Guild Wars 2

Yujin.1785:

Man the lengths people are willing to defend anet on these forums…

Man, the lengths people are willing to go to to pillory ANet on their own forums …

It works both ways. Opinions differ, but someone who likes something you don’t is not a pitiable wretch scrabbling in the clay for rocks they can call gems. They just happen to like the thing. And vice versa, you may like things they don’t, and that doesn’t make them an Enemy of the State bent on destroying All That is Holy.

We’ll see how it all works out. I am disappointed in the blogs so far, if they are what was meant by “deep dives,” they’re pretty darn shallow and missing details. I had thought they’d be the foundation for forum discussion with devs weighing in to clarify things. A few devs have, spottily, but a lot of persistent questions remain unaddressed at all.

So for now we have a few overviews, and can offer praise and critiques based on them, but cannot assume we know much at all of how the discussed systems will play out in practice.

It’s an interesting idea to have guild open world organizational tools. Perhaps something like this will come with the guilds revamp of HoT?

Meanwhile, I suggest you put [SUGG] in your title as right now it sounds like you’re discussing something already in game rather than putting forth an idea.

They revamped the story to happen every 10 levels in a lump.

For xp, you are doing it right by doing events and gathering, but you can squeeze out more by exploring. Finding a waypoint gives a nice hunk of xp change; vistas and pois and new white-name areas are a bit less. Check the dailies. If they’re too high level for your thief, you’ll need to do them on a higher level alt (it’s calibrated to your highest alt). The rewards for each daily include a Writ of Experience, and each of those is 1/10th a level, so you can put the writs in the bank for your Thief to use.

Crafting also offers solid xp if you have the mats (or the gold to buy the mats). You can get a few levels just standing still at a crafting table, though they’ve slowed the rate down a bit. Do it for the xp mostly, you are unlikely to make things you can actually use. Either salvage what you make to recycle mats, or sell it on the TP if it’s worth more than coppers. LW is a fine choice for a thief (I recently got 500 skill on mine, felt nice). Jewelcrafting or Cooking are the likely supplementary crafts that will do you some good, so long as you are grabbing every node you see so you have the mats.

Actually they have different idles. Here’s off the top of my head, as I’m not in game right now.

Male — Human: Brushes back of hand across mouth, fiddles with hands at waist level. Sylvari: Rubs back of head with head bent down. (I don’t recall the others).

Female — Human: None, due to a bug. But supposed to stretch arms up over head, set hands on hips, kick the ground, turn head one way and the other. Sylvari: Goes up on toes leaning forward with hands back, smiling in glee at the world. (I don’t recall the others but I know my ‘varis tend to keep looking to the side from where I’m pointing them).

There’s also different sounds to go with jumping, mining, etc. The male sylvari sounds constipated, and his laugh is snidely nasal. It bothers me no end, none of my alts sound like that in my head canon.

(Note — human dance isn’t disco, it’s the one from the video Every Day I’m Shufflin’ by the same people that did the I Work Out Wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle video).

Thanks Those are just bare bones descriptions, they all can have long profile threads on my guild forum (when I’m not too lazy to draft them). I’ve been RPing for over 3 decades, I need my characters to have depth!

There’s also the Musketeer way! For those who’ve watched the BBC America “Musketeers” series, they decided to use musket fire quite a bit. Aramis in particular is a crack shot. In the “making of” discussions they said that muskets would be a huge part of what a _Musket_eer did, and they envision their musketeers as the elite soldiers of the crown, the 17th century equivalent of Navy Seals.

Mmmm it would be lovely to be a dashing, swashbuckling Musketeer.

(PS the BBC-Am series is very well done, very immersive, lots of attention to set dressing to make you feel you’re watching a bustling early 17th c. Paris. The only Musketeers movie to ever satisfy me was the one with Michael York as D’Artagnan, as it paid attention to the source material and the costuming was meticulously researched. I was even able to sew the same doublet Athos wore in that movie when I played the King’s Musketeers LARP as him, and my source was Waugh’s Cut of Men’s Fashion (title might be off) and her diagram of an actual deconstructed period doublet from a museum. And I’m almost entirely satisfied with the current show. Season one is on DvD. Recommended!)

Oh, I’m sure the reason some let you hide parts is that they originally were made as separate pieces for town clothes before the Great Town Clothes Disaster. Maybe the Fancy Winter gloves are hideable too, I haven’t checked. Anyway, at least they didn’t go to extra effort to strip away the functionality that was already there in this one regard.

If only Preserved Queen Bees dropped as often as the Forum Bug.

Beldin.5498:

skullmount.1758:

LinseyMurdock.4165:

It was me! Sorry for the confusion.

Again, to confirm, the icons shown in the blog post are all placeholder. I am not requiring that you get Chaos of Lyssa or the Preserved Queen Bee.

Yay! a red tag. Now its official

Its also offical that they never said that you will not need Chaos of Lyssa or the Preserved Queen Bee.

I mean .. just in case you will really need it later, and want to complain about that

I rather think that " I am not requiring that you get Chaos of Lyssa or the Preserved Queen Bee." is in fact saying you will not need those. Quite officially.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

^

Yah it’s very similar to the cook outfit on the Norn, 700 gems. The hat can be hidden, I’m not sure about the gloves. Wiki only says the hat can be hidden.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outfit

I recently found I could hide the gloves on the Sylvari Cook (happy day, I hate that club hand), and I have the gloves hidden on a male human in Cook, so I assume one can hide it in Norn Cook as well. I have never in my life figured out how to edit a wiki without massive formatting errors so I’ll leave that to someone else.

Do what Wanze said, it won’t even cost you the difference in gems. Those who purchased the soulbound versions got grandfathered in. Note that “inventory” means bags, not equipped on your character.

An MMO is always “mid project,” though. It’s a constant iterative design process, never done. ANet would be in the middle of something no matter when he shifted his career onwards.

I love bagpipes and fully support this suggestion (maybe you should change the title to [SUGG} Musical Instrument: Scottish Pipe so people don’t think there is one already). So long as they actually sound like bagpipes, anyway, the backlash against the “bass” has me worried even though typically the ANet audio team delivers high quality sound and music.

There are those in this world, however, who impugn the glorious sound of bagpipes and will scream bloody murder about being “subjected” to it. Fie on them! I love me a properly piped Renn Fest.

When the tweet came out there was a thread (use google to search, I just found this via “gw2 forums Chris Whiteside leaves”) and it is at

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Chris-Whiteside-to-leave-Arenanet/first

skullmount.1758:

Lazaar.9123:

Refer to:

Linsey.4579:

Don’t worry a whole lot about the icons shown, they are all placeholder.

Linsey.4579:

I hooked them all up. Not sure why my account isn’t showing as a dev account, but I am in fact, Linsey Murdock.

I’m not sure I’d believe these yet. There still is no red tag to that account, it only has two posts, and AFAIK all dev accounts are first namelast name.XXXX (some with spaces between first and last).

I reported the second post with a request that they give her the red name badge to clear things up. So either she really is a dev and they’ll fix it if they can, or she’s not and they will take action against her.

Meanwhile perhaps a dev (or Gaile?) who is getting properly badged could come in to confirm/refute the veracity of the post.

I’d totally want the option. Toggle off, all the blocked /w’s return to be preserved for reporting purposes. Toggle on, poof, you don’t see them and any /w’s from the blocked person never show up on your screen.

I’d have a regular name. Because other than a few royal-borns, generally parents don’t have precognitive flashes as to their newborn’s impending career. (My husband’s watched the new “I, Zombie” show and says the main character’s name is Liv Moore. Ouch).

So what names have I picked for my alts?

Donari Mal di Bette, a fancy name for a fancy nobleman. The middle name is used intimately in the family. I have a family tree worked out as well, mostly because he was a tabletop character before GW2 came along.

Salvina Lucia (di) Bette, Donari’s sister. I had to axe the “di” to fit in 19 characters.

Jin Macklin, a Canthan descent commoner who helps at the family general store when not studying up on Grenth stuff. The “Jin” name is one of the few vestiges of Canthan culture in the family, it’s used from generation to generation.

David Raffino, a selfish guardian, ie his powers work great on him, not so great on anyone else. He’s an ex-Seraph due to his tendency to slack off even when on duty. He goes by “Rafe,” only his parents call him David, and he doesn’t visit often.

Mirth the Mouse, a street rat with huge anger issues. The last of a large brood of poor children she pretty much grew up on the streets and got her name for never smiling and being quiet and unobtrusive. She never started fights, she always finished them, and to this day she’s convinced the world is a harsh cruel place that’s out to get her.

Sylvari names — Briara (a name I used for my plant person in DaoC), Briamor (noodling around with an Arthurian name generator and glomming together syllables I liked, realized only later that it was close to Briara), Andret (straight from the generator, took a lot of tries to find one not taken), Ysethe (made up by me to sound Arthurian). Their stories come more from their professions. Briara’s the Guardian with much less vocabulary than thoughts in her head, so she babbles. Briamor’s the Scarlet Pimpernel, he’s a Mesmer with the Order of Whispers. Andret’s nobody, I just wanted an alt who could wear male ‘vari heavy armor so he’s a warrior. Ysethe’s a Necro, she studies decay and rot with an eye to preventing and reversing them, figuring they will be real hazards for the Pale Tree (she’s not feeling grand about having failed, thanks to Shadow of the Dragon).

Norns: Altdragg Splitstack, Engineer, named so I could remember how to split item stacks in inventory. He’s an architect with big dreams about building an Arcology-style lodge to dwarf Hoelbrak. Ylfa Aetlaveidr, names garned from an Ancient Norse dictionary, means she-wolf fated hunter. Not RP’d so no story for her, I just needed to get a Ranger to 80.

Asura: Merra (made at launch, I had a tabletop character named Mera so it seemed to work), expert in solid light (Mesmer), minimally RP’d but always looking for new applications of light tech. And, needing another asura so I could see another PS line, Froblekk, my only post-NPE new alt. I tried for Blekk, it was taken. He’s a young asura Necro who wants to be taken more seriously by seeming old, so he dyes his hair white, paints a skull on his face, and leans on his staff like he needs the support. But he keeps forgetting to lean on it.

And my one charr, Talani Stormburn, that is b u r n not b u m (game font can be annoying!), a responsible soldier and neatnik who uses Ele magic to provide ranged unit support and is fairly touchy about being impugned for being a magic user, tools being tools. Originally Razorstorm until the Razor Warband guild disbanded. Not played much as I was focused on another guild.

My remaining alt is an RP shill designed by someone else, so I’ll leave him out of this.

It depends on the ring’s origin. Karma bought items, for instance, cannot be sold or salvaged. I think this also applies to a number of the level-up rewards we now get. Since you’re leveling, likely you got it on one of your dings. Those give pretty sweet gear for the level now, but the tradeoff is you don’t get to profit from it other than by however more efficient it makes you at killing and looting.

I don’t know what QoL improvements the chat system is getting in HoT but it strikes me that it would be nice to have the option to delete whispers from one’s chat log if they come from a blocked person. I say option because you might want to screenshot the whispers to document harassment.

Most of my unwanted whispers, however, come from gold sellers. I just got one in the middle of a long whispered conversation. It’s an important conversation and I have to stare at the stupid gold seller ad for several minutes until it scrolls away. I’d love for my blocking them to just squish that text out of my perception, the way toggling off whispers as a whole removes all of them.

I read this paragraph in the blog,

“This crafting system is an account-based activity, which means you’ll only be able to craft each precursor this way once. However, all of the currently existing precursor acquisition methods will remain intact in addition to this new acquisition method. That means that if you want a particular precursor more than once, you’ll have to fall back to the original methods of acquisition.”

as saying the new ones can be gotten the old ways. Or else they are saying you can’t make double Legendaries if the mood so moves you.

I can see that it could be read as the old ways will work only for the old precursors, which will also have the new ways, and the new ones will only get the new ways, but I’m going to keep seeing it as every pre has the same two ways of getting it.

Except there likely will be a way to waypoint to the guild hall. They are unlikely to make low level alts who are in the guild wait until 80+exploration to enter the hall. The hall itself will be instanced, and thus not require setting foot in the HoT zone, as it were.

I really hope we get guild info next week, and then they can start in on specializations if they really want to make me happy

For those complaining it was hard to steer the glider, do you keyboard or mouse move? I’m a long time mouse mover and steering was a breeze. I went exactly where I wanted every time.

I did have some trouble judging altitude for the dismount. Somehow I was looking down enough at my character that I thought I was much higher over the wyvern platform than I was. I never fell very far when putting away the glider so as to land in a safe spot. That could get deceptive in spots where there really is a longer plunge.

There is an event tracker. I’m not sure exactly how to activate it since I do dailies on an alt with full world exploration and it’s all that’s left to track, but it points me to the nearest event (can be across the zone). It takes the place of the PS tracker and points to events, pois, vistas, etc.

Azrael gives a solid solo way to do it. It can get frustrating when two maps share a border but there’s no path through at all (One reason I hate getting places in Ascalon before I unlock the wps).

You can also ask in map chat. Odds are someone will either ping the map area where you need to go, or even offer to lead you. I know I would!

I learned recently from these forums that ambients count. I took my guardian to north Southsun (crabs!) and then to a spot in Mount Maelstrom that I like and racked up 100 torch kills about as fast as the cooldowns reset (after I retraited for fast torch cd). The story instances likely allow for group kills though, so they may be faster if you have an alt at the right PS step who uses the weapon you’re working on.

Highly inaccurate for me profession wise, dead on race wise. It gave me top three Ranger Mesmer Ele … when Mesmer is my top and the other two at the bottom (I have at least one 80 of each profession, I’ve given them all a fair go). But race wise it nailed me at Human-Sylvari-Norn-Charr-Asura. They’re all fun but most of my alts are the first two.

Check out the Cook’s Outfit for a nice cultural clothing look for norns. I think that’s the only current Outfit that looks different on each race and lets you hide the gloves if you want. It dyes beautifully.

I ran into this bug a couple of days ago. Relogging just put me back at the mortar until I walked well out onto the rubble and stood atop one of the little holes in it. Then the relog had me swimming and I got the water soon thereafter.

I have no idea how you ended up back in LA.

dwilkin.4186:

how do you show your character on the log-in screen without the awards or character selection bar on the bottom showing?

You can toggle the UI as someone already answered, same key as you use in game and you can pick the key (I use F11, it’s one key instead of three and it’s near Print Screen).

Also you can crop the shot. Windows7 has a nifty thing called the Snipping Tool. It quickly lets you pick any rectangular area on your screen and save it as a JPG. Benefits include avoiding inclusion of unnecessary or bad-to-show areas (such as channel chat with people’s names), a smaller file to upload and share, more compositional control, and if you first zoom in on the shot you get a larger view of things like character armors. I’ve got the tool on my toolbar, I can even use it for in-game shots though it freezes the screen while I select my image area, so it’s not for combat

I suggest any further armor pics go in the Mix and Match thread, though, this one is 11 months old …

The old log in screen was used at the con demos, but not in the stress test. I’d love to have it back if it contains the launcher features such as the news feed and download progress bar. Along with any security features the launcher offers that the old screen did not, of course, I don’t know what’s under the hood.

endeavor.7530:

New characters will level up as normal through all normal ways. I believe they referred to the beta and stress tests as to not mix players with unreleased content into the base game.

Think about it.

This. It was about not mixing beta advances with live progression. Revenants will absolutely be playable in old areas. I seldom state anything as 100% certain (or try not to, it’s the lawyer in me, always with the caveats), but I’m entirely sure on this point.

Should there be a /s on that, sorudo? In what way was the schedule “messy?” They sent an email on March 20 that in a fairly large font in its first paragraph said “Congratulations! As one of our most loyal players, we value your feedback. We want to invite you to join us on March 24 to stress test Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™* and find out what you think.” And soon thereafter, “The stress test is scheduled for Tuesday, March 24 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Pacific and 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Pacific.” Followed by precise directions on how to participate.

They did not change the scheduled date or postpone the start of either session. This forum was full of people lambasting the “most loyal” phrasing, other people posting screen shots of the email, yet more people asking for time zone conversions … the date was clear. What sort of reminder does one need when it’s only four days? That was the notice. And everyone that got it could mentally note “Stress beta is this coming Tuesday.”

Some people didn’t get the email due to spam filters or other issues, but they still got the slot on their character select screen. Which caused more forum posts (and those clued me in, as I have 17 slots and seldom click all the way over to the end).

ANet was not at all “messy” in this. The OP simply paid no attention at all.

I recall a dev explicitly stating that the new WvW and sPvP would be available even to HoTless players. I think it was in a video interview during PAX or REZZED. As someone unlikely to more than dip my toe in either, I took brief mental “that makes sense” note of it and didn’t bother trumpeting it to all and sundry, nor did I pay attention to which dev in which media. Anyway, they’ve said it will be, so no need to fret and make arguments why they should make it happen.

As to Guild Halls they have been very close-lipped. Colin’s full of glee as to how cool it will all be, though he kept saying the Angry Army (Angry Joe’s followers) would like it. They are likely a large guild.

I expect everyone in my small guild will buy HoT, so my questions revolve more around what a small guild can manage and where we should focus our efforts in preparation. Sadly they’re only giving us one blog a week right now, if that, so next Thursday is probably our next chance to get information.

felessan.9587:

Anyone else notice that the Preserved Queen Bee is in the collection for The Energizer?

“Targeted Reward” better include that one for Silverwastes or there won’t be a point to the collection – it’s as rare as a precursor and currently costs more than Dawn and The Legend on the TP.

I thought that was a Fossilized Insect. I guess I’d have to see the two icons side by side.

And now that I’ve read the rest of the thread I see a question no one’s asked — what will be needed to make the precursor once you finish the collection? At least in the Energizer example, what you get is the recipe for making it, not the Energizer itself.

If the recipe needs tradeable mats, that could affect the market quite a bit.

I can’t pick just one. Most fun? Mesmer, and that’s my go to for Fractals and dungeons now. Most played? Thief. I use him for Silverwastes and dailies, since he has the gold star and lots of mobility, not to mention stealth is awesome against the maze dogs.

Skullmarked.8705:

I did feel like there was a but of lag with the skills (the Jalis elite visual kicked in about 5-8 seconds after I activated it).

It took me a bit to realize it was a channeled skill. My guy raised his arm and glowed for a bit and I’m pretty sure there was a channeling bar — it blended into the background quite a bit, and I have problem seeing channels on things like the CoE bomb panel — so it wasn’t lag, it was cast time before getting the effect. Or so it seemed to me.

Maybe the animation or channel bar need to be more obvious. I’m pretty sure it’s channeled so in PvP situations it can be interrupted before everyone gets stoned, so to speak.

We do know there will be more, possibly longer and more involved. The email and the forums were chock full of information as to the two two-hour time blocks the stress test would run, there were people posting countdown timers, etc.

So just take a little time to eyeball the forums now and then, you don’t even have to read the threads, there will be thread titles indicating a new beta time.

I would not buy more skins, as I already buy every skin that interests me, and just because it’s free to apply forever won’t make me want the Toxic or Lawless skins any more than I already do — which is not enough to spend money on.

However, I would use skins a heck of a lot more. In the old system I changed up my looks quite frequently at all levels. Now I feel miserly with my charges even when I have a bunch (and I never buy them from the gem store except for those RNG gives me in my infrequent key purchases). I’ve also bought skins I’ve never used but keep on clogging up bank space because if I ever do want to use them they’re a free charge. I finally consigned my unused Scarlet shoulders and gloves to the wardrobe when I was making bank space, and have done so with a few other skins that were locked; I still can’t make myself dump the skins that are unlocked but still sitting in my bank.

I’d definitely pay 1000 gems for a permanent transmute. I might even buy a few to save the effort of shuffling them from alt to alt, though I’m hoping for an account-wide inventory bag for such things as several have suggested.

Well stated. I think you missed something on the gliders, though. The updrafts are to go higher. Apparently hitting them auto-deploys your glider, so maybe you were using that as the only way to make it work, but I could jump off anything and if I fell far enough to trigger the “OMG HELP GRAVITY IS ABOUT TO EAT ME” scream, a tap of the space bar opened the glider.

Having the same little gold interact plaque pop up as for everything that wants you to hit F might have been confusing, because who has time when falling to their doom to read the button and notice it says “space bar” not “F?” I think I only realized because I’d watched a number of demo streams and everyone mentioning gliding said it was space bar to deploy.

For those talking about not getting mushrooms to work, hopefully a UI redesign will help with that. I figured it out at last thanks to people on forums and map chat and thanks to just clicking on anything I could see in the Masteries panel.

The (fairly clumsy so far) way to do it is to open the mastery by spending a point, then click the box on the left side to make it active (or as the parlance seems to be, to “equip” it), then gain a level of XP. Once you’ve done all that, the tier of mastery works. There was only one mushroom I could find but it bounced me up quite well, requiring mouse steering to move forward onto the plateau.

As others have noted there needs to be a lot of changes to the UI to make it easier to track what you’ve done in that regard, and that’s not even bringing into play a possible redesign of the unlocking method if grinding out a level proves too onerous. For this latter I’m hoping that things will flow much better with greater access to all game areas and systems.

Oh, come to think of it, Scruffy was at one point levitating the way you describe Kasmeer doing. It may have something to do with zoning in at the top of a steep slope (I must say I’m pleased they fixed the 45 degree killer slope bug before planting us there for the demo).

There’s more, over on her little desk there’s an open book that has a folded piece of paper in it that is also numbers in parentheses. The book is at least currently titled “Long Distance Relationships: 10 Ways to Make it Work.”

That may have been there forever and the folded paper is all that’s new, I dunno, I’ve not explored her home for years.

I have a friend who was restricted to satellite for years. She got very good at healing in WoW dungeons when she couldn’t even tell where anything or anyone was because her frame rate was single digits and her lag astronomical. GW2 had similar issues for her.

Recently a bunch of friends pooled together and bought her Verizon Wireless. She’s been ecstatic about the difference. Now I can’t grab her for RP because she’s reveling in so many dungeons and raids her time is gone …

Anyway, a wireless connection might be an option for you if satellite turns out to be as bad as it was for her.

I’ve seen a lot of comments about Rev Hammer 3 reorienting the camera. I don’t recall that happening to me (though as a Thief in SW, I have so many camera turns that it’s pure habit to correct). I was able to #3 the wyvern repeatedly and watch the arc of my ghost self go to and return from the boss, with my camera remaining rock steady.

I’ve been playing with camera→char height, displaced vertically up, and FoV nearly max, if that makes a difference to the effect.

Now, hammer 3 -did_ frequently cause me to emit a falling scream, which seemed hilarious but not quite appropriate.

I agree with everyone who is calling for a substantial Mastery UI rework, though I didn’t have any problem finding the panel. One of those tool-tip hints came up when I unlocked my first MP and it said to click on the xp bar. That only works for those who read the hints, however, and I confess I tend not to when leveling in the base game, especially if they pop up while I’m in combat.

I got a few more shots in the evening session. Among them:
Map showing area to the west I managed to trigger by zone-edge walking
Options panel showing new toggle for rangers (not a permastow, sorry)
Pocket Raptors and Smokescale mobs
Wreckage on vines and ground
Views from my glider

My human guardian really hates wearing armor. He’s got blue force fields, why does he need heavy chafing metal strapped all over him? So I’ve had him in the skimpiest possible stuff, and shoved him in pretty much every outfit that came along as various odd-job bodyguard assignments made him don whatever idiocy his employer desired … But with Shadow Abyss to hide detail I’ve been able to get as close to a short sleeved shirt and trousers as heavy armor allows.

So hidden head/shoulders/gloves. Chest is Heritage, pants are Chain Legs, boots are Worn Scale. Blue Tint for the belt buckle, Pastel Winter for the arm band, all else is Shadow Abyss.

Normally he’d wear a pale blue shirt and dull dark brown or grey pants, but I had to go with the edgier black look to make this work. Wtb hoodie and human town clothes pants as armor pieces!

Feisty.3075:

Wow it was Awesome!!! short but Awesome. Loved that Dragon That is what it should be like fighting a fire breathing Drake. Only thing I didn’t like was no ranged weapon for the Rev. Cant wait to buy the full version

.. Hammer is ranged. Quite long range. I could stand well outside the wyvern’s fire field and blast away.

I was amused that the 3 skill did however give me the aoe effect at the wyvern’s feet. I mean, I used it and then burst into flames since I’d been standing in fire for the split second of the misty teleport even though my camera kept me back at my position.

As to the story I did pay attention to it since it wasn’t really very spoiler-full. I even decided to take the plunge and play the path of not helping Laranthir, since most of my alts are unlikely to be that mean come live. Lo and behold, that path is disabled for beta, they’re keeping it as a fresh thing to experience in HoT per the text box info for it. (I should have screenied that, I really wasn’t thinking in terms of screens for most of my play, sorry).

1 — Yes, the devs have said it will.

2 — Not yet. In HoT there will be one per base profession. Over time they intend to add more.

3 — It’s both. You’ll be able to play as your specialization in WvW for sure, and I believe they’ve also said sPvP.

4 — Hopefully not. That’s a game balance issue and the devs intend to keep everything balanced. Certainly critics will claim they’ve failed, especially at first as the full mix of specs hits the live game, but that’s what patches are for.

All answers gleaned from having watched dev interviews, live streams, and dev answers in these forums. Citations not available, I’d have to hunt through weeks of stuff to which I paid attention.

Danikat.8537:

I found pocket raptors! And…whatever that thing on the right is. Have to admit I was kind of relieved it was already dead.

I was looking for those! I never found that little ravine, which quadrant of the map is it in?

Silly me wait. I just mentally edited out your UI, which shows it just fine.

Ponuto, someone told me to try that but it never worked for the mastery point atop the spire of rock. At least I don’t think it did, there was no popup though the channeling bar looked like it got at least almost complete.