Guild Wars 2

I’ve been away from GW2 for a couple of months and haven’t been paying much more than cursory attention to these recent Living Story updates, so I really didn’t know what to expect when I finally got around to logging back in and checking it out.
Coupled with the inordinate amount of vitriol these recent updates have generated on the forums, I was prepared to be less than impressed.

Thank you, forums, for being wrong.

I get that many people are expecting some big bang and flash with every update – a la the almost painfully oversized Lost Shores events – and I get how those people would be let down by the Flame & Frost rollout so far.

As for me, however, I’ve kind of fallen for the really personal, slower pace of this story. For the first time since GW2’s launch, I feel like my character is doing something meaningful and vital and genuinely heroic for people who really need it.
Heroism isn’t about being the resident Super Tuffy who beats up the Big Bad Du Jour and saves the world every other week; rather, it’s in the details. The small things. The things you do without expectation of of everyone falling at your feet and treating you like a king.

This story is about people who have had their entire worlds – their homes, friends, families, livelihoods – ripped out from under them. They’ve been sent running, trying to find solace and safety wherever they can…and sometimes not making it. I genuinely felt for the refugees we meet in Lion’s Arch, for example, telling their stories and thanking me for returning their lost trinkets. I wasn’t just giving back a toy soldier or a compass, I was giving them back hope. Hope for their futures, hope for each other, and hope that the world never loses the few good people willing to go out of their way to help a stranger in need.
This is one of the most heartstring-plucking tales I’ve seen unfold in an MMO in a long while and it’s even better because just like in real life, we really don’t know anything about why it’s happening or how it’s going to end.

I’m sure there will be some big reveal and a mega-battle at the end of this all because hell, those are just fun (and everyone likes big, fat chests full of rewards). But until then, big kudos to the ANet writers and dev staff for putting out a product that may not please all of the people, but can be considered a high point of the GW2 story so far by those who do enjoy it.

See Anthony’s post here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/halloween/How-long-will-the-event-be-on-Please-answer/first#post570379

The dungeon will be up until the start of Phase 4, which is Oct. 31st. No time is stated, but considering all of the events thus far begin at 12 noon PST, I’d expect that schedule to be maintained.

After having finally succeeded after 3 hours, I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment or relief whatsoever. To the contrary, while the rest of this event has been fun I despise this jumping puzzle with all my might. I just can’t shake the feeling that the developer responsible for designing it seems to have been less interested in making a fun and entertaining experience than in acting out some kind of passive-aggressive grudge on players.

Loyn.2830:

Bacon wrapped scale helm.

Heh. I L’d OL. :P

Really? Because GOON has been around in just about every MMO I’ve played, and are historically one of the most populous and self-aggrandizing guilds on any server they pick as their “home”.

Last I checked, their GW2 contingent was on Maguuma though, not Ferguson’s.

If you guys did just make this guild up without any prior knowledge of them, then it’s best for you to be aware that such a guild already exists, and in fairly large numbers to boot.
If, however, you’re actually affiliated with the “real” Goon Squad, I’m not sure what you’d get out of misrepresenting yourselves like this. Branching out into a new server now or just having a chuckle?

Nope – same stats, different aesthetics.
Items of the same type (axe, longbow, greatsword, etc), same level and same quality (fine, masterwork, rare, etc) will always have the same base stats, with only the modifications and skins being different.
Here’s a link to a VERY detailed breakdown of how that works:

http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/2012/08/23/guide-weapon-and-armor-stats-explained/

Also, I wouldn’t trust those icons in the database. I haven’t seen skins for the Destroyer weapons yet but I very much doubt they just look like plain-jane vendor basics. The game’s still very new so more than likely those icons will be updated to reflect the accurate in-game counterparts as time passes.

I figured as much.
It’ll only remain viable so long as server transfers remain free and instantaneous, which isn’t going to be forever (as Illushia points out). Seems to me like a system being abused in its current state to achieve something outside of its intended purpose for personal gain…so yes, it’s a bit shady.

Is it against the rules, however? Maybe. Maybe not. In any case the rules aren’t there for moral arbitration or as replacements for good judgment. If it becomes rampant ANet will absolutely crack down, and you can bet that “I was just doing because I could” isn’t going to be a valid excuse.

If you have to ask if something you’re doing is wrong, you already know the answer.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ll second a desire for bacon and pork products.

I mean… we have pigs, red meat, and poultry (and I really like the design decision behind the red meat/poultry versus specifics i.e. “raptor meat” or “venison” or 500 more types of meats.

We’re missing a third meat type: white meat.

Er…actually, poultry would be the white meat, so we’ve already got that covered.
I believe you may be referring to the OTHER white meat.

I, for one, applaud ANet’s decision not to include bacon, the geek-chic status symbol equivalent of what PBR has become to hipsters. I pine for the days when I could step out to enjoy a hearty Sunday breakfast of bacon and eggs without miscellaneous bespectacled passersby attempting to engage me in conversation about comics, Internet memes or anything that has ever existed in 8 bits.

Nobody ever seems to wanna chat when I’m munching a kielbasa, though. Elitists.

So good job, ArenaNet! Good job, I say! Way to keep the residents of Tyria free from the deleterious effects of the bacon plague! May your efforts not go unrewarded, and may you never waver in your vision or cave in to the pressures of the pork-idolizing masses.

What would be the point of this? Is Orichalcum not an “instanced node” like other materials, where one person mining it doesn’t eliminate the nodes for other people?

Or is this just a shady a way to try and circumvent having to wait for the nodes to re-spawn in the world?

Man, I wish we had server-specific subforums in here. This would be so much easier.

At any rate, you may have guessed that I’m on the lookout for a guild to join.
I hang out on the Sanctum of Rall server currently, having chosen it in part because a couple of friends had already landed there and in part because…well…because it wasn’t full. I remember hearing a lot about the real “Oldroar” Rall and thought this was a really nice tribute, but I never knew the man so that didn’t play a major part in my choice.

A bit about me:
I’ve been a semi-active player in GW1 since its launch – broken up by about a 2 year hiatus between ‘09 and ’11 – as well as having dabbled in a number of other MMOs like Lineage II, Tabula Rasa (R.I.P.), AION, Rift, and very briefly Tera, as well as a smattering of too many non-MMO titles to count.
Never played WoW, though. Just couldn’t get into the mindset I guess.

I enjoy playing the games that I play for their artistic merit and storytelling value, which tend to lead me into RPGs and games with a lot of interesting, nuanced lore and characterization. The Guild Wars franchise so far has done a bang-up job on all counts there, so I expect I’ll be sticking around for a while.

As for my playstyle and availability, I’m in the Midwestern US so I play on the Central Timezone (GMT-6). I’m a pretty casual player, squeezing in 2-3 hours a few nights a week, with the occasional 6-8 hour binge on weekends when I don’t have anything else going on. My real life can get busy and it comes first, so guilds with rigid schedules and firm participation requirements wouldn’t be a good fit.
I primarily play PvE but partake in occasional SPvP and WvWvW as well, just not as a primary focus.

I’m looking for a guild or guilds that are large enough to support group activities, but are more than a massive hive-mind mob that throws out invites just to increase their size. Guilds that are fairly active in organizing events and running teams appeal to me the most, as the primary reasons to be in a guild at all are for the camaraderie and teamwork. If I wanted to play solo, I’d just play solo, in which case I probably wouldn’t be playing an MMO.

So! If any guilds out there are recruiting and it sounds like we’d suit one another, drop me a line and we’ll see where it goes. No expectations. If things don’t work out, we can still be friends. :P

jokermo.3058:

zeoli.3250:

Try running the game eith administrator privileges. I had a similar error and running the game in administrator worked

um im sole owner of this computer and i only have one admin and thats already me lol

Assuming from your reply that you aren’t particularly PC-savvy, being the sole user (and therefore default local administrator) on your computer doesn’t automatically determine that everything runs in administrator mode. Quite the opposite, in fact, as you’re still just a user who is granted specific permissions and not the “real” administrator account embedded into the operating system.

I know it sounds illogical, but that’s Microsoft for you. Blame it on UAC: a good idea gone wrong. That also means this advice is moot if you’re still running XP, but then…well, never mind. All I’ll say is end of life on that bad boy is coming up fast.

So if you’re on Win7, if you’re the only user, and if the application you want to run is trusted (which gw2.exe should be, given that we’re all pretty sure ANet’s not just trolling us with fancy malware) then right-clicking the executable, selecting properties and in the compatibility tab checking the box that says “run the program as administrator” isn’t opening you up to any threats.

Give it a try. It may help, it may not, but at least you’ll have made the attempt.

Lonami.2987:

• Elemental world bosses of the other 3 elements. The Earth Elemental could appear on the Harathi Highlands final event, for example. One already appears, but it’s too weak, and nothing like the Fire Elemental world boss.

It would appear that he’s already aware of that encounter, and I agree: it’s far too weak to be considered a real “boss”, besides just being a questline stepping-stone to the actual event boss, the Ulgoth (who is also not a world boss).

Is that giant swamp wurm still in the Sylavari starting zone? I remember it from BWE3 but don’t really know if that would qualify as a world boss either since I don’t remember the entire quest chain – assuming there even is one and it’s not just a popup spawn.

I had a very similar problem after installing GW2, actually.

My system at the time was running a Corsair 850W PSU, Core i5-2500K @3.8GHz CPU, 16GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 RAM and a 1GB MSI GTX 460 Cyclone.

I’m extremely careful about keeping my system well-tuned and running at a stable clip and have never, ever experienced any kind of spontaneous thermal or power-related shutdown. However after having installed GW2, it became not at all uncommon for my system to simply hard-reboot in the middle of a gaming session; sometimes playtime would last 3 or 4 hours, sometimes no more than 30 minutes.

The PC would simply power off and then just as quickly power back on, sure as if I’d tapped the power switch. Windows would crab about not shutting down cleanly, I’d tell it to shut up and keep booting, and that would be that.

Under no other circumstance, whether playing other games, watching videos or encoding audio & video content, did it ever so much as hiccup.
Ambient temps stayed pretty stable at around 28C throughout and my CPU & GPU temps never peaked above approx ~58-63C.

I ruled out my initial suspect – the power supply – with a simple multimeter test, which returned upwards of 85% on all rails and held pretty dang stable under load. I sincerely doubted the CPU was the culprit so really didn’t even test that.
The only remaining weak link was the video card, which was getting a bit long in the tooth anyway and due for replacement so I just bit the bullet and bumped up to a Gigabyte 2GB GTX 670.

I ran dungeons last night for about 4 hours and didn’t experience any further issues whatsoever. Further testing will be required over the weekend, but the outlook so far is good.

Moral of the story: Your issue probably IS hardware-related, but could very well be something other than the power subsystem. This behavior, at least for me, was triggered by something GW2 is requesting that the video card do which it either isn’t able to deliver or isn’t even able to process. What that would be, I don’t know, however given the number of other GPU-related issues and inconsistencies I’ve seen on this forum it’s hardly shocking news.