Guild Wars 2

Really? Last I read, it was that belongings and heirlooms would stop dropping and be unable to be turned in, but blade shards would be a permanent drop from aetherblade mobs. Might have gone for blueprints too; can’t remember atm. No word on the cores, though.

Edited for links:
found belongings/heirlooms stop 18March: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Update-Alliance-Supplies-Found-Items/first#post3750166
blade shards permanent: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-March-4-2014/first#post3713733 (see under : rewards and achievements subheading. Note: Aetherblade enemies across Tyria now have an added chance to drop Blade Shards. This addition to their drop list is permanent.)

Well, they did remove the menders with the last patch. So there’s that.

Gosh and golly, why isn’t this another rehash of Four Big Strong Blonds and the Token Delicate Lady Healer?

ANet, you’d best get to fixing this quick. After all, we’ve already pulled the misandry card — and as you know, misandry is totally real and super devastating to the butts of many dudebros and Nice Guys out there. (Also, as we all know, Scarlet only ever killed men, we tooooootally caught that. If it weren’t for sir norn the meatwielder over there, the ending would have been the equivalent of a manipedi party, thirty minutes of derisive cackling over what ye great womyn have wrought, and putting down all those foolish men who so chivalrously wanted … well, something, I guess. Even more time in the spotlight? To see Kasmeer’s illusionary outfit drop? Neo-post-sociofeminist scheme? OMG.)

I mean, what sort of world are you trying to push on us here with these weird and — and just offensive notions like personal friendships and relationships overcoming cultural boundaries? Disgusting; obviously you’re just trying to push us into dirty thoughts because it’s gosh darned unreasonable to imagine that a lady character might help a male character for any reason beyond … uh … furry seduction? Gross gross gross.

(Wow, that sure was a lot of BS; maybe it evens things up a little, lol.)

Seriously, though, welcome to 2014, fellow player, where at some point even gaming companies recognized that ladies exist, and they can do stuff, and have stuff, and make stuff happen! Even big things (that aren’t contained — or not-so contained — in their shirts)! I totally get that for the overwhelming majority of human history, things have been focused on dudes and stuff, and this is kind of a weird anomaly, but don’t worry; one living story’s worth of more innies than outies isn’t about to displace you from … something, I guess. Characters you can really super relate to? Characters you really want to relate to? (Musclebound WASP specimen of manly perfection, I’m guessing?)

Or does the fact that you say it took you 20 times viewing a cutscene before gender became a point of contention mean anything? They all have flaws (some way more than others); Kasmeer may be a power player, but she’s still scared and hiccupy and vastly imperfect. Jory’s … well, kind of dumb for a PI (or someone wanting to survive in Scarlet land, lol). Rox seems like she’s changed a lot, for the better. Honestly, every character is flawed, male and female alike; just because more dudes aren’t square-jawed, stoically staring into the distance Conan-types doesn’t mean they’re being belittled in any way. :| It just means they value or have grown in ways much different than, uh, probably what you want to see? Are used to seeing?

My personal opinion is that it’s different, and much more interesting than the overused mega archetypes we get stuck with in a lot of popular media. That the total face of media in general seems to be changing to open up spaces for more types of characters is a relief. That a wider variety of people are responding in ways usually reserved for Straight White Dudes is super cool.

If none of that means anything to you, though, and there are just too many virgingers on your screen for you to bear … well, great, you’re in luck! You have a near-infinite amount of media to consume that caters pretty heavily to your tastes. The rest of us will be chilling out over here, enjoying a rare moment of recognition for once. :>

Came in from SBI to an overflow, our Scarlet also bugged out at about 30% :< Had the prime buff as well. Some on the platform said they were still doing damage, but very very little. Either way, her health bar didn’t seem to move after the invuln popped.

I’ve been hearing these bosses don’t scale.

PvE commanders definitely have their place, they’re a tremendous help for people doing guild missions and the like. Still, I can definitely see a few points here; hopefully something can be worked out when anet addresses tag functionality.

SBI main map bugged as well, pretty sure they’re aware of the issue though.

Zylonite.5913:

All the 5-15 years old love it. All the 20 and above are sick of zerg’ing. But at the end, you need to shove the LS stuff to sell gems store items. What can you do…

Well shucks, I’ve apparently gone back in time by … wow, half my age.

Best. Update. Ever. Thanks, Anet!

Seriously though, there’s plenty of folks digging this update; sorry that you don’t, but generalizing like that is pretty silly.

LMAO I was wondering when you’d post again, these threads are always sad and hilarious.

Yes and no? It would be nice for some things like the earlier bosses, but could also spell doom for events where numbers matter.

0/10 home, 4/10 or so in overflow.

Grats, all! Well done!

One win in a non guild overflow, zero wins at home :<

Soon, though, I hope!

Haha, no, definitely not last — Kaineng has a ways to go yet, but we’ll get there.

Grats on your kill!

Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot of assistance or training available to our commanders these days. I’d considered it briefly on my warr, but the level of hostility I saw the last few times I hopped into eb was really disheartening. Even the occasional suggestions were vitriol bombs, and that makes me super sad because we’re definitely better than that.

Where we are now, population-wise, we can’t count on ace commanders floating us all up the tiers on a cloud of bootstraps or whatever. It’s going to take a team-wide effort, and a little bit of understanding while our doritos grow into their roles. It’s going to be a hard upward slog, and we’re going to get thumped more often than not for a while until we rebuild our core and confidence, but I have absolute faith in our server to pick ourselves up again.

I really dislike this mentality that ‘one player’ causes everyone to fail; it simply isn’t true. It takes 3 failed chains and poor lane defense, or 4 fails with good lane defense. That’s pretty forgiving for a boss meant to be pretty difficult, and definitely more than can be pinned on the shoulders of one person.

Rather than give grief to people for wanting to play the game they paid for(and offensive as the thought might be, it really isn’t ‘content made for well-geared 80’s only), maybe it’s time to think about maximizing effectiveness; even an appropriately leveled for the area warrior can be a banner machine, and plenty of other classes can provide buffs and other benefits even without being super geared for devastating dps. See if you can’t pull a higher concentration of non-80’s to the easier fight on lane one, then reinforce them with a party of you uber elites from lane two for the next chain round if it comes to it. And for goodness sake, help people out! Very very few who show up to the party are apathetic about the outcome, and if you’re so hung up on victory or bust isn’t a little bit of typing effort in the coordination phase worth it to make your chances better? Even just calling out a quick rundown of champ tactics and tips can help. Put that skill and knowledge to good use, instead of blaming a few for what really is a whole group effort both on and off the platforms.

Delvoire.8930:

Can you keep going back to the chests after they’ve been opened once?

Yep! You can open them as often as you get enough pieces for a completed cipher :>

Healix.5819:

The only problem with overflows is the people in them thinking they’re going to fail simply because they’re in an overflow.

I’ve had much better luck on overflows than main servers tbh. Six or seven tries so far, one success on OF, zero on main. :< I really think the success rate is going to skyrocket over the next few days, though, as more and more players get used to the mechanics. At that point, it’ll be up to platform coverage and a little bit of luck.

Things like this make me really sad that I haven’t kept up on the LS stuff. Whichever way things go, this sounds fascinating to me; villains-who-think-they’re-trying-to-do-the-right-thing are my favorite archetype.

azizul.8469:

lol… what is happening to ANET…? if i wanted to farm nodes , i would have gone to those guestable rich platinum nodes….. just a few seconds running from wp, and those nodes are per character….

Anything that made any sort of significant impact would met with screaming hordes rallying with the pitchforks and calling play to win — gosh, we’ve already got p2w accusations up in here, over basic metal nodes. So instead, they offer fluff (as seems fair, because they don’t -want- to be p2w) and are met with an equally large number of people being unimpressed with what they’ve got for sale.

What’s more detrimental to the game as a whole? Or, I guess, what would you rather hear people complain about?

Raistlan.3604:

The description on the web page announcing them says, “Using a Basic Ore Node Pack will place a Copper, Silver, and Gold vein in the home instance of every character on your account! Visit these nodes once a day to mine their resources with any one character.”

I have 8 characters on my account, but it seems like only 1 character can mine them per day? Even though it says, “will place a Copper, Silver, and Gold vein in the home instance of every character on your account”. “Every character.”

Yes, one character per day. Pretty much the landscape equivalent of a thing being account bound, I think.

Ah, fair enough; I can definitely understand that perspective, even if I don’t necessarily share it. Alas, I don’t think it’ll do much, given how many people will be happy to buy them in your stead, but I certainly appreciate standing up for your principles. :>

I will say that not everyone buying RNG things are helpless gambling addicts, though. I tend to spend roughly ten bucks to fifteen bucks month on gems because I want to support a company whose work I very much appreciate in a currency they need to keep on keepin’ on (that’s absolutely not a dig at you or even anyone else who buys gold with gems, just that given the opportunity I’d like to help keep their lights on and servers running). Sometimes I’ll just hold on to them and wait for the next thing released in-store, but since I don’t convert those gems to gold and have a problem with being bad at caring much about dress up/chronically unenthused with the gs armor skins (and one-time use), BLKs and dye packs often seem to be my go-to when I get the urge to just buy something.

Lol, yes. Spending thirty seconds on something that might take you what? Five minutes and a few more button presses? In open world is definitely edging ‘you win GW2’ territory.

If people had to compete for open-world nodes like some other mmos, I’d be a little more inclined to agree. Seriously, this is ridiculously superfluff convenience; three or four ores per node per day aren’t going to do much at all except please a few instance-filler/completionist types and set the screamers screaming about how it’s not worth it/too op/not what they wanted/the end of gw2 etc.

What, the new dyes are BoP?

Honest question here, I don’t know. If they’re not ‘buy them on the trading post’ is legit — if not likely expensive — advice. And no gambling involved!

Nope, I’m completely happy gathering them via wvw. sPVP has never interested me as a game mode, alas, and I love our wvw community.

Kain Francois.4328:

My bet is that its coming from a female writer…because, well…. Scarlet.

Really? Really? Never mind that the vast majority of these ~stereotypical females~ in media being lamented here are created and designed by men who present women as one-dimensional, skin-flashing walking hormone bags.

No seriously, real talk here. Why would you even assume as much? “Because Scarlet” doesn’t mean a thing.

Agreed, I thought they were completely acceptable, though like the above I would have liked something a little more wvw-flavored … and I think it would be absolutely fair to make those finishers permanent, because seriously, why not? Beyond the season chest, gaining 50 levels meant 50-150 chests depending on your previous week’s standing, and I know I got at least a few decent things out of them. Not to mention all the loot bags I got over the course of the season. Besides that, five level boosts to one of my alts was nice, as was the 3 free ranks in wvw (which also came with chests), though as far as the achiev goes all I really wanted was the title and to have a good time, so the box of rage was little more than a nice bonus to begin with. I understand that a lot of people are disappointed, but in the end it’s because the game didn’t live up to the scenario people had envisioned.

Personally, I can’t believe anyone legitimately expected to get a guaranteed ascended anything, much less a ton of overly rare/expensive stuff. Given the number of people that participated (seriously most of LA has had votm titles hanging over their heads forever), flooding the marketplace with (maybe tens of) thousands of exotics and whatnot seems like it would have thrown a wrench in a very carefully controlled economy. Plus, it seems a lot of people see the season achiev/chest as that magic carrot to get pve’ers in and potentially interested in wvw, so by that logic, wouldn’t it make sense to have something to drag us into the rest of the world in return?

I think people were going to be mad, anyway. If the rewards were too good, they would have been the new reason ~wvw is dying~, due to people stacking harder for the inevitable season 2 and further crippling smaller servers. If they were mediocre, as they were, then … well, they are apparently why wvw is dying? It sets the stage for next season, I think — now that people know roughly what they have to do to get what was given, I doubt we’ll see the same level of server-jumping, nor nearly the number of shiny-grinders spending an hour draining keeps to grind out those repair achievs. Seriously, in a lot of ways, I think they’ve given us what a lot of vocal hardcore wvw’ers have wanted/been asking for. Mediocre rewards is just the price we pay, lol.

As a side-note, it made me really happy to not see our map chats flooded with rage over the chests on reset night. :> I’m sure it was out there, but given the forum explosion I was braced for epic fury and was really pleasantly surprised.

Alas, this is nacho cheese.

Gotta make your own.

Aw, that’s nice to hear. :>

Surprisingly, this has been my favorite reset night! I left to pick up the husband with a handful of quiet demoralized areas, and came back 45 minutes later to see this amazing, wide array of disparate groups working together and being generally awesome! Maybe not a ton of people, but a dedicated one — havoc’s usually my thing, so this was a super fun.

Shout out to MU — I don’t remember ever seeing your guild before, but you’ve been a terror.

Gates of Madness? Man, we’re not gone but it certainly seems we’ve been forgotten, lol. Ah well, at least I don’t think I’ll have to worry about repair costs!

Either way, luck to all the lads and ladies out on the field this week. (And preemptive grats for the season, HoD.) I’ll be having a good time, regardless; no matter what the final tally is, I’ve made a lot of really good friends, and have had some of the best gaming experiences of my life over the last few weeks. <3

King Amadaeus.8619:

people shouldn’t let their GFs on skype

And/or maybe next time rustle up some commanders who can keep it in their, uh, skypants.

Trust me, there are plenty of us girlfriends/wives/varying levels of SO’s out there who can talk to omg boys on the internuts for years without contesting anyone’s territories. Not that I’m even remotely defending the other guilty party, just sayin’ it takes two to tango.

In all seriousness, though, that’s a super-bummer. Condolences to your both your cuckolded commander and your server. Here’s hoping y’all come out better and stronger for it in the end.

…but back on general topic, I’ve been a little bummed about missing so much of this week, but retail calls. Kinda hoping for a decent t-day turnout since I’ll finally get to play, sheesh.

I’d put in a third vote for Kaineng; we’ve been pretty steadily second place in our week-to-week match ups, at least, so we’re not getting completely steamrolled by everything, but definitely not dominating. Also it’s super-rare to queue anything but EB on reset night.

The only thing to keep in mind is that you mentioned you’re not a big fan of ts, and that’s where our primary voip contact is happening. :<