Guild Wars 2

I know devs posting on reddit instead of putting everything here first is a sore point, but in this case I don’t see the problem.

It looks like the issue of refunds was raised there first – and got a response from Anet’s Customer Service lead. That on it’s own makes sense – they responded on the site where the question was asked.

Then Jon Olson responded here when the question was asked here. But according to his forum title he’s a programmer, not a member of the customer service team. Contrary to popular belief video game companies are not a linear system with the people who make the game at the top and everyone else as ‘support staff’. Which means although he knows the answer Jon may not have the authority to make that decision himself (just like Gaile has to tell people to contact Support instead of saying she will sort their issues out herself), so he linked to a publicly available source from the relevant authority to back up his statement.

In other words it’s more like an external link to a source on a Wiki than sending someone to reddit to find the answer.

I don’t understand what’s wrong with the name Scarlet.

Maybe I’ve been reading/watching/playing different fantasy to your guys but it doesn’t strike me as any more commonly use or cliche than any other name. Far better than something like Raven or anything with an apostrophe in the middle.

I really don’t understand prefering Mr E. which at best is a sign of the characters lack of creativity (and possibly poor sense of humor) and at worst indicates a total thought process of “He’ll need a code name, something to keep him a mystery. Oh, there, job done.”

That is unusually bad luck. Although do remember to try out some of the other weapons rangers can use because even if you prefer the bows having more options available will come in useful later on.

As for why it’s happening all I can say is that drops are to some extent random and whilst this is exceptional it shouldn’t last, you should start getting bows again sooner or later.

You’ll also periodically get them as story and level up rewards, and those are fixed so there’s no worry of missing out on one.

It’s slightly off-topic but can I just say thank you for putting this on the official forum.

I’ve never been able to get used to Reddit, and I don’t use Twitter. I do follow GW2 on Facebook, and sometimes check the official site but for me this is by far the best place to get info on changes to the game, and maybe I’m biased but it seems like the most logical to me for announcements like this.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Arkham Creed.7358:

Lambent.6375:

Arkham Creed.7358:

My god guys why do you even have that much crap in your bank in the first place? The skins I understand, but materials? Seriously? For what possible reason would you ever hoard so many of anything? Just craft up the gear you want for your characters and then SELL the left over junk.

Honestly, do you really need enough clutter in your bank to make a legendary weapon ten times over?

Depending on what crafts you are leveling, it may require you to have far more materials than what is possible to stack. Especially if you’re in the mist of crafting ascended weapons, and it will get worse when ascended armor comes out.

I still highly doubt that you actually need enough materials to fill twelve bank tabs.

I have 10 bank tabs now and only 1 and ½ have empty slots, I farm and provide mats to my guild-mates(I am the go-to guy in my guild for help in this area when needed) as well as my own crafting initiative, so, I NEED more than most because of this.

If they’re for your guild surely they should be in the guild bank?

During the first beta where Ascalon Catacombs was available many people declared it incredibly difficult (and remember this was the old ‘easy’ version) and were either declaring it hardcore end-game content that most players are not supposed to be able to finish (at least not easily) or reassuring each other that it’s just because it hadn’t been properly play tested and it would be nerfed for launch.

It wasn’t nerfed, but once players got more familiar with combat mechanics generally and that dungeons specific quirks it became a lot easier to do. I’m not sure about the other permanent dungeons (wasn’t following public opinion that closely) but I know the same happened with Canach – at first a lot of people found it incredibly difficult but with practice it was possible to work out tricks and techniques that made it easy.

I suspect the same will happen here. Once people have had more time to play around with it and learn and share what works it won’t be nearly as bad.

In fact it says somewhere on the site that for legal reasons if you email them a suggestion they’ll delete it without reading and if you post it to them they’ll return it unopened. They will only take suggestions and feedback through the website, which in practice means this forum and very occasionally polls on the main site.

Which is because the website Terms of Use includes this:
“However, by submitting User Submissions to ArenaNet, you hereby grant ArenaNet a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, broadcast, license, post, sell, translate, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, in any medium now known or hereafter devised, without compensation or credit to the provider of the User Submissions.”

In other words if you post a suggestion here they automatically have permission to use it. If you submit it another way they would have to seek your permission separately and may need to pay you for it.

In Practice

They do read the forum, and they have taken suggestions from here before. The best thing to do is to make sure you post it in the right section, give it a clear title “cool idea” or “suggestion” is not helpful, “New Collection idea” or “Suggestion for a Current Event” is.

Make sure you explain your suggestion and the background to it in full. Don’t assume everyone knows about the problem you want to fix and why it’s annoying, or understands why the new thing would be really fun.

Also bear in mind your suggestion is never going to be used exactly as you first write it, if nothing else Anet will put their own spin on it. It’s also much more likely to be used if a lot of people show interest. Both of which mean if people start replying and saying how they’d do it differently or pointing out potential problems this is not a bad thing. This kind of discussion shows how many people are interested in the idea (far more than people simply posting “I agree” and can lead to creating a modified version of your original suggestion which is more likely to work for the game and all the players and therefore is more likely to be used.

GW2 is already pretty solo-friendly.

Asking for guilds, which are specifically groups of players to be progressed by a single person seems excessive to me.

I suspect it’s something to do with weapon swap and other things that change our skill bar.

In GW1 there were a few things that would change your skills bar, like entering the Desolation wurms or going into Costume Brawl, and if you swapped your skills around while in that ‘mode’ the changes would carry over to your normal skill bar. For example lets say I swapped the 1 and 5 skills while in Costume Brawl – when I left the skill I normally had on 1 would be swapped with the one I normally had on 5.

It’s not always obvious but GW2 is built off of GW1 and my guess is this is one thing that did carry over, and since changing skill bars is much more common in this game and they were linking a specific set of skills to each weapon anyway (instead of having a pool you could choose from) they decided to fix each one to a slot.

I agree it is annoying. My main since launch is a ranger and I’ve used shortbow and sword the vast majority of that time, and even now I still get confused by Skill 3 throwing me backwards if I’m using the bow and 2 throwing me backwards if I’m using the sword. I’d love to be able to put them on the same key but it’s not possible.

I much prefer this system to typical free to play MMOs. Yes there’s a lot of restrictions on free accounts, but most of them don’t actually restrict gameplay and I much prefer the idea of a single 1-time payment to remove all the restrictions than constantly being asked to pay out fir unlocks or pay a subscription.

When I’m playing my free account the only ones that really bother me are not being able to use map chat and not being able to sell things on the TP. And when I was new it took me a long time to get into the habit of selling on the TP anyway.

But maybe it also helps that (like a lot of people apparently) I think of the free version as a demo with no time limit, not something that’s intended to be played indefinitely.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

No subscription
This is a big one. I could afford a subscription game, but I’d feel pressured to play it to justify the price. This month would be a nightmare for me – I’m away for 2 (non-consecutive) weeks but I want to play in between, so I’d also have to pay for all that time I’m not using. With GW2 I don’t have to worry.

No stat treadmill
Yes there is grind in this game, but not for things you have to have to play. When I got to level 80 I got a set of exotic gear pretty much straight away with karma I’d saved up. Then within a month I did both the newly released Flame and Frost dungeon and Arah path 2. In a lot of MMOs that wouldn’t be an option. A newly max level character couldn’t go and do the final dungeon in the game, they’d have to do all the others first to get the other equipment tiers in between.

Along the same lines I’m still using some of that same gear now, almost 2 years later, and it’s still basically the top tier (yes there’s ascended, but that’s a very minor improvement).

No Pay-to-win
Sure you can buy gems, convert them to gold and use it to buy exotics, or even legendary weapons. But there is nothing you can get by spending real money that you can’t get relatively easily without spending anything. I have spent money in the gem store, but always for novelty items, I’ve never felt like I had to in order to keep playing.

Cooperative PvE
I realise this will sound like I’m paraphrasing Anet’s promotion of the game, but I really like that I don’t have to worry about other people around me in PvE because they can’t, deliberately or accidentally, screw up my game. They can delay me slightly, for example if reviving NPCs counts towards a heart and they revive one before I get there, but it’s relatively rare. I don’t have to worry about them stealing my kills or loot or me stealing theirs, or messing up their events. At worst I’m indifferent to other people, quite often I’m actually happy to see a random stranger come along because I know they’re going to help me, without me having to say or do anything to persuade them. (Sure it’s for their own interest, because they want to complete the event or whatever, but that’s the beauty of it, two people playing in the same area totally independently are also helping each other.)

Generally friendly community
This partially stems from the above, but I think the players deserve credit too. There are exceptions of course (come on, it’s the internet) but it’s nice that on the whole people are friendly and civil to each other.

The art style
I try not to make graphics a priority for me with games, especially because then it limits the replayability over the years. But I do love the art style in this game, it’s a wonderful mix of realism and something like an oil painting (a slightly impressionist one too, which is a style I like). There’s been many times I’ve just stopped in the middle of what I was doing to admire the scenery.

It’s fun
The combat especially. There’s been more than a few times I’ve been genuinely excited during a battle not so much because of the end result as because the process itself is enjoyable. The combination of movement and the variety of attacks makes it exciting to play through even fairly routine fights. Although I much prefer it when a boss has special mechanics that make it distinct from normal enemies.

Anet do read the forum and will make changes based on discussions here. (For example every change to the daily achievements has come from the forum.)

But they don’t simply implement everything everyone suggests. That would be impossible (both because of the time required and because a lot of suggestions contradict each other) and also it would not necessarily make a good game.

For one great example people were posting for years about how they wanted something like GW1’s system of earning new skills by finding and defeating specific bosses. Then they introduced exactly that as a way of unlocking traits and people hated it, so much they actually changed it back.

If you want to see your ideas make it into the game the best thing to do is to post a topic with a clear title (e.g. “levelling changes I’d like”) laying out exactly what you think the problem is and how you’d like to see it fixed. Simply saying “fix the questing/levelling system” doesn’t give them much to go on – what I think is wrong with it may be exactly what you love about it.

Then you need to get other people to support your ideas. Be aware that you’ll almost never get people simply saying “Yes! I want exactly this!”, most of them will have their own ideas on how it should work and other people may not like it at all. Neither of those means they’re attacking you or that you should give up on it immediately. Sometimes discussing an idea – hashing out the potential problems other people raise or incorporating their ideas can make it even better.

Finally be aware that it will take a long time for anything to happen. Anet almost never post in a topic to say they are going to use an idea – if they post at all it’s usually to ask for clarification. And even if they were to drop everything and start working on your idea that day it would take weeks or months to complete and then it might need to wait for a convenient time (for example they try to avoid balance changes when a PvP tournament is running).

So it’s not a quick or easy process, but if there’s things that really bother you it can be well worth it. (And at the very least it’s an opportunity to vent your frustration.)

Just so we’re clear by reviews do you mean topics on this forum (or a similar site like reddit)? Or actual articles on a blog or other website?

If it’s the first one then ignore them. People tend to come to forums to complain and if you’re lucky stick around to post some comments on other peoples complaints. If you believe the topics in the profession sections of this forum then every single profession has been hopelessly broken and useless since day 1 (although the ways in which they’re broken vary from time to time). But every other profession is massively over-powered and clearly the developers favourite that is always given all of the best updates to ensure it’s what everyone plays in every mode.

(At the risk of being confusing this doesn’t mean all these topics are completely wrong. Sometimes they are making a valid point, but they’re making it from the perspective of someone who is frustrated, maybe angry and prone to hyperbole. It’s the difference between me at home saying trains in my area have been especially unreliable lately and me texting my husband from the train that may or may not be leaving sometime soon to say the entire company should be fired because they’re kitten incompetent and couldn’t organise getting drunk in a brewery if someone handed them the opened bottles.)

If it’s an actual review of the profession written out in full then it should be more comprehensive and balanced. But check that it’s actually current because balance updates come out all the time and can make a big difference, and take it with a grain of salt because it is just one persons opinion.

Ultimately go with your own experience and preferences.

I’ve been playing a ranger since day-1 and there was a period when many dungeon groups genuinely would kick you the instant they saw you were playing a ranger. But I still entered, and completed, dungeons playing her. I just either formed groups with my guild or other like-minded players who didn’t care if we finished in the best time possible or if we followed the exact route someone else had dictated via youtube.

Honestly the elitists who only want what they (or rather the person they get their information from) considers to be the best professions and builds are not people I’d want to play with anyway, so it’s not a problem for me if they don’t want to play with me. If anything it may be more of a problem if they do.

The name ranger actually has nothing to do with fighting at range. It means someone who ranges across the wilderness and makes use of what’s around them. Think along the lines of army rangers, park rangers, and Aragorn from Lord of the Rings (which is where the fantasy archetype originated).

Guns don’t really fit into that, especially older designs like the ones in GW2 are based on. They require a lot of maintenance (relative to a bow or sword), some of it quite technical and a regular supply of ammo which was relatively heavy and couldn’t be made at a campsite in the middle of no where.

Obviously modern guns can be used for hunting, long range reconnaissance missions etc. but it took a relatively long time for them to be a viable option and the technology of GW2 isn’t quite there yet.

I agree. Male characters and female asura (who wear male skins most of the time) really could do with more variety.

It would be nice to have an option for bare arms in particular. I’ve got a charr with a really nice fur pattern, a norn with cool tattoos and a sylvari with bioluminescence and none of them are able to show it off because it ends up hidden under their clothing.

I’m the complete opposite, I feel like there’s a huge amount to explore and find in this game, more than almost any other RPG I’ve played.

But you have to be exploring to find it. If you just follow the story and do hearts and events as you come across them you’ll miss the vast majority of stuff on the map. Even if you do map completion you’re still going to miss a lot, especially if you rush around checking points off as quickly as you can.

Jumping puzzles and mini dungeons are the obvious examples. Some are obvious, some even require you to go part of the way along the path to get map completion (like Sharkmaw in Lion’s Arch), others you can pass right by the entrance and never even know it’s there unless you’re looking, or the type of person who will try to climb every likely looking pile of rocks just in case there’s something at the top.

A lot of the exploration achievements and odd hidden chests are even harder to find because they don’t take up a whole area of the map, they’re just sitting in odd corners.

But more than that there’s a lot of easter eggs, scenic spots and lore/trivia which the game not only doesn’t point you to but doesn’t tell you that you’ve found. You won’t get an achievement popping up to say you’ve found something, there is no chest or champion to give you a tangible reward, some of them may not even be intentional, but they’re there all the same and a lot of people enjoy finding them. Examples include the turkeys in Ascalon Catacombs (definitely intentional), Sally in Harathi Hinterlands who stands on a normally inaccessible balcony and then tells you off if you jump up there and the huge area on top of the cliffs above Mabon Market (probably not intentional).

Probably because gear doesn’t make that much of a difference and they wanted to avoid people getting judgemental over it.

They could add something like they had in GW1 where you could show your skill bar to other players. That seemed to satisfy most people. I always had to explain that I had a fiery bow string to make Conjure Flame/Mark of Rodgort functional, but I don’t remember anyone wanting proof that you had attributes (traits) to match your build or had runes and insignias on all your armor.

I think this is a problem with your approach to what’s on offer rather than the game itself.

Just because you can rush quickly from point to point doesn’t mean you have to or even that you should. If you would prefer to take your time, look at the scenery, talk to the NPCs and generally enjoy the world then you can do that too.

Personally I use things like vistas, POI’s, hearts, skill points etc. to give me a general idea of where to go and then I explore as I’m going. Sometimes that just means stopping to look at the scenery, sometimes it means talking to NPCs in a village before moving on, sometimes it means I discover a jump puzzle which leads me off in a completely different direction and I suddenly realise I’ve been playing for 2 hours, done about 15 things and still haven’t gotten to the POI I was heading to in the first place.

When you start really exploring there’s a lot on offer. There’s even some little stories you can get involved with which would be side-quests in other games. Some of them involve DE’s or event chains but others you just do without any prompting.

Considering a large area of the Black Citadel is given over to statues of famous charr heroes I agree completely.

(Warning: Spoilers below If you haven’t done the Claw Island personal story mission you might want to stop reading here.)

Bunmaster.9734:

Players don’t like unsolicited advice, give them tips and advice on how to be a better ranger or any class, will be answered with either, I play how i want or you are an elitist.
If i created the group (when i do, i post specifically what i want), i’d kick and if i joined, i’d leave. No drama that way.

It depends a lot on how it’s phrased.

For example I once did a dungeon with another ranger who was level 76 and who didn’t even know he could swap his pet when they died, because it was his first character and he’d listened to a friend who told him to level by crafting and then do dungeons.

But instead of simply telling him he was playing wrong or trying to correct him I started a conversation. I asked him why he didn’t swap his pet when it went down, he asked me what I meant and I explained what pet swapping is and the benefits of it. From there we got on to a discussion about the different pets and the pros and cons of each one, and then on to ranger builds in general and skills he understood (signets) and ones he didn’t (everything else) and how to figure out when and how to use them. All of which was in between fights during the rest of the dungeon.

Obviously it took longer than me simply telling him he was wrong and ordering him to change his build, or kicking him with no explanation and looking for someone who had already figured it out, but it also worked better and at the end of it we had a new guild member too.

Can I just remind everyone that we’re talking about 1 NPC with 3 or 4 lines of dialogue who is simply standing in LA? She is not part of the story, or even a dynamic event. You do not have to speak to her unless you want to.

I suspect many people in this thread would never even have noticed her if it wasn’t for the topic. (In fact I’ve seen several people giving their opinion on Anet’s “statement” and then coming back to say they cannot even find the NPC in question!)

I hardly think this is Anet making a statement or going out of their way to promote any gender or lifestyle and certainly not forcing an agenda on you, me or anyone else. If you’d be ok with it as long as it’s not overt and you can ignore it then you’ve already got exactly what you wanted.

Unless you also consider NPCs mentioning the fact that they have a wife or husband if you speak to them to be Anet making a statement on traditional families and pushing a pro-marriage agenda?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Picture: Argonian. Lizard based race. Female has breasts (because she’s female so they stuck breasts on her. Not because it makes any sense for a lizard to have breasts).

That bothers me too. I can just about accept it with the khajiit because at least they look like mammals (and I think they do produce milk for their young). But the Argonians lay eggs and when they young hatch they feed on Hist sap (which comes from trees) so there is literally no purpose to them having breasts and, unlike the sylvari, nothing in their history to suggest they developed from or copied a race that did. It’s purely bias on the part of the game designers who apparently couldn’t get over the idea that female humanoids must have breasts, even when creating an otherwise very original race.

I don’t think we know that much about asuran reproduction, other than they don’t lay eggs. But there’s not really any connection between the method of giving birth and the method of feeding the young (other than animals that lay eggs and then abandon them or die can’t feed the babies). The fact that most real-life animals either lay eggs or breastfeed is largely a coincidence, like most vertebrates having four pentadactyl limbs.

There are animals which lay eggs and breastfeed (monotremes) and animals which have live birth and don’t breastfeed like most sharks. (Fun fact, sharks are born with a full set of teeth and can and will bite even before they’re born, given the chance.)

In fantasy where you don’t have to follow the Earth’s evolutionary process or even the laws of physics and chemistry you’ve got even more options and I think it would be extremely boring, as well as look strange, to restrict all races to just one of those simply because it’s the one we expect from our own species. Where’s the fun in having different races to play if they’re all basically humans with different heights and skin colours?

I think they did a really good job under the circumstances.

This game has exceptionally good up-time. As other people have said most MMOs are taken offline for several hours every single time there’s a patch, and if they need to do an emergency fix after that they take it offline again.

Their players, including those who pay a subscription for access to the game, don’t get any compensation for that, it’s considered a normal part of playing an online game.

We experienced that once in 4 years. I think we could consider every other patch day when the game has remained online and we just had to re-log to pick up the new version our compensation.

I think the problem is that some people are treating the trading post like it’s an auction – thinking that you have to maintain the highest bid until the sale goes through or you won’t get your item.

That’s not how it works. You’re not placing competing bids for a single item, you’re offering to buy one or more of those items (usually one of tens, hundreds or thousands in circulation). If someone places a higher bid it doesn’t mean they’ve beaten you and you’ve lost out, it just means they’ve jumped to the front of the queue and you have to wait a bit longer.

If you can’t wait and would rather pay more to get the very next one sold then you can do that by increasing your bid – to match the lowest sell order. That way you get your item instantly.

I almost never watch items after placing a bid, and when I do it’s because I’m expecting it to sell very quickly and don’t think it’s worth doing anything else (like when I’m buying silk for crafting). Other than that I place my bid and then pretty much forget about it. Quite often it’s at the end of the day when I’m about to log off anyway, but if I do stay online I just carry on playing.

Sometimes I happen to notice I’ve been outbid, but even then I don’t rush to change my bid, I just wait for those ones to clear and to move back to the top of the list. If it’s been more than a few days I might reassess the situation. 15 days is my arbitrary cut-off point but I can only remember a couple of times I didn’t get my item/s before then. Even when I was buying a precursor (a very competitive item with relatively low availability compared to what I normally buy), I placed my bid, happened to notice I was outbid before going to bed but didn’t change it and came back from work the next day to find I’d got it.

I actually feel like they’ve done a good job of making it look new whilst retaining the essence of the original. It’s still got the roofs shaped like ships hulls, the sails and nets and other nautical themes dotted around and some of the haphazard design of the original.

I agree there’s more concrete in the new version but even that I’m ok with. It actually reminds me of various European seaside towns.

If you’ve only checked out the area around Trader’s Forum and the Grand Piazza then I can see where you’re coming from, but if you venture into the Commodore’s Quarter, the streets along the waterfront around the docks, or Western Ward I think you’ll see a lot of the old LA is still there. And of course Farshore Ward and the other outlying areas are relatively unchanged.

Endless Soul.5178:

It’s ok to walk from point A to point B, instead of running.

I see your point and I raise you a:

It’s ok to set out from point A intending to walk to point B, get distracted by point C and a cool place to take screenshots of the sky, spend a few minutes at point D listening to 2 NPCs argue, totally forget you were heading to B and go to F instead because you feel like doing a heart you haven’t gotten around to yet.

I like the events themselves, but I also think they could have done more to make people aware of them.

I saw the line in the patch notes but was completely wrong when I tried to guess at which leyline locations might have extra activity so I couldn’t find any myself and when I asked other players I was originally told the only difference was that there are slightly higher numbers of dragon minions in some areas of some maps, so I decided it wasn’t worth tracking down and carried on with other things.

I only realised there was more to it yesterday, and that was by a very round-about route. I noticed there was a new category in my achievements, but it was completely blank. So I looked it up on the Wiki and then I found out there were actually events and achievements associated with this.

When I asked my guilds and players in LA about it they all said they hadn’t seen the achievement category, or assumed it didn’t do anything yet (because all the achievements are hidden until you gain progress on them) and wouldn’t until Season 3 was released.

Some sites had a lot of players but there were others where I arrived just as the event was starting and there was no one around. So I switched on my mentor tag (I don’t have a commander tag) and told people in map chat there was a leyline event at my location. 2 out of 3 times I did this I was accused of lying and trying to troll people by tricking them into going to the wrong location. I later learned that this is because Dulfy’s site only lists 3 of the 6 locations that are on the Wiki and apparently some people believe that if Dulfy hasn’t said something exists then it doesn’t exist, even if they can see it happening right in front of them.

I’m not sure if that’s directly related to the lack of clarify from Anet, but it’s certainly the first time I’ve been accused of lying about the existence of an event.

Actually the fountain is still there. That was one of the first things I checked when I saw the patch had arrived. It’s just to the east of the giant hole where the drill was/is, tilted sideways but still in-tact.

There’s more of the old city surviving than I suspected at first, it’s just under the drill pieces, which will hopefully be removed in future updates.

Why would anyone agree to that?

What are these guilds offering that makes it seem worth 10g to join when there’s dozens of guilds advertising on any given day that will recruit for free?

I can’t speak for anyone else but what impresses me isn’t a rare or expensive item but a good combination of items and dyes.

You could have the rarest, most expensive, hardest to obtain items in the game but if they make you look like a complete mess then it’s not impressive. On the other hand you could be using low-level crafted gear, common dyes and loot weapons skins but if you put them together in a way that works, with a distinctive theme, it can look amazing.

Wait, karma is hard to get? I’m a very casual player with limited time and karma is the one thing I always have more than enough of.

I keep 1,000,000 of it ‘just in case’ but every few weeks I realise I have a few hundred thousand over that and go looking for something to spend it on. Usually either Orrian jewellery boxes or karma gear to throw in the forge to make something tradable/craftable.

Oddly enough I have the opposite take on the age thing – I’m 31 and I tend to feel like people younger than me are more inclined to want dark plots with lots of sinister characters and anti-heroes and people my age and older are more likely to prefer a straight-forward story with clearly defined good and bad guys where they know the good guys will win. (Or awful romantic “comedies” where everyone is a bloody idiot and good and evil don’t even come into it.)

In general I think I fit in better with the first group – I really like morally ambiguous characters. For example my favourite comic book is The Darkness where the ‘hero’ is literally the embodiment of pure evil and really not a good person even before that happened, but somehow still better than the forces of good, who are the bad guys.

I also like Bioware games where even when you’re trying to be the hero you often end up doing harm by accident or simply find yourself in situations where there is no good choice. (And when you’re trying to be evil I can find myself in situations where I’m thinking “I know it’s a game and it doesn’t mean anything, I know I decided this character was evil but I really don’t want to choose this option.”)

But Guild Wars 2 isn’t that sort of story. There are evil (and ugly) characters like Shiro, but like Shiro they’re the villains of the story, not the good guys. Look at the Nightmare Court, Sons of Svanir, Flame Legion, Minister Cadecus (and by extension a lot of the Ministry), the bandit gangs from the human personal story and so on.

You’ve even got a bit of the charr/human war you want – there are dissidents on both sides who are continuing to fight (mainly in Fields of Ruins), it just doesn’t involve Logan and Rytlock.

I’m not sure what you mean about the dragon’s corruption only affecting the landscape though. Are you aware that the Branded, Risen, Icebrood and Mordrem Guard are all people who were corrupted by the dragons? They weren’t created that way, they used to be normal humans, norn, charr etc. and then they were turned into monsters (in the case of the risen after they were killed).

Do you know how the Vigil came about? Almorra Soulkeeper was patrolling Lowland Burns when Kralkattorik flew over. She saw her entire warband (FYI warbands are like a charr’s family) turned into Branded in front of her eyes and then had to kill every single one of them when they turned on her. After that she vowed to destroy the dragons.

Are you aware that the norn, asura, quaggan, krait and many other races lost their original homelands to the dragons? (And others lost theirs to other things, like the tengu who were driven out of Cantha by a xenophobic human government.)

Have you been to the Weeping Isle where the Soundless are under constant attack by the Nightmare court? Did you know Lion’s Arch used to look completely different until Scarlet attacked it, killing huge numbers of people and destroying the city so it had to be completely rebuilt (this is what the memorial on the west side is for). have you talked to the norn homesteaders in Snowden Drifts who are under constant attack from Icebrood and thinking they may have to give up their homes to save their families? Have you played the Heart of Thorns storyline where a lot of people die to Mordremoth’s attacks?

I think GW2 has plenty of death, violence etc. It’s difficult to find an area outside of the cities where someone isn’t under attack by something (although that’s to be expected in a combat orientated game). It just doesn’t have cruel or violent anti-heroes turning on their allies for personal gain. At least not without being corrupted by dragons.

I think it’s different reasons for different people. Personally I make alts specifically to go through different versions of the personal story. I’ve got 5 permanent characters, one of each race, and every so often I make others to do the other stories.

So for me it’s fairly easy because it’s the levelling (part of it anyway) that I actually want to do. Plus I don’t mind going back over the same maps, there’s often stuff I didn’t see the first time around, or different ways of doing it.

I do sometimes use the level 20 scrolls and tomes of knowledge, but that’s partially because I can’t sell them or even give them away and they’re no use for my permanent characters so otherwise they’d just sit in my bank.

But also every profession plays differently so that helps a lot. When I’m making a new character I’ll make them either a profession I don’t have or do something to make them play differently like using different weapons and that makes it a lot more interesting.

As other people said it’s a design decision, so that the game isn’t always about grinding the next tier of equipment.

I really like that they’ve done it this way. It means getting ‘end game’ equipment is something I can do once relatively quickly (for exotics) or gradually as and when I feel like it (for ascended) without being locked out of any content because I haven’t got it. And then I only need to re-do it if I want to change my stats.

I like running dungeons sometimes, but I like to do them when I feel like it, not because I can’t continue the story until I’ve got enough dungeon equipment. I like the idea of raiding but won’t be able to commit to even my guilds casual/trainee raid squad until the New Year and I love that I can still go and play in the new maps without having any of the rewards from raids.

And it leaves me time to focus on goals I’m interested in. I like collecting mini pets which takes a huge amount of gold and various other currencies and therefore time. I also like to do map completion (whether I need the rewards or not), jumping puzzles, collect certain skins I’m interested in and sometimes I find an achievement or collection I want to do.

The fact that none of the rewards are required to access other content means it’s up to me which rewards I pursue and in what order instead of having to follow the path the developers have chosen.

It’s not quite the same as the old-school sandbox MMOs – the way my sister played Ultima Online (mainly staying in town crafting, trading and throwing parties) was so different to the way I played (exploring solo and doing dungeons with a guild) that we could have been playing different games. But it’s the same idea of letting you define your character and your activity.

If you want to show another player your gear or build there are numerous websites to let you do that, or you can ping it in chat. If they want to know what you’re using they can ask.

I don’t see any need for Anet to build a tool into the game to allow random strangers to critisise your build.

I would love this.

It was one of the things I really enjoyed in Ultima Online. I used several books to keep notes for myself, which was useful but can be done with a word document (or even a real life note book). But what I really loved was the ability to trade books or leave them in places for people to find.

One of my favourite memories of that game was making my way out to a remote peninsula on the edge of nowhere (north west of the main continent if I remember correctly) that had absolutely nothing on it to give players a reason to visit, and then finding a ‘Visitors Book’ in a clearing with notes from all the people who had been there.

Purgatori.3645:

This subject has been covered over and over.

The same points keep being made …. you are CHOOSING to gamble if you buy black lion chests and keys. Complaining about your choices to do so is moot.

If you want a guaranteed glider, buy it in the gem store since you have no problems supporting Anet

The problem is there are some gliders which are only available though the chests, so if you want them you don’t have a choice – you gamble or you miss out. (Or you gamble and miss out because you don’t get that specific drop.)

I don’t understand why they’re doing it either. I always thought one of the best things about the chests was they’re completely optional because everything in them is either tradable or available somewhere else so you only need to gamble if you want to. Then they changed that. I’m highly sceptical that it will get more people to buy keys so it seems to be purely disadvantaging people who can’t or won’t gamble for the items they want, and losing Anet money in the process.

As many people have pointed out every time this topic comes up there is a lot of lore in GW2 and background to every single event.

The problem is that it takes some getting used to how it’s presented and apparently a lot of people haven’t managed that yet. You won’t ever be presented with a single text box or cut-scene giving you all the background and lore to an event. Instead you have to spend some time in the area listening to and speaking to the NPCs before, during and after the event.

A good example are the “bunny events” in Wayfarer Foothills. The way most people play GW2 you get to the top of Hangrammr Climb, an NPC suddenly wants fur, you collect it, she runs off, you protect her for a while, you get 2 event rewards, end of story.

But if you listen to the NPCs you can get the full story behind it. In brief there’s a small group of norn who, for reasons I forget (but you can learn if you ask them) have decided to worship the spirit of Hare (or Bunny) and to do so by caring for a group of rabbits found at the top of the cliff. Something has been mysteriously killing off the rabbits and they’re convinced it’s a yeti but need proof, so you help them collect fur samples.

Then they perform the ritual of the jackalope to summon a champion of Hare to help them take down the yeti, subdue (exhaust) it to prove themselves worthy to Hare and then it guides them to their foe (which turns out to be a jotun and not a yeti, but still).

And that’s just a small 3 event chain. You get much more depth with bigger ones. Spend some time around Gods Lost Swamp and you can learn how and why the Shadow Behemoth appears (kind of amusing if you ever played GW1, especially if you did UWSC) and why we have to defeat it.

There are also a lot of non-event “quests”. NPCs will mention missing friends, or rumoured hidden treasure nearby or ask for help with a task, or simply hint that something significant might happen in a particular area. The game will never tell you that you must, or even should, help them but you can, just like you would in other RPGs.

I’m glad to hear this system is not set in stone and can be fixed based on our feedback.

I’m also hoping the ‘fix’ for the rangers profession mechanics means we’ll be able to at least name our pet from level 1 (it’s a small thing, but it bothers me every time I see it) and preferably use F1 and F3 from the start as well so we can actually fight instead of having the AI dictate targets.

I couldn’t disagree more. I love exploring the maps and finding new areas, it’s one of my favourite things to do in this game.

But then it’s one of my favourite things to do in any game, even ones that really don’t give any reward. Not just a reward you don’t consider to be worth the time and effort, I mean literally nothing. You find a cave on the edge of the map, climb all the way through it and there’s nothing in there at all and no achievement for having gotten there.

For me the fact that you can get a chest with some items or an achievement is a novelty and makes me feel like exploration is encouraged, even if those rewards aren’t unique to that specific content. And IMO it’s better that way because I’m well aware that there are also people like the OP who don’t like to explore and would rather get rewards other ways because it’s faster, more efficient or just more fun. Since the rewards aren’t unique we have a choice and can all get them while playing the stuff we want to do.

Of course not every single corner of the map, climbable piece of scenery, cave etc. does have a reward, some are just random bits of the map. But to me that’s actually part of the appeal because it makes it more exciting when I do find something. If I knew for a fact that every single cave was a jumping puzzle or mini-dungeon it would be boring, going in not knowing what I’m going to find makes it more exciting.

On top of which there are ‘intangible’ rewards. There’s a particular cliff in Dry Top with a vine on top which is climbable. By the OP’s definition there is nothing worthwhile at the top so climbing it is a waste of time. But for me (and based on screenshots I’ve seen many other people) you are rewarded – with an amazing view of a large area of the map.

Or to use an example from launch there’s the AC turkeys. This is a mini jumping puzzle inside a dungeon which rewards you with absolutely nothing except the sight of a room randomly filled with (immobile) turkeys. It doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t give you anything but I love it and most of my dungeon groups take a quick detour to see it, especially if someone in the group hasn’t been there before.

I think it was an attempt to please the people who were demanding a dungeon grind for vertical gear progression (which is apparently the only acceptable form of “end game” for an MMO to a lot of people).

They’ve got their dungeon, they can grind it indefinately and earn drops with better stats if they do, which then allow them to grind the dungeon even more. But the difference is minimal enough that everyone else is free to ignore it and get on with playing the game.

Mephane.8496:

Lol, and on top of that you can’t by the minis explicitly like you could during Halloween.

@ArenaNet: You do realize that if I could just by a Winter’s Day Mini Pack with all 3 Minis, and transform them into the Baby Quaggan in the Mystic Forge, you would probably get me to by the Mini Pack Twice to get all 4 pets. This way, however, I won’t even bother. I will not gamble real money for ingame pets.

This.

As soon as I knew there would be minis in GW2 I decided I wanted to collect them, and that I was going to make a special effort for the limited time only ones. I bought 2 sets of Halloween minis with real money so I could get all 4. I bought gems and changed them into gold to spend on making consortium chests to get those minis and I’m saving to get the Reef Drake off the TP because I didn’t get one during the event.

But I cannot and will not pay out real money for a random chance like this. It’s far more likely that I’ll be stuck with an inventory full of account bound stuff I don’t even want and no way to even swap it for the items I did want.

It’s an especially bad move at a time of the year when many people cannot afford to spend much on themselves because buying gifts, food, travel etc. for Christmas is taking up their available income.

I, and many other people have said it before and will keep saying it again – selling account bound items for real money is fine. A random chance at items is fine as long as there’s some way to swap the ones you don’t want. But paying real money for a random chance at items with a high probability you’ll be stuck with ones you don’t want is asking too much for too little in return.

The fact that it’s possible to create a free account won’t have any direct impact on you if you have a paid account – nothing has been changed for you and in most cases you won’t be able to identify free players in-game. (I think the main clue is they use say chat more because they can’t use map chat.)

But if you’re playing on a free account it’s quite different because there’s a lot of restrictions on what they can do.

That link goes to the full list on the Wiki but here’s some of the key points:

• Only 2 character slots
• Can’t choose or change server
• Won’t get login rewards
• Can’t use map chat at all or team/squad chat before level 30
• Can only whisper mutual friends or people on the same map once every 30 seconds
• Can’t sell or buy most items on the TP (even most weapons and armour)
• Can’t use guild banks
• Can’t leave starter maps until level 10, can’t enter LA until level 35 or WvW until level 60
• Can’t use gold to gems exchange
• Can’t post on the forum

I think of the free version as basically a demo. You have access to most of the content in the game – you can play the story, explore PvE maps, play PvP, level up and get new equipment etc. so you’ve got plenty of opportunity to get a feel for the game and decide if you want to stick with it, but the restrictions make it impractical to play on a free account long-term so if you do want to keep going sooner or later you’re going to want to buy a full account.

There are several factors involved in getting Hall of Monuments rewards in GW2. Some of this might seem very obvious, but from past experience it’s easier to cover the whole process from the beginning than to try and guess at the relevant parts.

1. You need to own a copy of GW1 that includes at least 1 campaign and Eye of the North. (Sounds like you’ve got this already.)

2. At least one character on your GW1 account needs to have visited the Eye of the North outpost.

3. The Monument of Honour (which stores titles and other achievements) is unlocked right away but the rest need a tapestry added first. You get tapestries during the EOTN storyline, or you can buy them from other players. Adding a tapestry only unlocks the monument for that character so it’s a good idea to think about which ones you’ll use. In particular you can only add one copy of each hero/pet to the Fellowship monument and one copy of each mini pet to the Devotion monument so you only really need to unlock those on one character, but make sure it’s one who has all the heroes.

4. Once the monument is unlocked you need to add things to it. Even if this is the first time you’ve visited the Hall if you’ve been playing GW1 for a while you’re likely to have some things you can add. The individual monuments pages linked from here give you a full list of what can be added to each one: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_Monuments

It’s easy to forget but every time you earn a title, upgrade a heroes armor, get new armor yourself etc. you need to actually go the hall and click on the monument to add it, otherwise it’s not counted.

(You can also speak to Kimmes the Historian in Pre-Searing Ascalon City to add the Legendary Defender of Ascalon, so you can keep your perma-pre if you have one.)

5. You need to log out of GW1 for the update to carry over to GW2 or the reward calculator website. (And possibly need to log into GW2 after logging out of 1, but I’m not entirely sure.)

6. Go to the Hall of Monuments in GW2 by using the portal stone. If you’ve unlocked the Black Widow Spider or White Raven you’ll see them wandering around. The other rewards you can get by speaking to Kimmes the Historian who is standing on a lily pad in the middle of the pool in the hall itself. (The Rainbow Jellyfish is swimming in the pool below him.)

Achievements and titles show up automatically on the achievements panel.

Well you have to remember not all of that is profit.

Even Evon Gnashblade has to pay his staff, all those TP locations are manned 24/7 by 1-3 agents, then there’s the weapons specialists (and anyone with specialist in their job title is going to be earning more), the Armor and Weapon traders, and that skritt who’s sorting the warehouse.

Plus they’ve got to feed the pigeons, and now parrots, ravens, griffons, quaggans and who knows what else. (They’re probably getting a good deal on the ghosts though, I think they feed mainly on despair and inconsolable rage so a few minutes of free time to hang around the Mystic Forge probably does it.)

I don’t understand why they didn’t make it an actual rifle either. It’s a really nice skin.

I am one of the players the OP mentioned – I work during the week and can only reliably play on weekends. Some week nights I’m on but I definitely can’t be on every day. And some days when I am on I don’t feel like doing whatever the daily needs.

But I have no problem with dailies. In fact I really like the current system precisely because I don’t feel forced to do them. There’s no real consequences if you miss one, it will take you a bit longer to get that gear than someone else, but that’s going to be the case for some people no matter what system they use.

You can’t catch up by grinding it on the weekend, but if that was an option you’d actually end up even further behind because the people you imagine yourself competing with would be grinding it all week.

I don’t understand why it’s such a big problem.

I was under the impression that the main reason most people did the dailies was to get the laurel (and maybe the mystic coin), but now you don’t have to do that because those come from the login reward.

The only reason to do a daily achievement is if you want the new rewards unique to that achievement (or if it’s something you were going to do anyway) and the only reason to do the meta achievement is if you want 10 AP. Because that’s all you’ll get from it. If you’re doing it for a laurel or XP or whatever else then you’re wasting your time right from the start.

This affects me too. It’s going to be much, much rare that I’ll complete the daily meta-achievement. But I don’t care because I don’t need 10 AP a day, and if I do want it for some reason I can do it. I might occasionally do individual dailies for the stuff in the chest, but that depends on what they get. From what I’ve seen today I’m not going to bother with most of them.

I’m surprised so many people are worried about chat/the game in general. I would have thought as long as a parent is with them they should be fine.

I may be biased by my own experiences – I started playing computer games when I was 2 (Hungry Horace on the ZX Spectrum!) and played a lot of games I was too young for, I’m not sure if there just weren’t many games for young kids in the 80’s and 90’s or if I was never interested in them but most of the ones I remember – Eye of the Beholder, Darksun, Doom 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Triad, that Terminator FPS, Warcraft 1 & 2, Ultima Online etc. were made for adults and would definitely be 16 or 18 rated these days.

But the computer was always in the main room of the house and one or both parents were always around to supervise. The only actual rule I remember being given was don’t play any game where things die (Doom and Warcraft in particular) during breakfast because it sounds like people throwing up. (And don’t play Theme Park because people actually throw up.)

But we were talked through a lot of things. Including the first time someone tried to chat me up in a chat room (during the week or so we had AOL) and when my little sister discovered that scamming newbies and charging for cyber then logging out were quick ways to make money in UO. Honestly I think it was more effective and helpful than simply being told we couldn’t play those games and pretending those issues don’t exist.

GW2 by comparison is pretty tame. There’s no blood or gore, you won’t see characters with their limbs cut off or horrible injuries and any damage/conditions heals pretty quickly once you’re out of combat. Some of the enemies look a bit gross or scary (if they play a charr – the cat monsters – they’ll start of fighting ghosts) and occasionally a character will die if they get far enough through the storyline, but that’s about it.

Chat obviously varies depending on who is on but the language filter should help a lot and as discussed you can turn channels off. Plus you’ll be there to supervise.

As for what to play I’d recommend avoiding elementalists and engineers because they’re more complicated – you really need to be using all your skills and profession mechanics and have good timing to get it right. Warrior is very simple and the ranger can be too (plus they get cool pets to fight with them). Guardian might also be a good choice because they have very good defensive capabilities.

But if they really want to play something else I’d say let them. It’s roaming around not having a clue what I was doing or what any of my spells and abilities actually did that got me hooked on RPGs as a kid. I didn’t care that I couldn’t get past the first area, I enjoyed throwing around spells I didn’t understand and watching what happened.

Honestly I think the jump in difficulty between World 1 and World 2 is entirely appropriate for a game based on old-school platformers.

Look at the original Mario and Sonic games for example, the first level of both could be completed pretty much by holding down right and pressed A occasionally. But as soon as you’re beyond the first few levels you’ve suddenly got a lot more to deal with, traps, enemies you can’t jump on, power-ups you need to acquire and use at the correct moments, lava. If anything I think World 2 of SAB is more forgiving than the Marble Zone in Sonic coming right after Green Hills.