Guild Wars 2

Yeah this was yet another blatant money grab by Anet, people were able to farm enough gold to buy things in game… so they figured by nerfing this to the floor, like every other farm, people will spend more cash on the gem store, which is wrong, because many people, like myself, refuse to purchase things for cash from the gem store anymore in direct response to the constant nerf of all decent farms.

I used to spend cash pretty regularly, because I would way out if I wanted to spend the time farming enough gold to purchase gems for item X, or if I’d rather spend cash and do something else with my time, often times I chose to spend the cash..

Once Anet removes the choice from the table, basically saying they will make it such a long, tedious and miserable experience to farm enough gold to make gem store purchases that I will be forced to just make the cash purchases… I, like many others, decided to not make anymore cash purchases AT ALL.

If Anet wants to limit the options of players and forcing our hand in hopes of prodding us into pulling out our wallet, instead of counting on financial support of customers happy with quality content and fair value in their offerings… I feel compelled to show them that there is another option entirely, I just go without that extra cosmetic item, just playing through the content, again, with the same aesthetics, both in content and my toons, until I get bored and start playing another game for 6 months to a year…

Hopefully the new Season 3 content will be much better in terms of game play and story then the heart of thorns expansion was/is. I just feel like they over promised and under delivered there… then nerfed off many of the staple aspects of the existing game to try and funnel players into that new content that many people were much less interested in then Anet anticipated.

I play more and spend more when there is a good solid farm to get me part or sometimes most of the way to my end goals, be it a new legendary, or ascended set or new skins or account.character upgrades, etc. I also become impatient one I start to see the finish line and often would drop the cash to finish up my current projects.

I am far less likely to spend cash at the beginning of a new pursuit… I just don’t.

So, as far as I am concerned, and players that share my views and gaming habits, nerfing the gold farms to death is counterproductive and actually yields Anet less cash in the long run.

It’s the same with the nerfing of key farming.. people that were farming a handful of keys on occasion did not suddenly start buying keys on a regular basis, they just moved on to something else and turned their nose up at black lion chests all together.

When I farmed keys, if I had like 7 or 8 ticket scraps, being burnt out on key farming, I would often buy 10 keys or so to get the last scraps I needed for a full ticket, but I definitely don’t buy any keys now, hoping to get enough scraps for a full ticket… it is WAY cheaper to just buy the skins off the TP.

We did the math back when they nerfed key farming and it was like 30 gold for a key, to open a chest that 95% of the time had contents worth less the 2 gold…. the value for purchase price was terrible. They nerfed key farming thinking it would equal more key sales, it didn’t. If they want to sell more keys, cut the price of them in half. THEN they will get a massive spike in sales and actually gain ground..

Just venting my thoughts… I just came back to playing about a week ago, getting ready for the Halloween event, it really is one of the best parts of the game as far as me and my group of friends is concerned.

See you in the Lab…

/rant

No big surprise here, GW2 has been a continuous series of let downs for the past year or so.

HoT turned out to be less then ideal, it was missing a lot of the things promised, and with it came the death of many things that many players enjoyed like dungeons… and loot.

The whole demise has been drenched in a constant effort to make the loot in the game less and less rewarding, and the effort required to obtain it more and more tedious.

Increasing the costs of crafting Ascended items, removing the majority of loot value from dungeons, and dropping loot in fractals that requires you buy keys to open all came across like a slap in the face.

The whole precursor crafting facet of the game is a joke, being more expensive to craft then to purchase in almost every case.

Raids are really lack luster, as is the loot obtained from them…

Legendary armor that is still currently unobtainable..

The whole silverwaste style grindathon sucks, and is why HoT has failed so hard on so many levels.

I’d say if the next expansion doesn’t come relatively soon, and have content more inline with the original game, with things like dungeons and world bosses, etc then it will probably be just another nail in the coffin, of this once magnificent game.

I hop on the forums just to see if anything positive has changed since I quit playing about 6 months ago, and every time, all changes seem to be for the worse.

It’s always just more disappointing news.

Indefinitely postponing content that was said to be included in an expansion that players were overcharged for in the first place is not just a disappointment, it’s a rip off, and and calling it an indefinite postponement is just an attempt to sugar coat what it really is, a rip off and yet another slap in the face to those that purchased the lackluster expansion, but of course they are all used to that by now, since it’s been happening since before the expansion was even released.

I used to talk very highly of this game, and brought more then a handful of players to it… but anymore, I can’t recommend the game nor can I be bothered to play it since nearly everything that I enjoyed about the game originally has been either removed, nerfed to the floor, or made so unrewarding that it feels insulting.

I’ll keep my eye out for news of the next expansion, but if it is anything even remotely close to what HoT was/is… I will have to postpone indefinitely the re installation of GW2.

Yeah with the all the fact in front of us, something is DEFINITELY fishy. There was a finite number to begin with, they were a Halloween item available for 1 season, from black lion chests only… then a couple years later like 50 were given away in a drawing.

There is and has been no other way to obtain them, prior to about 6 months ago there was seldom more the 15 or 20 for sale at any one time…

Around the time of last halloween or so, they were going for as much as 5000 gold… around christmas they had fallen to 1200 and the number listed was sky rocketing, now… the last time i looked there were like 300+ listed… for as low as 350 gold.

350 gold for one of the rarest, coolest and unobtainable skins in the game…

Sure, at first glance people might think someone has got to be duping them, but in reality if that was the case Anet would have been on them like ugly on a monkey before the first 100 made it to market.

What seems like a much more plausible scenario… is that Anet is intentionally flooding the market on these highest value items, quite simply to wipe out large chunks of wealth from those that sat on them for large profits.

Out of nowhere the most expensive skins in the game, that have no sustainable supply, and had a very limited number in existence, are suddenly more plentiful then most of the more expensive things that are still obtainable today.

Anet has been on a rampage for the last year, doing everything in their power to remove the wealth from players, remove their ability to generate wealth and really put the push on getting people to instead buy their gold with gems.

It became blatantly obvious. Why else would the remove the majority of gold rewards from dungeons, a staple activity enjoyed by a large number of people, and a stable source of income for many?

To drive people to their new and improved fractals? That they then decided you should have to buy keys to open your loot from?

Changing the rarity of common items used in crafting ascended gear, and drastically increasing the cost to craft said ascended gear, while simultaneously making it more difficult to generate the wealth required…

All of it struck me as very uncool and became the primary reason that I decided to stop playing GW2. I felt that Anet had become more and more greedy, their game development was more about shrinking rewards and putting people on endless hamster wheel grind-a-thons to get anything cool, which in the end is really only more over priced skins.

Playing continued to feel less and less rewarding, until, for me at least, it felt almost totally unrewarding, and all of the game’s high end the loot is purely cosmetic.

Yawnsville.

The final straw was watching the whole ghastly shield market manipulation… it is clearly an inside job, no other explanation would really make any sense, unless we are to believe that they are completely oblivious to an ongoing rampant massive scale duping campaign being carried out for months on end, involving some of the most rare and valuable items in the game.

Either explanation just further solidifies my negative feelings about where the game has went, and is headed. I used to LOVE this game… until i felt all of my investments in time, effort and cash were systematically devalued and my faith and trust betrayed.

Maybe the next expansion might be something that the group of people that I game with will find enjoyable, but as of now, I wouldn’t touch the game with a 10 ft pole.

And to answer the question before it’s asked, I log into the forums on occasion in hopes of seeing some miraculous turn of events that might return GW2 to the great value in gaming that it once was, and/or that some sort of new content has been released that I might find appealing…. something other the fighting plant monsters endlessly for horizontal progression.

That being said, shame on you anet… for this whole Ghastly Shield skin debacle and to those that remain loyal to them despite the seemingly limitless injustices, good luck and happy gaming.

I agree totally.

blagh..

I dislike the pvp in GW2 immensely, it’s unbalanced, unfair and unfun as far as a huge portion of players are concerned.

Daddicus.6128:

As it currently sits, GW2 (I’m only discussing PvE here) allows a glass-cannon strategy. What I mean by that is that you can put all your optional attribute points into things that do damage. Against smaller mobs, you end up killing the enemy before it can kill you. Against larger mobs, the character begins to have problems.

Against bosses and very large mobs, though, glass-cannons become an exploit. The GC charges in, deals a large amount of damage, dies, and then waypoints and runs back to combat to repeat the process.

IMO, this is an exploit. Do you agree? Why or why not? Also, if you agree, what should be done about it?

NOTE: Please don’t argue whether this actually works or not. Most everybody’s mind is already made up on that; that’s quite obvious from many other threads. Please stick with the more philosophical question of whether it SHOULD work or not.

All I got out of this was:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Seriously, why spend all your time crying about how others play?

Log in, play your way, and save your tantrums for situations where someone is actually effecting your game play.

Its always something to cater to pvp, no matter how it effects the rest of the game, its really annoying, will they ever learn that nerfing is just a never ending cycle of nerfing?

I have to laugh, it just seems so silly to me to spend 9k gold on making a a little sparkle trail behind your character..

if I ever got that drop, or any of those particle effects things the would be on the TP so fast they’d have scorch marks on the boxes…

I honestly probably wouldn’t pay 50 gold for those particle effects, they just seem so pointless and gaudy to me.

I know, I know, to each their own… but wow, 9k gold to look like a walking glass of soda fizz… people will buy ANYTHING, and apparently, in GW2, they will pay any price.

Please lord, let me get one of those drops, so I can craft and armory of ascended sets.

I had purchased a second salvage-o-matic a month or two ago, because the process of swapping out gear every time I change characters gets so tedious.. I would log in to my main character and be in the middle of something before I would realize that I forgot to swap his salvage-o-matic, among other things, back when I last logged out. This happened one too many times and I just bought a second one so one could stay on my main at all times. So imagine my thoughts when I saw that shared inventory slots where now available.

I was a little aggravated that I had made a purchase that was basically pointless now.

I came on the forums to vent my frustration and in the process read that Anet was offering refunds on some recent purchases, on an individual basis and depending on circumstances. I was a pleasantly surprised.

I quickly sent a support ticket even though I was thinking 30 days was probably the cut off and I was a little beyond that, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Well today, to my surprise I received an email informing me that I had been issued a full refund for the purchase price of the salvage-o-matic!

I just wanted to take a moment and leave a comment and tell everyone how cool I think it was of Anet to offer refunds on some of the more recent purchases, because, after all, it was/is really cool of them.

I added some extra gems to those refunded and bought 3 shared slots, put my perm TP, Merchant and Bank Access agents in them and I am LOVING it, what a HUGE quality of life improvement.

This makes it so much easier for me to play different characters without a bunch of tedious gear swapping that I will definitely be playing my alts a LOT more.

Thanks Anet for making shared slots available, and for being more then fair in terms of refunds on recent purchases that became unnecessary.

The slots are a little pricey, but the impact they have on accounts with lots of alts is tremendous.

I had purchased a second salvage-o-matic a month or two ago, because the process of swapping out gear every time I change characters gets so tedious.. I would log in to my main character and be in the middle of something before I would realize that I forgot to swap his salvage-o-matic, among other things, back when I last logged out. This happened one too many times and I just bought a second one so one could stay on my main at all times. So imagine my thoughts when I saw that shared inventory slots where now available.

I was a little aggravated that I had made a purchase that was basically pointless now.

I came on the forums to vent my frustration and in the process read that Anet was offering refunds on some recent purchases, on an individual basis and depending on circumstances. I was a pleasantly surprised.

I quickly sent a support ticket even though I was thinking 30 days was probably the cut off and I was a little beyond that, but I figured it was worth a shot.

Well today, to my surprise I received an email informing me that I had been issued a full refund for the purchase price of the salvage-o-matic!

I just wanted to take a moment and leave a comment and tell everyone how cool I think it was of Anet to offer refunds on some of the more recent purchases, because, after all, it was/is really cool of them.

I added some extra gems to those refunded and bought 3 shared slots, put my perm TP, Merchant and Bank Access agents in them and I am LOVING it, what a HUGE quality of life improvement.

This makes it so much easier for me to play different characters without a bunch of tedious gear swapping that I will definitely be playing my alts a LOT more.

Thanks Anet for making shared slots available, and for being more then fair in terms of refunds on recent purchases that became unnecessary.

The slots are a little pricey, but the impact they have on accounts with lots of alts is tremendous.

I know I am not the only person that is totally unimpressed by the last 5? 10? Sets of Black Lion Skins..

I have tickets, and have been anxiously awaiting a set to come out that I will be excited to grab a few skins from, but every time one is released, it’s like a huge let down.

I get it that everyone has different tastes, and Anet has to try and cater to them all… but it really feels like the Black Lion Skins are aimed almost exclusively at the butterfly wings and flower pedal crowd anymore, and when they are not… they tend to come off so gaudy that I couldn’t imagine any of my characters wielding any of them. Some of the animations are ridiculous at best.

Swords with blades that are like 18" inches wide… or 12" thick… look silly, and since I haven’t seen ANYONE using these skins, I’d have to say that the overall consensus is that yes, they look silly.

The Shadow set was on the right track towards something I would be into, but instead of something detailed and serious, they came off like they were made of shiny cartoon plant bones/skeletons… it was a huge let down for me.

It is not always easy to come up with a cool theme, but really there are plenty of things in GW2 to draw inspiration from, here a couple of ideas that I think would be very cool.

A Twilight set… imagine a weapon set based on the legendary greatsword Twilight.

A Sunrise set.. a no-brainer.

An Eternity set? Maybe requiring the skins of both collections to be forged… another no-brainer, folks.

These would easily be the most popular weapon skin sets ever introduced into GW2.

It’s always hard to try and find weapon skins that fit well aesthetically with the legendary Greatswords, and any other legendary for that matter, even the other legendaries don’t look very good together.

Weapon sets that compliment the awesome legendary weapons that people work so hard to get would be hugely successful and would inspire people to collect them all.

Maybe even make these skins a collection type thing, possibly a black lion ticket purchase for the precursor or something, there is plenty of latitude for creativity here just please keep their acquisition reasonable. Requirements like 20k drinks, for example, are not only excessive, but they are counter productive. Less people will even consider putting in the effort and/or resources required… locking it behind an obscene number of Black Lion tickets as a purchase price would be an even worse way to go.

With the role of skins being so large in GW2, especially the end game, it would be nice to actually see some skins that would inspire me to want them, and not just be the best choice out of a collection of lackluster offerings.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

PS ZERKER, DH, CHRONO, REAPER, CONDI ENGI

Most exp driving my zerker though

Ironically enough, after posting this, my 2nd and 3rd runs both yielded coat boxes.

As relieved as I am, I still feel like many people had this content completely ruined for them by the decision to roadblock completion with a RNG drop…

Some of the achievements required are enough to make completion feel like quite an accomplishment, I really see no point in forcing people to repeat it over and over until they can hit the RNG… TWICE.

To those that will argue that all accounts are created equally and that RNG is RNG… I can tell you 100% for sure that is BS. I know too many people that have crazy successful luck with things like forging precursors, and it is far too consistent to be a coincidence or a statistical anomaly.

In an interview some time ago John Smith spoke about account RNG, and “outliers” and basically explained that there will be people that will consistently be rewarded with premium loot more often then the average player, and that there will also be an equal and opposite group that will basically never be rewarded as well as the average player. Not only did reading that make me cringe and think it was an absolutely terrible way to deal with “RANDOM Number Generation” but also, that it is not really random if the outcome is somehow manipulated to create these “outliers”.

But, like I said in my original post, I don’t usually take much issue with rolls, because I tend to do a little better then average, it just seems bizarre to me that Anet would knowingly create or even allow accounts to exist that would basically be born losers when it comes to RNG, that seems like a great way to make a terrible experience for those poor souls.

Anyways, good luck and have fun!

Yes I know there have been countless threads about this, dating back to the day after the patch that introduced this RNG gate for the collection achievement, unfortunately nothing has changed.

I normally don’t take issue with drops, I tend to do pretty well.

I have done no less then 25 or 30 Vine Wrath runs over the past couple days and still no coat box, I am annoyed, and very sick of doing this event yet there is no other way to finish the collection… I think that this is a poor solution to what is a confirmed and documented issue for may players.

Anet honest expects people to do 30, 50 100+ runs of the same exact event… to get 2 coat boxes to finish out a collection that already required a very substantial amount of grinding to complete to that point.

After grinding out all the Mordrem parts, thousands and thousands of crests, all the living world season 2 achievements I then have my completion halted dead in it’s tracks hoping on a weird RNG drop that can only be obtained by running the same event over and over and over again. The majority of players seem to have got their boxes, and even extras in a handful of runs, while others are forced to do 20, 30, 40 and one guy even posted that he ran it 120+ times before he got a coat box.

This is ridiculous, it is NOT fun, it’s annoying and frustrating.

I am stuck running this event for who knows how long, instead of enjoying the game, because I actually want to finish the luminescent armor set I worked so hard to get..

I can’t wait to finish it and leave Silver Waste never to return, with nothing but negative memories about the most boring grind-a-thon I have ever had to endure.

I like to grind, i find it therapeutic, but this… is the antithesis of that.

This is a perfect example of how to take something cool and fun, and turn it into an annoying source of frustration and resentment, thanks for that.

Hopefully someone at Anet may see this and decide a sane and logical solution to this problem might be better then leaving it as a RNG only situation.

fingers crossed

Jski.6180:

Dashingsteel.3410:

- Dungeon rewards nuked( was only bad for the economy once the expansion showed up)
- Fractal rewards nuked for those who can’t get fractals mastery(only provided through expansion)
- Non HoT players can’t access guild boons( guild boons were part of the core game)

Anet, I am disgusted by your cowardly attempts to coerce players to buy HoT. There are many people who payed 60 dollars for the core game and you repay them by gutting key features out of the game. You are punishing customers for not being repeat customers. Why not let HoT stand on its own merits????

Did ppl realy live and die off Dungeon rewards?

Fractals have been mostly non played for some time by a lot of ppl.

Guild banners are the main guild boons i am not sure why you though they where core to the game becuse they where never that strong lol.

How is that cowardly its like your just picking random worlds to say that you think sound bad to call some one lol.
This is what non Living story (that ppl seemed to hate so much) looks like. Its payed expansion or Living story take your chose.

1. Yes. Some people did “live and die off dungeon rewards” many of the legendaries you see in the game were paid for with the gold from many nights of many dungeon runs.

2. I did fractals daily, with many groups, we did at least 3 tiers every days, fractal fans are doing LESS fractals now.

3. Saying they were not that strong doesn’t nullify the fact that a core feature of guild membership was removed from the core game and locked behind the HoT paywall.

4. It IS living story, it is the 1 or 2 year road map of living story content reworked a little, with a core feature update/rework/large round of unilateral loot nerfs packaged as an expansion with a 50 dollar price tag slapped on it.

The content is decent, but it really isn’t enough actual content to warrant a full price expansion price tag. The content that IS there is being stretched by creating barriers by locking access behind mastery tiers and event chains that give little experience, making achieving the masteries take a long time… giving the illusion that there is more to the content then there is.

I do like the HoT content in some ways, but I am finding difficulty in enjoying it in anything other then a SW farm kind way… which bums me out, becaue I detest the SW farm, it is the most boring farm ever, it has been nerfed so many times, both overtly and stealthily, like nerfing the loot tables of the champ bags on multiple occasions.

I want HoT to do well and be fun… unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem to “gel” well for many players, it feels like a giant even chain farm…

I have high hopes for raids, but I’m fairly confident that the week long lockout timer is gonna ruin them as an actual alternative to anything…

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Yes, it is really bad that Guild Bonuses is locked behind HoT expansion now.

This game is not about grinding (you may think so but it is not), you can choose to grind your gold if it is better in HoT or not is just stupid. I dislike grinding so I don’t do that and I have been playing since release and still have things to do.

The fractals Legendary stuff and all mastery stuff is Expansion content and why should it not be locked behind the Expansion? This is nothing you had before the expac.

Samething here it is HoT content, nothing that was there before why should it be available to people who won’t buy the expac? Also I know a few who have gotten a realy long way in Legendary crafting and havent bought anything, I have helped them doing content to have them aquire specific pieces they need and then they have saved mats so they have pretty much enough. I havent done these things yet so I can not say for a fact in even my opinion that it is totally fine. But still it is HoT content, people have said on forums that it is cheaper to buy yourself the old stuff on TP so why cry about it?

How wierd? They make an expansion and they make it locked to people who don’t by it!? Anet are horrible!

Call me a White Knight or whatever that argument won’t make people sound better. People can look at my post history and see that I am not all loving to everything in GW2.

If you bought the game and loved doing fractals, and decide not to buy HoT, then your fractal experience is kitten d, loot nerfed to floor, etc, etc, because you dont have the fractal masteries…

So you paid for fractals… and now you have had them taken away by and large unless you , well, pay for them again.

Yeah yeah, I know, you can still do fractals without Hot, but why would you? What would be the point of doing fractals without the masteries unlocked?

It would be like…. doing the dungeons now vs, pre Hot.

I truly detest the decision to castrate dungeons. The dungeons kept alot of people playing that would have no longer been playing otherwise.

And chopping up fractals, regurgitating them with locked boxes that require keys, loot that requires masteries to even get, and a new lvl system that reminds me of McDonalds dollar menu is not going to magically turn into the NEW dungeons.

The fact that not 1 single new fractal was added to the all new and improved fractals, shows exactly how much Anet is interested in providing compelling new content in terms of fractals/dungeons etc.

And yeah, I know, raids, raids, raids… that are still MIA, despite supposedly being included with HoT at launch when we asked to pre-purchase, then afterwards as launch drew closer it turned to well, the first part of raids will be available at launch the rest will come at a later date, then at launch it became raids will be coming at a later date.

Not to mention raids will basically be on a weekly lockout…. going to be hard to get all into something your only allowed to do once a week… and I am 100% sure that the weekly lock out is to keep people from having more then one CHANCE a week at obtaining a decent piece of raid loot… in an effort to stretch a little bit of content into a long and arduous journey to pursue a set of legendary armor.

Tigaseye.2047:

As I also said before, I get why they nerfed dungeon rewards – they were excessive, compared with other parts of the game, especially as people were, almost exclusively, speedrun-cheesing them.

EXCESSIVE?!?! Seriously, ROFL.

The loot drops from dungeons were pathetic, people had to group up and do speed runs, because, even “speed running” them, it took about 3 hours or so to make 20 or 30 gold… which could only be done once a day.

When a precursor, costs close to, if not more than, 1000 gold… and the cost to “craft” that precursor into a legendary weapon is another 900-1500 gold, anyone hoping to earn one in game in the next year or so, without spending hundreds of dollars in real life cash on gems to convert to gold, would almost HAVE to.

Unless of course they would rather spend 4 months day in and day out running the SW farm, a most boring and lame grind that has been subsequently nerfed numerous times, sometimes stealthily to slow down it’s profitability until they could afford the precursor… then start running that same lame and boring SW chest farm for another couple months to pay for the enormous gold sink that masquerades as “crafting” to finish their legendary, aka cool weapon skin.

I get that a game developer needs to make money from their product, I realize there is overhead costs, employees, salaries, etc, etc… but I can’t think of a single other game that has weapon skins that cost HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS, that changes game mechanics, content, loot tables, drop and spawn rates and any other applicable facet of the game, expressly to thwart progress towards earning these glorified skins by players that don’t spend substantial amounts of real life cash to acquire them.

It has become more and more brazen over the past year, and has become blatantly obvious at this point… and really is a HUGE turn off.

This sort of thing feels insulting and exploitative. Furthermore, unfortunately, these efforts to maximize profits while minimizing the amount of content creation required to keep people playing, and spending money in the gem store, impacts, more then any one else, the veteran players, those that started playing at the game’s launch, and have supported the game, it’s developers and community, with their participation, praise and gem store purchases, for the last 3 years, not to mention their full price purchase of the original game,

And it seems every time you turn around something else is nerfed, removed or locked behind a time gate or money wall… a good example is the decision to put fractal loot in locked boxes that require players purchase keys at 20 silver each to open them. Of the hundred or so I have opened, I don’t believe I have opened one yet that had contents that were worth the 20 silver I spent on the key.

It reminds me of the Black Lion Chest Keys, I won’t go into another discussion of these black lion keys here, as I have posted a couple rants previously outlining how insanely terrible of a gamble they are.

The rush was on to push those pre-orders and get everyone’s money in the Anet coffers before they even outlined would exactly players could expect for the 50 dollar price tag, there were a lot of compartmentalized reveals about this, that and the other thing, but there was no concrete table of contents offered prior to, or even during, that “give us the money now and we’ll tell you what’s included later” push.

I was hoping for at least one or 2 new dungeons, because I LOVE dungeons, running dungeons is some of my favorite content in any game, and the dungeons in GW2 were pretty awesome and are what kept me playing after i had built 6 or 7 80’s, multiple sets of ascended armors and weapon sets, 4 legendaries, etc, etc. and with all the talk about the new and improved fractals expanding them beyond level 50 all the way to level 100, I was almost positive there would be a at least a couple new fractals…

And man o man, was I excited for that raid content, and I had characters built to the hilt, and geared to their ears in preparation… on launch day, me and my friends were gonna be raiding like 24/7 until we passed out at our keyboards.

So launch day comes and those new dungeons I was hoping for…. were non existent, and to add insult to injury, the already abysmal loot drops of the existing dungeons was nerfed by 66% on average, meaning those dungeon runs now reward you with 1/3rd of what you used to get. Disappointed doesn’t even come close to describing how I felt about the death of my favorite part of GW2…grrr. but wait, let’s just check out the awesome new and improved Fractals of the Mist, right?

Not so much, fractal loot nerfed hard, portions of it that contain items needed for achievements was now locked in a box that I had to buy keys to open… the disappointment was welling up… but let’s take a look at the new fractals first before we get too nerd raged up… oh wait, there is no new fractals, they are all just chopped up into thier own respective little segments, and can be chosen like items off the dollar menu at McDonald’s now. The easy to track tiered system where you could get your daily rewards chests…. are gone. But wait, they did add a new fractal mastery that I was required to farm like 10 million XP to unlock so that I could again be eligible for any decent loot drops…. even if they are much more rare and hard to come by now.

So…
Dungeons: DEAD.

Fractals: New-ish, Improved? Maybe a little in some ways, but balanced out by loot nerfs and locked loot boxes.

Ok, Ok.. let’s just take a deep breath and head on over and get down to some serious raid content!

Wait, what? No raids? They are coming later? It went from included in HoT will be the new GW2 raids and legendary armor, to at launch the first leg of the new GW2 raids will be available with additional portions following soon after, to : No raids at launch but they will be coming at a later date.

Another heartbreak… I dried up my tears and decided to go check out the new maps… and wow, they were actually awesome. Gliding, which I suspected would be cheesy and gimmicky wasn’t at all, it was and is actually very awesome and feels very perfect and in place for the Maguuma Jungle content, totally pleasantly surprised. +1 Anet.

So I glided around like a boss, did a bunch of hero challenges, worked on masteries, got tons of random loot… that I notice that salvaging returns have taken a … yup, you guessed it, a nerf… and a HARD nerf at that, but whatever, the maps are fun so I grinded it out and bit by bit closed in on my first complete map of the new expansion, 87%, 93%, 95%, 98%, 99% 100%!!! YEAH!!!! wait, were is my chest? Where is my map complete chest, omg it’s bugged, I didn’t get my chest… after the normal and typical nerd raging in map chat, guild chat, party chat and on forums… I did a little research and learned that it is a known bug that characters that have 100% map complete in Tyria… don’t get their map complete chests in Maguuma. Yes, I am dead serious, and it is STILL bugged at least for me.

So I have to be honest that was kind of the last straw and took alot of the wind out of my sails over the Heart of Thorns Expansion.

I like the maps, and the new content is very cool and a very welcome change from running around doing the same things 750 more times in Tyria, I like gliding that was done really, really well and adds a cool new dimension to the game.

The masteries are a cool concept, but sort of feel a little excessive in that some parts of the new content are not accessible until you unlock certain masteries and doing event chains in the maps yield you about enough XP to feel like it will take forever and a day to get them unlocked enough to explore the whole jungle. I do get that Anet wanted to make the new content something that would last for a while, having portions that will be new to you even several weeks after launch, and it’s not a bad concept… but maybe the experience rewards for some of the events could see a little buff to balance out the effort:reward ratio a little better, that will come in time I believe, they probably have bigger fish to fry at the moment, I am sincerely holding on to the hope that the map completion chest problem is close to resolution. I would feel much better about doing the content if I didn’t know that I was going to get jacked for the rewards for that effort.

So I personally think Heart of Thorns is a good expansion in terms of content design and execution, there are many, many things that Anet has done right, hitting the nail on the head with gliding and the multi-level maps, etc. It’s unfortunate that the excitement to explore and complete the maps is kind of on hold, because of a VERY annoying and senseless bug… and igf it has been fixed, and I am just unaware of what I have to do to get my completion to register and my chest to pop up, then I apologize, if not… then seriously, Anet, fix it. It’s ridiculous that it hasn’t been addressed yet.

The raid content is said to hit on the 17th, so we’ll see how that goes, hopefully it will be all of that and a bucket of chicken and we can all raid and loot and craft legendary armor until we are burnt out…. I sure hope so.

And maybe, someone at Anet will realize that dungeons were a very important portion of the game content for a sizable chunk of the community, and that nerfing the loot drops from them to the floor just forces that chunk of players to do some crappy grind for gold that they don’t enjoy… and if players are not enjoying playing, I assume that eventually they will stop.

Sorry this turned into a novel, but I like to write, needed to vent, wanted to add my 2 cents and hope that maybe this post will be viewed in a constructive way.

Yeah I received no reward for 100% map completion in Verdant Brink…

I am more then a little bit annoyed.

All of the nerfs to loot were really infuriating for many of us, the 66% reduction in loot from dungeons was also not received well at all, the requirement of buying keys now to unlock loot chest from fractals is another “thing” that has many people angry… but those were decisions made by Anet, forced upon the community and are something we will have to live with, BUT, Anet allowing a bug that denies people the rewards they earn via map completion to continue to effect so many players, with apparently no course of action for these effected players to take in order to get their already earned rewards is a little ridiculous.

I realize they are busy, I realize they just finished up not only the Halloween event, but the launch of the first major, and PAID, expansion.

I know they are working hard to fix major issues and bugs that are causing crashes and severe problems.

I realize it takes time to address each issue as it is brought to their attention.

I am also relatively sure that this “no map completion chest” bug is probably pretty low on the priority list in the grand scheme of things.

I think that an official statement confirming that this is a known issue that will be addressed and remedied, not just for those completing the maps after the fix, but also for those of us that have already completed them and suffered the huge let down of getting robbed of our reward chests, would be warmly welcomed by everyone.

PS: If there already WAS a statement like this, and I missed it, then I apologize and will feel like a dumb-kitten when this is pointed out to me.

Thanks for reading.

Just got 100% map complete on Verdant Brink…. and didn’t get my completion chest.

I’ve heard that this is an ongoing issue, what do I have to do to get my completion reward chest?

wouw.5837:

The amount of pure gold gain was ridiculous, it’s better for the economy to farm places like SW.

The thing is…. running dungeons was fun, farming SW sucks.

Fractal rewards are garbage, rarely worth the cost of the key you have to buy to unlock the chests… in no uncertain terms we, the players, have been screwed for rewards on both dungeons and fractals.

They redid the way fractals worked, ruined the loot drops, ruined the reward for it and want people to do more of them… yet couldn’t add a single new fractal.

I have to say that’s pretty sad and insightful.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

All they did was normalize the price to that of the light armor set.

Light armor didn’t change at all.

Leather and Heavy armor price was increased to cost about the same as light armor.

Welcome to what light armor wearers have spent for the last 3 years.

That’s really a lame reply. The cost to craft medium and heavy armor took a huge spike, saying well light armor was always expensive is dumb.

Nobody cares about what DIDN’T change in price…

So if the reason for the price hike was to bring it closer to the cost of crafting light armor, then Anet should refund gold to everyone that crafted light armor when it was grossly more expensive… or would you suggest making everyone who crafted medium and heavy sets be made to pay the difference now?

Yeah, your comment was THAT silly.

I agree, by and large, with just about everything you said, the only thing I can really point out is the batwing brew, it IS 280 or so gold and looking to get one as a drop is, like expecting to get a precursor drop, in the next week…. not going to happen.

Gold and valuable loot from dungeons and fractals has been nerfed to the floor, maize bomb farming has been castrated and supposedly gold accumulation has taken about a 66% nerf across the board.

Gold is not going to be as easy to farm as it was before the expansion was released so for someone new to the the game, 300 gold is a significant money wall, as is the ~100 gold for the batwings, both of which will be going UP it price after Halloween concludes, not down… the only source for these items disappears in about a week, suggesting that they will become less valuable is ludicrous.

So it is what it is, but you are the one that started out saying FREE, free is NOT happening.

Sure you can eventually farm everything else required, I wouldn’t call getting the tattered batwings from Ascent to Madness easy though, as I have run that at least 40 or 50 times and have yet to get a single one. I have decent RNG, I have had precursor drops in the wild, and gotten them from the forge, I have about a +300 base magic find and was running birthday booster, magic find food, magic find utility so on and so forth so above average RNG with about +500 MF in buffs, 40-50 runs and not a single tattered batwing.

Saying they are easily farmed is quite a stretch, and a misleading one.

While I agree that this item is achievable by those dedicated enough to pursue it, suggesting that is can be 100% farmed is simply untrue.

Are the costs associated with this item exorbitant?

The answer to that is relative to the person being asked.. for me, a shoulder piece that has no physical skin, has a hardcoded stats and requires resources in amounts similar to a legendary weapon.. is NOT worth the cost in terms of time, effort and resources.

Others will feel differently I’m sure.

So yeah if you want to put in the effort then, like everything else, Night Fury is achievable, but certainly not “free” and 99.9% of the time not without a rather significant gold investment.

Firebaall’s suggestion of of putting the tonic on the Halloween vendor for 100 Candy Corn Cobs or so is an excellent idea, and would go a long way towards making the journey to craft it more about effort and less about overcoming a gold requirement hurdle.

Everyone has an opinion and is certainly entitled to it, but, let’s try and keep the rants based in reality, thanks.

Thanks for the official response, little things like that go a long way in squelching the rage babies … and keeping everyone else informed and on the same page.

that they forced a hotfix down our throats at peak play time, and broke the game… I was just about to try and farm some gold.

Seriously though, after the latest patch I am unable to log into my characters, I was actually able after about 15 tries to log onto one and zone to Lion’s Arch, only to get stuck again and crashed out after trying to zone to bloodtide coast.

Back at square one now, can log on to character select, selecting a char puts up a loading screen that seems to stall, and crash out telling me to check my inet connection… while I am on Teamspeak talking to friends that are having the exact same issue.

I understand that things happen from time to time, mistakes get made, things are overlooked, unforeseen consequences arise, but, could we at least get a could atleast get an official response or something, here on the forums instead of on reddit.

Or, MAYBE, the new patch has upgraded the log in and map changing experience, implementing RNG to keep the experience from feeling too flat or stale.

Razor.9872:

Meridya.9352:

OP, here’s the thing: The idea concept was sound. 400 hero points to unlock an elite specialization with hero point challenges in Heart of Maguuma providing 10 per completion sounds about right. People who were psyched up about HoT and went ahead and got map completion in Pact Tyria would only have to complete 19 HP challenges to unlock their specialization. That’s about 1.5 Heart of Maguuma maps worth. That’s reasonable.

Until you realize that the Heart of Maguuma HP challenges aren’t the same as the Pact Tyria HP challenges in terms of accessibility.

In Pact Tyria, any character could solo accomplish any of the HP challenges without much difficulty in under a couple of minutes. In Heart of Maguuma, half the HP challenges are gated in some form or another by masteries and the other half are Champion boss fights with a 5 minute time limit. This means a character can’t just go to all the hero points and complete them solo to unlock their specialization before experiencing the new content. They have to experience the new content first in order to earn the experience for the masteries, or they have to acquire some help from others in order to defeat the champions within the allotted 5 minutes and not everyone wants to wait around doing nothing at a champ HP for more players to show up.

So, on paper, Anet’s original reasoning for elite specializations costing 400 points sounded good. But once it was implemented with the difficulty and accessibility they wanted the hero challenges to have, it was no longer balanced properly for a fun experience.

Funny how you are saying hero challenges should be soloable and only take a couple minutes.

I don’t know what your definition of challenge is, but that is not mine.

I didn’t see where he said that at all, why are you making up reasons to be kitten-hurt?

Nidome.1365:

When they announced 400 hero points for the elite specs I thought “Ah, a challenge”, especially as I have a character of every class.
Now that challenge has been stolen by whiners – the very same whiners that will be complaining that they have nothing left to do in a week’s time…..

You would have thought Anet would have learned by now – a bunch of vocal whiners complain about something new being too hard so Anet make it easier and then those very same whiners complain they have nothing left to do because it was too easy.
It has happened every time Anet have released new content and will carry on happening until Anet say “Hey you keep saying you wanted challenges”.

LOL. The challenge was not stolen from you or anyone else. You are free to farm every single hero point in the expansion and all of Tyria, what you don’t seem to get, is that if you have to do all that before getting the elite specialization…. exactly what are you going to do with those elite specializations afterwards, rerun the content again and pretend you don’t remember it?

Run the new and improved watered down fractals ?

Stand in Lion’s Arch and flex your kitten at everyone and show off your flashy new elite spec gear and ask them if they’re jelly?

Seriously though, alot of people were hoping to experience the new content with the new elite specs, lowering the HP requirement makes that more possible by balancing the progression of the elite specs with the players progression through the content.

Not everyone wants to grind HP to the point of annoyance, I get it, but to be totally honest, I had about 300 HP on most of my characters already before HoT launched, and mostly before it was even announced. Prior to the nerf of skill point scrolls and their conversion to to spirit shards, those scrolls were as plentiful as mirrors in the Kardashian household, and we had to use them purchase things required for legendaries and other epic items . I, like most others that wanted such things did lots of farming for loot… and had many stacks of said scrolls.

I have several thousand spirit shards because of that conversion… but I also have lots of toons with hundreds of Skill Points/Hero Points, so 250 or 400 doesn’t really make much of a difference to me, to be honest. Are you going to infer that I stole the challenge from you also?

There are plenty of challenges and journeys available in GW2, and many more added with Heart of Thorns, Legendary Armor, new Legendary Weapons as well as Legendary Back Items not to mention the many, many millions of XP you will have to grind to complete the all of the Mastery tiers.

The only thing that was “stolen” was maybe your ability to tell people who are having difficulty completing elite specs, smuggly, that you finished yours the first week and inferring that you are better and more “hardcore” then those “whiners” because of it.

If you play Guild Wars 2 to try and rub your ingame accomplishments in the face of others, or feel that proving you can out grind or commit more time to playing then other people with less time to play, or patience for tedium, that’s your right, but it doesn’t make it any less laughable or silly.

Personally I think the fact that Raids went from “a major feature of the HoT expansion” to " the first leg will be included at launch" to " Raids will be released at a later date" is a topic much more worthy of complaints and would certainly provide justification for feeling like something has been “stolen” from the Heart of Thorns experience, but things like this happen, and Anet most likely felt that the raid content was not quite ready for release, and apposed to releasing such a MAJOR facet of the game in sub par par state, they decided to take a little more time to get them right.

Anyway, just keep playing and doing your thing, enjoy YOUR experience with the new content, try not to let it be ruined stressing over trivial things like being mad that someone less elite then you will be able to unlock their elite specs before you have a chance to rub thier nose in your eliteness.

Just remember, a bad, a noob or a casual driving a reaper… is still just a bad, a noob or a casual driving a reaper. Hang out in PVP and roflstomp them if you feel the need to show people how awesome you are or grind out that legendary armor and stand around in Lion’s Arch and answer questions about how hard it was, and how much faster you were able to get it done then all the noobs and casuals as you bathe in their admiration and jealousy, but for kittensake don’t get mad because they are able to play their elite specs with a few less hours of grinding then you were 4 days after launch.

Eddie Mo.7169:

I don’t agree with you, OP. I want my legendaries the moment I buy and log into the game. All of them. I also want to have 999,999 gold on every character. Why bother grinding all that stuff? This isn’t Grind Wars 2… Just give that to us ANET.

Why would you take the time to post such nonsense?

Comparing the majority of the community’s sentiment about lowering the HP cost of Elite Specializations to them demanding, or even wanting, legendaries, in any number, and an astronomical amount of gold is… the only word that comes to mind is stupid.

Making such a ridiculous post doesn’t come across funny, sarcastic or even satirical, but it does speaks volumes about immaturity, dysfunctional sense of humor and the complete ignorance of the aforementioned. Zero contribution to the topic, the original post, the ensuing discussion or anything else meaningful.

Maybe if you didn’t try so hard… you wouldn’t have to.

Just some food for thought.

I wish I could get a refund on the expansion… just a FYI

The game has been changed in so many ways that are negative to me, and go against my preferred play style, not to mention the fact that most of the content I enjoy has been nerfed into the ground and all but ruined.

I am seriously hunting for a new game..

How CONVENIENT

Yeah Necro gets greatsword and becomes a Reaper, Ranger becomes a walking god as Druid, and Warrior, get a torch shoved in his hand and told to go stand there and eat damage while we all use our flashy cool new specs.

I swear there have been some really questionable design choices…

I dunno but Guardian… sounds like a no brainer, shoe in for a tank, and Warrior, sounds ripe for damage dealing DPS goon…

So much, Huh? I don’t even know where to begin.

I think I’ll stick to the Halloween content, some of the best in the game IMHO, and see how, if at all, any of this stuff shakes out.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Sizer.3987:

So you spent what, a whole hour doing fractals and didnt get rewarded 20 gold from it? Shocking.

Flat gold gains throughout the entire game were nerfed. Going to take a few weeks for the economy to stabilize, and i know this isnt what people want to hear, but if you cant handle it go play a different game for a month and come back.

And in a month prices will be exactly as they are now. The only change will be that players won’t be running dungeons and fractals as much.

And one thing you left out… prices will remain the same, but players will no longer be able to make the gold to afford them… so quality of life in GW2 takes about a 66% nerf, that is a wonderful thank you gift for all of us that have supported this game since launch, purchased gem store goods and now their premium priced expansion.

I see people defending it the decision like they are some wizened sage that knows something that everyone else doesn’t, the reason for that, is they are too heavily invested either financially or emotionally, or both, to admit that the quality of life in GW2 has took a serious nose dive over the past several months, and there appears to be no end in sight.

A total let down to be honest.

Firelysm.4967:

Now that we have Balm nerfed, can we nerf TP flipping?
Because ToT was not as harming as TP flipping is.

AMEN!

TP flipping is the much bigger issue, as the people who do it on a large scale, typically ONLY do that.. they don’t really purchase things or play the game like an average player, they just hoard massive amounts of gold and manipulate the economy.

Everyone else is made to suffer never ending nerfs and tedium to compensate for “inflation” but the GW2 Stock brokers just keep doing their thing immune to any set backs, nerfs, redesigns or “New and Improved” versions…

It’s annoying to those that actually go out and do the content, and EARN the loot… that they are constantly being forced to accept less and less of for their efforts.

It certainly looks like someone plays favorites when it comes to the economy of GW2.

Just one more thing that gets listed in the “Cons” column.

That would be the beginning of the end for this game, if you are going to do that, then why not sell level 80 potions too, and full trait/skill unlock potions… hell why not sell RNGsus status for 1 month for 200 USD also…

Let’s turn GW2 into a crappy pay to win game full of skilless credit card wielding wannabe’s outclassing dedicated and skilled players, that should make the game SO much more awesome, right?

Please think about the overall ramifications of dumb ideas like this that would only destroy the game’s integrity so that you can pay your way to the top of the skilled player tree…. without actually needing to devlop any skills.

Setz.9675:

No whiteknighting nonsense!

• The gold from completing a dungeon is getting nerfed not removed.
• The TP will take on a new equilibrium for the majority of its items, high priced stuff like charged lodestones and giant eyes are surely to fall with map rewards while others are going up due to demand with HoT recipes.
• The demand for t5 materials is getting improved to get closer towards silk’s price with new HoT recipes.
• Dungeons will still generate a ton of blues/greens which are the biggest source of t5 materials.
• Salvage is getting revamped Some of these changes will reduce output to help us maintain scarcity, and some will rebalance heavily input materials with more rare materials to help even out some of the variation of scarcity we currently have.
  this could imply that salvaging lv60-80 blues and greens wil reward t2-4 materials which are more rare than their t5 counterparts which will improve gold/salvage at this time.
• Gold generated in dungeons was tremendously higher than gold generated in fractals by time.

Overal, the gold nerf is not outrageous considering that the TP is getting overhauled with it.

After reading this I have canceled my plans to purchase the expansion, and I am now actively looking for a new game to invest my time and extra gaming cash into.

The rewards for dungeons in GW2 are the absolute worst of any game I have ever played, and the fact that they are going to further nerf those already pathetic rewards is just the straw the broke the camel’s back for me.

I am sick of seeing anything rewarding nerfed into the ground, I am sick of the new events being filled with mobs that drop ZERO loot, I am sick of seeing the same old stale content being nerfed and and then called new and improved, and I am sick of the way Anet tries to corral people into spending more cash by making the acquisition of anything worth having so tedious, locked behind rng, in rng boxes and based on an RNG system that admittedly nerfs some accounts rolls so that they will likely never see a decent drop while augmenting others so that they will receive quality drops almost constantly…. enough.

An expansion that looks suspiciously like living world season 3 combined with some game updates, yet includes no new dungeons, no new races, limited legendaries, more account bound items that proliferate a grindathon towards anything interesting, reworked fractals…. that include no new fractals, just additional annoying mistlocks that are not skill based and challenging, just cheesey annoyance based mechanics that all the skill in the world won’t allow you to mitigate consistently, like being 1 shotted, or held for 10 secs so that you can then be 1 shotted while defenseless, etc.

All priced at about the same price we paid for the original game which provided a wealth of content… they must think of us as suckers, and those of us buying into it all hook line and sinker must be.

It’s all just made this game more of an annoying experience where I feel like I am going to be extorted if I plan on having any fun and/or acquire any of the cooler items.

If I want to break out my wallet and spend cash anytime I want something in a game, there are plenty of free to play games with expansive cash shops for that.

I was a GW2 fan because it used to feel like the game was an incredible value, buy to play, and all things could be achieved and acquired buy actually playing… while you can still technically acquire everything via gameplay, Anet has consistently made it more and more difficult and tedious to do so, all in efforts to convince us that it is just easier to hand over more cash.

The constant nerfs and watered down rewards for my efforts have bled all the fun and enjoyment out of the game for me, and I am sure I am not alone in this.

Maybe when enough people are finally fed up and start heading to other games for better and more fresh and relevant experiences the greedy powers that be at Anet might re-evaluate their trajectory and start making some decisions based on what will make players happy and provide them with an enjoyable and rewarding experience instead of trying to soak every possible cent that they can out of them…. then, and only then maybe we will see GW2 evolve into something worth playing again.

As it stands now, GW2 has become the worst title in gaming in terms of rewarding experiences beyond the initial playthrough.

Yes, I know I sound mad—I am.

No, I won’t let the door hit me in the a**.

I am annoyed that my investment over the past 3 years into this game feels like it has turned out to be a huge waste.

It won’t be long before GW2 is just like any other buy to win grinder out there. The most toxic thing about this game is it’s development, and the powers that be that are forging ahead powered by pure greed.

I can’t wait to read the kittenstorm of publicity that is gonna be plastered all over the internet the first week after this “expansion” launches. I have a gut feeling that it ain’t gonna be good.

In closing, I want to thank Anet, and all the staff there that have ruined the gaming experience for myself and the many, many other people who share these sentiments.

Hopefully you made enough on pre-orders to carry you for another 3 years.

I think a fair and rewarding solution could be as simple as:

Reroll all RNG at specified intervals. weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

In this scenario everyone gets a chance to eventually feel the thrill of being RNG-sus as well as eventually feeling the disheartening disappointment of seeing only blues and greens for days on end.

Combine that with something like an internal fail-safe that insures that after so many consecutive rerolls at average, or below average, a RNG modifier is added, cumulatively, until the RNG in question hits a certain threshold, with the same mechanics in place on the opposite end, thus guaranteeing that everyone does eventually experience both ends of the spectrum.

Something along those lines would be WAY better then the current system of some people getting almost constant great drops, and then some getting pretty much all garbage drops… then everyone else.

I’d imagine the outliers with the short end of the stick probably gave up on GW2 awhile back. I have fairly decent luck, relative to GW2 anyways… and there are times when I feel like my efforts are largely unrewarding, the experience for those on the lowest of the low end must be pretty depressing and frustrating.

It looks like CoE is getting nerfed, & karma is getting nerfed, & spirit shards were nerfed. That’s three major sources of charged lodestones all nerfed. So even if charged lodestones pop up as a map reward or something, it could all even out on the supply side.

This climate of constant nerfing is one of the most annoying things about Guild Wars 2, and is the biggest contributing factor that has lead myself, and the friends that I play with, to take long breaks from GW2, some friends have left to other games and have zero interest in returning….ever.

It seems like Anet’s answer to everything is to nerf things into the ground.

The living story content used to keep the game somewhat interesting, but since that has all been held back and bundled with some core game changes and marketed as an expansion, the game has become really stale for me, and a lot of others, I’m sure.

I used to really enjoy the game, and didn’t mind the grinding so much as there always seemed to be something new that I could grind away at when one thing got monotonous, anymore I log in, try to run a level 50 fractal, craft the time gated ascended mats and either do a couple world bosses, a couple stale dungeon paths or grind some gold at whatever the current farm is for about 30 mins or so before I get so bored and uninspired that I wind up logging off.

Despite my feelings about the value of the expansion, I had decided I would give in and buy it at launch for no other reason then the raid content… then I read that the raid content will come at some later date after launch.

Sorry if my train went off the tracks a little bit here, but it just sort of felt like a swift kick in the kittens to hear that COE as well as Karma were both gonna get nerfs just to manipulate the market price of lodestones… It’s really just another brick in the wall that I am sitting on, looking for another game to dive into.

I hope that something amazing happens, and Anet shows some love to the people that supported this game, the company and all of it’s employees for the past few years instead of the continued nerfing and cash grabbing pettiness that has been the bulk of our interactions for the best part of the last year.

The only fresh content that has been offered since the announcement of HOT was that pathetic mordrem event, the one where none of the mobs, not even the champions dropped ANY loot…. NONE whatsoever.

If that is an indicator of what the future of GW2 content looks like… I think it’s safe to say that there will be a sharp decline in the veteran and/or more hardcore player population.

But, maybe the idea is to chase those players away, and replace them with a more casual type of player that prefers to buy their loot with cash then to earn it in game…

I guess time will tell.

Please, Anet, give me a reason to play again.

For me this is simple.

Add some armor/Weapon skins that are of a darker flavor.

Think skulls and demons, red gems and black chrome…without making them look like they are related to plants.

I would like to see some darker, more gritty outfits/skins… stuff that make my warrior look mean and kitten, and not like rainbow bright… stuffed animal backpacks, the legendary pistol, short bow and the staff are the antitheses of what I’d like to see.

Think Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo…. early Dungeons and Dragons illustrations. etc.

Behellagh.1468:

But you all are so goal focus, your blinders don’t let you even acknowledge that there is another purpose for BLTC than a means to get tickets. They aren’t broken, your view of them are.

Yeah that purpose is called a gold sink, to wipe out a player’s accumulated wealth, or to soak them for substantial cash via gem purchases… and what better way then to entice them into purchasing a key for ~28 gold, that will, more than 99% of the time, yield a handful of junk worth less then 3 gold, or even more often worth less as the key purchasing player will find the contents of their chest useless and unwanted, and will instantly regret WASTING their hard earned gold, or RL dollars on them.

Key sales are lacking because they are ridiculously overpriced and the payoff is absolutely not worth it, in very nearly, just shy of every case… to the extent that one can almost guarantee that they will feel disappointed and ripped of if they actually purchased the key via the gem store.

I would love to see the Vegas odds on opening a chest that has content with a real world, or game economy value higher then, or even equal to, the cost of the key purchased to open it. 100:1? 500:1?

I am thinking probably closer to 1000:1 if not higher.

It would be considered a “sucker bet”.

People who farmed a couple keys, felt a little scammed, because they were gambling with their time, instead of their wallets… even though, there are several farms that pay off way better then average chest content value… so really they ARE wasting money 99% of the time.

People who do things like key farming, do it, not to undermine a game’s economy, but because they LIKE to farm stuff, they enjoy the semi-brainless loot runs. I am one of these people. I have farmed most of the better GW2 farms that have been discovered…. to ABSURD levels. At one time I had more then 7,000 gilded strongboxes in my bank. I made a lot less from opening them all then you might think.

The point is people with that farmer/grinder mentality and play style will ALWAYS be farming something, keys, Orr events/champs, Frostgorge, Silver Wastes, etc, etc, etc

In reality, while they were farming keys, they were thwarting their OWN gold farming potential, I can farm ~20 gold an hour doing the right farm, with the right set up…. and so can many others.

When a person farms keys, however, even if every chest had contents valued at 3 gold, which they don’t, not even remotely close, they would be making only `6 gold an hour, in reality the payout is probably closer to ~1 gold and hour.

Ha, even doing a world boss once an hour would yield better, more valuable loot, 99.5% or so of the time.

The effect of this killing blow to key farming will ONLY succeed in doing 2 things for sure:

1) Driving these farmers to other farms, where they will generate exponentially more gold/wealth then they ever did key farming.

and

2) Driving the price of black lion skins sky high in the next month or so.

As the BL Tickets people have sitting in their bank, patiently awaiting the day that a decent set comes out, one that wont make their male characters look like they are having gender identification issues, get spent, that existing surplus dries up, and the TP prices on Black Lion skins is gonna raise to the point that players will see them as not worth their 500+ gold price tag and will look to other items to work towards.

The Deathly Pauldrons, Ghastly Grinning Shield and other Halloween skins come to mind. I love all those skins, but 950+ gold for a shoulder armor skin, or an awesome shield skin, that is the highest priced item on the TP, valued higher then 2 Legendary weapons in some cases is just not worth the gold. I would never spend that much on a simple skin, especially since I don’t use a shield and currently have the shield precursor in my bank.

Point being that the value of weapons skins can only go so high before interest in said skins, and the likelihood of being able to sell them, starts to shrink….. drastically.

Just some food for thought.

I would love to see the Vegas odds on opening a chest that has content with a real world, or game economy value higher then, or even equal to, the cost of the key purchased to open it. 100:1? 500:1? Higer?

It would be considered a “sucker bet”.

Bring back key farming, or watch key sales plummet like never before.

I’ll keep my eye on this one…

I notice there are a lot of intelligent people posting on this forum, with great ideas on how to make the game better for the players and more profitable for Anet.

It’s unfortunate that Anet doesn’t listen to it’s playerbase more often.

What’s more unfortunate though, is that all these cool and level headed people are here on the forums venting their frustrations instead of having fun and playing the game they all paid for, several times over in most cases.

Personally, I have had enough of the changes in Guild Wars 2 that look to make playing the game less rewarding, over the past year the game changes have steadily tried to force people to the conclusion that they should just BUY the things they want from the gem store, as farming for anything is too tedious and time consuming, and will be constantly nerfed until it is pointless to do anymore.

I had originally decided after yesterday’s patch to simply boycott buying keys, or anything else from the gemstore, their overpriced expansion included.

But as I logged in today, and ran around doing the same old crap I have done countless times, getting the same old junk drops, I asked myself why am I even here doing this again today…

The answer is because I feel invested, I purchased the game, I supported Anet and Guild Wars 2 through gem store purchases throughout the last 3 years and have built a pretty solid account, with a full roster of characters, skins, legendaries, etc.

But should I let myself feel obligated to continue playing a game that is not only becoming stale due to the lack of fresh content, but has also become less and less rewarding to play as Arenanet makes every effort to thwart the player’s accumulation of wealth by any means other then gem store purchase?

The answer, for me at least, is no.

I dislike the direction the game is headed in, now being free to play, Arenanet feels the need to try and soak every cent that they can from each and every player, with no distinction or concession for those of us that actually bought this game and supported it for the last 3 years.

The content has become stale, the action is lacking and the focus is on costumes and skins, most of which I don’t even like.

I like to grind, play hard and go after coveted items, I enjoy the journey, I enjoy finding ways to make the gold I need to progress, I like the rewarding feeling I get when I kill something challenging and get awesome loot.

I used to get this feeling when I played Guild Wars 2, but over the past year or so it has felt like Anet has been there at every turn to water down these experiences, make the loot less awesome, and less frequent, and has, beyond that, been focused on nothing but pushing gem store items and pre-orders for this expansion, that as of this point really doesn’t seem to contain very much content in comparison to what we got when we purchased Guild Wars 2 at nearly the same price.

It feels like greed, it feels like disrespect and I feel insulted because of it.

This isn’t just about key farming being removed from the game, it’s about the entire laundry list of things that have led up to this.

Maybe things will change after the expansion rolls out and Anet no longer has the “Boy, wait to you see what we have in store for you guys!” card to play that many people seem so enamored by, but that remains to be seen.

I’ll probably check back in for a visit once the expansion goes on sale and is at a price that is more congruent with the amount of content included in it, but, until then, I am off in search of a more rewarding experience, with a focus on action and adventure, not on rainbow colored outfits that would look less out of place in Caitlyn Jenner’s closet then they do on my Warrior.

Next stop Elder Scrolls Online, I have heard great things about this game since it’s botched launch, and now I think the time is right for me to revisit Tamriel, so, for now, farewell my friends.

Maybe sometime in the future I will find myself on their forums writing a similar post, I guess only time will tell.

-Eddie

/rant

Rasimir.6239:

Why do you all jump to the conclusion that the goal of this change is to force key sales, when the very same patchnotes that announce the restriction to lvl10 story keys to once a week (which in itself probably only impacts a very low amount of players) also announce an increase of key drops?

I get it, being negative and doubting honest intentions is the in-thing right now, but shouldn’t we at least wait and see if there really is going to be a reduced supply in skins (apparently that’s all the vocal people care about?) or if the change in drop rate actually manages to do what ANet is trying to do in many other parts of the game, too, which is to distribute drops more evenly among the player base rather than concentrate them in the hands of the farmers?

They could increase key drops by 500% and you’ll probably still never see more then one a year, if that, because the chances of getting one are so miniscule that even a 500% increase will not even be noticeable. Saying that they have increased the drop rate is a very vague statement, one that I can all but promise you will not equate to any noticeable difference.

I have have farmed dungeons and most other content in this game to absurd levels, for the past 3 years, with a few breaks, and have got exactly 1 key as a drop in the wild…

I’d estimate the odds of a black lion key dropping from a random mob at about 1 in 1,000,000 or so, like I said, even if they increased those odds by 500% or even 1000% you are still looking at 5 or 10 in 1,000,000 or more.

Hardly enough to make a noticeable difference.

But tell us, why are you so quick to jump to the conclusion that the nerf of key farming ISN’T an attempt to stimulate key sales, you surely must have some info to lead you to your conclusion, or at least some logical theory as to how this change will effect some other aspect of they game, right?

You honestly think that “distributing” drops more evenly among people means anything other then rewarding the players that play less, at the expense of making the rewards for dedicated players even more abysmal then they are now? LOL.

Everyone that plays a lot and tries to gain resources and wealth is some anti-game player, economy ruining “farmer”.

The truth is, in this game, if you want anything other then trash drops you will have to repeat content over and over, and accumulate wealth… or get out your credit card and buy it.

The average player’s RNG, coupled with the multi-layered implementation of RNG Boxes within RNG boxes, the typical player can be assured that they will get next to nothing in terms of awesome drops without extensive “farming” or spending real cash.

I have seen quite a few people that are “drinking the koolaide” believing that by giving players less loot, less fresh content, less rewards, and less chances at good drops, somehow it makes the game better for everyone.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion though, regardless how out of touch, ill informed and naive they are.

I like really like some aspects of Guild Wars 2, sadly it seems that every month or so another thing that I love about the game is cut out, with no replacement or logical explanation and we are left to draw conclusions based on what we know, and what is pretty obvious.

But anyways, good luck on getting less loot for dedicated playing and more loot for doing nothing, since that seems to be your idea of a better Guild Wars 2!

Honestly, I just wish they would open the farm back up, but we know that won’t happen…

Despite what the folks at Anet think, key farming had nothing to do with the lacking sales of Black Lion Keys.

The reason that key sales are low, is because the contents of the chests suck.

Why on earth would a sane person spend, on average, 560 gold buying the 20 keys that it would require to get 10 ticket scraps, so they could buy a skin that sells on the TP for 80 gold?

It certainly can’t be because they want all the awesome useless boosters and trash items that make up 90% or more of the chests contents… because nobody wants or needs an armor booster, or a teleport to friend 1 time use gadget… or any of the other ridiculously worthless items stare at you from the chest you instantly regret opening 95% of the time.

It seems odd that Anet expects people to buy Keys for 28 gold, to open chests that 99% of the time, or more, have contents worth less then 3 gold.

It is not really a gamble, it’s a sink.

Just because 1 chest in 1,000,000, if that, drops a hair contract isn’t really enough to justify spending 28 gold for a key knowing, with near certainty, that what you will get out of the chest can be purchased outright for less then 3 gold, but more often, you wouldn’t spend ANYTHING buying those contents, because you wouldn’t want them.

The number of useless filler items is ridiculous.

But now, since the ability for people to “farm” keys, has been completely removed, despite the requirement being added that the farmer progress to level 10 before starting the story quests, the price of the BL skins on the trading post is gonna skyrocket.

People used to be able to farm a few keys here and there, and eventually they had enough scraps to buy a skin, and they would toss it on the TP, competition from other key farmers kept the prices pretty low on the 1 ticket skins, but now, since the only way to get those skins is by paying the average price of 560 gold for those 20 keys… or buying the gems with about 30 bucks in cash, the skins on the TP are going to coincide with with these costs…

I doubt people will spend 560 gold to buy a skin and then sell it on the TP for 80 gold, or spend 30 dollars on a skin that they can then sell for 80 gold, when that same 30 bucks in gems converted to gold would give them roughly 350.

I am thinking that the death of key farming is not going to have the effect that Anet envisioned, I think interest in the black lion chests will fall even lower, and as the price of the skins soar out of the range of the average player, interest in those skins will take a dive too. Which will further perpetuate the declining interest in purchasing Black Lion keys.

The contents of the chests are mostly worthless to most players, and at 30 or 40 minutes and the cost of leveling the character to level 10, those key farmers can EASILY make more gold doing other things in the same amount of time, so it won’t thwart their accumulation of wealth, at all, nor will it increase the sales of Black Lion Keys, about the only thing that I can tell that it HAS accomplished is to take away a little farm that a handful of people enjoyed doing on occasion when they were bored of all the other content they have done to death for the past 3 years.

It won’t stop people from farming, they will just go and farm something else, and will refuse to buy black lion keys out of spite.

Maybe the answer is to make the average chest contents worth closer to the 28 gold it costs to open them, or lower the price of the keys to a point where it is closer in value to the contents of the average chest.

I know I will miss my handful of key runs I did each week, for me it wasn’t JUST about getting the keys to open the crappy chests, I enjoyed trying to streamline the run, see if I could beat my previous best time, etc. It was a cool little solo game with a fun little reward at the end.

Hopefully I can find something else that will enjoy to a similar extent.

Anyways

/rant

I see alot of people telling the OP that it is somehow “HIS” fault that his luck is terrible in GW2.

If you read his post, he explains that he, and the friend he started with, did the same content, they did dungeons, world bosses, silverwastes… the OP goes on to explain that he put in almost twice the time doing this same content and while his friend got 2 precursor drops he got zero precursor drops, and that his friend got consistantly better loot and more of it, not just for his time playing, but over all.

That doesn’t sound like a spending behavior issue, or wrong place at the wrong tiome issue, it sounds like a RNG issue, because it IS an RNG issue.

I never did, nor will I ever understand the reasoning behind why Gw2’s RNG system is implemented the way it is, with a baseline probability with equal numbers of both above baseline RNG characters and below baseline characters, to equal extents. So that for every person that has great luck, and has pulled 7 precursors out off the forge with little effort, received another 2 or 3 as drops, etc, etc there is another player that could throw 10000 exotics into the forge and never get a precursor, who could grind content 24 hours a day from the moment of launch until right now and never see a precursor drop.

It defies logic, why would you want to make one player’s game experience rewarding and fun, while making another player’s thankless and unfair?

I can’t see how making some players into RNGesus and others into born losers is a good thing for anyone other then the person with the great RNG…

Why is it such a bad idea to make everyone have, say… an EQUAL chance at rare and exotic items?

Would rewarding players that put in the effort and time in hopes of getting that coveted items be a bad thing?

I know that I have stopped playing for long periods of time because of similar situations, my RNG is apparently not as bad as the OP’s, but I used to farm chests non stop, for months in the winter when I have tons of free time, there were times I have 5000+ gilded strong boxes in my bank, I used all the magic find food, and salvaged blues and greens for magic find… yet I would rarely get exotics, maybe 8 or 10 out of several thousand exotic chests from Frost Gorge, yet I had friends farming with me that would pick up about 10 rares and an exotic or so off of trash mobs while we were farming, and they would get 2 or 3 x the exotics I got, from half the boxes.

I know people that will buy 100 rares and CONSISTENTLY pull precursors out of the forge, I know a lady that pulled 7 out in a week, 1 a day, with 100 or so rares, honest truth here.

I have thrown 1000’s of rares into the mystic forge and have received 1 precursor, the rifle, for which I was very thankful, and out of the 20,000 or 30,000 or more chests I have opened I got the shield precursor, again I was so excited I was yelling (that was my first one) and my wife ran into my office thinking something was wrong.

I have a good friend I play with regularly, when we do fractals he ALWAYS gets 2x more rares/exos then I get, ALWAYS. I am happy for him, but it gets annoying to ALWAYS be the one getting the short end of the stick.

And as bad as I feel my RNG is compared to other players I know of, I also know that there are others, like the OP that have it way worse.

It really does seem like the RNG mechanics in this game are not only unfair, but in the end will discourage the players with unusually bad RNG from continuing to play, like the original poster that assumed working hard and being dedicated would increase his chances at better loot.

Unfortunately, this is not the way it works in GW2.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1553-john-smith-outlines-discussion-of-rng-changes/

They believe that if the playing field is level in terms of rewards, that the game wouldn’t be fun at all. So in Mr. Smith’s mind, it’s more fun for everyone if some people get constantly rewarded and some people never get rewarded at all. Sorry but that seems irrational and, as far as I am concerned, a terrible approach towards making the game enjoyable for all players.

I don’t think everyone should be getting awesome drops all the time, but I also don’t think ANYBODY should.

I guess I am really confused about how making the rewards for playing be decided at the time of account or character creation rather then RANDOM per drop and equal for everyone is not a terrible system that sucks.

Unless the goal is to manipulate an emotion response that research indicates may cause more people to break out then wallets then to quit… which would be my guess.

Maybe one day they will start doing RNG “rerolls” on a regular basis like weekly or monthly, at least that would give everyone a chance experience the Midas touch… and it’s antithesis.

Or would that be too fair and ruin the game?

If there is some logic behind why making some people’s experience in GW2 less rewarding then everyone else’s somehow makes the game better, please enlighten me.

Thanks,

Eddie

People are still spouting off that the expansion alone is 50.00 and the core game is FREE?

Some people will believe anything you tell them… lol.

I peeked in to see if anything had changed, obviously not. I have migrated to other games, as this whole ordeal made me lose my taste for Guild Wars 2, maybe after it’s released and goes on sale for 20 bucks or something I may consider checking it out, but I am definitely not paying 50 bucks for a chunk of living story content that they held back and released all at once… under false pretenses.

I’m sure lots of people will, and I hope they enjoy the experience, I am a little more selective with what I purchase, and i won’t buy things being marketed deceptively, out of principal.

That said, I am going back to the other games I am into now, and bid you guys, and the world of GW2 farewell… for the foreseeable future at least.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It would mean reworkng all the maps to apply the invisible walls, strong currents, icy winds, etc. it would mean spending time going over each and every map looking for way to break out of the maps and checking JPs from different approaches. All this would take hours of work and Dev time they currently don’t have. The reason the HoM bug hasn’t been fixed in months is because they’ve said the bug came at a time their resources were stretched to the limit (that expansion they are doing, you know). If they don’t have the time/manpower to fix that bug then they most certainly don’t have the time/manpower to rework all the vanilla maps.

So in other words if it = work for devs to do right, then the answer is just rush through and half kitten it because gw2 players don’t care if they get half finished content, or design choices that make next to no sense… is that what you are saying?

Either do things right, or don’t do them at all.

Randulf.7614:

It’s a progression system. They don’t exist to give free access to any area in the game, the idea is you invest XP into the gliding mastery to allow you to explore a map in a new and different way that can only be accessed from tree top to tree top. Travelling across the canopy then improves the jungle “feel”, especially as Maguuma is a more broken and open jungle.

As for the rest of the world, it has no need or purpose there than being cool. Yes it would be cool, but there are gameplay disadvantages as well like trivialising waypoints, breaking map boundaries, trivialising JPs.

On balance, as cool as it would be, I think their decision is the corrct one.

Sorry, but to me, it sounds like a big fail… gliders are neat idea that falls short if they can only be used in the expansion maps. Allowing players to re-explore the rest of the map via the air is a great opportunity to breathe new life into aging content. New dimensions could be added to the jumping puzzles, strange shifting wind currents, heat and cold effective lift and hang times… so many possibilities.

If you are completing expansion content, and progressing glider mastery… then most of the WP’s on the rest of the map are going to be somewhat trivialized already and again, always room for new dynamics to be put in play…

Invisible walls already exist in most places to enforce map boundries, I don’t really see it being terrible difficult to implement something like the “strong current” warning and teleporting system employed in the water.

I am sure there is a better solution fo JP’s other then just disabling the glider mastery on the vast majority of maps.

Limiting their usage to only a few select maps kind of trivializes the glider… and makes them come across gimmicky.

I don’t know much about Heart of Thorns, or how much content it will deliver… or when it will deliver any of it.

I do know that they are pushing for people to pay 49.95 for something yet won’t tell us how much we’ll get for that money or when we can expect to get it.

I know that from what has been shown and discussed it doesn’t look like it is going to be worth 49.95 in terms of content, and seems more like a pay wall they are going to lock all future content updates behind

I also know that Fallout 4 is shipping on November 10th of this year, has a price of 60.00 and will be a massive cutting edge game.

Unless Heart of Thorns turns out to be tremendous update, consisting of a AAA title worth of content I will most certainly be spending the extra 10 bucks on the sure thing, and waiting for the 9.95 sale on Heart of Thorns.

Ponkie Poe.5043:

Personally it feels like a giant middle finger to all vet players who have to pay as much for half the content as new players get for the same price, its a bonus for new players but AENet looks like they want to shaft existing players for as much as possible.

It IS a giant middle finger to all of us who have supported Guild Wars 2 and Arenanet over the years. It is becoming abundantly clear that they no longer care about creating the the highest quality or highest value game anymore, they have now turned their focus towards wrenching every last red cent they can out of anybody willing to pay it.

I would be willing to bet the whole pet rock thing was an inside joke, with someone at Arenanet saying something like, " These people will buy ANYTHING, at ANY price, don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you, I’ll put a rock on the gem store and you watch how many people buy it…"

All the evidence leads me to believe that this expansion was born from an idea to start charging for the living story content, and that Heart of Thorns will be little more then, if not simply, Living Story Season 3. It looks like an area the size of Silverwastes, with some “challenging group content” dynamic events, and 3 levels to the map…

At launch, Guild wars 2 had like 8 classes and 5 races.. it had around 15 regions full of various points of interest, skill challenges, heart quests, etc. It had around 8 dungeons, a plethora of dynamic events and world bosses, dozens of armor and weapon sets, like 7 crafting disciplines… enough content and replayabilty to keep people busy and enjoying the rich and colorful world, in all it’s diversity, for years. It cost $59.95 at launch, had a gem (cash) shop and was shown strong support by many, many loyal fans.

If Heart of Thorns is comparable to the amount of content we received when we bought the original game, then sure it’s well worth the $49.95 price tag, if it isn’t, if it is merely a glorified Living Story Season 3, then will be obvious that Arenanet has lost all respect it may have had for it’s loyal fan base, and maybe the gaming community as a whole, and feels they can sell anything they want, like pet rocks and once free living world content, for any price, because they have cultivated a userbase full of suckers that will pay whatever they ask for it.

It would be obvious to me at least.

I know there are people that will argue that they have enjoyed Guild Wars 2 so much that they are happy to spend 50 more dollars regardless of how small or underwhelming the expansion might be. That’s fine, but unfortunately it is that sort of sentiment that insures the rest of the us will continue to get raw deals.

I have seen people attacked for wanting to stand up for their rights as a consumer, or for being concerned about the price to value ratio of a product they are being asked to purchase, almost extorted into purchasing since it has been said that any future updates will require Heart of Thorns.

That’s just bad form, and really a sad way of showing appreciation to the people that have supported this game and it’s developers since Guild Wars 2 was launched.

I really hope the climate changes as the release date for Heart of Thorns draws closer, the whole debacle has really put a damper on my desire to play at all, sadly, and I was just getting back into the game after taking several months away from it to check out The Secret World again.

Maybe Arenanet is really just selling the beta access for $20.00 or so and will drop the price for the base package to 29.95 at launch or something, who knows.

Ricky.4706:

but that’s not being sneaky, they have been transparent about being a next generation of mmo – this involves taking risks in different models. unfortunately the perception of the bundle has devalued the core game and made it look free to play. The fact ncsoft has placed a value for it as stand alone on amazon, shows that was not their intention.

No, you are mistaken, the perception is that Arena Net has decided to save up several months worth of living story content and game updates and slapped a 50.00 price tag on them.

And used the inclusion of the core game to justify the 50.00 cost… then in response to the backlash released a statement saying that the expansion itself costs 50.00 but the core game is being given away free… unless you already have an account, then you are only getting the expansion.

Then in response to that backlash, they said they will be giving those that pre-order a “free” character expansion slot… while stating that all future expansions will include a copy of the core game as well as any and all expansions released prior to the current expansion.. unless of course you are already an account holder and loyal Guild Wars 2 fan, in which case you will be getting just the current expansion at the full price of the current GOTY edition.

Did I forget to mention that the perception also is that unless you buy one of the BUNDLES, of which existing players will only receive the expansion from, at full bundle price, you will be blocked from any further Living Story updates, etc and basically be left to die of boredom in a dying version of the game?

So yeah, some people are definitely resentful, not at the fact that there is an expansion being released, and not really so much that it is a 50.00 expansion… but more at the fact that from the details released so far it appears to be a heavily polished Living Story Season 3… and not a traditional game world expansion.

I am one of those that is rooting for Heart of Thorns, I would love to see it be a massive expansion that allows us to sort of move on from the old tried and true lands and dungeons that we have been playing over and over for the past 3 years to new lands to explore and dungeons to conquer, new armor and weapon sets to collect, new legendaries to lust after and grind for. (I would love to see some new darker, as in spooky, themed armor and weapon sets.. think skeletons and demons.. hint, hint)

And if it delivers on being that full on expansion to the Guild Wars 2 world, I’ll gladly plop down that 50.00 and tell everyone how awesome it is, and get on with the grindage, and forget all about the feeling cheated out of a copy of the original game that I feel forced to pay for…

If it doesn’t live up to the expectations that the full AAA title price tag has set up for it, and turns out to be Living Story Season 3, and the pay wall which all future updates are locked behind, then I will most likely start migrating back towards some of the other games that I play, and probably check out another similarly priced title.

That is not any kind of “Give me my way or I’ll quit!” threat or anything, it’s just simply how I feel about the whole debacle at this point. The game has definitely lost some of it’s shine without the small content updates adding to it’s world every couple weeks or so, and if it GW2 is moving towards is 50.00 Seasons of Living Story I can see myself losing interest.

But like I say at the end of the majority of my posts, only time will tell.