Guild Wars 2

Jornophelanthas.1475:

You need to have Eye of the North expansion to Guild Wars 1 and actually have the Hall of Monuments unlocked by visiting it for the first time.

If I remember correctly, you only get those points for linking accounts if you activate the Monument to “Honor” by applying a Monumental Tapestry to it.

(Don’t worry, you receive a Monumental Tapestry upon first discovering the Hall of Monuments, and the primary quest of Eye of the North will take you there as your first real stop.)

The honor monument doesn’t need a tapestry, it’s already activated when you first visit the hall (and the background changes to reflect your progress through the GWAMM title).

But you do need to visit the hall in GW1 at least once, and link your accounts, in order to get the 3 points.

It is true that they don’t list every single bug fix they do. I’ve reported a lot of minor text and graphic bugs over time, and every so often I go back and check on the ones I happen to remember and they’re usually gone. But I somehow doubt many people would want to scroll through pages of “corrected the punctuation in some random NPCs dialogue” or “fixed the position of a rock on the edge of the map in Queensdale to match it’s image” when they’re more concerned about skill changes and bugged event chains.

You don’t get any loot in the starting instances. I can’t remember when they changed it but it was fairly early on because of people farming there.

Although you can recieve items by mail, so you’re not permenantly stuck with your starting gear.

I made Rytlock, although I couldn’t get him exactly right:
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b168/aurorel/Rytlock.png

They can be used to replace a piece of equipment when inserting four pieces of equipment of the same rarity.
For example: use 3 rares + 1 mystic forge stone as a substitute for the 4th rare, to get a new rare with a chance for an exotic item (~10-20% chance).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge_Stone

It’s possible because the enemies in those areas give you XP.

They’ve never left the starting instance and have been levelling up extremely slowly. There’s someone in the human one on Desolation doing the same thing, he was level 65 last time I looked.

People did it in GW1 as well, there was even a title for it – Legendary Defender of Ascalon. It made more sense to me there because the tutorial area was much bigger (all of GW2’s Plains of Ashford basically) and it was much more challenging, until recently you needed to use a few tricks, as well as a lot of time, to pull it off.

I think it’s safe to assume that it was intentional simply because it’d be pretty impressive for someone to accidentally program a system that allows players to convert in-game currencies and then not notice it for almost 6 months.

It’s not contradictory though because gems do still function as a revenue generator. Some people have already spent hundreds of pounds/dollars/euros etc. on them. Importantly though they’re not the games primary revenue stream – that comes from selling copies, which is why Anet can afford to do this.

And yes it does mean you can buy the Digital Deluxe edition, or anything else in the gem store, simply through playing the game. It might take a while, depending on the conversion rates, but it can be done.

If you choose to keep the skin of the legendary (and I assume you would) and the stats of the exotic then it becomes an exotic.

Essentially when you transmute items you’re putting the skin of one onto the other. I think of it as kind of like putting the circuit boards from one PC into the case of another. If you take a cheap Dell and put it into an Alienware case you haven’t just made a top-end machine cheaply, you’ve made a cheap one look expensive. Similarly if you transmute a legendary skin onto an exotic you haven’t made a legendary with new stats, you’ve made an exotic that looks like a legendary.

100% world completion gets you 2 Gifts of Exploration (required for legendaries), a star next to your name, a title and a badge on the login screen.

There’s also the fact that if you haven’t been around the whole map you’ve probably missed content, particularly hearts and DE’s. But if you’re not enjoying doing it then that’s probably not a big loss to you.

I go back every so often because I never finished all the things I wanted to do in that game.

At the moment I’m mainly focused on finishing prophecies missions and levelling my roller-beetle on my pet ranger.

GW2db.com was creating during the beta weekends. A lot of stuff was changed between the betas and the final release, including the available minis.

They really, really need to update that list because it’s constantly confusing people.

For an upper limit I’ve been playing my main since day 1 of the headstart weekend, over 100 hours on that one character (can’t remember exactly and can’t check now) and I’m level 61.

But I have managed to spend hours at a time doing things that earn no experience, which is almost impressive in this game. Things like repeatedly trying and failing jump puzzles (I have finished all the ones I’ve tried, eventually) and scrabbling around bits of the scenery I thought might be jump puzzles, or I just wanted to climb. (Yesterday for example I was trying to get up the topiary outside the castle in Divinities Reach.)

Dyvim.8293:

Macros are no big deal, particularly from logitech or razer devices . They do not allow for any kind of advantage, and in pvp there inflexible nature is actually a disadvantage. They simply automate the repititious tasks the game requires and can allow people to reduce the stress on their wrist by anywhere from 50-80%.

The problem is there’s a fine line between a macro and a bot. The software that came with my Logitech G400 is more than enough to let me set up a macro that tabs to an enemy, executes an attack chain, loots and repeats the process until I tell it to stop. Which would be botting.

No it wouldn’t allow me to play better than someone else (in fact it’d be a lot worse because it wouldn’t be able to react to what was happening) but it would give me an unfair advantage because I could set it running and go do other things while it farmed for me.

Anet’s rule, as I’ve heard it described, is that key bindings, macros, whatever need to be 1:1. If you push one button and it executes one action then it’s allowed. If it does more than that then it’s against the ToS.

If you hold down both mouse buttons your character will run forward and you can turn by moving the mouse. Alternatively put auto-run on (default key is R) and use the right mouse button to turn.

If you’ve got a gaming mouse with extra buttons you could also map some of the movement keys to the mouse.

Honestly I think you’re looking at it entirely wrong.

IMO it should be:
Algorithm of MMORPG: kill mobs -> increase level, get new skills, get new items -> use them in pvp to show how cool you are
Algorithm of GW2: Do personal story quests, dynamic events, craft, explore etc. > increase level, get new skills and items > do new personal story quests, new dynamic events, explore new areas, do dungeons, do WvW (although you can do that while levelling) ect.

In other words the focus of the game is on experiencing the content, not getting through the content so you can get better/flashier items to show off to other players. (You can, and will, get better and nicer looking gear along the way too, but it’s just one part of the game rather than the point of it.)

I’ve not tried PVP in this game yet so I can’t comment on how it’s actually working but the idea is that it’s supposed to be entirely skill based rather than gear based. You’re supposed to spend time learning your profession and the combat mechanics and coming up with a good build, then win because you are better than the other person. Not spend your time grinding for gear in PVE and win because you have more free time to get that gear.

I really like my stalker, partially for the damage (without being so much of a glass cannon) and partially for nostalgia reasons – in GW1 I’ve still got the Melandru’s Stalker I tamed in the tutorial area 5 years ago. I also like the black moa and the river and reef drakes.

In water I like the jellyfish (I use rainbow most of the time, not that you can tell since it’s skinned the same as the blue) and either a drake or armorfish as a secondary pet.

I was disappointed by the shark, decent damage but kept dying too easily.

But at the moment I’m going through a phase of switching pets around a lot because I recently hit level 60 and I’m starting to think about my final build.

I’m in 2 guilds (one actual one, one private) and I’m always representing one of them. I still get invites every so often.

It’s a lot less than I got when I wasn’t in a guild though (although that was also launch weekend when I imagine there was a lot of recruiting going on).

What Labyrinth said.

You can delete all your characters and then transfer, but there is no reason to do so. If you keep them they’ll all move automatically. If you delete them you’ll still have to pay.

I don’t know if you lose laurels either. I wouldn’t have thought so since they’re account bound. I assume the same system that keeps your account tied to your home server even when you have no characters would also keep track of other account-based things like gems and laurels but I don’t plan to delete all my characters to find out.

Copain.1926:

Toxyn.9608:

It took me awhile to understand what you were asking due to the use of the word “Aura”. In this game, Auras are an Elementalist skill system.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aura

Does it matter what Aura means in this game? It’s a universal term that I think you can figure out. Just because it’s a skillset type doesn’t mean the actual use of the word gets voided.

It does make it highly confusing for people like me who are used to GW2 but don’t play other MMOs. Maybe it’s also because I’m tired but I have absolutely no idea what you mean by “aura”, unless you mean all skills which buff allies.

Can someone explain what it means in the context of this thread please?

I take it back, the lag has returned. It was fine for a couple of days (and again I was playing at the same time of day, on the same computer with the same internet connection) and now it’s back to loading for about 10 minutes then losing connection.

Particularly annoying when I’m trying to do the Claw Island personal story segment, which means LA is unavoidable. Currently every character I have that needs to go to LA either gets in and out as quickly as possible or goes unused for days at a time because it’s impossible to load, while I play others who have absolutely zero problems and no noticable lag at all.

Which I assume is not how Anet intended us to treat the games main city.

When I’m making a character I intend to keep I spend a lot time creating them in my mind before I ever touch the character creator. My latest for example, an asuran guardian called Xexxi I was working on for weeks and a lot of that was debating the name.

When I’m making a temporary character I go completely the other way and throw options together relatively quickly. I’ve got a norn warrior at the moment called Ronark Askirson and I have no idea where that name came from, it’s just whatever popped into my head at the time.

Although sometimes I do end up liking a ‘temp’ name. In GW1 I’ve had a series of short lived characters called Ilex Hedera (latin for holly ivy) which came about just because the first one wore green and was being made shortly before Christmas. That became the name of my engineer main in GW2.

It also helps to toggle your armor off (which is the button next to it) so you can see their full body because the pattern you choose affects which areas glow.

Have you considered the fact that Anet is not one homogenized group of “game designers” all doing the same job? Or even all capable of doing all the different jobs involved in making this game.

Like most companies it’s made up of a lot of people with their own skills and specialisations. Pulling the artists and writers and marketing guys who are making the new content off of that and telling them to fix bugs wouldn’t achieve anything. They probably have no more idea of how to do it than most of us do. (I say most of us because I’m sure if I said “any of us” at least one person would tell me they’re a computer programmer.)

Do you think your job would get done faster if everyone else in the company was told to stop doing their jobs and come help you? Or would it waste a lot of your time trying to walk them through things they have no clue on when you could be getting on and actually getting something done?

On top of which as other people have said they need to do both. If they were 100% focused on fixing bugs and were refusing to add anything new until the game was 100% bug free this forum would be full of people complaining that it’s ridiculous that the game has been out for almost 6 months and they haven’t added anything.

Edit: Also like other people have said I’ve noticed a lot of bug fixes since launch. For example the Battle for Beetletun chain and the Swamp chain were both frozen on Desolation at launch. Recently I went back to Queensdale and not only found both working but even found people who had no idea they’d ever been broken.

At launch I also noticed a lot of small camera and text bugs which have been fixed and I don’t think they bothered to include them in the patch notes. (Before anyone asked I think they fix minor bugs like these and not some of the bigger ones because these are easy to fix, it probably took a programmer less than a minute.)

I think a few people are mixing up Lions Arch and Divinities Reach.

Either that or I, and everyone else I’ve had this conversation with over the past several months, has missed that there is an accessible sewer system in Divinities Reach.

Having combed Divinities Reach several times (not looking for this specifically but trying to make sure I went into every accessible building, talked to every NPC etc.) I’m pretty confident Sil is right and it’s in the basement of the Maiden’s Whisper. Part of the human OoW story where you meet their representative in Divinities Reach reinforces that too. There are no order members down there but it looks like one of their bases. (As far as I know the only cities where they have clearly identified bases, with members of the order in uniform and banners are Lions Arch and The Grove.)

Fiennes.9568:

It’s be vastly amusing if Final Rest had been looted at some point, and the guy who did didn’t use a staff and then subsequently salvaged it using a Basic Salvage kit and went on his merry way…

That seems like something I would do. When I’m sorting loot I check for stuff I can use, then check the trading post to see if anything is worth more sold to a player and then merch or salvage everything else.

I’ve noticed the same with the daily veteran slayer. I killed a veteran doylak in Wayfarer foothills, stopped to sort my inventory out and it respawned relatively quickly so I killed it again and didn’t get credit. I thought maybe it only let you kill one of each type but I killed another veteran doylak straight after that and got credit. I assume it’s a similar cooldown, either time or based on what you do in between (I’d guess time).

You can heal the same person or kill the same enemy multiple times but you have to wait in between.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Danikat.8537:

Throw…a jar of….WHY!?!

I have no clue. I found out what this was when RPing. Conversing at the bar, then a man with no shirt, shades, and black pants runs in and then there are hearts everywhere.

Count yourselves lucky there were no harpies around.

All of the professions play differently so it’s really a matter of what playstyle you like. Which might well mean it’s down to trial and error.

For example warrior is a relatively straight-forward damage dealer, you use utility skills to get buffs to allow you to do more damage and your profession specific mechanic (F1 skill) is a special attack that does more damage. Whereas engineers are more reliant on using conditions and different types of attacks (via kits) for different situations and their F key skills are mainly extra utilities.

Then elementalists use their F key skills to change their attunement to give them different skills and rely on swapping regularly as appropriate to fight effectively.

And so on. (I’m not going to do all 8 professions or I’d be here all day.)

Throw…a jar of….WHY!?!

Could you give us some examples? I’m very much a casual player (been playing since launch and I still don’t have a level 80) and I can’t think of anything I can’t complete.

Obviously some things are going to take a lot longer for casual players than “hardcore” ones but it’s not any harder.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Danikat.8537:

To be honest I’m glad they took it out because from a lore perspective it doesn’t make any sense. In 25(+) years none of the sylvari have produced offspring, as far as we know they can’t reproduce themselves, so it would make no sense for them to produce pollen. Especially since it’d mean they’d constantly be pollinating each other and producing offspring (or at least fruit/seeds that would grow into new sylvari).

The removal of the pollen effect, from what I hear, was not removing it lore-wise. I believe it was due to technical limitations (multiple particle effects x lots of Sylvari = large system load).

I know it’s not the reason they took it out, but it’s the reason I’m glad they did.

Conncept.7638:

Why would anyone? On release I might have, but the chests have been made worse with each change. They used to at least give out great tools and BL kits, then the tools were made useless and they barely ever drop BL kits anymore, most of the time you get some copper a potion and a completely useless item. Not even worth a tenth of the cost of a BL key.

That might be bad luck. Since they updated the chests I’ve gotten 2 kits and no tonics at all (which is good because they’re my least favourite item).

I actually like the daily a lot more as it is now. Before it was pointless unless you were farming karma and boring.

Having some variety is nice and if you really don’t like a particular task you can just skip it that day. Yes you’ll lose a laurel but it’s not the end of the world. (And I say that as someone with 7 laurels so far who’s saving for the 2 minis.)

If you don’t like the daily gatherer or events you’re a bit stuck, but if you’re not gathering materials and doing events anyway then you’re going to have a problem playing this game.

No. I only use keys I get as story/map completion rewards. (And drops if I ever got one.)

As you said the chances of getting something useful is too low to justify the cost. My bank is already full of stuff from chests I haven’t used yet.

For general PVE (only thing I do) I like ranger, engineer, thief, elementalist and guardian.

Warrior is easy but gets boring IMO. Never really got the hang of Necros or Mesmers but I know other people really like them.

If by legit you mean is it legal or permitted by Anet then he answer (to both) is no.

You can’t completely ignore them but you can just delete the emails, after reporting them if you want to. (And I would recommend it because then they’ll get banned in the next sweep.)

If you bought the deluxe edition originally then you should get the mail right away (and the wolf skill should show up right away), if you bought the upgrade in the gem store then you’ll need to log out and back in before you’ll get the mail and it might take a while to kick in. Like Esplen said if you don’t have it after 48 hours contact support.

The LA one has been gone since the Lost Shores event, as other people said they were washed up on the beaches and died. I keep hoping another one will show up though, I loved seeing that whale.

The elite skill should be listed alongside all your other elites on each character’s skills tab on the Hero panel. You won’t be able to use it until you’re level 30 but you don’t have to unlock it with skill points so it’s good as a first elite.

The others are mailed to your characters. You can only get the mini Rytlock, Tome of Influence and Chalice of Glory once so after you pick them up on one character the mail will be gone from all the others, but each character will get their own Golem Banker (including ones created after you upgrade if you did it that way).

If it comes out in January then it’s a January patch, whether it’s on the 1st or the 31st.

You wouldn’t apply that logic to anything else would you? If you get sent a bill that says you have to pay it by the end of the month and then they fine you on the 28th because it’s basically the end of the month already so you should just admit that you’re late even if you have 2 days left you’d be pretty kitten

The reason they don’t have as many cash-shop items or as many new additions as free to play games is because this is not a free to play game.

It’s a buy to play game. Their main source of income is from selling copies of the games so their focus is going to be on releasing content that keeps existing players interested until they’re ready to release an expansion and making the game seem interesting enough that more people will want to buy it. The gem shop, even with things like people converting gems to gold, is going to be a relatively small addition on top of that.

Hence why we’ve only seen a few new gem shop items but have seen several big updates with new content and been promised more to come further on down the line.

I assume they’ve set aside a chunk of the profits from initial sales (something like 2 million copies during pre-sale and the first month after release) to cover estimated server costs, staff wages and other running costs until they’re ready to release an expansion and start the process over. Same way most games companies do it when they’re releasing boxed offline games that don’t charge a subscription or have an in-game store.

I wanted to play all the races, but particularly the slyvari because they seemed like something new and different. I’ve never played a plant race before.

Ellisande.5218:

Icarus Pherae.4680:

FYI the pollen effect means that you are literally spewing plant sperm from your pores as you run….. O.O

Ever wonder what’s in the water when you go swimming in the ocean?

This is why I never really understood people who like to see, and even swim through, coral reefs that are spawning. Yes it looks pretty because all the different corals do it at the same time and it’s all different bright colours, but at the same time it’s brightly coloured sperm and eggs you’re swimming through.

To be honest I’m glad they took it out because from a lore perspective it doesn’t make any sense. In 25(+) years none of the sylvari have produced offspring, as far as we know they can’t reproduce themselves, so it would make no sense for them to produce pollen. Especially since it’d mean they’d constantly be pollinating each other and producing offspring (or at least fruit/seeds that would grow into new sylvari).

It might be that they actually just take a long time to mature and eventually they will start to produce pollen and flowers (or spores or some other form of reproductive system) but I think it’s more likely the sylvari themselves are incapable of reproducing and at some point the Pale Tree will produce fruit or seeds like the one Ronan found.

IMO when they bring in the legendary updates transmuted ones shouldn’t be included. When you transmute a legendary you’re not putting new stats onto the legendary, you’re putting the skin onto an exotic weapon, but it’s still an exotic and not a legendary.

However I can already imagine the complaining if they did that, so they’ll probably allow it (although it might require resetting them to the original stats). Unless of course it turns out they have no way to know which skin a transmuted weapon has, then it might be impossible.

If you want to ask the maker specifically you’d be best asking on their Wiki userpage. There’s no guarentee they also use the forum or will see this if they do.

Click on the picture, scroll to the bottom of the page and it should tell you who uploaded it and give you a link to their talk page. (If it’s a red link you can still use it, it just means no one else has put anything on there yet.)

Ah, I must have got mixed up. I know I have 3 fine stones in the bank and I thought they came from map completion, but they must have come from a chest.

Although, you can get black lion keys from map completion (that might be what I was thinking of actually) and you can get the stones from the chest. It’s a lot more indirect that way though.

And then strangely today, without anything having changed either on their end or mine, I’m able to log in fine.

Seriously my internet and computer is not running any better than usual (and I’m not convinced that was the problem anyway), they haven’t updated the game since last time I tried…I can’t see what’s changed.

All I can think is with it being valentines less people are playing, but the overflow looked as busy as ever when I did get in.

If you want normal transmutation stones all you need to do is completely explore a city map, any city, and you’ll get 3 of them. (Or a black lion key but the drop rate for them is lower.)

You can also get both normal and fine transmutation stones for exploring other maps, but that takes longer.

Dolan.3071:

Do people only play for 10 minutes per day in which they need to grind out the daily? Really doing any sort of exploring/dungeon/anything will provide you with more than enough opportunities to finish the daily dodger… DOES NOT UNDERSTAND.

I normally only get to play for about an hour a day. If I have specific things I want to do then I often don’t bother with the daily, but if I’m just going to be exploring a zone anyway then I like to try for it.

A lot of it you can get through normal play but I often find myself with about 10-15 minutes left and one or more categories I haven’t completed so then I’ll focus on those.

But especially with dodging it really doesn’t bother me if someone kills my chosen enemy. Unless for some reason you’ve picked a lone veteran to dodge there’s almost always another of whatever enemy you’re using nearby so you can just switch to them. If the player(s) have literally wiped out every enemy in the area you can move or wait for them to respawn.

Also bear in mind chances are they’re not killing the enemy just to spite you. They probably need it for a heart, or their daily kills/kill variety or drops or whatever. So by saying they shouldn’t what you’re really doing is trying to make your goals more of a priority than theirs.

(Healing can be a bit more of an issue, because except in a few places dead players/NPCs are not guarenteed to re-appear. When the daily healer is up I tend to wait beside anyone who needs healing and check if other players are coming over. If they are then I’ll start healing at the same time they do, if not then I’ll start on my own. Unless of course I’m healing another player who is downed during an event or something, then getting them back in the fight takes priority and I heal as soon as I can.)

If a bunch of people are interested and have suitable existing characters/spare slots maybe we could get together and take some comparison screen shots. Alternatively one person could do it if they had a way to make sure they were standing in exactly the right position and then edited the screen shots together.

(On the off-chance this idea takes off I have a max height norn female and male and a min height asura female I could contribute.)

In general terms though I’ve noticed most humans come up to about the waist of my max-height norns and my min height asuran is about waist height on most humans.

(It’s actually kind of funny when I’ve been playing a max height norn for a while and only seen other norn then suddenly encounter humans or sylvari, they look so tiny!)