Guild Wars 2

Quick reminder: If someone is able to post on the forum then they already own GW2. They might only have the base game, but it will be the paid version. Recommending they hold off on buying HoT could be good advice, but there’s no reason to recommend they start a free account.

DukeofRome: I agree with the others who say GW2 is a great game to play in your situation. Levelling up is quick compared to many more traditional MMOs – even without grinding – I think my slowest is about 120 hours and that’s just doing casual PvE with lots of distractions and some time afk. You can speed that up considerably if you want to, even with very simple things like using the Tomes of Knowledge you get from login rewards to skip some levels.

On top of that exotic equipment (next to top tier) is very easy to get – by the time you get to level 80 you’ll probably be able to buy a full set with karma and/or gold – and it’s perfectly fine for almost everything in the game.

Almost everything can be played solo or with whoever happens to be around (and you’ll rarely find yourself alone in maps) so you don’t need to have a set time to play with a group. And all the story stuff can be done solo.

And of course you don’t have to pay for it. At some point you might want to buy HoT, and maybe the Living Story episodes you’ve missed, and of course there’s gem store stuff if you want it, but you don’t need any of that to play, it’s entirely optional.

The one downside to coming into the game now is you’ll be unable to play Season 1 of the Living Story. That was entirely temporary short-term releases, which were removed when the next one came along. But there’s a video in-game which summarises the key points and more in-depth ones on youtube if you want to know what happened.

starlinvf.1358:

Step 1. Put the brakes on the Hype train.
Step 2. Wait for the announcement

Wild speculation is what got us all in trouble last time. So this time around I’d suggest being more laser focused on whats in the announcement rather then whats not.

I agree.

Looking forward to the announcement is fine, but expecting specific things – especially things which haven’t even been hinted at and looking forward to seeing those announced is just setting yourself up for disappointment when they’re not included.

Blacklust.4638:

Why can’t noone from Anet swing by and say yes they will be comming back or no its a one time thing? If you write to support to ask they will just send you a reply to write on forum. You come here and can not know the answer cause aparently the players do not know it either and Anet won’t say a thing. Like its not enough of a ripoff…

They may not know for sure.

I’m pretty sure when the Fused Weapons were first released Anet didn’t know they would later on end up implementing the Black Lion Claim ticket system, and then a bit later on making older weapon sets available through that system. (Otherwise I’d pretty sure they would have gone with Black Lion Tickets originally instead of the complicated things they had before then.)

Likewise when they made the Wintersday Mystery Box in 2012 I doubt they knew they’d end up abandoning released-themed RNG boxes and 3-5 years later they’d put the exclusive mini pets into the normal gifts and make them tradable.

So what do they do? Say “we currently have no plans to repeat these/make them available another way”, and then deal with the fall out when 6 months, a year, 3 years on they are available again and a bunch of people are angry? Say they will be available again but they don’t know when or how that will be and leave everyone guessing whether it’ll be better to wait an unknown amount of time or try to get them now?

Does either of those really help?

The other alternative of course is to say they will never be available ever again in any form and then stick to that. Then players know if we want them we have to try for them now. But in the long run I think that’s a worse decision for everyone.

Rasgalinj.2763:

No wonder, did you see the mat requirements to forge just the first piece of the new sword?

Haven’t looked into the new ones but with a lot of the old legendaries the first tier of the precursor is by far the most expensive…or at least the one that needs the most materials.

The Legend Experiment (Bifrost tier 1) needs 35 Spiritwood Planks. Tier 3 needs 2.

Everything that was in the game before the expansion was released is still there and still accessible. So yes you can still play the whole of the original story, go to all of the maps that were in the game at release (plus a few new ones) etc.

What you can’t do is access any of the new stuff – you won’t be able to enter any of the maps added with the expansion or Season 3, play the new storylines, make a revenant, use masteries like gliding or use the elite specs on your characters.

You don’t need any of that – it won’t stop you doing anything but you might run into problems if you look up builds as people recommending them tend to assume you’ll have the expansion.

I think it’s a good idea to play through the game you’ve got for a while first. HoT isn’t massively different from the base game so if you don’t enjoy what you’ve got there’s no reason to buy HoT. But if you do like it and want more it’s well worth it.

Hopefully it’s a one-off because someone at Anet somehow decided this set is better than the previous ones and should cost more. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they’re testing the waters to see what they can get away with however.

Personally I’m more annoyed at yet another account bound mini pet in the chests. It’s finally pushed me to downgrade my long-term goal from “collect every mini-pet in the game” to “collect every mini pet EXCEPT those exclusive to real-money RNG”. I’m just going to ignore the existence of those because I’ve wasted far too much energy on trying to explain over and over why it’s a terrible idea.

I’m glad you’re feeling happy, and especially that you got the item you wanted, but what you’re describing…that’s not how RNG works.

“Your” RNG hasn’t changed, you had the same chance of getting it as you always did, and had you kept going you would have continued to see a similar proportion of “unlucky” and “lucky” chests. Likewise it doesn’t matter if you use the keys one at a time or all together, or if you collect chests the drops or buy them, or close your eyes while opening the chests or anything else. It’s random – that’s all there is to it.

Case in point: I just opened 11 chests in a row hoping to get the new mini pet and didn’t get it. I’ve previously opened just 1 chest with the only key I’d had for ages and gotten a claim ticket (full ticket, not a scrap). If the number of chests opened in a row has anything to do with it that should be the other way around.

It wasn’t my idea originally but I was one of the people who sided with the “sylvari are dragon minions” idea before Season 2.

There was a lot of opposition to it at the time, mostly based on the assumption that dragon minions were always 100% evil, except Glint and her children (seen in a GW1 challenge mission).

But it was the only thing that made sense to me, particularly because the sylvari can’t have children themselves but are produced in large numbers by a single ‘queen’ like worker bees and ants in real-life and are able to manipulate other plants to serve their purposes – exactly like dragon corruption (except they choose to use it to make houses and bridges and things).

I’ve not heard of people doing that in GW2. People will do it in other games by holding off on completing non-repeatable content, or in more traditional RPGs (MMOs or single-player) completing quests but not turning them in for the reward until they need the XP.

But that doesn’t really work in this game because you get the XP instantly on completing something, and the vast majority of content is repeatable.

I suppose maybe if there’s any story episodes you haven’t done yet you could wait until the next one is released so you can use the XP on the mastery. But other than that there’s nothing you can really save. You could put off doing open-world stuff, but since it’s repeatable there’s no benefit to that, you can get the same XP again later.

According to the file history on the wiki that map was uploaded in September 2014 so it seems unlikely it’s the new map. It also says it was datamined, which explains why the full dungeon map is visible – normally that only shows up when you’re in the dungeon.

I think it’s the map for the Story dungeon/personal story Arah path. It certainly looks right.

If the two posts above don’t help please can you give us a bit more information about what exactly the problem is:
What bit were you trying to do when you ran out of time?
Was the problem that you don’t know where to go or what to do, or is it too difficult?

I was going to say you could look at the Wiki as well, but then I noticed the walkthrough is incomplete. But the page might still help, depending on what you need: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Bitter_Cold_

(Edit: I added instructions on how to get into the cavern where the boss fight takes place, and the Wiki already had advice on how to complete the fight. If anything else needs adding please let me know.)

Alternatively if you can let us know which region you’re in someone could meet up with you in-game to help you through it.

Yes you can still explore, but yes you might also be overwhelmed with info.

Getting to level 80, either by using the boost or levelling up normally, won’t prevent you from doing any of the lower level content. Because the game scales you to the level of the area you’re in you will even get meaningful XP and items and will get to actually fight instead of just 1-shotting everything at level 80.

I used my boost on my warrior and then immediately started exploring a level 1-15 map and doing his personal story from the start (which is intended for level 10).

But when you use the boost it unlocks all your basic skills and traits (everything except the elite spec) and assigns you a pre-set selection. You’re given a full set of exotic equipment with soldiers stats and a few weapons to choose from. You’re also dropped into Silverwastes which is a level 80 map with a long meta-event chain. Which means you’ll have to use waypoints or the Heart of the Mists to go back to where you were and carry on your story.

On top of that you won’t be able to use any XP unless you use your story journal to play through the first HoT instance to unlock masteries (and once you’ve gained XP to train up the mastery tracks you’ll need to obtain mastery points to actually activate them).

Oh and the boost does not unlock the elite spec – you won’t be able to play a Dragon Hunter right away. You’ll need to collect Hero points from Challenges in PvE or using Proof of Heroics in WvW to unlock it.

Now maybe you’re reading that and thinking “Ok, that’s fine. I’ll need to think about a build to use while I unlock Dragon Hunter and which content to prioritise, but that’s ok.” Or maybe you’re going “Wait…what? Skills and traits I remember but what’s a mastery point? Is it the same as a hero point? Do I want soldier’s stats? Do I want to do a ‘meta event chain’? How do I use the story journal to activate HoT?”

If your reaction is closer to the second one I’d recommend holding off on using the boost for a while at least and using that time to level up normally and familiarise yourself with the game (even if you remember it fairly well a lot will have changed).

You can use the level 80 boost at any point – so if you get to level 30 or 50 or whatever and feel like you know what you’re doing now and the remaining levels are just a barrier you can use the boost then. Or use it on a second character to give yourself more options.

Your computer settings definitely make a difference. I was really frustrated when I finally got my thief to level 80, picked out cool armour for him and dyed it in 3 different shades of black…then my graphics card dyed and for a couple of months it all looked the same flat, matte black because I was playing on the lowest settings. Then I got my new graphics card, re-did my monitor settings and found I wanted to change the dyes around because they didn’t look as good any more.

(BTW yes I know all black armour is lame, but it’s only the one character and he’s a black and white striped Ash Legion thief so it works, and the 4th channel is white.)

Personally I like having a range of blacks to work with, because they do look different depending on the material they’re applied to and I like having the options. Sometimes I love the blue sheen from Midnight Ice, sometimes I want the same material to just be black. Sometimes Shadow Abyss is perfect, sometimes it hides details and Abyss or Black is better.

It’s the same with other colours. I use about 5 different reds on my elementalist, to get the right look across her armour and outfits, and 4 different reds on my necromancer. It’s often only a very subtle difference, but it’s important to me to get it just right.

Were they ever useful?

As I remember it they’ve always been more novelty/flavour skills than a valid choice. Which is intentional – Anet didn’t want players to feel they had to pick a certain race for the build they wanted, they wanted it to be entirely cosmetic so everyone can pick the race they want.

Vayne.8563:

I mean, it’s the same as if they were level 1. You could go back to an early area and play with them, in the same way you can play with them without using your own gliding and jumping mushroom, for the brief periods they’re even online.

I agree with this.

It’s like hiking in real life – you don’t leave someone behind because they’re walking slower than you and then complain that the hill was too steep and broke your group up – you go at the pace of the slowest person so you all stay together. (And ideally plan your route in advance based on what everyone is capable of.)

If you were playing with someone who wasn’t level 80 yet you wouldn’t insist they have to come to a level 80 map and then complain that they can’t survive, would you?

So if you’re playing with someone who can’t use updrafts yet then you do things that don’t require updrafts, if they don’t have nuloch wallows then you go the long way around…and so on. Do the other stuff when they’re not online, or when you’re playing with one of the people who does have those masteries unlocked.

Then when your friends do unlock a new mastery you can show them all the cool things they can do with it.

Whilst it would be a cool idea one big problem is they’d have to make 2 or more versions of every single storyline.

Members of the enemy racial factions would not be allowed into the Orders, they would not join the Pact, they probably wouldn’t try to kill the dragons (the Savnir especially), they were more likely to join Scarlet than try to stop her.

All of that would have to be accommodated. For accuracy it would have to extend to other areas of the game as well – bandits would not help the Seraph fight other bandits, the Inquest would not protect skritt, the Svanir wouldn’t do anything a female character told them to do…

So everything Anet make would have to have two versions, at least, if not more. That means double the development time for the same amount of content per character.

As I said it’s a cool idea, but even in single-player games that level of choice doesn’t quite work yet. I keep hoping they’ll get there – every time a game offers you choices I make at least 2 characters and pick different ones to see how far it goes. Sometimes the choices are interesting on an individual level – at least a few times I’ve found myself thinking “I know I wanted to make an evil character but I didn’t expect that!” but overall it only has a minor impact on the storyline – for exactly this reason – otherwise they basically have to make 2 games and most people will only ever play 1 of them.

I like the way it works now as well.

Admittedly there’s a lot of HoT stuff I’ve been meaning to do and haven’t gotten around to yet, but I also still have the whole raid line and the final rank of several other masteries still to unlock. It’d be really frustrating if I had to do the stuff I’m not even interested in just to get the final points to complete those.

As other people have said you can’t really get it wrong because eventually you’ll have more than enough points to unlock everything.

Personally I focus on unlocking a small selection of skills which seem useful first, then once I can use traits I pick a trait line which sounds good and focus on getting that fully unlocked – on the basis that I can use the whole trait line together whereas any new skills I unlock require swapping out one I already have.

I tend to leave the elite skills until last and just use the racial elites, because they’re good enough while you’re levelling but you probably won’t use them much once you reach level 80, so it’s fun to use them while you can.

Edit: Oh, it’s definitely worth experimenting with different traits and skills. You might find that something which didn’t sound that great actually works really well, but also it’s just helpful to familiarise yourself with the options you have available. Some skills (and traits) are highly situational – most of the time they’re not worth taking but it’s good to remember they exist so you can swap to them when you need them.

1) Try using equipment that gives toughness or vitality. Toughness is an armour bonus, vitality is a health bonus, both will help you survive more damage.

2) Make sure you’ve got some type of condition removal: either passive (a trait or signet that removes them periodically) or active (a skill you activate to remove them), especially if you choose toughness over vitality because conditions ignore armour.

3) Do you know how to dodge? Not just which button to push but when to use it in order to get the best use from it? That’s vital in this game because even with a ‘tank’ build you’re going to need active defense to stay alive and that’s your number 1 option.

4) Do you move during combat? Not just avoiding red circles but to avoid attacks and kite enemies. That also makes a huge difference. It is possible for some characters to survive in some situations while just standing in 1 spot, but it’s relatively rare compared to other games. (Don’t forget you can move while attacking too, so it’s not like you have to stop what you’re doing to avoid enemies.)

As far as I know there aren’t any images of her except for the statue in the Black Citadel.

As far as fur pattern/colour goes I think the nearest you can do is to base in on her grandfather Pyre Fieceshot. That may not be accurate since I think charr fur patterns can vary a lot, even within a family, but it’s a starting point at least.

The main reason to play in a party is to make it easier to coordinate – when you change maps it makes it far more likely you’ll end up on the same copy of the map, and if you don’t you can easily switch over, you can see each other on the map, get a private chat channel and you can place markers the other people can see. And of course it’s the only way to enter instances together.

This game was designed to actively discourage grinding enemies for XP so it’s hardly surprising they don’t allow you to power-level by going afk while a high level party member kills things on your behalf.

As other people have said if you want to help your brother or your niece (or anyone else) level up the best thing is to do events together. They will still need to actively participate – at least tag a few enemies or whatever else is required (collect items and give them to the NPC, stand in a circle to defend an area etc.) but they can do just enough to get gold participation while you (and anyone else who happens to be around) completes the event and they’ll get the same XP as if they did it all themselves.

You could also help them play through their personal story – killing enemies works the same way as in the open-world, if they don’t tag them they don’t get any credit – but they’ll get XP from completing the instance even if you actually killed everything.

Also remember there’s no harm in toning down your own attacks to give the other person time to tag them. It may not be as fun but you can just auto-attack and switch targets every few hits until they’re dead. If it gets boring maybe throw in some support skills – you can buff your partner so they can kill things faster and teach them about game mechanics in the process.

I agree.

I was really disappointed when I finished that instance and didn’t actually get the title. Then I thought maybe I needed to kill Zhaitan first, but that didn’t do it either.

None of the set 1, 2 or 3 minis come from achievements.

Originally they were sold on the TP (well, you bought an RNG pack which gave you a random mini) and now I believe they come from black lion chests (via the mini egg).

But they’re all tradable so you can buy them all on the TP with gold. Some are quiet expensive but personally I find them easier to get than some of the ones bought with new currencies. (Still saving up 250 crystalline ore for the mini Blademaster, then I need another 500+ ore for the rest of the guild minis.)

malachi.7503:

I like that I can freely roam around the game world randomly engaging in combat with anything I encounter and I will never truly outlevel any area. I take my fully leveled geared out character and go to divinity reach and can still enjoy the gameplay there.

I love this too. I’m a completionist, but also easily distracted in games so I spend a lot of time roaming around each area making sure I’ve found everything. Which means I’m usually over-levelled for whatever I’m doing. I don’t mind when that means I get no XP (it’s not like I need it) but it is annoying when all the drops are useless because they’re below my level and fights are over in 2 seconds.

In GW2 that doesn’t happen. I can take my level 80 characters anywhere in the world and play normally. Sure the fights are still somewhat easier because I have more skills and traits and a full set of matching equipment (when I’m levelling I just use whatever drops) but I still get to feel like I’m actually using my skills instead of having to pick just 1 per battle because that’s all I’ll have time for.

Well the default name in-game is kits as other people have said, presumably short for kittens.

But I see absolutely no reason you can’t call them skrittens. I certainly shall from now on.

There’s a lot I like about this game, but I think the main thing is it’s very low-commitment. For a long time after I quit Ultima Online I thought MMOs just weren’t for me because I can’t commit to playing on a regular schedule.

But GW2 (and GW1) are perfect for that. Firstly because there’s no subscription so I don’t risk losing money if I pay for permission to play for a month and then don’t have time to log in. But also because there’s no gear treadmill (since launch they’ve added 1 tier and that’s not required) so if I take a break from the game, or simply don’t feel like playing the latest “end game” content I’m not falling behind and I’m not going to be locked out of anything.

I also like a lot of the design of the game. For example exploration is very much encouraged with everything from mini dungeons and jumping puzzles to NPCs with weird dialogue, random achievements, rich gathering nodes and beautiful scenery to find if you take the time to search the maps thoroughly.

Having said all that (and bearing in mind there’s a lot I haven’t mentioned) it is quite different from other MMORPGs and I remember being confused by it when I started, even having played GW1 beforehand. I know I often have to push myself to stick with a new game when it seems weird and unfamiliar, instead of going back to the ones I already know.

If there’s anything in particular you’re frustrated with or confused by or simply can’t see the appeal of do ask, either here or in-game and we can probably help.

I really like this idea. I can’t count how many times someone’s said “X is on my tag!” and then people have to ask which tag that is (and about half the time the commander can’t answer because they’re in the middle of a fight). Adding a marker to show which colour tag is which commander would be a big help.

Moira Shalaar.5620:

I like this idea a lot, but does anyone have thoughts on how this idea might be improved upon to compensate for those gamers with color blindness? Anet has made a few accommodations lately, and if they were to go with this idea It might be a way to continue making things easier for gamers with visual impairment.

Perhaps mouse over the commander name in chat flashes the tag in mini map, much like mouse over HP/WP/PoI in the upper left of the map makes undiscovered ones flash?

I like this idea too – it would help in situations where there’s more than 1 commander using the same colour tag, as well as for colour blind people.

I believe the standard approach for accommodating colour blindness in situations like this is to make them different shapes as well – like the squad markers which are both unique shapes and colours, but I’m not sure how different they could make commander tags without it being confusing – a lot of people don’t recognise the mentor tag as anything other than a red blob, so I think they’d struggle to find a unique shape for each commander tag (which is also distinct from any other map marker) which is clear enough for people to call out in chat.

If you move away from the Bank/Mystic Forge/TP area it’s much better. Unlike the old Lion’s Arch there’s actual buildings (which aren’t balanced precariously on top of pillars), lots of little winding streets and courtyards.

The area around the waterfront just south of the bridge is a favourite of mine, it reminds me of various seaside towns I’ve visited, particularly around south Devon and Cornwall.

The problem is for most people there’s not much reason to go beyond that little courtyard area, which for whatever reason they made look like a theme park.

30g each is expensive, but it’s not impossible (and I say this as someone who rarely has more than 30g at one time).

On top of the ideas already posted try selling crafting materials you don’t need. I recently got 40g just from selling any cooking ingredients and gem stones I had more than 50 of (as in I left 50 of each in the bank). None of them went for a lot individually so it was a big surprise when I logged in and saw the gold waiting in the TP window, but I did have quite a few of them. And it’s not like I’m likely to use up the ones I have left over, so it’s basically free gold for me.

If you’ve got laurels you’re not using buy bags of T6 materials and sell those on the TP.

Alternatively pick a map with a meta event you like doing, like Silverwastes or Dragon’s Stand and do that, then sell/salvage & sell all the items you get. You can make quite a bit of gold that way.

Obviously selling materials isn’t something you can just keep doing over and over until you’ve got enough gold, but it will at least give you a headstart and then you can save or farm the rest.

It will take a while to get the full 180g, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

Also if my math is correct if you put in buy orders instead of immediately buying from the lowest seller it would currently cost you 102g for heavy recipes, 73g for medium and 105g for light. The only pieces which currently cost 30g+ are heavy trousers at 48g, and light gloves at 30g. So if you’re making a heavy or light set you could save a lot of gold by converting a different ascended set for just those pieces.

Alternatively unless you’ve already made the insignias you’re probably better off making a different ascended set and converting it.

As JAFW said it’s to stop people rushing through it. It means you have something to do for longer, and you’re going back to the map regularly – things like that spread players out and create more activity in the game as a whole.

Unless you’ve already finished everything else you need to do for this tier you can use the time to work on other parts of the collection. And if you have finished everything else I recommend you use the wiki to look at what you’ll need to do next and see if there’s anything you can get started on now, even if it’s just collecting raw materials.

Legendaries are designed to be long-term goals. A lot of the process is very time consuming, either because it’s time-gated or because it needs a lot of materials, expensive items or achievements which take a lot of time and multiple attempts to get. It’s a good idea to plan ahead and start on the stuff which is either time-gated or simply going to take ages first, so you don’t finish everything else and find yourself hitting a road block with 1 item.

The dye packs already impact the price of dyes – the most expensive dyes you can get from the packs always crash in price shortly after a pack is released. But I suppose making them un-tradable limits the impact to those specific dyes – it stops people selling them and making a pile of gold from their birthday gift.

More generally I think so many things are account bound so that you have to actually play the parts of the game they come from in order to get them. If everything was tradable then you could get anything in the game by buying gems, converting them to gold and buying whatever you wanted. And as much as it contradicts everything you’ll hear about games that rely on microtransactions for their profits I think Anet would prefer people to actually play their game rather than paying to skip the content.

It also means that you have to buy HoT to get access to HoT items, have to buy Living Story chapters to get those items etc. They managed to stop free accounts trading items which other players can buy or sell, so maybe they could use the same system to prevent you buying things that come from content you don’t have. But I don’t know how complicated that is to set up and maintain, and I can guarentee they’d get a lot of support tickets (and forum posts) about “bugged” trading post items.

First question: Do you want to play World vs World (WvW) together? If not then there is no need for anyone to transfer. All PvE and structured PvP maps are shared between all servers in a region. As long as you’re all on NA servers or all on EU servers you can play together.

If you do want to play WvW together then someone will need to transfer. A server transfer is for your whole account – all your characters, your bank and everything else will all move to the new server all in one go. You’ll stay in any guilds you’re part of and will still have access to their guild hall etkittenerally the only thing that will change is which world you fight for in WvW.

You do have to pay to transfer and if I remember correctly the price depends on the population of the server you’re transferring to, with lower population servers being cheaper. But I think most people have a specific server in mind and just pay whatever it costs – either because it’s the one their friends/guild play WvW on or based on the WvW leaderboard: https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en-gb/na/wvw

There is no way to transfer to a full server except to wait for the population to drop. This is based on the number of ‘active’ WvW players and only updates periodically – it’s no good waiting around for someone to leave WvW or even log off thinking a space will open up – they have to either transfer off that server or stay out of WvW for long enough that the game decides they no longer count as active, and it’s unclear how exactly that’s worked out. But the best time to check is just after the weekly reset on Fridays.

So probably the best way to do it is for you to look at the WvW rankings (since they’ll make more sense to you than a new player) and pick a server which isn’t full, tell all your friends to make their accounts on that server and then you transfer to it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Palador.2170:

Behellagh.1468:

NCSOFT owns ANet (indirectly through a holding company NCSOFT owns outright) but I believe, being NCSOFT’s first acquisition in NA and with former Blizzard “superstars”, ANet negotiated to keep the IP under their name so if NCSOFT every decides to sell off ANet, the IP will go with ANet.

At least that’s the scuttlebutt I heard over a decade ago.

I heard something similar, but I’m not sure I believe it any more. They’re going to be using GW2 characters in that new NCSoft MOBA, which tells me that NCSoft has some solid claim to the rights no matter what happens with ANet.

Both could be true. For example, as part of the deal granting ANet autonomy in publishing, NCSOFT could have e.g. retained rights to re-use character names or pay ANet a nominal fee to license such use.

That would make sense.

That’s what happened with Elder Scrolls Online – Bethesda owns the rights to the Elder Scrolls Franchise but for practical purposes didn’t want to be the ones running the MMO, so their parent company (Zenimax Media) set up a new studio (Zenimax Online Studios) and Bethesda granted them permission to use the Elder Scrolls IP.

It’s sort of the same with the GW2 merchandise – Arenanet will retain ownership of the images but Iam8bit and Welovefine have been given permission to use those images on merchandise they sell.

Have you seen the Guild Wars 2 Art Show (advertised on Facebook and Twitter) that sounds like pretty much exactly what you’re asking for in Point 2.

They encourage players to create fan art (which players were doing anyway) by promoting it and also discussing how it’s created. This in turn gets people talking about and sharing the art work.

Oh, they also have a system where players can submit their artwork to be turned into merchandise, which other people can buy and wear/use. That should be pretty effective for getting it out there – you could literally see someone walking around wearing GW2 fan art.

But if you have any other ideas I’m sure they’d be happy to hear about them. Besides spamming youtube, there’s hundreds (possibly even thousands) of GW2 youtube videos already, so I’m not sure what adding more would achieve.

There’s quite a few places like this where there’s paths and even zone portals which were in the game at launch and have never been used.

I think the only exception is the one at the back of Fort Vandal (also in Brisban Wildlands) which now leads into the Silverwastes.

Oddly enough they’ve tended to create new portals instead of using the ones which are already there – for example there wasn’t a gate at the back of the Plaza of Lyssa in Divinity’s Reach until The Head of the Snake was released and Lake Doric was added. I suppose because plans have changed over time and the ones they put in at launch don’t lead to the places they want to put new maps.

(It’s also possible that there was never any specific plan for these routes and it’s just that the designers were making the maps before the layout had been finalised so they just added a bunch of exit points and then closed off the ones that weren’t used.)

As I understand it the short version is that Arenanet owns the rights to the Guild Wars franchise (which covers both games) and the games themselves, but NCSoft owns Arenanet.

So if Arenanet did ever break away from NCSoft they’d be able to take Guild Wars with them. But that’s highly unlikely to ever happen because at the moment they’re sort-of the same company – it’d be like expecting the art department of Arenanet to break away and start their own studio.

I agree with the others – go for the charr one.

There are other choices for a massive pack for your norn (check out the huntsman crafted backpacks) but not many options for a charr engine.

Vayne.8563:

Monk Tank.5897:

That wasn’t because they moved. That was because of Bank Fraud.
I’m curious as to why Anet is in Seattle in the first place? Are there some underwater internet cables going to Asia from Seattle?
All the lines going to Europe are on the East Coast. Wouldn’t it make for faster server times as a whole if the Servers were located in NY? Or anywhere on the East Coast for that matter?
So people in Europe have to ping to the East Coast, then down to Texas, Then up to Seattle, back down to Texas, up to the East Coast and then back to Europe? Put the Servers on the East Coast plz.

There are lots of software companies in Seattle, including Microsoft and Amazon. It’s apparently a popular spot for software development, though I’ve never understood why.

I’m pretty sure Microsoft is based there simply because it’s where Bill Gates and the other founders are from.

As for other companies I have no idea. I was once told Seattle (or more accurately the whole Pacific North West) has such a strong musical history because the weather is terrible so there’s nothing to do except sit around playing music. Maybe it’s the same for people who are into software design?

(Although all the musicians I know who live there swear that the weather isn’t that bad and they spend plenty of time doing other things…but I’d only trust about 1/2 of them to tell the truth about 1/2 the time.)

My other MMO – Elder Scrolls Online – has a Public Test Server (PTS) and exactly the same thing happens there with numerous hot fixes and follow-up patches after an update is released.

I think there’s a few reasons public beta testing isn’t effective at stopping this:

1) The vast majority of people who play on the PTS are not actually interesting in finding and reporting bugs. Many simply want to mess around with the tools provided for testing (like instantly creating a max level character), or they just want to play the new release early, either just because they’re curious or so they can do things like practice raids so they can claim to be the first to beat it when it’s released.

2) Related to 1 in some cases people have actively tried to prevent bugs and exploits from being reported so they’d make it into the live game and could be exploited before being reported and fixed.

3) Even when people do provide feedback it’s usually not great. QA is as much a skill as any other part of game design – I’ve been told that a good tester can recite from memory every single action they took (as in every key they pressed, exactly where their character walked etc.) for the past hour. They need to be able to do that in order to correctly identify what’s causing a bug and replicate it. So a post from someone on the forum saying “X is bugged, plz fix” doesn’t really help the company at all – they still need to get someone to find out what’s actually wrong with it, what’s causing that and what needs to happen for it to be fixed.

4) Sometimes they simply don’t have time to fix everything. There’s a lot of factors that go into deciding when to release even a small update and bug fixing is just one of those. They can’t put the release on hold indefinitely to make sure all the bugs are fixed, so the QA team just has to do as much as they can with the time they have. They’ll have a list of bugs ranked by priority (how badly they break the game) and they’ll fix as many as they can in the time they have and then fix the rest later. Often if a release has “tons of bugs” it’s 99% very minor things – they description on an item was wrong or you have to talk to an NPC twice before they’ll sell you something. What you don’t see is the ones they fixed instead – the one where talking to an NPC crashes the server or entering a story instance locks you out of your character or right-clicking on an essential item causes it to disappear, or something explodes and turns 1/2 a dozen surrounding items bright pink….

5) Sometimes bugs appear between testing and release. My favourite example of this isn’t from a game at all: In my old job we had a database we used to log enquires. When we got a new version it was tested by all 7 end users on the same PCs we’d be using the final version on and we all agreed it was pretty much bug free. The only thing that happened after that was we saved it to a new location on the server. Somehow that introduced a bug where if you clicked the empty space next to a button it asked if you wanted to save, and if you clicked yes the program crashed. I left the company a year and a half later and that was never fixed, because no one could figure out what was causing it.

On top of which they have to accept that a PTS means putting staff time (and therefore money) into moderating that community, collating feedback and ‘managing’ testers, and that it means there will basically be no surprises in anything they ever release. It’s bad enough when stuff leaks – imagine if there was never any mystery about any new release because everyone already knew exactly what was in it, right down to every single new item, and 1/2 the players had already completed it.

As far as I know most DDoS attacks aren’t instigated by people who play the game, and therefore aren’t intended as a ‘protest’ against anything the company has or has not done. It’s basically the server equivalent of hacking a website and replacing the home page with a screen that says “You’ve been hacked by some no-lifer! Lol! I am so cool!”

The aim is…well, exactly what’s happening here – they get to see a bunch of people talking about what they’ve done (OMG such an achievement).

I’m curious about why moving their offices from Seattle to Texas or New York is included in the list. What benefit would that provide?

How does it outweigh the disruption of requiring employees to relocate hundreds of miles away, or leave the company and be replaced?

I’m not sure what gave you the impression that free accounts would be just like the game was at launch, but I don’t think that was Anet’s intention.

Apart from the lack of a time limit it is a trial account. As other people have said many of the restrictions are to prevent gold sellers from using free accounts, but others (like having just 2 character slots) are to make it frustrating to play long-term so you have an incentive to buy the full game.

It was aimed at potential new players who wanted to try the game before they bought it – not existing players looking for nostalgia.

This would be a really helpful feature for Anet to add.

Unless they do add it however I think the best you can do is ask them, or if they’re not sure use the Wiki to see what they need to do next.

There’s a boat like that in Lion’s Arch harbour, it’s part of the Troll’s Revenge jumping puzzle.

Considering they haven’t even announced the next expansion yet I doubt it’s going to be coming any time soon. Hopefully we won’t have as long to wait as we did between the end of Season 2 and HoT (9 months) but I doubt it’s going to be Episode 6 one month and the expansion the next either.

Also there’s no reason they have to release new legendaries at the same time as Living Story episodes. So they could easily keep releasing new legendaries after the end of the Living Story. They could even release some after the next expansion has come out.

It also depends on how you use titles – if you pick a title to show you’ve completed that particular achievement, or as a nod to the original pop culture reference (which I suspect is a big part of the reason Killer Queen is so popular) then it doesn’t matter.

But if you pick titles which sound appropriate for your character regardless of where they came from (like using Veteran of the Mists on a revenant who has never been in WvW) then gender-specific titles can be a problem.

Unless I’ve missed one this only applies to The Emperor and possibly Killer Queen, so I don’t think it’s a huge ask to have an alternate Empress title. And maybe Killer King, but that sounds weird to me. (Oh, maybe King Killer and make it a reference to the King Killer Chronicles books.)

And if it’s aimed at people who pick a title to suit the character it wouldn’t need to come from the same achievement or even a similar one. It could be pretty much anything.

(Although it’s kind of annoying when the perfect title for your character comes from something really difficult…says the person who wants A Light in the Darkness for exactly that reason.)

If the ways they’re obtained are going to be changed I’d suggest removing them from reward tracks and rank chests and keeping them as login rewards.

Whenever this topic comes up it seems to be people who regularly do a lot of WvW or PvP who feel they get too many, while there’s another (maybe smaller) group of players like me who mainly play PvE and so mainly get Tomes from login rewards who feel it’s about right, or even that we don’t get enough.

It seems to me the obvious solution to keep both groups happy is to reduce the number of tomes that come from reward tracks but keep them as login rewards.

It bothers me too.

I understand why they did it from a game design perspective: each map is actually self-contained in a cube so the actual edges have to be square. If you run into the actual edge weird things happen, mostly this jittery effect where it’s like you’re sticking to the invisible wall, and also it looks really unrealistic because the ground just stops in a perfectly straight line and then there’s nothing but sky (and sometimes water) beyond it. So they need to hide it somehow and, on a one-off basis, a mountain which is too steep to climb is a much more natural barrier. Making those mountains follow the actual edge of the map allows them to use the maximum amount of space within it.

The problem is when you have a game with lots of adjacent maps and you use that same trick over and over you get…well GW2’s world map, with it’s endless array of perfectly straight north/south and east/west mountain ranges, everywhere, regardless of the surrounding geography, and the end result looks extremely unrealistic.

Having said all that I want to thank the OP for not asking for the existing maps to be changed. That’s the usual request when this topic comes up – for Anet to “just” remove all the mountains or even remove the map boundaries all together and make the entire game into one continuous map. Which of course isn’t going to happen because they’d have to basically re-build the world from scratch.

I completely agree that they should try to avoid this going forward. We have seen slight improvements with some newer maps – for example many of the HoT maps have thick foliage (aka walls with a tree pattern on them) or impassable vines or crevices around the edge – or the world appears to keep going and you’re just told you can’t venture that far – which at least only breaks my immersion when I’m actually there and can’t see any reason I can’t keep gliding rather than annoying me every time I look at the map.

It would be nice to see that improved on. For example if it’s true that we’re going into the Crystal Desert maybe they could borrow a trick from Dragon Age Inquisition (and various other games with desert maps) where if you try to walk off the map a sandstorm blows up and you’re forced to turn around. (Just actually make it effective, unlike DA:I when it was first released where you could just ignore that and fall off the world.)

I love this too.

After about 10 years of GW1 and 2 being my only MMOs it caught me by surprise the first time I tried to log into another game and was told it was down for maintenance. Sure it’s not a big deal when it does happen (especially since I’m usually at work) but I have to admit I’ve often wondered why more games don’t use the same/similar tech to GW2 to allow them to keep the game running while they update.

The big advantage, I think, isn’t so much that you don’t lose time to regular maintenance but that quick fixes can actually be done quickly. In my other game because almost any update requires taking the servers offline bugs have to be really major to justify a quick fix. Most have to wait until either there’s enough ‘minor’ fixes to justify an update or for the next scheduled maintenance which can be a week away.

I think it’s unlikely the nest episode will be released this week, because they usually announce it at least a week in advance and do a bunch of promotion first.

Also I think the Winter in Summer thing was supposed to be specifically old items being re-released. I admit I was hoping for something new as well, but the description did make me think it’d be all old stuff. And the stuff that’s been up the whole time is all ending tomorrow, so I assume that’s the end of it.