Guild Wars 2

A suspicious part of me wonders if the key and pet sale over the weekend was meant to flush out any surplus gems so when the sickle and kitten went on sale the inevitable surge in the exchange price would drive even more players to the cash option.

Nah! They wouldn’t have the foresite to do that, right? :p

TwoBit.5903:

It’s tactic used to create urgency, getting people to spend more in a short amount of time. It also makes these items exclusive to players who are fast enough to buy them.

Exactly. Consumers have been conditioned to buy things that are “limited time only” or “on sale”. JC Penney learned the hard way how conditioned the consumer is when they got rid of sales and just priced the items the same as when they were on sale (instead of 60% off $30 jeans they simply offered them at $12 all the time). Store sales plummeted.

Strangely enough it’s the “hunt” for bargins and “foraging” for specials that still drive us.

I’ve been bitten to often jumping onto the bleeding edge of components. I would wait at least 30 days after Haswell CPUs and motherboards are commonly available to see what SNAFUs happen. We already know that there are USB3 problems in the new motherboard chipsets.

Timothy II.6097:

Thank you for answering my question, as I was thinking I had lost my stuff forever.

You can also access it and your bank slots at crafting stations.

Ryuujin.8236:

Behellagh.1468:

In a way ArenaNet does affect the exchange rate but by only putting items in the gem shop players are willing to get but are too cheap to buy the gems with $.

It’s an interesting strategy – As long as players buy gems with gold, then it becomes ever more enticing for players to buy gold using gems – so in essence anet still gets the money either way, just who foots the bill differs

Exactly. Which then acts as a counting force to bring the exchange rate down. Go to GW2Spidy and look at the gem rates chart for the last month and see how some of the surges are eased off over time until then next big thing comes to the gem shop.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

-raises hand- simple noob question but what do they mean by ranks? I don’t WvW much so many I just haven’t noticed but I wasn’t aware of any ranks to be gained.

You get WvW xp and as you level that you attain ranks. The wiki is your friend.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_Experience#WXP_Ranks

Pedra.4381:

anzenketh.3759:

ArenaNet does not control Gold to Gem prices players do.

And you believe this why?

Because that point has been beaten to death already, numerous times.

The exchange rate surged because players rushed to convert gold to gems for the sickle and the kitten. Large influx of gold in and gems out means the exchange price surges.

In a way ArenaNet does affect the exchange rate but by only putting items in the gem shop players are willing to get but are too cheap to buy the gems with $.

1) make sure it’s a i7-3770K if you intend on serious overclocking (as oppose to fixing it just at 3.9GHz).

2) I would suggest a 3rd party CPU cooler, a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO is nice and inexpensive. As long as you aren’t planing to push the clock speed beyond 4.4-4.5 GHz.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5763/undervolting-and-overclocking-on-ivy-bridge

3) Memory is overkill in regards to speed. I refer you to this article, bottom of page.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/ivy-bridge-ddr3_4.html#sect0

The two games tested, with a non-overclocked CPU (blue bar chart) shows only a 2-7% improvement between -1866 and -2400 memory. Plus you don’t have to push the memory voltage to 1.65V to achieve 2400MHz stability.

I would go with these, -1866 Cas 8 memory.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231539

Edit: spelling and anti-kitten measures.

No patch here.

15 charr

At the end of this article has some information on an Asia release.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7432/Consistent-Steady-Growth-Puts-Us-in-a-Good-Place.html/page/1

He said people interested in Chinese and Korean releases of Guild Wars 2 will want to pay close attention to the ChinaJoy convention later this summer when more information will be released.

It’s a long weekend in the US. The holiday that “officially” kicks off the start of summer. So have a weekend sale.

It’s just players have a different definition for “down the road” and “in the future”, just like “rare chance”. Causes a lot of misunderstandings. Also most players aren’t software developers, it can take months from idea to implementation that doesn’t break something like the economy, profession balance, etc.

I got a couple of dyes two nights ago and none last night. Random is random.

Sure there was a time last December that it seemed that every plant had a 50/50 chance of coughing up a dye but I think there was a patch note about an overly generous drop table.

There’s part of me that wonder how much of the hate is generated simply because they gave us the option to buy gems with gold. Currency exchange hate. Can’t make money crafting hate. Can’t make lots of gold playing hate. But I have to farm to make gold, why do they hate farmers, hate. RNG BLC hate (because I spent all my gold for keys and got nothing).

Sure you still need coin to work toward you legendary unless you spend a lot of time gathering all the materials needed and even then.

LtTiger.4568:

Bet there are loads that buys keys and open chests without knowing they can’t get the skins anymore.. Not everyone is on the website or forums everyday. Easy to miss out on stuff like that..

Except Frost and Flame is over for a while now. Those skins were tied to that living story. We have a new living story now with it’s own skins and means to get them. It’s only logical to assume F&F skins are no longer in BL chests.

JimFear.2760:

If/when they do another event with skins or whatever in lockboxes, will any lockboxes I already have be able to contain said items? Or will I have to re-farm for them?

I believe the general consensus is that when the box is opened is when the items are determined. So if a skin is on the drop table when you open the box, you should have a chance to get it.

Stone.6751:

Unfortunately developer ArenaNet doesn’t appear to have got the memo, with director Colin Johanson saying as recently as March that none were currently planned.

“Expansions are definitely something that we’ll potentially look at in the future, but we don’t have a timetable on it. We’re open to it, but I think our major focus as a studio is making the living world concept as strong as possibly can for the players that we’ve got.”

Try as recently as 12 days ago.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05/14/ncsoft-clarifies-stance-on-guild-wars-2-expansion/

You have to understand who is on the other end of the investor’s conference call, analysts, mutual fund managers and other large holders of stock. They see GW2 dropping 69% quarter to quarter they need more than “transitioning to cash store for income” to keep their nerves in check. After all GW had three “expansions” (I know the first two really aren’t) to keep the income flowing. The rest of NCSOFT’s MMO titles in Korea are subscription based, this B2P but with a cash shop idea for the west is an unknown and unknowns are scary to stock holders. So they “suggested” that an expansion is in the works, just not now, or soon.

Plus they can always point out that in the 7 months reported since GW2 came out, it has had sales that exceeded the 7 years of Guild Wars, just in the west with Korea, China and Japan yet to come.

Players who have problems with the game says it’s dying unless the devs cater to their requests.

Players who enjoy the game as is says it’s not.

Thanks, I didn’t feel like trying to find those quotes with the state of this forum’s search.

mjharrison.3209:

The biggest issue I see with B2P is the company has far less incentive to listen to players and to upgrade their game regularly. Once they have your money, why should they care about you? In fact, to maximise their profits they’re better off if you stop playing.

Except for that annoying cash shop. In which case they want as many people around as possible because only a certain % will ever use a cash shop for boosters and and not for win items.

Stated after each of the last two conference calls where NCSOFT said that an expansion is in the works that there wasn’t. Most recent denial was 11 days ago.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05/14/ncsoft-clarifies-stance-on-guild-wars-2-expansion/

That’s why I believe it’s just a stop gap. Something quick that didn’t need a lot of testing.

Only pro I can see with a subscription fee is forum access is usually tied to game access.

This way those who’ve quit the game for some reason will have to pay to keep telling us how bad the game is and how everyone he knows has already left and the rest of you are all doomed.

Everyone is on the same market. To keep it from melting down on everybody they’ve put a limit on how many transactions any one player can make in a minute.

Why such a rush?

Leablo.2651:

Related: Japan has banned virtual grab bag collection schemes, though not the grab bags themselves.

It seems like this is something that would have to be addressed by legislation. Corporations are notoriously bad at self-policing and they’re not going to stop a highly profitable activity just because it rubs some people the wrong way.

Actually no. What they banned was the practice of trading in a set of items collected from grab bags for an even “rarer” item.

http://andriasang.com/con12k/complete_gacha_illegal/

Keys are on sale again, didn’t know that. But the last time I knew keys were on sale was a few days before they put special items in the chest, which made it so much worse.

The client side program change didn’t affect Lyssa. No game assets were changed on the client side which is why the update was very quick.

That’s all Jeff is saying. No more, no less.

Language.

Sorry, had to be said. NA and especially US gamers are fairly monoglot. I’m sure no US gamer would be pleased if he picked a server only to discover that the primary language of choice there was anything other than English. And then find out it’ll cost him money to move.

Europeans on the other hand are a lot more polyglot. Lots of languages, lots of history, lots of invasions, lots of borders, nice rail system. You have to be able to handle yourself in multiple languages and for international commerce, most can handle English, sometimes better than native speakers.

Better. Much Better. Load times will still be slow due to the 5400rpm drive but hey, it’s a laptop, sacrifices must be made.

17.5K of them were added to the market in under an hour Thursday morning, East Coast USA time which finally raised supply over demand. This was a couple of hours after roughly 9K ectos were bought in 2 1/2 hours starting at 11p EDT. I bring this up because both are substantial movements in ecto supply that occurred with 10 hours of each other and by amounts rarely if ever seen before.

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/item/19721-glob-of-ectoplasm

It seems as if the majority of these new items were all priced at exactly 20 silver. So naturally all new items posted are priced under that because who wants to add their ectos to the end of a 16K+ item queue?

About an hour ago demand is again above supply but barely. Supply is still growing and is likely due to the reasons already stated. Prices had been hitting a high water mark of around 19s50c and as low as just above 18s, mere coppers above the highest bid.

See my original post here.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/So-what-s-up-with-Ectos/2076961

Black Regent.5897:

Vecanski.2016:

People just don’t want to accept responsibility for their own actions.\

If a hotel chain started running gambling tables by the same general rules ANET is running the gem store they’d be busted on RICO charges in a week.

Except it’s NOT. You are buying a grab bag. There is a “rare” chance that a grab bag will have something you want very, very much. You know, at least you should, that you won’t get that item in the grab bag you purchased however you will get items that are valued around the cost of the grab bag. Stores do this ALL the time, especially around the holidays as a promotion.

You, the player, made the choice that the items you are likely to get are “worthless” and only the “rare” item counts as a success.

Wait wait wait wait. First of all there is always some problems with the first iteration of new CPU and motherboard chipset. I would still stick with the Ivy Bridge/Z7x motherboards. Then there are some questions about power supplies and the new minimum power requirements from the Haswell. Remember, being on the leading edge always comes at a price. I would wait at least 30 days after the new CPU and motherboards pop up on NewEgg to see how things shake out.

The 700 series from nVidia looks to be simply a rebadge of the 600 series at faster clocks. Is that honestly worth a wait? Plus it’s the top end cards that always come first. Right now you have a GTX 660 picked out. I would be surprised to see it’s replacement anytime soon.

So apparently this cap is holding as the price of ectos have barely budged above 19.5s all day. The volume in ectos may indeed be quite high but it doesn’t take much effort to observe how the price and volume at a price fluctuates over time. Just call up ectos for sale on the TP, select it as if you were interested in buying them and observe the prices and number up for sale. Now hit refresh every 10 seconds or so and watch the price “boil”. Moving down and up. Seeing volume at a particular price change as others buy and post additional ones for sale.

I’ve been watching ectos due to the frequency that they are traded. They have a fairly broad range of prices with the occasional one with 100s available at that price. You can watch that number erode as that price becomes the lowest for a moment or two only to be undercut again and that price undercut still. It’s a kind of froth as the price moves lower and then crashing back into that economical “breakwater” clump of items. These blocks of several hundred don’t last out the day, quickly eroding away, reforming later at another price point as players sell at whatever the TP says is the current low sale price as oppose to undercut it with their own price. There is currently one of these 500 unit breakwater at 19.7s.

About 22 hours ago the price moved away from 20s down to the 19.5s peak. Maybe overnight the price may rise a bit but I doubt any serious headway will be made against the 20s wall. As of this writing the 20s wall isn’t even within the lowest 20 prices right now.

One other curious selling pattern I’ve noticed, again intentional or not. I often see a large number of 30 units for sale in a range of prices 1c apart over a 10-15 copper range. It’s like a set of “trip wires”, indicators as to how high the price has reached since the wires were laid. This way someone wouldn’t need to constantly watch to see the top end of the active price range. Of course it could just be coincidental.

Leablo.2651:

Using that info from Spidy the 15% double tax can be detailed more closely.

Assume there is a uniform internal conversion rate of x gold per 100 gems. Anet treats gem trades internally as TP transactions.

In the case of buying this means you have to cover the compounded cost of the gems and the added tax. So you don’t pay 1.15x, but x/0.85 ~ 1.176×. This is how any seller would calculate the list price when targeting a receipt of x. The twist is that, as the buyer, you pay the tax for the seller (Anet).

When you sell 100 gems, you lose 15% as normal to sales tax, so Anet takes x out of their coffers, of which you get 0.85×. This is the amount provided in the quote.

As a sell:buy ratio, the expected value is 0.85x/(x/0.85) = 72.25% which is the observed value from Spidy.

edit: clarified inclusion of tax in quoted prices

Duh! Of course, 0.85 squared. Brilliant! Kicking myself for not realizing that myself. I use to be so much better at spotting things like that.

Screw the logs the kitten Periscopes are still about. But they do spawn the occasional molten core gang of critters (like being walloped by the kitten Periscope isn’t enough) of an annoyance.

I think there was a breach early on with AION that ended up in the end with NCSOFT on a number of banks black lists due to all the challenges against charges.

Now I’ve seen $15/1200 Gem card in stores, not many stores but I’ve seen them.

Oh no they’re real. The boots are “Feathered” with all the colors set the same.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Sailor-Scout-armor/first#post1384814

Undertaker.2731:

Behellagh.1468:

Undertaker.2731:

Does my warrior look nice? if not what should i change?

Hey it’s the Mars rover guy.

Mars rover guy?

Honestly don’t get the reference? Here.

LordPhantom.1678:

Behellagh.1468:

Actually 3 CPU “intensive” threads (taking at least 50% a core each) looking at the game in Process Explorer from SysInternals. That over 70% of the game’s load in those three threads.

Looks like this on my side (Lions Arch in front of the bank; FX8350):

The two renderer threads drop significantly if the game isn’t the focus. Also you have to remember by 8 if you want to normalize utilization in terms of per core.

Let me get back with some of my own PE screen grabs.

Edit: Top image is with the game running in full screen window. By the time I could tab over to it so you can see it and do the screen capture, usage dropped a bit. Bottom image is with the game running in just a window with PE peaking out but the game has the focus.

@theckylistener

It looks as if you have this HP box.

Ram speed doesn’t impact much in the big scheme of things. However if you are looking to increase your memory to 8GB, you have to replace the 4GB you have since that motherboard only has two memory slots.

Also besides a real gamer video card you will have to swap out the anemic power supply that’s in all HPs. And since the HP case is cramp, you will need a power supply that conforms to the actual ATX12V spec when it comes to physical size. There is really not a lot of extra space in that case.

What you need is a modern ATX12V power supply in the 430-500 watt range (note I’m not expecting you to have a sky high upgrade budget). It also has to be able to fit and HP cases are very cramp so most power supplies with fans on their top/bottom aren’t a good fit since they are longer. Because of this you are looking for ones that are only 5.5" deep (long). They are all going to be 5.9″ × 3.4″ but the third dimension is important.

Now since you are in the UK, at least that PC is only sold in the UK according to HP, I don’t have any handy links to online sources of parts So I can only recommend models and hope they are available there.

In the 430 watt size I would recommend the Corsair CX430. It can provide 380 watts of 12 volt power for the CPU and video card (it’s what they feed on). For 500 watt size I would recommend it’s big brother the Corsair CX500 with 450 watts of 12 volt power. Either should be able to support up to a GTX 660Ti but the CX430 might be pushing it a bit.

As for video cards, the GTX 650Ti Boost (lets add MORE suffixes) is a fairly good card for the price point. It has more in common with the GTX 660 than the vanilla GTX 650Ti. If you prefer AMD then the HD 7850 should have similar performance.

LordPhantom.1678:

As long as GW2’s one large CPU thread (i’m not talking about the many little ones) slows down the entire system i can’t get my GTX680 to 100% usage anyway, so no reason to upgrade for me (and most likely for a lot of others too).

Actually 3 CPU “intensive” threads (taking at least 50% a core each) looking at the game in Process Explorer from SysInternals. That over 70% of the game’s load in those three threads.

Undertaker.2731:

Does my warrior look nice? if not what should i change?

Hey it’s the Mars rover guy.

Gem to Gold has been ~72.25% of the Gold to Gem price from nearly the begining. Check the history at GW2Spidy

Oct 1, 2012: Gem to Gold – 27.90s Gold to Gem – 38.62s Ratio: 0.72242
Now: Gem to Gold – 221.04s Gold to Gem – 305.95s Ratio: 0.72247

Difference due to not allowing fractional copper.

Now I find this curious.

Sometime around 11p EDT, Ecto supply started to drop off sharply. Going from 63K down to 52K over the next 2 1/2 hours. Prices also started to rise from 19.6s to 22s as all lower priced items were sold. By 5am EDT prices returned to around 20s and supply grew to 56k.

Then around 8:20a EDT to 9:10a EDT, supply grew by 17.5K units to the point it now outstrips demand. Interestingly enough there is now over 16K ectos priced at 20s.

Whatever happened, coordinated or coincidence, that 16K ectos have effectively capped the price of ectos. No one will even think of pricing above 20s or even at 20s (who wants to be at the end of that line?). So for the foreseeable future, until that 16K block is worn away, ecto prices are now capped at 20s.

Of course this now lowers the price of rare armor salvage fodder under 17s since the average coin you can get from a salvaged 20s ecto with a master kit about 15.3s and then 4s from the rune (assuming you are selling the salvage). It makes the margins doing this incredibly thin.

Now as far as I can tell, ecto supply never before exceeded demand. I just find the whole thing both curious, so much stock at one price and so much supply added in such a short period, and annoying since I was making a gold or so a night for 1/2 an hour of buying, salvaging and selling.

This is like the 30th thread talking about this video. Expect it to be locked and you getting redirected to this one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/links/Talking-GW2-expansion-long-overdue/first

Since the game is B2P, even if they no longer play the game, they can still come here to “share” their feelings till the end of their days.

Really need to make a character that goes with this song.

Left for 1,2,3, R, F1 … Right for arrow keys and mouse. Mapped right ctrl and keypad 0 for staffing.

1) The don’t notice. This happens to me more times than I like to count. I’m in battle, I’m looking at the map, I’m selling stuff on the market, etc and simply don’t notice the whisper until 10 minutes later. I try to reply if not a lot of time has passed but more often than not I don’t get a reply.

2) They are having a conversation with other people on another channel and your whisper just fudged up their autoreply.

3) He/she and their buds are all on ventro or the like and don’t even have the kitten chat open.

4) They don’t like you. They have a murder wall set up in a room where they are plotting your horrible demise. Run.

Hover mouse over the mini-map. You should see a bar of icons on the right side of the mini-map. Click on the one that looks like your mouse pointer. That toggles between your map rotating (icon always points up) or map with North always up and your icon rotating.