Guild Wars 2

Streaks.5076:

Same, but I think we can’t till 12am PST when they said HoT releases

Ah, that would then also be when you get the miniature, etc?

Not sure if I am the only one, so I am posting here instead of opening a ticket, maybe someone else has solved this riddle and we don’t have to slap even more on customer services’ desk.

I purchased Ultimate pretty much the second it came out. Today, when logging in (patching is complete) I can’t create a Revenant or use Elite/Masteries because the game says I have to purchase HoT. The serial is applied, if I try to do it again on the web it tells me it already has been activated.

I have the extra char slots and the glider skin and guild hall deco, as well as the 4000 gems.

I think there are three different posts in one.

Take pets from rangers? Sure, Marksman is a good job. But, unlike your claims, the “Ranger” archetype (ranged, pet) is old and firm.

My poor pet? Dude, I am out there murdering sentient beings for a few silver and a chance that they have something I want to use or sell. I just spent an hour running around a socialist society in a hill, slaying them for their drops of blood. Some animal getting pounded on isn’t really a concern of mine, if it dies I’ll rez it, and in the meantime I’ll kill its family for food.

But neither of those are why Bearbow is hated. Bearbow is hated because it is one of the least contributory spec/profession slots in an instance. Heck, Necros do more in terms of combos, health, condition management, and more. Bearbow is “let me hit something and let’s see if it dies.” And that’s why it’s hated.

Neither of those games took significant risks in changing the gameplay, though. It’s a lot easier to do something that has been done before than it is to innovate. There are reasons that no one else has made a dynamic world with scalable events before at least on the kind of scale that GW2 does it! And if it takes a bit of time to get it to work optimally, then its well worth it.

I disagree with the “GW2 is so different” stance. Yes, Anet took some things a little further but most of those things are either polish or great ideas that just had to moved forward, something a new code base can do much easier than an existing one. Dynamic Events aren’t all that different from what you find in Warhammer’s Public Quests and Rift’s Zone/Rift events. In fact, I’d say Rift’s Zone Events push the envelope much further than GW2’s.

Sure, I don’t have to talk to someone to accept a quest but that’s semantics. It’s a great idea that had been part of WoW in some shape before that (auto-events). Crafting is, imho, actually a step back with a shared bank/collectible’s space and discoveries having been part of UO for a while in the late 90s, early 2000s.

The fight/combat system is pretty special, yes, and can be considered a move forward from AOC’s bad system. Twitch based combat, as found in FPSRPGs, moderated down to MMORPGs is a great idea, no doubts here. But it it really “revolutionary” or just evolutionary?

All in all, there’s one thing Anet did not copy – and that’s a meaningful beta and meaningful pre-launch phase. Instead after only a few BWEs the game was launched. Other games, from Rift to WoW since BC, have learned that real betas help prevent the launched game from being one. And that is the one thing Anet did different.

There is a much larger issue here that no one has addressed, yet. By making WvWvW maps mandatory for World Completion we have, at any given time, people inside the map who do not want to PvP. Who are not there as part of a team. Who do not contribute. And, yet, take a slot in the queue and on the map.

I define “too early” as any period of time before people have had sufficient time to learn their class, as well as how to play against every other class

That is a good metric, IMHO. Let the game “stew” until the general player base has shed its preconceived notions (no, Joe, you can’t just stand there and wail on someone). The question is, however, if and how Anet creates its data to decide on nerfs. I can’t, for the life of me, believe it’s “forum whining” that informs their decisions. Then, though, on the other hand, most of the things that are nerfed now made it through BWEs and were apparently deemed OK until more data came in…

sainguine.2870:

vanilla was mostly bnet people-get your self together man

So far it sounds like I am a little more together than you. Would you care to provide some data on this?

sainguine.2870:

heres the tldr version of wows popularity without your “poetic waxings”.wow had a built in fanbase of blizz fanboys from diablo and starcraft over 10 million strong.

You are sadly terribly wrong. According to Blizzard’s own statements, 90% of the new player base in Vanilla were not Starcraft or Diablo players. In fact, during BlizzCon 1 there was a panel on this (in the Starcraft track) that revealed that WoW polled extremely unfavorably among SC players for its lack of balance and equal footing in PvP.

I’ll wax poetically for a second here. There’s no TL;DR.

The reason WoW became so ingrained, so popular, so quickly, was due to something that had nothing to do with skills and balance or even instances and quests. Instead it turned every player into someone who probed and explored. Within weeks after release hundreds of wall walking videos were on YouTube. People did funny stuff Blizzard didn’t anticipate and it became a little bit of a cat and mouse game. Mind Control enemy NPCs into your own city? Or kidnap them? Sit above the Alterac Valley exit and MC enemy players? Explore Hyjal? Find the hidden entrance to a whole unexplored and half-designed world behind walls or in Karazhan pre-opening? Use Really Sticky Glue in PvP or the ghost debuff to buy things from ghosts one continent away? That stuff was fun and addictive.

When that went away people stuck around. No matter how many balance issues there were, no matter how immature some of the population was. No matter how badly the interaction between Arena and BG and PvP made everyone unhappy – people stuck it out.

What happened to a good game with none of that when it failed to balance its classes is easily visible in Warhammer. Warhammer was a great idea but max-level play was boring, mind-numbing, and expensive (Keep upkeep… gah!). So people left. One server stands, from 29 at launch. And despite holding a coveted World Shaper title I have no desire to ever log back in. All the disappointment, none of the merry memories.

I want Anet to get it right now. Not in a few months or years, now. Because Anet doesn’t provide for those merry memories. Compared to Vanilla WoW, which was chaotic, dirty, and fun, GW2 is advanced, organized, and clinical. It redefines a lot of things about game design (not as much as some of the fanboys want everyone to believe and much more than some detractors claim) and it deserves to be successful. The last thing I want to hapkitten that once everyone and their mother have an 80 in every profession the game stalls and people leave. Because, alas, while I don’t pay monthlies I invest in the game, time and real money, and I don’t want to regret it in six months on an empty server.

What Anet did to the Greatsword for Guardians was uncalled for. Sure, nerf retaliation, but the change in button arrangements is maddening and the kind of action that makes people leave. Same with the changes to Light Armor classes – very little, often no, fix of broken or underwhelming skills but nerfs for all of them. Heck, I even understand the nerf to Pistol Whip, but to make the Oct 7 patch all about nerfing class abilities and not about addressing the issues that were raised in the past months is dangerous to the franchise.

How do I know? Well, today I logged into my old WoW account for the first time in over a year – and all the guys and gals who had left Rift and WoW to come play GW2 with us were on their new or old WoW toons – there’s a little bit of discontent going on and I just hope it blows over and turns into joy as Anet releases fixes that should have come before the nerfs….

Because I was born and raised in Iceland and never really got the whole attraction to what I’d call Anglo-Saxon “glory seeking”. I am not a role player but personal responsibility and quiet heroism (with lots of boasting afterwards) is kind of how “my people” are at home.

There’s some decent butchering of Norse lore and minds in the Norn story and world, but it’s still closer to what reality is for me than a bunch of prancy princes and princesses uttering “I am RICH, you know” as a way of introducing themselves.

Look at it this way: I doubt a game based on South African lore would be as successful in America. Not because people hate the lore but because it’s easier to identify with a game and suspend some disbelief while creating immersion if the foundations are familiar. Norse is more familiar to me.

I finally completed a map and, finally, for the first time ever, got reward items I could actually use. Well, you guessed it … the second time I completed it for some leather (I am AS), a trident (I have better and can’t use them anyways), and wrists that are less useful than Apple’s new Maps app. Not happy. Not happy at all.

davelid.1984:

My biggest problem with the run animation is how slow we go during it. When I have swiftness on the animation feels like it’s at just the right speed, but otherwise I always feel like I’m running in slow motion.

Precisely this. Compared to jumps we seem to hover in mid-air, falling down slower than we should. It’s molasses.

Not to be “that guy” but Cider or Wine IS NOT EMULATION. It is merely a system call translation which is completely different. “Wine Is Not an Emulator”

Well, technically Cider is more an emulator than Wine since some of the things are emulated and/or virtualized. In essence it’s all the good things from Wine¹ and a few layers of closed source above, below, and inside the application to make things work that wouldn’t in a pure non-CPU-emulation setup.

¹ Disclosure: As one of the coders on Wine I was around during the Transgaming fiasco and dislike the way TG handled the MIT license spirit. I am a little biased against Cider.

If the complication in playing a class comes from changing key binds you’re doing it wrong as a game designer. If, as a player, you want confusing key binds because it makes you feel more 1337, you’re doing it wrong, too.

Consistent UI/UX and consistent mechanics aren’t “dumbing down” the game. They’re improving on it and allow for more intelligent game play.

Liminality.9743:

“don’t do enough damage” I sincerely believe this to be true. Many other people have stated that they rerolled to another class after playing elementalist for a while and felt the other classes did either more damage in general or the same damage with less effort. This seems to be more evident in Pvp.

You don’t have to go that far out. Just engage a Skate of your own level. The self-heals of that mob often outheal any damage we can do without going toe to toe and being hit for ~20 percent of our life. The time it takes for me to evade and shoot is enough for the mob to heal all damage I did between endurance recharges, even with boost t those.

SiNoS.2147:

While my main is a toughness heavy guardian. I actually also play a thief and ele. I enjoy all of them. I’ve just learned how to pull back behind the front line when needed.

That’s the thing, though. On my Guardian if I run into a cave or across some plain and get pounced by a pack of mixed casters and melee, I don’t break a sweat. Armor up, get GS out for a second to pull in all the casters, then mace and board, wham, healing down, some aegis, heal when aegis runs out, hit them, heal a little if needed (6+F2 and feel like a boss), tap-evade the big hits which are usually telegraphed, done.

On my Thief (disclaimer: I stopped playing him in the mid-40s) I have so many avoidance tools I just circle-kite, strafe, and do heavy damage.

On the Elementalist not only do I have to keep stuff within a small area so my ground targeted stuff actually gets them (Dragon’s Tooth, for example), a “normal” mob’s “normal” attacks can take me down 1/4th of my health even IF I kite and evade. Give me five mobs… Even well + heals doesn’t fix that anymore…

I am not complaining, mind you, I am just pointing out that a Guardian has much less worries than a Necro, Ele, or Mesmer when running into a pack.

Rolo.9248:

You can already do that now: target the player, right-click the item and select “Mail” and it will open a mail window with the targeted player’s name already in the To: block and hit send. I can’t see how that can get any easier.

… for the scammer. Say I find a nice Masterwork chain item. The guy who is with me in a dungeon wants it. “Sure,” I say, “how about you trade me for that scepter you just picked up”. We both click “mail”, we both send, I go to open my mail and … there’s a ragged cloth in my inbox. I have been scammed. Reverse the roles and it could happen, too.

Sometimes akitten for tat with observable trade values is the best way to maintain civility. Trust but verify…

SiNoS.2147:

I personally like the fact they make a battle feel like a battle. Frankly i love the fact they swarm me with monsters. It feels like im actually at war. It gets me into the story. Its the first game thats ever done that for me and its amazing.

Let me guess… you’re not playing a non-toughness specced clothie?

hyzus.7023:

this isnt like any other mmo please stop expecting the same crap you get everywhere else

This line is truly the Godwin of GW2. “Shut up, GW2 is different and you just don’t understand what it is, but I do”

Sorry to say this, but it isn’t. GW2 places different wrappers around core functions but once you move from the naming conventions and means you’re more or less in the same boat. Sure you’re not talking to quest givers but you do “do once” quests nevertheless. Sure, you get Karma, but you’re doing repeating dynamic quests and zone events nevertheless. And, sure, everyone can DE stuff or harvest a node, but you’re farming and crafting nevertheless.

And in all this, there’s a combat mechanic. GW2’s mechanic is that of avoidance and damage with minor replenishments. That breaks the trifecta but it does not break, end, or change, the idea that professions essentially contribute their unique brand of whatever to solo play, PvP, and group play. Since every profession is control, buff, debuff, and DPS, every profession should be able to arrive at the same greater sum of all its elements.

Right now the Necromancer has lower DPS, is on the lower end of control, good on buff and debuff, and not very good in avoidance and management. Mobs that do not telegraph moves as clearly are a much greater challenge on a Necromancer than, say, a Guardian. If the ability to eat hits or control foes is lower, DPS should be higher to compensate for that. Basically every profession should have an equal plunder ratio – more “hardened” ones might take longer to kill a mob but the weaker defenses are the higher DPS, control, or buff/debuff, should be. It’s a net-sum game.

I might be misunderstanding this, but the contribution for World Events seems to be a little on the wonky side sometimes. Just now I finished two events – in one I literally jumped in to deliver the death blow to a Champion unit and was awarded a gold medal contribution. The second one (hold off the centaurs) I spent mostly alone with two other players coming in between wave 4 and 5 (of 7) – and got Bronze.

Is this a known bug, an unknown one, or am I misunderstanding something?