Guild Wars 2

I too loved Cantha. The way Shin Jea was made; colorful, bright, exotic looking made me love it. I wasn’t a very big fan of the horrible slum-liness of Kaining, but I found myself coming back quite a few times. My hate may also have come from the fact this was probably the first area I got kind of stuck in, storywise. The horrible feeling you got from the city was however also it’s strongest point: It had a real atmosphere, even if it was a horrible one. The fact you could genuinely get lost in the sub-map-instances (whatever they were called) did cause for immersion: You wanted to get the heck out of there.

Then there was the forest; it really felt like an ancient, dense, place with trees you could walk over to get to other areas, not to forget the little stream of water near the mean moa.
Lastly; the jade sea. A brilliant setting, graphically, because it combined the exotic & colorfullness of shing jae with the ‘creepiness’ of ancient creatures entombed in a crystallized sea.

There was no place I loved more than Cantha in Gw1, save for perhaps the norn-lands. Even if you do decide that bringing Cantha back would be too big of a hassle, can I suggest bringing the various parts that made Cantha awesome back instead?
Things like an ancient forest where you’re more off the beaten path than on, a massive, overcrowded city (slums?) that’s formed like a maze and lastly, (more) exotic-feeling, brightly colored islands and settings.

HeeHee.5208:

One-time events where lots of players will miss out, especially on rewards, due to prior commitments or unwillingness to prioritise a game over real life.

Personally, the final karka chain event was the best series of dynamic event I have experienced to date. Long but fun and interesting if your computer could handle it and knew what to do.

However, to consciously design such an event, a one-time event, where invariably lots of people will miss out is somewhat ridiculous. Basically, it is guaranteed to annoy people and if Arenanet wishes to do that then it is ultimately its choice. However, I would suggest having alternatives or at least “multi-time” events to cater for as many players as possible, namely for those who lead very busy lives.

I think this post hits the homerun. You can’t do one time events every time, and especially during Christmassy times where a lot of people turn off their PC’s and spend time with relatives, it’s probably not the wisest idea in general.

There’s one thing that doesn’t really add up though; The one time event would probably have been on the day Tixx arrived in LA, which was on the 20th. A thursday and completely normal day of the week; people still had to go to work on friday and go about their normal routines. In that sense, no different from the Karka event that took place (for us central European gamers) at around 23:00 on a sunday. The monday following would be a normal weekday with the normal weekday obligations. So why do an event on that sunday but not this time on a thursday?

If you truly wanted to make Wintersday a more relaxed event, I guess it makes sense. But to be completely honest, I reckon it’s got to do with the stability issues of the server mainly. To me, the biggest problem with the karka event was the fact the servers couldn’t handle it: people who wanted to be there had problems logging in and got shut down due to that. The time at which it took place wasn’t a big deal: if you can’t be there due to obligations, you can’t be there.

All in all; wintersday was a lot of fun, because the dungeons all took place during the week, I was glad they were all relatively short and there were no one time event things. I probably would’ve missed some, because I simply have less time during the week. That however doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see more one time events.

Rieselle.5079:

I think the ultimate and final solution that pleases everyone, is to have a special portal in Fractals (or wherever) that can transport you to the past / parallel universes / other dimensions / etc

Using this portal, ANet has a lot of freedom to make DLC mini-story scenarios, flesh out Tyria’s history a bit more by allowing us to experience historical scenes, and of course, allow us to replay one-time events.

So yeah, moving forward, if they implement such a system, they can have epic one-time events, but still allow everyone to participate (and everyone to replay it if they like it.)

That really is not a bad idea at all :o
I get Iruwen’s issue with it, but the way I see it, is that the world will have been altered after that event, but when you fire it up in the Fractals, you get to see how it got altered.

Terrahero.9358:

I fully understand the OPs grievance. It was hinted that you would only be able to get two, and if you wanted all you had to spend gems. Altough not directly worded in such a way, its understandable to see why someone would think that.

And then they suddenly turn around and hand out so many materials you couldve gotten the 3th one aswell without spending gems.

It’s not an argument in the slightest though. What they said was that you could get 2 mini pets out of the first 5 days. That’s a fact AND they held up to it. If you drew conclusions from that, you can’t hold Arenanet responsible for that. Not even a little bit.

I fully agree with the last part of your post (that I cutted out of this), they don’t owe you anything: They simply didn’t lie. As a matter in fact (and I’ve said this before in this thread): the extra cogs they gave out aren’t even really meant for you. They’re meant for the people who somehow got screwed out of getting 2 craftable mini’s.

However; the entire thing was handled sloppy once more: having to give out TWO (!) extra waves of cogs because your content for getting them is buggy is a major flaw. If the point is telling them they need to get their act straight, you have my sympathy. But people saying Arenanet lied when they factually haven’t, annoys me.

I can understand you feeling cheated, I really do, but let’s get some things straight.
No one lied to you.
The exact quote you are referring to goes like this:

You’ll have enough to make any two you’d like if you play all five days.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wintersday/Tixx-Minipets/first#post1007757

With the way that was worded, noone ever said that the cogs you got out of the first five days would be all the cogs you would be given. Ofcourse, the reason as it turns out now (from my understanding), was because a lot of people got cheated out of cogs. It was a quickfix.
However, this means that if you hadn’t encountered bugs, you got all this as extra free stuff. It wasn’t intended for you, but you still got it. Sell the cogs, it’s a whopping 2s for free, or keep them for next year. Who knows.