Guild Wars 2

Ah, but with four slots it seems reasonable to use at least one of them to cycle some alts so as to test out more professions along with race combos — new voice acting, woo! I’m so glad I will be able to spend most of my time that weekend on this (though man, I also want to watch the GamesCon streams).

Now I just have to defeat the creeping crud that is slurping into my system so I’m not dreadfully ill next week. Today a sore throat, tomorrow a fever no doubt ….

I’ll go where the mood takes me. Happily we get four beta slots to test a variety of things without losing progress! https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/First-Beta-Weekend/first#post5337539

Chronomancer and Dragonhunter intrigue me the most since Mesmer and Guardian are my PvE go-tos other than my Thief, who gets the most attention because he’s my main for RP. But he sucks in dungeons >.> Revenant Shiro is begging for a quick spin. Since I was one of the bugged people last beta I didn’t get to test the first iteration of the day/night cycle and I should definitely do a few rounds of that so I can give feedback on it, especially as they seem to have altered it greatly in response to previous playtesting.

And of course there’s the new reward system to review in old maps. I’m very curious about it as I’ve been avoiding any map completion beyond what happens in leveling an Ele pending those changes.

It could be that two weekends will be enough. But there are a few ways to read it:

- They know they want two weekends. ANet being a responsively iterative developer, they can determine as of the second one whether they need more, and decide at that point whether to extend the alts yet again.

- They know there will be more than two weekends. But players being content locusts, they know some people will zip to the end of what’s available. A reset after that to get players back to testing the start of things, especially after ANet’s tweaked the start, would help the devs.

- Or, as you say, they still have a target date that is soon enough there isn’t room for more than two weekends of testing.

Anyway, I wouldn’t assume that only having two weekends mentioned means there won’t be more.

Wooohoooo! I will have ALL THE FUN! Thanks!

Dark Saviour.9410:

Eh. I guess I’ll just read some opinion pieces once people get into it.
Was going to potentially check out some streams, but if the zones capped to the same basic areas as the last ‘beta’, then not much point.

Except they have apparently changed the nighttime experience after the complaints about it. So the terrain will be the same, the experience will be different. Plus there will be four elites to test, map rewards in Pact Tyria, etc.

I see plenty of point beyond seeing a few new valleys.

DBZVelena.5186:

I’ll be missing out on the pvp tournament, since its on saterday this time. (why not sunday???)

Generally the Saturday of a weekend con is the day full of the most energy for the attendees and the presenters. Friday is distracted by the logistics of arrival and registration, hotel check in, etc, Sunday people are tired and perhaps having to check out of their hotels and even leaving in the afternoon because they have to be ready to work Monday morning. So Saturday is prime real estate for presenting the cool stuff and getting the most attention for it.

I’m a bit sad to only have one slot. Now I have to choose whether to test one thing and advance its masteries enough to give feedback on higher tiers, or to smorgasbord the start of multiple things.

I think I’m leaning to testing Chronomancer in as much depth as I can.

We had persistent characters in the latter part of beta testing in 2012 too. It all got wiped. Don’t fall victim to wishful thinking, OP, you are only manufacturing your own disappointment.

Well, the Embroidered are little pointy toed slippers for male or female. Beyond that I’d have to go back in game to peruse the Wardrobe and you’re likely best off doing that yourself. Go to any bank or crafting machine, click the Wardrobe tab at the bottom, click for Light armor, and scroll down to footwear. Then preview everything in there until you find whatever is closest to your mental image of a sandal

As others have clarified you cannot buy the expansion for gems if you don’t already have the game. I think I was assuming your friends had the base game already because the word “expansion” made me think “expanding on what one has.” But JustTrogdor is absolutely correct, initial purchase of the game at any level must be with cash.

I don’t know if this is patch related, but today there were two times when I could not rez a downed person, as in neither tapping F nor clicking the F on the UI did anything. First time I was on a high-40’s elementalist in Bloodtide at the Alpha Drake in the north. Second I was on an 80 Thief fighting Tequatl right after reset.

Also during the Teq fight my camera kept zooming in when I ran to the cannon defense.

1 — Only ANet knows. Pessimists say “one map” (clearly wrong), optimists say “several maps in one new zone, with more coming post-launch the way SW did.” As to new and exciting things, check the FAQ for the main new things.

2 — The larger packs don’t add functionality, they add a mini and a glider skin etc. Nothing you need to play the game. The largest pack includes a set of 1/2 price gems, so if you will spend 50 bucks on gems anyway in the future it’s a stellar deal.

3 — There will be content people without HoT cannot see. That’s how expansions work.

4 — You could wait 1 to 3 years and buy the next expansion and it will include this one as well as vanilla. But then you would miss all that game playing time and being part of the game’s evolution.

5 — No one knows for sure but the theory many have is that yes, guildies without the expansion can still see the guild hall but might not be able to use all its features.

6 — The base and middle packs can be bought for gems, so you could buy them a gem card (or buy one yourself and give them the code) so they could do the in-game purchase of the expansion. Or I think you could buy any tier of the expansion and just send the serial code to someone else to apply to their own old or new account.

7 — No bulk discounts that I know of.

Probably the same thing that the Dwayna gate seraph guard knows about riding horses.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Yeah, Anet is a bit inconsistent when it comes to whether or not Charr and Asura females will have the female model or male model. Just two examples: the Lich outfit gives both the male version, while the fancy wintersday outfit gives both the female version.

Even better, the Monk’s outfit is female on Asura and male on Charr. I believe that’s the first time it’s been different between the two.

As an altoholic I cannot begin to muster arguments for how to stick to one profession. Well maybe I can, a little. Mesmer is pretty good in all areas of the game from what I hear (I am PvE focused). Certainly in PvE I find it the most fun profession, subjective as that opinion is. My three are Asura, Human, and Sylvari, and all work quite well as mesmers. That part is cosmetic, though, and once again subjective, so it’s what race most floats your boat and has your favorite animations and voice.

I can however assure you that you not only can change hair in game, you can change your whole look. There are faces, hairs, and hair and eye colors only available after creation. You need either a hairstyle kit or a makeover kit; the former only affects hair, the latter lets you change everything but race and profession. You buy them in the gem store or get them as rewards from achievement chests or random drops from Black Lion Chests (which need keys to open and you either buy the keys or farm them slowly).

I dunno, I read it as you choose from a list.

“The new static schedule will allow you to practice a given fractal and learn its challenges with your friends, removing the necessity of rerolling fractals in order to find the fractal of your choice.”

That implies some choice in picking the fractal you want to practice. As does “still have the flexibility of running three or four fractals in the evening with your friends just like before.” If there is only one option, that would mean running it three or four times which I doubt they mean by that comment.

About trading the encryptions: Note they are lockboxes, and the keys come from a different source. You may still need to work at getting the mats to buy the keys, so you can’t open the traded boxes without having in some way “earned” your chance at the contents.

Now, if the contents are also tradeable, then I will agree it devalues the wow-factor at seeing someone with the nifty new things. I say this as someone only at Fractal 27 or so who is unlikely to grind them out fast enough to get the goodies terribly quickly.

That is a very nifty map. But is there a way to show all nodes of a type? I decided to check for soft wood per the OP’s request as I also perennially need the stuff and it only seems to indicate what zones have it, not where in the zones the nodes will spawn.

That’s a known bug from Tuesday’s patch (the cannons). Check the bug forums to see if it’s still being reported. If so you may have to wait to do the instance because that is a progress-blocking bug (which will make it high priority to fix).

Ah, that makes sense. An addition to my quotes, I just noticed that the encryptions will need keys to open, and those keys apparently come from currency gained by salvaging rings etc. Thus you might need HoT to be able to open them.

But I did mean the new fractal weapon acquisition would apply even if you don’t have HoT since they elected to have it available at level 50. That strongly suggests to me that it will be part of the core game. No guarantee, of course.

I would think not, Ayrilana. They won’t leave the old 3+1 RNG in place for non-HoTters, and I’m not sure how they’d tailor loot tables based on HoT status. They could lock out 51-100 for non-HoTters, I suppose.

“At the end of every fractal, you’ll find a lockbox in the final chest called a fractal encryption. " I read this as meaning even the lower tier ones.

“you’ll be able to trade fractal encryptions with your fellow Tyrians.” — so even those who don’t run the fractals might be able to buy the boxes with a chance at the cool stuff inside.

“Once you’ve completed fractal scale 50, the golem BUY-2046 in the Mistlock Observatory will sell you a fractal weapon crate for pristine fractal relics, which will grant you a fractal weapon skin of your choice.” — And you can get to 50 now. I do wonder how many relics per crate.

I’m happy they are retrofitting achieve tracking. I might finally do Divemaster, or find the 30th coin in the first part of Dry Top.

I think if we tried training them they’d leash back to their spawn point.

ba-dum-tish!

I’m curious as to what the legendary backpack does, though I assume it has ooc stat switching like the weapons do.

I certainly suddenly really want to get to level 50. I’m just at 27 or so … it can happen!

Too bad for it, I turn off my computer for the night So I guess it would apply the updates on boot up in the morning? I’ll still refer to your above post on disabling automatic driver updates once I have Win10 because sometimes one really wants to go to an older more stable version.

I don’t mind automatic updates so long as I can tell it “Not now.” Many years ago I had Norton Antivirus (eeeeewwww, I know) and a sure sign that it was updating and scanning was when the game I was playing would slow to molasses speeds. I prefer popups when I boot the computer that ask me if I’m ready to update x or y program.

If Win10 decides on its own to use my computer’s attention span for its own purposes whenever it wants, I’ll be holding off on the upgrade for oh, two more years or so, whenever I next get a new computer.

cunningowl.8024:

Will Anet reps be at Dragoncon in Atl. GA this year?

That’s an interesting question. I’ve never gone to DragonCon as it’s just a little further than I want to travel for a con (and in latter years I’ve not been con-going a’tall). But DC → GA isn’t thaaaat far, and I have plenty of friends who go and costume for it; one of them got kudos for his Samurai Iron Man costume last time.

The thing is, though, while it’s huge it’s still an F&SF con, right? It doesn’t sound like a place for video game purveyors to trumpet their wares the way PAX is.

That’s a good point. While I was at my mom’s my tablet and phone were seldom more than two feet from me. I got email challenged twice out there. I don’t think I’ve gotten email challenges at home all that often.

Though if it did happen, my question stands, if I decide I don’t want to log in badly enough to displace the cat and tromp downstairs, will anything worse than not logging in happen? Will my account get locked for suspicious activity?

1 — You can farm the karma (over time you’ll end up with millions of it), as the temple gear is the most “free” set of exotics you’ll get, plus it has unique skins. You do want level 80 exotics, whether bought with karma, gold on the TP (it’s only a gold or two per piece as a rule) or dungeon tokens.

2 — This game is designed for gear balance. You choose your stat distribution to fit your play style (eg berserker stats for pure dps at the cost of defense) but you don’t get to have more stats than anyone else of the same tier. The idea is to have skill determine how you do, not gear.

The gear that requires more work is the ascended, unless you get phenomenally lucky with drops. What legendary offers is the ability to freely swap stats on the fly any time you are out of combat so you can shuffle around your overall combination a bit. Ascended can only change with some expense and some time at the Mystic Forge (and that’s a new development in the past few weeks, used to be it was stuck with the stats from creation).

Far from reducing the choice it opens it much wider. If gears A and B take the “extra work” but then have a huge stat advantage over C and D, who is ever going to use C and D once they procure A and B?

I’m willing to wait for my mini and get the SMS rather than relying on something installed on my computer. But a question: How long do I have after the SMS is sent to make use of the info on it? When I’m at home my phone lounges around downstairs by my purse and the door to the garage, as I generally don’t use my cell unless traveling. If it’s winter and I have a quilt over my legs and a cat on my lap, I may not want to run downstairs that minute.

I do keep a tablet near me much more often unless it’s charging, but it doesn’t have a phone number and it does sound like the phone number is the way to go. I replace electronics over time but have had the same land line since 2002 and the same cell phone number for at least six years, perhaps much longer, my mind is fuzzy on whether it was my flip phone number before I started using Galaxies.

TLDR is there a deadline on providing the texted code?

I know many of us want to know in advance. But ANet likes to surprise the players — just look at Colin’s announcement that pre-purchase would be available .. oh … now. Besides, they’re hardly going to say “Hey, heads up, we’re going to tell you the release date is X, tune in for the big announcement that X is the date!” Why steal their own thunder?

Some of the information we have not gotten yet is material. People want to stock up on weapon skins suiting their Elite. They want to work on appropriate legendaries, or on Ascended armor of useful stats (less vital now that we can redo the stats). Some will want to do Hero Challenges only on the alt whose Elite they intend to focus on and can’t decide that until they know something about all the Elites.

But as to “what are they going to show us at GamesCon, what are they going to announce?” Ask yourself what would in any way change in your game play between now and the con based on that. If they said “This is where we’ll show off Challenging Group Content,” would anything be different for you beyond having a date certain for that blog? If they said “Yes, OK, stay tuned so you can hear the release date at the same time as everyone else,” how would that affect you in the slightest? You still wouldn’t know the date until then and thus you still wouldn’t have any data to time your budget etc.

They’ll say something. They’ll give away some stuff. There’s no need to know in advance what the details are. The con is sold out so you can’t decide at the last minute to go to it because you want this year’s Mr. Sparkles.

Nope, no templates. You can’t download keybinds afaik because that would be in essence a template, plus automatically applying it would need a macro and those are not allowed.

On the plus side, this game doesn’t have nearly as many keybinds to set as most others.

What if we would like to have our alts that still have PS to do get the pointer, but not our finished ones?

Though I did go to the NPC and watch the cinematic on my main PS alt, after making sure to first log in on my mid level alt and then on an 80 I don’t need to play for a while. The LS did not reactivate on my main.

I do think I’m missing a couple of achieves on my UI. I am pretty sure I did the speed run at the Timberline portion while that was still an active chapter and it’s not showing now. I can’t be 100% sure because I didn’t make a point of completing the achieves until I needed them for Luminescent.

I’m not sure what you mean by a binding set. You can redo your key bindings any time you like via the options screen, and those changes will remain account wide for you until you change them again, even if you log in from a different computer.

If you mean creating a template so you can swap it out between alts, no, you only get one universal set.

As to which ones are best, it’s far too subjective. Some people swear by shifting WASD over one set of keys. For me it makes no difference, I don’t keyboard move, I mouse move and reserve the keyboard for firing off skills and utilities. Some people like to do combo keys with SHIFT and CTRL modifiers; I find it slows me down tremendously to try to hit two keys instead of just one, plus I have small hands compared to most players and it hurts to do that stretch. (Not freakishly small, I just happen to be a woman on the slim side so I don’t have big ol’ guy mitts )

So it’s whatever feels intuitive to you. Which isn’t to say people can’t make suggestions but only you can decide if they are in fact good enough to be the “best” for you.

Zelulose.8695:

I posted the shocking aura prestige bug unaware of this thread. Please merg

You can self-report your own post and ask for the merge; the mods will notice it more in that thread than in this one.

Kidel.2057:

Any way to permanently remove this red “!” mark? It’s there every time I log in to my main character, even if I have everithing unlocked.

That pre-existed the patch, it’s been annoying since day one of the Hero Points system debut. I don’t think I posted a bug thread about it but I think if you have unspent points it wants to alert you. Even the old system did that.

Anyway, yeah, the ! shouldn’t trigger until you gain new points even if you have some unspent, and preferably it won’t ever trigger if you have nothing left you can buy but you go collecting points against future need.

Very helpful! I hope I can find it again if/when I get Win10. Maybe they can make a sticky for Win10 hints and tips in the Tech Support section.

Hmm … just in case … I’m permalinking this post in my guild forums

So of course there is a forum bug on what should be the last post in this thread, there being other threads dedicated to discussion of the info flow rate and July 27 being over.

I didn’t expect to set off a discussion on the info dump rate, sorry about that. I just wanted to be alerted if something happened on Monday while I was destroying my hard drive!

Anyway I’m safely home now and at my for-real computer and can resume doing my own checking for blogs and images. Thank you to those who stood ready to assuage my thirst for HoT info

I do agree. Personalizing chat colors would help so many people. But that sounds like a bigger coding issue than ANet just picking and setting a color, which I very much wish they would do as a stopgap until they give me the power to change the text color myself.

I wonder, is there an Overwulf app to do it? Because I’m not keen on getting Overwulf but I think I just might if it let me read RP interactions without getting a headache from squinting.

“Changed the color of squad chat to blue-green to make it more distinct from GM whisper.”

From the patch notes.

I know this is a minor thing compared to the rest of the patch but it caught my eye. Why? Because it shows they are willing to change chat colors and, moreover, able to do so.

So please, ANet, I’m begging you. Make the emote chat color easier to read. Ditch that dull grey. Maybe a cream color closer to /say but not so bright white? It’s been any eyesore since BWE1.

It only unlocks on the alt that uses it. However, as long as you know which alt has it, you don’t need it more than once. That alt can make the insignia and put it in the bank for the alt making the final item.

As to the gem store it could just be they are gearing up for a big 3rd anniversary sale and want to avoid a) having people scream for refunds on things they just bought full price and b) people feeling they’ve spent enough recently that they have no urge to buy things even on sale. (I personally have been glad since the lack of new Gem Store items has removed my quandary about using PayPal away from my home computer /grins).

You’re right that it could be there is a crunch. Or it could be this week we learn about challenging group content; the teasers have been for the elites only. I have no expectations one way or another. I simply don’t want to miss a teaser if one shows up.

Well keep in mind that the Charr-Human treaty’s only been in effect for four years now. Plenty of people on both sides will be veterans of the conflict and have deep seated feelings about the other race. Peace or no peace, they could well see just being friends, let alone lovers, as a betrayal of the memory of those who died.

There can be other factors as well. Humans are a dying race (never mind how cheerful and crowded DR is or how many players play humans, it’s canon that humans in Tyria are in the role of the fading, diminishing race). A human that chooses non-human partners is opting out of replenishing the population. Conversely, Charr are expansionist and need cubs to build the fahrars and the armies, so they’d likewise lean towards disapproval of those who don’t contribute.

Plus I agree with Agroman’s comment that the arousal cues just won’t be there in more than a tiny fraction of the population of each race, which will make it unusual enough that others will care because it’s so bizarre.

As far as I’m concerned, Rox and Braham are just very good friends. They can be jealous about each other on that basis without any sexual component.

I’m debating male human, female human, female sylvari, female norn. The humans already have looks designed, the others have face concepts that I think I forgot to document the sliders for. Actually, the female human is one I made in a hurry for the recent beta and I didn’t save her sliders either, or even a closeup of the face … oops.

However, the only RP concept I have so far beyond nebulous subconscious meanderings is the sylvari. She’ll use the channeled spirits as a buffer to help resist Mordremoth’s whispers so she can push into the jungle to face him, and she takes to Revenanting purely for that reason. She won’t give a darn which legends are nattering at her so long as they let her remain a free agent.

Normally I just wait until someone spots a Tweeted or Facebooked teaser image, or keep spot checking for them myself. Today, however, I have to nuke my hard drive so I can junk this old computer before tomorrow’s travel home. I’ll be able to view forums on my tablet, it just won’t be so easy to hop around the web, and since I won’t put my game password on my tablet I won’t have all the nice little forum markers for read threads or the auto jump to my last read post …

Anyway, since there’s a chance we get an image today for another Elite reveal this week, I’d appreciate it being embedded in this forum’s cloud if/when it shows up. Thanks in advance to anyone that does so! Since I won’t be posting again until Wednesday once I trash my computer.

A hint on using the Rename: remember or write down the original display name. Then retype that in first before writing your note. The UI clears the field completely when you select rename and sometimes you want to know the player’s handle later on. “Good Norn RPer” tells me nothing about how to spot them on the forums

Jordo.5913:

They said on a live stream that you need level 80 + 60 hero challenges to fully unlock everything on a profession,

Singling this out to remind folks that that was the original version (and it was 65). They revised it so you now have everything unlocked at 80, excluding the Elite specializations which will probably need plenty of challenges.

I don’t see any reason Tomes won’t work. Revenants aren’t getting any special treatment in the starting process. It’s up to the individual whether they want to skip forward like that.

I have a zillion Tomes but I hate skipping. I like playing the character through the world to get a feel for it both in game play and in RP personality. I have more than enough 80’s to experience HoT right away, I can wait to bring my Rev(s) through.

It’s in keybindings. Out of long habit I set my UI toggle to F11 as that is quite close to the Print Screen button and I can flick the UI off very fast, get my pics, and flick it back on even mid combat. I don’t like using combo keys in general and I really don’t want one for something I need to tap that quickly.

Why not F12? I don’t know. I think in one of my early MMO’s F12 was an important hotkey and I didn’t want to change it since the F12 key is easy to find thanks to the gap to its right. But it’s not like most of the F keys have any necessary use in GW2, so there’s no reason not to employ them for things like this.

I don’t know the answer but I assume you will. The point of making them purchasable later is so they can be permanent content. They are also part of the storyline your character goes through and will continue to experience more of in HoT. ANet will want new players to have access to the content and story, and it makes them money to boot from those that prefer to pay cash for gems.

Until ANet specifically says otherwise, I shall be comfortable in my prediction that the LS will be permanently available even after multiple expansions.

edit based on flesh wound: Now, you will need HoT to play chapters that go beyond LS2 Chapter 8. But the stuff that is available right now? I don’t see why it would be blocked later even to non-HoTters.

Now now, Trogdor. Being a fount of suggestions is far better than being a constant detractor of the game without constructive feedback, as we see far too often here. Let us not discourage the OP.