Guild Wars 2

Yes, though if he can get 200 gems with gold he needn’t spend real cash.

Hmm. Why not wait one week, watch the PAX announcement, then ask these questions if they are not answered by that panel?

He needs to have logged into the game world once during the time they were active. As he did not do that, they will cost the gems for full unlock.

He can experience them for free if you start the instances, but he won’t get achieves, rewards, or the ability to interact with objects and control dialogue trees.

This is awesome of you. Me, I’m not going to suddenly buy plane tickets and a hotel room for something I’ll be watching on Twitch in comfort But I hope a few more people get a chance to be there live when they wouldn’t have otherwise had the chance!

Also please make the Twitch broadcast pan over the audience from time to time. I have a guildie who will be there and we are all rooting to see her.

At least they can be individually purchased. I don’t care for the helmet or shoulders, but the gloves can work with a number of looks. So I bought those and will leave the helm and pauldrons alone.

I do hope that future whole armor sets will be available, and available piece-meal as well. And that they will remain available, so one can buy the pieces wanted when wanted. My bank has too many skins not yet assigned to alts as it is ><

Stark.1350:

Why does everyone need more than one coat? Alts?

You must unlock all three if you want the luminescent version. You need the luminescent collection complete if you want the title “A Light in the Darkness.”

Also alts.

Yes, it’s been noticed and its reversal has been requested in several threads.

RNG smiled on me this once, I had all my coat boxes in three wins, then got another. None since. I think I’ve done the fight five or six times, one of which was a failed attempt. In all but one I had actively done the zone events from the start of Pact preparations; in the last one (no box), a guildie told me her zone was about to Breach and I hurried over just in time to jump into Red for the Breach.

That one was my first time seeing the Darkwing and I did not know to jump on the flowers, so I went down every time >< Now I know, and will try doing it the right way. Maybe avoiding the big blast damage aids box chances? Y’know, do it right and up your odds? … nah. ’tis RNG.

Actually, in the PS you meet a SPOILERS AHEAD SKIP THIS POST IF YOU CARE demolitionist asura who gets blown up and you must go tell his widow about it.

So unless that’s a writer’s gaff, Asura will marry.

There are a lot of reasons not to have romance with well-known NPC’s in an MMO. It’s rather a RP faux pas, actually. One big concern is how it conflicts with others who also are “romancing” that NPC. “She’s my wife! No, she’s mine!” Another is that many RPers consider it to be very much “I’m a special snowflake, I’m connected to the Big Names.” It gets into Mary Sue territory.

There’s more, but the above is most likely what lies behind xXMapcoXx’s reply.

All the current content will be available. Any Living World chapters (Season Two) for which you did not log in will require 200 gems to unlock, after which they will be fully available to your account forever. Meanwhile you can experience the (Season Two) story with anyone willing to start an instance for you even if you have not unlocked it yourself, but you won’t get the rewards or be able to do the achieves or interact with objects, and the instance starter will control dialogue choices and speed of reading them.

Characters created before last April’s trait change are “grandfathered” in. To open traits you will only need to apply trait points you get through leveling, as in the old system. Newer characters must either go out in the world to do tasks to unlock the traits, or pay in gold + skill points. Many of the tasks to open a trait require you to be 20 levels higher than when you first get access to it, so a ton of new alts just aren’t getting more than the minimum necessary traits if any. That’s why people are telling you not to delete the older alts.

The fall damage trait for necromancers requires doing the PvP JP, by the way. I spent gold and skill points on that. Because no, just no.

I won’t wish for specific things (though I agree the level and gear cap should remain as is). After all, this is something they’ve been working on for quite a while, and major things like races and zones won’t suddenly magically get added in the next few months just because people asked, they’ll already be there without the wishing.

But I will wish that HoT contains enough fun new stuff to bring back my friends who have drifted away from the game. I miss them.

A WoW guildie who played GW1 tried so hard to get us all to join him there. Nothing I saw of it made me psyched to play (the extremely low rez videos may have been a bit off putting). But when GW2 was announced, he renewed his lobbying. I watched some profession ability videos, checked out the gameplay videos from the alpha demos at cons, saw the Manifesto, and grew hooked. I love cooperative play! Plus the artwork was amazing, and the lack of daily grind appealed very strongly while I was working on rep for my flaming hippogryph mount.

I joined the 2RP website, started RPing in the Queasy Quaggan chat, then my WoW friend decided to remake his old Alliance WoW guild with the same name and a new direction. He and I designed our characters together (a year later the big plot reveal that they had the same father — as they discovered via a ‘broken token" — drew applause from the guild). We RP’d and recruited before beta, during beta, and got our stories going so when the game launched we were already established and knew the world.

TLDR: Word of mouth combined with amazing videos and an immersive world.

PS: I literally could not force myself to play WoW as of GW2’s launch. I’ve recently picked it up again with the Warlords expansion, but mostly just to hang out with my old WoW friends. The aesthetic and UI there grates on me.

Now that’s the summary post I was hoping to see from Chris Whiteside! What a lovely list of how the CDI’s did affect things.

Have you checked your hero panel? Click on the LS star tab, scroll to the bottom, click the episode, then click to activate it.

If that doesn’t work, it’s time to hit up the Support teams via the tech support forum and filing tickets.

A comment on grouping for it: Two of my guildies went in together; I was listening on Mumble and ready to go help if they wanted, as I managed to complete it before them (a first for me). They reported a bug/feature where if the tagalong died she couldn’t use the shortcut mote to rejoin, so the instance creator had to also die and they had to redo the whole thing.

Has anyone else had that issue?

It thrilled me because it gave that “official” feeling to “something big is coming.” We on the forums have known about the PAX panel, we’ve looked at the panel announcement (which is the same as in this trailer end), and the many-page thread about it has yowled that it can’t be anything big since ANet didn’t ballyhoo it. Well, now they have!

I just hope that after the panel, all in-game playings of the trailer will cut out the splash announcement, as it will at that point look careless and sloppy to have an ad for something that’s over.

I did it on my thief, no stability, plenty of dodge. Braham’s bubble did stop some of the attacks; mostly I gritted my teeth, made sure I was healed, and kept channeling until I made it without interruption. The shadow beasties were no problem at all once these forums told me I could hit them if on Fire. Shortbow one shot them with ease, then on to the next fire lighting.

My alts that I am keeping caught up with LS so I have achieve options are a guardian and a mesmer; stability will be a nice bonus on them.

I was shouting in amazement! Tears were in my eyes! And then … it kept on giving me more. I managed to finish before my guildies so I had to bite my tongue beyond saying “keep going, there’s more.”

Now it’s a hazy blur and I have to rewatch all the cinematics a zillion times to actually notice the details.

Anyway yes, I was on the edge of my seat and I think this is what people want in cliffhangers. It had some major reveals – Wynn’s secret! – and great shocks — the airfleet nuuuuu — and even some immersive involvement since my guild just wrapped up a longish plot that at one point had our airship attacked by Mordy vines from below.

I have to figure out how my three RP’d ’varis are affected. And watch this all again, and do the LS on alts. And farm up eyes and kidneys … but wow, that finale got me so jazzed.

I agree with Palador. We’re sort of in an event loop, and the whole Pact thing is the prelude to Heart of Thorns. Also note that Canach seemed to be himself.

Someone else posited that the Pale Tree is a Glint analog and is protecting Her children from the corruption as best She can. That gives an out to RPers who want to stay on the “good side.” Though Soundless may be in trouble …

I have to wonder why Trahearne was commanding from the ground rather than a flagship. Did I see that wrong?

Though to those saying he was incompetent to have the fleet fire from such low altitude, could be that’s all the range the cannons have?

After the Breach is complete, the lanes near Amber become the site of a fairly long boss fight. It’s not actually hard — my guildies and I went in with zero idea of the mechanics, learned as we went, and the map completed it. It looks like one lane opens up to let people go in and fight, while the other lanes send siege devourers in to give buffs to those fighting.

There are a crapton of Mordrem out in the lanes, arrow carts and catapults to build and use, and a limited supply of siege devourers to protect.

When it’s over there’s a big chest, a lot of bandit chests, and a dead asura skill point.

I was losing badly ’til I checked the forums and got the hint that you can one-shot the shadow things if you have the Fire. So hop in the fire, toss an arrow or bullet or whatever at the shadow thing, then get to a cog to light the fire, preferably one Braham has a blue dome over. Try to be at good health before you channel the lighting in case the Shadow popcorns you. The little shadows move very slow so you have time to kill them (you lose the Fire when you shoot them, so you want to be standing in it to immediately get it back).

Before I learned that I got down to losing my doublet from all the dying. After, I got to the attack-Shadow phase within a minute easy.

I noticed that reset on the quantity. Now to sell a stack of something you have to click the desired sell price, then slide the quantity back to max.

I am not, but when I have in the past the best answer has been to just let it alone. After a few minutes (could be 10 to 15 minutes), it latches on and starts working.

I do seem to be hung at 62% with 2120 files remaining, but it’s not at 0KB/sec, so I assume it’s doing something.

The notes are short but the patch seems pretty large. I’m 62% in with 2120 files remaining.

All right, I will bite. I won’t make a long list, just one prognostication: We’ll find that glowing city/pillar area from the Pale Tree’s vision.

I asked a while back but I think people didn’t see it as the thread moves so fast: How does one see this panel on live stream? Is there a PAX payment to make, or will this be on ANet’s Twitch?

I am sure one could. I, however, am a pack rat. Until I hit 1500 units in the bank, all my mats stay with me. And I’m barely double digits on most T6, if that. I’m not making gold hand over fist in SW — I’m salvaging and banking mats. Mithril and Elder Logs are the only things I have that much of, and even the logs I haven’t maxed into planks yet.

I cannot make myself sell things until I have no room to keep them. I had so many stacks of unidentified dye …. then I needed the bank space so I kept one stack on the off chance I ever bizarrely decide to make Bifrost and sold off the others, clearing over 300 gold from doing so.

So to me getting a vision crystal is a saving of future effort, as is the pair of ingots, but I’m not looking at it financially. Then again I never min-max in any game, or do anything terribly efficiently

Vision crystal, 2 deldrimor ingots (nice, as I’ve had an iron deficiency for some time and have been making the time-gated part but not the ingots themselves. I miiight some day make more ascended pieces). I almost think there was a third thing.

Favorite: Mesmer. It just feels so intuitive and yet has tricky things to keep it interesting. I like being useful, having solid ranged/melee options, and light armor has some of the prettiest clothes in game.

Least Favorite: … several might tie, here. Engineer for sheer awkwardness of play (also mine is male Norn, so it feels even more clumsy and slow). Ele for terribad squishiness (also mine is a charr and was one of my first alts, so it was extra hard). Ranger for boring combined with too many pet choices that never retain names. I have one of each at 80 but never play them unless they fit an RP scene.

There’s no “delay” as such because they never have a set time beyond some time in the 24 hours of the patch day (Pacific Time). I’ve seen it as early as 11 am eastern and as late as 7 pm eastern. Usually, though, I see it by 3 pm eastern and have time to do a hunk of it before I have to go out for my Tuesday evening activities.

So you should certainly have tonight to farm, but tomorrow you could get cut off on short notice.

Indeed, so long as you have logged in to the game (not character select, actually into the game) at least once during the time the chapter was active, you will always have access to it on every alt you ever make.

If you have not logged in during the active time, you will need 200 gems per missed chapter to get full access, or get someone who has it unlocked to give you a guided tour sans achieves and rewards.

Whoops, my bad. I won’t delete it, though, that leads to other issues and mine has a date on it besides

Not nearly as fun as yesterday’s key offer, but today you get a free MF booster and a free TP Express. Enjoy!

Yes, chemiclord, yes. I was thinking about this as I puttered about this morning.

This game is designed to be cooperative and inclusive. People being people, it does give us a block feature to help avoid those who are … shall we say, less cooperative than might be wished. And people being people, there are those who want to be more choosy about whom they share their time with. Yet in GW2, that is a less-supported option because it does fragment the players and create barriers to joining in the fun.

The OP’s idea sounded rather nice to me at first blush. At least, it seemed a reasoned attempt by a would-be excluder to manage it in a non-rancorous manner. Now that I think on it, however, it won’t stop the malicious from just checking the box so they can see all the offered runs and deliberately join ones they don’t match so as to use up time. It will create venom and spite (just as we see in every thread where someone suggests ways to keep the undesirables out of their dungeon runs).

The whole thing about a random LFG tool is you are going to get random people. Some of them will be fools, some of them will be great. Sure it’s annoying if they join without matching your posted description. Say “sorry, you clicked the wrong group, this is [ x description ]” and kick them. You’ll get your requested parameters eventually and you’ll have a chatlog to show you weren’t being mean, while they’ll have an explanation and possibly incentive to read more carefully.

If you don’t want random people, find 4 like-minded friends. If your set up for the run really is that good, there should be plenty of others who agree and will join you for repeated runs, right?

When the daily included a 21-30 fractal, 5 of my guild started it. Then one, our most experienced, had to leave for dinner with her folks when we were on the third fractal towards the end. We LFG’d the open slot, got someone who’d had to leave a repeatedly wiping group. He was a support guardian, as was I, and the rest of the run went very smoothly and our PuGger was super-nice. We’d have missed out on the lovely time we had with him if we’d been picky about getting only the most perfectly geared and traited of only the most wished for profession.

I for one am looking forward to the PAX presentation with some of the same anticipation I used to feel for Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries. If it turns out not to be a game-changer, oh well, at least I got that giddy feeling of happy expectation for a few weeks. To quote a line from Agent Carter, “That’s not nothin’!”

A question, though: I’ve seen a few references to the panel being live streamed. Do I need to get some sort of virtual ticket in advance in order to view that? How does one see a PAX live stream? (The only convention live streams I’ve done were a couple of Blizzcons several years back, and those definitely needed a pre-bought ticket for 40 bucks or so).

That was just a recap of what we saw when Mordremoth first began to spread into our lands. Most of the trailer is made of flashbacks.

Lol! Looks like the OP got deleted. S/He was complaining about never getting past the golem room in the LS chapter, and included a picture of said room. I never understand why OPs delete the post instead of editing or adding to the thread, and never expect it, so I don’t tend to fill space by quoting them …

Anyway: White fields — the asura have wedges where they will see you if you unstealth while in the field.
No break stealth — Caithe is perma-stealthed in the Asura lab unless detected. Stepping in a white detection area does not make her detected, the white field goes orange if the player channels a knockout blow.
Doing the knockout — the mechanic of the instance is to sidle up behind/next to asura researchers and press F. You then channel for a couple of seconds and they get knocked out, removing their detection wedge.
Pathing — a videogame/MMO term to indicate the walking pattern of a game monster. In this part of the LS, two small golems patrol the lab and have orange circles around them. If you are touched by the orange circle, you lose stealth and everything attacks you.
Kosh — my bad. I meant cosh, as in to knock someone out with a blackjack. I either had a flashback to Babylon 5 or conflated cosh with K.O.

It was a help thread until the OP deleted their complaint about not being able to do the mechanics.

I always respect The Gap.

It seems a safe bet that new weapon sets will come out sometime. Jan 13? Who knows? Me, I just slowly store up tickets until I see weapons I really want to spend them on. I didn’t get any Chaos or Zephyr (or whatever the wind ones are) because they just didn’t look great enough to me to spend my limited resources on (the wind ones are super pretty, I just like things that look like weapons that one might potentially actually fight with). But I’ve gotten six Wintersday weapons! And I am now out of tickets, so I almost hope I don’t like the next set so I have time to restock.

That’s a long winded way of suggesting you save your tickets until the patch unless you happen to love the current set enough to gamble you won’t like the next set as much.

Maybe it’s a holdover from before the magic find change? Back then the parrot’s deploying was a sure sign the player had runed out with magic find rather than combat boost stats, plus the parrot aggroed everything around it. It was the honey badger of summoned AI’s. So a real stigma got attached to anyone using it.

I don’t know a surefire way because I don’t worry about stacks so if I glub, I glub. But it has to do with your direction of motion.

I mouse steer. Thus, in water, I dive if I aim my camera down, rise if I aim it up. Thus you want to keep on moving “up” while in the water. Maybe auto-run would work if you aim forward and up and tap autorun as you get to the water?

Are you on NA? I have a few minutes right now before RP, I could come in and help.

The main trick, though, is to realize that you can go through the white fields just fine without breaking stealth so long as you don’t do the knockout. So let the little pathing golems get out of the way, and zip on to the back of the room. Wait for the guard there to turn away, kosh him. Then you can get the researchers at those back tables — don’t stand behind them, flank them. And always, always wait as long as it takes to get your opening. Start the knockout as the golem danger circles more away.

The more asura you knock out, the less you have to deal with if you do alert them. Use all of Caithe’s skills if that happens, especially hit 0 to stealth then 1 a few times in succession to backstab a foe before the stealth leaves (do that on 0’s cooldown, every time). 7 runs you away a long distance, 6 heals you while sending you backwards in a dodge, 2 flings you in a line poisoning anyone on the way, 8 aoe slows down everyone around you, 3 hits a few foes while flipping you away from attacks. Keep mobile, keep attacking.

Good luck! Post here in the next 10 minutes if you want me to come be Caithe for you.

MrWubzy.3587:

The best you have is pressing Ctrl+Shift+H. It hides all UI elements and it’s perfect for screenshots.

Or, as I mentioned a few posts above this, rebind it to one key of your choice. Imo that is better than having to mash three keys simultaneously, so that’s the best you have!

Ashen, while I agree with the principles you’re stating, I don’t feel a line was crossed here. I say this without having seen the “AMA” itself as it was removed, but the followup commentaries seemed to be more respectful gibes, a friendly “roast” as it were. They just didn’t feel mean spirited or crude to me. They were more riffs on the table meme that’s grown up in GW2 culture.

If Rubi, Peter, or Colin are in any way hurt or offended by the thread, that’s another issue. I certainly hope they aren’t but instead take it in good spirit and humor. I myself have no Reddit account and so cannot comment there; perhaps that means I interpret the few Reddit pages I find via links differently from those immersed in that medium of communication.

Yes, but all the comments below are still there, and some are quite clever.

Timmyf, I’m so sorry for Rubi. This is the first mention I saw of her loss. I hope she’s been able to just turn off the computer and have some private time.

Very insightful, Gibson. I agree as well.

I don’t know if ANet’s tech would allow this, but having branching outcomes individual to the player based on player choices might help quite a bit. TESO does that, to a limited extent. In quest dialogues you can choose from a few options, and sometimes that has a permanent effect. I was gut-wrenched when I chose a way to help a would-be comedian — and he got murdered before my eyes, when the other path of the quest would have had him live. Since then I’ve thought really hard about options. Do I turn in a killer to the detective? Do I protect him based on his pure motives? It works there because they phase content based on individual progress without hiding players from each other, so I can see a dead body where my friend sees a living jokester. Some continuity issues, of course. Yet the thing is I feel deeply invested in the story I have encountered, because I know I affected it. It’s a lot more Choose Your Own Adventure than the LS currently allows.

To be clear, I think there’s been a lot of good stuff in the LS too. I was thoroughly blown away by Omadd’s Machine and the Hidden Arcana. Some cutscenes moved me to tears (though that could be the music, movie soundtracks are super effective on me and so is the GW2 music).

I mostly don’t mind being excluded, as I know they are working hard (kitten break) on this game and they will eventually deliver the goods. Is the story a thoroughly gripping one? No. It’s far from perfect. In the thread I linked above one poster does a very nice job of discussing how MMO’s offer non-linear story telling and the LS is trying to use a linear format, which makes it stuttering and awkward. See, that’s feedback, that’s looking at deeper causes as to why the tale may not satisfy.

But one of the risks of being an early adopter of new things is you won’t get a perfectly polished gem at a low low price. You’ll be there for the kinks and twists and breakdowns. That’s where we are now, in the early stages of a new way of delivering story and content. ANet continues to refine it, to learn from their errors, and that’s all I ask of them.

I did it all three years, including Choir. But not including the JP, which I haven’t even entered this year because I simply cannot do rapid timed jumping and don’t need to frustrate myself with it. I never beat it in a lot of trying first year and some last year, so enough already! (I am very glad it exists, though, and I cheer on my friends who work at it and make it to the top). I also haven’t bothered with the PvP since in past years trying it over and over meant I managed just once to return a gift. Otherwise I lost pretty thoroughly every time, being a terrible PvPer in any game.

Choir’s easy for me so long as I don’t care about a perfect score. I do a full round for each daily, and I’ve gotten 596 but always seem to miss at least one note somewhere. So I don’t mind it being part of the meta and am super happy I could do the meta without touching the JP or the PvP!

I’m so glad you posted this — my key got me a claim ticket! And an unidentified dye.

It’s total superstition, but I have a completely subjective feeling that I get better luck on chests if I use a magic find booster before I even get the key(s), then open the chest(s) while still under the booster’s effects. I have a large pile of the boosters and don’t get keys very often, so why not? I did that for this one.