Guild Wars 2

If you mean the “Swap Weapons” button, then no. And there’s a “Stow Weapons” option in the Control Options interface, but it’s blank by default (and I checked, and it doesn’t cancel the tomes). But, darn it, yes, the Tome button itself becomes a “Leave Transform” button. I hadn’t spotted that. Thanks for making me take another look. I just wish the interface were even remotely consistent in the way such things work.

I haven’t used Tome of Wrath before, so I’m not familiar with it. I noticed today that, once launched, I can’t cancel it – I have to simply wait for it to expire (which is a pain, to put it mildly, if I didn’t actually mean to cast it). a) Has it always worked that way, b) is this a bug, or c) both?

Been a lot of this, from what people were saying in chat.

I had characters from two accounts in the same map doing Shatterer just now. It completed, both looted. I left with one to the PVP lobby; before I could move the other, it was DC’d. The one that left got the achievement and loot; the other got rolled back and nothing. Right now. I’d say get out of the map as soon as you can once you’re done.

(When I brought the second character on line, I’d originally gone into a copy of Blazeridge where the event was running behind the one in the first map copy. I’d swapped the character into the map where the pre was more advanced. So on spec I took the DC’d character back into Blazeridge again, and my luck held – the pre was still running. Got credit on the second try without having to wait 3 hours. Very much a lottery, but worth a try if it happens to you and there’s a long pre on the boss.)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The auto login has been broken for a long time. There was a number of posts about it when it first came up, months ago. I guess people gave up and stopped reporting it or used the posted fix.

Googling it, looks like it was Sept. 9th last year. No auto login after patch

You can try this fix:
“If you add the command line parameter -autologin to the GW2 shortcut, GW2 autostarts as before the update.
How to add command line parameters: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments”

And if you read my first post, you’ll see that
a) I already know that,
b) that’s not what I need, and
c) that’s not the point I was making.
And I said as much in the very first line.

On the contrary, I’m quite happy that, without the switch, autologin doesn’t happen – that’s the way things should be. I was posting about: the consequences when it unexpectedly does; a 100% repeatable crash I get when I try and dig myself out of the mess that causes; and the way I’d suggest it ought to work if they ever decide to get around to “fixing” it (because the way it was previously designed was already broken).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t have that issue changing between accounts as I have ‘auto-play’ unchecked. I do, however, have ‘remember password’ and ‘remember account name’ checked.

Are you saying unchecking ‘auto-play’ does not work for your client? Or your command line argument is working when you don’t want it to? Did you remove it?

Have you tried a -repair?

(Also, I am not familiar with the term ‘abend’…sorry.)

Autoplay is not the problem. There are two visible phases to launching the game, with different client screens. First, log in (enter account details and password; server checks who you are). When you’ve logged in, the credential information disappears and you get all the web-site-related blurb. Second, launch the game proper. Autoplay controls the second, and is controlled by the check box on the second screen (erratum That’s on the first screen as well. Oh well.). That works fine.

Autologin controls the first phase – if you’ve entered correct account details and password, should the game move forward to the second screen – i.e. act as though you’d hit the “log in” button – without waiting for you to do something? At points in GW2’s history, the answer has been “yes, if both remember boxes have been checked”, and “yes, if the -autologin switch has also been specified” (and sometimes “no, even if the switch has been specified” – but that one was definitively a bug). The problem is that right now, we’re stuck somewhere between the two – if you don’t specify the switch, but have asked for credentials to be remembered, usually it doesn’t move on without a user interaction, but sometimes it does – and if it does, it’s not possible – or I, at least, haven’t found a way – to get in there and stop it doing so without crashing the client.)

(“Abend”. Sorry – mainframe terminology: “ABnormal END”. I.e., a crash.)

This is not another simple “autologin doesn’t work” post.

I have two GW2 accounts – although this problem would also apply (albeit only once) if I were trying to alter my account name or password.

The problems I see stem from the fact that autologin is not, currently, working consistently (mostly it doesn’t happen; sometimes it does) – and a related client abend.

With “remember account name” and “remember password” checked, I usually have to then click “log in” to actually continue.

That suits me fine. Normally, I want to use the same account as the one I logged out from, so having the credentials remembered suits me fine – but sometimes I want to swap accounts and enter new credential – and I can.

However. Sometimes, autologin happens anyway.

1) that is annoying in itself, because it would be nice if the function were at least consistent.

2) the window to interrupt autologin is short. If I don’t locate and click on Cancel in the first couple of seconds, the login process takes over and I lose that screen. And if I then try to log out to change accounts, autologin invariably kicks in again – giving me little chance to make the change. And round, and round, and so on. And to date, once the client has decided that autologin is to be engaged, exiting it completely doesn’t seem to change things; when I restart the client, behaviour is the same.

3) if I successfully manage to click on Cancel, and change the login details, the client then crashes. Every time. About the one good thing is that, on relaunch, it has then forgotten the old login credentials – so autologin can’t and doesn’t happen.

So, basically, the only way I can be sure of having clean control over launching my client, with the credentials I want at the time, seems to be to enter one or both values every time.

(I’m aware of the “-autologin” switch. I used to use it for single-account play, with 100% success. But what I need is consistency of behaviour, and – ideally – the ability to remember the last lot of credentials without automatically launching the game when that’s not what I want. Autologin ought to be a third option, independent of the “remember” check boxes – and a command line switch “-noautologin” to allow the client to be definitively launched without the behaviour ought to be available.)

I have ways around this, clearly (not remembering password is easiest) – but even with that, we need at least a consistent way to get to the login credentials screen when auotologin has been requested, and no abend when we do so.

qarinus.3869:

If it’s neither of these issues, then I’m afraid I can’t help. I did just complete all the zones except cities over the last ~two weeks and didn’t notice any other skill point oddities.

There was a level 16 character while I was in, I think, Caledon Forest (might have been Metrica Province) yesterday, querying why he or she couldn’t interact with one of the skill points, too. But, like you, I’ve done a fair bit of zone completion in the last couple of weeks, and Scrabclaw’s Roost is the only one I’ve noticed myself.

qarinus.3869:

papaflesas, I noticed recently while mapping in Fields of Ruin that one of the skill points there isn’t showing up on the map. If the problem isn’t that you’re too low level (they won’t show on the map or be usable until level 13) and that’s where you were mapping, look over by the harpy nests in the northeast corner of the map. The set that’s slightly further south-east and up a little rise from from the others.

Yes, Scrabclaw’s Roost definitely doesn’t show up on the maps (even when you’re standing next to it, and even when you’ve done it). I’ve seen that on two characters.

The Skill Challenge chevron at Scrabclaw’s Roost in Fields of Ruin doesn’t appear on my maps.

In the last few days I’ve done the Skill Challenge at Scrabclaw’s Roost twice, on different accounts. In neither case was the Skill Challenge chevron visible on my main map or compass, either before or after I completed it, and even when I was standing right next to it (indeed, the only reason I found it without resorting to a web search was because I already knew it was there).

GuzziHero.2467:

G18-G20 are awkward to use

I have small hands, but I find G18/G20 easy enough now I’m used to the mouse – they’re top and bottom corners. By contrast, G19 I can neither reach easily nor feel well; I use it, but I wouldn’t dream of putting anything on it that I’d want to use in a hurry.

Mine’s pretty straightforward, but works well for me. The ones I rely on and use all the time are:

G9-G18 as 1-10
G20 as `(Swap weapons)
Wheel-left as M (toggle map)
Wheel right as R (toggle run mode)

G-Shift+{G9-G12} as F1-F4

1 DPI pointer sensitivity level (1850).

I also have a few fill-ins. like G19 for I (Inventory) and G-Shift+G20 for F (Interact), but those are nice-to-haves that I don’t use as much.

Edit: I don’t have Jump on the mouse. because I’m an old-school mouse+keyboard player, with my left hand around the holy WSAD, so my left thumb’s naturally on the space bar anyway. I both steer and move with keyboard and mouse according to need and circumstance.

One of my characters is now stuck unable to get a chest from Rhendak, it seems.

In the past, going doing successful PvE or Boss events with a character has been 100% successful for me in clearing the “can’t get the chest” condition for Rhendak. Today it doesn’t.

Today that has changed. A character who got a chest yesterday and just logged out at the boss, failed to get one (I’d had successful drops on 2 other characters today before that, both of whom had also simply logged out at the boss). Fair enough, I’m used to that happening about half the time, so I went off and did a successful PvE event with her, then tried Rhendak again. Now – I’ve been keeping stats, so I know that, the last 36 straight times I did that, I got a chest. And I’ve never seen it fail. But, today – no. Tried again – successful PvE event. Back to Rhendak, no chest. Tried a successful Boss event (Behemoth), then back to Rhendak. Again, no chest. I guess I’ll have to wait until they back out the April 1st patch and see whether that changes anything – but right now, any anti-farming code seems to have bugged on me, for the worse.

Edit: It has indeed cleared with the passing of a new day/patch.

Lots of reports of stories being bugged/refusing to progress, as of yesterday’s patch. Happened to me as well. Sometimes it clears when you try again, sometimes it doesn’t. On the one hand I’ll believe it’s fixed when the reports stop – on the other I’ve no doubt it’s going to be high on the list of things the support guys are bugging the devs about.

If it’s intrusive, you could try resizing the window. You can’t move it down, but you can move the left edge and/or top away from screen centre.

(I’d agree that the bottom of the window has moved up somewhat – I have screen shots before and after that confirm the gap has approximately doubled. But if that gap on your screen shot is an inch, a quick measure shows you’re playing on a 76" screen. Congratulations, I wish I could. But whatever your screen height, the gap is still only about 2.5% of the screen display height.)

I had a similar problem on “Cathedral of Silence”. I’d done various personal story episodes earlier in the day, before the patch; this was the first I’ve tried after it.

At the objective “Secure the Altar of Grenth”, I cleared out all mobs around the altar, fought and killed both veteran mobs. At that point, normally, the story moves on; this time it didn’t. I led Priestess Rhie in to the green star – nothing happened. I ran around all over the place multiple looking for a mob or a spawn that I might have missed, because I know that even one mob you haven’t yet killed will stop it progressing. No sign of anything. I even cleared out the other end of the cathedral, which I know I haven’t had to do in the past. Nothing. Now – Rhie had died at one point and had to be rezzed, which was another thought I had for a possible cause – but whatever, I was unable to progress it, and came here looking for any bug reports on it. Going back for another try once I can summon the enthusiasm.

Edit: Second try, the story progressed correctly. Rhie had died that time as well, so that’s not a show-stopper.

Know what? Your fortune awaits, because you’re clearly a genius, and the average development manager would sell his or her soul for a way of reducing the number of bugs that get through that actually works. (“Test it.” Wow.)

I worked as a tester of complex software for a computer multinational for 20 years, and with plenty of our customers’ development groups too, and I can tell you this: if you haven’t been there and done it, you simply don’t have the right to criticise. Development is HARD. Finding every new bug is close to impossible (I don’t know how many people ANet have in their test team(s), but you can be utterly confident that they don’t remotely have enough to thoroughly test every bit of new code every patch, let alone retest even a fraction of the old code). There are formal ways of “proving” code, but they cost an arm and a leg – not the sort of thing you’re going to do in quantity unless people are paying you millions. And even they aren’t foolproof.

The truth is that ANet are no worse than most others, and certainly no worse than I’d expect. The big issue to me is not so much what bugs get through, as how fast serious bugs get addressed once they’re found.

Artanis.4963:

Unless something’s changed in the past few days, stand on the barrier, exit to character select, then log back in.

I got this item with this method just last week.

It’s getting bad when you have to resort to one bug to get around another, mind…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You may be missing the Chantry of Secrets, or some other obscure place. You might try visiting there, again.

A screenshot of your World Map completion legend might be helpful.

Good luck.

Seconded. It may or may not be the cause, but CoS is the one I miss every time. You need to actually go into the instance to get it (although it’s at least now been updated so that you don’t need to run around inside to find it)..

Glaciate.3901:

The first time…

Just an observation – you might get more attention/replies if you use a more descriptive title. I suspect that the number of people who read every thread just to see what it is, is somewhat limited.

When mousing over a Soulbound item in the bank, rather than displaying “Soulbound to another character”, replace the “another character” with the actual character name.

This is the sort of simple usability change that, if not impractical for non-obvious reasons, could likely be done for next to no cost when someone is in the right piece of code – and would save some of us, at least, hours of occasional frustration. (Other people will never hit it, or simply won’t understand what the problem is. that’s the way of the world.)

If, like me, you suffer from alt-oholism, you’ll know that sinking feeling when you go to try and use something you’ve saved for a rainy day, and realise that it’s soulbound to another character (in my case, most commonly it’s things like Skill Point scrolls, but it’s been gear once or twice as well). There’s also the annoying and unneccessary difficulty of actually trying to keep straight and organise such soulbound stuff as you genuinely want to put in the bank.

Unfortunately, whilst the game is quick to point out that something belongs to another character, it doesn’t give you any hints as to which one – the only way to track it down is to go through your characters one at a time until you find the one it belongs to. Which is annoying, and when it happens takes significant time I could be using better (and, in my case at least, as I normally simply drop my characters into WvW in order to access the bank and vendors via the convenient crafting stations, probably means I also take up a space in WvW that someone else could potentially be using more profitably for the purpose for which it’s intended). And whilst I haven’t experienced it, there’s even the extreme case where the item might have been soulbound to a character that has since been deleted – how on earth are we easily supposed to sort that one out? Just keep running through the characters until we’re absolutely convinced we’ve checked them all, I suppose.

Belated, but – tips from a mediocre jumper.

Firstly. Don’t let go of the movement keys too soon. The game physics isn’t entirely realistic – deliberately, I’m sure – and the keys are still controlling you somewhat even while you’re in the air. If you’re falling short, keep the forward key pressed until you know you’ve failed. Let go early and you’ll miss. (There are places in the game where getting the length of jump right is key, and one way to control that is to release the “forward” button at the right time. There are others where a small amount of “steering” in the air is important, too.)

Secondly. Effectively, every character has an invisible “base” that it stands on, meaning that it can often go rather further out over an edge before it falls than you’d think. Find a flat surface, with a clearly-defined edge, at a safe height above the ground, and try moving your character around on the edge until you’ve found out how far you can actually go before you fall. Then practice a jump or two from nearly that far out. You could easily be robbing yourself of distance by trying to jump from further back than you need to (even allowing a margin of safety).

Thirdly. You could try experimenting with both standing and running jumps. It’s helpful to be able to do both, but you’ll probably you’re better at one than the other (especially depending on precisely how you control your character). Personally I’d far rather back of a little, hold down the movement key and hit the space bar at the right moment – but I have a friend who simply can’t do that, and does everything from a standing start. Doing that needs good timing, mind, and he’d be the first to admit that he misses his jumps a lot more than I do.

Eirian Direstorm.9748:

It’s a bug. If you stand out on the ice and re-log, you’ll be under the ice and can get to the water if that’s what you need.

Thanks for that. There’s always the other path anyway; I just wondered.

Ah, OK. Thanks.

I don’t remember seeing anything about this, but in the Font of Rhand mini-dungeon of late I don’t seem able to use a statue head to load the mortar any more on the left of the two possible routes. Has this changed?

Yeah, I’ve had one of those in the last week or so. I was amused as heck that someone thought I’d fall for it despite the mail system putting the “not sent by the Guild Wars 2 team” alert on the bottom.

Report, delete, forget.

Purple Miku.7032:

I guess that’s one way to look at it, but not all invisible walls placed prevent access with the intention of that.

That’s my point really… there’s many invisible walls placed that serve absolutely no purpose.

I suspect it’s the easy option – “We don’t know what the unintended consequences of letting people go there would be, so rather than having to waste manpower dealing with them after the event, let’s just prevent them in the first place.” Frustrating as a player, at times, but probably eminently sensible as a developer.

Many.8419:

The problem with too much scaling is – why should I level my toon or gear it?

That’s a different issue. But – you level because most scaling only works one way, and levelling gives you access to new content** (and, frankly, simply because you want to, and you can). And you gear because it helps with all sorts of high-end stuff. Which is rather more than was mostly the case in GW – and it didn’t stop that being a darn good game.

**Rather like some of the Mastery stuff coming up in HoT, in fact…

Tomerant.2701:

I never had problems completing zone events even with downscaled 80s beside me. Leveling here is extremely easy and you get xp for doing basicly anything.

They should focus on fixing the fps drop thing instead of something like this. I saw no change at all. It’s minor stuff or it’s been nerfed already due to a massive btching festival.

It’s not so bad later, but at the lowest the down-levelling simply doesn’t work. As an example, I have personal memories of trying to kill drakes in order to complete the “Fisher Travis” renown heart west of Shaemoor, when a group of high-level players came in and started killing them for their own purposes. Result? Between skills, traits, numbers and so on, they were moving around the area faster than I was – and whenever anyone got near a drake, they simply one-shotted it. I never got a look-in; I could start towards a drake when one spawned, but by the time I got in range, it was invariably dead. OK, there are other ways of completing that particular heart – there often are – but that’s neither here nor there, because a key component of any good game is allowing players to play the way they want to, not forcing them to work around problems. I’d decided what I wanted to do, and inadequate down-levelling stopped me. If they’d been performing at a level similar to mine, I’d have been able to join in; instead, I gave up and went to do something else for a while. Similarly in the levels 8/80 case I described above; my newbie friend wasn’t looking to power-level despite us, we were all hoping for a pleasant joint experience to which we would all feel we’d contributed. Down-levelling seemed to promise that – but it simply didn’t work in practice.

OK, my own 2p worth. And this is purely personal opinion; YMMV.

I don’t know whether it’s changed or not; if it has I don’t know whether it’s deliberate or not. But if it has, and it was, I welcome it – and not before time.

When I first met the GW2 scaling concept, I was near-blown away. The idea that you could go back to any area that you were at least high-enough level to enter, and be scaled back down to a level suitable for the content, was brilliant. At a stroke it seemed to make the entire game continuously accessible and replayable with even the highest-level character. And in particular I remember, when a friend was contemplating GW2 to join a couple of us who had already been playing for some time, enthusing to him about how we’d be able to come join him straight away with our existing characters – because the game would adjust us down something akin to his level and stop us dominating things.

Except, of course, that’s not what happened. Just like the old days and Another Game™, our level 80s joined his level 8 or so, and simply steamrollered everything in sight. Quite frequently he didn’t even get credit for kills. The first session lasted about 30 minutes before we realised that, down-levelled or not, we’d either have to roll new characters to play with him or wait for him to put levels on – just like that Other Game we’d come from.. Nice idea, ANet; shame it didn’t work.

And – yes, I can see down-sides to full or near-full down-levelling – but I don’t see them as game-breakers, merely things that would, if it were working properly, make GW2 a different game to others – which is, frankly, half its attraction. But, put simply – if it’s going to be there, it needs to work, to level the playing-field for all characters in a zone. And if it’s not going to deliver that, then what, in the end, is it there for? Write it off as a good idea that didn’t work, and take it out.

I can’t tell whether or not it’s connected to download speed, and my client’s still going (so far) – but every now and again the download client graphics spasm in a way that’s positively painful to look at for a few seconds (which is part of what I think the OP was reporting). I have the perception they’re jumping back and forwards between two or more fairly close locations on the screen.

Update: Yes, it looks as though I’m seeing a real drop in download speed during the glitching as well. Although it recovers when the glitching stops.

Update 2: And now, with 99% and 1010Mb downloaded, and 2 files remaining, the glitching has gone continuous. I’ve had to minimise the window because it’s too hard to watch. Throughput has also dropped to a mere fraction of what it was before.

Update 3: What seems to be going on is that it’s getting (or at least reporting) near-continuous connection errors. When the panel jumps, the "Connection error(s) detected – retrying " message is just visible as a flickering ghost behind the main download screen; I presume it’s repeatedly hitting a connection problem, flagging up the error message on a new copy of the client panel (in a slightly different horizontal location – at least on my 1920×1080 screen), then successfully reconnecting and clearing the error panel again. And again, and again. The result is truly awful. Total download is still creeping up 1Mb at a time, but heaven only knows how long it’s going to take to complete.

Update 4: Download still only crawling along, but the connection failures have stopped, and the screen is stable again. I notice that the number of files downloaded has now also dropped (was 2 – now purportedly 1).

UPdate 5: Aaaand… they’re back. Two hours downloading, and counting. Oh… …joy….

Guys – if nothing else comes out of this, PLEASE change the error screen so that the graphics show at the same location as the normal one. That was unbelievably nasty to have to watch.

Astralporing.1957:

Nephziel.6053:

Gems are digital currency non existant Anet doesn’t need anyone to sell gems in order for someone to buy them. It doesn’t work quite that way.

Actually, it does work exactly that way, which was directly confirmed by devs several times already. The only source of gem generation that does not come from people buying them for real cash is the achievement rewards, and those do not add any meaningful amount to the whole pool.

How can I put it? Whilst I have absolutely no reason to think that those weren’t genuine and honest statements, I’m also ultimately a cynic when it comes to such things. Whilst I don’t automatically assume I’m being lied to when there’s no obvious advantage to it, I don’t necessarily take everything I’m told at face value either – and even when something’s actually true, I definitely don’t believe that it will necessarily always remain true in the future (especially when I can see reasons for alternate behaviour). Or, indeed, that we’d be told if it were to change. I’ve been around the block enough times to know that business simply doesn’t always work that way.

So – OK, if John Smith said a month back that the entire fungible gems stock was bought by players, I agree that it seems likely that’s currently the case. Whether it will always be so even if it is, and whether ANet management will always resist the temptation to have things tweaked – who knows?

(There’s also quite bit of “wiggle room” in John’s statement, by the way; it’s not a full description of the GW2 economy. For example – if I buy gems with real currency, then spend those gems on in-game purchases, are those gems removed from circulation? Or do, or can, some or all of them become available for in-game purchase with gold? Even if all new gems are bought with real currency, and even if gems used to make purchases are taken out of circulation, what about the game pool of gold that the market also needs to operate? Is that also left entirely to market forces – does it come entirely from player earnings in-game (because ANet could equally affect the exchange rates by changing the amount of gold in that pool)? And come to that – whilst it’s not actually impossible that both gold and gem pools were empty at launch, it seems unlikely, because otherwise the market could at minimum have been downright frustrating, and possibly highly volatile as well (the first gems would have needed to come from real currency; the players who bought them wouldn’t have been able to exchange them for gold from an empty pool; players wanting to buy gems with in-game gold wouldn’t have been able to do so until people had swapped gems for in-game purchases – and if those gems were then taken out of circulation, they still wouldn’t be available, come to that, so there would need at minimum to be some gold to exchange gems for; and at times there could potentially have been high demands chasing limited supply, meaing exchange rates potentially off the scale. Not something I’d expect ANet would have wanted. So there was almost certainly at least a degree of pump-priming. How big was it, compared to the current market? And is it still in there, or has it been removed? And so on.)

Gibson.4036:

The way conversion works, if you buy gems with gold, ANet still gets paid in real cash, because someone had to buy those gems with real cash to sell them on the exchange((my emphasis)).

Double-counting, even if correct.

Even if the above bold section were true (which I seriously doubt, by the way), paying gold for gems that are already paid for and in the game adds nothing directly to ANet’s income. If it were to have any effect at all, it would be at most a secondary one: an increase in the exchange rate, and a possible resultant pull-on of people buying more gems with real money to convert them into gold at a better rate. Only ANet would know how strong that effect would be, though.

There’s no reason to think it’s true in the first place, though. ANet have total control over the market; they can, in principle, inject or remove gems and gold, and manipulate the exchange rates, precisely as they wish, to keep the market healthy and to meet their game and business needs. It’s very difficult to see why they wouldn’t. Which means: (a) there’s no reason to suppose that gems sales are genuinely even closely matched by gems purchases, let alone exactly; and (b) if a different exchange rate would better suit ANet’s goals, frankly they can arrange it anyway.

Either way – it’s very hard to see how allowing players to buy HoT with gems would benefit ANet’s bottom line. And that’s what this is all about.

For my money, I expect no gem-purchase option for HoT, and a real-world price-point of up to £30(€40/$45) – maybe a little less. Whether or not I’ll think that to be good value for money is neither here nor there; if the price seems a bit steep, I, and the vast majority of current players, will grumble our heads off – but we’ll still buy.

Simply curious…

In the chamber in which Rhendak spawns, sometimes there are drake heads on the walls, breathing fire (similar to the ones in the puzzle chamber above, which have to be disabled to open the gate). On the other hand, sometimes they aren’t there.

And far too often, when they aren’t there, I log out in the wrong place in the room, and log back in to find I’ve just been toasted to death….

Does anyone actually know WHAT controls when they’re there and when they’re not? It’s hardly a pressing matter, but I’d love to know.

Bubi.7942:

Well it was elaboratly explained in the patch notes when it came out and the previous announcement before that when it was gonna end.

Don’t forget the multiple threads asking about the event’s end, which all have gotten replies, you could have checked those.

Oh wait.

What an incredibly helpful and constructive reply that was.

1) There’s nothing whatsoever in the patch notes, that I can see, about end date.
2) I have a life beyond GW2, and many better things to do with my time than reading every single thread in the forums. If it was discussed here – so what? I didn’t see it. I strongly doubt I was the only person.
3) I was making a serious point; if you can’t manage a serious answer, I really wouldn’t bother. ANet launched GW2 in China last year; Spring Festival is a big thing, and is still going. I had assumed that the content would continue; I was wrong. But killing the parallel game content for the sake of it is rather like deciding to end Wintersday on December 23rd – not clever (and not culturally aware, either).

Why, when the Spring Festival (a.k.a. “Chinese New Year”) still has more than a week to run, is the GW2 Lunar Festival already over and patched out of existence? I know it started early, but that’s no reason to end it early as well.

The Spring Festival runs from the last day of the last month of the Chinese calendar to the Lantern festival on the 15th day of the first month (that’s March 5th this year, in the Gregorian calendar).

Silmar Alech.4305:

As far as I observed this, you need about 30 minutes between Rhendak kills to get his chest again, which means a pause of 1-2 spawns after a kill.

Good theory, but if it were right, the first character of the day would always get a chest. And a single character parked at Rhendak would never see the problem. Whereas I’ve definitely had chests fail to appear in both cases.

So far, I’ve discovered that I never have the problem if I take my character off and do a world boss between attempts. But in my case that involves doing a lot of other things that could equally have been responsible in resolving the issue (swapping characters, changing zones, logging out in different places and so on).

Personally, I’m still trying to pin this one down to something I have confidence in. Collecting data – if I ever reach a fairly definitive conclusion, I’ll share.

Edit: Numbers on some things are still small, so I’ll hold back from a fuller update for now, but.
1) It’s looking increasingly conclusive at least that the received wisdom is correct, and that running any open world PvE event is enough to stop the chest failing to appear (or alternatively, to clear the problem once it’s present).
2) WvW events do not appear to have the same effect.
3) Simply camping Rhendak has about a 50% failure rate overall (although there’s just the hint of a possibility in my figures that (a) the first account run of the day may have a better strike rate, and that (b) leaving his room and doing other things between character runs may improve that, depending on what they are – but I need more data).
4) The problem can clear spontaneously

Ricky Da Man.5064:

I predict release date will be 17/3/2015.

I hope you’re right, but even if not, hopefully it won’t be TOO long after (given that they’re supposedly showing a “playable version” at PAX and EGX Rezzed earlier in the month). I suspect it really depends on how long they feel they’ll need to beta test an expansion.

I had this problem on three different characters. In each case, going and doing a world boss cleared it.

(I find the problem isn’t constant, and I have a perception that it also clears if I only use a character on non-consecutive days at most – but I haven’t actually tried to confirm that.)

Ceridwen.6703:

I noted the other day that, despite having finished the PS, the Temple of the Forgotten God blurb was at the end of all the text (so everything was in its new order above, and the Temple of the Forgotten God was in twice). Check above it to see where you actually are, and see if you can do something from that.

It’s still a bug, though.

Good point. On the only character I’ve actually completed the PS on, I have Victory or Death correctly at the end – but that Temple of the Forgotten God entry looks out of position, and if the size of the scroll bar is anything to go by, there’s a lot scrolled off above it in the window that we can’t see. And the reorg left me with all SORTS of chaos in my sundry Personal Stories (and I had a dozen or so at the time).

I’d have to say, it looks like a bug to me as well. You don’t seem to have any new mail outstanding (although I’d agree it would be worth your going through and clearing everything out), and your BLTC queue looks to be empty (there is, or was, a bug that stopped some sorts of progress if you had too much stuff to collect). Plus, whatever I do, I can’t remotely duplicate your screen-shot. One story or the other ought to be showing up in green, and there ought to be a progress star visible. And if you were still in LS2, you also ought to have a “Continue This Story” button under the “My Story” header.

I’d be amazed if you haven’t, but – have you tried, say, selecting an episode of the LS to replay, and seeing whether you then get an option to go back to your PS? Might be worth swapping what you’re supposed to be doing a few times, just to see if you can bump the code into clearing whatever’s stopping you. Maybe change character, and log out and back in as well, in amongst changing episodes. All the old computer favourites, in other words. (It probably won’t make a difference – but it’s always worth a shot.)

Dumb question, but has anything been said about whether or not there will be any new content between announcement and the actual release of Heart of Thorns? Too long with nothing novel to do is likely to be a fair old turn-off for those of us who’ve played the game to death and gotten used to getting our stimulation from a fix of new content every few weeks.

(I’m looking forward to the expansion, and expect ANet will be putting every free body on it; but I play with a group of fairly casual gamers, and I’m not looking forward to, say, several months of trying to find something else interesting for us all to do in what’s already there, if that’s how long it takes for HoT to arrive…)

Edit: Corrected dumb typo.

After many, many fails, I finally got this. Full party of 5 including 2 Guardians, one of them me. Full Cleric’s gear, plus Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew; I only ran out of dodges a couple of times, and the walls that hit me weren’t nearly enough to take me down (I was downed once, due to my own stupidity, but fortunately someone else managed to rez me). Also – I’d never used Wall of Reflection before (in fact, I hadn’t even bought it!), but it’s absolutely the canine’s genitalia for this achievement. I spent half the event looking for chances to bounce stuff back at Windmane; even got him once or twice. Great fun. At the end we had three downed, and the two guardians running around – and, suddenly, it was over, and we’d won. The relief was, frankly, intense. Then I spent an agonising three minutes thinking “Please, PLEASE don’t DC me now” until the achievement was actually awarded… I aged 3 years in as many minutes. Thanks, Anet! Next time, hand out achievements as soon as they’re completed, maybe?!?

Oh, and yes – TURN OFF POSTPROCESSING. Best tip ever.

This thread may have been out of date, but right now the item is on promotion again (450 gems).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Perhaps, this will be informative: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Human-Story-Quest-1/first#post4706434

Good luck.

Ah! OK, a link to that earlier would perhaps have been useful… 8-)

Well, I can at least confirm that if you play the “Dead Sister” thread of the PS through from scratch now, “Liberation” does indeed complete successfully, without any sign of the letter from Thackeray (I just blew one of the too-many Experience Scrolls clogging up my bank checking it out – had enough fun in the process that I think I’ll probably keep the character).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

He does not need to contact the CS Team, as Liberation is the last story in the L20 Story Arc. He will not receive the mail until his character is Level 30, which is when the next Story Arc unlocks (and the mail will be sent).

Forgive me if I’m politely sceptical. If that were genuinely the case, then it would be fundamentally different to all the other PS arcs I’ve played whilst levelling characters since the patch in question.

My experience of how the Personal Story system now works is that I’ve always been able to fully complete the final level of the episode and receive my reward (after which the story in question is ticked as complete in my Story Journal). My Story Journal has then shown the title of the next episode, the name of the first story in that episode, and a note in red “This episode will become playable at level ((whatever))”. My main screen shows nothing about the personal story until I hit the next level threshold.

By contrast his screen shots clearly show that the level 20 episode is still in progress, that he has not yet completed it, and that he needs to read a letter in order to progress it. And if he hasn’t finished that episode, it’s not remotely clear why the level of the next one would come into play (even if it then starts with a letter).

I recognise the possibility that the change to the PS system may have introduced anomalies – I’ve certainly seen a few odd things – and that this is one. If so, fair enough. But I remain strongly convinced that the chance is very high that he has an unopened letter, and should check his mail more carefully. And frankly, even if it turns out I’m wrong and you’re right, it can’t exactly do any harm to check (and do a little housekeeping in the process). Whereas if I’m right and you’re wrong, failing to do so will simply leave him stuck.

That looks to be the wrong letter. Check there aren’t other letters in your mail that you haven’t read yet.

It’s a while since I’ve done that personal story line, but you’re looking for one from Logan Thackeray, I think – not one of the generic (but otherwise largely useless) “Aren’t you doing well?” ones that pop up from Tyrian Explorers Society from time to time – which is what that one is.

(Ideally, I’d say, clear your mailbox completely:

Open each letter in turn;
read it;
take any attachments;
click on any “Show me buttons” if you want to;
then delete it.

If you STILL can’t continue your story after doing that, THEN you have a problem. Hit the support button in the main menu and ask for help.)

(This was seen in WvW; it may be present elsewhere, but I can’t confirm or deny that.)

Equipping new gear resulted in all gear colour slots defaulting to “Dye Remover”.

Having previously worked out a vaguely-pleasing colour-scheme for the gear on my mid-level character, I decided it was time to give her gear a makeover, so I selected and bought a tranche of stuff on the TC. To collect it, I popped over to my home Borderlands in WvW, spoke to the BL Trader, and received the gear. I then went into inventory, and right-clicked on each item to equip it. On leaving inventory, I noticed that my character now seemed to be dressed in a rather drab selection of browns. Opening the Hero/Equipment/Dye panel revealed that all of the item dye colours were now set to “Dye Remover”. On past occasions, new gear has picked up the colours from the slots set for the old gear (the result isn’t always ideal, but at least it vaguely preserves the feel of things).

Being lazy (and slightly miffed), and not wanting to have to go through and set everything COMPLETELY from scratch again, I experimented, and found that, with the Dye panel open, re-equipping the old gear restored the colour scheme for that slot, and re-equipping the new item THEN resulted in the old colour scheme being remembered and honoured for the new gear.

Edit: And on re-entering the game today, one piece of the new equipment had “forgotten” its colours, and was pure “Dye remover” again. I think (can’t be definitively sure after a gap of 48 hours) that I’d experimented after the initial problem by changing dyes on other pieces of gear, but not on that one.

Edit 2: Basically, all my new gear now seems to come without colour. Meaning either I run around feeling very drab or have to go find the Dyes tab every time I equip something new. Really annoying.

Edit 3: I see there’s another thread on this, and that it’s a known bug:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Dye-colors-reset-to-default

OK – I know people may not exactly thank me for this, but I’m adding it because I’m seeing different symptoms.

Firstly, I’ve been playing most of the morning and afternoon today in SW, plus a couple of the LS instances, and I’ve seen nothing even remotely resembling lag on play. BUT. The login server, by contrast, has almost gone on strike – the TC mostly just goes into a spinning “working” icon, and frequently gives up with an error message – so trying to clear my inventory is taking forever. And it took me multiple attempts to log in to actually post this.

Edit: Now resolved.

psy.5437:

Also confirming this behaviour.

TP defaults to selecting buy orders at highest current price with 100% of your item.
User switches to highest

(lowest, but I know what you mean – the price at the top of the list)

sell of item, and amount changes to one item only at that price forcing a manual change to maximum.

And as you’d guess, when there are no buy orders, it defaults correctly (to listing all of your items at the lowest current offered sell price).

There’s probably already a thread on this, but I haven’t found it, so…

Does anyone else think that one of the sound-bites from the Wintersday “Mini Princess Doll” miniature bears a striking resemblance to the iconic Star Trek (original series) “fight music”? Much higher key, obviously, and cut very short, but…

If you don’t know the music I mean, then you’re either too young or… …shame on you. Either way, you can hear it at (e.g.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AphxyjrH4SE . The fragment I’m reminded of is about the first 7 notes of the main refrain – the rising sequence ending on three stressed high(er) notes – and can first be heard at about 12 seconds in. Apparently the music is technically “The Ritual/Ancient Battle/Second Kroykah,” composed by Gerald Fried for the episode, “Amok Time.”

(OK, it could be coincidence – but I hope I’m right, and it’s deliberate; if so, it’s a nice touch. Either way, it certainly makes me smile every time I hear it.)