Guild Wars 2

Sadly that link doesn’t give us anything other than the customize page. But I’m glad you have found something you think is future proof.

Edit: Ah, I’ve puzzled it out. I hope you noticed that the system doesn’t normally come with a copy of Windows. As for the link, that’s the fault of this forum’s link redirector, tends to garble links with ? and & portions. This link should work.

http://tinyurl.com/pkb88kx

I think you would be better off with the 2nd Intel system, the Boxing Day special, I suggested since it includes Windows 7, the R7 270 is faster than the HD 7850 and once you add in Windows 7 on your pick, this one is $80 cheaper.

You don’t know the e-mail address that the account uses to log in?

Via the support link at the top of the page.

No.

FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB -1 byte.

I do support the content of his message, if someone wants to go through all the trouble to avoid buying keys, who are we to criticize.

Yes, the portal group is now in Vigil’s Keep so when you pop out the remaining portals are right there.

Want hard mode? Wear and wield white items.

With new content constantly coming out, the game will always be in Beta.

StinVec.3621:

Behellagh.1468:

Now StinVec you need to shape the image in the form of a calendar for March.

How’s this?

2nd problem is an open beta would have players finishing content even before it goes live. By then they’re bored with it.

Maybe a LS that doesn’t occur in existing areas but in new ones. Adding a new zone every couple of LS issues.

Now StinVec you need to shape the image in the form of a calendar for March.

While I admit farming keys is degenerate gameplay, it’s a ridiculous amount of work just for one key. Even if you can do it in a half an hour your “pay” is at best $3.12 and at worst $2.10 an hour. I spend 60-70 gold a month on gems and bough 5 when they were on sale just for chuckles, plus 35% off of the for 5 price. What a deal!

Anyways I’m sure ANet doesn’t mind someone jumping through so many hoops just to get a single key as a reward.

But I believe the daily reset is always UTC 0 and BLTC reset on sales as UTC 8.

That’s old support. They changed it many months ago. Not sure how you check status of new support.

The BLWS is a free waypoint away in DR. And before the airship, the daily activity NPC was always a gate away in LA.

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

^^^ I am referring to how GW1 was done, there was no cash shop until like 5-6 years later. At first you bought the game and everything came with it.

Then each expansion costed 40 bucks.

That was then. Here they decided to drip out the Living Story and a Gem Store instead of trying the paid expansion route.

More same day patches.

What $40 expansion?

Sadly AMD has also appeared to have halted or delayed development of any new CPUs for socket AM3+ as well (at least through 2015), choosing to concentrate on their FM2+ APUs for the consumer marketplace.

As for PCs from that outlet I suggest either of the following two which are in the same price ballpark (but an actual budget would have been helpful).

http://www.xpcomputers.co.nz/product-intel_quad_core_haswell_i5_budget_gaming_pc_with_8gb_1tb_hd7770-1138560

http://www.xpcomputers.co.nz/product-boxing_day_special_intel_core_i5_gaming_pc_with_8gb__1tb_amd_r9_270_2gb_gddr5_win7hp_win8-2536691

Both are Intel quad cores of the latest generation. The cheaper is 3GHz (3.2GHz Turbo) while the more expensive rig has a 3.1GHz (3.3GHz Turbo) CPU. Compared to the A8-5600K they are roughly 45% and 50% faster respectively (according to Passmark). As for the FX-4300, the two Intels are 30% and 35% respectively.

As for the one Intel rig that lists the motherboard used it too only supports two sticks of RAM and has only one graphics card slot.

As for the video cards, based on testing at TechPowerUP, their general performance rank as following, with the HD 7770 normalize to 100.

HD 7700 – 100 – your 1st selection and the cheaper Intel rig
HD R7 260X – 130 – your 2nd selection with the FX-4300
HD R7 270 – 145 – the 2nd Intel rig.

The Intel rigs also support PCIe V3 vs V2 in the AMD rigs. All that means is the cards have more maximum bandwidth when talking to the CPU.
At least motherboard wise, the Intel rigs have at least one more generation of CPUs in their future.

Axialbloom.8109:

Seaweed is the future!

Soylent Green is People!

1) Outside of the personal story the “quest” system is tied with exploration. You find scouts which tell you the heart quests in the area. Dynamic events you stumble upon while exploring. You should have enough common sense that if you see critters higher level than you, then you shouldn’t be going that way.

Also since the game will scale you down in level to match the area you are in, you could put off your personal story to whenever.

2) This goes back to exploration. As you explore you will unlock waypoints (for XP) which are a rather cheap way to travel around in the world. Pretty much everything is within a minute of running of a waypoint. Of course finding them first may take a bit of time. Plus a lot of the professions have abilities to boost running speed.

3) For me RPGs and MMOs are about exploration along with “discretion is the better part of valor”. But if you want action just attack everything you see. I’m sure you would soon find yourself in a fight that’s very exciting, trying not to die.

Already obsolete. AMD introduced the Socket FM2+ line of motherboards and CPUs a month or so ago so it appears that Socket FM2, which that system uses, isn’t going to be getting any new CPUs models beyond the current top of the line A10-6800K (14% faster clockspeed than the A8-5600K and support for DDR3-2133).

Unfortunately that motherboard only has 2 ram slots so expansion is out. It only has one x16 slot for a video card, so CrossfireX or SLi is out. There’s likely room in the case to support additional drives so that shouldn’t be a problem. But at it’s core Socket FM2 appears to be a dead end.

And delete that link would you. By posting it you are letting them phish the forums.

My point was always if players simply stopped using the TP as a vendor and actually enter a bids when they want to buy and price the items they want to sell the coin that once went to a few stays in the pocket of the player using the TP for themselves instead simply being a supplier and a consumer.

But players simply don’t care about maximizing the earnings and savings from using the TP this way, they would rather have the immediacy.

You are all forgetting that the BLC use to never give tickets. It was, and my eyes, will always be a Whitman Sampler of Gem Store items. Now most of those items I would never buy in the first place. What the chests use to have was a fairly good chance of dropping another key. But I’m an RPG hoarder. I hoard consumables not wanting to start relying on them only to run out at some point. I still have kite fortunes.

But then ANet slapped a “chance to enter for a new car” on their sampler box and everyone conveniently forgets that the purpose of the BLC is to expose players to Gem Store Items in hopes there’s some consumable that they would be willing to pay for directly.

Yes, I hate how ticket and ticket scrapes hides the true cost of these skins. But if EVE freaked out over an $80 costume piece, what would happen if ANet simply offered skins in the $100, $200, $300 range in gems? However a player wielding one of these weapon skins either paid a lot or was very lucky. And it does give that player a since of being one of the few.

Random is random.

It resets midnight Pacific Standard (soon to be daylight) Time. That’s 3am East coast US, 8am London.

This thread again

takes a drink

Of course an i7-3970X. Another huge waste of money. Let me guess, OC with a 240mm liquid cooling system as well. Somebody really sold you a bill of goods. I could easily build a pair of decent systems for the cost of that one. Maybe even three.

Let’s see, a $1200 CPU and $1400 in video cards. Bet they sold you on 32GB of ultra fast ram and a RAID 0 SSD set up as well.

All of that doesn’t help all that much with this game when it gets CPU bound in a WvW zerg.

“We spared no expense.”

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

Behellagh stop!
Why AMD vs INTEL?
If you buy i3 4130 you will have same performance as FX 4300/6300/8320

Game in 2014 should utilize 4 cores.

Dont compare CPU – create build for 400-500$ and try to play this game at 1080p

I’m smart enough to know you can’t spend $400-500 on a build, even excluding a legal copy of Windows, and expect to play at 1080p at 30fps minimum. I don’t play at 1080p now but at 1600×900 at 25-30fps soloing in the wilderness with high settings. But I’m not willing to sacrifice pretty just for fps. I don’t even turn off reflections.

Why recommend Intel? Because with an Intel platform I can swap out an i3-4130 for an i5-4570 and get an immediate performance boost in this game and most others for $200. And while an FX-8350 can constantly beat an i5-4570 in apps the scale well as number of cores increase, I simply don’t use that many that often to matter or care. I enjoy playing games and most of the games I play simply don’t scale across more than one or two cores. GW2 is the only exception in my gaming library. And while I expect in the future that 4 cores may be required one day, I’m already set for that.

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

I am sorry, because some people cant afford same rig as you!
Reducing CPU overhead – better single core performance.

I know that it easy to say that and i am not expecting it.
They already did a great game!

If we compare optimization …
http://gamegpu.ru/mmorpg-/-onlayn-igry/archeage-test-gpu.html

this game has far better CPU optimization

Of course it does, it’s built on the CryEngine 3 platform for crying out loud. CryTek license their engine to other developers so it has to embrace modern convention and have high frame rates to compete in the game engine marketplace. ANet created their own with their priorities and preferences. People don’t buy MMOs solely on FPS performance.

This keeps going back to the fact that the game’s development started in 2007. Sure they could have tried the Source or UE3 from the FPS world or BigWorld from the MMO world. They instead took the engine they had from GW and rewrote it to require 2 cores and Dx9. They thought it was good enough. They likely didn’t foresee the scaling issues when lots of players are nearby. Oops.

I have a $500 HP running an A8-3820 (2.5GHz K10 based quad core APU). Yes that means I get 6FPS when doing Maw with the culling settings at minimum. But I understand and accept the limitation. Sure I could have gotten an HP with an Intel dual core with HT but that would have saddled me with an Intel HD Graphics 2000 instead of an HD 6550D and since I knew I would be gaming, that was the deciding factor.

I’ve looked at the overall thread usage by the game with Process Explorer. I can see that the primary threads are close to maximizing out a pair of cores.

I can watch disk IO spike until players avatars are built when I zone/WP into a player rich area when my culling settings are not at minimum and how it’s different from when you first enter the game.

I know if I swap out the PSU for something “real” I could at least get a basic video card like the GTX 750Ti or an R7 265 and possibly squeeze out a bit more performance while doing my daily. But I do know that it’s likely even with these lower end GPUs the gains will be limited in GW2 due to the CPU.

But I can accept the fact that seeing how the game is performing, how CPU usage is spread among all the threads, observing how that changes depending what I’m doing or where I am, that CPU core performance trumps number of cores. And if core performance is the key, then I know that you can only get so far with AMD and then you have to go with Intel.

You know what’s sad? TechReport has abandoned AMD CPUs in their current DIY system guide. Their only complaint about Intel, their prices rarely move because there’s no competition from AMD!

Right now AMD is the Coyote and Intel is the Roadrunner. Just when AMD thinks they’ve caught up … BEEP! BEEP!

Ohoni.6057:

Your ivory tower approach to all this is a great way to win sympathy. I imagine you rushed out to get the Monocles when they were still relatively affordable to us proles.

And your “just stick it to the 1%” approach isn’t going to garner much support either.

Bee, just stop.

Consoles are different beasts from PCs. They have a streamline OS, APIs that talk directly to the hardware and hardware is a known, fixed feature. This allows software to be written for maximum performance because all of the abstraction to support varying hardware, eliminate the need of performance settings because of variable hardware, designing code that scales to hardware, etc. are gone. That’s why consoles can perform as well or better than gaming PCs that cost twice as much.

Of course they have their limitations too. Primarily limits to art assets which are the bulk of any modern game.

But that’s neither here nor there. This game, in it’s current state, what matters is the maximum performance of a single core. The last few generations of AMD CPUs will lose to the last few generations of Intel CPUs every time. Yes, AMD CPUs are cheaper BECAUSE they lose to Intel every time. It’s the way AMD can still sell CPUs since Intel chooses not to compete in that price space. While you are talking about spending an extra $100-200 on an Intel CPU/Motherboard over an AMD pairing, once you include everything else that’s required, it’s not as big of a deal as you may think.

Mantle is not an issue with this game, I wish you would stop changing the subject every time you lose. The game currently doesn’t support a thread safe/multithreaded API for graphics such as Dx11. And while Mantle’s reduced CPU overhead by use of a streamline API and minimal driver, no games company would saddle nVidia with just Dx9 while giving AMD graphic cards Mantle support. Nobody wants to PO either of the two video card GPU manufacturers, just as they don’t want to PO either of the two CPU manufacturers by pulling CPU specific instruction mix optimizations.

This game wasn’t written to support trends in software design that weren’t prevalent in 2007. Quad cores and beyond were not common. Gamers clung on to Dx9 and 32 bit XP because of hate for Vista and poor Dx10 ports. MMOs weren’t about matching FPS frame rates but about looks, style and story.

Nothing that you have suggested will help the OP. He wanted to know why his OC FX-8320 with a high end GPU wasn’t doing well in this game. We told him the facts. You can’t change the facts. This game does not scale based on the number of cores you have. This game does not generate enough work for more than a few cores. The three threads that represent the bulk of work, are limited by a core’s performance. All together it’s bad news for the AMD FX based CPUs and as for the Athlon and Phenom IIs, Intel left them in the dust performance wise when Sandy Bridge CPUs came out.

For this game, in parts when numerous other players are active, CPU single core performance is everything. Period.

Female Norm Mesmer
Female Human Thief

Sometimes people like to buy lottery tickets. Or blind box toys. Or gachapon capsule toys.

A game doesn’t need to be written to support multi GPUs, however how effective it is does depend on how a game is written. It also depends on how much time it takes the GPU to accomplish it’s work relative to how much time it takes the CPU to accomplish it’s work in rendering a frame.

But since there are times in this game where CPU performance is the limiting factor, multiple GPUs doesn’t really help.

You like me … you really like me!

Essence Snow.3194:

Let me ask to any of ya’ll (I know y’all, but not where I live) what legitimate reasons do you have that profit potential from trading/speculating/etc should not be brought more in line with the rest of the game?

As far as I can tell there’s only one. It’s a major gold sink. That is something that could be remedied, so….ya…what reasons are there?

Problem is the so called profit potential from the trading at least is due almost entirely to player psychology. They choose to use is as a pawn shop or store front rather than a flea market. They choose immediacy over coin. You can’t “code” around that. The players are creating a market where they will pay for immediacy and a few are willing to step in and provide that service. And competition among those who provide that service both raises the buy price and lowers the sell price for an item. They earn less per item than the players they bought the item from, they just make it up in volume.

This is in sympathy with the March Sales item record.

I’m listing the gold to gem previous 24 hour running average just before UTC -8 or midnight Pacific time from GW2Spidy at the end of each sale. After a few days GW2Spidy starts throwing away the minute by minute data.

Feb 28th: 7.913163g per 100
Mar 1st: 8.282175g per 100 – Collection Expander; 10% sale
Mar 2nd: 8.213522g per 100 – Braham, Megitech, Phoenix Armor Skins; 20% sale
Mar 3rd: 8.817895g per 100 – Black Lion Chest Key; 15%/35%/15% sale
Mar 4th: 8.388506g per 100 – Crafting Booster; 20% sale
Mar 5th: 8.190425g per 100 – Instant Repair Canister; 30% sale
Mar 6th: 8.169352g per 100 – Flute; 20% sale
Mar 7th: 8.502428g per 100 – Total Makeover Kit; 20% Sale & Kasmeer’s Staff Skin; 0% Sale
Mar 8th: 8.102759g per 100 – Metabolic Primer; 20% Sale
Mar 9th: 8.169047g per 100 – 2 Week Banker Golem; 50% Sale & Fuzzy Hats all styles; 20% Sale
Mar 10th: 8.492287g per 100 – Rox’s Short Bow Skin & Rox’s Quiver Backpiece; 0% Sale
+Mar 11th: 8.522785g per 100 – Gathering Booster; 20% Sale
Mar 12th: 8.349008g per 100 – Dye Pack; 20% Sale
Mar 13th: 8.317955g per 100 – Mystic Forge Stone; 15% Sale
Mar 14th: 8.214028g per 100 – Experience Booster; 15% Sale
Mar 15th: 8.605648g per 100 – Transmutation Crystals; 20% Sale
Mar 16th: 8.676984g per 100 – Phalanx, Viper, & Trickster Armor Skins; 15% Sale.
Mar 17th: 8.392304g per 100 – Magic Find Booster; 20% Sale & Pirate Captain’s Outfit; 10% Sale & Mini 3-Pack Set 2; Exiting Store
+Mar 18th: 8.892308g per 100 – Trading Post Express; 25% Sale
Mar 19th: 8.878539g per 100 – Consortium Mobile Crafting Station; 0% Sale
Mar 20th: 8.849836g per 100 – Marriner’s Horn; 20% Sale
Mar 21st: 8.628988g per 100 – Plush Charr and Quaggan Backpack; 20% Sale
Mar 22nd: 8.955157g per 100 – Marjory’s Axe and Dagger Skins; 0% Sale
Mar 23rd: 8.939717g per 100 – Aetherblade Armor Skins; 20% Sale
Mar 24th: 8.767769g per 100 – Box o’ Fun; 50% Sale & WXP Booster; 15% Sale & Threasher-Sickle 5000; Exiting Store
+Mar 25th: 9.227262g per 100 – Bank Access Express; 20% Sale
Mar 26th: 9.134028g per 100 – Permanent Spectre Finisher; 15% Sale
Mar 27th: 9.024413g per 100 – Braham’s Mace and Shield Skins; 0% Sale
Mar 28th: 9.058239g per 100 – Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic; 20% Sale
Mar 29th: 8.938644g per 100 – Royal Terrace Pass; 0% Sale
Mar 30th: 9.036830g per 100 – Primeval, Krytan, & Profane Armor Skins; 20% Sale
Mar 31st: 9.317227g per 100 – Black Lion Key; 10% Sale & Communal Boost Bonfire; 25% Sale & Scarlet’s Champions Mini 3-pack; 0% Sale

This is the range the exchange rate fluctuated during that day, actual data.

Mar 1st: 7.53g – 9.10g
Mar 2nd: 7.17g – 8.74g
Mar 3rd: 7.74g – 9.77g
Mar 4th: 7.66g – 9.47g
Mar 5th: 7.30g – 8.92g
Mar 6th: 7.54g – 8.96g
Mar 7th: 7.55g – 9.14g
Mar 8th: 7.50g – 8.78g
Mar 9th: 7.41g – 8.72g
Mar 10th: 7.62g – 9.33g
+Mar 11th: 7.75g – 9.08g
Mar 12th: 7.84g – 9.02g
Mar 13th: 7.64g – 9.11g
Mar 14th: 7.39g – 8.79g
Mar 15th: 7.89g – 9.41g
Mar 16th: 8.04g – 9.49g
Mar 17th: 7.93g – 8.98g
+Mar 18th: 8.04g – 9.74g
Mar 19th: 7.89g – 9.48g
Mar 20th: 7.99g – 9.53g
Mar 21st: 7.47g – 9.41g
Mar 22nd: 8.14g – 9.58g
Mar 23rd: 8.18g – 9.47g
Mar 24th: 7.74g – 9.38g
+Mar 25th: 8.39g – 9.65g
Mar 26th: 8.53g – 9.93g
Mar 27th: 8.03g – 9.63g
Mar 28th: 8.24g – 9.62g
Mar 29th: 8.16g – 9.48g
Mar 30th: 8.22g – 9.49g
Mar 31st: 8.60g – 10.53g

Note:
- March 11th introduced Scarlet’s Grasp and Scarlet’s Spaulders to the Gem Store.
- March 18th introduced Mini 3-pack Set 3, expanded the number of Collection Expanders to 5 from 3 and added new hairstyles to the Hair and Makeover Kits.
- March 25th introduced Lion’s Arch Survivor’s Dyes, Frost Wasp Logging Tool and Golem Pummeler Finisher.

Draw whatever conclusions you like.

*Now with a chart. Hope some think it’s informative.

Blue line is the range of the exchange rate that day.
The box shows start and finish averages for the day. Black box the average rate increased, red box the average rate decreased.

Well call Doc Brown and see if he and Marty can take you back in time before you were such a bookah and salvaged not one but five Dawns.

Roll to disbelieve …

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

Eh they should do DX 11.2
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm-PC-232999/Tests/WoW-Cataclysm-Benchmarks-DirectX-11-bis-zu-50-Prozent-schneller-als-DirectX-9-822073/

Don’t confuse Dx11.2 for vanilla Dx11. Blizzard isn’t stupid enough to ignore everyone running Windows 7. Just as nobody is going to do a Mantle version but NOT a Dx11.

Just look at the test set up for a moment before you go all zealot, it’s a Windows 7 platform so it’s not even Dx11.1. Jeez man, there are decaffeinated blends that just as good as the real thing.

Avelos.6798:

Time for AM4 in my opinion.

I imagine that’s what’ll happen. That and a 20nm feature size.

Page 2 and 3 of this article highlights some of the improvements of Steamroller over Piledriver (APUs so no sluggish L3 cache) when both are clocked at 4.2GHz.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/177099-secrets-of-steamroller-digging-deep-into-amds-next-gen-core/2

But most of the gains from Piledriver was due to clockspeed increases. IPC improvement was relatively minor. Steamroller is better at that but we aren’t going to see an AM3+ socket Steamroller CPU.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

ok so in gw2 looking at gem prices in the last year gems were about 100gems=2gold, this year 100gems=8gold, similarly the US economy took about 55 years to reach a similar rise in inflation effective to buying power, meaning that at the speed GW2 economy moves a single day in GW2 economy would be comparable to nearly two months in the US economy (DISCLAIMER: I used the time period between 1914 and 1969 to show this increase as getting closer to the 2000s inflation is shown to be much higher, but while looking back to 1775 to 1875 would have been equally ridiculous as it showed only about 14 percent inflation over 100 years http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php) but to get to the point of this, I believe this shows that flippers are indeed selling time as if a loan or for speculators maybe it would look more like buying futures.

Except the Gem Exchange rates are determined by scarcity of gems in the exchange relative to the exchange’s gold reserve. The more gems purchased with gold, the higher the rate goes because the exchange now has more gold in it’s coffers and less gems. The only way the exchange gets more gems is if players sell it gems for gold and that causes the rate to go down.

Today I’m noticing with spikes caused by the key sale that some players are taking the opportunity to buy gems with cash and convert them to gold. It broke 7g for 100 gems sold or over 5.6g per $1. If ANet quickly follows with more popular items I can see the gold to gem rate easily breaking 10g per 100 gems.

“And an awesome wailing was heard throughout heaven …”

They don’t “need” to fix it, it’ll be gone in less than 11 hours.

All of March, a different sale every day, you don’t know in advance what will be returning or on sale until it is.

Surprise! Today is keys. I imagine one day will be bank slots, another character slots. Various gathering tools, skins maybe even Set 1 minis. You won’t know unless you check daily and if it’s something you have been wanting then buy it immediately because it’ll be gone the next day.

I fear we are going to have loads of “I missed it, when will it be back again?” threads.

Opps, egg on face of guy who entered the sale data.

Lets see if they fix it once Anet gets to work.

Systems like that are notoriously tough to balance. The chances of a particular combination being overpowered compared to the rest is highly likely even though the individual powers seem balance.