Guild Wars 2

I’m Asian. I grew up deeply influenced by the wuxia trend in the ‘90s, so I’m always fascinated by ancient East Asian culture. Most of my characters have this modern Asian face but once in awhile, I made costumes for them heavily inspired by those.

Below are my thief, posing as a kunoichi (female ninja) cladded in battle armor, and my elementalist, as a noble bride in the Song dynasty gracefully playing her pipa.

Rauderi.8706:

But there’s a rather large section of the community that seems to think “pick-up group” and “high performance” are somehow a good intersection of traits to look for. Hate to break it to the pro players out there, but you’re not breaking speed records with a PUG just because you have a DPS meter. There’s a very entitled attitude that goes along with it, and it’s not healthy for the game.

For the 1% of the 1% who have static groups and push boundaries, sure, DPS meters and sharing that data makes for a great tool. For those who want to be better for themselves, cool beans and rock on and hone those rotations into shining diamonds.

For those who will cry and whine when a fight takes an extra minute (after spending an 15-60 minutes finally putting a dungeon/raid group together), stop inflicting that sourness on random strangers and get a thicker skin. A DPS meter around random strangers does nothing for you.

Ensuring a faster clear is not all that PuG’s are using DPs meters for. They’re also using them to identify failure points or potential failure points. Absent the meter, the law firm of Rage, Blame and Kick will still show up. However, absent an accurate meter the group will engage their services based on other criteria that are less accurate.

As to inflicting sourness … It’s unfortunate that people who want efficiency and people who aren’t concerned about it mix, but that’s the nature of the LFG tool. If players who desire to play as they want only grouped with each other and players who want to stick religiously to a meta grouped only with each other, then the PAIW players would not have to deal with any “sourness.”

I’m certainly not in favor of rudeness, but to be frank, there’s rudeness on both sides of the divide. Players who enter groups knowing they don’t meet posted reqs are placing their desire to get into a group with minimal effort over the desires of those who started the group in the first place.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Moonyeti.3296:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Moonyeti.3296:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

The root of this particular problem can be found in the existence of an in game economy.

Sometimes I wonder if all the time and effort Anet must put into maintaining the BLTC and the in game economy is worth it. Just suppose for a moment, all items were acct bound on acquire. (Yes yes I know what about trading and crafting). Then imagine, gold and gems were as well. It would actually have an interesting effect on in game play. Why? More need to group to get high end missions, raids etc done, to obtain desired items. The stranglehold on the economy by some (buying and destroying or holding desired items to drive the price up, etc..) would be gone. We already live with some crafted items being bound. I know, at this point it would cause more chaos then it is worth, but isn’t defending Tyria our purpose, not day trading in game?

O.o?

A common draw in MMO’s for many people IS the ‘day trading’ side of things though. For that to work, a player driven economy is required.

And gold sellers/farmers feed and thrive on that aspect. Remove it, they will vanish overnight. It’s known that in China gold farming is a regular job for some. They are living of it’s income. So no easy fix is forthcoming. As to those liking the day trading aspect, why not do it for real and make real money? Or are they doing both now (day trading in game and profiting from it in real time) LOL

Why? I don’t know. I played WoW for years with my wife and she made tons of money playing the Auction House (WoW version of the TP). It was never appealing to me, but who cares? It is obviously a thing a lot of people like to do. All I am getting from your post is that it isn’t appealing to you so you don’t even want to entertain the idea that it is otherwise a staple of MMO’s.

Mmo’s are built utilizing many forms of information, to devise a plan of action. They know our triggers and hot points. Some employ behaviorists, to delve into the psyche of gamers. Making money, real or imagined is a trigger for many. For me, giving it to those needing help in game is mine. I wish I could do more in real life, but for now, virtually helping is still helping. Greed is it’s own reward. And it’s own curse. Some “play” the in game market to see how they will do, or see it as easy and a way to pass the time, others will do as I do, and help others. I’m not so short sighted to say I know why any one person does what they do, or for what reason. We all follow our own drummers. But to speak to your insinuation I don’t care what others want, shows how very little you know about me or anyone like me. If anything we care too much, about perfect strangers. So some would lose a virtual time waster, others would gain peace of mind, knowing an unstable existence out of game, need not intrude in game. As for commerce being a staple, of course it is, it’s user generated content, just like PVP. But ask yourself this, if it didn’t exist, how much more time could be put to expansions, bug fixes, enhancements, and more.

Oh no doubt tons more content could be made if they cut any section of the game. We could cut fractals out, that would free up a lot of dev resources for everything else. But I am thinking that would make a lot of people unhappy that a part of the game they like got cut out to make another section of the game populace happy. They could stop making any new maps and only add to the existing ones, that would probably free up dev resources as well. We could cut WvW, Raids, etc. There are a lot of ways to free up dev resources, but that doesn’t mean they are all equally valid for the future of the game.

While participating in the leather farm over the weekend (maybe about 4-5 hours in total?) I spoke with other leather farmers, and the majority of them that responded stated that they were there for their own crafting needs, just like me.

Only a handful of the ones that responded said that they were selling the Bloodstone Warped Hides without even salvaging them.

Additionally, the farming squads I were in were either mostly full, or completely full, each with many non-squadded players following along.

EDIT: I know this is anecdotal, but I thought it would be interesting to share anyways.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Mortifera.6138:

Some things are a given. I don’t have to spoon-feed everything to you.

Prediction fulfilled. Thanks for posting.

/thread. (Takes a bow)

How did you know I crossdress?

Moonyeti.3296:

Endless Soul.5178:

moonstarmac.4603:

LW3E4 — Farm those centaur! After about 15 minutes I had about 20 hardened plus lots of other leather.

This is exactly what I’m doing.

Forum “experts” say the new leather farm is a bust, but I’ve joined several farm trains, and I’m getting what I need for crafting and having fun smacking centaurs doing it.

I’m curious about this too. I had also been hearing the farm isn’t good, but I joined a farm squad to hit the POI I needed up there. I didn’t even go for the leather, but in the few minutes (5 maybe) I was with the group I got 6 pieces of leather.

I think the “experts” are basing this off two things:

First, the price of leather on the trading post didn’t move much the moment of release. IMO, this is to be expected: high prices mean lots of pent up demand, where people farm leather, then use it to make those things they really wanted but couldn’t afford before.

As that demand is gradually consumed we will see more leather being farmed and sold, which will gradually lower the price to the point that people are no longer motivated to spend the time and effort to farm it.

Second, they looked at the drop rates for T5 vs T6 leather in the farm, and concluded that it was broken because it returned significantly more T5. IMO, this neglects that this is the same as any other farm (eg: wood, much more T5 than T6), and that the leather farm model means you can’t skip the T5 “nodes” on your way to collect only T6, where you can with other resources.

The returns do also more closely model the actual demand when crafting, in terms of T5 vs T6 volumes, than I think many people acknowledge when they are narrowly focused only on “things that are very expensive right now”, mostly T6 only crafts.

Dear ArenaNet, it’s very obvious how many things is wrong with the Mordremoth fight, Bugs affect the Mechanics which are pretty much how you construct a fight in any game.

• There are reports of bugs linked to how the Penalty Box affects the fight. In general it is not a Raid… It takes a long time to complete the instance and there’s only the option to Restart the current fight a player is in (BY DEATH) or Restart all 3. This is punishing the people whom experience a lot of Error.

• Maybe you should have a system like Precocious Aurene where it saves where you are in the story. There should be save points after entering the First Fight (Eir/Canach/PaleTreeAvatar), Enter the Second Fight (Eir/Canach/PaleTreeAvatar), Enter the Third Fight with Mordremoth. If you could do something like this in the future for the fight it would help a lot.

• The BreakBar is very confusing in every single fight, and most casual players won’t think to bring skills with Soft CC or Hard CC, ‘cause it is a story instance that doesn’t require players to bring specific builds, they don’t put a BreakBar as priority in their mind; unlike Raiders it means Life or Death. I have had the BreakBar stop progress in the last phase of the Mordremoth Fight, just standing there… As the player I was helping is sitting in the stupid Penalty Box, feeling sorry he died.

I know the players are going to be demanding a lot of changes from you. But the whole instance needs to be fixed and partially overhauled in order to fix a ton of already existing issues.

I personally don’t want this to be like Zhaitan, where we get a Easy Button attached to a Cannon on a kitten Air Ship.

This is the end game boss of the Heart of Thorns Expansion, it’s content that Players are going to still play a few years from now. You should care a lot more about Fixing story bugs and keeping it a good reminder of where you’ve been. Now it’s attached to a Ascended Weapon Reward, which is more motive for future Casuals and other to play through this Content. – Please fix more than just Horrible Bugs.

Keep on Topic, this is about the Hearts and Minds instance, Bug Fixes, Encounter, Ect. Only.

To Ayrilana.1396,

Its interesting how you claim that the only people who should be able to raid are those that have enough “dedication”. And people, who refuse to put in the effort shouldn’t raid. How about people who like challenges, but hate having to socialize and rely on 9 other people. Read my comments on page 3 and 4 of this topic.

Shouldn’t “challenging” content be based only on pure skill and dedication? Raids should be relabeled “Socially Challenging Content” instead, because the true challenge comes from having to deal with people. I am not Human Resources, I want to play the game, not deal with conflicting interests and drama. Yes, there is a major issue with raid accessibility.

I like how you mentioned GW1, I beaten all elite zones without other players. Some examples being Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Slavers Exile, Domain of Anguish, The Deep, Urgoz, Winds of Change(HM), War in Kryta (HM), all missions and explorable areas(HM). In GW2, I’ve done all PvE areas, events, dungeons, and fractals without needing to socialize or communicate with anyone. The only exception to PvE content released by Anet is…. raids.

Fractals and dungeons are easy to learn simply by copying the group, no social drama needed when learning. I’ve PUGed thousands of dungeons and fractals. Here is how the runs go, everyone silently plays, at the end everyone says “ty”. To even learn raids, guess what? you have to deal with drama from other people. I can’t learn on my own pace, with my own schedule, and at my own terms. All Gw1 and Gw2 PvE content except raids is easily accessible.

The “challenge” in challenging content should be because the content itself is actually difficult, not the difficulty of trying to play with 9 other people. I highly suggest you play Dark Souls 3/Bloodborne, No Leveling run, All bosses. Your understand what actual mechanically “challenging content” is. What GW2 needs is challenging content, where the mechanics are challenging, not because its a social challenge.

TorsoReaper.8530:

ASVP.9752:

Finally coming back to this game since a year or two, was just wondering what main things has changed since then.

Also, a tier of the classes during the meta. Like who I should stay away from, etc.

Thanks!

Leather is really really really expensive right now and Anet doesn’t want to fix it

Leather is expensive right now, and ANet are making changes aimed at addressing that, but given the pent up demand, and the relatively slow moving nature of economies, we won’t know how effective that was for several more months, at least.

Fixed that for you. At least, unless you like whiplash as the price tanks to below vendor sell value, and then spikes up through the roof again, because every correction is an enormous overreaction intended to change value instantly…

Ayrilana.1396:

They are side content. Just because they’re pinnacle of challenging endgame content does not mean they’re side content. You do not have to participate in raids to enjoy other areas of the game.

And this is one of most obvious examples how game is changed, from “everything is available to everyone, play how you want” to “meta or gtfo, you are not allowed to pick your way anymore, go away and play something else”. This gone so far that now we even have dps meters in game, and some people are already trying to push them further into non-raids too.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just because fractals can be seen as stepping stones to raids, this doesn’t diminish what fractals offer to players. There are many things in games that are stepping stones to other things within the games. It’s a sense of progression.

And yet these things are clearly getting less Anet attention despite being more popular and having wider audience.

Ayrilana.1396:

Yes, raids got 4 wings. We also got four living story episodes that each contained a map. So what’s your point? Raids are still a very small part of the game meant for those that wanted a challenge. Yes, raids have unique rewards but what areas of the game don’t?

I’m talking about repeatable instanced content, which is something that keeping people interested and giving them stuff to do. Living story maps gives you only some gear farm after you finished initial story. Its not like people are happy when they see either lack of new content to do in 5ppl format, or brick wall surrounding raids. One of these things should be addressed, though it better be both of them.

Ayrilana.1396:

No, PvE balances are not all based on raids. Some things will be more prone to need to be changed because of how they are in raids but are not a large issue in the rest of the game. It’s really no different than how some things were changed because of their impact in fractals but weren’t a large issue in open world PvE.

Except its not. Even old infamous conjured weapons nerfs were made only after someone used them in sPvP tourney.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raid threads are not really all that more numerous. I’ve actually seen more mounts threads but that doesn’t mean the game needs mounts. There are those that want to experience the story which you can for the most part in cleared instances. Cleared instance isn’t enough because they consider fighting the bosses as part of the experience but they want it brought down to their level. This would also be a waste of resources as players would likely only play the story mode once like for dungeons. Then there are those that want an easy mode because they want the loots but without having to put in the effort to earn them.

Multiple difficulty modes for group content is universal approach for modern game developing, and it works, and that’s why it being requested. “But you should just work harder”, “but you just want rewards for free”, “but its pointless and nobody going to play them” – these arguments are proven wrong in many games already, on tremendous auditory, including all top PvE games. Why Anet is ignoring that experience and pushing 10 years old and outdated raid model is beyond me.

Hi there!

GW2Armory now supports rich embeds, currently being used on qtfy.eu and being implemented on metabattle.com and a few other sites.

Have you ever wanted to show items, skills, amulets, specializations, or even your characters from GW2Armory on your websites? Well now you can!

Go check out the embed example page!

If you have any questions please ask, also if you find any issues or features you’d like to have for the embeds go check out the github repository!

Cheers,
madou

VaLee.5102:

TLDR; What makes GW2 different than any other generic MMO right now?

How would you convince a WoW player for example to come and play GW2 today? Because I can’t think of anything else but “well it’s like WoW, but different…it has asuras instead of gnomes, and you don’t need 100 addons to be able to get into a raid…yet”

I never played WoW, never cared for WoW.
I came from Korean grind fests, Japanese Lobby games, and a long line of failed/canned western Superhero and Horror MMOs. With those games everything came to a crashing halt at end game. You NEEDED a guild, which inevitably lead to scheduling raid dates, having to deal with other peoples personal drama and so on. You wound up spending all your time and effort to get prepared for the hope that one day your lucky number was drawn and you would get a piece of loot that was going to be obsolete when the next update came. If you missed your chance you did it all again to the point of tedium. Months and even years of my time were dedicated to a ton of drama and stress, all in efforts to keep my characters up to date. I just wanted to play the darn game, but those games became my job away from my job.

GW2 is a different beast. It offers me the experience of going off on my own to explore without needing a party to go with me. I always enjoy meeting new people just by showing up to a monster icon or event icon, not having to sit in a town and shout for 3 hours to get a party to do something. I can obtain all of my gear fairly easily and while there is some (small by my definition) grind I don’t have the dread that my gear will be out of date in a few months. For as much as people complain about Elite grinding, for me its a cake walk. I sit down for a few hours here and there and am able to knock out a 10th to a quarter of a wheel. That is super casual for me.

If I get bored of one game mode I can play another, there is always something to do. There has been no other game that has given me what I have been looking for in regars to PvP. I enjoy WvW as well, but understand a bit where the old timers are coming from that it needs some work or new content. PvE LFG is no where annoying as other games I have played. I haven’t once been unable to complete a dungeon because it was abandoned by players (or devs.) GW2 has delivered what it advertised for me, I pay one time and can play hours of content hassle free. I can play Fashion Wars without having to jump through a crap ton of hoops. I can log in, set a goal, get that goal done and log for the night and not feel like everyone is leaving me behind.

Sure I have run into a handful of elitist jerks, but they are in every game. I can honestly say in GW2 I have never had to PUT UP WITH and STOMACH those elitist jerks, I have never NEEDED them to complete any content, and that feels good.

That’s my not-so-elevator pitch. I came into this game with very low expectations, and pleasantly had them all exceeded.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Well again, the problem is a lot of players, not a few, but quite a few, have trouble functioning within groups. That’s a completely different type of skill you bring to the table and until recently, it wasn’t quiet as bad.

I mean it’s far easier to find four other people you can gel with than 9 other people.

My guild is slowly working through the escort right now. We’ve gotten to the fourth tower. We’ve yet to have the same people show up twice in a row, and we don’t have enough back ups. Some people raiding with us are clickers. Some people raiding with us have worse connections than other people. It’s disheartening.

We only do this a couple of hours a week. I saw a post on reddit where some raider was telling us that the escort is a bit harder than other dynamic events in the game. They left off the part where those who die can’t be rezzed. They left off the part where you can’t use a revive orb even. Or boosters.

Whether you believe me or not, I could raid. I have the ability to raid. If it was something I enjoyed, I’d be doing it. But it’s not something I enjoy, nor is telling people in the guild they’re not good enough to join is, which is sometimes the case. Up until now, I could get people through fractals and dungeons, but this is a different level. And it takes me not only out of my comfort zone it takes the entire guild out of it’s comfort zone. There are people who feel like second class citizens because they can’t join us. Some are older. Some have health issues. Some have slow computers. Some have bad connections.

At the end of the day, my guild would likely be happier and stronger if raids weren’t in the game. And I know I’m not the only guild going through this because I’ve seen posts from other guilds that have gone through it and I’ve talked to people in the game who have had similar experiences. Sure I could completely ignore raids. But you always have to keep your head tilted at a certain angle. And once animated legendary armor is out there, they’ll be harder to ignore.

I don’t know whether raids will be good for the overall health of the game in the long run. I don’t know how many players will leave because they can’t get L. Armor, or want to see the raids but cannot for whatever reason. Yeah, I get your point. I guess I’ve gotten used to having to ignore a lot of the game. Thing for me is, while I do ignore significant portions of GW2, I would pretty much ignore vastly greater amounts of every multi-player game I’ve played except for the original GW. That’s why I’m sort of still around.

I’m probably overstating my case because I have seen a drop in interest with some people in my guild and it’s blamed not necessarily on raids, but on overall game difficulty. I would imagine my guild is pretty average, over all. I don’t think most people who play games are necessarily good gamers. We have a mix in my guild that I think (but I could be fooling myself) represents are fair cross section of the playerbase.

I have people who want to do the hardest content and people who’s highlight of the day is the center farm in Hirathi (not the new one lol).

I mean, my reaction is from seeing the reaction of other people and being unhappy with it. I personally still play the same game (more or less) that I always have, but I can see how I’d have to keep putting increased effort in to get the same rewards and yeah, that worries me. But it also might just be chicken little yelling the sky is falling. The problem is I don’t know, so I come here to express what I see happening.

I’m actually calmer after reading this thread and thinking maybe it’s not as bad as I’d originally thought it was. I guess time will tell.

I’d be happier if income wasn’t sliding in quarterly reports, but there’s no way I can say categorically that what I’m seeing is the cause of that. It could be just a case of confirmation bias.

I hope the next expansion finds a better middle ground than HOT did. And I hope we never have that long content drought again, because I’m sure that contributed to the current situation.

I just completed this again for about the 10th time I think and hit 2 of the nasty bugs. One I have seen before which is VERY annoying and the other I guess is minor.

The first one is the “Annoying Eir” one. That is if you deplete her HP to zero weather it be by accident or on purpose while her pet is still alive you will NOT be able to close the rift. What happens is she will constantly spam her attack where the circles chase you around making it impossible to close the rift. This seriously needs fixing.

The second was with the Canach fight. You get to the part where he says to take the shield yet it does NOTHING. It reflects nothing back and does no damage. So you just drop it and hit the dude as per usual to finish the fight. Heck even the tooltip for the shield skill is simply “…” which seems like another bug in itself.

Apart from these bugs I agree with needing “save points” or something after each part of the fight where you kill off one of the summoned chars. It’s no fun killing them all and then falling out of the sky in the second take to the air part and not being able to recover and get yourself back up. Which of course results in having to do EVERY single one of those fights again.

I just did this as a zerk ele and let me tell you even in zerk mode the HP of these summons as well as Mordy himself seems far too much. Especially considering my low HP pool. However surviving the fights is not that hard but once you hit the air look out. With that low HP pool if you go down there is a good chance that’s it….repeat city for maybe another hour or 2.

I fell out of the sky twice and had to repeat everything. And even on my third attempt I fell again but luckily (and maybe due to a bug but a good one) I managed to pick myself up and get back into the air long enough for the next phase to continue and res myself. What happened was I used my skill 2 downed skill and managed to take to the air in that form (being I passed over the updraft). I managed to do this 3 times, the next phase started which gave me a chance to res and continue/finish the fight.

Tone down the HP pools while you are at it. As I said in zerk form the pools are too high. Which reminds me of the pain of when I ran 7 of my alts through way back when who were all in PVT gear. Let me tell you, it can easily add an extra 30 mins to an hour going in with any kind of survival/toughness gear due to their HP pools…no fun at all! And lets no forget that HOT was touted as being the killer of the zerk meta. How so when things take FAR, FAR, FAR too long to kill in any other gear?

Vil Lyn.

hurp.9851:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Here are some reset times:

Daily

00:00 UTC (17:00 UTC-7) — Advances login rewards
00:00 UTC (17:00 UTC-7) — Resets daily achievements; certain objects respawn: chests (e.g. from Jumping Puzzles, except for those in World versus World), and event-related interactive objects (Carving Pumpkin, Magic Snow).
00:00 UTC (17:00 UTC-7) — Resets diminishing returns for repeated completions of the same dungeon paths.

Weekly

Friday ~18:00 UTC (11:00 UTC-7) — World versus World reset for EU servers. (The exact time varies from week to week.)
Saturday ~01:00 UTC (18:00 UTC-7) — World versus World reset for NA servers. (The exact time varies from week to week.)
Sunday 00:00 UTC (17:00 UTC-7) — Guild mission rewards reset.

Why is this post giving UTC-7 as an alternate time expression? Is there some reason to think that GW2 players, or gamers, or people in general benefit from hearing schedules in that particular time offset?

Because it was copied from the Wiki, that adjusts to one’s own time zone. I suppose I should have removed the adjustment; I probably didn’t understand the API back then. Also, the original 4+ year-old post asked about UTC (PT). Not that anyone cares about a really old post/thread like this.

My apologies.

Svarty.8019:

In my opinion, GW2’s Dodge mechanic is the best thing to hit combat in MMOs thus far.

Having said that, from an overall (PvE and WvW) perspective and in my opinion, the rest of the combat system doesn’t feel satisfying. Overall damage numbers felt too high at release, but after all the power-creep, the game-play is a frustrating disappointment.

Combat feels panicky and random. Too often, huge spikes mean a mashing of self-heals way too early in the battle. From then on it’s a case of sustain (self-blasting waters, stealth-resets), which some classes are capable of and others are not.

That’s my experience of combat in GW2.

Are you sure this isn’t a byproduct of the “all damage, all the time” model that is strongly pushed for PvE content? If you build for nothing but damage, and take only damage increasing utility skills, it’s maybe not such a surprise that damage is hard to deal with, and only some classes have the luck to deal with it?

Meanwhile, occasionally in my guild people follow the advice to use a “WvW” meta build, and suddenly … they find they are able to do things that were formerly impossible, because those builds don’t just focus on damage, they also include damage avoidance, self-healing, and damage reduction gear, traits, and skills.

I need ele sword. I will fite u

Just a tip if you are worried about details and such, something that might be helpful. Personally I use a prepaid credit card for online purchases. That is it is a credit card (Mastercard, Visa etc) like the standard ones but you only have credit on it when you put it on it. So I make sure to only have cash on it when I want to purchase something. If there is no cash on it, any purchase attempt will be shot down and you are not out of pocket due to hackers or what-not.

I am not sure if your banks offer similar options but it is def worth looking into. Things like this can give you an extra layer of protection and stop things like what the OP experienced from happening.

Yes Anet were awesome enough to refund what was spent. But there are a lot of other companies out there that are not so awesome or who wouldn’t refund. So again having something like this can be helpful.

InkHeart.6201:

Vayne.8563:

Just so you know, the original is not free. That is the game you bought is NOT the free version. There are a boatload of limitations on the free version. You can’t send anything to anyone. Your access to the trading post, both buying and selling is extremely limited. You only get 2 character slots. You can’t talk in map chat. Playing the unrestricted game is very different from playing the free game.

Anet has to compete with other MMOs and most of them are doing the same thing. Imagine how hard it would be to get someone to start the game three, four expansions down the road, if the buy in price is 300.

For two years of WoW, you’d be paying for the game and $15 a month. This game doesn’t charge for a monthly fee. I’ve personally gotten my money’s worth for the $60 I spent originally, even having bought it for me and my wife.

So 3 years later, they come out with an expansion and ask for another $50?

One of the best deals out there for an MMO that doesn’t have a pay to win cash shop. That’s my take on it.

Ok, I totally agree that I’ve gotten my money’s worth with my copy, the game is awesome so let’s get that out of the way. If I had only bought the one copy and had to dish out for HOT this post wouldn’t even be here.

It’s really just that I’m an older game whose been dying to play with his family, and yes maybe I rushed into buying the other 2 copies when I should’ve waited (didn’t see the 12.5K hospital bill coming), but I was so enthusiastic about the game, and the prospect of having my own little ‘home-guild’ if you will, that I grabbed the other two copies before I had the computers for the girls to play them on.

Vegeta.2563 – Awesome, thank you for that!

First of all, sorry to hear about the hospital bill, because health issues simply suck. Of course, games don’t really care if I have money or don’t have money. It’s a business and it needs to keep the lights on. I buy everything I buy in this game twice, because it’s not just me but my wife who plays. Both my kids own the game as well, but they’re old enough to buy their own kitten copies lol.

The thing is no matter how you slice it, it’s a fair price of the game. To put it another way, would I give up everything I’ve earned prior to the release of the expansion to save $10-20 on the expansion? The answer is no.

It reminds me in some ways of Guild Wars 1. If you bought every title at the time they came out, you’d have been spending $50 on each title (roughly, I don’t remember exact prices), so you’d have spent $200 (which again I’d have bought for my wife so double). A few years later that same game was less than half price. You could get the trilogy for $50, which was like getting two games free, and you could get EotM for like $30 or later on much much cheaper.

But as a player who was there longer, I had a ton of experiences that newer players were never going to have. Like playing the game before heroes were introduced, which was a different experience. Or masks at events that people couldn’t get because those event masks changed. Or minis from festivals that were no longer offered, because it was now the year of the Ox, or whatever it was.

I get the whole financial strain of multiple copies, and I know everyone is in different financial situations, but that really doesn’t affect game pricing, nor should it…if the price is fair.

Frankly I think Heart of Thorns was too expensive for what the offered initially but I always saw it as a combination of game plus a season pass to get the living story episodes for free just by logging in. Now, with four new zones and more story coming, I’d say Heart of Thorns is more worth it than it was at launch.

Welcome to Tyria and I hope you like it here.

I gave up with WoW sometime during MoP, had a brief look at it when WoD cam out and have pretty much entirely turned my back on it. However knowing people who are still playing it I can give some pointers to what I feel are the main differences.

There is no gear grind. The best equipment you can get is Ascended (Legendary has the same stats), which really isn’t that much better than Exotic to be really worth chasing until you are doing high end fractal and raids. For virtually all the content you will be fine in exotics which can be bought off the Trading post fairly cheaply, 2 – 5 gold per item, (gold is far more valuable here than in WoW). Mostly armor and weapons are wanted to unlock a particular skin. Your characters style can end up being far more important at high levels than any gear score.

The classes are far more versatile, if you want a melee ranger, you can make one that works well, warrior using ranged weapons, fine for most open world mobs and can be reasonable support in dungeons as well. You say you have played all classes to 10, but have you tried all weapon types on them, a mace/focus guardian plays very differently from a greatsword guardian. Try as much as you can and find out what is fun for you to play, that is more important here than what is meta at the moment.

A couple of other things to mention, there is no kill or node stealing, everyone that helps kill a mob will get experience and loot for themselves, ore, wood and plant nodes will remain for anyone else to gather after you have collected them, you can even log onto a different character yourself and go out and get the same node. Everyone can resurrect anyone else, and gets experience for doing so. Leveling is quick and the more you play the quicker it gets as there are items that can be used to grant levels to alts, but it is worth taking the time to level slowly and explore the world, and find out what part of the game you enjoy, whether it is open world pve, dungeons and fractals, wvw or spvp, every thing is viable.

If you are still playing the trial version you will find there are a lot of limitations on it, particularly as far as the trading post goes. You can do most of the original game on it all the way to level 80, but if you haven’t bought the game and are sure you are enjoying it then I would recommend getting HoT.

Man there was a game that came out with multiple difficulty in raids, even a lower difficulty so that casuals could run it and get to see and experience all the end game raids, even the lfg for it was easy. Man, what game was that again, I can’t quite remember. Was about seven years ago they did it, even before gw2 came out. /snaps fingers, man what game was it, it’s at the tip of my tongue.