Guild Wars 2

Have had some issues with crashing due to processor threading issues (known issue with the game) in the past, and those issues have jumped since the release of HoT. Unsurprising, but I know how expansion releases tend to be unstable regardless of game.

Honestly, it has gone smoother than most, far smoother, but instabilities are going to be a fact of life for about the first month or two. I’ve played MMOs for over a decade and I have not seen a release come without problems and bugs, a lot of them. That this game has had fewer, if more problematic, ones, is both a credit to the devs and an indication that they’ve taken care of the easy to fix ones.

Fixes, mind you, which can easily be the cause for this problem. If you’ve done programming, or any development work for that matter, you would know just how easily a fix to one problem can cause problems elsewhere. Especially in a game as complex as this.

Anyway, enough of my rant there.

A few fixes:

Run an installation repair. You can do this by creating a shortcut to the game and modifying the shortcut target in the properties window to “Full Guild Wars 2.exe path” -repair

If that doesn’t work:

Uninstall the client, redownload it, and reinstall the game.

If that doesn’t work:

Check your drivers. If your GPU drivers are up to date, roll back the drivers to a previous update. If the drivers are not up to date, update them.

Worst comes to worst, shut your system down, let it cool, fully unplug it and disconnect everything. Then open it up and clean the inside. You should do this periodically anyway to maximize the lifespan of the machine.

Mount for GW2: The Dead Horse. It does nothing, cannot move, and comes with a stick to beat in the pathetic hope it will. In fact, it’s dead, rotting, and makes every NPC around you shun you meaning that you cannot buy, sell, craft, or enter any town or city, ever again. Also, it makes you attackable by everyone in WvW, you cannot join PvP teams, etc.

Why? Because you are sick and disturbed enough to insist on riding a dead horse and beating it.

I agree that the story could have been paced better, but I also note that the story was structured the way it was to give a sense of emergency. In other words, DE needed rescuing yesterday, Trahearne needs to be found right now, and we don’t have support, so what we have, we are stuck with and need to finish this fast.

Yes, there are parts which could have been fleshed out better, Rata Novus and the Exalted being prime examples. However, your character is also impatient to get the job over and done with.

Keep in mind, this is from lessons learned by Anet. They listen to fans, and the majority like their story to be in nice, digestible chunks. The original story was long due to having to encompass 80 levels of progression.

Now, I don’t mind the brevity of the Story. It keeps direction, your character keeps moving forward, and so forth. I admit it has flaws, but I can enjoy it for what it is. A quick run where time is working against you, and has a sense of urgency. There are no gradual advances culminating in a final showdown. There is your group barely holding on and grimly pressing forward because they are all there is between Mordremoth’s forces and the rest of Tyria.

Eh, I haven’t had too much trouble soloing content. If I ran into a brick wall, I usually went somewhere else for a bit to cool off before my frustration had me making even more mistakes.

Keep in mind, I am a casual player, my average playtime is a couple of hours. This means that a casual can solo it provided they have an understanding of the underlying game mechanics and take the time to learn each area.

The only part I haven’t been able to solo has been the final story mission, and I am fine with that. Hell, I am having a lot of fun trying, as I like the challenge. That the fight I am having trouble with has a number of bugs is immaterial. It’s still fun.

I did most of the content as a Valk/Zerker Tempest, and switched to Carrion/Zerker later to experiment with it, found it fun, and now run that. I also intend to do some other builds and try them.

Decides to toast some marshmallows while being entertained

Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised at how few bugs I have run into. I don’t expect things to be perfect, or even be that smooth on launch day, but things have been going fairly well, all things considered.

This is actually one of the smoothest launches I have seen for an MMO game.

Narrrz.7532:

Cynova.7406:

emotional and satisfying.

WE GET TO KILL PHLUNT?!

EMPHATICALLY SECONDED

Come to LA, the train is currently at the station.

YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer: Yes, you will, but so will/did the rest of us. This is due to legal requirements, as they mentioned, not to punish players in a specific region.

Frankly, I liked the BWE2 difficulty, despite my frequent swearing at it. Admittedly, I thought it could be better tuned, but that was for making the difficulty more uniform and adjust the scaling a little bit.

Besides, what is difficult and hard now, won’t be in a few months as we adjust to it.

As much as I was initially annoyed by this, you have to keep in mind that the entire premise of elite specs is that they’re earned. Also, elite specs were designed to be a hero point sink, but still leave you with over 200 left if you have grinded all of the available hero points in game as they currently are.

Like any MMO, or game in general, you want to or unlock everything? You’re going to have to work for it.

OP, how many MMOs have you played on launch day, or tried to access the second the content was available? I’m guessing this is your first time, since you would other wise realize that the launch time is the same time that content gets launched for MMOs amd games with online gameplay, developed in North America mind you, launch. Since Anet doesn’t have offices in other countries, this means that the time is global.

This has nothing to do with them being inconvenient, and everything to do with the fact that most games developed in North America are located on the West Coast and in the Paciffic Time Zone. If they had their EU only megaservers based in Europe, then the launch for Europe might be, might be mind you, persuaded to launch at 00:00 UTC, or midnight as it would be in Greenwich, England for the European players. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that since doing so wouldn’t likely be the case anyway, just look at how Blizzard does its’ global launches: Midnight Pacific Time (UTC – 7).

The reason for this is simple: one time for the entire world means the least amount of coordination and administrative effort involved. Also, launching at a time when the majority of players are likely to be either asleep, at work, or soon to be so, makes sense, as it gives them a few more precious hours to find and isolate problems that they know are coming and get started on fixing them.

And there was plenty for the data miners to throw out there. To be honest, I think most of it’s already there, just needs to have the flags activated, the final bits thrown in, and so on.

They will probably throw in a pre the day before, or the day of, but before the time the xpac gets the green light. Also, expect much instability on the launch.

Eh, even if they came out with everything up front, the market would still become unstable, just because it’s an xpac. This is the case with just about every MMO out there that has had an expansion (or more). Veteran players are already prepping for it, or are just planning to wait it out.

There’s a reason the first two classes I’m doing elite specs for have 100% world completion. While I haven’t gotten all of the WvW hero point, yet, I am waiting to see how many I will need.

In other words, I have a lot of hero points to sink, just in case. Also, given that it’s not only skills and traits that can be unlocked, I have a feeling that a lot of it is simple fluff to sink the hero points in to.

Besides, there’s going to be ways to get even more, so it’s not like it will break the game…. much.

2: Probably, and see answer 1 for what that would mean.

3: I don’t see why not. The Halloween content would be based in Tyria most likely, as it is part of the vanilla game.

1: Perhaps, but it does mean that you will have to run a dungeon several times to level a Pact Tyria Masteries, as dungeons would only count towards that. Also, Mastery XP requirements double each level.

Honestly, I would be surprised if the launch resulted in better than mild server instability. Being a veteran MMO player, I tend to hope for the best, but expect the worst on launch days.

Investing in more servers is not cost-effective. They aren’t going to invest in a resource that they are not going to need using after everything stabilizes. They know their player base, or just MMO players in general, and know that a good deal of those who jump in will get bored and go somewhere else.

Why waste the money?

Anyway, expect instability. I am.

Eh, I can see Ebonhawke becoming a base of operations for forays in the Crystal Desert to take on Kralkatorrik’s forces and open a path to Elona. He was next on the Pact’s list of dragons until Mordremoth decided to interrupt our planned party there.

kitten dragon being an kitten …

Anyway, that’s neither here, nor there. Something for the future though.

kitten for cities getting attacked, well, let’s have a world event where all of them get attacked by the Mordrem!

First, don’t take the datamining seriously. Word has it that unlocking all the required stuff will only cost 85. Don’t take that seriously either.

The last bits? You know, the uniqueish skins? Yeah, those might cost more, much like how bloodstone shards were a skill point dump.

Either way, we will see soon enough.

Meh, don’t really care either way. Things will work out as they are a playable race, meaning that they’re the good guys.

Well, for a given definition of good, given that no faction is lily white. The Sylvari were more innocent, but that is due to their youth. Well, now your innocence is shattered and we will enjoy your tears of sorrow, rage and hate.

points to the Mordrem and Mordremoth

Those chaps are there for you to take it out on. Have fun!

The third spec slot opens at level 71, that doesn’t mean that the elite spec will be available. ANet has already said, elite specs open up at level 80. No sooner.

Oh look, I have to find something else to fill in the slot/role of ice bow and explore the rest of my skills. Meh, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, considering that elementalists have known that ice bow was OP for quite some time. We weren’t complaining, mind you, but I am actually surprised that it wasn’t hit with the nerf bat sooner.

Don’t worry OP, there are plenty of other skills that are high powered for you to play with. Also, look on the bright side, you might find yourself finding another skill that fills in the same role.

We will have to wait and see, but the fact is that, as the OP points out, there will always be a meta.

Now, for regular play, that isn’t an issue. You can run whatever builds you want and stand a reasonable chance at clearing regular content.

With harder content, the dynamic changes a bit, largely because it will require players to take multiple roles, such as tank/dps, healer/dps, condition/heals, etc. Each setup will take into account a class’ strengths, meaning that each class/spec will have multiple meta possibilities.

Considering that ANet is bringing in legendary armor and the legendary back piece, shifting metas is going to be easy for those who manage it, meaning that the reliance on a single meta for multiple classes/specs may become less viable. It will still be viable, but might not always be the meta, allowing for more situational builds.

Of course, the stat and build switching on legendaries is only for those who take the time and go through the trouble of doing them, especially since it is highly likely that the legendary armor and back piece will be Bount on Account as soon as they are acquired.

Well, at first. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that changes down the line.

Eh, I’ve always seen the Revenant as, like some have said, a jack of all trades, master of none class. It can do the various roles and do them well when properly optimized, but there are individual class specs which do the job better.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as jack of all trades classes have always had a niche and Revenant was built this way from the start. It does good damage, good healing, can be designed as a condition fighter, or can tank, as needed. Of course, it has to be optimized for each role, but with the advent of legendary armor to be coming in HoT, that means you can stat switch on the fly for various roles out of combat, adding a new level of meta gaming that the Revenant is built for.

Eh, the kittening about it was mild, despite what some articles said. Besides, even if ANet gave us everything we wanted, cured cancer, and so on… people would still QQ.

Besides, nothing involved was false advertising. Misleading? Probably. But not false. There is a difference. ANet has been very careful to not make promises that it has no intention of carrying out.

It would be interesting, much like how the last beta event in vanilla culminated in a massive branded invasion where you got corrupted and entered into PvP with everyone else who wasn’t.

Not likely to happen though.

Worst comes to worst, it is underwhelming compared to the hype, much like revenant was when it was tested the first time around. At the very least, it will be mechanically stable, with the rest tunable before HoT goes live.

Eh, it will depend on how you want to play it. There will be those who will refuse to play an elite spec, and those who will sing their praises.

The fact is, the game won’t require you to play one in order to remain effective. Instead, they are there to simply provide more options to play with.

Warrior (Berserker) – Pillage not included.

Guardian (Dragonhunter) – Trophy hunter.

Revenant (Herald) – Eats other legends.

Ranger (Druid) – Now with bludgeons.

Thief (Daredevil) – Shaolin Mugger

Engineer (Scrapper) – Percussive maintenance.

Necromancer (Reaper) – Don’t fear me.

Elementalist (Tempest) – Cyn’s ego personified.

Mesmer (Chronomancer) – No trigger needed.

Considering that the “Vanilla” PS takes place two years before HoT, it shouldn’t be necessary for you.

The PS was basically ANet’s way of getting you to explore various places and was a way to direct you to Orr by getting you to go to new areas as you leveled and the areas were level appropriate at the time. Doing it was not required, but it did provide direction in PvE.

For HoT, the replayability will likely be like Living World S2, with achievements that are earnable in the chapters after finishing the chapter and redoing it, with some piece of nice gear for doing them.

They’re neither better, nor worse. Each basically gives you different options for the class, but at the same time, the “elite” is of a there can be only one vibe.

It’s basically a way for them to allow for mechanics changes and give players options, much like the mastery system allows for progression.

Can you get a compliment?

You can.

Will you?

That’s up to everyone else. Fishing for compliments tends to make receiving one less likely though.

Ohoni.6057:

Have you ever tried to start a fire with living wood before? It’s freaking hard.

True, it’s mostly water.

That’s why the Asura invented these nice little things called chlorine-triflouride and FOOF.

Also, keep in mind that completing all of the mastery tracks is going to require you to invest the time to do completion of content on multiple characters, especially HoT due to the fact that masteries are account wide.

This is both good and bad.

Good in the sense that you will have reason to make use of your other characters outside of being bored with your current one. Also, content will be familiar enough that you won’t have to spend forever on a single character. There will be just enough farmable mastery points to complete, or nearly complete, one mastery track per character.

Bad in the fact that it is set up to make it just this side of impossible to complete all of the masteries on one character. Keep in mind that the xp collection will continue, meaning that you will have to do other characters for the mastery point.

I can be wrong, but that is how it’s looking at this time.

distributes popcorn and beer to the lurkers

Continue entertaining us, please.

This being a forum, it operates on circular logic, fallacies, and the simple fact that all of us believe that we, as individuals, are the only ones who are right and that everyone else is wrong. It’s also why it is hard for the devs to take us seriously.

Eh, I don’t think it will be badly unbalanced. Most of what we have seen has worked fairly well right out of the beta gate, and the devs are constantly testing things even outside of the wider events.

We only get to play with it when they’ve done their own beta process, put them into the open beta for us to test and break, and so on.

Of course, the first couple of months are going to be problematic, there simply hasn’t been enough stress work to find all of the bugs, especially since the BWEs are so limited in scale for the HoT content. OTOH, it also allows them to take each section of it to test, using us as the lab rats.

Eh, I expect bugs, and welcome them. If it went perfectly smoothly at first, then there would be something major about to go wrong.

It is also possible, if not probable, that there will be fewer mastery points available than what is needed to unlock all of the masteries. At least on one character. This actually makes some sense when you think about it, as masteries are account wide and it encourages you to make heavy use of your alts to get them all.

If anything, there is probably just enough mastery points to be gathered by one character to fill most, if not all, of the masteries for one track, plus a few points which may be one off rewards for the entire account.

Probably most, as this would also mean getting all of your alts to grab them all as well and it can be set to divide the HoT matery points to all for all masteries to be unlocked with the base number of characters for an account. Since that’s five characters, that would imply a minimum of 16 points. Of course, that’s if those five characters do everything needed to unlock all of the masteries across the account.

Thus, the issue at hand suddenly becomes much more workable. The devs have to make it manageable and workable, they don’t have to make it entirely easy, especially since some of the mastery points are almost certain to be tied to difficult content, or having to go really out of your way to get.

The game itself also supports trinity, or at least variants of it, it’s just that the trinity is not necessary to do content. I’ve seen parties do variants of trinity and make them work. The game just wasn’t built around it. It was built around letting players play how they want to.

The devs want players to experiment with builds and styles to find one that works for them, rather than being shoehorned into a complete role and build because that’s the only way to do it.

People always talk about Berserker as the only spec to play, and I can see its merits. I also don’t play a dedicated zerker build because it doesn’t mesh with my preferred style.

The would make sense.

I seriously doubt that it’s the Mursaat, if only because the events of Prophecies and the Krytan Civil War in GW1 basically reduced their numbers to near extinction. They weren’t decimated, they were completely destroyed as a faction, with the few survivors getting the hell out of dodge and probably going back to the Isles of Janthir.

Also, given that they hid themselves in another reality the last time the dragons awoke, they would likely have done the same when Primordus awoke.

Also, due to the teaser appearances from some of the videos, it’s implied that the Exalted are connected to the Forgotten. Perhaps they went through ascension themselves, or did it through some other means. The serpentine beings in the trailers are probably the Exalted and the Mursaat are explicitly humanoid, strengthening the connection to the Forgotten.

It will be interesting to see, either way.

Puts down the popcorn and grabs a beer

As entertaining as this is Serophous, you are ignoring the fact that the other posters are pointing out situations where defense and other builds are worthwhile. However, you keep running back to the same arguments as if they invalidate all the others.

Now, I honestly don’t care. As in, I don’t care about their arguments, I don’t care about your arguments, and I just plain don’t care period. By the same token, everyone else is fully free to not care about what I post. They are also free to ignore it.

PopeUrban.2578:

Consider that in many of those events the adds are scaled through the roof compared to what you’d get doing the same event solo. The one champ is designed to have certain “manditory dodge” attacks that are spaced far enough any class can make the dodge. The adds, however, are hitting hard because they’re scaled up to ensure there’s actually a challenge of sorts when there’s a zerg present.

That’s why you’ve got to kill those adds fast. A lot of zergs end up forgetting that and it shows. Those adds still die easily and are there to make sure people are paying attention.

Perhaps I am one of the minority that enjoyed playing the Tempest and getting a feel for its quirks. Still very squishy? I’m fine with that. Elementalists are glass cannons by default, Tempest just tunes the caliber of the canon. The warhorn skills and shouts not as powerful as they probably should be? That’s cool, they can tune the damage higher, or I can adjust to it.

I had fun with it, despite my frequent cursing in the Verdant Brink.

Passes around popcorn to those who are amused by this.

Jockum, it’s not exponential. Exponential means it’s raising the damage by powers of a specific number (x to the power of n), not by a percentage. If that exponentially was in the actual wiki post, then that person doesn’t know math as well as he thinks he does. Or I am just nitpicking over the details. Actually, I am nitpicking over the details, since that seems to be the entire point of this thread.

Honestly, I could care less about running full whatever. If a person wants to run something other than zerker, then they will run something other than zerker. Just because it’s the ideal dps build, does not mean it is ideal for every player. Or they just want to play something different. Don’t know, don’t care. But hey, if people want to argue over this, go right ahead, I can use the entertainment.

Oh, and Draknar, nice bit of amusing sarcasm there, I got a chuckle out of it.

It doesn’t surprise me that there’s been a lot of work, fixing, and tuning on the revenant. It’s a class being built from the ground up, which takes a lot more work than simply adding in an elite spec, as they basically have to tune more than one simple spec, but six, and make sure their balance works well enough.

It won’t be perfect, but the more issues they fix before launch, the fewer issues, especially game breaking ones, they have to fix later.

Though yeah, I want to see the elite spec info for the remaining classes as well. Tempest, Chronomancer, Reaper and Dragonhunter were fun to experiment with.

The Account bound setup does seem to railroad you, but it was designed due to the fact that not every player is going to invest time in the adventures, or due to the fact that finishing a mastery track requires a massive time investment and can be sped up by running an alt through some story missions. Thus, you can switch mastery tracks while playing if you want to, while just going over to an alt to grind the mastery xp for it.

Also, mastery points can be gained outside of adventures from simple exploration, there are two mastery challenges, a la skill points, in sight of the entrance of VB. Well, at the top of the ridge you enter on, but you know what I mean.

From the looks of it, Pale Reaver event in the Shrouded Ruins may have its progression tags disabled, though the Itzel one is probably bugged. Well, can’t really say that, as I’ve seen Shrouded Ruins go completely through.

Given that we are limited in area to explore, this may, in part, be deliberate.

That beta events are going on and aren’t specific invite only, developments have hit the stage meaning that it will be released soon enough, within six or so months.

Note that specific invite means that they personally emailed you and invited you. Pre-order invites are a staple of MMOs.