Guild Wars 2

Maclaine on reddit said that he would like to but that he can not promise anything… also was said that maybe after HoT ships and he has free time again.

The SAB trolling is real, ArenaNet, just laughed so hard watching Jennifer Hale cook (on a gaming stream). Amazing and cringe worthy at the same time.

But that intro and outro music and the SAB feels… in the triva and during the live performance SAB trolling for everyone.

These arrangements absolutely have to be recorded and preserved… a clean recording of them would be fantastic.

Amazing live cover of SAB on stream, chiptune is even cooler though….

First, this is not new information… this has been evident since the first HoT BWE with Sylvari accessible.

Second this is not bad design, it is design that on the contrary incentivizes people to create more than one character (if they don’t have sylvari yet) or at the very least play through the story twice (as others have pointed out, mordys voice is not the only difference). So from ArenaNet’s point of view this is an excellent design choice. It adds an additional layer of replayability (the other being the branches within individual instances) and thus on average will result in people spending more time with HoT content and in the game.

Bottom line this is good design and the only associated negative to it is player perception. That said, this can be called bad design (arguably) if they then won’t in future releases, where relevant, add similar extra story telling for other races. Notice how I did not call it content, because it is not content in terms of gameplay, merely narrative context. If they cripple the story telling for other races as a result, like they did with the original personal story due to different but similar choices done there, then and only then are they due for critique.

You can tell the same story from two different perspectives, plenty of books and tv shows have done this to varying degree of success. Why would it suddenly be bad when applied to games?

I would be pretty sad if Dash lost its extra distance… I don’t know what the underlying issue is exactly but can’t you simply make dash apply a movement speed modifier (one that obviously affects distance traveled, unlike the regular boons do right now) and possibly an animation modifier like for superspeed or swiftness.

I mean essentially you are replacing the regular dodge (which might internally already be considered a skill) with a skill that has evade frames so can it not internally have all the same properties of a skill.

Edit: to put it differently why not just define a status effect (so boon interaction is not present) called “dash” that is applied for the duration of the dodge and go from there (make it hidden or visible in the UI that is not relevant).

rhael.6317:

Personal note to development team: shouldn’t the unit tests have started failing as new work was checked in post-SAB?

I highly doubt ArenaNet has comprehensive test coverage for their engine, since it is so old (or at least that is what people keep saying, ie. that it is actually a heavily modified version of the original GW engine). I find this somewhat unlikely because the original game was released so long ago and likely in development for a long while before that.

Also, even if we assume that unit testing is used religiously for the backend code it is doubtful that these tests can be used on the scripts written by designers (ie. what a huge bulk of SAB is) in a very complete capacity or at all.

Xillllix.3485:

It was a stylish game inside the game. They announced 4 worlds but let us down after world 2.

To be fair they said, four worlds rest of which would hopefully release some day… unfortunately when it comes to world 2 the things surrounding its release were a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances. For the people not around back then see Josh’s exhaustive posts here, sadly the second release was also arguably a victim of its own ambition (but mostly changes in reward structure and ascended weapons and stuff being introduced at the same time imho).

Xillllix.3485:

This was the beginning of world 1:
https://youtu.be/F8jpD06wL0o

:’( you evil person, making me watch this by linking it….

Oh there is support for it… why it doesn’t happen (considering skins from moto are account bound) I have no clue, my personal theory is that if they did that it would only bring unwanted (to them) attention to SAB.

This topic is sad, I noticed that charr merchant was disabled around the time they added moa racing in LA. Even made a report, because I thought, hey we now have gambling in LA so why not with cows too then. Sadly seems I wasted my time.

These kind of things are bugs that should really be simple to fix, if there was an exploit related to that specific related event then just adjust the price and winnings so that it is not out of whack anymore or replace the betting mechanic similar to what the moa race in LA used (adjusted with prices appropriate for a starting zone ofc).

There is still a bunch of “Unknown” trees and Cannon’s with empty interact prompts (Charr and Sylvari areas respectively) for stuff that was added for NPE presumably. It laments me that this kind of changes (some intended originally as temporary) still remain and make the game seem unpolished to the keen eye.

Pandaman.4758:

That’s a terrible idea. One’s enjoyment of jumping puzzles is entirely contingent on your familiarity with the game’s controls. The only thing you’ll achieve by putting a newbie through the hardest jumping puzzle in the game is frustrate them until they ragequit.

While I agree with you, though I find the concept amusing, I disagree on the fact that SAB is the hardest jumping puzzle in GW2. The most mechanically complex and the longest (counting all zones, or even just an individual W2 zone), definitely, however, it is hardly the hardest (sans Tribulation mode, but that is for masochists anyways).

Why it isn’t the hardest, because while there are hard jumps in places, thanks to how it is separated and uses unique assets (and can use more liberal collision/hitboxes) and resized character models it is mostly actually a lot easier to design jumping puzzles where the game engines shortcomings don’t annoy you.

Okay parts of W2 were brutal the first time through, however, once you learn the tricks it becomes a lot easier (flute is king). Personally the most annoying part of SAB thus far was they geyser bend in W2-1 (due to lag, however, they “fixed” it) and the Yeti fight in W2-3. That said SAB still has things that most jumping puzzles do not and that is shortcuts and other aids in addition to checkpoints.

Bomber.3872:

If op’s conclusion might work, then please don’t add SAB!

Knowing that the topic would get merged, this no longer makes much sense.

Kal Spiro.9745:

It is absolutely not working fine. Unless you are actively ready to do some serious bug testing you would not want to be in that game. This video only shows one of the many problems this player has run into and even it is a serious problem. Do you honestly want to be trapped in that room for five minutes any time you might run out of lives? That’s super broken.

Correct also, people seem to have conveniently missed the lack of bubbles inside the level shown so the special interaction to add bubbles to your inventory when running over them definitely is broken (note: the objects do not even spawn) so it is also likely that any other objects like it are also broken.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Eirdyne.9843:

Can we have a refund for our Infinite Lives Coin since it’s been useless for years now?

They refuse to refund it because SAB is still in the game and maaaaaybe will be unlocked in the future.

More likely they are afraid of the surge of gems into the economy if they suddenly had to process all the refund requests (because hey, “free” gems). But you are right that is their official reason.

Aedelric.1287:

Kal Spiro.9745:

we have absolutely no way to gauge numbers

Apart from perhaps the super massive topic and the many in game protests with many, many filled maps? The tons of fan art and songs plus the fact that one person being trapped in the box is news worthy on one of the biggest MMO sites around.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/17/guild-wars-2-player-finds-himself-trapped-in-the-super-adventure-box/

I wish people would stop spouting nonsense.

Kal Spiro is actually correct though, ArenaNet has more data than we do and their data is out of date due to so many shifts and changes in player population since the box was last open and our data is equally out of date (at least as far as this topic is concerned, as well as past protests).

We can not gauge numbers (same applies to ArenaNet even though they have more data) because we have no data as to how many of the people that have participated in this topic or past protests are still actively playing or waiting for SAB to return. At this point there has just been too much time since the box was last open for us to make any accurate assessment one way or the other the landscape has changed.

Is there demand for SAB? Definitely, however, quantifying said demmand in any way is actually not possible.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Give ICC owners unrestricted access to SAB under the expectation that they will bug test it. I would absolutely do that, and I expect a large number of others would also.

I would happily join you (I like breaking things, especially when I don’t have to be the one to fix said broken things), however, if they did anything like this it would be a disaster for them.

Linfang.1087:

They would have to gut and restart SAB, not from scratch since they have the models and concepts all figured out.

You are overestimating the changes in the game engine most likely, that is if their programmers know jack about modular programming and API design. While code rot is a real thing the basic principles of API design are, in practice, based on minimizing the ripple effect when changes are made at lower levels. Theoretically you are not supposed to change the contracts (Design by Contract, Bertrand Meyer 1986) in a way that is not backwards compatible, but that is not always pragmatic or realistic.

Yes, SAB might have done unintended things and relied on implementation details, however, your metaphor of taking a broken engine and rebuilding it is tad excessive. Better analog would be like doing a corrective eye surgery. If SAB was broken to a point where all they had would be models (plus other assets) and their concepts it would not be able to run on the engine at all much less be interacted with in any way. If they really had changed the engine so drastically as you seem to think they have they’d have to constantly rework old content to match their changes which is not sustainable.

Sevans.4619:

I think that after Heart of Thorns, Super Adventure Box should be the next GW2 expansion. Elder dragon and all.

lol, definitely seconded The salt from other players would be real though, the people who don’t like SAB tend to be quiet until something official about it is said after all (for the record, not serious but I do find the thought amusing).

Rayti.6531:

Malediktus.9250:

egzius.9031:

Seems like Arenanet needs to come up with another reason we cannot test until some guy breaks into SAB to prove them wrong. So far, it just looks like Arenanet just couldn’t care less about SAB and threw anything that came into their mind as reasons to us.

It looks barely bugged at all. Anet lied to us.

If you guys took the time to read through the reddit post (+ comments) where the video has been posted, you would also have seen the comments by the player who got stuck in the SAB. He is writing about missing/broken collision detection, broken projectiles, endless continue room (you get stuck there when you run out of lifes) etc. he encountered in there…

These are only a few bugs from World 2-1 (first zone). All the other zones were blocked from the player, according to his original post on reddit. Do you really think these are the only bugs in existence after all the changes made to the game (most prominent change which could affect the SAB: fall dmg fixes)?

Also: The abovementioned bugs might sound like minor bugs to you, but the cause for them could lie very deep in the code and need some time to get fixed.

Releasing the SAB in its current state would only result in a lot of complaints on the forums about said bugs and could also lead to the certain, permanent death of the SAB. Just imagine you were a new player who heard about this epic instanced content which is the SAB from veterans, and then the first time you get to play it, it’s a bugged, nearly unplayable mess. Do you think such a player would enjoy it and/or ever go in there again?

Don’t get me wrong, I want the SAB back as much as everyone here… But I’d rather have it in its fixed state than in a broken one.

Thanks for posting this, I was about to do the same… that said, for me what is broken and what isn’t is relative. Judging from that video I’d say while SAB is definitely broken (ie. they didn’t lie) it is still less broken than I originally assumed after reading Colin’s statements on it.

Oi, Colin… wasn’t SAB supposed to be broken or something… the envy is real right now. At least it is not totally broken by the looks of it (who needs hitboxes anyways :P).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3l8dt4/super_adventure_box/

So, mallyx was gutted… I understand the reasons behind it but rather than replace his gimmick with something else you simply opted to remove or water it down significantly. UA being reworked was entirely expected, however, that too removes something signifcant from Mallyx mostly.

Couldn’t you just have introduced a persistent buff or another mechanic that reduces or even prevents condition removal from external sources while channeling mallyx and then give him some limited control over this effect (for example, say it is not active for a short duration after the heal skill is used or something).

Edit: re torment suggestion, that seems reasonable if a bit complicated I mean if you were to implement that would the situation be then that when under the effects of torment, when applied by a revenant with this trait line, it might even be the correct “counter” for the target to move rather than to avoid moving (not counting condition cleanse).

The effect seems overly nuanced to be honest.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

I’m guessing they might be able to be slotted into any Legend, which could be pretty convenient to replace some of the less useful Legend skills…

The problem is that they are balanced around having 1 skill bar and not 2 for the right half of your bar. They are also not made with energy in mind and would need to be changed to work with revenant, but would muddy the purity of each legends skill set playstyle. I thought I had mentioned it before on one of the initial streams, but racial skills won’t be usable on revenant.

Why not just say it like it is: you are afraid that access to the raicials would make race choice matter during character creation, in a way that it currently does not, when creating a Revenant. Why use all those fancy words, when the truth is the skills themselves were conceived as underpowered, so putting them on different profession without touching their cooldowns is not not going to change that. The only thing that would change is being able to have more racials due to two utility bars, however, how could picking more underpowered skills be a balance problem (it definitely won’t make you owerpowered, besides no-one in their right mind would load up an all racials loadout).

To be completely honest, while I understand all the reasons when it comes to purity of purpose, and Ventari in particular on that front, it’ll still suck that we technically loose out on a feature of the game due to our profession choice. Of course this also likely applies to a flair skill we even paid money for, though when it comes to that it sucks more due to the fact that I think Mistfire Wolf is an extremely cool looker and fits thematically well with Revenant than it does because it was a bonus in the original collectors edition.

Why not just remove raicial skills from the entire game and be done with it? (If that sounded bitter good, because right now I am even if I predicted that this was coming).

Therodin.2970:

I would not be surprised if SAB never returns, I 100% believe they mean it when they say soon. But i also 100% believe when they said they weren’t going to do an expansion model. Over time there priorities change and other stuff starts looking more attractive, so im sure when they have the time to work on SAB something else will look more important.

Sadly, I believe you are completely right… the number of players who got to experience it can only either stay the same or get worse (depending on how you look at it). Over time ANet will have less and less incentive to bring it back. Especially if the longer they wait the harder it becomes, which could very well be a realistic scenario taking Colins semi-recent (it is kind of sad to have to use that word on this time scale) comments into account.

They have found their groove, when it comes to narrative and mechanical updates at this point, so where does that leave fun wacky out of the box updates. The optimist in me is saying the earliest we could see SAB would be in April next year, but that is if they make the conscious decision that SAB is now their “April Fools festival” much like the escapades of the Mad King constitute the typical Halloween festivities. If SAB remains at a place where it has no place of its own to call home, then we really might indeed never see it come back despite ArenaNet’s best intentions… best laid plans and all that.

We don’t really know ArenaNet’s roadmap going forward past HoT, sans 3 raid wings as post launch updates and returning to a more frequent release cadence (the current assumption as to what that means is LS season 3, and Halloween + Wintersday but those might be recycled again due to HoT).

Edit: for the lazy, here is much of the same by WoodenPotatoes https://youtu.be/fEMWCWaU-uQ?t=825

binidj.5734:

Finally, didn’t you learn from Southsun Cove not to do short duration events? Absolute base minimum duration of the invasion should be a week, not a weekend.

Ditto, while I agree with most of what you said… this is perhaps the most important point. The introduction of Southsun Cove was a cool concept, but short duration events like this and that just don’t work very well, at the very least if there is a problem you have nowhere near enough time to respond and address those issues when the event is live for such a short duration.

Also, one more thing the short duration of this event adds pressure and by doing so makes the problems with the event stand out more than they would if people simply had more time (not that extending the event would be an excuse for bad design or anything like that).

I dunno if people have paid enough attention to notice this but the Brisban Wildlands version of the event tracks the total events completed map wide, whereas the Kessex Hills one does not (no clue about the third map since I never did that one in the end).

What this tells me is either the design for this even changed or they ran out of time and had to change it. Otherwise there really is no reason for such an odd inconsistency. The thing is this event would be much better if it had such a map wide objective and rewards based on those objectives.

I can’t help but to compare this event to Scarlets invasions and those had exactly that, a map wide goal. (Now, they also had some unintended “problems” when it came to optimal loot, but as I recall that got changed during said release).

Setz.9675:

How about a system where bronze medal awards 1 bag, silver 3 bags and gold 5 bags? Bronze is obtained by spending 15-35% of your time at the event. Silver 35-55% of event uptime and gold for 55% and up.

I agree that time spent in the event area should definitely be a factor in an event like this, but it can’t be solely based on that either. However, something that makes people be less prone to tagging and running to next event to tag is definitely needed be it changes in reward mechanics or how the events count your contribution.

fireflyry.7023:

I like the idea that certain rewards are given out if your there at the time and if your not you miss out.

I do too, but with ArenaNet’s temporary content model for LS1, this was a rule not an exception. For example, I am perfectly fine with them doing cosmetic stuff like hats or some weapon skins (the halloween shield f.ex.) as limited things. However, because of how S1 was there are so many of these items and some of them have prestige far above what is supposed to be the most prestigious items in the game.

There is really no point for ArenaNet to indefinitely keep a huge chunk of rewards as one time only when they can get more out of these items by making them available to more players, in moderation of course.

Calcifire.1864:

then it just becomes a matter of getting sprockets.

Thanks I know that, but considering that blade shards are account bound and sprockets are similarly limited as blade shards are material conversion is not the most appealing alternative.

They could safely provide more means to get blade shards without impacting the economy which is why them not doing so is slightly confusing especially for an event as short as this.

Alright, let’s get this out of the way then. I usually try to rationalize the design decisions made, particularly the ones I don’t like, and based on that form my opinion.

• No reward for individual events: I guess initially this doesn’t seem like such a huge deal, XP is currently useless for lvl 80 players and karma is way too inflated so you wouldn’t want to feed into that either. Also you probably don’t want this event to artificially shorten the time it takes new players to level (which makes it in a manner of speaking a content skip for those who play with the mentality of rushing to 80). Makes sense right? Except that even for players at 80 getting XP out of event mobs is one of the few means of providing feedback to the player about their current event contribution while the event is ongoing, this is even more relevant when all the events consist of for the most part is killing mobs. Then there is the matter of waypoint costs and the additional gold cost for rewards (which btw are prohibitive factors for new players, among others).

• No loot from event mobs: This is something that is for the most part true for Silverwastes as well, so not much to say there, and I can clearly see reduced loot drops as a means to control the economical impact. However, no loot at all combined with no event rewards for participating in individual events only serve to emphasize other problems with this event (see disconnection related issues mentioned here and elsewhere) since there is absolutely no rewards for partial participation.

• Blooms distributed based on individual contribution: Makes sense when you think of it as incentivizing continued contribution, however, it also effectively goes against previous design decisions and has execution problems when it comes to disconnections and other edge cases. What I mean by it going against previous design decisions is the fact that outside of PvP and WvW there has previously been very little competition between players in open world PvE and even in HoT, when it comes to adventures, that competition is very meta as opposed to competing inside the game. No kill stealing in GW2 is almost not true in this event, because while you can not steal loot you very much can deny contribution because the event scaling can not keep up and blobs of downscaled 80’s make champions and elites melt like ice cream on hot summer day (ie. in seconds), spawning veterans at all when the events are scaled seems like a total oversight. If the rewards were based on map progress vs personal progress (or at least combination of the two) this wouldn’t be as big of an issue but they are.

I did the event once and probably won’t do it again, because for that one time I realized how utterly chaotic this event is… to the point where event mechanics are hard to discern from the chaos when you are desperately trying to get tags on mobs. On average I probably managed to land one or two attacks per mob at worst times.

For me this event comes off as extremely stressful and unrewarding and I was one of the 80 level players in a blob. I can only imagine how confusing this feels to new players with characters that are still leveling and using level appropriate gear in these maps. I can imagine them barely being able to get credit for events when at times it was difficult for me as well (exotics and ascended weapons + trinkets). Also on reddit someone did the math on the potential income of blooms over the course of the event and the prices for the rewards seem overtuned (at least the gold cost of rewards seems unnecessary, since the entire event in itself is a gold sink already and these costs are very high for new players, so the rewards will not appeal to them).

lordkrall.7241:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Memories_of_Scarlet_Box

Tbh. looking at that list makes me sad… I would give anything for guaranteed faster way to gain blade shards over the chance to get one of the better items from that selection.

The tooltip is almost misleading… the probability that you get what you want for crafting that stuff is actually pretty low (disclaimer: I have one of the back items, with shall we say non-optimal stats).

Yeah, got absolutely nothing… also is it just me are are these things dying laughably fast, there must be some mistake in scaling because champions and elites melt like butter (as in sometimes I barely had enough time to switch targets and watch the health disappear in under 3-5s).

Revenant will definitely be big for me, I was 100% going to main Rev starting HoT until they announced Daredevil (that and 100% map completion are two good reasons to stick with Thief).

I will mess around with Thief and Rev this coming BWE and make my final decision then, I have some build ideas for both now that Rev is more or less complete it will be easier to say what I will end up sticking with afterwards.

What ArenaNet has promised to us is, pay once play forever, not pay once get everything for free. The price of admission guarantees continued access to the service, not necessarily everything in it at all times (see Living Story season 1).

This has been discussed from many different angles to death at this point, most recently when HoT pre-purchase was criticized (justifiably to a point, even though value of 50$ is very relative to every individual).

At the end of the day what they are doing with living story stuff since season two is a perfect analog to a TV series with eventual box sets released at retail down the line as far as business model is concerned.

It is quite likely those achievements will not be migrated over to your main account once the betas are over.

It seems more plausible that this is their way of introducing temporary mastery points for the duration of the beta in an easy and a bit clever way. That, or it is simply a test to try some new kind of way to grant achievements, or tie mastery points to achievements, based on very specific event objectives.

We know achievements are changing come HoT… or then it could simply be that they can use these achievements to pull some data about the beta weekend more easily through them.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Tried it out and looks awesome. It won’t be out in time for the next beta weekend, but know that it’ll be coming.

Yay, I like thief for similar extra bit of flavor… nice to see revenant getting it too. Also, from this message are we to assume the next BWE will be soon™, maybe next week to coincide with PAX reveals?

Turamarth.3248:

The blogpost says so.
“In order to help keep league play fun for all players and reduce the number of people who quit, go AFK, or get up to other shenanigans, we’ll be updating and reinstating the dishonor system. "

Oh, the blogpost is live… when I logged in earlier I didn’t see it in the launcher then… in that case I am off to read it.

Please say yes… no matter what the cons of the system as we know it, anything is better than no deserter deterrent at all (mainly, because as I understand it without something like it the fact that you can not fall back to previous division will be a saftety net for deserters… and for early divisions it will be deserters galore). Besides as far as disconnections are concerned just treat them the same as every other game does (ie. with a grace period in case that person reconnects).

Also, since Stronghold is considered a new “competitive” game mode, where does it stand when it comes to leagues. I presume that anything directly tied to WTS qualification will be Conquest still, however, will there be for example separate league for Stronghold.

Donari.5237:

I don’t know what happens if your bags are full when your weapon gets removed.

Likely the typical encumbered dialog pops up. That being said personally I’d prefer it gave us one skillbar for core and another for (each) specialization and just blanked the weapon skills when you have say a greatsword as a non-reaper necro. This would for example allow one weapon set to be for necro another for reaper (if you want the ability to swap quickly ooc, essentially would still mean sacrificing weapon swap for this).

Kidel.2057:

I mean, numbers are not low, it’s just that 6 seconds is a lot.

I agree, and while I haven’t spent a ton of time on rev this weekend I am already adopting the mindset that with Shiro I have no heal skill. Since both Ventari and Mallyx heal have some situational components tbh. I almost feel that if one wants a panic button or flat instant heal as Shiro Jalis with his heal is basically the closest you can get (except that it being two buttons it isn’t exactly a panic button :P).

HaxTester.9816:

Will it be grind hell for those who have multiple characters?

Masteries are account wide progression so no, that is precisely the reason they can be tuned to take longer in my opinion at least.

Robert Gee.9246:

1. Stun breaks were pretty much useless against this unless they also gave stability because the pulls were so close together that you still couldn’t escape. The pulls were also so close together that you couldn’t even dodge roll between them if you got caught by one of them.

Would it be enough to change this if the pull happened only on the first tick of the well? So the flow of the skill would be pull then float, not pull and float. That or then adding a debilitating condition of some kind such as slow to replace the pull (even if Mesmer already has an AoE slow).

latinkuro.7304:

it should have it’s own aura and footfalls, it is a legendary item after all.

There we immediately bump into the problem what if people have both the backpiece and a legendary weapon, which effect should take priority then. Unlike for weapons we don’t have clear distinction that can be used here (ie. main-hand or off-hand for weapon effects).

So if it has a special effect they are probably going to try and avoid too much overlap.

If it did they would have announced it separately, they made quite clear at the time the portals were relevant that it would be just for one test (the FAQ covers this even now), there is really no need to ask this question every time there is a PvE beta… if the portals become relevant ever again they will re-announce it.

I am going to be pretty miffed if we do not get racial skills on revenants.

I can see the potential technical hurdles with it, but really that should be no excuse — anti-toxin spray being removed was already unnecessary, sure it couldn’t be “trained” but it could have at least remained as a sort of universal raicial skill in PvE and WvW (it certainly seemed weak enough outside of ToN release window, where it actually had some theoretical use cases, to fit the category).

Mistfire Wolf is actually imo. a really good looking skill I have some fun memories of using it as a placeholder elite when levelling my first character and it even saved my hide a few times back then (Remember doing the wall jumping puzzle in one Charr areas for map completion and those pesky veterans, that I was too lazy to kill admittedly, downing me but luckily I popped the wolf just before and he ended up rallying me).

NapTooN.6283:

The only thing you can realistically hope for is a 3 day Head Start for Prepurchasers.

Even that seems unlikely… they might do it drum up some sales closer to HoT launch, but if they were planning for it from the beginning most likely they would have already announced it with pre-purchases.

Tyr.6097:

To be honest: Yes, i want the rifle because of how bad our range options are. Fix them and all staff junkies can have staffs to cosplay kitten mowl the whole time.

Ranged options… wait, shortbow is a ranged weapon, I always though of it as AoE/Utility… there is no sensible way to make it a proper ranged weapon with good damage without changing majority of the skills on it completely.

P/P is really the only ranged weapon for thief that doesn’t inherently drop our DPS through the floor (don’t get me wrong P/P is no match for D/D at all, but when it comes to ranged weapons where the range is actually useful it is basically the only choice).

I have this same thing, if the Texas IP is the forums, then what are these London IP’s I see four or five of on my list.

Rating this purely on the changes to profession mechanics… Chronomancer is hands down the best of the bunch while Reaper is the worst. I mean reaper shroud is just another DS spun differently.

Meanwhile, ele seems kind of basic (as in overload is something that could be a GM trait somewhere it is just an added ondemmand proc with some flair) and dragonhunter is the middle of the proverbial road (while its idea is bit similar to overloads in concept, still something more substantial in my opinion because it can’t be ignored).

Samuel Loretan.8601:

But because World versus World is the only game mode to which worlds apply these days, we have developed a better model that exclusively uses WvW data to determine population levels and transfer costs.

Nice… speaking of which is the “Guest” button even doing anything these days, if so what…

HaseKent.1843:

Please refer to the trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv83NXBtdQo
Revenant casting some dragon thingy…..Is it Glint? Not so sure.

That skill is, or at least was, certainly Glint related, an NCSoft press image of that same skill, that was published around announcement, was named glint elite.

Edit: http://press.ncsoft.com/artwork/2015/02/na-1-20150220112109/585c30b693107f40/GW2HoT_02-2015_Glint_Elite_%28Teaser%29.jpg

This is essentially a more involved spin on racial specializations… except that they are not race restricted (which in my opinion is a good thing, since that means they could actually be viable in PvE and WvW).

I think this is a good idea, however, somehow I don’t see this happening… the mastery system is the only form of progression that is, very loosely, tied to overworld stories. ArenaNet seems to have some reasons why they steer clear to race and story permanently affecting your character in terms of gameplay as much as possible.