Guild Wars 2

I have the same CPU and a R9 380. Your performance is pretty normal for me. The unfortunate reality is that GW2 is simply very CPU intensive and the AMD CPUs aren’t the fastest single-thread speed CPUs out there.

Other games are more GPU intensive, and often are built with heavier multi-threading in mind (like Witcher 3). Also keep in mind that Witcher 3 doesn’t have to negotiate the management of all the network traffic that comes with an MMO.

AMD is very good for heavily multi-threaded apps/games/servers/etc.

When Heart of Thorns first came out, there were many complaints about the volume of content. One complaint was that there wasn’t a lot of content… only 4 new PvE maps and such.

But if you take Heart of Thorns and all of Season 3 as a whole for what we paid for, it’s really quite a lot of content, including… is it six additional maps?

I would love to see a full Heart of Thorns retrospective from ArenaNet, including a cool infographic detailing what we all actually got when we bought that Heart of Thorns expansion.

I think it would be a cool way to sell Path of Fire and perhaps even more Heart of Thorns.

Throwing in my vote for having:

Standard $49.99

Core
Heart of Thorns
800 Gems

This technically drops the revenue of the expansion $10, but has the side-effect of also giving veteran players gems to use to buy an outfit or buy a new character slot. It also puts gems in the hands of new players to explore the Trading Post and get them enticed to use it in the future.

ArenaNet still gets their $50. It is a win-win compromise. Everyone gets something, and feels like both a deal and an apology. ArenaNet loses 20% off of the base game but effectively advertises the gem store for new players.

Then, replace the character slot from the other two editions with this 800 gems.

And it is easy to implement. Anyone who purchased HoT gets a 800 gem drop.

Charr are pretty unique among fantasy beast-men. The remind me a lot of gnolls (d&d) but cat-based instead of hyena-based. They are most like the Beauty and the Beast, beast though, who is lion-like with horns.

I like the defensive adaptation theory. Primitive charr would be into biting and mauling. The are aggressive by nature so would likely also compete for mates by fighting (like big cats). Horns may have been for both head protection and as a display to indicate strength. Nowadays they are just there…

Tarr Geargrind is a perfect name, IMO. It’s the kind of ironic play on words that I like in charr names.

My Blood Legion guardian is named Krush Bonemender. My original concept was a front-line combat medic, and I put the ambiguity of either crushing or mending bones in his name. He’s dyed in blood red and white.

Krush Bonemender

I knew that I wanted to play a guardian, but I also wanted to play a Charr. I read somewhere that playing a Charr guardian was “against character”, but I did it anyway. Of course, that needed a fitting name (and I also liked the name “Crush”, but I used Krush). So I ended up with:

Krush Bonemender

I liked how it sounded for a soldier Charr “healer”.