Guild Wars 2

I would guess as many as s/he receives. If RNG sucks there may not be even one. Each claim ticket (or 10 scraps making a ticket) becomes a skin to give away, as I read the OP.

C’mon, ESO is not a bad game. It misses a few key things that GW2 does just right, but the complaints I’m seeing here are not entirely accurate.

Phasing: Yes, it’s a problem to just casually run around with friends who aren’t at the exact same stage as you, but you can at least all group up and see each other much more easily than at launch.

Switch from Sub to B2P: Here I have some inside info. Back when the game was first publicly announced, I questioned my friend who was working there as to why it would have a sub fee. He said that model had been put in place early on before the B2P model had proven itself in other games and was “baked in” too much to change by intended launch, but they would eventually switch. So it wasn’t sudden, it just was harder work than the buying public thought.

Muddy Brown: Yes, especially if you start in the Pact. Stonefalls is horrifically dull. But other zones are green and sunny (when not dynamically raining), and now there are dyes — not nearly as good as GW2 dyes — to brighten up the armor.

And the quests are wonderfully immersive, the stories much better told and holding more depth than in GW2, your choices really impact your future experience with no do-overs.

GW2 still works better as a whole. In TESO I can feel like I’m fighting the game to try to get things done, whereas GW2 gameplay and movement is smooth and intuitive. GW2 is more social, has a better TP (well, TESO doesn’t have one at all, just individual guild traders so you have to get lucky to run into one and have it selling what you seek), and is easier on the eyes.

But that’s no reason to bash TESO as being far more horrible than it is.

I would love a shirt (if XL)! Assuming posting here enters me, I’ll put in what I put in the other giveaway thread (and note the HoT Tshirts are awesome and they are not in the other giveaway). Because I meant it there and I mean it here.

I love Guild Wars 2 cecause it stretches the imagination, it brings people together in creativity. GW2, more than any other MMO I’ve played out of many, promotes kindness and generosity of spirit through encouraging cooperative play. It’s full of humor and detail. It’s also beautiful! Even those who say nasty things will generally pause to say “but the art and sound are gorgeous.” GW2’s given me thousands of hours of fun, made me some really good friends, and been a wonderful place to go and forget about job stress.

I believe if you got the March 5 email titled “See Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns at PAX East, Rezzed, and on Twitch this week!” that you are subscribed. That was my only email confirmation of sign up, and I did get the invite.

So if you got that, but no invite, it may just be bad luck of the draw

Cut and paste from the fine print at the bottom of the email:

*This invitation is for this Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns testing event only. This does not guarantee access to future events. Invitation is nontransferable. A current Guild Wars 2 account and Internet access are required to participate.

Actually my email doesn’t say. I have 2 open slots so I didn’t even think about it, but what it says is to click the Create Beta Character button and create a new human character of any profession including revenant.

It could well be that the beta character uses its own slot and we’ll have a different character select screen with just that one on it or something, but the email says nothing solid about not needing an open slot.

Yes, the email encourages sharing, and Izzy Cartwright said in an interview they don’t want to keep it a secret, they want people sharing/tweeting/streaming everything.

As you are new to beta, and to stress tests, be advised that crashes to desktop are expected. The whole point is to overload things. So while you should report any issues you find (and try to do foolish things in game to see if you can glitch things out), please don’t get frustrated if you find game-killing things. The more you find, the more they can fix for future iterations!

Happy Day! I got the invite! And I can do the first test, it’s before groceries … the second test will depend on how forgiving my husband might be of my ditching steak/movie in order to beta … (Or maybe I’ll spend Monday evening with him instead, yeah, I bet I can sell that to him, hopefully. /plots)

I may be biased towards ESO thanks to having a friend who works on it, but I’ve enjoyed it as an occasional break from GW2. The questing is far more immersive, and GW2 has trained me in mobile fighting so I can handle it in ESO quite well (also, I’m a DK using bow and Ardent Flame and I feel soooo OP … my forays into the other 3 classes have felt far less powerful). I have fun with the combat and I really love the spell animations … still trying to figure out how one player I saw sent a rolling vertical hoop of fire at a foe, because I must has.

Yet GW2 is more compelling. Jump physics work, the painterly style is beautiful, armor has much more variety, and GW2 is core-designed to bring people together. ESO’s phasing and node stealing makes it almost impossible to quest with friends unless you never play without the other one there. Interaction with the world feels much smoother.

I’ve been with both games since they launched (also did WoD launch and AA launch, I’ve quit AA with extreme prejudice), and nothing’s pulling me away from GW2 so far.

You’re safe. They couldn’t possibly release it that fast at this point, they’re still working on key systems and need beta feedback and haven’t set up pre-orders. It won’t be out in a month.

Also, grats, sounds like you got a job to love.

Right now you should not delete any character made before last April. The older ones are grandfathered in to having all traits available simply for leveling up; newer ones have some prohibitive hurdles to getting at their traits. The system will get revamped again, presumably before or as of HoT launch, but for now you may want your old alts handy, at least until you try out how things have changed and decide if you like it or not.

Beyond that, check out Azhure’s links and perhaps google for other threads asking “what has changed in GW2?” because there have been walls of text answering them. Or just start playing and ask more specific questions as they occur to you, either here or in Map Chat. It’s a chance to discover the game all over again!

Oh, this could be such a long post.

Why love Guild Wars 2 and RPG’s? Because they stretch the imagination, they bring people together in creativity. GW2 in particular promotes kindness and generosity of spirit through encouraging cooperative play. It’s full of humor and detail. It’s also beautiful! Even those who say nasty things will generally pause to say “but the art and sound are gorgeous.” GW2’s given me thousands of hours of fun, made me some really good friends, and been a wonderful place to go and forget about job stress.

Why do I deserve the TShirt? (That is the prize for which I drool). Well, I don’t any more than anyone else. But I would wear it with pride, it’s exactly the size I get in all my TShirts, and I’ve been at least sporadically campaigning for ANet to follow through on their launch-era Facebook poll of preferred TShirt designs. If I could buy the shirt I would. I would buy pretty much any GW2 TShirt so long as it weren’t thin white fabric since I need opacity in my clothing. Heck, I’d even get white GW2 TShirts but I’d have to wear them over another shirt. I love the game, I support the game, I’m probably a “whale” for the game. So I would be really happy if I won!

I just listened to a 40 minute interview with Izzy Cartwright at REZZED and at the end he said they like the CDI’s a lot and intend to continue them.

Whether they’ll find the time is another issue, but they do mean to do them, and other devs did weigh in during previous CDI’s. So there’s hope.

All right, I did get through it. I didn’t hear anything about the Court (likely because I skipped over the starting story stuff, I’m avoiding seeing story until I can experience it for myself). The only other things I noted were that the Revenant weapons skins we’ve been seeing “are already in the game, you get them in WvW” and they intend to continue the CDIs even without Chris Whiteside.

The rest was all about Revenant game play.

Kudos to the interviewer for keeping an excellent and calm flow of chatter even while actively playing with an unfamiliar keyboard and mouse setup and keeping Izzy talking informatively, even if most of it was information we already had from watching many demos.

Sigh … nothing like hitting Post Reply after writing several paragraphs only to see the log in request.

Short form: I retain better visually than via audio input, and can’t multitask various forms of information input, so it will take all my attention for 40 minutes to try to retain anything at all from the interview and if my focus wanders, I will miss stuff.

But I’ll try. That bit about the Court has me intrigued.

Would you be willing to say what those things were, Inculpatus? I confess that I didn’t have the attention span today for 40 minutes of interview. I might have more focus tomorrow, but no promises.

As someone with zero musical skill, I’m happy there are macros so I can RP my characters being good at playing an instrument (theoretically. I have yet to find macros or try them out).

Do you get mad at someone who plays a cd of a Beethoven quartet rather than sitting down with a violin and 3 other people and playing it live?

Yep, we LFG’d it and filled in half a second. Just got through, and OP is enjoying the after party, I believe.

I’d suggest a PM or finding the player in game, this thread is a year old and they may no longer be playing.

(I’m amused I was the last poster in it).

The problem is that is a dungeon, recommended 5 players, and in fact you need at least two players to hold down pressure plates at the first gate.

There are a ton of threads with people talking about being unhappy they must do a dungeon.

There are also a ton of people willing to help. I’m one of them. I see you’re not in game right now. Are you NA? If so, hop back in game and I’ll organize a run for you and others in need. It’s a pretty easy dungeon if you have a guide.

(This offer good right now, and at later days/times when I’m not involved in other things, but may not be good if I get called on by guildies for stuff before you ping me).

From the responses in this thread I think you all might enjoy
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Show-your-ugliest-toon/first#content

I never have gotten one that I know of. But at one point I was in an AC Detha path run with guildies. We almost never skip trash, and one of my guildies got the mace precursor off those little spiders right before you go down to do the chain-pull spikes vs. gravelings.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs for the bugs forum.

Suggestions go in the most appropriate forum for them, not sequestered away in their own mishmosh like they used to be. So if this is a bug affecting just you, post it in Bugs, and if it’s standard camera behavior you’d prefer to change, either make your own [SUGG] thread in General or perhaps add to the https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-player-camera-improvements/first thread that is getting dev attention.

I think penguins look fancy without adding silly little human garb to them. I would like a regular penguin mini, very much.

Then again, the minis I most choose to account bind are the ones that look like real animals (Tyrian, not Terran) one might see running about on their own. And I don’t put garments on my RL pets. Not even collars, since my cats are indoors cats.

Iason Evan.3806:

So is getting the dye about getting the dye or is it about hopefully making more gold back than you spent on gems and turning a profit-i.e. gambling-?

For me it was getting the dye. So I have bound all the Shadow dyes to my account, including several TP bought (I’m around 100 g down now) and sold my only duplicate since my guildie who wanted it got it from her own packs so I didn’t need to give it to her. I was hoping for a second Shadow Abyss to sell, but when I got a 5 pack with no shadow dyes in it at all I elected not to drop further cash on the chance.

Aurette.7908:

Is it worth completing the map on alts? Does it give the legendary crafting item again or that is just an account award once?

You get the two Gifts of Exploration for every alt that gets 100% of the world. That’s how people make more than two legendaries per account.

Or you did. Has anyone who was still lacking PvE completion done it since the patch and gotten two Gifts? I would expect it’s still at two, or they’d have said it in the notes, but it’s worth getting some confirmation.

Kal, I alt hopped like heck, testing the dyes on a number of armor weights and materials. Some did show the tints, enough that I thought it worthwhile getting them all.

However, I don’t expect everyone to be running max graphics or eyeballing me up close, and the tints are subtle enough that seeing someone run by you won’t give much opportunity to notice “oooh, what lovely hints of purple.”

Chat changes:

- More visible text for emotes. At the very least, brighten up that dull grey. At best, give players control over color/contrast for each one for their personal client.

- Custom chat channels. Let players make and name a chat channel (or several channels) to which they can invite other players. Perhaps cap it at 500 participants (as we know a guild can hold 500 people all using the same chat).

- Undockable chat tabs. I’m less wedded to this than I used to be, as it does add to screen clutter, but sometimes I want to monitor multiple channels without having one of them scrolled away by the other. For instance I keep Map in its own tab, just it and Whispers, so I have to keep clicking tabs to see what my Party and Guild are saying when I’m watching Map for things like SW coordination. But I don’t want it mixed with those channels because then I’ll miss important comments in them as the sea of Map engulfs them.

I believe it’s the content pointer going wonky, as I had it tell my ele to go there when he was far too low level. Since I knew better, I just ignored it.

At least Ebonhawke itself can mostly be wandered in safely enough, so it’s not instant death to hop through from DR. Unlike the time when I was leveling my first guardian, one of my first 5 alts, and I went unsuspecting through an LA portal into the icy area of Gendarren and was one-shot by ice elementals as soon as I loaded in

I got 8 dyes in my first 20 opened, 0 in my next 5, then I stopped. Just one Shadow Abyss, my only duplicate was Shadow Magenta.

From map chat comments and my guildies’ experiences, it does seem generally more likely you’ll get at least one good one in a set of five than has been true for earlier specialty RNG dye packs.

In fact, thanks to my luck with having Abyss drop, I was able to get my missing dyes off the TP and this is the very first specialty dye set where I have them all. For what it’s worth, I suppose, since most of them will just look black to anyone watching me run by.

From the moment it appeared people (including me) have been wanting it to be dyeable. Even just one dye channel, please? As it is it doesn’t match any of my alts’ preferred color palettes and so it languishes even though it’s adorable on some of them.

Though it looks best on my sylvari in her Cook’s outfit, which is not a possible combination in the current all-or-nothing outfit system. Maybe they can introduce a dye channel for the hat at the same time they make hats mix/match with outfits.

Someone in game clued me in on the workaround for the stacking issue: put all the items in your bag (eg the Tomes of Knowledge that aren’t stacking with pre-patch ones — not the birthday ones, the regular ones), zone to another zone then back to where your bank is. At that point they will stack in your bags and you can put them in the bank.

Maybe they stack after one zone transition, I didn’t check, but definitely I was able to combine my Tomes by hopping to Shaemoor and back into DR.

They revamped the New Player Experience so now your Personal Story comes in lumps every 10 levels. Once you’re 10, you’ll get to start it.

You used to get the letter/go-to right away on waking up after fighting the Shaemoor hands.

Umm, “once?” They’ve had all sorts of gold star event things up there since the beginning. Any time something was going on, be it PvP or WvW or PvE, that’s been there. This is not a new thing even if you’ve only just noticed it because it’s not touting something you want to see.

I don’t care about eSports either, but given how uncluttered the UI is compared to any other MMO I play other than TESO, I’m perfectly able to edit that tiny corner of my screen out of my consciousness. I am playing wide screen high rez windowed, which may make a difference to the sense of clutter. Maybe it’s more intrusive on small monitors?

I think it’s hilarious! I spent some time just standing in Queensdale watching my female human’s face. Her lips moved with the phrases, no matter what race/gender/profession was uttering them.

I’m hoping someone does a video pastiche of their character shouting inappropriately. My favorite so far has been my above mentioned female human mesmer shouting, still in a female voice, “FOR THE IMPERATOR!”

Dulfy has a gallery showing them http://dulfy.net/2015/03/16/gw2-upcoming-items-from-march-16-patch/

Back in October 2012 I found my twin (he’s in the ragged green, I’m in the nice coat).

And also I’ve had literal twins, there was something giving us duplicates of ourselves. So pics two and three are not photoshopped, I took them in game.

Jubilation! I tested and it does work on alt swap! Thanks so much for noticing this.

Now if they give us personal control over chat channel colors, I may just swoon.

Yes, but in the past they’ve given us 3 blog posts in a week, Tues-Wed-Thurs, leading to threads asking why we never see posts on Mon/Fri. It’s not always doled out one tiny bit per week.

I’ve read other threads in these forums saying that yes, if you progress in someone else’s Order line you can get swapped though you still can only buy the armor from the one where you started. I’m not sure how to set it back.

Hmm, why wait to next week? Thursday is a perfectly good blog day. Today we only got a compilation of reviews of REZZED’s demos, mostly videos we’ve seen already if we were streaming REZZED. Perhaps some new information tomorrow?

Maybe you should search for Heart of Thorns.

I’d expect the Druid spec blog to be the first spec blog, since that way they can make us wait even longer to find out what the other specs are.

It would be nice of them to give us a list of specs. Just the names (and preferably a planned order of blog reveal). That would fuel a few threads full of guesses as to what the specs will actually do

I’m fine with them just being regular people rather than polished slick spinners. The oilier someone gets about their product, the more I resist buying it. These presentations are from the people who are actually working on the game, not trained public speakers who spend all their time hyping it up.

Maybe it’s just that I have a lot of empathy for being highly uncomfortable in front of a camera, but I like the presenters just the way they are.

As gaming novels, they’re fine. They do what they need to do, ie deliver lore and a tour of the world/races/professions. On their own merits, I really couldn’t recommend them.

For perspective, I enjoy authors such as Willis, Bujold, Tepper, Gaiman, Weber, S.M. Stirling, Weekes, Sanderson, Abercrombie, Wells, Willey, Francis, Diana Wynn Jones, Beagle, and the like.

Edge of Destiny — Very poor read. Unfocused, shallow characterization (Rytlock and Logan come off as whiny modern Terran teenage human boys), constrained by the need to showcase one of each race and some of every area in the game and containing a number of unbelievable character actions. Worth reading only to get some Tyrian lore and history to put in-game things in context.

Ghosts of Ascalon — Better. It has a focused story (a group of adventurers assemble to go on a treasure hunt in some old ruins) and while it also has to showcase one-of-each it does so with a bit more depth and better dialogue. On its own might suffice as light beach reading or for other times when you don’t need to pay much attention to what you’re reading.

Sea of Sorrows — Rises to good enough to read for its own sake, though hardly on par with the authors I listed above. Occasionally trite but generally far more immersive, it made me care far more about what happened to the characters in the story than the other two managed. An excellent source of history of LA and it explains LA’s government and political place in the world. The go-to source to refute those who think Ellen Kiel is some sort of powerful dictator, or that Gnashblade would have had any more control than she does (though his financial clout might have given him more sway).

I read the first two when they came out, before game launch, without knowing anything at all of the GW1 world. By the time the third arrived I was much more steeped in the game and had a lot more context for the lore I was getting from the book. This may have affected my opinions of each novel.

In Map chat yesterday people were comparing their Shadow dye drop rates. One guy opened 80 dyes and got 21 Shadows, including more than one Shadow Abyss. Someone else opened 40 and got 9 or 10 of the dyes.

I opened 25 total. The first 4 sets of 5 each gave me at least one Shadow (my first 5 gave me 3 Shadows including an Abyss, so I kept on going). The last set was on a different alt later in the day, and just had regular dyes in it. I ended up with 8 Shadows, Magenta my only duplicate. Before I opened the last set I had the best drop rate of anyone who’d commented, 8/20, but at the end I was 8/25 and thus more in line with what others reported.

A guildie of mine opened some, I’m not sure how many. Her very first one was Abyss, then she got another one and sold it. I had been hoping for a second one as well. Alas I am actually down quite a bit of gold thanks to buying 100 gems with gold (for that last set of five, boo) and putting in buy orders for two of my three missing dyes … but the reason I keep a gold reserve around is so I can buy special items I want when they appear. If I won’t spend it I might as well not have it, hey?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

These are all so close to each other… can you even tell the difference between them outside of the super brightened preview screen?

It depends on the material you’re dyeing. Some armors will lighten any dye applied. So yes, the hints of tints will show up on some things (e.g. female Winged pants, light armor). I am pretty sure that anyone looking at you running around will just see black, though, no matter which of these dyes you use.

Interestingly, the Shadow Green and Shadow Blue show up better than any of the orange or red hues. Again on the Winged pants, the waist gems actually get a green/blue glint to them with Shadow Green/Blue, but just look black with any of the others.

They do make good trim and detail hues, but for larger areas of armor I suggest using them only when you want to look like you have black clothes on.

I’d be worried about deliberately taking advantage of this. I wasn’t planning on making an alt just now, and I certainly won’t ‘til this is fixed. I don’t want any account issues thanks to getting the title and the skins without doing the tasks in GW1 that are normally required.

It’s always the Chantry. Always. People don’t even need to see the list of what you have to know you’ve missed it or it hasn’t registered so you have to go back in.

I commented long ago that we need a sticky titled “Your Last Poi is Chantry of Secrets” and I still stand by that

RoyalPredator.9163:

I’m full of Dragonite Ore and Bloodstone Dust. Won’t delete them, because…
something that converts them would be nice…. even if from gemstore, but it should be worthy!!

+ Armor skins plsssssssss I’m thinking to quit all time I log in…

The Dust can be eaten by the Mawdrey backpiece, though that takes a lot of time to make (I’m still on the previous step, thanks to a lack of foxfire clusters).