Guild Wars 2

Does that mean there are no new raids coming with PoF in favor of open world content?

Being someone who hasn’t raided previously in GW2, I’d like to get into it. But honestly the vibe I have gotten across the board has been that its pretty much out of the question unless you are lucky enough to find a “training” group. I looked in LFG and it was pretty much only wanting exp players.

Am I missing that much if I don’t get to experience raiding?

With the general pacing that we have seen in Living World Season 3 I was wondering if we can expect an announcement about the next expansion sometime soon. We are coming up on episode 4, which is likely the halfway point and if you figure 2 months between each episode it would give us about 10 more months.

Maybe there is info already out that I missed, seems like a logical question at this point though.

To be honest I am loving Living World Season 3. It seems ANet is finally returning to its roots as far as making maps and giving us ones that are both solo friendly AND interesting. This also seems like it is leading up to an announcement for the next expansion! Do you guys think they learned from Heart of Thorns and will release the next xpac with solo play in mind and return to what made vanilla great with things like jumping puzzles and guild activities and such?

I sure hope we get some more info soon!

Thats really awesome, I look forward to it

I’m sorry if I have been out of the loop on this, did ANet announce that they’re working on the next expansion? I’ve seen this mentioned in a couple of other threads but haven’t seen any official threads.

And this is what I see as the first item:

Updates to Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Maps
Heart of Maguuma maps have been updated to make exploration more fun, whether you prefer solo or group play. Mordremoth’s forces were driven back from crucial waypoints, adventures are more accessible, new events have been added, and scaling and reward structures have been adjusted to give you more control over how you spend your time in the jungle.

So…did ANet go back and fix the HoT zones to make them more accessible and fun like vanilla zones are, or were these just some superficial changes that were made. I stopped playing a handful of months ago because of sheer frustration needing groups for almost everything in HoT.

I will start by saying that I have thoroughly enjoyed Guild Wars 2 since its launch. This game was a breath of fresh air in a genre that is overrun with WoW clones, each throwing story and community aside in favor of rushing to the end to grind “endgame”. When ANet told us “Endgame starts at level 1” they really meant it. I can honestly say I had an AMAZING time leveling up, I made a lot of really great friends, enjoyed a really awesome and friendly community and even better there was literally always something to do even at the level cap.

Flash forward to the launch of Heart of Thorns.

What has put me off is not the bugs, nor is it the poorly planned out mastery system, or some of the exploits that needed to be addressed. It is the fundamental change of direction that ANet has taken with Guild Wars 2. I loved this game so much because I didn’t need to be a hardcore anything in order to take part and enjoy. World bosses were something you showed up for and had fun with along with countless others and not once did I hear people saying “Wow this is a terrible way of doing things!”. Ascended Gear could be crafted so again, something that folks can enjoy and work on at their own pace. Nothing at all about what we were sold on this game about made it into Heart of Thorns for some reason. What Heart of Thorns DID give the community:

-A new metric for weeding out players from even being allowed into raid groups
-A new metric for telling players what gear to wear
-A new metric for telling players what build to use
-Bringing in long-time hardcore guilds as testers and then having it backfire when they throw out the good old “world first” crap, which has really helped create a divide between the elitist and casual players

See where I am going here? ANet, I am not even sure you guys know where you are trying to take this game right now. Its very clear you have abandoned your longtime supporters who have stayed with the game in favor of this new crowd that you think is going to come rushing in because of raids.

In my opinion, raids in Guild Wars 2 should have been done like how Dragon’s Stand works. Massive map with multiple objectives, tons of players take part, everyone gets rewards and has fun. Yes, I said it, everyone gets rewarded who takes part. I know thats some sort of crime these days to say on here but I’m saying it.

So for now I simply refuse to spend any more money on anything for this game. I already own the base game and HoT, if I truly want to play I guess I will be confined to playing new alts through the Central Tyria content as I do not wish to be part of the absolute mess that Heart of Thorns has introduced into this game. I would encourage any others who feel this way as well to do the same. ANet may not care what we say on the forums, but they will definitely care about what we do with our money.

Having some decent time playing around with Heart of Thorns I thought I would share with ANet what I found to be the good, bad and ugly.

Good:

Storyline – Absolutely stunning in my opinion. While it is rather short I felt that everything was well thought out, told very well and had memorable characters all the way through. With how the main story ended I am really eager to see where Living World Season 3 takes everything.

New Maps, events and enemies – Meguuma Jungle is absolutely beautiful and some of the new NPCs that I have seen are phenomenal looking. The new event metas that go on in each of the maps, particularly Dragon’s Stand, I have had a blast with. I would love to see more added as we get further past launch.

Soundtrack – You guys really stepped up your game with the soundtrack in my opinion, especially in Tarir. Thank you for this, it really helps with immersion!

Masteries – I love the idea of horizontal progression as opposed to strait leveling, and having certain map areas accessible only after you train certain masteries is a great change.

Bad:

Mastery XP – For as awesome as Masteries are, the sheer amount of XP needed to level them seems a bit over the top. I would rather have seen more tiers within each Mastery with less XP needed for each tier than the way it currently is.

Difficulty – While its great to have a good challenge in the game the current state of Meguuma Jungle maps is spinning out of control. Hero Points require at least 3 or more people usually depending on the situation and professions present. Mobs are so densely packed and hit so hard that its a huge undertaking even making it to the next Waypoint on a map so you can continue exploring without having to start over back across the zone. The fact there are silver and gold category enemies free roaming in packs…I get you want players to group up, but forcing it like this isn’t a good idea in my opinion.

Ugly:

Map Bugs: This is borderline game breaking. For the past 3 nights I have personally gotten into dead maps and when the game prompts for me to jump to a more populated one, it dumps me into a map with 3 other people. The whole taxi solution is nice, but its a bandaid on a much larger problem. Whatever is going on with this needs to be fixed and fast.

Game crashes: No, turning down my video settings has nothing to do with this as my PC specs are way beyond anything GW2 needs. There is nothing like being in the final battle of Dragon’s Stand and crash out, only to come back to an empty map.

Thank you for reading and I hope others will (constructively) voice their thoughts as well!!

I will give it a shot tonight and see how things go. For example, I head to Dragon’s Stand and I have yet to get into a map that has had enough folks to field the map event. In Auric Basin its hit or miss with having enough to field events, Tangled Depths is the same story. Verident Brink (spelling may be wrong) I usually see more than enough folks to field events.

Is it just that most players haven’t progressed enough yet to be all over the different maps?

Bump for an update to this issue. This is pretty game breaking and I know a lot of people have serious concerns about it

Is there an update as to when the low/zero pop map bug is going to be resolved? It makes it nearly impossible to effectively run events out in Meguuma Jungle when you wind up on a map of like 2 people.

I’ve had some interesting talks with friends over the past day or two about the current state of Central Tyria Mastery farming and what has been going on with CoF. My question is this, is it true what ANet has come out and openly stated that the current farming method being used is within game guidelines or is it something that will likely be patched out?

A number of friends and guildied have stated their extreme unhappiness about this issue and a couple have gone as far as saying they want to just quit the game altogether. Personally I look at Mastery as something that should take players a good long time to completely finish, but CoF farming doesn’t really bother me to be honest.

Any info on this is appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I am hoping someone has some insight about this. For the Central Tyria Masteries where do we gain additional points from? Are there new locations to obtain them from scattered around Central Tyria like the Meguuma Jungle points are?

Thanks in advance!

Agreed guys, I really hope that the next xpac doesn’t take as long to release. In my opinion Heart of Thorns is an utter masterpiece and a great foundation to build on going forward.

Bring on ….well I can’t say which dragon, they’re referenced in the story but I don’t wanna drop any spoilers on the forums!

Really and truly, in my 13+ years of MMO playing I haven’t ever had so much fun with an expansion. The story, the art, the music…just everything is absolutely outstanding. That isn’t to say its completely perfect, but nothing ever is.

Thank you for creating something so terrific that its made this player feel the magic of the MMO genre again.

Cheers!

I have no idea what you are talking about OP. As far as I can tell ANet has been on top of their game fixing things pretty darn fast

I had heard during a guild discussion that in order to raid players will need to be decked out in full ascended armor, weapons and accessories?

Is this accurate? I would have thought that full exotic armor and weapons would have been enough to raid. If this is true I’m not sure how well it is going to be receivedm

If the hardcore crowd think that GW2 raids are going to exclude 99% of the playerbase to make a tiny minority happy they are sadly mistaken.

Raids will be very challenging as they should be. They will encourage teamwork and strategizing as well as communication. These are things that players in GW2 already embrace doing with each other.

If a player wants to be able to berate other players, throw up dps meters and have “super hardcore only” content then this sadly isn’t the game for them.

Welcome to all returning and new players, I hope you all have a great time in Tyria!

If there is ever anything I can do to help please contact me in-game / add me to friends

Marique Ceri
Jade Quarry
Argonauts of Tyria

Exact same stuff happening to me, EST NA player.

Don’t see myself wasting any money on HoT if this is going to be an issue that isnt resolved asap, began a few days ago

I was about to make a thread about this same issue! I have been having the issue for a few days now and its exclusive to GW2 no other MMO or online game I have been playing has had any issue

Lazaar.9123:

Yeah, I want a physical collectors edition too. Maybe we can get the revenant version of Rytlock as a statue!

This, this x1000000

Hmmm, well forget that idea then

How does the community feel about large scale 10-player Puzzle raids. These would require teamwork insofar as things such as hitting switches at the same time, the group breaking up and unlocking areas for each other…things of this nature rather than strait normal raids where you just kill things.

Food for thought, a lot of possibilities with this tho!

To be honest after a decade of World of Warcraft raiding and seeing what kind of effect it has on the community I can whole heartedly say no thank you to raids in the traditional sense for GW2.

Please give us more open world events and bosses tho!

…that I can’t pre-order it right now. kitten you ArenaNet!

On a side note, please give us a physical CE with a sweet as hell statue and art book again!!

I would love to see ANet put together a physical CE like what was released for GW2 launch. I still have my sweet “Making Of” book sitting here on my bookshelf along with the cool Char statue that came with it (don’t remember what I did with the tin or the random prints that came with it tho).

Anyways, any chance of us getting another CE like this for the expansion?

Hello folks!

I bought GW2 (a couple of copies actually, 1 digital and 1 physical collectors edition) back at launch and then ended up not getting into the game as much as I had wanted because at the time I was hooked on another MMO that I was pretty heavily invested in. Now that I have more free time I would like to get into GW2 and had some pretty simple questions I was hoping to get answered:

1. Does each class have their own unique story to play thru? For example, in a game like Rift or WoW once you have leveled to the cap its pretty redundant to do it again on alts. In GW2 is the story and experience different for each class? (I really hope so)

2. At launch I had 2 accounts. My first was my Digital Deluxe account which I got because the CE was sold out everywhere by me. When a physical CE did become available I snatched it up but couldn’t add the key to my main account so I ended up making a second account to play on. Now since then I have only been able to get back into my secondary account. My original account I cannot get into and would like to but I no longer have the e-mail with a serial number for the game and don’t remember any characters on the account. For that matter I don’t even think I still have the same credit card that I bought it with. Is there ANY way that ArenaNet can help me get back into my account or am I basically out of luck and will have to just stick with my secondary account?

3. Is it true that ArenaNet is looking to add PvE raids to GW2? Let me explain what I mean. I know GW2 has some dungeons, I know there are world bosses, but I had heard that PvE large scale instanced raids are coming to the game and was curious about it.

4. What do players at the cap do? Like what is the rundown of things I can take part in once I hit 80 to enhance myself to be the best I can be?

Thank you!