Guild Wars 2

Gasoline.2570:

The writing is truly getting worse and worse.

It felt very forced and out of place, I have to agree with it being quite poor writing.

Weindrasi.3805:

Honestly, I don’t see what the big issue is with the game having a bunch of female characters. Most games have mostly male characters, and players just have to put up with it. So we happen to get one game that has more females. What’s the problem?

Other games are irrelevant, we play this one and what happens in this game is all that matters.

Unfortunately men are portrayed in two ways lately, the Logan Thackeray love struck dolt or the Lord Faren comedy act, neither portray our gender well.

DarksunG.9537:

I’m surprised people haven’t noticed Anet’s fixation on female characters. Most everything they do now is gurl power, down to the random npc chatter.

Mad King Thorn and the Bloody Prince are male.

That said when it comes to allies we have not had a decent male lead in a long while.

I agree, especially with the Sanctum Model.

Urgh… I have had enough of Scarlet and her alliances.

This is the last time, if we get more lazy writing and have a centar/whatever alliance next then I am out. I will just skip that living story and any others till Scarlet is dead.

Looks like the next two days I will be doing the achievements ASAP so I can ignore this alliance exists and go off play other parts of the game.

This is some sort of horrid joke, some writer at Arena Net needs fired.

She breaks the Guild Wars lore, read up on the lore forums to find all the points as their is quite a bit to it. Racial relations, being a master of everything everything exceptionally fast, etcetera, etcetera.

Her character is essentially spackling paste, she is applied to fill the holes in the living story when needed.

Her `crazy´ personality is not truly horrendous, but the fact that her decisions, actions and intentions make little no sense means that we players can not relate with her or at the bare least understand.

She is boring because nothing has any real impact, a Scarlet story is here one moment and gone the next. Her threats mean nothing and the effects of her presence in the world is negligible making people feel quite ambivalent towards her. The character is quite shallow in the game, Arena Net may have a well planned out history for her and even some back story on the website, but none of this has transferred ingame and what is seen in game is the only thing that matters.

Sylvari may not be overused quite yet and people may still be bitter about Trahearne stealing away the later parts of the personal story. But her being Sylvari is still an issue, lets face it if Scarlet was an mentally unstable Asura (Not a unique concept) people would have been much more likely to accept her as being the unimaginable genius that she is meant to be. Picking a Sylvari, the emotionally stunted wooden (As in tedious) race they are, might not have been the best choice.

She was introduced as being the main characters personal nemesis, this failed partly due to being hyped as being better than was it was. She has little connection to our main characters and even her actions affect us only slightly. Queen Jennah who she tried to assassinate, the Lionguard who she consistently crosses, Caithe who she has direct issues with, even Lord Faren who she tried to cook alive, all legitimately have personal issues with her. Our characters do not, beyond the odd skirmish where she runs away and an explosive present she left us in the mail. The only thing she does succeed at is being a nemesis, because she is unbeatable, I would be too if I had her teleport to safety when on zero health skill.

Is Scarlet a well-made and memorable antagonist? No.
Is she the best Guild Wars has offered to date? Not by a long shot.

A few people do like her, but their is no accounting for taste.

lordkrall.7241:

Are we really so entitled nowadays

Yes, we did all buy the game after all.

As for what happened, it was obviously nothing serious or life threatening as Twitter states “Everyone is fine. ~RB2”

Now get off your self-righteous high horse.

Disappointing, but not as disappointing as last time when the livestream went forward but they did not show any of the promised Halloween content, just skill changes.

Better to be outright cancelled, unfortunately this makes the release page even more lackluster than it already is. Compare the release page to last years and you will see what I mean.

Less Scarlet.

Bring back Mursaat.

Getefix.9150:

one day her minions will end p becoming bored of her and just leave, she replaces them with skritt (the only things stupid enough to join her) and thats how it starts

As much as I hate Scarlet and think that she ruins Guild Wars lore and the Living Story, I love the Skritt more. I am ashamed to admit I would still play that content even if it revolved around her.

That is a very low percentage and no doubt it will only get lower with time.

I did notice a lot of servers are in single figures after all this time. If I personally made that content I would be quite disheartened that a lot of people have missed out.

The numbers do not look good, unless you think five servers fighting Tequatl semi-regularly out of thirty is a good statistic.

Fingers crossed we get Tequatl version three, better scaling.

Lack of forethought and a desperate need to serve the now was the problem with that update.

Very occasionally a guild may tackle him on a whim but on most servers Tequatil is a dead zone and will be for a very long time. People cry for hard content, but when offered they will always take rewarding content first. Fact is plenty of other things in Guild Wars II are easier and far more rewarding, people will always gravitate towards that.

All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that Arena Net learned a lesson from this one and have a little more foresight in the future.

M Night Shyamalan quality writing, I agree Seras.

Her character and story is poorly conceived and implemented much in the style of After Earth, The Last Airbender and Lady in the Water, perhaps even all combined.

Wait, we are both hating on Scarlet here right? Why else use Shyamalan’s tainted name.

Signed.

It is not that she herself is the sole cause of cheapening the already established lore (Though she is a big part of it). I would say Area Net’s attempt of forcing a connection between her and every other event that truly devalues things.

mercury ranique.2170:

only a fraction of the people dislike Scarlet

I can do that too!

Only a fraction of people like Scarlet.

Kite.2510:

I would rather have a Southsun fruit tree!

Good idea for a future update.

I love the idea behind the Obelisk Shard, it is a great move by Arena Net. The more achievement rewards for the home instance, the better.

jazzllanna.1278:

I really like Scarlet, but then I have always really liked Harley Quinn and they are very similar. I find her dialog to be entertaining and kind of funny.

I think that post does a disservice to Harley Quinn.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

and to flesh out her rivalry with the player

What rivalry? Beyond sending me a care package in the way of a bomb, she has done little to attack my character directly and personally.

If anything she has a rivalry with Queen Jennah, Ellen Kiel/ The Lionguard and Caithe. To my character she is nothing more than a casual nuisance.

Even Lord Faren has more of a reason to call her a personal nemesis.

You are quite right DreamOfACure.

She needs to be killed off, she was not a very well conceived villian to start with and the fact that she is shoehorned into almost every living story is making things worse.

I do not care how she dies, have her fall off the Krait tower in one of the website stories Arena Net seem to be so fond of.

Azure Prower.8701:

Why is she so popular?

She is not.

Seriously? Scarlet? That is severely disappointing.

Somehow I was expecting more with this event, it was not bad but a slight let down due to excessive grind and having only a small amount of fresh content.

I would be fine with in game books that tell various stories of the many characters. Some decent concept art, page turning, it would be like how The Elder Scrolls does it. We could even have a bank tab for collecting them all, perhaps even a librarian in our home instance.

It is not far fetched, Guild Wars I had similar books.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Storybook

Realistically though we will probably just get a tab on our hero panel to scroll through similar to the personal story.

I do want to know more about the Elder Dragons and I do detest Scarlet being involved in every story. But I will say I do enjoy the living story, I log on and play it for a an hour or so each day for a week until I get my meta achievement and then patiently wait for the next update.

It is good fun, but the pacing is a bit too fast. I would prefer a three week schedule as I do feel stressed to complete things in time and do want to play other things once in a while.

Jeff.4680:

But the Krait are xenophobic so why would they side with the Nightmare Court?!? ughhhhhhhhh… kitten Arena Net! Quit just throwing bad guys together and calling it an alliance under Scarlet -_-

Agreed, it is poor story telling it devalues what was set out previously in lore. Molten Alliance was a bad move (Fun content, but poor writing) and throwing more odd couples together for the strictly for the dynamic is not a good tactic.

Because it is a -living- story, as it it evolves and changes. It would hardly be a living story if it remained the same for years and years.

Solution? Do not take a break, it is why Arena Net now schedule bi-weekly updates, so people always have something to do, they never want you to leave!

Hopefully not Scarlet.

Probably is Scarlet.

To me almost none of that is true and did not take place Ashadow, if it did not happen in game then it did not happen at all. If it has to be explained out of character outside the game, then Arena Net are not doing a good enough job with her story and events in game, something has to change.

Plus Scarlet is not a good villain, when I think of all the great villains in games and movies, she does not even come in on the top 100. She is more of a nuisance rather than anything else.

Palawa Joko, who is a bit of a joke undoubtedly is a better villain, even the Mad King has more of an awe/fear inspiring aura about him.

Perhaps, but this topic is not really about that issue.

Ackos.7942:

Its great, but still too bad if you cant play when you can get the achievements…

I understand, but that is the point of a unique reward, to show you were present and put the effort in to attain the achievement.

It would not be a good trophy or achievement if all you have to do was log on for five minutes.

This is probably the most unsightly armour I have ever seen in Guild Wars II, Guild Wars I Assassin ancient armour still beats it for sheer repulsiveness though.

Some times I wonder, Arena Net artists can make some truly awe inspiring things, then every now and then they pull something like this out of their rear end.

I am liking this trend towards home instance meta achievement rewards.

It gives the home instance a better use and essentially provides a kind of trophy for past accomplishments. Much better than Arena Net’s past tendency to give us excessive amounts of backpacks

Good work, I look forward to seeing more rewards like this.

Always one person who complains that things are too easy regardless of how others find it.

I would rather they keep the jumping puzzle as is and introduce another one next year so people that have mastered this one can get something fresh.

Increased difficulty does not equal increased fun.

As with many others I believe that if it did not happen in game, it did not happen at all.

PvE:
1. Housing/Personal Instance/Trophies
2. Hobbies/Mini Games
3. Solo Content

I agree, his character is well done, quite evil and lacks a sense of humor thus quite the outcast in Thorns books. I look forward to seeing where this goes.

The only problem are his looks. He completely lacks the magical evil vibe the Thorns have going on. An example of what would have been acceptable is the concept art for this months wallpaper. What we got was a goth necromancer with a mohawk, that was a severe disappointment.

I agree with Aberrant, if Arena Net do not do it themselves then it should not be in the game.

Redenaz.8631:

the idea that anyone was being intentionally mislead is absurd.

Indeed, it was undoubtedly accidental and to suggest that they willfully hoodwinked people is quite ludicrous.

That said they did not do all they could to clarify the situation, a simple post of the forum a tweet on top of the facebook post, would have gone a long way to help.

I would not think it productive to ask when exactly the event starts, no one knows.

Arena Net have never told us the precise time before, it is doubtful that this will change any time soon. Also no game release or update ever runs smoothly, so I would not suggest you sit with bated breath.

We will have another update in two weeks, it will still be before Halloween. Keep your fingers crossed that it the loved reaper’s rumble may come back then.

lordkrall.7241:

There is nothing (nor have there been) anything that says that they would preview the new Halloween event.

Hence my post stating that it was misleading.

“DEVELOPER LIVESTREAM – OCTOBER 14
Take a spooky sneak peek at the Blood and Madness release with ArenaNet devs during the preview livestream on our Twitch channel on Monday, October 14 at 12PM PDT.”

It is impossible to read that text without coming away thinking that you would get a preview of the Haloween content.

I am not actually upset about not getting a Halloween preview I am quite capable of waiting a day, I am only slightly irked from being mislead. If the text stated PvP balance preview I would not have an issue at all.

Malcheor.7645:

We knew earlier today that it would be about balance

I assume you mean the `royal we´.

I, and I am sure many others, do not use facebook as such the only information provided is taken from the official release page, which apparently was grossly misleading.

It was technically a sneak peek, but most definitely not a peek of what they actually advertised.

Still, problems can arise on test servers, bugs, et cetera. Perhaps they had a last minute change due to unforeseen circumstances, that said community relations should have told us.

It was only a trip to various sites for lore so I see no reason for new players to miss out on it. Additionally I think it would be good if Arena Net would expand on this and add another tier with new lore, new book and a new adventure.

Personally mine has been in my bank since I obtained them, not my style.

Definitely evil and quite, quite mad.

He is sadistic as he kills people for fun, tortures those that break his law and executes and assassinates people that are close to him just to gain power. Due to the fact that while he was alive he made attempts to conceal his tendencies for murder, I would call him a homicidal sociopath.

If Scarlet is supposed to be a personal nemesis, then she is a very poor one.

Perhaps she is for Ellen Kiel and the Lionguard, who she has personally crossed, perhaps she is for Caithe who she has personal issues with or even Queen Jennah who she has tried to assassinate.

For me and my character Scarlet means virtually nothing, it is not like she attacked my home instance or anything. Is she supposed to be my nemesis because she attacked people that I barely have any dealings with? I get nemesis because she is unbeatable, but personal is quite the stretch, if she is anything to my character then she is more of a casual nuisance.

Maybe they meant personal as in the opposite, for example the Trahearne orientated Orr `personal´ quest chain. I am not sure if the Arena Net writers really understand what the word personal means.

Dr Ritter.1327:

i hate all of you who voted for the reactor instead of abaddon

I voted for Abaddon, but I have a funny feeling that if we won the Fractal would have revealed Scarlet was to blame all along.

Best:
1. Super Adventure Box
2. Wintersday
3. Shadow of the Mad King
4. Bazaar of the Four Winds
5. The Lost Shores

Worst:
1. Tequatl Rising
2. Twilight Assault
3. Queens Jubilee
4. Super Adventure Box Back to School
5. Dragon Bash

My bank is stuffed with backpack items and we had a backpack item last Halloween as well as the last few updates.

I for one am glad this update is not another backpack.