Guild Wars 2

Nope, none of the blogs have been on that. It’s possible they don’t want to release details early given that a collection will be involved and the items needed, if currently in game, will skyrocket in price the moment anyone knows their identity.

Agreed on all counts but one! The events are the “quests” of this game. Don’t think of them as a break, think of them as advancing the story of the zone you’re in (plus they may be the main source of xp for you).

Welcome to Tyria, there’s lots more fun waiting for you.

Two more reasons why this won’t happen:

One — many people are attached to their alts as they stand. All of mine have at least some RP to them. Why should I have to essentially kill off one alt and his/her story in order to start another?

Two — In the PAX South announcement, one of the first things they said was that the Revenant is there so new players can start off on equal footing with veterans on one profession. There will be no requirement to have an 80 to play Revenant.

Prophet.6257:

Can we go with another name?

Death Knight sounds too corny.

Hmm … Death Day? /points at thread title

OP means the voice actors who did our characters’ shouts like “I could outrun a centaur!” and “I’ve made life! …. of a sort.” Presumably some Revenant skills will have their own signifying lines and will be voiced. I hope so. I know some people are annoyed by the shouts but I like hearing them and knowing a particular action has happened.

Certainly I’ve been alerted many a time to the need to help a downed person by hearing “A little help?” and the like. Yeah, that’s racial not profession, but the idea is the same, the audio cues help keep me informed.

Check this thread for previous discussion on this subject:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Revenant-Starting-Area-Possible-Spoilers/first

There are also armor rune sets that stealth you if you get knocked to low health. Do you have six of the same rune?

Only to people far below your level. It’s all relative. Your 80’s will show pink to people in their 20’s while they are on their 20’s, but if they swap to an 80 your 80 will be back to green.

I don’t think that works out in the wild, though, since everyone gets downscaled and you see them with a lower level green number with an arrow pointing down next to it to indicate they are actually higher level than the zone.

I think the last line is the key, the OP wants a precursor collection hunt to be epic and is not talking about the designated “adventures” ANet has thus far discussed.

I think Rubi looks tremendously relaxed, in a bouncy energetic way. The last PoI her two guests, in contrast, looked stiff and nervous, not that I blame them, one doesn’t generally go into video game design expecting to do a lot of public speaking. Some of that is me projecting, because I know how cameras affect me. Still, Rubi doesn’t stammer or hunch up, she keeps a flow of chatter going so there are no awkward silences, she doesn’t keep repeating herself or using odd stall phrases (Mike O’B’s constant almost diabolical “yeeeesssss” had me grimacing a bit at the PAX livestream, though he was otherwise doing great). She shows genuine enthusiasm and perfect control over what she says, as it’s clear that despite her efforts to avoid personal spoilers she still does know more than we’re allowed to.

I do feel the PoIs could present a bit more meaty info. ESO Live is a good example of giving solid looks at upcoming features and gameplay, with hosts no more slick than what ANet offers. I’m glad PoIs aren’t slick, though. Slick salesmanship is a fast way to drive me away from a product. Give me real people talking about something they love any day.

Shinya.2598:

Will we have a new character select?
I’d love that. More like the one in EoTN where you could watch yourself from different angles.
The Charr is still huuuuuge, plz fix after 3 yrs.

What do you mean by different angles? You can spin characters in the current select, just click on them and drag left/right. You can’t tilt up and down, though, and your toes will always be covered even if you toggled off the UI.

People on this forum have reported getting their first box on their 55th try or so. I call not-BS.

Some folks get the raw end of RNG. I have a friend who runs fractals regularly and has yet to get a spoon while the others of us who run them sporadically have gotten multiples. It’s become a running joke to link our spoons to her when they drop. It’s her only remaining spoon for the collection, too.

Anyway OP, just keep trying. You should get your second box some time.

I disagree with a forced WP (unless the suggestion made earlier in this thread as to putting in a close temporary wp is implemented), and I vehemently disagree with a one minute timer. A minute can go by quite quickly, and in some fights it’s way longer than a minute to get back.

Today I decided to do a Vinewrath for fun. Worked on the map from 1/3 prepped through Breach (which succeeded at the last moment, hurray!) then ran to North since that’s always under-staffed. Mid failed, so North got to deal with the thrasher, and sadly failed as well. I died in the last two seconds before the fail and got dumped out with everyone else. Two others lay dead near me as well. A living person jumped up and down on our corpses for longer than a rez would take, and when asked “why jump when you can rez?” said “Because you didn’t WP.” Then she ran off. Someone else came to kindly get us on our feet so we could help keep the carrier up, but it was too late, the last two carriers were lost (not sure in which lanes) and it was one of the rare Vinewrath fails.

Had I wp’d the moment I died (again, two seconds before everyone got evicted anyway), I’d never have made it back to North in time to do thing one. Had I and my two fellow dead been rezzed, we’d have been back in the fight inside a minute without costing anyone else anything because there is a brief grace period after the eviction to allow for rezzing.

Waypointing would have been a worse drain on resources than getting rezzed. And people doing useful rezzes (ie outside, not during the boss fight) wouldn’t necessarily have been able to get to it inside a minute, but definitely could have long before waypointers could charge back in.

Every race is equal except Norn and Charr will have more camera issues in tight spaces.

If she’s new to MMO controls, don’t have her play Engineer or Elementalist. Warrior might be her best start until she learns more of how to maneuver and use skills. That or Guardian, with all the damage mitigation and blocks available.

Both of you should practice dodging. Try it while running around in a safe place to get used to how often you can do it and how it moves you, then try using it every time a mob does a channeled “big hit coming” animation. Dodging is a key element of survival in this game.

Beyond that, don’t rush her. If she wants to sit and listen to the full loop of kids at play, let her. If she wants to climb a hill for the view, let her. There’s lots of hidden gems tucked away in the game, and getting to them helps you learn the mechanics without missing the journey along the way.

Actually I do know whereof the OP speaks. I’ve been helping a couple of people with LS recently. I have them start the instance so I’m just there to explain and aid, they get control. In at least one (Glint’s Lair?) every time I turned around there was another green star offering to let me exit the instance. I avoided hitting F and moved away from the star, so I never mistakenly hit it, but the guy I was helping commented he saw the stars too.

I can see how it would be frustrating to accidentally hit one, though it seemed a bit of caution was all it took for me to avoid that happening even once, let alone repeatedly.

I say there’s no risk at all. I cannot imagine they would deny those one-time mastery points to accounts that have already done world completion. Remember that every two legendaries require a map completion for the Gift, look at how many legendaries you see in game, and then consider blocking a mastery line for everyone that’s made them … nah.

Most definitely retroactive! And besides, they know how to do it. When they introduced achievement chests, people got a chest a day until they caught up to their number of points previously gained.

You probably don’t have one but if you do have a Total Makeover Kit you can use it to check your slider settings. Unless you already screenshotted them when making her, that is (I used to do that with new alts, a habit from beta when I knew I’d be losing the characters come launch). With a sylvari you also want to note your skin/pattern/glow color choices. That way you can get almost exactly the look you had before deletion.

But since the only place it will show up is in your Personal Story recap, you can simply RP her as preferring a different god, or have her “convert” as it were. No one will ever see anything to contradict that and afaik no NPC dialogues hinge on the choice.

Not only for all your characters now, but for all your characters you ever make on that account.

We generally get the blogs on Tues-Wed-Thurs. That doesn’t stop me from refreshing the page a lot on Mondays and Fridays, but I don’t really expect blogs on those days.

I do expect we’ll get more blogs for quite a while, they have a lot of HoT to cover.

I fully understand how compelling a game this is. Probably you do need outside help to block you from playing. But if you can manage the mental flip, remember:

You won’t fall behind if you don’t play. Sure there are some daily things to do but you can afford not to do them. This game is not about getting to the end, it’s about playing as little or much as you like and letting things distract you along the way. All the fun things will still be there after your exams (maybe not Dragonball, but if you’ve played that a little bit you have had the experience). Achievements come with time, don’t worry if you miss out on completing one.

You don’t have to play. You just get to when you want to.

And exams are waaaaay more important than exploring that next cave with a chest at the end of a maze.

(Full disclosure, I speak as someone who is darned lucky the internet didn’t exist when I was in college because no way would I have avoided getting sucked into far too much game play. But as this MMO came much later in life for me, I was easily able to have a career and just play evenings, so I know it’s possible to do things that aren’t GW2).

Bran.7425:

RashanDale.3609:

-Stygian axe
-Legionnaire Axe
-Flame Cleaver

Theyre all pretty good, better than Frostfang i’d argue. And a couple more are decent. So i really dont have a problem with Axe skins.

I think when thrown all of them revert to the default iron (or whichever axe ranger used to start with.).

I believe Dulfy commented that Marjory’s axe keeps the skin and had a video showing that. I have yet to apply mine as it hasn’t suited any character but one, and she already has the Warden axe.

My opinion is opposite of the OP’s, as I can do without a ton of particle effects and animations. I am particularly fond of the knotwork axes such as .. I think the name is Truth? .. they look like real weapons to me but have some artistry to them. Same with the Aureate axe.

So for me there are plenty of decent axe skins!

Hmm, the usual advice is to make the attempt between 3 am and 6 am eastern (at least for those trying to join Tarnished Coast) … so you’re a bit hampered there. I hear also that you want to fully exit and restart when trying, and you want a little gap of time to avoid just resetting your position as it were. So try first thing in the morning, if it’s full, exit to desktop, pause a minute, try again, for as long as you can spare before heading to work. And keep trying.

Here’s hoping you make it.

I’d have to search for the source — might have been in Ree Soesbee’s article pre launch? — but I know that my understanding of lore at the game’s start had Sylvari not much affected by alcohol at all, so they have to drink a ton of it to get a buzz, let alone drunk.

Some lore sources:
http://www.talktyria.net/2011/08/11/sylvari-lore-interview-with-ree-soesbee-kristen-perry/ (nothing about alcohol in this one)
http://www.wartower.de/artikel/artikel.php?id=651 (recording is in English. I didn’t just listen to it again, so I don’t recall the key points in it).
http://gaygamer.net/2011/10/interview_guild_war_2s_ree_soe.html (more about their romance norms than anything)

And I may be wrong, given this bit on Sylvari biology from Soesbee’s blog:
“Biology

Sylvari biology is very different from any other race. They do not have internal organs, but instead are formed of growing plant matter, sap for blood, leaves and bark for skin. A jaw, for example, can be formed by leaves, vines, or even shards of bark that grow and press together to form the silhouette, but if you look closely you can still see the fibers and holes of the structure. Instead of bones, an arm is a mass of tightly-woven stems and leaves that work together to do the work of such a limb.

Many scholars hypothesize as to why the sylvari look human-like at all instead of having a monstrous form, such as other “vegetable” races possess. Some suggest that the Pale Tree saw mostly humans during her youth. Individuals such as Ronan, who planted the seed, and others around the Pale Tree may have been physical role models for her eventual children. A popular asura theory is that the Pale Tree was planted on the graves of Ronan’s daughter and his ruined village, and their ”discorporate mass” was absorbed into the ground. The Pale Tree took nourishment from that soil, and therefore, the sylvari are predisposed to be shaped in a humanoid manner.

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Sylvari do sleep, and they can eat both meat and vegetables. They drink, as other races do, and they get tipsy on alcoholic beverages. They gain enjoyment from sitting in the sunlight—and it invigorates them—but can’t live on it as plants do. Their blood is a sticky sap, and though they can bleed, they do not have blood pressure or a pulse.

No one knows how long the sylvari live. The oldest of their race are the firstborn, all of whom awakened twenty-five years ago. Sylvari show little signs of growing old, and none have yet died of advanced age. Physically, sylvari are male or female, and the relevant external biology is accurate on both, but they cannot sexually reproduce as the other races do; they have no internal organs capable of creating children. Whether they have their own methods of reproduction outside of the Pale Tree has yet to be seen.

Sylvari grow their armor and much of their clothing. Their bodies create petal-like coverings, vines, and leaves that they shape into pleasing garments. When they wish to remove the garments, they simply shed their petal clothing as a human might cut their hair. Some sylvari wear armor made by other races or weave clothing in a more traditional manner, just out of preference. As an adopted custom, they cover themselves as humans do, concealing certain portions of their anatomy where it seems culturally appropriate." — source http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/73825.Ree_Soesbee/blog a bit past halfway down, with some Sylvari short stories surrounding it.

Even when the T&T bags weren’t obtainable via game play they remained on the TP and bags bought thusly could still be opened for the same loot tables inside.

If the envelopes no longer come from game play their prices will likely rise, but the items themselves will still function just as they do now.

Fiddling in character creator I think it’s Clay or Sandstone. Go to face/skin color options, click the arrow on the right side of the colors a couple of times to get to the right edge of the choices, look at the greys along the lower right.

By login screen do you mean the launcher or the character select screen? To me there is no login screen as such any more, just a small launcher that then puts me in character select (if I log out from there, I’m back to the launcher).

If you mean the character select, sure, I could see some benefit to tweaking it a bit; other threads have made a number of suggestions for improvement without cluttering it too much. But I’ll point out there’s a reason so many character/armor screenshots use the character select screen: guaranteed good lighting and a good look at armor detail, which you can’t always get in game thanks to too much granularity in the camera zoom and greatly differing lighting levels and colors outside player control.

I’d want any changes to continue to give us clear views of our characters.

NPE = New Player Experience. Last April the game’s first levels changed fairly drastically, removing a lot of the things you used to do in the early part of play and adding in the level reward chests.

I tend to forget to use consumables in any MMO, and especially in GW2 where you have to go to a bit of effort to have them and remember them at the right time on the right character. A compounding problem lies in my hesitation to use something up if I’m not sure I won’t want it more later. I don’t even buy food off the TP or use it except when it’s dropped. If I’m leveling an alt I will use XP and killstreak boosters when I remember, and the Celebration and Birthday ones as well. I tend to store armor and regen boosters on my dungeon guardian, occasionally remembering to eat them at a dungeon start.

I’ve spent quite a bit on the gem store but the only consumables I’ve paid for have been keys and dye kits.

I just realized that romantic needn’t mean serene and lovely. Depends on who you’re with! Before I joined my WoW Horde guild, they had an Orcish wedding in Thunder Bluff (for non WoWers, that’s a Native American style city atop tall mesas, generally a peaceful and sunny place). As the ceremony/rite proceeded, the Alliance chose that moment to raid the city. My guildies wiped the floor with them — in RP clothes. And the bride and groom declared it the most awesome Orc wedding ever, they got a bloody battle for it!

So maybe you’re a pair of Norns and you want to leave a trail of Svanir bodies through Frostgorge. That could be one way to do romance

Asked and answered sooo many times.

They didn’t design it to be replayable. It was mostly open world and huge. They changed things in LS2 based on feedback and observation of problems with the initial concept, and they would like to rework LS1 to let people play through the story, but they sort of haven’t got infinite resources and there’s an expansion they are concentrating on right now.

So one day you may be able to but asking won’t make it happen any faster.

As has been said in a number of threads on this subject, ANet would like to bring back LS1 but it will require a complete reworking of it as it was their first experimental pass and making a “living world” with history that flows onward. So they have to wait until they can spare the resources, and until then no one can play it other than in a couple of fractals.

LS2 was designed for replayability, and you don’t have to pay to see the lore of it. You only need someone who has unlocked it to open the instance and run it with you. Ask them to take their time with dialogues and reading books, and you’ll get all the lore.

Now granted I speak from the vantage of someone who didn’t miss any of LS1, I’ve been here all along. But life does keep going, and there will always be something you missed. I was only an infant in the 1960s, so I never saw the Beatles live. I did get to see Star Wars when it premiered in theaters, before anyone knew what it was. I was four when I watched Armstrong set foot on the moon live, something most of you can only experience in recordings. I meet new friends and hey, I wasn’t there when they did that cool Broadway performance or whatever, I don’t understand their in-jokes until I’ve known them a while. It’s in a past I didn’t share.

More game specific, my RP guild ran an involved plot in the first year of GW2. When told about it new members cry out “I wish I’d been there!” But y’know, they’re here now. And can be part of the new stories we’re telling.

So this game keeps changing, and people joining now didn’t get to play the BWE end blowout events. How unfair, no Shatterer Corrupts Ashford for them. Does everything have to remain available forever? The world (and databases) would get rather crowded if so.

You don’t even have to use a dodge on the room-filling aoe, you can jump in place to avoid it.

I’m always happy to help people with the LS chapters, and I’m available most every NA Eastern time afternoon/evening (not Tuesdays). Feel free to call on me for aid with your LS on NA. I’ve soloed every LS end boss, though my first attempts are always on my Thief and usually involve a lot of dying as I learn the fight. Thereafter I use a Guardian and a Mesmer to more easily zip on through.

But don’t reactivate it if you are working on another chapter that you don’t want to abandon, as you can have only one active LS chapter at a time.

Charleston or riot?

.. still dreaming of getting vintage dances in my MMOs. Back when my arches allowed, I could waltz for hours. /sigh /grumble about silly brief fad pop dances getting all the MMO love … (OK, Charleston was a silly fad dance, but it not only lasted a while as mainstream dance, it’s still danced today. Who dances The Monkey now for anything but making fun of it?).

I don’t have a link but I do believe Colin confirmed it in a video interview. Or maybe on the POI right after PAX South? I distinctly recall explicit commentary regarding how the minion status had been designed in from the start of the race, and that the devs were worried they’d put too many clues in the Sylvari starting Dream section where you fight the Shadow of the Dragon.

What Zera said. It’s a royal pain to redo all my keybinds every time I make an alt (I have 15 alts right now in GW2). It also tends to lead to bugs where occasionally the game just willy-nilly resets you to default — that happened to me a lot in ESO at the start.

So while I can see some people wanting different configurations for one profession versus another, I’m leery of the impact on those of us who want to set it up once and have it that way forever for the game or until we choose to redo it.

Speaking of romantic couples, there’s a newlywed pair in the Ascalon Settlement that’s adorable. So long as centaurs don’t attack, in fact, that’s a fine place to hang out. Lots of prettiness, and if you go up to the tomb on the north side you can look out over the water.

Malediktus.3740:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mini_Mystical_Dragon

“Chinese version only – reaching level 13 of the VIP system.”

Give me a moment to find a source outside Wiki. . . .

Hope they bring the VIP system to NA/EU then. I want this mini.

Egad no. I hope they bring the mini but we do NOT want the VIP system. That requires paying for bonuses and privileges. It would shred the game in NA/EU. No mini is worth killing the game.

The treehouse in Shaemoor is a lovely location with a sweeping view, though your date will include giggling children at play.

You could go to the Ebonhawke inn for a bed&breakfast experience (including a raucous drunk).

In the Grove’s home instance you can climb to the top housing pod for a secluded summer-feeling spot.

In Malchior’s Leap, east side, there is the Pyrite area with the glowing golden ball. Just watch out for earth elementals.

Timberline Falls has any number of lodges.

Lornar’s Pass has high snowy mountains galore. It also has the Marionette area. Why not celebrate your love at a place of victory, and turn what was a battlefield into a pleasant park?

Or for warmer climes, try the central island in Gendarren. Sure it’s full of pirates, but they never go up on the hill with a vista.

Just a few ideas off the top of my head without being in game to look at the map

I’ve two guardians and two warriors, one each human and sylvari. Here’s some shots. First one is my street rat who scraped up armor over time, so nothing fancy or bright for her. Then there’s a sylvari warrior in T2 (not happy with the colors), a sylvari guardian in full T3, and a human guardian who really hates armor because he’d rather just use aegis. So he goes for skimpy, but has been in heftier stuff when ordered to.

My human mesmer is ICly 30 years old. It took a lot of work to tweak a face to look even close to that. Most of the faces come out late teens at best.

The young look is easy. Round the face a bit, make the eyes larger, the nose softer and smaller, avoid the really lipsticked look. Do one of the little-girl hairstyles and make the head a little bit larger on a shorter slimmer body. Voila.

I likely should have taken a shot with the options window open, because that was the markedly larger panel. Also everything got sort of fuzzy. OP, you might not need to make the UI larger if you get higher rez; at least, being quite nearsighted and starting to need new glasses I can still see the icons just fine with my monitor more than two feet from me.

I am in windowed full screen at high rez on a widescreen monitor. Sorry I don’t know the exact rez, but I promise it’s as high as my machine/monitor goes and the computer’s a good machine bought less than a year ago. Here’s Larger and Normal. I must say Larger is annoyingly large.

That’s superbly cut and paced.

I do miss how Dragon Bash had stuff happening all over the world if you wanted to go do things in other zones (at least I recall that it did, for a while every festival had “nodes” in the maps). And yes, it took a teensy bit of searching to find it, I wasn’t teleported straight to it upon logging in. Then again I do read patch notes, even little ones, in case there is something of interest.

Now, I may be the oddball one for once, but I actually like Dragon Ball despite my normal loathing for PvP. I don’t even mind losing. It’s just a fun arena to run around in thanks to the jump pads and spin disks. I’ve only done 2 or 3 games a day, because I don’t love it enough to be unable to chat with friends, and I think only been in one win. Even so, it’s a pleasant diversion.

The way I figure, this isn’t something meant to hold our rapt attention 100%, it’s just some bonus stuff as a fun aside for those interested. A few art assets and a minigame not seen for a long time, given to us while they continue to hone HoT, I’ve no complaint.

As I said last time this was suggested: I concur, with one large caveat. Don’t make the outfits look just like the current tonics. Some of the combinations are just … odd. Either solicit suggested combinations from the player base or go back to the (now archived?) threads with pictures submitted of town clothes to get ideas for looks people enjoyed having.

On top of that if it’s possible to hide shoulders and gloves on outfits, or at the very least sub in whatever headpiece we want, that would go a long way to restoring the old freedom of appearance. Not all the way, but still worth the doing.

It’s not new. Even in early days of the game I got serious fps drops after zoning into Black Citadel. Not every time (and sometimes Ashford did the same thing to me), but enough to know it wasn’t coincidence the fps was dropping on that zone in. When it happens I have to restart the game because I’ll be stuck in single-digit fps until I do.

I wonder if the various cities had different design teams and coders. It’s bizarre how fast one can blip between wp’s in Rata Sum and the Grove compared to the much longer load screens in the other cities.

Take no heed of the grumps! It’s such a grand feeling to get that last thing needed for your gold star. I’ve only done it twice, and swore Never Again. If WvW does get removed I might unswear.

Congratulations, it’s not an easy achievement.

If you want to do the achieve to open all 5 chests in the time limit, you’ll need 5 keys. Once you’ve done the achieve imo there’s no point unless you really want another piece or two of blue gear in your bags.

At least they seem to sell a bit now. For the longest time after getting that achieve I was deleting them for bag space.

We only saw a sliver of the beginning of one zone, where vines have disrupted things terribly. In the trailers there seems to be plenty of bridges, meadows, hills, and other things to just run on. To me the gliders and mushrooms appear supplemental, not the required only transit methods.