Guild Wars 2

A full analysis would, of course, require going into much greater detail, but those are what I think of as the core properties of Preservation magic. Direct conversion of magical energy into life energy. Conjuring of physical barriers directly from magic, with those barriers manifesting as ‘solid light’. And… whatever smiting/holy damage actually is.

Keeping in mind, of course, that particularly in GW2’s time, the schools of bloodstone magic have been supplemented if not outright replaced by an increasing concentration of ambient magic. The fact that a bloodstone exploded without a profession being materially affected suggests that whichever profession was linked to the Maguuma bloodstone didn’t really need it any more, after all. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that the White Mantle started tinkering with the Maguuma bloodstone a lot earlier than the journal entries, and that tinkering is at least part of why resurrection magic in the GW1 sense no longer exists.

All of the professions have had some degree of overlap, even in Guild Wars 1.

Consider the mesmer, for instance. Manipulation of magical energy in the form of ether is a mesmer speciality… except that elementalists could also do it. Punishment hexes were a big part of the mesmer theme, except necromancers arguably had the best punishment hexes, at least until Panic and Visions of Regret were reworked. Mesmers could strip enchantments… but so could necromancers… or they could remove hexes… but then, so could monks.

Take either of the other two, and you’ll also find these overlaps. Either the lines between the schools had already started to blur at the time of GW1, or they were never that solidly established in the first place. After all, the four schools were originally broken out of a unified whole, so there are bound to be points where spells from the schools resemble one another close to the boundaries between them. The schools each have their own distinct ‘flavours’, the things they’re best at, but there’s little that’s exclusive to one school of magic. In GW2’s time, the boundaries have become even more porous.

Kitten and puppy the 5000 character limit!

We don’t really know the definitions of any school of magic. ArenaNet has never really explored that, and now with (easily) arguable retcons, even GW1 professions could have had a mixing of schools with non-bloodstone magic.

I’m not sure where you got “aether connecting worlds/dimensions” but honestly, I’d say all four schools do multiple things with aether.

After all, necromancers conjure frost and darkness from nowhere, and mesmers create solidified (but weak) fractured light (illusions).

And about professions using more healing in their magic now, keep in mind that bloodstone magic (thus the four schools) have severely weakened over the millennia and has been partially (and largely) suppressed by the magic leaked out from the Elder Dragons. Meaning professions aren’t just using Preservation/Denial/Aggression/Destruction now but also the spectrum that ley-energy is made of – or rather, the rest of the spectrum.

GW2 is definitely gorgeous. The shiverpeaks and orr really stand out to me.

I’ve recently purchased a new “high end” laptop and I can finally play with max settings (shaders, shadows, reflections, etc) and I’m really rediscovering GW2. I had no idea some parts of the game were so beautiful. Special mention to Queensdale’s Swamp, the Chak underground lake in Tangled Depths, and Mordremoth in DS (who looks silly with low settings and gorgeous with all effects on).

Really, that’s a whole new experience for me, and I run low level worldbosses just for the sake of seeing how they look with a good GPU.

I too spend a lot of time in the Tyrian maps. It’s good to take a break from the “goals” and just clear a zone. I always have an alt to work on, even if they now begin at level 40. So always something productive to do in even the beginner zones.

Agreed with all of this.

Except even with 4 level 80’s (I boosted, 3 levelled naturally) I still spend a lot of time in the lower level zones simply because I love playing them.

I’m actually playing a level 31 alt right now and just finished the Triskell Quay story instance and decided to stick around and do the heart too since I’m here and it feels incomplete to save the town from risen only to leave them infested with krait.

I think I actually enjoy the game most when I slow down, stop thinking of it as a game with goals and objectives and simply take my time to explore and do things as I come across them, whether that’s in a low level map or the Maguuma Jungle or whatever. I think I’m lucky that it’s actually very easy for me to do that, if anything I have a hard time focusing on a goal and not getting distracted with taking screenshots, talking to NPCs, following event chains or whatever else.

This is a prime example of players dumping merchants and other items inside chests so other players can’t access them. In this case there was no way to click on the chest that would give a player access to it because of the merchant. The merchant was dropped there tonight sometime before 10:22pm Central US Time.

I wish the devs would put exclusion zones around chests, nodes, NPCs, etc to prevent dropping things on top of them. I couldn’t report it in game because I don’t know which player dropped it plus it would have kept me from getting other chests which would have pleased the troll.

you answered your own question I think. people are playing the halloween content while it’s still around (Labyrinth). you can play in SW etc any time, you can only play the halloween stuff now, so people tend to switch what they play when it’s around (from what I’ve seen anyways)

I only have one 80 character with “Been there done that”. So last night I started working on taking my 80 Necro, who’s been enjoying HOT content, back into Tyria to get all the waypoints. This will help me on guild missions, or doing dungeons eventually ,etc.

Wow, I had just forgotten how amazing these zones are. I know a lot of us here focus on our builds and min/maxing and “nerfs” and such. I just feel sometimes I “miss the forest because of all the trees”. Going back into these Tyria zones for the first time in over a year, just for the purposes of exploring and finding new things, is just AWESOME. I even found some things my 100% character never saw! The underwater stuff, the “hidden” caves and caverns, the high points that I can now glide off of (better with infinite gliding), the new jump pads, it is just so cool to go back there after being away. It feels like I’m seeing them for the first time. And to think that any player with a decent PC can now see/explore all of this FOR FREE now is even more amazing.

Some observations. 1) I have mixed feelings now about how fast someone can get to 80, especially if they take the easy path that I did by staying in the low level zones. There really are some amazing things to see in these higher zones. Then again I have the same mixed feelings about “forcing” anyone to go into these areas, as the freedom of progression is my favorite thing in this game. So this is more or less just a regret. 2) I was saddened by how few players seemed to be in these core Tyria zones. I’m hoping Halloween might be part of the reason, but I suppose most of us just stay in HOT once we hit 80 (as I did too). I just hate to see such beautiful places go unexplored, and the big events and champions just “sit there” because most of us can’t solo them (or at least I can’t).

Anyway, I just wanted to thank A-Net again for this amazing game! I still have 5 whole zones to explore, likely tonight. I so look forward to seeing these sights for the second time. And guys, tell all your friends about this FREE game. I think they will be amazed.

Thanks for letting me “gush” for a bit.

Can we have a guild hall in Orr? Its a place many of us have emotional ties to, and would be a cool spot (and testament) to the progress. I was thinking of the corner north of Arah, in the corner between the Cursed Shore and malchors leap (entrance in ML)

To open, a similar cleansing event to the one in HoT?

How realistic would this be?

I find that I have to make many allowances in RPG’s with regard to immersion. The crafting materials thing is definitely not one of them. My thoughts:

• As an adventurer, I collect diverse things. Why can’t enemies do that, too? Why wouldn’t a Blood Legion soldier take something from the corpse of the Asura that called him an idiot?
• Raw crafting materials tend to be valuable. Why wouldn’t an enemy be carrying some with the intention of selling them when given the chance?
• Crafting is arguably less of a waste of time in GW2 than it is in other theme park MMO’s. I remember tailoring to max level in WotLK, making the one Epic piece available to tailors, then replacing it with a better chest piece from one of the first few dungeon runs I did. Arguably, unless you’re playing a sandbox game, crafting in MMO’s is all about being able to make a very few things that have value, and the process is a time and resource sink.
• Drops of equipment that my character cannot use is in no way immersion breaking. In fact, it would be more immersion breaking to get a preponderance of usable items. Rewards tailored to a particular character are a hallmark of Dungeons and Dragons, not a quasi-realistic fantasy world. The more realistic the setting, the more likely plunder would include random stuff whose value lies more in what you can sell it for than any personal use you could put it to.

Rox’s quiver back please! would pay 1000 gems for it >.>

While I am in sympathy with your frustration, I believe that ANet might have a hard time addressing your concerns if you do not tell them which specific items you wanted to purchase were unavailable.

Alin.2468:

If something is limited, then most of the time is limited for 1 week. In that week there is enough time to buy gems with $$$ and that desired item.

A week isn’t enough time, it’s come and gone before the pay check hits my account. (paid fortnightly)

Also the gem store is going downhill. The conversion price for Gems to Gold is atrocious, I’m also another customer wanting to spend money, except I’m going to buy Nightfury and Incinerator… Just can’t until Anet decides to give a fixed price for gem to gold, 1500 gems for 250g is really bad. Should not have gone past 1000 gems for 250 gold.

That makes legendaries $150 roughly instead of $300-400 depending on the AUD/USD exchange.

Djinn.9245:

I often wonder whether the “scarcity” model of “buy it quick because it might disappear” really makes them more money than having the items all the time which in addition to not being frustrating for people who know what they want, also allows for impulse buying. I suppose it must work otherwise why would they do it. I’m sure Anet has professional marketing people figuring this stuff out. But that doesn’t help people like the OP.

It doesn’t even need to be scarce… all you need to do is convince the buyer that the opportunity is. Just look at the infamous JC Penny restructuring, where they got rid of sales and simply knocked down their regular price to match the sale price all year round. Their sales plummeted, and nearly bankrupt them in less then 3 years. Nothing about how the prices were determined changed… just the way they were presented to the public.

Apparently people only pay attention when they think something is special or limited in nature. Thats why Kmart has “every day low price” yet still does flash sales through out the day. And we’ve all seen the riots during Xmas sales.

And now that you’ve experienced a let down, next time you see anything you might “possibly want”, you’ll buy gems and grab as many items as you can. Plus you’re also compulsively watching the Gem store now to see when it, or something else, show up there. They used to bait people all the time with gem store freebies that they’d never announce publicly.

Djinn.9245:

I often wonder whether the “scarcity” model of “buy it quick because it might disappear” really makes them more money than having the items all the time which in addition to not being frustrating for people who know what they want, also allows for impulse buying. I suppose it must work otherwise why would they do it. I’m sure Anet has professional marketing people figuring this stuff out. But that doesn’t help people like the OP.

It definitely works, which is why it’s done in all sorts of situations, both digital and RL stores.

A different question is how well it helps build and maintain customer loyalty. Airlines have very sophisticated models now for making the most money per flight, which, in fact, generate more revenue than they used to make under the old pricing systems. However, it generates a lot of grumpy travelers, who then have grumpy traveling experiences, which will discourage some from flying specific airlines or get them to consider alternative means of transportation.

In the case of the gem shop, I generally wait for items to be discounted before I purchase, so I never expect to be able to purchase anything exactly when I first get interested in it. I find in MMOs, being in a rush means higher prices, more grind, and sometimes, not being able to get the stuff I want when I want. It’s a lot more fun for me when I don’t worry about the timing.

Dave.6819:

u my friend deserve a cookie. that’s exactly how 80% of players who have legendary weaps / ascended gear play the game. real life job -> credit card -> gems to gold -> all done and ready to show off. skin wars2. quite pathetic if u ask me tho.. but it is how it is. basically an official and legit way of gold spammers.

Except the people who do this enable people like me, who currently possesses more time than RL cash, to earn gold in the game that can be exchanged for gems. Without those “pay-to-skin” types, I’d not have access to a ton of QoL features only available via the gem store.

ekylok.2410:

I just don’t see the logic in removing items from gem store.

There’s a lot of logic in it. One of the logical reasons for cycling items through the gem store is to keep gem to gold conversion rates at a stable level. When the big anniversary sale was going on a few months back and just about every item that’s ever been in the gem store was available, gem to gold conversion rates skyrocketed from around 80-90g per 400 gems to upwards of 170-180g per 400 at its peak. If Anet made every single gem store item immediately available this would likely happen again.

By releasing specific items at specific times of the year and offering sales on items in high demand, Anet can generate more income from impulse buys and also maintain the gem:gold ratio, keeping it around a reasonable level.

The gem shop is their main source of income for this game. I think it’s fair to say they understand the reasoning behind all of their business decisions regarding gem store items and sales. Just because you don’t understand their reasoning doesn’t mean they are making poor decisions.

Also, threatening to spend your money elsewhere will not change anything. I challenge you to walk into Target and threaten a manager there by telling them you’ll spend your money at Walmart instead, and see how quickly you get pushed to the side for someone willing to be reasonable in their requests. Sorry pal, the customer is not always right.

But good luck, regardless.

I suppose this has been suggested before, and I see there is/was a phone app of some sort that predated the wardrobe system, but I think we need something entirely in-game.

I’d really like to have an instanced area where you have all of the wardrobe items AND all of the dyes unlocked while you’re able to see your character in the field.

In other words, a place where I can see the character in action, with weapons out, doing moves, checking for clipping, checking for color matching issues, in a “live” environment with areas with different lighting scales.

It’s very difficult to get a good sense of this sort of thing in that little panel we have to use now as it only reveals a bit of this stuff. We only get to see how four dyes look together and only as splashed across an entire channel, not the way most players would probably apply them.

Armor and dyes are expensive and/or time-sucking propositions in many cases, only to find they don’t work out as well as you thought they would from the results in the static, generic preview option available currently.

I think this is a great idea, I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve messed about with various character looks and found that the UI is just not revealing enough, sometimes the colors do not show properly and when you end up with it on your live character it just does not look the same, worst case of that is when you change hairstyle or color and you end up wasting a lot of gems because I didn’t come out as you expected it, or you discover some strange textures that didn’t show up before.

I think it would be great to be able to test run your look, inspecting it in full size from every angle. Could also be fun to be able to personalize your changing room with scribing.

Tabasco.1743:

The combo pack is finally back. (yay) 4 days only however.

Still unhappy?! You got what you asked for. Get it. Use it. Have fun with it. You do not need 4 days to make a simple buy in gem store that can be done in 4 seconds.

ArenaNet listened, they actually listened to community about the mini cat witch and bad wings. You should enjoy, and say thank you, not criticise.

ekylok.2410:

It just makes no sense to me…I was ready to drop $50, but instead ESO will be getting that money…

And when they do return to the gem store, I may be playing Revelation Online then, and will probably not notice they have returned.

I just don’t see the logic in removing items from gem store.

So the ESO store has those exact items? Or will you be spending your money there on completely different items as some sort of “protest”? I don’t see the logic in that.

ekylok.2410:

but, what I wanted to buy was not in the gemstore…

would have bought
1 Character Slot 800 Gems – always in store
1 Total Makeover Kit 350 Gems – always in store

Why didn’t you buy those? They are in the gem shop.

ekylok.2410:

1 Set of Light Armor 800 Gems – not in store

Most armor sets are released in game. Existing sets cycle through the gem shop. like everything else.

There are three light armor sets currently available: Profane, Phoenix, and Zodiac. In addition, there are over a dozen outfits (including some that are ‘light’).

ekylok.2410:

1 Weapon 600 Gems – not in store

Which weapon? There are four currently available. In addition, there are hundreds and hundreds of skins you could acquire through the TP by converting 600 gems into 100-120 gold.

ekylok.2410:

1 Glider 500 Gems – not in store

Which glider? There are 15 currently available.

Would have bought 4000 Gems =$50 usd

ekylok.2410:

This is ridiculous…I thought Anet liked making money…Very poor business model imo.

The gem shop is the most financially successful part of the game, in terms of income exceeding expectations. It’s a demonstrably effective business model.

@OP if your point is that you are frustrated that the specific items you want aren’t available, please specify what you’d like to see. There’s even a sticky post for exactly that purpose.

Criticizing gem shop policies is a popular pastime here, but it doesn’t help change the list of items offered.

I assume he’s talking about specific weapon / glider / armor skins that he wants that aren’t in the gem store. Most people aren’t going to go into the GS thinking “I’m just going to buy any random thing”. No idea why he didn’t just list the ones he was specifically looking for, but…

This is a discussion that’s been done to death. Yes, limited-time sales of items tick people off. No, its not necessarily a bad business model, because limited time sales will force some people to buy items they wouldn’t have bought otherwise due to being limited and not knowing when they’ll return again.

They haven’t said; I’m predicting it will end on the 8th.

See also:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/End-of-the-event/6373845