There is no evidence pointing in that direction. In fact, given that Anet has mentioned all kinds of things that specializations give you (new healing/utility/elite skills, new traits, new mechanices, one new weapon) but have not mentioned changed skills for old weapons to me indicates that this is not a part of specializations.
According to this lore. Druids actually shed their mortal forms to become something more akin to treants. So some sort of shape-shifting wouldn’t be to far fetched.
That seems to have been a one-direction transformation though and only into treants.
The things I expect to be free for everybody: The new borderlands and stronghold. Because there is no way to limit that content to those who have the expansion.
Everything else will no doubt require you to have the expansion.
I fixed that. Your point still stands though, druids in guild wars lore are druids in guild wars lore, nothing else. Although, to be fair, so little is known about the druids that anything goes really.
Looking at the ranger, the themes I’m guessing are part of the druid are: animals, plants and weather. What that means exactly, other than the skill we’ve seen, is pure speculation.
That’s exactly what has been happening with the living story? All of the living story takes place after the personal story. The present day of the game is 1328 AE, while the personal story took place in 1325 AE. That said, many parts of the game are ‘frozen in time’ so to speak. Updating all events, dialogues and what not to be in 1328 AE would take so much resources as to be unreasonable.
Generally when lore elements and mechanical elements begin to mix, it doesn’t work, so just keep them separate. They don’t need to mix either. Why does a lore event need a mechanical explanation for it?
Tell that to the WP system that became canon after six years of preproduction, two years on live, and an entire book series treated them as if they weren’t.
There are actually various lore explanations for how waypoints work (and for why npcs don’t use them more, specifically because they are too expensive for most non-heroes and because they are not useable for large groups and large cargo).
except they’ve said time and again that specializations change your mechanics, and heavily implied several times that there are perks to sticking with the base class.
The perks of sticking with the base class are that you have the ranger mechanics instead of the druid mechanics. Furthermore, there have been some hints that a profession also loses access to stuff when he specializes (i.e. lose access to some skills, traits and possibly a weapon, in favor of other skills, traits and a weapon).
so if i don’t want to play a druid and i don’t get anything new for my ranger, yeah, it’ll be boring. i just want some new utilities.
You get new utilities for the ranger, when you specialize as a druid. I really don’t see the problem here.
Does anyone know if they are changing the left half for existing weapons?
There has been no indication whatsoever that this is the case. If it were the case then I think Anet would have hinted at that. So my prediction is no.
Are there any official quotes stating that a new profession provides 1 weapon, as opposed to just more weapons?
A few, for example the HoT site says:
Evolve your gameplay. With profession specializations, you’ll unlock access to a weapon previously unavailable to your profession as well as new traits, skills, and unique mechanics – all of which will transform your profession into something new.
Do we know if weapon skills for existing wield-able weapons will stay the same? For instance will the main-hand sword that was shown with the shield have the existing abilities it has currently while the Mesmer is specialized? If those skills change then it would be a way of giving an existing weapon new skills too.
I seriously doubt it. That would make it a lot harder to balance specializations. Furthermore, I think they would have hinted at that if that was the case.
There will not be an event at Pax East. There will be playable demos however. In addition, there will probably be interviews with press. Therefore there is no time conversion you could do (except for a time conversion to the start of Pax East, for which there is a countdown clock on the site of Pax East).
I also think people are overly focused on the new weapon when the new elite, new utility skills, and new traits are probably far more important in terms of the specialization being competitive in any play mode.
Agreed. Don’t forget ‘changed profession mechanics’, whatever that means exactly.
Not in PvP, masteries are PvE-only (and even there they are restricted to certain areas).
WvW might be slightly different. The currently availaible maps will not allow it, since they were not made with the system in mind. However, it might be that the new borderlands map does allow it. We will have to wait and see.
They have said that specializations give ‘a new weapon’. That seems to imply only 1 weapon per specializations, regardless of whether that is a two-handed, main-hand or off-hand weapon. Though I don’t know if it should be taken that literal.
i hope so, otherwise it’ll feel a bit stale for the people that don’t want to specialize.
I don’t agree. If Anet introduces a new trait and you say you also need new skills because ‘otherwise it’ll feel a bit stale for the people that don’t want to use that trait’ then that seems like a strange argument to make. More options = more options, whether you like or use them or not. It’s not like specializations are in any way a one-time choice or something that takes a lot of work to change in and out of.
Well, the location the Zephyrites were trying to reach is implied to be deeper into the jungle. We’ll probably see them again as they continue trying to get there.
The matter of Glint’s egg is still unresolved, so I bet they’ll take part in that arc if nothing else.
Furthermore, what little information we have about the story of HoT points towards ‘what Glint hid in the jungle’ or ‘what Glint left behind in the jungle’ or something of that nature. I’d speculate that this is Gleam, Glint’s 250 years old child.
Why would there waypoints there anyway? They don’t automagically install themselves now, do they? Somebody had to go install them. Who? When? How? Point being, if there are waypoints, this is not unexplored territory.
You don’t think the pact fleet had the means with them to install waypoints?
The pact fleet was destroyed within minutes of reaching the djungle.
Depends on what you call destroyed. The gameplay shown clearly shows us that at least one group of pact soldiers is still a somewhat organized unit. I’d hazard a guess and say that there are more groups around.
Why would there waypoints there anyway? They don’t automagically install themselves now, do they? Somebody had to go install them. Who? When? How? Point being, if there are waypoints, this is not unexplored territory.
You don’t think the pact fleet had the means with them to install waypoints?
I am not sure specialization concerns PvP. Unless they are available for everyone, it would be unfair to those without the expansion.
How would it be unfair if specializations only give more options and not stronger options? They are meant to be sidegrades, not upgrades.
Arenanet did the same in Guild Wars 1 where in pvp only those with the proper campaigns had access to the skills and professions from those campaigns. I don’t see why GW2 would be any different.
My guess is that Guild Halls are next, but that Revenant will be before Specializations. For one, they have confirmed that Revenant will be playable at Pax East. Second, I’m guessing their start with Revenant reveal, then do all other profession Specializations (each with their own blog) and finish with Revenant’s Specialization.
The thing that has me confused is that they’ve said that masteries will be added to the core game as well as the expansion zones. When they say that, it sort of implies everyone will be unlocking masteries, but the majority of them will only be useful while in the Maguuma Jungle. I know people have interpreted from an interview that said “When people unlock Heart of Thorns, they will gain access to the Mastery system” or something similar that only people with the expansions will gain masteries, but I believe this might just be another one of those impulsive replies given in interviews, or people reading far too deeply into an off-hand comment in the interview. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see just what they have planned.
It doesn’t come from an interview, it comes straight from the blog post made by Arenanet concerning masteries:
The ability to train Masteries is unlocked at level 80 for all players that own Heart of Thorns.
I dont like the idea of staff for a ranger. It’s a medium class and should use pistols or rifles.
Why should medium classes use pistols and rifles? Is there some kind of rule for that? There are as much classes with heavy armor who use rifles as there as are classes with medium armor who uses rifles. Granted, for pistols it is a bit different but still. I don’t see the neccesity there.
Futhermore, Anet has specifically said that Rangers shy away from technology because of their connection to nature. If Anet decides to create a ranger specialization with a rifle or a gun it would have to be one which, to some extent, leaves the connection to nature (I can imagine such a specialization giving up the pet completely since a lot of (potential) ranger players have asked for that).
Patience is a virtue. They’ve actually given a decent amount of information since the announcement. Not as much as we’d love to have, but pretty good schedule. I expect that every week we will get one new topic (if we are lucky, two sometimes). My guess is this:
This week (week of 2/9): Strongholds
Week of 2/16: Guild halls and some teaser on guild events
Week of 2/23: New WvW borderland map
Week of 3/2: Full Revenant reveal
Week of 3/9-3/30: Specialization reveals (two per week maybe)
April: More detail on some of the other options and preparation of release in late April, May, or June.
That roll-out of information seems to be a bit slow since there will be playable demos in early march and the beta is said to start shortly after that. Still, I agree with you that they will want to stretch the reveals as much as possible.
I’d say where we go depends on the story. If they can make it plausible to go to Cantha and Elona then fine. However, for now it seems like plot developments point us towards the other Elder Dragons first which are all in or very close to Tyria (perhaps with the only exception of the Deep Sea Dragon).
We don’t know. We have no idea how many maps are included nor how big they will be or where they will be (except for one, namely Verdant Brink which is located west of Dry Top and the Silverwastess).
Dis! Hoping its tonight, must admit its been terribly quiet (ANET and speculation community), but some of us know its coming!
:P
Well, we do know that the last day to unlock Point of No Return is on the 24th, which incidentally also is a Tuesday, so it is rather likely that we will have something then at least.
But chinese new year is the 19th so I kinda expect it to be live before then. Although to be fair, canthan new year and chinese new year were not always aligned.
Worth to mention though that the books have been all but officially announced as non-canon, so there might be some inconsistencies.
That’s not really fair. What was said was that when lore inconsistencies exist between the game and out-of-game sources, the game takes precedence and that, should it be neccesary, out-of-game sources might be mallable to some extent. That is not the same as calling them non-canon. They are canon untill proven otherwise.
To be fair, they also get 1 healing skill, a couple (about 4 I would guess) utility skills, 1 elite skill, new traits and changed profession mechanics.
Furthermore there already are differences in the number of weapon skills different classes have available. That is done by design.
My biggest fear is definetely that the HoT maps are too similar to Dry Top and the Silverwastes. In my opinion Dry Top and the Silverwastes are way too focused on zerging and farming. They are also lacking in the variety of their events.
I understand that they try to have this map-wide event that they want to tie everything to but I enjoy the way it is done in Orr (specifically Straits of Devastation but also the other two zones) way more than the way it is done in Dry Top and the Silverwastes. It feels much more organic and there is much more variety in the look and feel of the events and of the areas in which they take place.
I’m worried about the level number going away now. There is no way to see if anyone is 80 or lower for core content. This will really divide players more and make new players feel left out of old and new content.
Instead of looking at my party area, I will have to ask what their level is… of course 80 is required for southsun, orr, frostgorge and wastes areas and the new HoT maps, but dungeons? I should only have to look at my HUD!
Since masteries are only unlocked when a character is level 80, you do not have to worry about this. When you see a character’s mastery points you automatically know the character is level 80.
I don’t really blame them for screwing up, that happens. I do blame them for taking so long to fix it. How many new players have now had a worse experience because of it?
I’d be tempted to say something like: MH Axe, MH Mace, MH Sword, OH Shield, OH Focus, OH Dagger, Greatsword, Hammer, Staff. However that might be somewhat too similar to the Guardian.
Thinking about it some more, I would kind of want adventures of different game genres. Mario kart-like adventures have already been mentioned (and already exist in the form of Sanctum Sprint), but what about things like Tower Defense, First Person Shooter, checkers/chess, Acromage (the card game found within the video game Might & Magic VII), Bejeweled, platformer (ala super mario) and so on? Just thinking out loud here.
I agree with the OP, having a theme is all well and good but it can create a really, really, boring, tedious zone after a time.
The 3 Orr zones were kitten horrible compared with Queensdale, Wayfarer Foothills and Frostgorge Sound.
I actually quite like the Orr zones. The theme might be the same across all it’s events but what you do in those events is pretty varied. Contrast that with the Silverwastes or even Dry Top.. Those zones get repetitive real fast.
1. Defeat as many enemies as possible within the time limit.
2. See how many waves of enemies you can survive (which increase in difficulty each time).
3. Defeat all enemies in as little time as possible.
I do however somewhat expect Anet to give you an option to buy all of season 2 in one go for a price that is lower than what you would pay if you bought each chapter seperately.
For now it seems like there are four environments: 1) the maguuma waste, 2) the jungle floor, 3) the roots, 4) the canopy. Those all seem pretty distinct to me.
No those are all the jungle. What you’re saying is like saying if you go up a mountain top in the norn area it’s another environment versus being ground level on the same map.
Environments mean more than that, they mean you have entered a whole new aesthetic.
But it does seem that HoT has ONE actual environment. Jungle.
The norn area example is terrible. There the ground level and the mountain level look exactly the same. This is definetely not the case for the jungle in HoT where the roots for example are completely different from the jungle floor.
And even if you count the canopy, floor and roots as one environment, there is still the wastes which by any account is different from the jungle.
I really hope that the Heart of Maguuma has learnt from the massive design flaws that Dry Top and The Silverwastes suffered from. Otherwise players will grow bored of these maps very quickly.
What exactly are these massive design flaws? I have had nothing but fun in those maps.
To be honest I find Orr and Frostgorge way more enjoyable. Dry Top and the Silverwastes are very repetitive.
For now it seems like there are four environments: 1) the maguuma waste, 2) the jungle floor, 3) the roots, 4) the canopy. Those all seem pretty distinct to me.
I think there is a slight chance we get to the area that was the Alcazia Jungle in Guild Wars 1. Otherwise, I think that the four environments mentioned above are it.
