Guild Wars 2

Sorry it took so long! I’ll be trying to really hammer some of these out. A lot of really cool ideas flooded in right when I got busy with some other projects, and there are many more posted characters I want to do themes for. But for now…

http://youtu.be/QHc76i2_bMA

This is the theme for Kyera Fearghus.

I tried to break from my Japanese composer-inspired M.O. and create something a little more atmospheric, something more Western. Thematically, I tried to capture a sort of “calm oceanic” feel throughout piece, but especially at the beginning, to signify the character’s connection with water. The second half of the piece brings in the sweeping orchestral strings, with the melody echoed in a violin ensemble and a flute section aimed at capturing both Kyera’s adventurous spirit and her human noble lineage.

Listen here: http://youtu.be/cNYwHAWc76c
Download the standard release: http://itstartsatdusk.com/music/DusK%20-%20Heroes%20of%20Tyria.mp3
Download the louder WAV to install yourself: http://itstartsatdusk.com/other/HoTLouderMaster.zip

This idea came to me after the bombshell that was the Living World Season 2 finale ending. I felt like the menu screen needed some music with a little more “hype”. So I decided to break every social law regarding “my place in the music industry” and create a new track for that character select screen.

After finishing it, I figured I’d release it, and provide the version that I use so that if anyone else is crazy enough to sub in my music in place of a freakin’ BAFTA award-winner, they can. You can. If you want to.

If not, feel free to just enjoy it as any of my other remixes. Or don’t, and hurt my sensitive feelings.

Something’s definitely up. It is kinda ridiculous that we need to hop through asset servers just to find one where we can download a few small files.

I’m sure they’ll fix it though.

I… didn’t think of that. Why didn’t I think of that?

Alright, gonna go ahead and bang my head against the wall a few times, then run those JPs for her.

Like the title says. My wife couldn’t do a jumping puzzle to save her life, and I don’t have a Mesmer that can port her. Are there any easily accessible but maybe guarded open world chests that drop the Mysterious Grubby Package?

Second wave:
“Map, Compass, and Satchel” - Captain Kace, human engineer
“On Silent Hawk Wings” - Cyane Imara, norn ranger
“How Close She Came” - Rosja, sylvari warrior
“Seeking Magic” - Vaeleyna Eventide, human elementalist
“Cheesy Jokes and Bloodlust” - Rezzah, asura necromancer
“Her Inquest Colors” - Erizzi, asura engineer
“An Alchemical Ego” - Tarsin Blastdraft, charr engineer

First wave:
“Balthazar Guide My Arm, Dwayna Guide My Heart” - Dathius Eventide, human guardian
“The Waters Around Her” - Kyera Fearghus, human elementalist
“One Day to Be Forgiven” - Alesia Langmar, human guardian
“Many Songs Will Be Sung” - Thorfinnr Sleggja, norn warrior
“In His Heart of Frost” - Rhew Anfarwol, sylvari necromancer
“A Dark Heart is Still a Heart, Right?” - Lyzixx, asura necromancer
“Semele’s Research” - Semele Isra, human elementalist

Full original composition playlist

Quick update: All character themes for Second Wave have been composed. I’m going to be taking a few months’ break to write bonus tracks for the album release and focus on other projects. I expect to start Third Wave in late summer. Huge thanks to everyone who has submitted a character so far!

Original post below:
——-

Since March 2014, I’ve been writing short loopable theme music for GW2 characters for practice. I started with two of my characters, then opened it up to Guild Wars 2 Guru. I got a modest response, but I’m still looking to expand my pool of characters to choose from, so I brought the thread over here as well. With the GW2Guru thread closed, this is now the sole place for it.

If you’re interested, all you need to do is say so and give me a quick rundown of your character and an image I can use.

For the character description, I’ll need obvious things like name, race, and profession, but also a little bit of back story and personality. I don’t need a 10-page essay, but I would like more than “this is my character, he’s a warrior”.

For the image, give me something that’s ready to go. I’m not exactly a Photoshop wiz.

The themes I end up doing will be entirely at my own discretion, and with my own timing, so posting does not guarantee you a character theme, let alone one in any sort of punctual manner (I did, after all, recently get back from a 7-month hiatus). I’m basically doing this for practice and to create a body of work, and I figured I might as well do something cool for the GW2 community while I’m at it. A lot of what I’ll end up doing will be new for me to some extent, so I’ll need time.

No solid format rules are really set in stone for how you present your character, but an interesting character, a well-written bio, and a nice full high-resolution screenshot of your character will help your chances of being picked.

This isn’t a commission thread; please seek me out through other means for commission work. This isn’t a criticism thread; instead, feel free to post criticism in the comments on YouTube.

I’ll throw everything I do in the following post, including ones I do for my own characters, along with a link to my full Original Composition playlist on YouTube. If you need examples or just want to hear what I’ve done, follow the links in the next post.

Notes:

Regarding frequency: I will no longer be doing these compositions at the rate that I used to. Community interest has declined, and I need to focus on creating music that will advance my goals. I will not be ending the project entirely, but there will be long stretches of time where I don’t create a character theme.

I decide what to name these pieces. I have a system, and naming my own compositions is simply part of the process of personal investment for me.

If your picture is out-of-date, always feel free to edit your post with a better one. I always select pictures right before I release any given composition, so I’ll see it if you upload a new one.

Any pictures with any sort of typography other than an artist’s signature will not be used.

http://youtu.be/j249m55FVzE

I composed this theme for Phenn over at the Guru.

Want a shot at a theme for your own character? Click here.

A short loopable I composed for my necromancer.

Want a shot at a theme for one of your own characters? Click here for more info.

http://youtu.be/sz_97dFUUco

Had some fun with this one. Enjoy.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Tell me; what happens when ANet stop making money for the investors?

Not only that, running an MMO requires money:

• Staff
• Servers
• Building and Utilities
• Hardware and Software

These costs are grossly overestimated today. If it were 2001, I’d be siding with you. But it’s 2014, and we now have the numbers to know that even WoW could have been sustainable on box sales alone.

2014: Why aren’t people reading about games before they buy them?

Karizee.8076:

Megaservers appear to be keeping it quite lively

This. I popped out of making a new character at around 4 AM this morning, and saw plenty of players running around.

Knock yourself out. Just link back to it.

http://youtu.be/Lw8Kx1cuCg4

I’m still hard at work with Hardcore Adventure Box: World 2, but it’s late, so I decided to release this early. Enjoy.

I actually had a suggestion a while back that involved earning ascended gear, among other things, as a series of long-term event/meta-event “campaigns”.

I think their rationale behind locking ascended behind the crafting menu was the idea that you have to do a variety of content to get the mats, requiring you do do a lot of stuff to finally get your hands on ascended gear. I don’t feel it worked as well as they had planned.

Ever play Final Fantasy XI? Out of all games I’ve played, that takes the cake.

WoW comes pretty close, though. I can’t really call GW2 “grindy” at all by comparison.

Megaservice does sound a bit tacky. Megaserver sounds a bit better imo.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

More gem shop content.

About as guaranteed as a post from you everyday bashing this game like an upset ex-boyfriend.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/devtracker

Noooooooooo

melts

nOxe.6293:

DPS meter is the last thing this game needs.

DPS meter will be the day I quit GW2.

Which will be weird, considering all the fan music I’ve done/plan to do for it.

Xbon.9086:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/devtracker

/thread
/all threads like it

As long as they don’t speed up development. I’m not even done with the second EP yet, so I can’t even begin the third!

On the technical level, they probably can’t do it. It’s not a matter of merely reflecting the animations, as some people might think.

Lambent.6375:

Not really, tons of people doing world events depending on the server and time.

“hate it when no one comes” about killed me.

Oh, crap, Ferocity failed? kitten , I must have missed when it was implemented.

Oh, wait.

ITT another person insists anecdotes are an acceptable alternative to statistical evidence.

How many tracks are currently in the game’s playlist for normal (non-boss) battle music? Just wondering, because reasons.

Skorm.4897:

Well i’ve dropped 1500+ hours into this game and im already bored.

You got 1500+ hours into a $60 title and somehow that means it’s lacking content?

The definition of self-parody, everybody.

teufeldritch.7691:

The Holy Trinity is only holy if you are a member of that belief system. If you are not, like Anet, then it is in fact not holy.

Combat atheism! Whoooo!

Seriously, though, the lack of a trinity is a major selling point of the game. To suddenly put it in would be like adding eight-way run and weapons to Street Fighter IV, or throwing blue shells in Forza. If you don’t like it, there are other games. So go play them, because coming to a forum to try and convince everyone else that they’re suddenly not enjoying the game simply because you don’t looks kinda ridiculous.

ArenaNet’s being silent! Even though they made about 20 posts here in the past 24 hours.

ITT biased anecdotes are considered an acceptable replacement for statistical evidence.

cranked.3812:

Zerker builds are used because it’s what works best with the way the game was designed.

This is the problem with the zerker crowd; they’ve deluded themselves into believing that the entire game was designed around a single stat set.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I just think implementing it will give extra ammunition to people wanting to talk about how much grind there is in the game.

Well, everything is considered “grind” to those people, so I don’t feel like that would matter.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

OneManArmy.9732:

tldr?

“Bring back Zaishen Quests”

Not exactly. Each Zaishen Quest on any given day was for all players. This system wouldn’t be. Chunks of players on the same server would have different Call to Arms (conceptual name only, btw) objectives on any given day.

So, I was out just romping about Tyria as I sometimes do, completing events simply for the sake of completing events because I don’t fall into the rewards-motivated player majority. It’s lonely out there sometimes, especially at 4 AM (I’m kind of a night owl), and as I was moving between Ascalon Settlement to Nebo Terrace, I started thinking: “What might bring those rewards-motivated players out here to join me?”

So here’s an idea I had: A separate daily achievement that players could do for an extra laurel, and some loot with rarity scaled according to level, including a small chance at choose-your-own-stats profession-based ascended gear for level 80 characters (removing a key complaint about ascended gear, the crafting requirement, making it optional and allowing players to gear their characters in ascended simply by playing the game).

This would be a daily objective shown in your achievement pane that would assign you to participate in events in a certain map, or maybe even work your way toward a meta event completion. These objectives, assigned according to character level, would be doled out on daily reset to the entire player base at random, instead of all players receiving the same objective as we see in the current daily achievements. That way, the players are spread out and bringing the entire world to life, instead of being clumped into one area.

Lore-wise, this could also trigger some sort of flavorful way to get the player involved, bringing it beyond a mere “do this, get this” checklist (like the current daily system). A letter could arrive by mail from the Pact asking the player to assist in taking all of the Temples in a map, or a personal invitation to Meatoberfest, or from Balfouris Humancleaver looking for aid in retaking Ascalon city. For some of these objectives, maybe an NPC could spawn near the player in a city and run up to him/her, triggering a short dialogue about how he’s come seeking aid. It could be a sylvari citizen saying how they’re worried about Gamarien going out into Wychmire all alone and asking you to accompany him, or someone from Eldvin Monastery could plead with the player to investigate the swamp because he’s felt an incredibly powerful dark presence there but the Seraph won’t take him seriously.

In this way, rewards-motivated players could find themselves going out into the world and bringing it to life every day — each day would present every player with some fresh, lengthy adventure — and we could see some of the events that largely go unnoticed get done. It could even go beyond this, with permanent, large-scale change in Tyria coming about as a result of the players’ efforts (and with it, new challenges opening up), but this kind of idea should be taken one step at a time.

Addendum: Let’s try to keep feedback constructive. This largely off-topic game-bashing for the sake of game-bashing is getting old, and I will report every post rooted in it.

Midget.6150:

This is really beautiful, seriously Are you gonna make more orchestral pieces? I’d love to listen to more like this

I’ll definitely be doing more. I also did one a while back, in case you didn’t catch that one.

A short loopable I composed for one of my characters recently. Enjoy.

I thoroughly enjoyed the update. I feel it was a solid LW entry.

And some armchair writing experts here are making me lol pretty hard.

Colin’s stated in an interview with Wood that he really wants to see capes come back, but because of all of the variables involved, it’s a significantly larger technically challenge to implement them with the customization present in the first game.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

chemiclord.3978:

Shockwave.1230:

Interesting tid-bit, Eric Rane mentions how overwhelming it can seem to have code being used by 500,000 players. Not sure why he uses that number, but he does.

Because it’s a decent round number that’s probably somewhere in the ballpark of their heaviest concurrent usage, would be my guess.

I think you are wrong here, it is more like the number of active players all together.
500,000 concruent players in GW2? Maybe shortly after release. I am fairly sure that we are far away from that number right now.

Well, at the 1 year point, they announced that they had about 460k concurrent players, and several times, they’ve stated that the player base is growing, not shrinking.

Oh no, I have to walk though an additional Asura gate a few feet away from the Asura gate I just went in to get from Divinity’s Reach to another city. How dreadful!

Naevius.3185:

A noble, self-sacrificing death, mano-a-mano with a dragon.

Forever immortalized in a huge statue in New Lion’s Arch, with the words ‘Never Forget!’

Please yes.

Happening to me as well.

I just checked, and yeah, the GW2 soundtrack isn’t on DirectSong anymore. That site was the sole distributor of the GW2 soundtrack.

Guess that makes my copy a rarity. I should look into preserving it.

Dropping this track to tease the next installment of Hardcore Adventure Box, which will be releasing soon-ish.

Haven’t heard the first EP yet? Check it out here.

I agree with you for the most part, but when the Phalanx heavy set came out, what I was saving for human cultural tier 3 was spent on gems to buy Phalanx instead.

I whipped this up over the past couple of days. My first orchestral piece; I usually just use orchestral elements to supplement live recordings, but not this time. Lots of fun. The concept is the final battle against a cornered and very desperate Scarlet Briar; the first part depicts her planning, and the second part is the battle.

Enjoy.

redhand.7168:

The lore in which the “Guild Wars” took place plays no role in this new game.

We’re clearly not playing the same game.