Guild Wars 2

With a new expansion just behind the horizon and Dragon Stand being a map with so many “access issues” theses days (limited time slots to get on the map, less people playing the meta, success needed to spawn Noxious Pods at camps), wouldn’t it be great to have a Noxious Pod at the home instance?
The would allow players to slowly gain Crystalline Ore every day, without running around DS searching for 3-4 Noxious Pods on a non-meta map.

A higher supply of Crystalline Ore would allow us to actually go for GH weapons (Chiaroscuro) and armour (Ornate) + HoT foods more often.
The variety of HoT map mats (Airship Oil, Auric Dust etc.) would also be acquired. without us having to go to every single map (while Oil & Sparks are easier to get outside the meta cycle anyway).

Our focus will shift even more when a new narrative and maps arrive, so making the life of HoT players easier with the Noxious Pod at home, would be a nice addition.

Randulf.7614:

Mikhail.4961:

Randulf.7614:

Considering the improvements in Anets storytelling and gameplay implementations since S1

The what now?

Pretty much exactly what you quoted. Whether it is still “good” or “great” or not is a different subject, but there is noticeable improvement in the consistency of both story and dialogue since S1. An episode for eg no longer involves fixing signposts or map wide invasion events which progressed the story by almost nothing over a month+.

Gameplay mechanics in Silverwastes, S2, HoT maps and S3 also show varying degrees of gameplay improvements since S1.

Improvements vary greatly in these places, but it would be ridiculous to suggest Anet haven’t improved in these areas whatsoever.

I can’t talk about season 1 because I missed it, I’ve only seen some parts of it in different videos.

But I can compare season 2 and 3 as I played both of them. I noticed some sort of consistency in season 2 as it felt like if it’s been written mostly in one part. Characters had their personality, it’s been believable and interesting.

Season 3 however is an utter mess. There’s no consistency in the behaviour of the characters, everything feels completely unnatural and just makes sense if you look back (character 1 did this in episode 2 because he needed to find out things that will be clear in season 5 and the like). I didn’t notice any fixed style in the dialogue except for Taimi maybe. Plus, characters are just gone for no reason because of problems regarding the availability of voice actors and the like, so characters are missing the entire season and suddenly appear claiming: “I had stuff to do” makes it hard to believe. Your own character is constantly told to go there, go back to the other place, OH somehting else again happened there – only to justify the quantity of maps we’ve gotten
Oh look even more gw1 lore that’s been artificially put in there because people wanted to see more of it, go take a look! The entire season just feels artificial, like they’ve tried to put EVERYTHING in there from episode 2 on. The reveal of episode 5 – if it’s the truth as we know it at this point – is actually ridiculous if you look at the story as a whole.

The design of the instances vary as well, they’re either interesting, showing some exploring, investigating, speculating as in episode 1 – Out of the Shadows or rather boring, endless enemies in waves (vanilla GW2 personal story) like in A Crack in the Ice or even something completely different in other episodes.
You can notice that as well as you read through the feedback threads of each episode. The reason could be that season 3 has been officially confirmed to be written by 3 different teams in a certain rotation. Pretty difficult to keep consistency up if the teams are working on their own.

So I don’t agree to call season 3 an improvement over the other season(s).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Funny, at the time, the story of Living World Season One was decried as terrible. Even after it finished. It only became ‘good’ years later. Might be a case of ‘grass is always greener’, or something.

That is simplifying the situation enormously. There were plenty of people who enjoyed S1 at the time and still hold that opinion. There are also plenty of people who never got to experience it who also would like to it return. It is those groups who tend to make these threads and a case for its return.

Considering the improvements in Anets storytelling and gameplay implementations since S1, even though I largely disliked all but a few aspects of it, I would actually be quite excited to see what they could do with the season using their built upon experience. That’s one reason I support its return despite being vocally against it at the time.

Regardless to the quality, S1 is still a gap in the story and having it return is only a good thing assuming they can ever allocate resources for it (currently unlikely).

The biggest problem I have is what they call the DBZ effect or dragon ball effect, where animeesque villians become more powerful with every inception and the next thing is as rediculasly over the top as the last.

GW2 suffers from this alot right now, the biggest issue is that your making us fight a DEITY after fighting dragons, whats next? The Cosmic essense of creation itself?

This kind of thing invalidates the value of such forces. It makes gods look weak because they suddenly become killable. Part of the reason a god is so great is that they “cant” die in the first place.

I will say this, GW2 has always felt like Fan-fiction over-all with only Season 2 ever showing any real talent for making that fiction its own. Season 3 has started well but got progressivly worse over time. Theres no denying, the writing has just become a cluster kitten of bad decision and poor forethought. Its like trying to make people surprised at a plot twist ANYONE could have seen comming for miles.

Its like the season 1 thing with Scarlet, “Spoiler” Scarlet did all the things, Toxic Alliance/Molten Alliance/Aether Alliance everything. We KNEW this, it was NOT surpising NOR good writing it was blatantly OBVIOUS what was comming up. You were treating your audience like complete idiots and that isnt healthy for them or for you.

IF I was A-net right now this is the things id do to move the story forwards positively for once:

The Death of Dragons Watch/Destinies Edge:

While I dont think we need a character genocide I think we need closure, the next expansion needs to END the dragons watch and allow us to move ON, meet NEW characters on NEW adventures on our PERSONAL journey of self growth. Yes we can occasionally meet members of DE and DW from time to time but we should not spend our entire lifetime as the commander being involved with them.
Its time to end a good thing while its still on its declining high rather than becomming completely stale. Allowing us to finish Krally off and then going our seperate ways allows the commander to go on NEW adventures that are truly PERSONAL and a case of finding ones self.

If the Dragons are out, then kill them, dont just knock them out:

Commit to the genocide of these Elder Dragons, let us fight something else, let us take on something FAR more interesting with personality, depth and actual goals. Lazarus was so promising and this fake lazarus is actually balthazar stuff just RUINED that for me personally. You had SO much potential for this guy to double-cross us or even NOT double-cross us and just surprise us entirely by helping us fight the gods as Lazarus the Dire not some fake.

The plot twist was also too quick and forced, much like the entirety of episode 5, too many things happen at once which essentially removes any point in them being a problem in the first place. Jormag is asleep, Primrodus is asleep, this literally eliminates both as a threat for good. So whats the next threat?

Take us beyond Tyria, but not just to Cantha/Elona but to unfamiliar continents:

Post Expansion 2 and Season 3 should focus heavily on discovery, new things, the discovery of things we have NEVER seen before and peoples we have never MET in our existance. Peoples with their own personal problems, a humbler expansion with just as much threat and evil could be more interesting, it worked for a certain other MMO a few years ago that involved pandas so it could easily work for GW2.

JTGuevara.9018:

This is one reason I’m not a fan of “plot twists” in entertainment. I was enjoying season 3 until this chapter when it just went for shock value. No suspense. No explanation. LIke it’s supposed to ‘impress me’. The sudden Balthazar twist just killed the Lazarus plot in its tracks. Nothing but a “Gotcha!” to the audience. His return was pretty underwhelming, imo. Of all the places to debut one of the human gods…an asura lab?!

I’m not even against Balthazar coming back, but….not like this….Ah well, what’s done is done. I wonder how the next chapter will attempt to explain this.

Not just Lazarus plot was killed. Almost all season 3 buildup was just obliterated by Ep5 (though the whole episode, not just Balthazar reveal). Lazarus plot, active Jormag and Primordus – Anet were building these things from season begining. And now they are just a mirage, poofed in smoke without any climax, as relevant to Tiria’s world as that flying mage’s tower in Kessex Hills.
I’m just depressed now. In 2 months we will have season finale, and in half a year a new expansion, and I want to care about the story and get hyped… but I can’t. Human gods, Balthazar, big stuff, I should be exited. But the buildup was so poor (and none-existent prior to Ep5) that I just couldn’t care even if I wanted to. No, buildup is a wrong word for that. Anti-buildup (or build-down maybe?) is a right one, cause Ep5 story twists destroyed all the plots that were carefully created during previous 4 episodes.

Ardid.7203:

IMO it is possible the term “Deux ex Machina” is not the more precisely, canonically correct. What’s the word we should use to describe that ill staged, sudden, annoying Lazarus Mystery/Balthazar Reveal?

Simple, a bad plot twist. A curve ball.

This is one reason I’m not a fan of “plot twists” in entertainment. I was enjoying season 3 until this chapter when it just went for shock value. No suspense. No explanation. LIke it’s supposed to ‘impress me’. The sudden Balthazar twist just killed the Lazarus plot in its tracks. Nothing but a “Gotcha!” to the audience. His return was pretty underwhelming, imo. Of all the places to debut one of the human gods…an asura lab?!

I’m not even against Balthazar coming back, but….not like this….Ah well, what’s done is done. I wonder how the next chapter will attempt to explain this.

My asura don’t have much of this problem
Guardian (f): Aviann (double n was intended)
Necromancer (m): Bstaz (pronounced Stez)
Thief (m): Eîbon (Here I had to use a ^i because Eibon was taken, but it’s so small no one notices it)

I actually have a different problem with Norn and Humans, namely, I wanted to have a character as adescendant of d’Alessio, alas, you cannot type a name like that, it becomes Dalessio which just looks wrong.
And my Norn.. I wanted my mesmer to be called Jåndal Björsson, but the å wasn’t allowed.. so no d’A of l’O sounds, no å or ø either….
I am kinda disapointed in this limitation

Since Guild Wars 2 always tried to be different in terms of questing, it’s pretty disappointing to see the evolution in some parts of the game. Personally I didn’t mind the introduction of repeatable hearts in the new season 3 maps. It’s been the decision to hook them up to certain achievements or “quests” that bugged me.

When a quest consists of nothing but doing the same boring heart quests every day over and over for a million times… I’m talking about the druid runestone backpack you can get in Draconis Mons in particular. A nice skin (ascended backpiece) you can earn while playing the game. Sounds great.

What the quest would look like in other games: In a small village you heard a story of a powerful stone. The stone once belonged to [name]. It’s been destroyed in the battle of [region]. Some warriors gathered the remaining pieces which still granted them enormous power. They say if you put the pieces together, you’ll be as powerful as the great [name] again. Task: find the warriors, take the pieces and restore the magical stone. – You’ll probably find them in some dungeons as challenging bosses. However, you’ll have to attune yourself to certain elements/… in order to defeat them. Get the attunement in some side quests.

What GW2 did:
Tier 1:

• Buy a druid runestone fragment from the unbound Magic collector.
  Wha… Where did you get that? Why are you selling it? What should I do with it?
• Do 4 heart quests. Buy 4 other runestone fragments from heart vendors
  What a coincidence that every heart vendor finds a druid runestone fragment each day.
• Gather flowers and bring them to some druids.
  Be.. because druids like flowers. Yes. everyone loves flowers!

Tier 2:
Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. -> Collect 3×5=15 runestone fragments. Kill some of the druids’ friends and combine their elements with the runestones. Also bring the druids more flowers. EVERYONE LOVES FLOWERS!

Tier 3:
Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Collect 5×5=25 runestone fragments. Kill the bosses all around the map and combine their elements with the runestones. Give the druid lodestones. Also: MORE FLOWERS! And plant a seed.

Tier 4:
Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Do 4 heart quests. Wait 1 day. Collect 7×5=35 runestone fragments. Kill a few bosses all around the map. Kill other enemies to get their elements. Combine them with the runestones. Give the druid even more lodestones. Also: UNLIMITED FLOWERRRRRR! Plant tons of seeds everywhere. Congratulations.

You have to do the same boring, never ending heart quests 16×4=64 times. Gather 0/x. Kill 0/x. 64 times. Plus, it’s time gated. 1 runestone a day. It’s the most annoying, most boring I’ve ever done in a game. Yes, you’re not forced to do it. But if you want to get the backpack, you have to do it. All I’m asking for is a bit more creativity and variety.

Hello,

With some irony, I have a lot of pleasure to play my mesmer, but I think it’s time for him to retire in a peaceful abode, and go grow carrots and cabbages.

Indeed, I encountered a new mesmer : Ro Venombite . Even if she’s just a veteran mercenary, she’s able to break the illusion at 80%, still cast her spells in stealth, port elsewhere, and come back with 100% HP. And this, not only once, but seemingly every time she wants. It’s an absolute pain to fight her, and even if I recognize she can be taken down, I also admit she’s far more powerful than White Mantle mesmers that had 2 HP bars, or even those twin pistols mesmers that stack confusion.

So, the time has come. The commander of the pact is old, lacks training and new fresh skills. And there’s a nice manor in Kryta that’s now available, providing some megalomanic portraits are removed. Carrots and cabbages. That’ll be fine for the future of the commander of the Pact.

non ironic version : Ro venombite is yet another OP character, bearing skills with no common measure with player’s. Either it’s a bug, or it’s an intended design to have a veteran so boring to beat, but it’s time to stop the power creep, and the crazy new skills for NPC’s only.

Development time is wasted creating on-steroids variants of player’s skills while players are starving for new skills to play with. The sole purpose of this is to create an artificial challenge, and even that fails because those named mercenaries aren’t a real threat whatsoever.

Aren’t there better ways to create challenging encounters than tossing handfuls of overpowered trash mobs blasting CC’s all around ?

Don’t ask me. I think the free-to-GW1-players Fiery Dragon Sword looks legendary.

While farming some ascended gear it has come to my attention that only the trinkets from bloodstone fen have a reset item. I would really love to see an item similar to this for the other Living Story 3 maps. keep up the good work on ls!

definitely GW1, having access to 2 professions and some crazy synergies allowed for some pretty kitten crazy characters,
like 55 hp monks who were INVINCIBLE without disenchantment,
or perma shadowform assassins who were utterly unattackable,
GW1 trap rangers could place 20 traps in one spot, stepping on it means instant death,
a GW1 Edge of Extinction ranger in GW2s WvW would kill everyone,

GW1 minion masters could have their own personal army of minions and wash over enemies, until later in the games life there was no minion cap, instead minions had health degeneration, but with the right build you could negate it and keep your army alive.

Gw2 “Confusion” condi? pff! in GW1 mesmers could bury you under 3-4 “if you attack you take damage” hexes, swing 3 times and you’re dead!

the healers could reduce damage to minute amounts,
while also having huge spammable heals.

each GW1 class would utterly destroy their GW2 shadows.

i am assuming for the sake of argument that health pools and damage are percentages since GW1 used different numbers.

Only the most recent conditions get cleared first. That’s why it’s strategic to use your most damaging (or disabling) conditions first and cap it with weaker ones so it doesn’t get cleared easily.

For generic condition removal, the most recently applied condition or conditions will be removed first.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

Yeah, after the opening chapters of the personal story, race does just become cosmetic. Unfortunately the armour designs help to remove the distinction between races even more.

I’ve long since stopped noticing the more minor continuity issues with playing a charr. I play Ash legion as well, and when I think about it the story is riddled with them.

• The three orders – Forgal treats you like a fresh recruit, despite having a lifelong military background. Tybalt’s idea of spying is an embarrassment and realistically he’d be the one following directions of an Ash expert. Sieran’s failure to respect authority would be so objectionable to a charr that she wouldn’t be working with one past the first mission.

• Rytlock would not be assigning Iron or Ash soldiers to any of the orders. That’d be the job of their respective tribunes. Ash would expect intel in return – yet we never hear from Desertgrave again. For 4 years.

• After defeating Zhaitan, you’d figure a charr would report back to their legion before running around the countryside chasing Scarlet’s minions. It’s practically like the legions forgot our characters exist.

• Ditto after Mordremoth. And Caudecus (this one would be particularly important given the treaty).

I’d have to go through the personal story line-by-line to find all the places where the dialogue doesn’t sound right for a charr, so I won’t do that here. Let’s just say that the last episode had too many… for anyone familiar with charr lore, the reason is obvious.

I don’t think retconning past problems away makes any sense from a business perspective, but I’d like to hope that ANet can throw in the odd branch here and there in future just to give the character more grounding in its world.

Of course they have no character. Everyone knows that Charrs are just a bunch of taped together Asurans wrapped in a full body suit made of Norn chest hair.

Ok i have been having a really hard time believing the story lines since HOT.

Zhaitan ok i get that we killed a Elder dragon after years of work and slowly starving him and using incredibly powerful weapons. I believe after that fight Trahearne said something like we “lost most of the pact” which to me is over 50% of our armed forces.

Completely believable as much as the world doesnt show the effects of the Zhaitan fight.

The morde saga was horrible and ill just skip it.

Now we just had a new episode and my question becomes how is Taimi making this machine that kills 2 elder dragons at the same time?

She makes comments like “even i dont know how it works”, what?

I dont know if im the commander anymore or if the commander is just some character i control but we are now fighting gods and just rushing into it alone?

I am seriously so confused on the lily pads we jumped here. We keep running into magical beings who just give us the answers to things. Like rata novus in morde saga, Trahearne can help us kill morde ……… and now Tami made a machine that can kill both dragons by ???

When we first went to some of the new maps like Ember Bay people were dying like Taimis assistant.

I would just like some answers on how we are still pushing forward so strongly and running into all these beings that just help us out of no where.

My biggest question is what makes the magic we are using to kill 2 elder dragons at the same time? If we have this ability how is it that Balth can come right into our Lab, shut down or Way Point, teleport it to a new area, where i get into a volcano where Taimi magically appears?

If anyone could share i would love to see/read the parts im missing.

There are some technical criteria you can use to make more objective evaluation of writting. The “not foreshadowed, not relevant, hastily presented plot twist”, for example, would be without any doubt classified as bad writing by any serious, objective and detached professional critic. Its just that bad.
The rest can be argued about, but the literal deux ex machina twist was really bad.

After several days of using this skill, I can provide some specific points to look into. Firstly, this concept is fantastic and I have enjoyed it greatly – when it works. It just needs some tweaks to iron out some kinks and bring out it’s full spooder-man potential:

1. First and foremost, the cast delay is a double-punshiment. There’s already a delay when it fires and extends to the target spot, which makes sense (thought it could be a little faster). Having the delay before it even casts complicates using this skill, especially while flying. By the time it fires, you’re no longer where you were when you started it. If nothing else, just removing the cast delay would make this skill immensely more enjoyable, at least for me.

2. The leap it does as it pulls you towards the target is a double-edged sword. If you’re on the ground, using the vine to accelerate forward, it’s great for getting over uneven terrain. But if you’re trying to navigate in tight spaces, like the jp or trying to collect the fire-stones, it throws you up to the ceiling, stops you in mid-air and drops you to the ground far from your intended target. I’d personally prefer if it just dragged you straight towards the target. This could be implemented as skill 2 on the vine (i.e. skill 1 stays as-is, skill 2 is a direct pull). You could even have us buy skill 2 like we did with the flying skills in BF.

3. It fails intermittently – sometimes even if there’s no obstacles to impede you, it aborts in mid-pull and drops you. Maybe this is something to do with lag. Here is Australia we tend to get lag-related issues. Maybe it thinks it’s reached its destination. I don’t know. It’s just annoying. This would be an acceptable risk of using it if only the other bugs didn’t happen.

4. Replacing our weapon skills is also frustrating. The joy of using this mechanic is undeniably in feeling like the web-slinger, moving through the environment smoothly. That feeling of flow is interrupted whenever you have to stop, drop the vine, fight something then go-and-find-another-vine! This doesn’t help the game-play experience. Here’s a small change that allow you to keep the weapon-replacement method but make it a little less tedious: make the vine an item that appears in your inventory with three charges. After you drop it and fight, you can double-click it in inventory to use it again with whatever charges are left.

5. The limit of three charges is frustrating. If the other bugs didn’t exist, this may be an acceptable limitation but as it stands, it’s just another straw on the camel’s back. It would have been brilliant to have this skill permanently once the mastery is done, but for obvious reasons that isn’t possible with this design. Making the charges cumulative is clearly not possible for similar reasons. Increasing the number of charges, even if just to 5 or 7, would be awesome. Often I don’t use this skill with any particular destination in mind. I just like the flying through the air.

6. More seriously, there’s an odd glitch where it sometimes ignores where you’ve targeted (even though the target was green and looked like it worked) and pulls you straight down to the ground. It’s as if it decides that for some reason the target is invalid and instead targets the closest reachable ground. This is a difficult one as it cannot be reproduced reliably, as least not that I’ve been able to yet. I’ll keep an eye on it until some kind of pattern becomes clear.

In summary, thank you Anet. Very nice concept. Hope you consider some of these.

This will be Guild Wars 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR2Esy83MQ0

Just when I was beginning to hope the story writing abilities of the living story tem might FINALLY be maturing at long last and produce a story that was coherent, and enjorable, Flashpoint launches. Leaving aside the frankly AWFUL map which makes TD look easy to navigate, The story is poorly exectuted, chews continuity and is as lazier than most of my School English essays.
To sum up my problem, this reveal, that has been built up to all this living world season wasn’t worth the wait. It was a human god all along? Ok, with NO shadowing what so ever that the Gods were even present in Tyria any more, or any reason to suspect he would have spontaneously gone mad and decided to power grab. I’m sure someone at anet is really kittening happy with themselves that the resolution of this seaon, and why we’re not going to be fighting Primordus and Jormag next expansion is not only figuratively a deus ex machina, BUT IS LITERALLY, A BLOODY GOD, IN A BLOODY MACHINE!
Oh wonderful not only are the writing staff on this episode using the biggest crutch in writing as used by all writers lacking any/all of the following: imagination, motivation, time or competence. They have to rub our noses in it by making their deus ex machina, A DEUS EX MACHINA!
This is like those crappy movies where they try and make you laugh by being self aware that they suck.
The same logic I apply there can be applied here. Being aware you’re writing badly, does not suddenly make you a Booker Prize winner. But it does make you a fine example of of the Dunning-Kruger effect. So congratulations whoever came up with this plot twist, you’re not quite ENTIRELY clueless, because you KNOW you sucked.
Quite frankly, I refuse to have anything more to do with this episode, and by extension its map. I’ll be waiting the final episode to see if someone managed to figure out which one of the writer’s brains fell out and replace them.

After 4.5 years, I think the Mystic Forge Kit deserves its own icon.

ANet found the time to gussy up the icons for various otherwise identical icons for less-used items, so why is it that the popular Mystic Salvage Kit Icon still looks like that of the Crude Salvage Kit? One is great at recovering ectos from rares, one is a waste.

Can we get a little shininess shone on one of the most popular tools?

Haishao.6851:

GW1 was 200 years in the past.

Earth looks like science fiction compared to 200 years ago too.

To be fair, gw1 had a tech level similar to somewhere between 11th century and 14th century europe. Two hundred years later europeans did not have helecopters, machineguns, tanks, autocannon, etc.

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m waiting to see what Episode 6 brings to the table in terms of its story before I even consider getting Expac 2. So far though, based on the story we’ve got so far from Living World Season 3, I’m not impressed enough to warrant buying Expac 2.

Hoping Episode 6 will prove me wrong but I highly doubt it.

Hello Anet,

I have a simple to define issue I’d like to point out that is difficult for you to solve. The issue is quite simply that build optimization is tied way too heavily to the game’s economy.

To take you back to Guild Wars 1, you should recall that the game had loads of build craft that you could do. This was not tied heavily at all the game’s economy. Players mainly experienced build craft through exploring the game and experiencing content.

The beauty of this was the enjoyable cycle that it created. When players wanted to experience the game in a new way, by playing a new build, they would go do replay or do new content they haven’t done before in order to unlock the parts of their build they didn’t have. When a build got stale they would repeat the process. It was a cycle that promoted new experiences.

In Guild Wars 2, the problem of tying build craft so heavily to the economy is that obtaining new builds and optimizing them becomes about repetition/grind. You are incentivized to find the most efficient money farms available to you and repeat that.

This combined with the massive reduction in build craft available in Guild Wars 2 and the amount of grind for optimizing builds due to that low supply of available builds has been a real struggle for me. At this point I can only play PvE for story (and on alts), because I feel like I’m wasting my time if I try to do more in the game.

Obviously you have a long established economy that boils down to everything is tied to build optimization or cosmetics, so easing the pain of making build craft more readily available is probably a challenge that can’t be overcome anytime soon.

Ultimately I’m just hoping that you make a core tenant of your future development to be fostering a cycle of experiencing the game in new ways, even when it’s replaying prior experiences. I feel like Guild Wars 1 did this very well and Guild Wars 2 should be able to reach a similar mark, since it’s still you as the developer.

I doubt it’ll be make-or-break any more than the first one. I wouldn’t call it appealing to super-fans, either. I’d call it appealing to those who didn’t play this game for the PvP. PvP and WvW, as expected, died with the expansion. The landmark falloff is obvious at this point. It’s been slow, but it’s how it’s gone.

Those content with HoT are going to like the next one. The reasoning is because the next one is being catered towards those exact players, because they stayed, and because ANet already knows what those players want, and because ANet can stay profitable on those players.

ANet would be suicidal to try and re-convince the mass of betrayed players to come back. That’s a gamble and may just upset the players which liked HoT. They failed on the first try with a lot of time to develop the first expansion. The second expansion has been announced for just over a year, now, and we’re looking at maybe a two-year interval between when expansions are released. That’s breakneck speed for a company with so few developers.

HoT already broke the game for many, including me. Until they go against the grain of the first expansion and back to the game’s original manifesto, I’m never buying from ANet again, regardless of the state of one of the leaked elite specs being almost identical to a proposal I made. The product at its core is no longer good enough.
The original promises are pretty much entirely all broken for why I signed up to begin with. ANet’s practices are not good enough to warrant trust in their development reliability or attentiveness in gameplay improvements, either.

For the past two years, it’s been QoL at best. Sweeping changes that have been necessary for five years have not been made still, because ANet is insistent on making changes to “low hanging fruit” (quote CJ) problems which are symptoms and not causes.

So no, it won’t break GW2 or ANet. We’ve already “hit” that mark; it just won’t revitalize the other aspects of the game which many people quit over which are already failing and failing hard.

Went full-generic-Asian RPG especially with all the overdone particle effects and silly weapons/armor and I’m honestly disappointed. It’s no longer got that great rustic feel.

All I’ll say is that this picture sums up my feelings about Marjory and Kasmeer’s interactions pretty nicely. If only there was an impatient toe-tapping emote.

The Inquest is likely going to be the final group of villains in the Continent of Tyria once the Gods are taken care of.

Yeah, just’ve been to Zinn’s crypt and my character started to let loose some ambient dialogue something to an invisible person. I couldn’t really enjoy that piece of lore because…

…someone at Anet plastered devourers all over that place!

Seriously! What’s the point of recording the lore, some people still wanna hear, if they overcrowd that place with veteran parasitic devourers which are exquisitely un-balanced regarding low health classes such as…let me think…elementalists?(BtW: Guess what I play…)
I really wanted to hear the talk, but there wasn’t even a devourer to rally at, because everything is elite, veteran and quite often such a necro-bs-mob.