Guild Wars 2

I like that the tone of this thread has moved away from the “omg you suck. look how easy I can do it” nonsense (for the most part – the post above mine was made before I hit post on mine ) to being actually helpful. That is what these forums should be like all the time.

Ariella Goldstein.3562:

Blaeys.3102:

I enjoyed the fight and did not find it overly frustrating or difficult.

True, if you try to simply zerg the statue down, you will probably fail, but adding the need to switch and move a little doesnt make the fight frustrating. It makes it more fun.

Keep in mind that it is virtually impossible to fail the fight since the Rox will keep rezzing you if you go down. Seems like a good mix of casual and semi challenging to me.

Worst case scenario, grab a friend or two and head into it. It goes pretty fast with multiple people in the fight.

Seems to me that part of my problem is that I don’t seem to have the reaction time some of you have I guess. Gear is pretty good, I’m getting rid of the menders, except for when rhythm ends up breaking for one reason or another. I move as fast as I can to get the things down, bottlenecking the menders in the door, freezing them with signet, and maybe 4 out of 5 I can get down, it’s the 5th one that’s the problem because it gets through and it’s back to the beginning. So no, not zerging, I am taking a tactical approach.

And these instances are supposed to be allowed for soloing, so I’d like to be able to do it that way. And please don’t give me the “why are you playing an mmo”. There are times, even in an mmo, that I don’t want to depend on a group due to RL reasons. I only get a chance to play in between naps and activities of my kids. So it’s nice to have things I can access on my own schedule, and if I have to leave because of a rl emergency, I don’t leave anyone hang. I like being polite.

I AM going to check my gear and traits again, but I’m really not sure how helpful that’s going to be in the end.

Anyone that uses the lines “why are you playing” or any other similar derogatory in a thread like this is mainly trolling. It’s best to just ignore them if you want a real discussion.

Your post is well worded and worthy of discussion. Best I can do is offer some advice. It sounds like the path you are taking will work with a little perseverance and adapting. If the fear wards are the big issue, take a sec to range the ones nearest you down. If its the immune adds, I find it best to run toward them and dodge through (or pop damage immunity of some kind). They disappear as soon as the explode so letting them explode earlier (in ways you dont take damage) will keep them from overwhelming the room. If you have any kind of pets/summons/minions, try to get them onto the statue early. Additionally, hit the statue with your biggest burst of damage at the very start of the fight to give yourself a headstart and shorten the fight considerably. There are fewer adds to deal with and you can usually make a sizeable dent before you have to head off the mender.

Beyond that, I would ask someone who plays the same profession for some tips. Often a slight change in traits or utilities will make the fight much more manageable (for instance, when I did it on my necro, the chilling darkness trait make a big difference for me).

I enjoyed the fight and did not find it overly frustrating or difficult.

True, if you try to simply zerg the statue down, you will probably fail, but adding the need to switch and move a little doesnt make the fight frustrating. It makes it more fun.

Keep in mind that it is virtually impossible to fail the fight since Rox will keep rezzing you if you go down. Seems like a good mix of casual and semi challenging to me.

Worst case scenario, grab a friend or two and head into it. It goes pretty fast with multiple people in the fight.

you dont have to spawn that wolf. Use Scruffy’s detection ability to help identify the right crate to open and ignore the rest.

Shpongle.6025:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Shpongle.6025:

…is literally the worst thing you have ever put in the Living Story, season 1 included, besides Liadri. It literally took me 25 minutes to kill it, and I did not die once, and I always killed all the menders…if I knew it was like that I would’ve found a group of people to do it with.

Next time, put a warning label on it ‘’this content should be attended with a group of people’’ or something like that

not.fun.at.all. way.too.long

You are way.too.bad.

Get out of your Clerics/Nomads comfort zone and try to learn the encounter (not that there’s much to learn). You barely had to dodge at all, you were able to simply kite the spectral flames which real name I forgot und the ascalonian menders were slow as hell, not to mention the obvious tells and the nice, orange-red aoe-indicator which basically screams “press V now!”

Seeing that you have so much problems with such an encounter, may I ask you which class you play with what kind of build? We might be able to give you useful tips so that you can improve your gameplay.

Saint.5647:

Shrug. You’re just a bad player.

Nothing about this takes 25 minutes. For the record, I’ve not been a living story fan in the past. They’ve made big steps in the right direction though. This is a fun fight with some mechanics and attacks to mind.

It’s not difficult but does require you to pay attention to attacks and enemies. It’s very easy to solo. You mind Rytlock’s instructions, evade attacks, and put out damage on the statue. Also mind mender pathing and hop back to CC and burn them down. If you need the mender achievement, you let them buff him and continue as normal.

It’s actually engaging and interesting. An absolute lolmode quest with a group though. You’re just a bad player. They’ve made some great content here.

I was using a full rabid gear exo+ascended rabid spec condi necro. And I never said it was hard, I didn’t have to restart once, it’s just too long and tedious. Took me 25 minutes.

There’s no good and bad players in this game.
There’s just zerkers and not zerkers.

I am a not zerker.

Tip for necros (even non zerkers – im also in Rabid). Use the Flesh Golem and trigger its charge against the statue every time its off cooldown. It takes a big chunk of health every time. Dont worry about focusing the other ghosts down (except the mender). Your marks and other aoes, along with the NPCs, will be enough to keep them under control. Your only jobs (except staying alive) are to dps the statue and the mender. Its also important to keep chill off of you as much as possible to help stay away from the immune explody balls of light.

Finally, a suggestion – trait into Chilling Darkness. The chills on blinds make dealing with the mender almost trivial.

I think it was a decent patch content wise. Not the largest or even the most engaging, but the story was tight and there were fun moments.

It is extremely unfortunate that the fun was overshadowed by the crippling bugs and stalled events. Those are what people will remember from this patch – standing around forever in Iron Marches and Frostgorge waiting for short events to start.

It is like a good book that has been dropped in a puddle. You can read just enough to know its enjoyable, but not enough to actually enjoy it.

Hopefully, the developers learned some important lessons with this patch and we wont see this kind of thing again.

OMNIBUS.2913:

I enjoyed this episode too but scannign through there sure is a lot of people hating on it. Personally i liked the open world events part tied to LS. Gives players a reason to go and do these events. They are also doing some much needed character developement on DE #2. I actually payed attention to find out more about them.

I think, if you dig a little, you’ll find that most people hating on it are doing so because of the event bugs we had yesterday – some of which were bad enough to stop all progression in the story and make players wait around (for potentially hours) before they could proceed.

Most of those seem fixed now, so today will be the real test. I like the integration of real world events into the story as well and hope they continue to do that.

Personally, I really enjoyed this story step and found some of the fights engaging. I went in expecting this patch to be smaller and more focused on story – which it was. I am hoping (especially seeing how this step ended), that we will be seeing some dungeon content added in the next update though. I think they have the perfect opportunity to do so (and it would give us more to do through the mid season break that has been rumored).

It looks like the problem is Fenris is getting stuck in the wall of the tower and the supply dolyaks are just AWOL.

I managed to find a map instance where this wasnt the case, but it is still something they need to fix.

There was also an issue with the event in Blazeridge – the boss at the end of the artifact hunt was going immune after being attacked too early, stopping the event from progressing.

On the plus side, the bandaid fixes (extra NPC at the sample event) they made in Iron Marches are allowing people to progress in the story without having to do that event. I think these events are 90% there – just small things completely shutting people’s stories down.

roguenub.1409:

I simply hate this update, and honestly, I’ve enjoyed all of the other releases. This takes “mindless” to a whole new level

Its just broken. They get it fixed and it will be enjoyable.

Every open world event seems to be getting stuck though. It really needs to be fixed.

The escort quest in Frostgorge is stuck and wont proceed now.

These events need to be running continuously – or, at the very least, every 5 minutes. They’re fun, but there is way too much time between events (specifically, the sample collection event).

People will get frustrated.

dkspins.4670:

Just one more reason I love the Megaservers… not! LS1 had all open world events, yet I never recall this much chaos, nor problems like NPC’s or animals having guild tags in the past 18 months. The cap on maps is too high currently, 50 per map unless TeQ or Evolved Wurm is up.

I dont think this has anything to do with megaserver. We’ve seen these kind of issues before.

Hopefully, they will have this fixed soon. Til then, alot of people are still having fun just hanging out on the map.

I think the best way to look at it is to compare what we have now to the early episodes of Season 1, specifically the first three episodes of Flame and Frost (Southsun was considered a “special event” according to the web site).

Those first three episodes were lead ins, introducing us to Braham and Rox and setting the story through things like the signposts, special instances for both characters (retaking Cragstead and defending the hatchery), some exploration events, etc.

The first three episodes of season 2 feel similar, with the notable exception of adding Dry Top (even though Southsun was added just before the start of season one, so you could say we are at about the same point we were then in terms of content released).

It wasnt until the 4th episode that we saw our first dungeon (the Molten Facilities) and episode 6 introduced the first major world boss (Karka Queen – which was the first real permanent element of that season).

I think we are on track to see some major fights – and lots of new content other than story steps and new maps (which are great, but we can all agree cannot stand alone to offer a full gaming experience).

Before were done, Im sure we will have new dungeons, world bosses, etc – all of those things we love to do.

I think it is way too early in the season to worry, but do agree that the living story seasons need to be alot more than a few stories and new maps.

Ideally, by the end of the season, we should see the following:

- New Maps
- New Dynamic Events
- New Guild Missions
- New Dungeons
- New Fractals
- New World Bosses
- New Traits and Utility Skills (this one is very important – was the core of the character progression model they unveiled earlier this year)

Additionally, there will be the feature packs, which will hopefully include:

- New PvP modes
- New Goals and Events in WvW
- New Mini Games
- New things to spend guild influence on (Really want guild halls)
- Improvements to UI/core mechanics
- Many more surprises.

I think we will see most of these, and maybe some more – which will keep me sated and happy with the game. A new profession or weapons would be nice, but arent high on my list of wants.

IMO, the worst case would be the season turns into just the story instances and new maps/dynamic events, but I think they know that would be a HUGE step backwards for this game.

People in game – that Ive seen – love the megaserver for the most part. It keeps the world alive and means there are people to play with in pretty much every zone.

And saying you never see people you know anymore is most likely hyperbole more than fact – the system does a good job putting people on the same map most (about 60-70% in my estimate) of the time.

That isnt to say it is perfect and couldnt use some improvements. Specifically, they need:

- a better system for joining friends on other map versions (having to taxi via 5 man parties is clunky and irritating). They need to let us simply right click friends or guildees and taxi without having to be in their party. This one small interface change would make all the difference for me.

- and they need some way to foster server communities for WvW outside of the actual WvW maps. Those communities are struggling, especially on smaller servers. Ideally, this would be a dedicated chat channel for your server (/server to talk in a chat channel dedicated to your server).

These dont seem like big changes to implement (Im not a programmer though) – just minor interface changes that would make a world of difference.

New game modes should be the top priority right now, even if they arent part of the tourney rotation.

PvP is fun in this game, but the more casual pvpers (like myself and alot of people I know) need more variety to keep us interested in that aspect of the game. King of the hill, capture the flag, deathmatch, etc – we need alot more to do in pvp day to day.

Im not saying that balance, esports,etc arent important aspects – just that many of us just want more FUN things to do in spvp on a day to day basis.

I think the desire to make an esport is clouding the developers ability to just make some fun things to do in pvp. Forget everything else and just focus on making it fun.

We’re only two releases into the season. Little early to complain about the lack of any feature. I doubt the developers will let a season go by without a new dungeon or other group content.

If your point is that the living story instances should include scaling/difficulty appropriate to five man parties (and maybe some kind of minimal ongoing reward), I think that argument can be made and should be something the devs consider for the future (although I think, if that is the case, you can make that recommendation a little calmer than you do in this thread – they are more likely to listen if you are level headed and logical in the request instead of coming across antagonistic all the time).

cesmode.4257:

So when I say I didnt come back because LS sucks, what is that?

The first part (“didnt come back”) can be considered fact (if, in fact, you arent playing at all – in which case, why are you on these forums so much), but the second part is opinion (“LS sucks”). It would be a fact if you said you didnt come back because you didnt think you would like the new LS.

To the OP, I have been seeing an uptick in the number of my guildees playing again in the past two weeks, but havent inquired about whether or not its related to the living story. The reality is – it doesn’t really matter why. I just like seeing more people around.

You blow up a giant poisonous tower – there will be fallout (in this case spores) across a wide area.

From a lore perspective, it shouldnt make much difference at all. The story path is set in stone – while the explorable paths are about us clearing out gravelings – we cleared out most of the ghosts in the story path. They could remove the random ghosts we run across in explorable and Lt Kholer, but that would be about all that would be warranted. The gravelings (last 3 bosses with possible exception of Ghost Eater) wouldnt really be affected by this occurence.

The bigger question is will they take this opportunity to give us a path in AC similar to Twilight Assault in TA. I really hope so. Ive been waiting awhile to see some new challenges in dungeons.

It makes sense for them to still be around. Their leaders were defeated so they have no real impact (now), but it wouldnt make sense if they simply disappeared.

I really hope this means they are giving a path in the AC dungeon the Twilight Assault overhaul treatment.

Seems like the perfect chance to do it.

I absolutely love the direction they are taking with the past two updates/season two, but I think there is more they could do to broaden the appeal.

Specifically, I would love to see implementation of a hard mode into the personal story line – with some kind of minimal rewards (could be as small as a champ box) for repeating each episodes final boss (Aerin and the Monstrous Mordrem Thrasher so far). Adding hard mode to unlocked personal stories could create short mini dungeon experiences with fights that challenge groups up to five players – hopefully not replacing dungeons but definitely giving groups something fun to do in between dungeon releases – of just a way to really quickly have some fun with smaller groups.

Just a thought.

I agree. They could do alot more with this system and adding some palpatable hard content into these instances.

Some of the current achievements, while difficult solo, are laughably easy in 3-5 player groups. They should give us a third tier of achievements (or, even better, optional bosses) that offer Liadri-level challenges to both single and 5 party groups.

CureForLiving.5360:

EgonVenkman.1907:

M Steel.2574:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Confirmed – Logan’s seed has been planted

^ You are a true poet.

But teasing aside, there has been speculation that Jennah might be pregnant in other forums—though she certainly isn’t showing yet if she is. That said, she’s a powerful mesmer and she hasn’t made many appearances since Scarlet’s attack.

And how do we not know the child isn’t a few years old already. Hidden away after Logan left his old gang to save the queen. That is what my money is on.

But why hide the child?

As an heir to the throne, the child would be a descendant of King Doric and, therefore, tasked with protecting the bloodstones. The dragons have a good reason for hunting him or her down.

One things is for sure – none of this bodes well for Queen Jennah.

It seems to scale similar to the other world bosses – only with considerably more health – so it is extremely unlikely it is mathematically possible to solo it down in the time allotted. It feels along the same lines as Karka Queen or Tequatl in terms of health, just without the complexity.

To the OP’s original point, I agree that it is a well designed fight, even though it takes little to no strategic thinking to kill it. It is more about maximizing dps, practicing dodges, using condi clears/stability/etc.

That said, I think there are three things they can do to improve the fight -

1. tweak the scaling. Until you have 40 people, it feels really hard to even dent its health.

2. As others have mentioned, there needs to be some lore or reason for this giant to be here.

3. It needs to despawn at the end of the sandstorm (in fact, I think all of the sandstorm bosses should). If it even has 10% health, it takes forever to kill (especially with about half the people leaving to do other events), which, in turn, severely hinders the map’s attempts at T4/5 the next hour.

Easy solution to this issue.

First, as others have said, it is easy to avoid the zerg in most zones. If you are looking for the small group experience in the open world, either party with friends/guildees or, if none are online, use the looking for group tool. It is actually really effective for something like this. Just advertise a group with a notice like “looking for small group to do DEs in Cursed Shores (or Mt Maelstrom or where).”

My favorite zones to do this in are usually Kessex Hills, Malchor’s Leap and Fields of Ruin, but there are many others – or just hopping between maps to the various minidungeons. It is also possible to get this experience in the new Dry Top map if you focus on the smaller events or end up on a server not going for T4 or 5.

What you’re looking for is in the game. You just have to put some (extremely minimal) effort into finding it.

To the point of community, I disagree. Good communities are built, not forced onto us by arbitrary boundaries. For me, the communities that matter are my guild, those we wvw with (which hasnt changed) and my friends list. The megaserver just creates a bigger pool of potential friends (for the friends list and guild). It enhances my community rather than diminishes it.

maha.7902:

What?

Players have 100% control over when their interrupts will work, people just misuse their CC all the time by just spamming all of their skills off cooldown.

Technically, yes they do, but not in practice.

Realistically, in open world zergs, it is too easy for other players to instantly restack 50 stacks of defiance.

Giving players control over when their interrupts will work, without the reliance on 70 other players paying attention, is the key to making interrupts valid in the open game world.

This is far less of an issue in instanced 5-man content where groups that communicate well can coordinate interrupts much easier.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Lots of nice comments here. I, too, have a strong dislike for the Defiant/Unshakable system. Internally we’ve kicked around a lot of ideas about how to change it. The problem is that making large sweeping changes to the game is a bit like moving a table that you built a Jenga™ tower on—it takes time, planning, and a lot of care to do it.

We’ve made big changes before, though. This one is on our list to address.
In the mean time it’s great to see some discussion over alternatives as well as some specific examples where existing alternatives work.

Personally (by which I mean not representing the entire development team) I’d like to see at least one boss with a sort of reverse defiance. Generally immune to CC except in windows during one or two keys attacks with a long warmup. I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Discuss?

To me, the biggest issue is that players have no individual control over when their interrupts will work.

My potential solution:

I know it may be problematic technically, but what if defiance stacks were unique to the player rather than global. Instead of 50 stacks of defiance with a huge zerg of players, every player has 4 (it could be an uncleansable debuff on the player). Essentially, players know that every 4th interrupt they execute will work so they need to plan accordingly.

This gives players control over when and how often they can interrupt – and still accomplishes the goal of limiting interrupts in major encounters.

I also really like the idea of “windows for interrupts” like you describe (and like you’ve used on Three Toed Tootsie).

I say tear it down if it results in interesting story and gameplay. That is what it is all about.

LFG is working great for me when I want to find a T4 map.

I think the map is a good balance – doesnt require the organization of something like Boss Blitz or the Marionette – but still offers incentive to tacitly work together.

I dont think every zone should use this exact same mechanic, but having maps where we can do this is a nice addition.

Only started this morning. Map has been really smooth until a few hours ago (impressively so with the sandstorm mechanic).

It is specific to Dry Top and it does seem to be affecting everyone that I can see.

The big differences are you get an extra champion to fight during the sandstorm and all events drop slightly more geodes.

Not sure if luck is upped, but I did see someone get the pistol precursor last time I did a T4 (and they got it on the T4 boss).

It doesnt seem that hard to get the map to T4 with some minimal organization/leadership. Dulfy has a pretty good guide to making it happen.

As far as I can tell, the skritt burgler in Dry Top spawns in the same place at exactly 40 minutes past every hour (at the exact moment the sandstorm starts).

OanSur.4590:

This may not be the best LS release so far, but for a start of a new season- its great. Remember when S1 started and we were wandering the land fixing signs and escorting refugee… comparing to that, S2 is going to be epic.

Also after many months of zerg wars content it is nice to see a map like that designed for smaller groups of players. Only thing i miss is some kind of repeatable dungeon path. Like in tower of nightmares part.

The repeatable dungeon path is there – in the form of the 3 repeatable living story instances. there is just no incentive outside of enjoying the fights for going back in after you get the achievements. I would like to see them add some kind of minimal reward to them though – even if it were just some geodes or a champ box for the last boss. Either that or add some hardcore mode achievements with rewards.

And agree – great chapter so far.

Everything about this patch feels extremely well done – but there is one thing I can point to that makes me extremely optimistic about the future.

That is the heavy focus on dynamic events in the new map zone. Dynamic events are what make the world feel alive and I think the development team hit a major home run with the way they fit together in Dry Top. Please give us more like this, Anet.

And the story is very tight and well written so far. While I enjoyed Season One, some of it felt a little forced. Can’t wait to see where the story goes next.

There definitely needs to be a solution to this. I shouldnt have to switch to power based gear for open world combat because of a technical limitation. Surely there is a solution that makes these stats/builds viable that doesnt tax the system into the dirt.

As has been said multiple times, many other MMOs (almost all over MMOs) get this right – it is sad that GW2, which does almost everything better than all of those games – drops the ball on this important point.

Repeating the living story steps is fun and I really like the new achievement system – but I think there is a bit of a missed opportunity here. They should add a (very) minimal reward for redoing living stories segments associated with releases – it could be as low as 20 silver or maybe a couple of champion bags.

Turn them into mini scalable dungeons (akin to the missions from GW1) – the only piece missing is a smallish reward.

Very happy with the result. Hope they keep this up.

Yea. Figured it out. Its just a confusing interface. The missions are definitely replayable.

Same thing is happening to me. Cant proceed past “Disturbance in Brisban Wildlands” step.

Just a thought, but I think a big part of the reason support stats aren’t as popular/useful is because, in large groups (and even in 5 man groups), it is very simple to keep the important boons running almost 24/7.

If they changed “boon duration” to “boon intensity,” it could (potentially) open up more builds and make support builds much more viable. For instance, instead of “might last 3 seconds longer” it would become might increases power/condition damage by 30% more than normal (same with other appropriate boons).

Just a thought. I realize there are probably technological limitations or gaps in my logic, but I would like to see them do something to make support builds better.

I would like to see more challenging content added, but not through instanced raids as some have suggested. Having raided 10 and 25 man hardcore for years, I know firsthand the kind of toxic environment they can create.

I think the best place to add hardcore large group content (keeping in mind they do need more solo and 5-man challenges as well) is through guild missions.

I would like to see two additional categories of guild missions:

- Tier 4 Bounties: Two raid level bosses that spawn in set locations in the open world that offer a real challenge (current bounty bosses do not – its more like hide and seek).

- Tier 2 Challenges: Extremely difficult group dynamic events (guild challenges taken to the next level).

Contemporary Heroes (http://contemporaryheroes.shivtr.com) is once again actively recruiting new members. We accept members from any server in North America (Most of us WvW on Henge of Denravi, but that is not required to be a member of the guild).

We want to grow from our already substantial bases (300 total; 150+ active members) into a multi server guild dedicated to just enjoying the game for what it is – and leaving the rat race out of it.

Contact me in game at Blaeys.3102 if the following sounds like something you would like to be a part of.

Our mantra is very simple – “NO DRAMA.”

For us, this is a game – a place to play and have fun with friends, old and new. As a guild we arent trying to set any speed records or prove anything to the community. We just want to cut up and have fun in a virtual world.

As far as guild rules/guidelines, it’s pretty simple. We do not tolerate (serious) elitism, petty squabbling, name calling, belittling or any other form of (real) drama in the guild whatsoever. We keep that crap out of our guild any way we can – while still allowing members to have fun (even at each others’ expense – as long as its done in fun ).

Guild Activities:

Most of the week, we leave the schedule open for individual and small group play (with ad hoc large group activities such as Living Story and Orrian Temple runs thrown in – we do like to run living story content in larger guild groups when people are interested).

At the same time, we have three events that are scheduled every week (none of which are mandatory for members to attend):

• Guild Mission Night (Monday nights at 8:30 eastern). We do all guild missions, and at least one major world event (usually Karka Queen) every week. They usually take about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Attendance has been holding steady at between 30 and 40 participants each mission. We do not take ourselves very seriously during these missions, so be prepared for singing in teamspeak, stories about exploding armadillos, etc. We will do additional missions throughout the week if enough people miss Monday and express interest.

• Guild sPvP Tournament Night (alternating between Tuesday and Thursday at 8:30 p.m. eastern). Format is open, but we usually do a 3-5 team 3v3 deathmatch mini tournament on our custom pvp map – followed by something just for fun (Zombie Mode, VIP Hunt, AsuraBall). We dont take this event very seriously either – its mainly about hunting down and killing each other mercilessly over and over.

• Guild WvW Night (Wednesdays at 7 p.m. eastern) – because of the game structure, this is the only event that is restricted to people on Henge of Denravi.

Addtionally, it is very easy to find people for 5 party groups for dungeons, spvp, fractals, etc at almost any time of the day in the guild. We have a fairly active playerbase that enjoys doing things together. If you express interest in a particular activity, we do our best to make sure you get the chance to do that activity. This sometimes means rotating people in and out of dungeon/fractal groups. It is important to us that no one gets left behind. People who commit to the guild will find the guild committed to them.

General Guild Information:

We have a channel on the HoD Teamspeak, a 100+ member Ventrilo and an active Web site () – as well as a fully stocked and researched guild bank.

• Guild boosters – we run +gold per kill, + karma and +magic find 24/7, with other boosters running based on need (e.g. crafting critical success when new crafting levels come out, reduced waypoint costs during living story intros, etc when needed).

• Our members include people from all walks of life and of all ages (which is why we keep things in chat family friendly). Ages (that I know of) range from 17 to 62 – and we have more than one family that plays together in the guild (something we are very proud of and encourage).

• Repping the guild is encouraged, but not required. Guild rank (and bank access) is tiered based on how often you wish to rep, but all members are invited to all guild activities.

If you are interested in joining, whisper me (Blaeys.3102) or any other member in game. You will not see us spamming chat looking for new members. We prefer to recruit in ways that allow us to better communicate who we are and what people get from the guild when they join.

Here is what I would like to see in terms of new challenging content:

For one to five players:

- Living story repeatables (the journal) that include optional hardcore bosses or titles/achievements that challenge us in unique ways
- New dungeons or TAssault level revamps of existing paths
- More fractals
- return of the “trials” event from cutthroat politics with rotating enemies monthly based on what is going on in the game world

For 15-100 players

- New “hardcore” guild mission category that includes extremely difficult bosses (bounties) and events (challenges) – that start scaling at 15 and continue up to 100 people

- Open world mini-dungeons that require thought and coordination to open/complete

- New category of open world dynamic events that show up in a different color, indicating they are more difficult than others

- Revamp/addition of world bosses to include anti-zerg/coordination mechanics (portals on Behemoth were a good start and work for very low level – now do the same with the rest)

For 100+ players

- Tequatl and Triple Threat
- one additional boss of this caliber during each living world “season”
- Living Story invasion events (temporary content, but at least one every other month)

Im pumped. Great teaser.

It raises more questions than it answers, but that is a good thing. I like experiencing the big ticket items in the game for the first time instead of on youtube.

The big questions for me right now are, who attacked the Zephyrites and will we get to provide aid/help them out in any way? Aetherblades make the most sense, but they aren’t the only possibility (A dragon, Tengu, or even Evon Gnashblade – as revenge for supporting Kiel maybe).

And a new desert area will be fun – not sure if we’ll get to go there on July 1 (video makes it look like were just prepping/dealing with threats in Brisban), but I hope the gates actually open and we do.

Regardless, it looks great so far.

The fully dead character’s name should be in a different color (compared to downed) and rezzes should prioritize downed characters over fully dead.

And, most importantly, fully dead characters should not count toward boss scaling – and characters who lay fully dead for more than X seconds should not be eligible for boss loot/world boss boxes/event credit.

Great example, Lanfear. I would love to see repeatable story steps in the journal of Toxic Hybrid (and the hatchery/cragstead events) caliber.

To the OP, cyclical content like FotW shouldn’t be permanent, and there will always, by necessity, still need to be some temporary content (like the open world activities in the Lion’s Arch invasion). In order for the world to change and feel alive, some things simply cannot be permanent.

For the much of the content, however, they have a solid toolbox of ways they can keep it around and relevant (without really diluting the population), including:

- The new Living Story Journal instances (examples from S1 could be Cragstead, Hatchery, Toxic Hybrid, other instanced areas from tower, fight against Canach’s Lair, cutthroat politics enemy wave defense events, queens speech where scarlet attacks, etc)

- New Guild Missions (Bosses from LA invasion as new bounties, Scaled down Marionette as guild challenge, instanced, empty Tower of Nightmares as guild puzzle, etc)

- New Dynamic Events (fixing signs, helping refugees in Southsun, rogue clockwork invasions, etc – there is really alot of potential here)

- New Champions (Aetherblade captains, bosses from tower – which they did, etc)

- New World Bosses

- New Non-Instanced Mini Dungeons

- New Fractals/Dungeon Paths

- New Mini-Games

I look forward to Season Two. While I firmly believe the HUGE world changing, open world events need to still be temporary, I see the permanent face of the game becoming more interesting as the game progresses.

Lion’s Arch is not mostly repaired. The vendors and a mystic forge are back, but the city is still a complete mess – as it should be.

I was very much against enemy cast bars in the beginning for aesthetic reasons, but, now, I think adding them would alleviate many issues – and possibly bring interrupt playstyles closer to being viable in PVE.

As far as colorblind mode – as a colorblind player, I think this is something EVERY game developer should do day one. There are alot of us out there.