Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That’s because @Devata believes at the core of his being that ANet “could” do it.

I might be wrong. We do however know that their current approach was good for the first 1,5 year or so and then started to drop off more thenthey had hoped.

Didn’t want to resort to this. Air the dark dirty secrets of ArenaNet but if this doesn’t change your mind I don’t know what will. All you have to do is examine the audited annual reports from NCSOFT which breaks out the income and profit of their subsidiaries including ArenaNet.

Looking at the audited annual reports reveals an ugly truth. ArenaNet as an entity never made a profit from Guild Wars.

In 2005 GW sold 41,308 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 10,608 million KrW of that and almost made a profit, their loss was only 168 million KrW.

In 2006 GW sold 52,560 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 13,400 million KrW of that and their loss was 2,022 million KrW.

In 2007 GW sold 42,058 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 12,020 million KrW of that and their loss was 2,975 million KrW.

In 2008 GW sold 26,228 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 8,131 million KrW of that and their loss was 10,148 million KrW.

In 2009 GW sold 17,127 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 5,254 million KrW of that and their loss was 21,658 million KrW.

ArenaNet had to pay off the development cost of GW just like an author or a band paying off their advance. And in 2009 they announced work on GW2. [sarcasm]It sure looks like that box expansion plan for GW really worked out for them.[/sarcasm] By the end of 2012, the last time ANet was broken out as it was “absorbed” into NC West Holdings along with NC Interactive and Carbine, ANet had liabilities, aka debt, of 128,000 million KrW. That’s the year GW2 sold 164,854 million KrW and ANet saw 68,000 million of that and actually had a profit of 28,000 million KrW.

This is part of the reason they decided that to maintain their B2P/no subscription approach, went with the cash shop.

Edit: This also makes the taking over of distribution by ANet for HoT a lot of sense so they could book more of that income without letting NC Interactive suck up a sizable cut.

Choir Bell
Mainly just a fun toy. Also used for some guild hall upgrades and making Winters Presense. But there’s so many in the game they stay very cheap all year round, so can be safely sold, if you want more you can always buy them.

There’s an unbreakable version too, which is probably a better choice if you think you’re going to use it regularly.

Candy Cane
Gives a karma boost if you eat it, and also used a crafting material. Also used for making Winter’s Presence. Maybe keep some in your material storage just in case you want them and sell any others you get.

Eggnog, Apple cider & Buttered spirits
These are only used for the Festive Imbiber achievement, so unless you really want the title or Winter’s Presence I highly recommend selling them because they’re worth quite a bit.

Mintberry Icecream, Peppermint Omnomberry Bar, Peppermint Cake, Fruitcake, Peppermint Oil & Tuning Icicle
These are just food/utility consumables. If the boosts they give are useful to you then you might want to keep some, but if not you could sell them. In previous years I’ve managed to get myself a year’s worth of food from 1 Wintersday, now I mainly sell them.

Package of Snowballs
This is another toy. Keep it if you want snowballs all year round, or sell it. It’s also used to make Winter’s Presence.

Tonics
These turn you into various Wintersday themed things. Keep them if you find that fun, or sell them.

Snowflakes
These are crafting materials. I keep 250 of each tier (simply because that’s what fits in storage) and convert all the rest to Flawless Snowflakes and use them to buy decorations for my guild.

Quartz Crystals
These are crafting materials which are hard to come by outside Wintersday. It might be worth holding onto them in case you want them, or just because the price will go up gradually throughout the year when they’re harder to get.

Linseed Oil
This is a standard HoT crafting material, used for loads of things. You can get it at any time of the year but it might be worth holding onto.

Empyreal Fragment/Star
These are ascended crafting materials. You can’t sell them but if you complete the ‘quest’ to help the orphans who sent you a letter you get an item to convert them to random items that you can sell/salvage. They are widely available throughout the year so there’s no need to hang onto them if you don’t have a use for them.

Festive Transom
Used to craft guild hall decorations. If you’re not a scribe sell it or give it to your guilds scribe.

Miniatures
Like all minis these are purely cosmetic. You can use them or sell them. The Snowballs and Skritt can be combined in the Mystic Forge to make fancier versions and the Snowman and Golem can be used to make a quaggan in a santa hat.

Recipes
Like all crafting recipes you can learn them so you can make the items any time you want or sell them. I sell most of them because I’m unlikely to ever make the items, and I can always buy them back if I need to.

Ancient Mariner’s Oilcloth Bag
This is the only way to get an exotic aquabreather. Not so in demand now you can get ascended ones but still useful. But they’re not tradable so if you don’t want it your only option is to pick a breather and salvage it.

Enchanted Snowball Box
Contains a tonic that turns you into a snowball. If you don’t want it make sure you sell the box as once you’ve opened it and got the tonic it’s not tradable.

Festive Beverage Case
Gives you a tonic. Account bound so you can only use it or delete it.

Musical Bell Case
Gives you a slightly different kind of choir bell. Keep it if you want the toy or sell it, but as with the snowball you can only sell the case before opening it. It’s also used to make Winter’s Presence.

Sigil
Used to upgrade weapons. I think it’s also used in Winter’s Presence but the Wiki doesn’t say. Use it or sell it.

Winter’s Heart Infusion
Adds an effect to your character which turns them white and gives a frosty trail when you move. It’s also the single most valuable item you can get from a gift, so you might want to sell it.

Think of it not as a buttcape but as your towel.

A towel is just about the most massively useful thing any Dragon Watcher can carry. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold snow of Frostgorge Sound; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Southsun inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert landscape of Ember Bay; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy Elon River ; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Dragon Champion, Tequatl (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course you can dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non Dragon Watcher) discovers that a Dragon Watcher has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, WvW gear, latest gem store outfit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the Dragon Watcher any of these or a dozen other items that the Dragon Watcher might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of Tyria, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

So wear your Buttcape Towel with pride. Everywhere you go people will see it and say, “Now that’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”

And that the truth. ^^

Astralporing.1957:

TexZero.7910:

Also sounds like your blaming the mode for the fault of the people. Instead you should be putting the fault directly where it lies, the people you associated with.

The people were, for the most part, completely fine as long as no raids were involved.
(also, i generally do not tend to blame people for things that aren’t their fault)

If raids brought out bad behavior, then the potential for the bad behavior was already there. I’m more inclined to ask people to accept responsibility than I am to assign blame. However, if someone gets nasty over failure, over who got the desired virtual reward or whatever other myriad bones of contention you might care to name, then they got nasty. If you want to deny them the responsibility for their behavior by excusing it because of the game mode, that’s a curious choice.

For content to offer meaningful challenge to skilled players, it has to be to some degree hard. That means there has to be the possibility of failure. Failure tends to bring out the worst in some people and the best in others. Also, avarice, impatience, jealousy, egotism and other demons can dog cooperative efforts.

Easier content may mean those behaviors don’t come out. Does that mean there should only be easy content? No. In a game genre that survives by attracting multiple distinct player types, it means that players should recognize that if they don’t want to risk exposure to conflict in a game, they should avoid harder content except with people they know don’t carry that kind of baggage.

So why don’t they? Two reasons. They want the virtual gewgaw and they want convenience. That’s all these debates ever come down to.

First of all, you’re assume a new player cannot be a good player.

Secondly, you’re assuming the player’s build is all that matters, rather than strategy and situational awareness.

i just did it at queensdale in the cave at scaver waypoint.. just dont go into combat, i hit the same one over n over till completed. yay

Toasa.1236:

New Players should be NOT able to kill good Players just because of the build.

Good players don’t die. :P

I dont blame flippers for the price hike on glacial fragments, I blame those scribes and decorators, who keep buying it at high prices.
Flippers dont destroy supply, consumers do.

There are Communities on EU and NA who organize every meta event at least once a week and some events even daily

If you play on EU servers:

ts.gw2community.com
gw2ts.de (this is a german TS !)

check these 2 Teamspeak servers out
You can see the meta/boss events planned for the current week (new plan every monday i think) in the Events channel that both of these have somewhere at the top
(called “Events & Termine” on german TS and “Event Area (Read Description)” on english TS)

For the english TS you can also look it up at the calendar website
http://gw2community.com/calendar/
blue marked events are repeated everday and the green ones change from week to week

Just search for Triple Trouble and get ready for the day and time when it will be organized

You won’t need to talk or say anything .. just join the right channel and listen and be prepared to join on certain players in order to jump to the correct Map instance on which the event will take place

If you play on NA:

ts.ttsgamers.com
With a website for planned events:
http://ttsgamers.com/event-calendar/

glicko calculations to predict/assign rating haven’t changed and won’t change unless the glicko dude (or a protege) himself decides it’s time for glicko3.

building a matlab/python/r script or an excel spreadsheet is perfectly doable with what’s on the wiki, just kind of a big side project and means you aren’t playing the game.

Adry.7512:

Nowadays guilds are just a means of socializing with other players, and to find an easier method of locating things to do.

What are you talking about? Guilds have always been a social tool. It falls into the category as LFG, map chat, friends/followers. Most of your first paragraph touch on content which isn’t the primary function of the guild system. In fact, with the introduction of guild halls, guilds have actually received some content, and more gets added as decoration are expanded. In the pre-expansion game, guilds were almost non-existant in terms of content, and a purer tool.

Adry.7512:

There is no such thing as having one guild. you will be heavily disappointed if you try to dedicate yourself to one guild.

Why is having just one guild a good thing? You can still dedicate most of your attention to one guild while being part of others.

Adry.7512:

There are small and personal guilds, but for the majority of the time, ITS HARD to find ANYONE willing to help you do anything that you want to do. Whether its fractals, WVW, SPVP, dungeons, you name it. Everyone is doing their own thing or doing guild missions. Maybe in the near future developers will try to make guilds a more personal experience, and more relevant. At the moment many other aspects of the game are being worked on right now….the most latest being SPVP.

That’s a complaint against your guildies, Anet can’t develop to account for that. These people are supposed to be your friends, not be providers of services to fulfill your agenda. That’s a very selfish way to view a friendship. And with most good friendship, it’s a 2-way street… you get what you give.

If I were in your shoes, I’d take a long hard look at myself and ask: Who is the dead weight in this relationship? My guildies or me? If it’s the former, find a guild/players you do get along with (using your ability to join multiple guilds if you don’t want to lose track of your current one). If it’s the latter… well, only you can change that.

Take your complaint about your guild being useless in helping you get your Ad Infinitum collection thread and turn the question around… have you helped any of them when they needed it?

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

I have reproduced this internally and I see the issue. And yes, it’s all my fault…

The fix should be included in the next patch. Unfortunately as I missed our hotfix deadlines, that could be a while ;_;

Until then, you do not have to reset the entire instance to fix this.

The bug occurs when the game destroys the wisp that you are holding, which happens on the event failure. If you drop the wisp, you are not affected. When the event fails, each player who had a wisp destroyed can log out, and log back in, and then they should be able to pick up wisps again.

I am very sorry for this inconvenience. I can see this making swampland runs quite tedious if you are wiping :c send me your hate mail and I will open it with shame.

Guess who’s off the Christmas card list!

Jokes, don’t beat yourself up.. these things happen, the joys of programming Props for communicating and resolving the issue quickly though. Even if our hotfix will be delayed slightly.

I’m going to say my peace here because I have a feeling I’m one of the commanders that OP is complaining about.

Yes, I kicked you from my squad 2 days ago as soon as you joined. You can cry “racism” and “xenophobia” all you want on here (not that anyone here seems to believe that anyway, lol), but here’s why we really kicked you:

1. We put up an LFG for experienced people only. Believe it or not, most of us HAD been in raids with you before. We’ve been in pug raids with you where you have caused the squad to wipe on multiple occasions for failing simple mechanics, not communicating, and generally not being a team player. Based on our negative experiences being in raids with you, we didn’t think you would make a good addition to our squad.

2. Going off of everyone else in this thread, you have made a seriously bad reputation for yourself on these forums. I have seen many of your ridiculous threads myself. My other guildmates have too. We wanted nothing to do with it or you because of it. That’s why when you whispered me and said “Do I know you?” I responded “No, but we know you.” And then I blocked you, because I knew you would be the kind of person who would not let it go, and I did not have the time to sit there and help you validate your life choices.

In the end, you need to accept the fact that the commanders have total control over their squad. We have the ultimate decision on who we bring in a raid, and who we don’t. It has nothing to do with race, gender, or what have you. We were looking for someone who knew the fights and were a team player, and you offered neither of those. It is not against GW2 rules to kick people from a squad for failing to meet the requirements we have placed. What IS against the rules, is LFG abuse and harassment, which is what you proceeded to do for 2 days to 2 different guildmates. It’s childish behavior like this that solidifies why we collectively decided to kick you (and block you). It was not just me or just 1 person that wanted you out. All of us did. I cannot even believe you claim that you ‘don’t understand how your behavior here is so wrong’. For the amount of people on this thread that have said they blocked you or have had bad experiences with you, you still can’t see it? YOU are the problem. And YOU started it. Now YOU have to accept the consequences, because we sure don’t have to.

Stop behaving like a child. Stop complaining all the time. Stop trolling the forums. Just stop. Start having a better attitude, start practicing, and start being a better team player and you will see better results. This should be obvious, and should not have to be repeated to you over and over and over. If you honestly feel like you have done no wrong and are entitled to act like a brat, then it should NOT be a surprise that no one wants you in their raids. And after all of this, I guarantee that you still won’t understand, which makes me feel very sorry for you.

Polismassa.6740:

2) Your rating is not a pure measure of your skill MMR in a team based game is, and always will be a measure of your ability to win matches.

Just to build upon this:

There are a lot of different facets to ‘ability to win matches’. Players can be good at winning duels or winning team fights or picking winning fights or fighting on the right points or rotating between points or playing good builds for the meta or swapping to the right build for the match-up or filling in effectively to balance your team composition or playing hard every game or not tilting or encouraging teammates and keeping people focused.

Or a whole lot of things I didn’t mention in that run-on sentence above.

The difference between a pro-level player and an experienced but middling journeyman (say, gold level) player isn’t that the pro is a bit better at all of these things. It’s almost always the case that the pro is good at almost all of these things, while your middling, experienced player is good (sometimes even pro-level!) at some of these things, and just a dumpster fire at others.

Good but not great players include people that can beat everyone they face in a 1v1 but are constantly engaged in bad fights (trying to kill a guardian on a fully capped point with their thief), people who can’t win a duel for the life of them but pick teamfights they can contribute to well, people who know a single trick (condi mesmer that always goes far!) that sometimes dominates and sometimes feeds, people who often play well but tilt and throw as soon as something goes badly (thus losing games that could be recovered and won).

The really insidious part of this? If you are one of those players, you’re probably really focused on the parts of your game that you are good at, and blind to those that are holding you back. You’re also blind to the good things your teammates are doing (that you are not good at), while their flaws (in areas that are your strengths) are on full display.

Which is why you think your teammate (with the same MMR and similar match win performance) is terrible, and why that teammate thinks that you are terrible. It’s why there’s a pretty big range of play (generally the 75th to the 95th percentile, roughly) that is just an utterly miserable rage-fast, a bunch of skilled but fundamentally flawed players picking at each other’s faults.

If you want to get better, don’t look at that ‘scrub’ with the same rating as you in disbelief. Figure out what he’s doing that you aren’t – because, odds are, that’s what’s holding you back.

If you are wondering why so many people have you blocked, I can tell you because you are also on my block list.

1) You are a hypocrite. You come to forums complaining how people are toxic and elitist and won’t give anybody a chance. Yet when I ran into you in a raid PUG on an alt, you instantly told the commander to kick me because I didn’t have enough AP lol.

2) When I ran into you in T4 fractals, you kept complaining and being an kitten , even though you were the one walking over everyone else with social awkwardness.

3) Instead of some self reflection and improvement, you constantly run to forums and guild chats to try to garner sympathy and shifting to blame to everyone else.

4) You aren’t skilled enough at the game for most of us to put up with the trouble of having you around when we can just replace you with someone more pleasant.

Hope that helps!

https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/spirit-shards

Yes you can use macros to play instruments.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/audio/Sad-truth-of-playing-the-ingame-instruments/first#post4546267

Because they do not give a player a gameplay advantage, Customer Support does not intend to take action on people who play instruments using macros. We don’t recommend any. We don’t support them. If a macro causes your refrigerator to explode, we’re not going to get involved. But they are not against the rules, because the rules pertain to gameplay advantages, such as faster kills or more effective defense.

Well, there’s always the opinion of this poster who said:

Malediktus.9250
“Keeping the high achievement point skins prestigious (29k+) is a valid reason.”

The fewer AP there is and the harder it is to get AP, the more prestigious the skin is. Isn’t that right Malediktus.3740?

for those have have played for a long time ‘wall of RNG gambling’ = random drop. random drop isn’t an evil, its simply a way of making drops more exciting. And if you don’t get it, guess what, the world doesn’t end. Some modern players expect guaranteed drops and everything they can see when they think they have earned it.

There was nothing wrong with the implementation of the Strange Rock scavenger hunt. The only problem here was the community that overhypes everything and convinced themselves it was a legendary journey. The community is the only thing at fault here, not ANet. We never received any sort of indication that it would be a legendary item, people just assumed that and ran with it. Then they blamed ANet for something that was designed and implemented before this hype even got started wasn’t what the community thought it was going to be.

There was 100% nothing wrong with the scavenger hunt

kdaddy.5431:

Greener.6204:

So you spent a lot of money on things you wanted. You spent a lot of mystic coins on things you wanted. Now you’re unhappy because you have no money nor mystic coins?

I think there’s an idiom concerning cake out there which says the above more succinctly.

Actually no, alot of the WvW things were things i had before HOT.

Anet made it so to WvW you need to dump mats into a toilet that allows for boons/upgrades/ other things that you would of gotten had you just been in WvW.

As someone who spent alot of time upgrading camps and towers defending small areas in CD home land. Things like that was alot of fun which is why I am nearly done with my WvW AP yet still being less then 1k in WvW since i mostly played before they gave you points in WvW.

So to recap again, i have to dump mats into a the guild toilet for WvW upgrades that i used to be able to have threw actually playing WvW.

I have all the necessary things to make the item other then mystic coins which are at a really high price of 1 gold a pc.

I dont have gold because i dont farm the maps. And your comment alone shows you have no idea what you speak of and that you only wanted to make a snarky comment which makes you come across as dumb since you couldnt put 1+1 together and i have to draw it out in crayon for ya.

If you wanted to say hey coins need to stay this price for X reasons i be for it. No, you said nothing because thinking probably and writing down a decent response isnt in your bag of tricks.

I can put one and one together. You’re currently gold/material poor, and are wishing you weren’t. Take stock of where your income is going, and budget for the future expenses. If you’re spending your gold doing something you enjoy, great! I’m happy for you.

It’s been a year since Winter’s Presence was released. If your goal was to get that shoulder skin, then long-term planning or huge spending was already needed. The price of mystic coins hasn’t changed that much since then, and they’re currently at 90 silver as thousands are being thrown onto the market (I hope you take advantage of this).

But, as I was trying to say, if you’re spending your gold, don’t be too surprised that you can’t buy everything you want. Few people walk around with enough mystic coins in their bank to match their desires; it’s why we use the trading post.

WARNING!! Don’t go to Dulfy now!!
Apparantly she uploaded a guide on the content of Wintersday, and the new open letters collection. DON’T GO THERE, you will be informed!!

So you spent a lot of money on things you wanted. You spent a lot of mystic coins on things you wanted. Now you’re unhappy because you have no money nor mystic coins?

I think there’s an idiom concerning cake out there which says the above more succinctly.

Spook.5847:

Randulf.7614:

Felahr.9830:

Randulf.7614:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I thought the ‘Meta’ is the one that gives 100 AP. It just seems easier to do. At least the first 5, so the first 50 points. Only takes 5 days of Dailies.

It seems to give the same reward as last year. Or I expect the choices will be the same; who knows? Maybe more choices.

Correct. The meta just works differently this year – it is only linked to dailies, but you can get up to 100 points this time

id rather have a cool item than 100 ap

You do.

Last year the meta was either an old toy mini or 100 gifts. This year are brand new skins.

What meta this year? I am not even seeing one :/

It’s explained a bit further up in this thread, but I’ll recap.

It’s not a conventional meta, more like a meta for the dailies to circumvent having to activities some players find abhorrent. There is an achievement called A Season of Merriment. You complete 3 Wintersday dailies each day and after 5 days, you get 10 ap up to a possible 100ap. You also can get one of the weapons in the below link as a reward.

http://dulfy.net/2015/12/16/gw2-2015-a-merry-wintersday-achievements-guide/#Daily_Achievement_A_Season_of_Merriment

I was reading a book, and I wondered what was on the last page and IT SPOILED EVERYTHING!

WHY DO THEY DO THIS?!

The good thing about Dulfy is that it’s optional. Wanna figure out things alone? Have fun. Need help? Go to Dulfy. It’s a win-win situation.

“BUT :
why are they making an achievement guide and explain everything ?!
They are spoilering around and thats boring..
Why?!"

Pro tip for the day: Don’t go to sites with information you don’t want to see.