Guild Wars 2

Paulytnz.7619:

My guess is that it is going to be a totally new char that does not exist in the game at all yet.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with this.

For one thing, while who dies is a Personal Story spoiler, who lives is a spoiler too.

CalvinHobbes.3541:

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

I was wondering if it might be like the doppelganger in the Augury Rock mission of GW1 – actually literally based on your own character. That would make it “personal” and would explain how any of us would recognize the person no matter which story branches we chose.

This would have to assume that everyone playing GW2 has also played GW1. Which we know is not the case.

No, I said like that. Not the very same creature.

GW1 Spoiler: It couldn't be the same creature because that doppelganger gets defeated at Augury Rock.

I just meant that they may be planning to use the same sort of mirroring to create a personalized antagonist as they did then. No prior knowledge necessary because the part you’d be meant to recognize is that it’s a version of yourself.

I was wondering if it might be like the doppelganger in the Augury Rock mission of GW1 – actually literally based on your own character. That would make it “personal” and would explain how any of us would recognize the person no matter which story branches we chose.

Much as I would love to have Forgal back… I think the more obvious explanation is that since one group of refugees is Norn and the other is Charr, there’s an important NPC from each.

I actually think the “do we assume so-and-so is dead” thing means exactly the opposite of that – they have to avoid using characters who died at any point in the Personal Story, because depending where the player is in the PS the character may be alive or dead for them in their individual progression. It doesn’t mean (unfortunately – did I mention how much I miss Forgal?) that anyone who died is coming back.

I don’t think the Consortium folks are responsible for what is happening. I don’t see them as having either the inclination or the capabilities to pull off something like this. The Consortium so far has not been portrayed as evil for evil’s sake – they’re just amoral for profit’s sake. I don’t think causing a disaster on this scale deliberately would make much sense with what we’ve seen so far.

That said, I do think the Consortium are going to be important in the story, because it seems clear they’re jumping in to try to profit from the situation. I think we need to keep an eye on them as F&F progresses.

I’m very curious about why they don’t want Grawl refugees in Southsun Cove – that seems like they know something the rest of us don’t.

Actually causing the disaster, though? I don’t see why they would do that or how they’d pull it off.

bullyrook.2165:

I’ve heard some players talking about this alliance between d & f, that these two combined created the steam creatures.

I think that’s unlikely since the steam creatures are given a different origin in the Asura personal story.

Yeah, I’m fine with it. Characters don’t have to have the top gear to be playable, and you don’t have to have all your alts kitted out at the same time. I think it’s good to have rewards to work for over time, as well as more short-term gains.

LotusThief.4613:

I’m talking about the Blue and Pink Quaggan backpacks. Ladies have to pay more and pray they get lucky, but the men can just buy theirs in a instant.

The Charr packs are not split between male and female but the Quaggan are. Why?

Seems a little sexist to me. I get you want to make money but this feels like a slap in the face.

Not trying to start stuff, just sharing my feelings.

The assumptions you’re making about gendered preferences make me uncomfortable.

I’m a female (IRL and in game) and I like the blue one better.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I am still waiting for examples of where Trahearne takes away your glory.

It’s not so much what Trahearne the character does, as the fact that the story itself changes to have the central focus on him instead of on the PC.

Trahearne can give you all the credit he wants, but if the game is treating you like a henchman, his words don’t go very far.

Forgal. I miss him greatly.

snargles.2137:

I have not been online to check recently. . .Is there any update on this? What is happening in the world?

There have been a few changes along the way, but they’ve been minor. The bigger stuff is coming later, but if you want to see what’s happening right now, this is a good resource that is kept up to date:

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/29/gw2-living-story-refuge-volunteer-events-guide/

Ellisande.5218:

Did you play as a Sylvari? I think they do a much better/worse (because then it becomes interolerable when Forgal treats you like you haven’t done a single thing) making the Sylvari out to be a hero before you join an order.

I’ve since played all the races to that point, but my first play-through was on a human, and I think that the first time you see the storyline tends to affect your perception on later characters too.

Ellisande.5218:

I hated Forgal. His treatment of my character or even his necessity simply didn’t make sense. I could understand the idea of having a mentor if my character is level 1 and first beginning, and indeed I really did like the mentor I was given (Caithe). By the time I had Forgal my character was already an established and well respected Sylvari hero. Turning me from a hero into a rookie made about as much sense as saying that Microsoft is going to headhunt the CEO of Google and then make him work in the mail room. Those things just don’t make any sense.

That’s interesting, because I had the opposite reaction. I felt like prior to joining the Vigil, my character was being praised out of all proportion to her deeds, and I think she would have felt a bit embarrassed about it.

It was kind of nice to meet an NPC who wasn’t totally awed by her minor hometown good deeds.

I’d love to have henchmen available for instanced tasks. They wouldn’t be necessary (or make sense) in the open world, of course.

Smoothy.1085:

Long long long ago ANet said the February update would be very big, when i saw there was a page for the update I was super excited but now… its almost as small as the January update or does it just look that small?

I don’t see how we can tell from the few sentences we’ve seen whether it’s big or small, honestly. There just isn’t that much information yet.

“Hold back the gathering storm” and “battles rage” sounds potentially big to me… but it’s only potential at this point. I think it’s too soon to tell one way or the other.

GuzziHero.2467:

Another reason to dislike Trahearne… in the ‘An Early Parole’ story, all that useless **** does is aggro enemies for you…

I’m going to be sending Trahearne a bill for the armour repair costs I incurred when I died needlessly while running to rez him from wherever he’d died first.

wildcode.5403:

ok, maybe I mis-understood.

It’s a little bit confusing because most people (understandably) think that Ascalon City was the past capital of Ascalon, but actually Rin was.

Sort of like almost everyone thinks the capital of New York State is New York City, but it’s not – it’s Albany.

So you were correct that the Black Citadel was built over the old Ascalonian capital city… that just isn’t Ascalon City.

Brassbolt.7164:

I haven’t played GW2 in about two weeks or so, I logged on to see what the “Event” was about…..

Fixing signs? Lighting campfires? Is that what it’s about?

Just curious if there is more to it than that, will there be more? Just trying to justify running around fixing signs and what is the ultimate goal.

This is just the “prelude” event. The real action will be coming over the next couple of months.

If you help the refugees, you get a title (Volunteer) and you can learn from some of the NPCs about the plot that’s developing. More to come later, though.

Human Ranger, PvE, female character and female player.

I have alts of all professions and at least one of each race, though.

I really wish ANet would start making a lot more things account bound rather than soulbound.

If you could pass on gear to an alt when your main was finished with it, it would be a lot harder for anything to become completely obsolete. The work and the gold and/or karma you put into exotics wouldn’t be completely wasted when you upgraded to ascended, for example.

If it was account bound, you still couldn’t sell it after it had been used – but you would be able to get more use out of it.

Lutinz.6915:

The charr one however does state that they were driven off their ranch by Flame Legion. It seems more likely that the flame legion may be involved though how is anyone’s guess at this point.

I’m starting to wonder if rather than being a cause, the Flame Legion are displaced too. If something larger drove them out of their strongholds, they may be moving into the territory of other Charr because they need somewhere to go.

Ratphink.4751:

Well there is an Asura personal story plotline that deals directly with them…

Yeah, for this reason I think it would be almost impossible for the writers to come up with a reasonably coherent one-size-fits all plot for them.

My Asura Necromancer not only knows what the steam creatures are and where they came from, but she knows that (trying to avoid too much spoilage) they are inextricably linked to her own potential and her choices.

To my human Ranger, they’re just one more weird monster in a landscape of various weird monsters.

I don’t see how a story about them could possibly be tailored to fit both of those characters. If we learn more about the steam creatures, I would expect to see it in personal story rather than as a worldwide plotline.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Actually, mechanics don’t mimic looting bodies for that. It mimics picking up items/environmental weapons. If people take it as looting bodies, well… that’s kind of their problem for seeing something that’s not there mechanically or lore wise.

Yeah, this is true, and it’s not like it’s never happened before. There are at least two renown hearts (maybe more, but I can think of two specific ones) where you have to recover identification from dead Seraphs and return them to the commander, so it’s not like your PC would never have done this before and wouldn’t know the drill.

Rhysati.4932:

Personally, I’m actually enjoying the zones now, whereas before I simply refused to go in them. I had resigned myself to waiting to complete those maps until I absolutely had to(and could get a group of guildies to go with). Now, I’m enjoying myself.

Same. My main is a Ranger, and I wasn’t having trouble with the survivability or winning the fights… it was just so boring. I would avoid Orr because it took forever to fight through loads of very similar mobs to get anywhere, and that’s not interesting to me.

Now I’m actually having fun exploring Orr because I can look at things besides Risen health bars and skill animations.

It seems like some posters (not the person I quoted) think the only reason people might welcome this change is to lower the difficulty, and that isn’t the case.

I don’t think it should be different for each player, because some dailies are significantly more difficult than others. It wouldn’t be very equitable if players got the same number of laurels for doing a vastly different amount of work. If they’re the same for all of us, it can’t be unfair to anybody because we all have the same goalposts.

Maybe I’m just a weirdo, but I never actually found Orr hard. It was just monotonous. It was just fighting the same set of enemies all the time, with no real variation – just throwing in lots of fights to compensate for the repetition.

The only time I would actually run into difficulty would be when I got so bored of killing more or less identical Risen that I would lose patience and make a run for wherever I wanted to go, and in the process draw too much aggro.

So to me, it’s not about difficulty, it’s about turning the zone into more than just mashing the same buttons over and over, and actually having the breathing room to choose whether I want to fight every possible fight, or keep moving toward a further goal. For me, that’s a welcome change.

Hug ten Charr.

I think there are two additional factors to consider related specifically to GW2:

1.) This is the sequel to a game where all the PCs were human. People who want to continue their legacy from the first game are more likely to gravitate toward humans, so they can play a descendant or the same character.

2.) Most of the nonhuman races have a very defined lore niche. Asura are inventors and intellectuals, Charr are warlike and regimented, Sylvari are naive and curious, etc. There’s nothing objectively wrong with that, but it does mean that someone who isn’t as interested in those niche flavours will find more diversity in the humans, who are less defined by racial background and thus can adapt to any roleplay setup.

There’s evidence that the preference for humans is common to most MMOs because players gravitate toward what is like them.

I think in GW2, though, there are some unique factors that can’t really be changed without either going back in time or completing rewriting the lore of the races.

I would just as soon pay cash. ANet has already given us a lot for the initial purchase price, and I had gone into this assuming that at some point I would need to put in more money.

Developers can’t develop games for free. They have to keep the revenue stream going to keep themselves employed, and I think the majority of players understand that.

That being the case, I don’t see any point both complicating the revenue stream and disrupting the in-game economy by requiring cash to be converted to gems for purchase. It seems like a hassle for everyone that would gain nothing. I’d rather just pay my money and have it done, without an extra step of currency conversion.

I’m finding this much better.

For me, it was never so much that Orr was hard, it was that Orr was frustrating. I don’t mind challenging fights, but it was annoying that you couldn’t take more than a few steps without getting attacked by something. That made it difficult to just explore and enjoy the scenery. Since the patch, I can actually look around (and the landscape is really cool!) rather than focusing constantly on some random enemy’s next attack.

It also makes sense lore-wise that when Zhaitan was defeated and Orr was cleansed, the Risen population would start to drop.

I used to find Orr kind of boring because it was just this constant pattern of take a few steps, fight, take a few steps, fight a pretty much identical fight, and so on. It just seemed very monotonous and it took forever to get anywhere. Now that I can choose my battles, I’m actually enjoying the exploring.

Delvoire.8930:

I was hearing yesterday in game that the achievement resets daily? Is that confirmed? I got 40 of 75 last night before I had to log off and I was hoping to get the remainder today. If it resets though.. i’ll be a sad panda.

I think that’s highly unlikely. The points are toward a title (i.e. something permanent,) so it wouldn’t make sense if they disappeared.

My guess is when you log in again you’ll still be at 40. I did all of mine in one day so I can’t confirm, but it would make no sense for it to reset given what the points are used for.

Yeah, I’m on Crystal Desert too and Orr has been pretty full. I think you may be missing the peak time, though. Would you maybe be able to play a couple of hours earlier? It seems like CD’s busiest times tend to be around peak in Eastern Standard, so it may be cooling off before you log on.

I didn’t mind grouping up for the final story. I found some nice people to run it with.

I was very disappointed that my character wasn’t in the cutscenes of this final dramatic mission, though. It made me feel like an NPC, just silently tagging along.

Lutinz.6915:

Theres also a mysterious corpse of a merchant who has burns on his body and blood coming from his ears but no other signs of injury on the northern most point of the Wayfarer Foothills.

When I went to check this out, I saw the merchant corpse but it was a female merchant character rather than a male. Everything else was the same.

I wonder if this was a glitch, or if we’re meant to assume that more than one merchant has died.

VakarisJ.5619:

So everyone’s either eating it and claiming numerical superiority (wrong) or saving it for sentimental value (illogical)?

It’s a game. The point is to have fun. I will have more fun if I save it than if I consume it. So logically, I should save it.

BobbyStein.2315:

• The Flame and Frost story content progresses over time. You will not see everything today, tomorrow, or even the next day.
• Expect subtle changes at first. Maybe you’ll encounter some familiar characters. Perhaps you’ll be introduced to some new ones. You might see a new structure where there wasn’t one before.
• The Living Story content is initially about the thrill of discovery. We’ll put some markers on your map, maybe send you a letter, or parcel out details through certain characters, but the rest is up to you.
• As the weeks progress, you’ll notice bigger changes in the world. New events may appear. Plots will advance and characters will develop.

Feedback: This sounds awesome! I love the idea of gradual changes that are truly world-changing. It’s a great way to keep Tyria dynamic without players missing out by not being available at a specific time. I look forward to seeing how this develops.

Wolfhammer.3140:

Hi,
How do you know you need 75 points??
I did some of the signs and checked bodies for the collectibles and turned them in, but I got no counter feedback to tell me hown many I’d done..

How do you see your total please???

Open your Hero Panel (by pressing H,) look in your achievements, and click on Living Story. It shows you how much you have done, and how many more to advance.

I saved it too.

I’m more of a roleplayer than a by the numbers player, and if a kid did a drawing like that for my character, she would keep it. It’s staying safely tucked away in the bank vault.

I think that the herald is confusingly not labeled as a herald. The label is “Refugee Coordinator,” and can be found at the gold star in Hoelbrak. Assuming they’re the same thing. You won’t learn much from her yet anyway.

I think it would be pretty much impossible to solo. You might be able to manage Zhaitan by yourself with the cannons, but I think the bigger problem would be the mobs that come on the ship during various stages of the dungeon. There are a lot of them, and they hit pretty hard.

I say that as someone who has solo-ed the rest of the personal story. The last dungeon is different than the story missions, because it’s designed around a full party. Even the hardest prior story missions are designed with the solo player in mind, so the challenge is on a different level.

You’ll have no problem understanding the GW2 story without playing GW1.

GW2 is set 250 years later, so the two games are pretty separate.

Playing GW1 would give you a broader sense of the lore and the history, but is not necessary.

Have fun in GW2!

critickitten.1498:

I’m pretty sure that saving a player while downed also adds to the tally.

I got my Daily Healer achievement finished after I helped up a downed player I was running Fractals with. Unless I hallucinated that entire run, pretty sure downed counts too.

It does. Revived means helping a defeated or downed character. Letting someone who was downed die would have no benefit at all.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

You know, I think it’s sad that homosexuality seems to be only present in Sylvari. It looks like Anet made them as they are, so they have a scapegoat, showing us more liberal players that they are cool enough to show homosexuals, but they are still afraid of rightwingers, so they make them on the strange plant race only. That itself makes it look like homosexuality is something wierd that only appears in weird races.

I’ve heard there are homosexuals of other races, but they are rather hidden, usually heart NPCs that fall in “love” with you regardless of race and gender.

I think it’s mainly that the Sylvari are more open about their romantic feelings than most other races, because they’re “young” so they tend to act rather adolescent when they’re in love.

You also hear quite a bit of dialog about heterosexual relationships if you hang around the Sylvari areas – and you’d be hard pressed to find that level of open discussion about male/female relationships either when you’re listening to conversations elsewhere.

I think it has a lot to do with the Sylvari wearing their hearts on their sleeves and tending to share information that members of other races would likely keep to themselves.

Arcalithe.6057:

But my opinion IS that you guys are being irrational (until proven otherwise in-game). I don’t see the problem here. :V

You’re missing my point.

This is thread about whether we like Trahearne. That’s a preference. A preference can’t be proven one way or the other – it’s a matter of personal taste.

Actually playing through the storyline will indeed give you an opinion on whether or not you like Trahearne. It won’t give you an opinion about whether or not I like Trahearne unless you find some way to hijack my brain. There’s a difference.

It’s possible to feel differently about the same thing without either party being objectively wrong. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

Taste is just taste; it’s not something you can go disprove.

Arcalithe.6057:

I guess I’ll have to “wait and see” like I did with Lori, but I’m not holding my breath that you people are being entirely rational about this whole thing. :V

Believe it or not, it’s possible to have differences of opinion without either side being irrational. That’s the whole point of an opinion as opposed to a fact.

Yeah, I had the same problem recently. My character was almost completely hidden by the HP bubble even with extreme camera adjustment, so it was very difficult to see what I was doing and what my position was in relation to the terrain and foes.

Gaudrath.6725:

It is not a chronological mess. It is stated on more than one occasion in the game that the Shatterer is just one of many such creatures. The same goes for Claw. The only reason Tequatl is “named” is because those hylek don’t know any better.

I always thought Tequatl was more of a description of a type of creature than a proper name. It’s the Hylek word meaning “the one who is in darkness,” which I figured they were using to mean that type of dragon (any of them would be in darkness) rather than a specific creature.

If you read the dialog with the translation in mind rather than treating it as a name, it still works equally well.

Since the January update is a “prelude,” I don’t think we really need a video promo too. It seems like the first update will be sufficient introduction.

I think it would be fun, but more plot-based content would be a higher priority for me.

Just click on yourself.

It doesn’t actually do anything, but you should see a blue circle at your own feet.

ETA: Now I’m wondering if I’m just crazy, though. :P I’m fairly sure I’ve done this, but maybe I’m remembering wrong. If it doesn’t work, sorry! If I’m mistaken it’s not intentional misleading.

mulch.2586:

You want to be able to select yourself as a target?

You can already select yourself, your title just doesn’t show when you do. Self-selecting is an existing feature, not something the poster is asking them to add.

mulch.2586:

But… none of the titles show, not just yours but anyone else either, unless you target them.

That’s the whole point of the original post, though – other people’s titles are visible if you select them, but your own is not visible even if you select yourself.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

I’m actually really shocked that it’s 6 months after the launch and we still cannot select our own character and see the names and titles.

The point is not to make titles always visible; it’s to make them visible if you choose to click on them.

To me it doesn’t make any sense that this isn’t already possible to do. It would make more sense to be able to see your own title the same way you can see someone else’s. Why make it two different ways rather than the same thing?

WreckSC.1835:

Is it correct from a Lore standpoint to call the champions that are put together in what we would consider a ‘Dragon like form’ to be a dragon, just not an Elder one? Or is the power of an actual ‘Elder’ Dragon so great in comparison that it would never be bracketed as being a dragon.

Yep, calling it a dragon is correct.

Throughout Tyrian (the world as well as the continent) history, there have been quite a few dragons.

The Elder Dragons are one type of very powerful dragon, but there are other types as well. Another dragon may be an Elder Dragon’s champion, as Glint was for Kralkatorrik.

If it looks like a dragon, it’s probably a dragon, although there are only a handful are Elder Dragons (exactly how many remains debated, likely around 6-ish.)