Guild Wars 2

It will be a very slow progression in your situation. But I would put up a thread asking for help claiming and try it now, while there plenty of other small guilds that still need help.
Once you’ve claimed, or even before you’ve claimed, you can spend 50 gold and 50 favor to buy a merchant and anvil.(No minimum guild level or materials required for these two – just gold and favor) Your storage will be grandfathered in, and you’ll have a lot of basic convenience in your new guild hall. You can hit the G key, click the <Enter Guild Hall> and enjoy the convenience of being able to sell, buy basic equipment, repair armor, and access guild storage; then go right back to where you were.(instead of having to travel to town) Meanwhile you collect materials and queue up upgrades to get you to the point where you can make guild armor.
The dulfy guide linked has a lot of useful information about claiming, and your first few upgrades. The wiki page will help you work out the upgrade path you need to take to get your guild armorer, and help you decide what you do or don’t want to put resources into. Good luck.
http://dulfy.net/2015/10/23/gw2-guild-hall-claiming-and-upgrade-guide/
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_upgrade

More information – You can go in with everyone in a squad, so helpers don’t have to join the guild. The whole squad will be pulled in, so long as everyone goes in as the guild trying to claim.(There’s a selection as you enter, similar to the one when entering the Guild Initiative HQ in Lion’s Arch.) The squad leader doesn’t have to be a member of the claiming guild, either.

NWC has claimed our guild hall, with the help of the nice people from ROFL, Donari, and Black Sun Empress. Then we helped ROFL claim theirs. It went very smoothly with 9 and then with 8. It was actually fun with decent numbers. And we met some very nice people.

Thanks again to the people of ROFL, and to Donari and Black Sun Empress, who came to help purely out of kindness.

@ Leota – Friend request is fine, I’ve already friended you – so I’ll be on your “followers” list. Whatever food you want to use is fine. I asked so that we could provide it for you. As far as consumables go, I was just letting people know what works and what doesn’t. No need to go out of your way to get stuff. We will try to be in earlier, we didn’t realize your window was 5pm to 9pm. Thanks again for your help. Copying this to PM for you.

You should probably change your subject to mention account bound recipes and crafting professions, rather than race change. Some people only look at the subject, and race change is one of the “beating a dead horse” topics here.
You also mention “change race”, “race change”, and “race changing” when you really mean “making a new character of a different race”.(at the sacrifice of an old character or purchase of a new slot) I think it would help if you would edit and re-word your post.
As to your suggestion, many people craft to level new characters, rather than do world exploration. There are people who feel absolutely opposite about this from the way you do.(and this would ruin their way of leveling) So I don’t know that it would be as popular a “solution” as you think.
And it may be hard for Anet to implement. Crafting professions were always envisioned as being tied to a character. Plus there’s the role playing/lore aspect of it – why do all these characters know all the same crafts and recipes, when they didn’t all study them?

@ Yargesh – Thank you for the advice.
re: number of people – we’ve already tried with 4, and we’d like to move things along faster. (We don’t have a lot of time to play together each week.) Research seems to indicate that we shouldn’t scale up the event unless we have more than 9.

Ash Legion Spy Kit, Birthday Blaster, Golem in a Box, Fire Elemental Powder, and Ogre Pet Whistles- work

Experimental Teleportation Gun, Healing Seed Pod, Medical Kit, and Mortar Seed Turrets – do not work

It seems to follow the restrictions for dungeons/fractals, a more complete list here:
http://dulfy.net/2013/01/16/gw2-useful-and-fun-consumables-guide/

Do we know what environmental consumables, like Fire Elemental Powder, Mortar Seed Turrets, Ogre Pet Whistles, Healing Seed Pods, etc… work or don’t work? Does the instance restrict use of things like that, or some of them?(like Dungeons)

We would welcome your help, Little Leota. With your 3, Donrai, and possibly 1 other, we’d have 8 or 9, which should be optimal. And we’d certainly help your guild in return. Saturday from 7 to 11pm Eastern is best for us, but some of us could be available at other times.
What consumables do you like to run with? To Donari as well – What food/utility consumables would you want to use in this situation?
And what voice chat do you prefer?

Thank you, that’s very kind of you. I hope the oncoming weather isn’t as bad as you think it will be. Good luck.

We are a tiny guild of 4 active players,(NA region) needing help to claim Gilded Hollow. We’ll help you claim, if you’ll help us. If you want to claim Lost Precipice, we’ll help you, it’s just that we’re more familiar with Gilded Hollow.
We typically meet on Saturday evenings from 7pm to 11pm(sometimes longer ) US Eastern time zone. We’re looking to add 4 to 6 to our 4.(From what I’ve heard/read it seems to scale in increments of 10.)
We’d like to try again on this coming Saturday 2016-01-23.

Yes, forgot the Zaishen Chest. But you know what I mean.

GW1 has different keys for each of the different regional chests. The difference is, lock picks open any chest. They are a drop and can also be sold, if you would rather do that.

It would be nice to have a universal lock pick for GW2, but I think it would be better to just put keys in the wallet.(If we can only have 1 of those 2 choices)

As for fireball, it really doesn’t match its sound now. And it doesn’t look like something that does AoE damage affecting more than one target. Not that I’m asking for a nerf of any kind for fireball. I just don’t think its current look matches its sound and AoE damage.
They really needed to go about this “fix” the right way, changing things that would have the most benefit, and least negative impact first. Nerfing the visual appeal of individual skills just seems desperate and pathetic.

Rather than make a whole new storage method/system for them, I think that keys* should just go in a “key ring” section of the wallet.

• keys = anything used to open a locked container, including crow bars, chak acid, machetes, and anything else that Anet might make up for opening locked containers

re: They haven’t listened or fixed any of it unfortunately. – Go look at Elementalist auras. They’ve backed off some of the changes. The egg shape isn’t as narrow, and most of the effects have returned. They’re still harder to see than they used to be, but they’re better than they were. So they are listening at least a little, and are fixing things at least a little.
And we need them to know that’s good, and we need more of that.(Listening, and fixing these visual nerfs.)

re: Ne’er a truer word spoken. – Nope. I’ve already explained why that is false.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Visual-nerfs-Merged/5917813
More people saying the same thing is good. It adds weight to what has been said here.

If this thread isn’t accomplishing anything, why are they backing off the aura changes? As to why these have been stealth mods that are totally not in the patch notes, that’s another good question. :/

For a game that will automatically tell you you’ve already unlocked a dye, you’d think it wouldn’t let you consume a recipe with a character that doesn’t know that particular craft. Oddly, it does. Maybe this is harder to code than the dye check? Can anyone from Anet enlighten us?
OP, you might want to change your subject, to what this thread is actually about.

Zhaitan is a Personal Story boss, not a World Boss. And the fight takes place in a 1 to 5 player instances, so they’re limited in what they can do. Yes, the fight has always been disappointing, but what can they do, make him a World Boss? Then you’d finish your Personal Story at a World Boss event, that you’ve probably already done.

re: all player posts from now on, were and will inevitably be a repetition of what has already been said here, there is nothing more we can add. – No, I think more people saying the same thing is good. Different people saying the same thing make our case stronger.
Two people saying the same thing might be a coincidence, Ten people saying the same thing definitely is not. And One Hundred people saying the same thing, you probably ought pay attention to. Right?

Of course it’s not good customer service. Forbidden topics, and other forms of non-communication never are. Nor is being rude and disrespectful(like Colin’s angry, petulant “It’s not because of esports” reply on Reddit)I never implied they were. I do believe that this topic is on a “Forbidden Topic” list. If you go and carefully read the Anet “No restriction on posting” reply that Siobhan.5273 links a few posts above.(And read it like a godsforsaken lawyer) you’ll see it doesn’t rule out a “Forbidden Topic” list. (IMO) It primarily addresses who can post and where. And I’m not criticizing Gaile. She’s definitely one of the people from Anet I trust. But as a PR employee, she must be very, very careful about what she posts. And she knows exactly how to word what she needs to say.
And as I’ve said, this makes no difference, except we can quit wondering why, and demanding responses. No responses are coming until it becomes allowed. But they still need meaningful input.(Rather than “Why won’t you respond?!? We’re sick of no response!!” kinda thing. )

re: at this point they should just come out and declare “Diz da visualz now, bro! Dealz with it!!” – Casting my vote for “I think this is absolutely not what they should do.”

re: chutzpah – chutzpah is not something you use on your customers.

My overall impression is, they’re going to leave everything the way it is until they figure out what they’re going to do, or decide just to move forward without altering their original plan. Either way, we won’t get any kind of communication until it is allowed, probably just before release.(or with release in patch notes)

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or maybe more. Thank you Donari for sharing the very informative screen shot, even including the tool-tip that says “Vendors and the Trading Post will ignore items in this slot”
It also shows that they’re treated like a (separate) bag, and don’t require sacrificing regular inventory slots. And that they have a clear border differentiating them from other slots, etc…
The screen shot tells it much better:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Shared-Inventory-slots-1/5914355

re: We are not responsible for wooing them into a conversation.- Call it what you want, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. And I think I have.

I’m reasonably certain that this thread is on a “Forbidden Topic” list. I believe that Anet employees are allowed to read, but not allowed to comment on this topic. And in fact someone may be tasked with reading this thread and making note of the feedback. Because they could have closed this thread if they wanted to, but the thread is still open. It also seems that recently(my cloudy, vague version of recently) policy has changed, and Anet employees are no longer allowed to say that they aren’t allowed to comment on a given thing. They used to be able to say this, but now it seems like they’re not allowed to any more.

So at this point I’m sure there’s no way to “woo” or “goad” them into replying. No reply will come until management takes this topic off of the “Forbidden Topic” list. What we must do going forward, is keep this thread alive in a legitimate way.(not just bumping) We must continue to give useful, respectful feedback.
<edit>
TL;DR – Just because there’s no reply doesn’t mean they aren’t listening. Give them good(useful) feedback.

Instead of pictures of fashion models, I would look at an art primer. There will be advice/recommendations on relative head size and proportion there. I think it would be more relevant than static pictures, since you are actually composing figures yourself. As always, you are the best judge of what you like. Though your tastes may change/evolve over time.
Also, I really like what Donari wrote. It sounds like a good procedure for dialing in and finalizing your look, regardless of the method you choose to select it.

Maybe if we gave them something positive to comment on, like is it just me, or does FPS at Frozen Maw/Svanir Shaman not drop like a stone these last few days? Has there been some stealth optimization there?

You know, it may be that they’re silent because they don’t know how to proceed at this point. Because they’re still planning out how they want to effectively address this issue. If that’s the case, please just post something here(not Reddit) to that effect. How hard would it be to type up something like:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We’re sorry that the measures we took to address the visual noise issue were pretty much ineffective and had a negative impact on enjoyment of the game for many of you. We’re carefully examining our options and looking for a way to move forward on this with minimal negative impact. And once again, we’re sorry for the negative impact this has had. It was not our intent to make players angry. We were only trying to improve the game, and we will address this issue when we’re sure we have a good solution.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And post it.(here, not on Reddit)

Amazed at the number of people who missed in the OP’s first sentence, where it clearly said “How about some “Did you know?”s during loading screens?”

The problem with this, IMO, is the people who read patch notes and use the wiki are also the people who would look at the “Did you know?” messages in the load screens. And the people who don’t read the patch notes and wiki are probably also not going to play attention to any fun facts displayed on the loading screens.

I like the idea, but I don’t know that it would be all that beneficial.

Balancing and bug fixes on currently released material before gliding outside of HoT, and especially before any thoughts of a new expansion. Priorities.
In fact, with all the stuff HoT broke, I would say, “Let’s never do another expansion again, and just skip to GW3 with a totally new, modern engine”.

They need to work on fixing and balancing what we have now, before they even think about doing another expansion.
But let me give you my wish for Guild Wars 3. Please, please use a totally new engine. With modern architecture, that will properly support things like multi-threading, a large number of CPU cores, modern versions of DirectX, etc…
The original GW engine was made for a multi-player (not MMO) instanced game, with instances having a maximum of 8 players. It will not be suitable for another iteration of Guild Wars.(IMO, it isn’t suitable for GW2, even) So please use a totally new engine for GW3. Develop it in house or license it from a reputable 3rd party, but please just get a new engine for GW3.
And once again, it is my feeling that we should get the vast majority of bug fixes and balancing on what is currently out completed before even thinking about a new expansion.

In 3+ years of playing,(since beta) I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in Metrica, and gotten only three of them. One of those since the release of HoT. So I got very lucky. If something like this is tied to a major objective, why not increase the chance that it drops? You can always call out in map chat, ask who needs them, and give them to players who still who needs them. They can also be sold to vendors. So having more of these than you need is not an issue.
However, when we went there, a very nice person was already waiting with a crystal to take a full group of people through. He did not call out in map chat about the event, but did call out for the vendor afterwards. And when the vendor vanished, we did the event again with my crystal, and called out in map chat at the end, directing people to the vendor, and telling them why.
So while there are methods to spread out the benefit of the slight few crystals that drop, wouldn’t it be better to just increase the drop rate? Seriously?
<edit>
When you get your crystal, do the event, and spawn the vendor, please call out in map chat and direct other players to the vendor. You don’t need to do the event with a group of dozens, but please alert other players when the vendor is about to spawn, direct them to the place, and tell them why.

re: Herald Disco Disc – Yeah, that thing is visually loud and distracting. And I haven’t memorized the hieroglyphs, I look at the skill bar to know what I have active. It gives a very clear and non-visually noisy indication of what you have active atm. So there’s really no need for the hieroglyphs, or the great big, bright disc of distraction. Yet we have that, and new, enhanced (cosmetic) visual effects for Legendary weapons. And two new shoulder items that give totally cosmetic visual auras. How do these fit into their plan for reducing visual noise? They seem to be going out of their way to add visual noise.

I’d really like to know what their plans are going forward. And I know I’m not alone. How hard is it to put up a simple response?(Here instead of Reddit.)

re: I think this game still has too much “visual noise”. In raid groups or large zergs on world bosses. – It most certainly does. Because what they’ve done so far does not really address the issue. It requires a proper fix. Which would include player adjustable settings, so that each player can adjust their graphics to suit their taste/needs.

You need to please give your region, EU or NA.
And how many do you have already? It seems to scale in increments of 10, so you should keep your group 10 or under if possible.

Yes, we realize that this is a bad time of year to get anything done. Everyone does. That’s why they should have tasked someone with putting up an official response, here on the official forums. Before everyone left for the holidays.
Or better yet, don’t start a project like this right before the holidays. There would be no reason to do that except, oh wait… the esports tournament, which they swear that these visual nerfs are unrelated to.

Good or bad leadership can make a tremendous difference in how well or how poorly things turn out.

re: If people actually read what to do we wouldn’t need commanders. – This might be somewhat correct, but good leadership will always make things go smoother.(If people are willing to follow and not oblivious) Not that having a tag is an assurance of good leadership.

And +1 to moving or making an option to disable “Compact”.

Moving “Destroy” and “Consume All” to opposite sides of “Use” would go a long way to solving this. I can’t see how the UI guys didn’t think of this while implementing the change. I would prefer a positioning fix to yet another confirmation dialog.

If you’re asking “Do they quit dropping?”, yes.(except for the home instance Wintersday Tree)
If you’re asking if the ones in your inventory, bank, on the TP, etc.. suddenly go away, no.

I want to be on your team

re: Gallant and Goofus – Wow, is that still running, or are you as old as I am?

Back on topic – You’re blowing it out of proportion and ignoring context. And you can hardly say Gallant would approve of griefing. If I recall, that strip ran in a Boy Scout publication. :p Gallant would report someone who was blatantly disregarding the rules and griefing others. You know he would.

Yes, not having English as your first language is a disadvantage on these forums. Let me please answer your question about wording:

You would say the situation as whole was handled badly.

I’m just giving you advice on your wording, though. This isn’t any kind of statement that I agree or disagree.

re: That’s the problem with this supposed policy. It cannot be enforced at this moment because there are no rules against it. – You might want to go back and actually read the rules you clicked through without looking at them because you didn’t care.

re: Sure, people can quote the User Agreement, but what sort of “laws” are going to be written down? – You might go back, read, and try to understand all those rules that you clicked through without looking at them because you didn’t care.

It’s Anet’s house, and you agreed to the rules.(regardless of whether you read and understood them or not) If a guest in my house chooses to misbehave, I am within my rights to ask him to leave. The rules are set down in print, and you’re supposed to read them before you agree to them.

<edit: In before someone asks – Yes, I did read them. And it took forever, but I did read them all. I always read something I’m supposed to agree to. How else can you agree , unless you know what you’re agreeing to?>

re: series known as “Tripe by J J Abrams – Considering how horribly JJ Abrams butchred Star Trek, I must admit I’m concerned. I would actually like certain spoilers. But if I want spoilers, I can choose to seek them out, in the proper places. I don’t want them barfed into map chat for everyone to see by some jerk, for the purposes of griefing.

re: instead of reporting and banning instance hijackers or genuine map griefers, you want people to report other people who spoil a MOVIE – What gives you the impression that Anet only wants Start Wars griefing reported.? This is merely a clarification of rules that already exist. Griefing is and always has been punishable. Anet wants players to report any form of griefing, not just Star Wars griefing. Why would you think otherwise?

re: No. There is a block option. Learn to use it. – So blocking someone will erase the memory of what they just typed? When did that feature get added?!? That’s great. ‘Cuz there is so much garbage in map chat I wish I’d never seen.
Seriously, look at this in context. You can certainly block someone who continues to harass you.(or even starts to harass or grief you) But that guy knew it wouldn’t work against his spoiler. Because once they’ve read it, it’s too late. So please have a little common sense, this is a unique situation. And customer service is going to handle each report on an individual basis. They don’t have a chat filter in place that’s going to auto-ban anyone who types certain Star Wars key words in. A person is going to look at the chat log and make a judgement call, to see if it’s griefing, or just a simple discussion. The whole point was not what was typed, it was why. He wasn’t discussing anything, he was griefing. And griefing is against the rules, and is punishable.

re: TBH you shouldn’t be on the internet if you care about spoilers. You’re gonna be spoiled one way or another regardless, all you can do is disable all the chats. – Either you didn’t read anything in the thread or you’re being deliberately obtuse, or both. GW2 is not a chat room, news site, social media site, or SciFi fan publication. If I went to any of those places, I would be begging for spoilers. But GW2 is a game. Chat is included for game functionality. And while chat is not limited to be used for game purposes only, it is primarily for game purposes. It is a reasonable expectation that I can log in to GW2, and make use of local and map chat, and LFG, for gaming purposes. It is not reasonable to expect me to turn off local and map chat, and avoid LFG, because jerks want to spread spoilers.
That said however, if I really wanted to be safe from spoilers, I would turn off local and map chat, and avoid LFG. Because yeah, it can happen. Even by accident.

re: Why on earth is this reportable? – The OP, Gaile, and most of the other posters in this merged thread are talking about people deliberately spamming spoilers in map chat. (for the purpose of griefing) Not someone who accidentally types in local or map chat instead of whisper or party chat.
Like Gaile said, CS will make individual judgements per report.

re: Just turn off map/local chat to avoid spoilers. – Yes, I could turn off local and map chat if I wanted to avoid spoilers. But I’m using local and map chat to play the game. The (reportable) players in question are not using map or local chat to play the game – they are deliberately using it for griefing. Legitimate in-game use > abuse for purposes of griefing.
Keep in mind, map chat isn’t like going into a restaurant and quietly talking to someone in the same booth, or going into an office building and entering a conference room to discuss something. Map chat is like marching up to the cashier in the restaurant, or the receptionist in the office building, taking the PA, and saying “Attention everyone: [Star Wars spoiler]”. It is not private in any way – it is a form of Public Address. Everyone sees it.
Local chat is like standing up in a large room, and raising your voice so that everyone in the room can hear, to say “Attention everyone: [Star Wars spoiler]”. You are not privately talking to one person over in a corner of the room, off from everyone else. Local chat is like standing up in that room and addressing everyone present.
And that is what the players in question are doing. They are not making legitimate, in-game use for chat. They’re using chat to be jerks because they think they can’t be punished for it.
If you want to discus Star Wars ep7 “in-game”, please use private methods. You can always party up, or join a squad, or whisper. Please use those private forms of chat. Or voice chat, which would be even easier to communicate, and even more private. .Map and local chats are for in-game use, more than they are for off-topic information(specifically being used for griefing)
And again, thank you ArenaNet for taking a stand against griefing.

re: This is another stepping stone towards the world you deserve. I hope you enjoy it when it gets here and you remember your efforts that helped to bring it about. – Utterly preposterous. A gaming company has taken mild steps to keep players from being jerks to each other. How is this a stepping stone to the apocalypse? The people who will hold off that world that you are so desperately afraid of, are the people who stand up for their rights and the rights of others. Not people who roll over and give up, saying things like “Pain and suffering are part of life – put up with them.” and “Bad people are inevitable, let them win.”
In many places, people have a right to do what they want, including be mean and hateful to others. But does that make it right to do so? And what kind of people are we, if we let it happen?