Guild Wars 2

Only problem is when all their friends are off in HoT and they decide to buy HoT then, they will be back to complain how they didn’t get a character slot. Just you wait and see.

BackDraft.4291:

You have a link to that thread?

Ulitmate Package preorder!

Any idea when we get our other char slot?

From the blog post.

Veteran Player Appreciation

For our long-standing fans and loyal players, we would like to say thank you and show our appreciation. For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account. The process of delivering your additional character slot will take us some time, but rest assured we will get it to you as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about the specific timing soon.

So when they figure out who gets what. I would imagine after July 31st when this offer goes off the table.

Before someone asks.

I have the NA English version and I got 817 MB for the main download.

Once the new version of the server software is installed and the client is out at the various CDN sites they simply flip a switch and everyone logged in gets a notice that the old version will stay up for another hour so please log off and update your client.

This method should allow players to finish up with whatever they are doing.

Honestly, read the patch notes.

Hero points are earned by leveling up or by completing hero challenges (previously skill challenges) throughout the world.

Then why start a thread about a topic already talked to death?

Saw the title, saw 30% and thought “oh no, not another ascended gear is getting a boost it’s so totally unfair – gear grind thread”.

Sorry, it’s late/early here.

I’m sure later in the day there will be tons of posts about how X got shafted and whatever the new “meta” will be for profession Y. You build theorists take all the fun out of MMOs by publishing “the right way” to equip your characters and in turn create an atmosphere of elitism around any mandatory party activity.

Who cares that and the end of the day players stats may shift ever so slightly, up or down. Most 80s are still equipped with some of the best gear in the game. It was best yesterday and it will still be best tomorrow.

Drang und sturm over nothing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Anet-please-fix-this/first#post5173842

Honestly try FXAA and see if it actually matters more than a frame or two. And if it doesn’t and you don’t mind the collateral blur, leave it on.

I wish. Darn toads should have a bulk option.

A character slot doesn’t disrupt the gem exchange with wild gem to gold conversion releasing all that gold that’s been sequestered back into the economy.

Considering the pre-order “fix” ends July 31st, I’m guessing they are hoping for a launch on the game’s 3rd anniversary.

Tomorrow? Likely between 8a and 5p PDT but I’ll wager before noon PDT. Unless the last sanity check of the client/server changes catch on fire.

Looks like your system is responding to the game running with both the CPU and GPU running at their full potential.

No idea. All they’ve said is that SP beyond what we would have based on our level and SP challenges done will be converted into a MF currency. They’ve said nothing, as far as I know, if they are going to rebalance the cost of those items or leave it the same.

Tomorrow will tell.

It’s not their problem. KongZhong handles the game in China, ANet just license the client/server software to them with tools that allow them to set up their own gem shop.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t know why people are shocked when they clarified the FAQ to match the current reality. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?

Of course it is.

Except when you start telling players almost 5 months ago that the base game was required and putting it on sale during every game con ANet were at hawking HoT and when time comes to start up pre-order announce the base game is now included in the price, it seems duplicitous. The FAQ change then looks as if they were covering their backsides rather than simply reflect the current situation accurately.

Of course that should only tick off those who bought the game since the original HoT announcement till now. But I suspect it’s being used as a rage point by players who bought the game long ago.

Games that run on PCs and consoles are developed on game engines that are already running on all platforms and is usually planned in advance that the development will be on all those platforms. What you see considerably less often is a custom game engine that starts on the PC being ported to a console along with the game. Console to PC is more doable simply because you are going to a more powerful platform with the PC.

So no, GW2 will never happen on a console. Or Tablet.

But still, each front fan move 67.4 cubic feet of air per minute. The case only has a volume of roughly 1.8 cubic feet. That’s roughly 74 exchanges per minute, over 1 per second.

And yes, the 2nd fan on the bottom is unlikely due to the cabling coming out of the PSU, modular or otherwise. The 1st fan would be only slightly effective since the drive cage is above it and the first full drive will block airflow. Fortunately the lower front fan is blowing air across the drive cage for cooling.

You could always go odd with a case like this.

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/carbide-series-air-540-silver-edition-high-airflow-atx-cube-case

I just dislike vertical DVD mounts. But it does provide a very clean airflow path across the motherboard. And nobody seems to like the silver version so it’s cheaper online than the other variants.

KDXX.9520:

I remember Anet before NCSoft…better days, they’d NEVER have done this. They would have spit on the idea. Shame on NCSoft and EVERY person who works for such a company.

NCSOFT has owned ANet since 2002, before the original Guild Wars launched.

I’ve bought several but always when they are on sale. No reason to spend more than I have to. Also I convert some of my gold every week to gems so I don’t get caught in a rate spike if say a sale happens on slots.

But is it worse or better than Australia/New Zealand? I’m assuming slightly better.

If at anytime since the announcement some one from ANet CS ever told an upset player that the FAQ never said you had to buy the base game, it would be a problem.

During last August’s anniversary sale transmutation charges were on sale. Except whoever was in charge of calculating the discounted price screwed up. It was suppose to be 30% off. So instead of 150 for 5 / 270 for 10 / 600 for 25 being discounted to 105/189/420 gems they were discounted to 105/210/525 gems. That’s 30%/22.2%/12.5%.

After this was pointed out someone went into the gem shop and raised the full price to 150/300/750 and reverting it back to 150/270/600 once the sale was over rather than fixing the sale price and tracking down those who bought at the wrong price and refunded them. It’s minor compared to the issue today but it’s not like they didn’t take the easy route before.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Wrong-advertising-in-Gem-Shop/first#post4347304

You may think it’s a problem but in business taking quick action is often more problematic than taking some time to consider the best alternatives.

There are two-ish issues here.

First is the base price for the expansion a fair price for what we know is included. $50 seems a bit pricing and statements about how this expansion was “also about laying the groundwork for future content” seems to imply we are paying for future features we won’t be seeing right away.

Second is what looks to be the sudden change in the requirement to already own the game part of the plan all along and the original FAQ coupled with the sales a “cash grab” or was this a last minute change and nobody thought about how bad this looks and therefore didn’t consider ways to reimburse those who were caught by this.

Vayne.8563:

… not to mention outright accusations of wrongdoing.

They changed their position about requiring to buy the core game and then edited the FAQ to hide the fact they said that in the first place. Seems to be a smidge of deceitful marketing right there coupled with the $10 sales so new players could be ready for when the expansion hit.

If they had a statement within 48 hours of this hitting the fan it would have gone a long way in quenching the fires but all the time did was to allow the anger and rage to build upon itself.

I’ve been in enough companies to see senior management and marketing foul up beyond all recognition while the engineering and manufacturing groups collectively face palm the screw up to say this is was just someone not thinking things through and it seemed like a good idea at the time rather than mustache twirling, hand wringing evil laughter from a darken room.

I think people expect too much action from companies. Did you think they would reverse their position while E3 was going on? Did you thing those behind the decision making process was even aware of the blow back until it started cropping up on game media sites on Friday? Were they even aware when the forums got all but taken down by a some disgruntled group with a bot net on Wednesday? Plus there is a holiday this weekend in the US and it’s unlikely they would spend the weekend to develop a cogent statement to the issues.

Management isn’t agile.

And when ever they do formulate a statement about this ruckus, it will be spun by marketing and cleared by legal and will say virtually nothing about the actual complaints or provide a satisfactory resolution in the eyes of the noisiest of us and likely inflaming them more.

The only think ANet senior management has going for them is thatTrait 3.0 will dominate the forums once they drop on Tuesday and push the bulk of the expansion threads to page 10.

Sorry I misunderstood. It’s a semi-common occurrence of not knowing how to get to the Inquest Complex and jumped to that is what you meant without looking at the included picture and realize it was the southeastern and not northeastern part of MP.

My bad.

There is a gate on the west side of the map just north of the The Ant Hill at the POI called Transfer Gate that will get you to the other side.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transfer_Gate_

When ANet says you will need to buy the core game, put it on sale for $10 and five months later say, oh no you don’t need to have the core game cause it’s baked right in, that is poor form. It’s either a major miscommunication or outright deception.

I imagine a number of people who saw the announcement, heard the hype and the $10 sale price and pulled the trigger because they would need to own the game anyways according to the old FAQ.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maguuma_Jungle
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maguuma_Wastes
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heart_of_Maguuma

This is getting like Georgia where every town has a road with the word Peachtree in it and the bigger the town, the more streets with the word Peachtree in it.

And the Quaker Oats guy clearly said Maguuma Jungle. If he was meant to say Heart of Maguuma then get a script writer familiar with the locals and regions in game.

Honestly the OP does have a point. They tell players you need to own GW2 to get the expansion and then offer it for free on the pre-order. True he had two months to play and I’m not sure if he got the game when it was on sale for $10 but this sudden change in requirement isn’t playing by Hoyle. Bad form ANet. Bad form.

A Hamster I would hold off doing anything rash until late next week and see if ANet comes up with a plan to “fix” this or not.

Healix.5819:

Behellagh.1468:

Now that’s odd to mention the Maguuma Jungle because that is in the core game since launch.

HoT takes place in the heart of the Maguuma Jungle.

As oppose to the Maguuma Jungle the Sylvari and Asura are in.

Intel is the better choice performance wise due to it’s higher core performance over AMD’s current offerings. Even if you take into account the game performs better with more than two cores, AMD’s cores are weak and the only advantage AMD has is more cores, which only matters if your game can use all those cores which GW2 doesn’t. And I’m talking real cores here. i3 CPUs are two cores with hyperthreading which is a way to squeeze some additional performance out of those two cores by faking to the OS that it has four cores.

Unlike the Battlefield/Metro/Call of Duty style games, GW2 is still more affected by CPU performance than graphics card. You will see improvement with a faster video card but at times when the game’s frame rate really bogs down, it’s due to CPU performance and not the graphics card.

This is a rough build list, yes it’s up there in price.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/F2mKVn

Basically top end Intel quad core with 3rd party cooler and an Asus Z97 motherboard with latest USB version. This combo will allow overclocking of the CPU.

16 GB of DDR3-1866 Cas 9 memory. Why 16 GB? Because the switch to DDR4 is coming within six months and if the pattern holds, the price of DDR3 will rise as more production is devoted to DDR4. So get it while it’s cheap. But if you want to drop it to 8 GB that’s fine too.

GTX 960 is half the performance of a GTX 980 Ti at 1/3rd the price. And as I said earlier, when the game bogs down, it’s not because of a complicated graphics being rendered but the CPU getting bogged down.

The case comes with 2×140mm front and 120 mm rear fan with spots for up to 5 more fans (2 bottom and 3 top). The PSU is a semi-modular 650 watt 80+ Gold Seasonic.

The SSD is the popular 250GB Samsung 850 EVO.

I’m sure while I was researching this others have chimed in so this is just one opinion and one suggested list of parts.

Test.8734:

Doggie.3184:

I’m not too concerned with how China plays as long as we’re not a part of it.

Meanwhile, ArenaNet was forced to watch GW2’s earnings falling instead of rising with the China release. All that effort was for nothing. It’s little to no surprise that ArenaNet, too, is desperate – desperate enough for the “bait and switch” we just got with HoT.

China’s GW2 income would have been reported as royalties in NCSOFT’s quarterly reports and not in the broken out GW2 income numbers, which only come from NCSOFT’s owned subsidiaries.

And what defines veteran? Day the account was registered? Time played? Gems bought? Forum posts?

Veteran is usually a number of months paid subscription term which isn’t applicable in a B2P game.

Edit: And until the crisis and what to say about it is decided, everyone has gone mute until the official word comes down from above.

It appears the previous thread on this got silently nuked from orbit because I did have a post in it, it’s not in my post history and I wasn’t notified the thread went into the trash.

ANet licences the game to KongZhong. They can do whatever they want to monetize the game there. Not sure if ANet only gets a cut from game and gem sales and not the straight up cash for item transactions I see on KongZhong’s GW2 site.

First LS 1 is not happening because they only built LS 2 with the repeatability by giving LS 2 it’s own zones. They aren’t going to add the tech to blow up and rebuild Lion’s Arch over and over again.

LS 2 is currently on available for 1280 gems and a character slot is only 800 gems. Not really equivalent choices in terms of value to the player.

That’s called management or marketing paralysis. Remember some of the upper management are/were at E3 this week. Let them have some time to regroup now that this spat is on game news websites and not just this forum and reddit.

Calling an expansion a paywall is a little unfair in my opinion. By definition then all expansions are therefore paywalls if you need to buy it to access it’s content.

Paywall is usually reserved for core game functionality being restricted from F2P players that VIP tier (read subscription in everything but name only) players get.

The ratio between the rates is that gems to gold is roughly 72.25% of the gold to gems rate. Starting last August 2014 Spidy became unreliable (except when Spidy’s sampling was down, the obvious straight line). Before then the prices are accurate. If you are looking for an accurate history after than, at least for the Gold to Gems ratio, then GW2TP.com has a chart going back to late Sept 2013.

https://www.gw2tp.com/gems

When I bring up the exchange in game right now I can:

Buy 2000 gems for 358g 40s 18c
Sell 1933 gems for 250g

This sets the rate for 100 gems as

Gold to Gems ~ 17g 92s 1c
Gems to Gold ~ 12g 93s 33c (remember this conversion only gives you whole gold, any silver and copper you should be getting is truncated so this value isn’t exact)

12.9333 g / 17.9201 g ~ 72.17%

Patch is usually posted start of business day to noonish PDT.

The video did say something odd when they mentioned the inclusion of the core game.

“The Standard Edition of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns comes with access to the core game, as well as everything in the Maguuma Jungle.”

Now that’s odd to mention the Maguuma Jungle because that is in the core game since launch. Now if they meant Maguuma Wastes, well you have access to that as well right now if you have the core game, except for the LS2 content. So why call it out? A case of terminology confusion? Why mention it unless you are also getting something extra and the only extra thing in any Maguuma anyplace would be LS 2. What are they trying to say here? Yet another confusing announcement from ArenaNet.

https://youtu.be/kcpwXHqrQis?t=43s

Other than online I haven’t seen any local retailers in my area who once carried it still offering any box edition of the game for several months now.

I won’t buy it because the only things it gets you over the online HoT edition, if it’s the heroic edition, are the heroic goodies and a way out of date DVD copy of the game. And you would still need to buy the HoT edition.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2#Guild_Wars_2_editions

I suspect neither Aidenwold or Devata ever worked on software development much less game development.

GW was the equivalent of an Infocom’s ZIL or LucusArts SCUMM game. Relatively easy to knock out another game using the same underlying tech with simply a new coat of paint/art assets.

GW2 is a completely different beast and is more difficult to crank out “another whole game” the way the campaigns were, which is what all of you are calling expansions.

The hub/spoke/instanced model is so much easier to develop new content for than a full blown MMO that GW2 is. And unlike GW they aren’t just throwing a bunch of traits out there and then worry how to balance it all at a later date. That’s just another GW hardcore player harping point. GW2 is targeting the casual player so everything is about simplifying the experience so new players won’t be turned off playing, so no, you cant’ have 100s of traits to rummage through to find the overpowered combination to be nerfed the next time ANet does a balance sweep. Even the reduced set GW2 has still causes ANet to rebalance periodically.

GW2 wasn’t for the GW hardcore, those who were still playing in 2010. The money they spent in GW was long gone in terms of keeping that game open or the development of GW2. Their only contribution was impressing the NCSOFT money guys to lend ANet the development funds for GW2.

And yes, if it wasn’t for EotN with the HoM tying into GW2, GW would have been shut down totally. While GW may have allowed GW2 to be developed, the prospect of GW2 kept GW’s lights on pre launch and GW2’s success since launch.

For PSU sizing I use the eXtreme PSU calculator and up the suggested size by 50%. So a good quality 650-700 watt PSU should be what you are looking for.

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

The Pro is technically faster than the EVO and on paper more reliable due to the type of flash they use. In practice the EVO is reliable enough for any consumer. TechReport drove both versions of the previous generation into the ground, all far exceeding their published lifespans.

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

For RAM I think the current conventional wisdom is that DDR3-1866, CAS 9 is the sweet spot in terms of price Vs perceivable performance gain.

Here’s TechReport’s most recent system guild.

http://techreport.com/review/28198/system-guide-current

Harper.4173:

Protip: the “revenue stream” they need flows more from the gem store than it does from boxed copy sales.
Players that buy the game and leave are not where you want to be. You want players that buy the game and stay and keep buying. Veteran players ARE that market. We bought the game, we’re buying the expansion. We’re buying gems and items in between. That’s where their money comes from.

The fact that the core game doesn’t get them that much cash can be seen in the discounts that went as low as 10$ – their entire strategy is to have a lot of players playing so that a good portion of them will use the gem store. That’s fair.

The problem is in order to build up large numbers you can’t just keep selling forever to new players – you also need people to stay – player retention – and for that you’ve got to make them happy.

I as a veteran feel in a sense that Anet has done very little for me and doesn’t really care about the veteran player demographic – which is upsetting.

When the NPE was launched veterans weren’t a concern.
When FOTM was reset veterans weren’t a concern.

I’m wondering – will long time veteran players of this franchise ever be a concern?

Also – the one time events and festivities aren’t really a thing – the “new players” could easily have bought the game back when we veterans did.
Equal opportunity. The fact that they chose not to is entirely their choice and the consequences that follow are what they are.

They had a choice. Sadly veterans don’t have one since we can’t choose for Anet to care more about us.

Protip – In the first four months of GW2’s existence it had income of $150 million. In the next 27 months it had a total income of $210 million. That’s the difference between primarily box sales Vs primarily gem sales. That’s why they are putting out another full price box release, that spike of income to keep development wheels turning for the “next” game, whether it’s GW3 or the next box expansion.

@Devata when will you accept that ANet will never be able to crank out expansions at a rate that could sustain the business. GW2 is an entirely different style game from GW. And as long as ANet’s number one priority it no monthly fee the cash shop is the only option available short of opening a Patreon account.

Rally against the cash shop but unless you know of a business model that doesn’t include a cash shop that includes juiced up items as most F2P games sell or walled off content that you can access for a fee or for a subscription in everything but name this is the model they have.

Wishing it was “just like GW” with an expansion every 12 months on average to keep the lights on and the development continuing isn’t going to work. I hope you realize that if GW2 didn’t get the green light and the funding from NCSOFT for development, GW would have likely shut down years ago due to lack of income. The only reason it’s still alive today is because ANet tied the HoM to GW2.

Oh most definitely STO is a hybrid F2P game. I’ve dabbled.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7009153

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Free-to-Play

The pants are Illustrious. I think the boots are too.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illustrious_armor_

Oh look, someone cleaned up up my graph and not attributed it to me. No biggie.

Anyways it shows the drop off from “box” sales to gem sales. HoT should spike that nicely.

And it show off how GW2 is still one of the higher income sources for NCSOFT. 3rd ahead of AION, Lineage II, WildStar and the combined income of their other games including GW and their mobile games.