!

Israel
ISP: Bezeqint
pingplotter image to Gate of Madness Server

Pinging to 64.25.38.192 with 32 bytes of data
Request timed out
Request timed out
Request timed out
Request timed out

Ping statistics for 64.28.38.192
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

64.25.38.192
Gate of Madness world
100% packet loss right after this adress

7:11:3:189:101 in israel is due to packet loss on many of the routing servers in North America to Europe. the new patch didnt change much. though it felt better for the few first minutes. but then the lag returned and the eventual connection lost error.

you can use invisible bags for the minis. they will not be deposited.

its not only you Lichy. there is a whole country (Israel) and i am sure other countries too, that suffer enormous lag, huge packet loss and disconnecting pings for the last week. there are few threads active about this. and sadly nothing happenns.

try to un-equip the armor and then transmute it?

New Patch. Lag is still there.

Higher fps than screen refresh rate only has some effect on the Image tearing effects due to more calculation operations. visualy there is less time for the eye to percieve impurities.

http://www.adkgamers.com/index.html/_/comp-team-articles/pt-3-optimization-maximization-intensification-r248

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=366444

Solar. if you screen is refreshing at 60hz and you run a game at 60fps or 500fps you will not see any difference.
and the 24 fps comment was aimed for the minimum fps drop. and it will not appear as a slide show. that is why tom’s are referring to 30fps as a minimum fps target. (NTSC vs PAL frame rates btw) 3d screens work in similar way, showing another motion picture stream during the dead time, while the mind connects them into one.
in filming higher fps shooting is usually used for time lapse. while shooting something like a bullet flying in 70-300 fps and then showing it in 24-30 fps.
Classic cinema shooting is 24 fps
PAL Video stream is 25fps
NTSC stream is 30fps
Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd on the other hand were only 16 fps. thats why they are jumping just like some players do in WvW. or in WWI movies.

bottom line is that 24-30fps is (probably) the low limit of what will not disturb the eye in case of fps drop.

get a decent GPU. (9400GT never was a gaming grade card) what you linked is not showing up.
as for the Cpu. the Q9550 can be overclocked a bit to 3.4-3.6 with cheap aftermarket cooler such as CM 212. with a decent GPU you should be able to run the game on Highest. just make sure your case has room for a long gaming card.

Kalec. i am not arguing with you. yes i agree i am considering upgrading my 5 year old Q6600 system. which still performs decently here. it happens that i have that AMD system as back up near me and i use to ditch older cards into the secondary computers i have. i also have an I5-460m Mobile which i used to play Guild Wars with (its connected to my 42inch Panasonic IPS-Led screen btw)
i run the Q6600 with single HD6870 and i am not getting far downed results than your system. yes i do get drops as low as 24fps in WvW. but i am not pretending to sell 5-6 year old Q6600s here. but look you are running a GTX670 4GB with 16GB Ram with a far superior CPU to mine. i for example would be very dissapointed if i would purchase your parts now and get the results you wrote you are getting.
yes indeed its a mystery why AMD failed so badly with that Bulldozer generation.
yes the Phenom II’s seem to outperform them.

and yes there is no much point in purchasing low end system for a game that makes high end premium priced system choke in the upper parts of the scale.
but he said, he can not return the parts. so no point for him even switching the CPU. even if he get the 8150 he might not get much higher fps.
so what can he do?

as for myself…
i will wait and see what piledriver can deliver. (if the 890GX Asus board i have would still be able to run it. it can run the other AM3+)
i like the AMD chipset for allowing a much cheaper alternative to X-fire. and the fact is when i got it two years ago, it was already equipped with SATA3 and USB 3.0 (and it replaced a Pentium D 805)

it is sad that AMD run out of competition to Intel. (the SB/IB are manufactured near to where i live btw) the market was much more competitive 2-3 years ago.

Q6600@3.4 with HD6870 doesnt have any problems with this game on 1920×1080 highest settings. shaders set on Ultra. AA on. and Vsync on. fps drop in massive WvWvW is to around 24-30 fps range. (average fps in PvE is 38-60) its not a slide show. yes it is old and may become cranky in events like the Inquest Raid during the beta (but then the game wasnt optimised). i would say it can be compared to Dual Core I5 with HT.
any 6850 can be overclocked to 6870 performance.

Kalec.6589:

Moz & Simon De Borovsk you didnt prove nothing. He’s not running a 7950, nor at 1280×1024. So 41fps he wont see. You have stock cooling at 4.8Ghz, I really doubt your temps are even low or even truthful.

But clock speeds are not always good. The architecture of the cpu is more important. You dont need an expensive cooler either. CM 212 $30 will handle i5 2500k easily.

Too bad you can change your system, would be a smart way to go.

Mr. Kalec, what was i trying to prove according to you? i wrote that my AMD Phenom II Dual Core 560 with two cores unlocked (B60 after the unlock) on stock 3.3 Ghz with a HD4870 card runs this game on highest settings with Shaders turned on Ultra. at 1280×1040. (HD4870=5770=6770 and is bit faster than 7770) can and will let GW2 run at 35-55 fps.
and yes i am using 212 CM cooler. and it doesnt matter as this chip Unlocked cant run faster than 3.9Ghz without shutting one core. so basicaly what i have is an AMD QC that can run Stable up to 3.8 on Air with the 212.
is it playable? it is.
will it be playbale at 1920×1080 i will tell you when i swap it with my intel machine.
honestly i dont know about the 41xx, i am not going to buy one to test it. but what i understood is that they will deliver more or less the same.

as for the guy who bought it. 6850 is not going to block him. and he can oc the GPU to get 6870 performance. if his system can run the game up to 25 fps during the fps drops, he wont notice the drops. (what the eye sees as fps drop lag is under 24fps and not 30 fps as stated everywhere. just go to the cinema and tell me you see fps drops there).

that AMD i have was a 80-90$ Cpu. The mobo 100$ more. 4 GB of DDR3 Ram. and the Card there is 4 years old. my point is that it is playable on high settings. in that configuration.

FX41xx with 6850 should be a better combo than the one i have. so yes he should be able to play it.

as for you:
i am sorry your 2500-3000$ machine isnt delivering X10 times the fps a 250-300$ combo delivers while its still playable. (as long as his minimun fps will stay above 24-30) and he will be able to swap and upgrade his cpu.

Help. Game is unplayable in Israel for 4 days now.

try this one 64.25.39.1

if its the one so there is huge packet loss all the way down:

88%-100% packet loss on three servers before Dallas
40% packet loss in Dallas
40% packet loss in new york
etc…

try tracert command from your command prompt, type there: tracert plaync.com

perhaps support can give us more detailed IP Adress to check.

i already tested mine and can tell you that medium/high pings already begin in Paris. so its not Bezeqint.
time out* (4 times) is after Seattle.

this lag is for sure coming all the way from North America.

did you try to talk with Bezeqint support? they will tell you on the phone if the packet loss is happening before their nautical cable gateway. or you can just run traceroute on the GW2 server IP.