Guild Wars 2

Farming Silverwastes is probably the way to go for gold and materials. If you have the patience of a saint and the Agony Resistance to do it over and over again, Fractal 40 – Molten Boss farming, might be a faster way to gain the gold needed.

Doing your daily fractals can reward you with a lot of gold fast, but you need to have the AR and fractal levels to do the high level fractals. I would advise joining a friendly guild that does fractals every day. Doing a fractal also awards karma, although if you have HoT, you can also access LS3 maps. Farming the Winterberries in Bitterfrost Frontier, consuming them for the Unbound Magic, and trading that in for the Obsidian Shards is a quick way to getting all the shards you will ever need.

The only real problem is getting Mystic Coins, which means either sucking it up and buying from the TP, or playing the waiting game. You can trade in laurels for the T6 materials, so that is not a major issue if you have been saving those up.

Personally, I like crafting the precursor. Zap might be a project I will do in the future, but as I just finished Bifrost, I’m a bit gold strapped myself. I crafted The Legend on my own. The important thing is to take your time. Legendaries are a long term project.

usnedward.9023:

Katastroff.1045:

The more maps we get, the less populated they will be. What the game needs is not stuff to draw us to a map, but stuff to draw NEW players to the maps.

There will always be players in every map, but often not enough for a successful one unless its was an organized group.

One of the reasons I left WoW was instead of making use of current maps so many more were introduced. Good news in GW2 is I don’t waste time flying point to point so traveling is made easier. New areas are great but once objectives are made why go back? I use only one toon to cover map progression and then just do my thing whatever that may be for the day.

ANET obviously intends to keep new maps rolling which is fine but we need some gear progression and for the record I HOPE they never increase level cap.

Back to maps… mega server has been huge for ANET in that every map has someone in it and must max out before another map is created. A great system especially for events unless you login 5 minutes before the event and get locked out

I hope we never get more gear progression. Most of my friends quit when ascended gear was introduced years ago. I’ve been trying ever since to get them to come back. Gear progression is only a means to an end and once that end is reached, people will simply stop playing. This is precisely what you said “once objectives are made why go back?”

If either further gear progression is introduced or level cap is increased, it will do far more harm than good.

No, what is needed is incentive to come back to the maps introduced. Monthlies are a good idea. Maybe what we need is a PvE reward track with a big shiny at the end.

Archranis.2375:

I don’t think we’ll ever see bouncing mushrooms or updrafts as items users can place. The grapplers just need to be given a position; there are no additional parameters for their behavior. Bouncing mushrooms need a trajectory — where you bounce to, how high, etc. Updrafts need a height and position in air (guild hall placeables need an anchor point to place objects next to). There is no mechanism to give mushrooms and updrafts these additional parameters.

They could simply just give us a set height for the updrafts or even multiple types of updrafts (a la tables, trees, cushions in scribing) and a default jump height for mushrooms. I don’t see this as an impediment to implementing such a feature. I’m sure the devs could figure something out. You don’t really need to specify trajectory for a mushroom, just give us something that boosts us into the air.

*Please don’t make the excuse that it consumes dev time. I’ve heard it enough on the forums and on reddit. It is neither helpful, nor constructive.

Well, my personal interpretation is that everyone else is another high ranking Pact officer. We know from Living Story season 2 that Trahearne had several other Commanders under him (he was waiting for a report from an airship Commander in one episode). It makes sense for a large multi-national and multi-racial organization to have several high ranking officers, so in essence we are all Pact Commanders.

As for Dragon Stand events, it could just be that while several of the surviving Pact Commanders (i.e. other players) were leading the charge against the Mouth of Mordremoth while you as the First Pact Commander and Slayer of Zhaitan, kill Mordremoth in the Dream. That’s how I interpret it anyway. There is no contradiction if we had other commanders handling things topside while our character in their story finishes the dragon off.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill and nostalgia goggles makes everything look great. I, for one, disliked Season 1 even though I think it should return in some form for continuity’s sake. There were multiple problems with the format and there were numerous times where players were wondering if the devs were doing anything with the storyline anytime fast because it felt like we were bouncing from one festival to another with no real continuity in between.

Ask anyone what was good about season 1 and most will say the Marionette fight and the Battle for Lion’s Arch. What I remember about Season 1 was pressing F on a bunch of signposts for two weeks and an evil sylvari that created an impossible alliance-of-the-week of enemies that should have been fighting each other instead of us.

“Best” story is subjective, but for me the story behind season 1 was probably one of the worst ever written for the franchise. Scarlet’s backstory had to be retconned so hard that even today she seems like an unstoppable savant. When it was first written, she had graduated from all three asuran colleges, which even asura don’t do. It’s been retconned to read that she got special permission to take courses from all three. It still doesn’t change the issue that she still learned everything possible from a norn blacksmith, a charr sniper, and a hylek alchemist to become the super engineer that somehow (never explained) managed to convince six different insular isolationist groups to team up and work together in her Molten Alliance (Dredge and Flame Legion), Aetherblade Pirates (Inquest and Bandits, I’ll give props to this as this is actually believable due to events in Brisban), and Toxic Alliance (Krait and Nightmare Court).

A lot of people seem to like Scarlet. I’ll give you that they got a really good voice actress for her, but the way her character was written as our personal nemesis never rang true for me and I was more annoyed at her antics than anything else and wanted something more in the updates than the oh let’s fight Scarlet’s newest Evil alliance (with a capital E).

Oh, definitely. I would love to have more stuff to craft that we can interact with in our guild halls. It would make a scavenger hunt in the guild hall more fun when you have a bunch of movement options.

Some other assets that I’d love to have are actual buildings like some of the houses in Divinity’s Reach or The Grove.

Definitely the norn for me. The charr, the sylvari, the asura, and even the humans all had fairly interesting storylines. There is so much the devs could do with them and yet their lore is stagnant. All of the norn seem to epitomize loud, boorish, drunkards who can’t put down their tankards unless the risen/mordrem/whatever enemy-of-the-week are already knocking down their front door and inside their house.

Forgal was probably the best written of them, but even then he was fairly stereotypical of the tall, powerful warrior troupes, which seem to be every norn we ever see.

EdwinLi.1284:

Honestly I am a bit ticked that there is no Race specific dialogues involving certain race specific events nor past choices in Zhaitan Arc. However, I guess this is mostly due to how players can skip the Zhaitan Arc and just jump into Season 2 to Season 3 storyline thus the story may have issues if they did go through Zhaitan Arc and complete certain storyline points to reference their actions.

Technically, none of your choices ultimately mattered during the Zhaitan Arc. Regardless of what you chose to do, you are the Pact Commander and Slayer of Zhaitan, even if you don’t run through the personal story. You can skip LS2 and you start out exactly as you did if you ran through it. You are still chasing after Caithe who has the Egg.

If you played Charr, you basically say good-bye to your warband and never see them again at the point when you joined an Order.

For another instance, no matter if you chose to do the Apatia storyline during the My Greatest Fear story arc or not, the Pact ends up with the Krait Blue Orb by the time the Battle of Fort Trinity comes around. The idea is that even though you , the Commander, didn’t do it, someone else, maybe less important, did.

That said there are certain race-based dialogue sprinkled throughout LS. If you are playing an asura character, when Taimi and co. are examining Scarlet’s room during LS2, Taimi has a few extra lines of dialogue that reference the fact that you were the Snaff Prize winner.

The previous LS episode basically ran with the idea that the human noble, commoner and grew up on the streets options all happened as Caudecus had a hand in manipulating all the events in those early storylines.

I tend to be long-winded, but I’ll keep this short.

Story: Too little build up to the reveal and way too short. Humans should have very different dialogue.
Collectibles: Finally, we can put all those LS3 currencies in Materials. Thank you!!! Big hug to the devs!
Mastery: Awesome new mastery. Having fun being spiderman
Map: The mini-map really needs some degree of improvement for the multi-level maps like this and Tangled Depths. The new map is awesome though.

Cyninja.2954:

Zephic.3075:

Balthazar is by far the worst possible choice of a reveal. A proper build-up was definitely needed and not just a mention last episode that Lazarus wasn’t real. Last episode was appropriate epic, but this episode’s story was a downer.

The buildup was there, maybe more subtle than expected. The gods were gone, no one knows where they went and/or what they actually were. It not having been tied in to the story episodes so far does not mean it wasn’t there.

Zephic.3075:

Why now? Why is the God of War and Fire weakened? Why does a human commander have no other dialogue about a literal meeting their god face-to-face? This episode brings up far more questions than answers.

Exactly! One question answered and a lot more raised. I absolutely look forward to getting thes questions answered now. Imagine how boring the story would have been with no new questions raised.

Zephic.3075:

After the Glory of Tyria arriving to fight Zhaitan from nowhere, and the idea that fighting Mordremoth in his mind despite him being a dragon of the mind were basically Deus Ex Machina thrown into the game for no reason other than the writers wrote themselves into a corner, the devs pulled an actual god out of the machine and didn’t bother to explain anything about his elaborate deception.

Yes, they did write themselves into a corner, but not at those points. The moment they had some being absorb a Bloodstone explosion and basically 1-man army destroy the attacking destroyers on the golden temple they had to turn to a character not present in the current story. It would be geniunely unbelievable that any character we had access to were so powerful and not step up to fight the dragon menace. Hence why I found all the speculation that Lazarus might have been Queen Jenna or some other known character hilarious.

Your mileage may vary, I suppose. I found this episode completely inappropriate for human characters and it definitely jumped the shark. I don’t look forward for the questions I raised to be answered, because any answers will not be fulfilling.

There was no build up to this storyline. Yes, the gods have been gone for a long time, that is world background and lore. The fact that Balthazar was Lazarus was a plot twist for the sake of a plot twist. Given the facts that we had from the previous LS episodes, could you accurately predict his identity no matter how farfetched it may have seemed beforehand? No, the only facts we had were that Lazarus was not the “real” Lazarus and perhaps gameplay mechanics from Episode 2 when fighting alongside Lazarus; and we know that gameplay doesn’t always figure into storytelling. A good plot twist lays down the clues to Lazarus’ identity so when he does reveal himself, we all slap ourselves for not seeing the clues that he was indeed Balthazar in disguise.

I’m not saying that no questions being raised is good for the story, but the way the story is told really needs to step up to the plate. This episode was nearly on the level of Scarlet revealing her latest and greatest improbable alliance of the month, whose members should really be hating and fighting each other.

The bloodstone absorption and “Lazarus” appearing to kill a bunch of destroyers single-handedly was explained pretty well. Of course someone who had absorbed a bloodstone’s worth of magic would be super-powerful.

What I was pointing out was the inexplicable usage of deus ex machina to solve the problem of fighting both Zhaitan and Mordremoth. In the case of Zhaitan, our airship was damaged beyond repair, and suddenly another airship shows up out of nowhere with the just the right armaments to kill the Elder Dragon. There was no lead up to this airship suddenly appearing to save our bacon. If we had seen it being prepared for takeoff or Trahearne mentioning that the Pride of Tyria was being built in Personal Story leading up to Victory or Death beforehand, it would have come off much better.

With Mordremoth, we went into Act 4 without knowing his weakness and just jumped into the Dream through Trahearne was completely pulled out from left field. Trahearne never had this ability to pull others into the Dream; in fact, during the Personal Story, we had to go to the Pale Tree with Trahearne in order to enter the Dream. In addition, we went into the Elder Dragon of Mind to fight him because the Commander just suddenly decides that it was the right thing to do was to fight the Mind Dragon in its mind, where it is presumably the strongest.

I could go on about the weak storytelling in this episode and GW2 in general, but this post has already stretched out too long.

I thought it was inappropriate for all of our characters to have the same lines. Worshipers of Balthazar should have different lines. Kasmeer definitely had the right reaction to realizing she was fighting one of the Six Gods.

How would you feel if all of a sudden you met your god face-to-face and suddenly you found yourself on the opposite side of a conflict from him? Let me put it this way, your first reaction is probably not throw down the towel and challenge God (especially the God of WAR) to a fist fight.

Balthazar is by far the worst possible choice of a reveal. A proper build-up was definitely needed and not just a mention last episode that Lazarus wasn’t real. Last episode was appropriate epic, but this episode’s story was a downer.

Why now? Why is the God of War and Fire weakened? Why does a human commander have no other dialogue about a literal meeting their god face-to-face? This episode brings up far more questions than answers.

After the Glory of Tyria arriving to fight Zhaitan from nowhere, and the idea that fighting Mordremoth in his mind despite him being a dragon of the mind were basically Deus Ex Machina thrown into the game for no reason other than the writers wrote themselves into a corner, the devs pulled an actual god out of the machine and didn’t bother to explain anything about his elaborate deception.

Rasimir.6239:

There’s a major holiday coming up around the 15th/16th of this month in large parts of the world, which might be a reason for ANet to not release a new update at that time. The 25th sounds like a much more likely release date for the next episode.

My first thought when reading this line was “when was the last day to file your taxes considered a holiday?”

In the US, most companies do not give a day off for Easter, before or after the fact. The last holiday we had at my workplace was President’s Day in mid-February. The next holiday? Memorial Day at the very end of May.

Bigger bags is not the solution. It will just make you horde more stuff until you hit the cap again returning you to this cycle of asking for even bigger bags.

Ultimately, you don’t even need that much space. It is truly all just a matter of perspective. Inventory management is key here. Do you really need even half the stuff you haul around? Multiple food items? Several armor sets? WvW items? I’ve been guilty of having some of my characters hauling weapon skins of all things in my inventory. Once you figure out what is absolutely necessary and keep only that in your inventory, you’ll find that you have plenty of space.

In my opinion, the main issue is the ever expanding number of portal scrolls, non-currency currency items (i.e. petrified wood, bloodstone crystals, etc.) and numerous key items (bandit keys, crowbars, etc.). Much of these should go in, as many have already suggested in multiple threads, a key ring or into the wallet. The portal scrolls should ideally go into a book that opens up dialog options of where you wanted to warp to.

What I liked:
1.) Aurene mission was fairly well done from a lore perspective, although from a gameplay perspective, it was boring waiting for the AI to decide to attack the last boss.
2.) The new map is amazingly detailed. Kudos to the map design and art team.

What I disliked:
1.) Braham. His attitude towards us while understandable , grates on me. I know people who talk like him in real life and I stay away from them. I don’t interact with them as much as humanly possible in real life, please don’t make me interact with them in game. I don’t like the way my character, who has led the Pact to victory two times against two Elder Dragons, responds to him.

Your mother died? So what? I lost my whole warband (which to a charr is their family), my mentor, and even the Pact Marshal! Depending on what race we were, Trahearne was either our close friend or even our oldest brother. If we were sylvari, our mother is in a coma. If we are human, it is possible both of our parents are dead. Where is the continuity? Where is the comeback? Commander Doormat indeed. We let him walk all over us and for what purpose? To lead a charge that will possibly kill even more people? This is a drastically different person than the take charge type of player character shown in Heart of Thorns.

I would have liked the option to smack him over the head for mouthing off or any option to talk him down from his actions. This is different from good character development. We haven’t seen Braham until this instance since HoT and this switch around in his attitude towards us feels more like character derailment.

During the fight against Mordremoth and the jungle campaign, as Trahearne was MIA, by virtue of seniority and rank, we were the defacto leader of the Pact. You see this in several instances where Pact officers immediately defer to you as you’re the one with the highest Pact rank left.

Immediately after the jungle campaign, according to the Interview with the Queen https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/an-interview-with-queen-jennah/ and Season 3 Episode 1, General Almorra Soulkeeper is currently in charge of Pact operations, which makes sense as the Vigil is the Order that is most military structured of the three.

I thought Laranthir was ranked right behind you in the Pact, but according to the wiki he is second-in-command of the Vigil. His Pact rank is never stated. Also, you may want to note that in Living World Season 2, Trahearne makes a comment that he was waiting for another commander to report in via airship, which seems to indicate that he has multiple commanders under him. As this was a throwaway line to his aide, it is unclear what sort of rank structure the Pact is under at this time. We were certainly not in command of any part of the Pact during this as we were directing our team of adventurers and operating separately.

Considering that Pact leadership fell to Laranthir during the Dragon’s Stand events, he may very well end up as Marshal, in spite of both in-game and out-of-game sentiment towards sylvari.

Besides the specialized units you mentioned, we know that the Pact employs tanks (from the Personal Story chapter: Armor Guard) and has (had?) an airship fleet with charr helicopter support. In addition, the Priory support teams are often on excavation expeditions to unearth lost lore and in the Personal Story chapter Air Drop, you control a mechanized golem battlesuit, so they have some degree of mechanized units (to what extent is unknown as the battlesuit is never seen nor heard from again).

The segment with Aurene was a bit too sappy for me, personally. The dragon is cute, but the whole training her to be good felt a bit forced. I did like seeing Caithe in that episode, but this is the THIRD time in three episodes that we have gone through her apologizing for her actions during Heart of Thorns, although this is the first time that her segment was optional.

I absolutely love the new map. It is much larger than the previous two with various weather effects and terrain. Ember Bay was a bit bland and looked the same everywhere. On the new map, we have a variety of different places to explore and things to do.

Braham and I do have different opinions regarding his mother’s guild. Destiny’s Edge is something to look up to. A collaborative guild filled with the best of all races is something to enshrine and not for us to join, but to believe in. I do understand where he is coming from with regards to upholding his mother’s legend, but when does he stop thinking about upholding her legend and start writing his own? Respect can mean different things to different people.

Technically, there is no Destiny’s Edge left to join. As pointed out in Episode 1 by Rytlock, Eir was the guild leader, Logan and Zojja are both out for the foreseeable future, which leaves… him and Caithe, who has wandered off to do her own thing.

I never really liked Braham in previous instances and the final part of this episode simply brought out all of his bad points. He rushes in without thinking about the consequences. We tried to talk him out of it, but his hotheadedness prevents him from listening to us and he simply slaps our hand away when we only wanted to help. This is the exact attitude that gets good people killed, although I did not particularly like my character’s response to him. Yes, it was our fault for the svanir chasing after him, but his whole “I’m not going to give Jormag one more minute, because someone else’s mother is going to die” attitude towards us, who have seen many close friends and allies die in front of us is sanctimonious. Also, his whole diatribe of “so only you get to pick when we fight the dragon” made me want to slap him upside the head with my greatsword.

Hesacon.8735:

Dinks.2478:

Hesacon.8735:

orahfireborn.7418:

Spoilers concerning Living World season 3 episode 2 (adding to things already said)

you have been warned

hide spoiler

We have Taimi in second episode explaining what is magic, how is it separated and how dragons absorb magic from dead dragons, and we saw that with Mordemorth. So it is clearly stated that Zhaitan is dead dead)

Taimi looked at the data for five minutes and is speculating, it doesn’t have to be true. She’s been wrong before..

It is 100% ovservable truth. We have destroyers who are Primodus’ minions running around with death and plant based powers. The result of gaining power from Zhaitan and Mordremoths death respectively.

Destroyers running around with Risen and Mordrem powers could have another explanation. Taimi gave a theory, but she isn’t the authority on Elder Dragons, she couldn’t even remember Steve’s name.

I don’t remember seeing Risen Mordrem.

It wasn’t so much risen mordrem, but rather Mordremoth being able to create new minions from the dead was the ability given to him from Zhaitan.

I would like if we got a Zhaitan raid though. It doesn’t have to be chronologically proper, just say here is how the dragon really went down.

Ronin.7381:

To be honest, I’m really getting tired of all these new items clogging up my inventory. I want it to stop. Add a new menu for the journal for this crap that is independent from loot and inventory space, PLEASE!

Agreed. I was just pointing out how strange it was to have the diaries be inventory objects while Cami’s recordings are a one and done item in the world.

In a perfect world, we should be able to just open our achievement panel and select the recordings/diaries to see them again.

I agree with Musashi. Belinda’s fate must still weigh heavily on Marjory’s mind. It hasn’t been that long since her death. With Lazarus coming back from the dead, there is definitely some degree of interest in Marjory to study him.

I am a bit surprised that Lazarus wanted to help us at all, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I don’t see a reason not to leave the recordings in the world, although I would rather have either an item in my inventory like the diaries from last episode or be able to re-read Cami’s recordings directly from the achievement panel.

My first thought when I saw Aurene was it is time to throw my master pokeball at it.

Lazarus coming to help us was surprising and I thought it was funny how our character told him to get lost when he first appeared. I am hoping to see Anet take his character away from the expected I am going to use you and then backstab/betray you later.

Caithe was a bit weird to see her at the egg chamber. Still no Kasmeer or Braham? I wonder what is happening to them.

The story was amazing and I can’t wait to see more. I love the fact that we’re finally tying up loose ends from GW1 with Lazarus.

Do you mean gameplay or story wise ,OP?

Gameplay, only the twisted marionette stands out for me, but even that had flaws that are not easily corrected even today. The fight model has been copied to both Silverwastes and Dragon’s Stand, both of which I am fairly happy with. Your mileage may vary.

Storywise, Scarlet was one of the worst written villians in any medium I have seen during LS1. I still remember when they had her study and graduate from all three asuran colleges before it was retconned into her getting special permission to attend a few courses. It still doesn’t change the rest of her horrid backstory where she goes to every race’s best and brightest and learns from them all. The fact that we still know nothing about her impossible alliances of the month, strikes me as poor storytelling at best.

So no. I don’t want Scarlet back. Her voice work was top notch though. The only instance where I found her believable as a villian was her introduction during the Queen’s Gauntlet mission where she kidnapped Lord Faren.

I said this in an older thread, but I think the devs could let us design our own guild missions in our guild halls. They are huge and some people are extremely creative with jumping puzzles.

Nonetheless, we definitely could use a bit of change to our guild missions. Instead of guild bounty, why not guild hall defense, where waves of enemies attack the guild hall from various entrances?

It really is up to you and how you define your end game goals. If you want to buy it outright, that is your choice. I have been tempted to do this myself at times, but for me it would eliminate some of the fun in getting the item.

I wish they would update the content or introduce ascended armor or weapons as rewards for 3x or 4x or even 5x the amount of dungeon tokens as the exotics or special dungeon specific infusion auras as rewards. It would make dungeons more inticing to run again.

The fact that legendaries need dungeon tokens isn’t enough to keep people playing dungeons. Not everyone wants to craft a legendary weapon.

Chef is good, since all classes benefit from it. Since you are a light armor class, tailor can build your armors.

For weapons, you want either artificer or weaponsmith, depending on what you use more. Do you use daggers/axe/greatsword? Then get weaponsmith. If you use staff/focus/sceptet, get artificer.

Crafting can get expensive. You can learn only two professions per character, but you can always make another character to learn the other crafting professions. One reason to craft is to have a surefire way of getting ascended armor and weapons.

Jewelry is a bit useless at the moment, as you can get all of your ascended jewelry and trinkets from laurels, fractals, achievements, bloodstone fen, or guild commendations, although actual stat combos may vary depending on method.

I wouldn’t recommend buying black lion keys, unless you have cash or gold to burn. RNG is RNG and unless you are extremely lucky, you will most likely end up with some boosters and ticket scraps.

What exactly are you arguing for OP? I have read your premise several times now and I still do not fully understand what you are complaining about. This is an online game. Patches are not just for fixing issues, they add content and changes to the game. I can’t see you getting much support here, as many of us like many of the changes that have come to the game.

Ascended gear is NOT OP. The minute you make weapons break is the minite you lose most of the player base. I have never seen other players refuse to help others in PvE, so your point on using low level equipment for low level dungeons is moot.

If you think your money was stolen, then file a ticket for a refund. Sorry, you didn’t like the changes, but you seem to be advocating something that goes completely against the idea of an MMO. If you don’t like changes, then why advocate for these drastic changes?

FrostSpectre.4198:

sjado.7295:

Any chance you are going to increase the number of character slots?
We only have 5 slots and there are 9 classes, so I can’t experience all the classes for me to decide which one I prefer to play.

In this case you can expand your character slots by buying gems (with ingame gold or with real money) and use them to buy “character slot expansions” on “Upgrades” page on gem store.

If I remember correct, you should also get a character slot once your account reaches 3 years of age, but I might be very wrong about it and it only applies to players who started playing GW2 on it’s release date who then bought HoT.

Sadly it’s just that way to expand the character slots

Not true. You do not get a character slot at 3 years old. What happened was a whole brouhaha over Heart of Thorn’s pricing point and the lack of a character slot even though it was introducing a new class, and those of us who preordered even the normal edition of HoT got a free character slot.

The only way to get more character slots is to buy them from the gem store.

Save your scroll for another character. Laurels are one way to gear, but I would only recommend doing that for an ascended amulet unless you have a ton of laurels sitting around. Rings can be gotten from fractals fairly easily and earrings/trinkets can come from doing enough guild missions.

For the rest of your gear, as everyone else has suggested either run dungeons or get karma for the vendors in Orr. Crafting is also an expensive option, but worth it, in my opinion, if you want an assured way of getting ascended equipment.

I have been with Guild Wars since the first beta of GW1 and I still remember how amazed my college roommates and I were back then by everything the game had to offer (IWAY builds for life!). This feeling continued to GW2 and to this day I have not found another game or franchise that has taken my breath away in the same manner.

While I have my personal gripes with the game, it has always been my go to game and the one I keep recommending to my friends and coworkers.

Thank you ArenaNet for creating such a wonderful world that we all call home. Here is to another great year!

Anecdotal evidence is not statistical proof. Also, many people seem to mistaken probability as absolutes that a 1 out of 10 chance means that if they try 10 times, they are assured to get the item once. It is not true.

The only people who can say definitively is the developers. What we can do is analyze a tiny sample size of the player base and say that maybe a decrease in drop rate, but regardless of the amount of data we manage to gather, it is just a tiny portion of the overall number of players.

RNG is RNG. OP probably just had some bad luck.

Unfortunately, I don’t think a mobile or even a companion app is very likely at this point.

The only game that I have played with a working companion app is Warframe, where you can tell the game to craft items, pick up finished items, and also dispatch and collect your drones. I would love to be able to craft in GW2 via app.

For most of my characters, I name them based partly on lore. Others I try and justify their names by creating some backstory for them.

I used to play Dungeon and Dragons and I kept a list of NPC names to quickly generate a character if it ever became necessary. If I am totally out of ideas, I roll my d20 and pick from that list.

I just want to thank Mo, Gaile, and the devs for all their hard work and excellent communication during the outage. As someone who works in the software industry, I totally understand the hardships that comes when a server, or several, go down or have major issues that require a rollback. In the four years that I have played GW2, this was the only time I have heard of or seen such a long downtime. You must have some of the best network architecture in the industry.

I wish you all the best! Game on fellow Tyrians!

Like many others here, my favorite class is the mesmer. I love how the class plays and feels. It is amazing the mind games you can play with your clones and phantasms.

I am split between elementalist and guardian as my number 2. Elementalists are so versatile and guardians are always welcome members of my parties.

The White Mantle must have one of the best shotput teams in the world. I can’t even see them fire and I get knocked off my glider constantly. Sometimes even after landing and going behind some rocks, I still get hit because the heat-seeking rocks still have a lock on me.

Are we sure these guys are human? They are more like mobile missile turrets.

0. I have been playing since headstart. I have given up ever getting a precursor from drops or from mystic forge. I have spent countless rare and exotics at the mystic forge. I am always surprised when I find normal exotics in drops,

I bought Dawn from the trading post instead, before HoT came out. I am glad that we have a definite way to get precursors now, even if it is a potentially expensive one.

I’ve never ran into a situation where a veteran refused to help others. I’ve never been asked to put on a mentor tag, but if people are having problems, I am always willing to run over and help out. Actually, I forget I have the mentor tag most of the time. If you shout out in map chat for assistance, there are always people who will be willing to assist. Also, I’ve seen many maps with multiple people running around with mentor tags which only serves to confuse people. In addition, there is often the silent dude with the commander tag standing in a remote corner of the map afk, who only serves as a distraction for people who want to finish events.

There are always rude people regardless whether in game or in real life, but on a whole, the people I have ran into in game have been very nice and very helpful. I find that the golden rule works best, give assistance to others and in return they will assist you.

Commanding is a different beast altogether though. I’ve commanded Dragon’s Stand a few times, but it is draining, especially when people don’t listen to you or follow directions. You get all the blame and it is a thankless job. I want to thank all those who continue to command that long meta-event map. You guys are awesome. Communication is key when it comes to either commanding or mentoring.

I agree that if the entire game had been written with the idea that you had to be there when it happened, it would be much easier to swallow, except the devs could not keep up their own pace of development. Remember how LS1 started? We spent two weeks hammering down signs in Wayfarer Foothills. That was not engaging content and it was outright mocked on the forums for being filler after all the hype. We also had numerous weeks of content drought in both LS1 and LS2.

Reading something outside of the game is not ideal. This was the problem I had with Final Fantasy 13. Immediately after every cutscene, I had to go to the datalog to find out who these people were, what was going on, and what they were even talking about. I think I spent more time reading about the game in the datalog than playing the game.

I don’t remember seeing Colin’s comment, but I do remember remarking with several of my friends about this problem of continuity and why ANet was creating so much content and then abruptly removing it from the game every two weeks.

The end result is that we now have a game where a number of very important characters were introduced in Season 1 (i.e. everyone in the Dragon’s Watch guild except Rytlock), that new players to the game have no idea who they are, no idea why they are following us, and no idea why they are calling us boss.

I’m all for temporary content, having huge open world events was awesome in LS1, but don’t make important bits of the story completely inaccessible. LS2 was a step in the right direction and I hope they bring back at least the story sequences from LS1.

If they have to do it with a recap video, they need to recap everything, not just what they think was important.

Terrible character? Maybe. I think Trahearne would have come across a lot better if the other playable races besides his own had some mention of the sylvari firstborn prior to meeting him on Claw Island. The story writing was also partly to blame, as the personal story was poorly paced and had the tendency to jump all over the place with a revolving door of NPCs that we were supposed to care about, but fell flat as the NPC suddenly died to wrap up a story arc never to be mentioned again: Tonn, Apatia, Zott, just to name a few. At least your Order’s mentor made it through two and a half chapters before getting killed, the amount of time they got, which helped nail down their characterization and motivations, is why a lot of people like Tybalt, Forgal, and Sieran.

Trahearne, despite lasting the rest of the personal story, you barely ever interacted with and we never truly saw the person beneath the Marshal. His motivations were clear, but not presented in a way that it would resonate with us. It was always, “Commander, I have a mission for you,” with him. This, plus the loss of apparent control over our story, is why many people disliked him and it seemed like Trahearne was taking credit over our achievements, as he was the leader of the Pact. He says multiple times throughout the story that “this is possible only because of you, commander,” but this fails to appease us because we want to believe that we are the sole hero that can save the world and this role appears to have been taken from us and given to Trahearne.

Luckily, it seems that since the end of LS1’s overpowered to the extreme character of Scarlet Briar, the writing has improved by leaps and bounds. LS2’s writing was incredible compared to its predecessor. HoT was very tightly focused on what amounted to a rescue mission, and because of the narrow focus, I think the writing and characterization of the various NPCs was much better for it, although it had some issues of being rushed and the Rata Novus segment felt like a bit of a sidetrack that went nowhere. LS3’s 1st episode was amazing, so let’s hope they keep the momentum going. As a side note, I was pleasantly surprised to see Ceera, the Pact Medic; who was Tonn’s wife in the Personal Story, show up at Auric Basin.

Guild Wars 2 has always had amazing background lore, but the actual story writing was a bit lacking at launch in my opinion.

LS1 was not purely open world though. There were numerous single player story instances. Examples include instances where: Braham arguing with Eir and Knut over defenses at Craigstead, Braham begging Rytlock for assistance because the dredge and flame legion alliance, Rox protecting the devourer pit during a Molten Alliance attack, the death of Councilor Theo Ashford during Dragon’s Bash, the first meeting with Marjory, the meeting with the Master of Peace over a treaty between Lion’s Arch and the Zephyrites, the introduction of the watchwork knights at the start of the Queen’s Jubilee, the attack by Scarlet Briar during the Queen’s Jubilee, the final battle aboard Scarlet’s airship…

If ANet does nothing else, they should bring back at least these instanced story sequences for newer players, so that they aren’t forced to go to youtube or the wiki for information. I’ve said this before, but having an NPC, Ela Makkay, tell you what you did in LS1 is a terrible way to tell story in a video game. And she doesn’t even do it well, skipping over everything that had to do with Ellen Kiel, the Captain’s Election, etc.

Besides the two dungeons that have been remade into four fractals (Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat), which were amazing and very difficult, the truly epic open world events were (in no particular order): Scarlet Invasions, the Tower of Nightmares, the Marionette, the Escape from Lion’s Arch, and the Battle for Lion’s Arch, all of which required map-wide coordination.

Guilds are no longer divided between servers. Your guild vault should still be available. Go to Lion’s Arch (or any town) and talk to the guild bank person there.

Yep, I’m lagging very badly since last night to the point where the game thinks I’m still gliding when my character is on the ground. I’m going to try and update my graphics card and see if that helps, because the only thing that was changed on my end was Nvidia Experience downloading an updated driver.

Quaggan is mad. Quaggan don’t like you. Quaggan RAGE!!!

In all seriousness and to offer a counterpoint example, Shashoo is an incredibly capable quaggan in the story and she takes command of a Pact group during the events on Verdant Brink and leads one of the island defenses during the Mouth of Mordremoth fight. If that isn’t doing something, I don’t know what is.

Hahaha, I would totally have picked Poohbah & Friends.

Except leveling doesn’t give you a full exotic level 80 set of gear. When I finished leveling my mesmer on my alt account. I had a mishmash of level 68 to level 78 exotic gear, which are decidedly worse than most level 80 gear.

To address OP’s point, I agree that leather prices are too high. Perhaps the sources for leather can be boosted?

Telemin.7380:

While I support the idea of new halls. (in this case, more is better), how would situations where a guild that captured one of the existing halls (and upgrades) wants one of the new ones?

Could be handled like it is now. You pay the price for exploration and run the claim guild hall mission and the new guild hall replaces your old one.