Guild Wars 2

I’d rather see it random to be honest. More exciting and surprising, less farmable, fewer players rigidly scheduling their game time around the most optimal farm clock. But I suspect I’ll be in a minority here, heh.

Rather than ‘lore friendly’ I guess a better term is ‘au naturel’ sylvari :P But sure! My guardian Dwynn is rockin’ a combo of Tier 1/Tier 2 cultural.

My engy sylvari has less of an aversion to non-leafy clothes though.

LordByron.8369:

“If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it,
that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game.”

DevonCarver.5370:

zen.6091:

I take it that since legendaries will soon be able to have stat changes out of combat, it would be possible to do this for other gear?

I don’t see that happening and the main reason is that it sets Legendaries apart. It makes them cooler, it makes them more worth trying to get if you care about stats and not just looks. I could be proven wrong at some point, but I don’t expect us to head down that road.

P.S. No.

2 quotes from the old anet and the new anet…..

This is very important to highlight and I know I seethed when I saw that quote in the dev tracker. We’ve gone quite clearly from ‘Legendaries are stand-out cosmetically, but that’s it’ to ‘Legendaries will always be best in slot because now we have a gear treadmill’ and now even ‘Legendaries are now going to be more flexible in terms of stats than all other weapons, increasing their utility above all other weapons and thus providing a build diversity advantage to everyone who owns one’.

If you can’t call that a 180 reversal on a design promise, I don’t know what is.

If you take the Scarlet short story, that has her pretty brutally murder her mentor at the end of it, and compare it to the anime silly team rocket tone that you actually see in game for her . . . yeah, it’s a bit frustrating. I like a lot of the lighthearted stuff in GW2, but there is definitely a little too much of it. We could do with some serious business.

I think you misunderstood ‘interpersonal/interplay’.

She’s pretty superficially related to them at best, and driving them to actions that generally have very little to do with their own cultures and causes, so it’s definitely not the way I wanted it.

While I think it’s a good idea for Anet to start implementing permanent content, I’m a) not sure this is the type of permanent content I’d like to see, and b) would much prefer them to develop the dozens of unresolved conflicts occurring on current maps from level 0+ instead of inventing new, frivolous villains out of nowhere to crash the party every month.

I want to see the Nightmare Court plot some new heinous scheme as part of their ongoing conflict with the Grove sylvari. I want to see centaurs gain ground with some fiendish new war strategy, or the Flame Legion lay siege to the Black Citadel, or the Sons of Svanir start brewing something nasty for Hoelbrak.

We have so many underdeveloped villain factions that are established and could be given some real depth and memorable ringleaders outside of the personal story, and I don’t understand why we got one-dimensional-super-genius-just-because-Scarlet before Anet considered developing all these other half-finished ideas in their stead.

Ah, my bad. Sorry!

You can’t get every achievement by failing. The most time-consuming ones, in fact, require you to “stop Scarlet’s portal invasions”.

100% support. The barriers to completing and enjoying Clockwork Chaos because of this problem are ridiculous.

ArchonWing.9480:

Faowri.4159:

ArchonWing.9480:

I really hate it to break it to some of you, but not every item is going to be useful to you.

Is there a genuinely good reason for it not to be useful to everyone, though? I can’t think of one.

Actually no when the purpose of the item falls outside a ocean of unlimited wants. The item was built with the (slightly added convenience) purpose of getting you to roll a completely new character. It was most likely figured out that the first 20 levels are too trivial or something. All you really have to do is convince them the remaining 60 are the same.

Also, it’s not like any of us did anything to earn it. If you did, then you could argue that your effort went to waste. Here, it’s hard to say claim a loss of significant value.

I don’t really think it’s about ‘earning’ it. It’s a gift, so it would have made sense to ensure it had relevance to everyone who was going to receive it. I respect the fact that they want people to make alts, but lots of people have already done so.

I’m not upset or anything. I just think it’s a waste, really. More pointless bank space baggage.

Gender-variable armour is bad enough :P Please, no, to gender-specific dances.

Better reconnect functionality is desperately needed if Anet wants to persist with this type of event design in the future. So far I’ve been thrown out of four invasions by a random disconnect, twice once Scarlet appears.

I’ve already given up on getting any of the ‘invasions in different maps’ achievements because of this, but it would have been nice to at least get the daily today to try and make up my meta-achievement that way. NOPE. Dropped twice. My internet is fine, my signal bar is full, I’ve dropped all of my graphics settings, all to no avail. I may try again later, but trying to do this LW meta is currently much more frustrating than fun, and I don’t play for frustration.

ArchonWing.9480:

I really hate it to break it to some of you, but not every item is going to be useful to you.

Is there a genuinely good reason for it not to be useful to everyone, though? I can’t think of one.

Sobat.8650:

Only if it was soul-bound to the specific birthday character.

Yeah, this would be a great compromise.

I do have 2-3 alts I haven’t touched yet though they’ve been sitting there since launch day, so the current scrolls are only partially useless for me. A couple of alts have already inched past level 20 over the months, through crafting or occasional breaks from my mains, so the scrolls are no good for them.

So much of the game design is not alt-friendly that it seems an odd move to lock it down this way. Even stuff like only buying one instance of a skin from the gemstore instead of unlocking the skin across your account.

Weindrasi.3805:

I can sympathize with the people who say “Well, females have felt this way for generations! Now males occasionally feel it, and they freak out!”. For years, women characters have been sub-par, and women players have been largely ignored. I bet a lot of women players have a lot of pent-up frustration from that.

That said, reverse-sexism is still wrong. That’s why, if this game was truly sexist against men, I would be concerned. However, I don’t think you’re correct, OP.
The living story has featured a good number of strong, well-written female characters. However, if you examine the game as a whole, it’s pretty 50/50. Strong, excellent male characters include…
Tybalt! Who doesn’t love Tybalt? He’s full of personality.
Forgal! He’s also got a great, well-developed personality. He’s rough and masculine, intelligent, practical, and he’s got a hilarious sense of humor.
Bhuer Goreblade! He’s a competent centurion of the Iron Legion, and an early mentor for charr characters
Maverick, Clawspur, and Dinky! Each of these warband-mates has a unique personality and take on life.
Trahearne! Yeah, you heard me. Arenanet screwed up in portraying him in the personal story, but seriously. The guy is a scholar and hero devoted to saving Orr. He leads the Pact—was able to successfully bring together the three Orders and hold them together. He is able to interact with all the races—even those who are generally unfriendly, like the Largos.
Dougal Keane! This guy doesn’t play a major role in your character’s story, but he is the hero of the Ghosts of Ascalon novel. Because of him, the charr and humans were able to form their alliance.
Steward Gixx! The leader of the Durmand Priory. He’s a humorous character, because he gets so frustrated with Sieran, but you can tell that he really cares about her and about the priory. He’s a wise and competent leader.

Also, there are lots of historic male characters like Cobiah Marriner, Pyre Fierceshot, Prince Rurik, Durmand, Ventari, Ronan, and Snaff!

Lastly, just because Guild Wars 2 portrays female personalities and roles so well, that doesn’t mean it’s flawless.
Females can still only pick a small range of rail-thin (eating disorder, anyone?) body types with exaggerated sexual traits (big breasts, flirty idle animations). Unlike some of the male faces, no female faces have any scars or flaws (except for one norn face with a few scratches). The humanoid female characters, like Eir, Jennah, and so-on, all look like supermodels. Lastly, some of the armors still give male characters a completely covering robe, and female characters a corresponding bikini. So the message that females must appeal sexually to men, in order to be important, is still there.

That’s not to say Guild Wars 2 is bad. It’s a great game. Just, it isn’t all peachy and perfect when it comes to portrayal of women

Excellent, constructive post, and thank you for highlighting that doing well in one area of gender representation doesn’t necessarily mean the whole game is completely free of tired gender stereotypes.

The more obvious sexist stereotypes are still important issues, though, and as you say, because they’re more obvious and easier to analyse, they inevitably get more attention. Not all of it, though. I read plenty of feminist blogs which critique at more subtle levels.

I was almost with you until the shot at Sarkeesian :P She emphasises at the beginning of every video she creates that enjoying media doesn’t exclude you from being able to recognise or talk about its problematic aspects, and she breaks down very specific aspects of the media (plot devices, characters within it, etc.) she talks about rather than saying DIS GAME R BAD. So much of the criticism levelled at her is at things people say she says, instead of what she actually says, so . . . just wanted to point that out.

Bovinity.8610:

It is funny…I’ve never seen a game with so many strong female main characters, in so many positions of leadership, and with such large roles. And I doubt anyone would claim that Zojja is “sexualized”. =D

And yet if you ask the “typical feminist blogger” about GW2, they’ll say it’s awful because they saw a screenshot of some Female Human Light Armor set that was too revealing, and thus it’s a horribly sexist game that oppresses females and blah blah. Mostly because that’s the easy route.

It is possible for a game to have both brilliantly diverse/representative and problematic elements, you know. The problematic elements don’t go away just because they did good in a different area of the game. That’s why flat-out THIS GAME IS SEXIST statements are completely useless for critical analysis.

Interesting read. I hadn’t considered the LW/GW2 cast from this angle.

Although I have to be honest and say that as it’s actually quite rare for decent female characters to outnumber decent male characters in a particular cast or context, especially in video games which still suffer so badly from tokenism as far as female characters go, I don’t personally find it quite so terrible (especially while some of said female characters are pretty awfully written anyway). Female gamers have been putting up with this kind of cast imbalance for decades, after all.

That said, in all things balance and diversity are usually the best thing as far as gender goes in a cast. I wouldn’t complain if we got more interesting male characters thrown into the mix.

Since karma is now account-bound, and they intend to remove bonuses from karma boosters, it makes more sense to just get rid of them as drops and have the karma just go straight into your wallet really. There’s literally no point in storing it anymore.

The first few days of a new release are typically the public testing experience :P ‘S why I generally don’t play new content until a few days in.

Sprawler.5612:

Oh, also? “Eeeeveryone’s heard about Scarlet!”

Yeaaaaaah. The writers really need to work on building villains instead of pulling them out of thin air like this. Especially if they’re so super special that they apparently are a master student of all three asura colleges and mentors from every other race ever.

Irikol.3495:

That makes sense in real life, but in a game world? No. You shouldn’t have to wait HOURS in line to get on the new ride, it should be available from the start of when it was released unless there is a long quest chain interfering with it. It’s not fun to stand in line for hours, or hope that people will let you cut in front of them.

Considering Anet themselves have previously made statements to the effect of “waiting to play the game isn’t fun”, this is a very reasonable analogy.

A heads up is always appreciated on these things. That said, doesn’t personally affect me since I always threw on whatever booster I had on me and just used that rather than trying to squeeze every drop of karma out of a consumable. I used up my hoard as soon as karma became account bound.

I’m pleased with the change overall as now I don’t feel like I need to wait until I have a boost on to use the kitten things and let them clog up my inventory in the meantime. Now we just need to get rid of karma consumables altogether and just have karma rewards dumped straight into your wallet for maximum convenience, minimum clutter and exactly the same results.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Faowri.4159:

Soulbound is stupid and needs to go away.

It’s needed for certain things, but the Devs need to fully consider potential issues when they do use it.

I think it’s very rare that it does much over and above account-bound. In the vast majority of cases, account-bound should be the lowest boundary they drop to.

Soulbound is stupid and needs to go away.

I saw someone in the bug forum suggest always opening the chests from the stairs below the top, rather than running straight up there. Don’t know if it works, but I can say I didn’t have a glitched tower once I started doing this, so maybe it makes a difference.

Jamais vu.5284:

That’s interesting to say when most cosplayers I see are female. And not conservatively dressed ones at that.

Women choosing what to wear on their own bodies is pretty different to designing a character with no agency of its own to be sexualised. Besides which, do you not stop to think that the reason female cosplayers have such a gigantic pool of skimpy costumes to pick from is because, I don’t know, the media is a little oversaturated with them?

You seem to be implying that I have a problem with sexy costumes/designs. I don’t. It should always be optional, though, when it comes to player characters wearing it, and if it’s part of the story then it should serve the narrative. Everything has its time and place. For me, the watchknights fit neither.

Your ideas about added character models make all perfect sense in a world where Anet has unlimited resources.

Funny how there always seem to be enough resources to give male/gender-neutral/less humanoid characters diversity, but never female. Odd, that.

@Crazylegs: Thank you for the considered reply Breath of fresh air to have some civil discussion on the matter.

Pisak.8507:

And… This is everything? Looks like the smallest update this year.

I hope so! I’d actually appreciate a nice, modest little story-driven LW component after all that achievement grind the past few months.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Static.9841:

Would you mind explaining to me then, why nobody, not one person has ever come to the forums, male or female, to complain about why every male character in this game (with the possible exception of Charr) are pretty much the vision of adonis and stereotyping males as big musclebound warriors or why males haven’t complained that it’s damaging to men who can’t live up to this perfect vision?

Sexism works both ways.

I would love to know the answer to that as well. So many people seem to get all bent out of shape when females are shown in a way that they deem offensive or sexist, but men seem to always be fair game.

That is why I often say that we should be focusing on gender equality for both genders, not just one or the other.

The short answer is that men are idealised to be something most men want to be (according to designers/marketing/stereotype). Women are often idealised to be something men want to look at/own (again, according to designers/marketing/stereotype). Read up on the “male gaze” for a full answer here.

There are certainly grounds for discussing the presentation of male characters in video games as harmful, but it’s strange how people usually only want to bring it up when other people are discussing the presentation of women and the female form, as a way of shutting the latter down. There is no reason both cannot be discussed in equal terms, but ultimately power fantasies, while potentially negative, are still empowering for men, and sexual fantasies tend to be limiting for women.

Male human characters can have a fairly diverse range of body types, from the skinny scholar to the sculpted gladiator, and Anet wasn’t afraid to make the norn range from chunky to huge. They also have a range of faces from cute and young to older and wizened. With female characters, we had to fight tooth and nail to get some non-hourglass huge-boobed female human builds added to the game at the last minute in beta, and even then we couldn’t get any true buff ladies added to the human roster (the new types were literally added after a thread about the topic took off and a dev who cared posted to say he was bringing the matter to the artists). There is also one token old-looking face that had barely any effort put into it at all – again added at the last minute, and only because we cried out for some older faces. For the norn, their entire body type is different to their male counterpart to ensure that, yet again, they are attractive when it’s okay for the men not to be.

So there are representation issues in GW2, no matter how progressive it has been on certain fronts. If you are concerned about the representation of men, by all means, create a forum thread on it. Nobody’s stopping you. People talking about the watchknight issue are not stopping you. It doesn’t have to be either/or. I have actually engaged in a lot of discussion online about the problems with the stereotypical presentation of ‘masculinity’ when it’s brought up. Have you?

Tsubaki.8732:

I do agree that difficult content has its place in the game, but it should be a separate thing from the standard content/main achievement of an update. Every standard skill level player should be able to “finish” a Living Story, i.e. get the main achievement plus reward. And then there could be an additional, optional “hard mode” achievement/reward for those who think they are hot stuff (e.g. “OK, we sent the bad guys running and everybody who helped gets a title and some exotic socks, but we found out where the main villain is hiding, go do this instance for an additional reward – but this will be difficult”).

That way everybody can say “yup, did this Living Story and got the title/reward”, and the hard mode players can show off their additional shinies.

One additional thing: I really do like the way this new Living Story update works. In previous updates, I often had the problem that to get the overall reward, I had to do all those individual achievements, among which there always were quite a few which I really did not want to do. Either some pvp arena stuff, or dungeons, or win some other annoying minigame. And most of the time, you could only leave out 1-2 and still get the overall reward. Which was why I did not finish the last two Living Story updates – I could not leave out the annoying stuff (like e.g. Sprint/aspect arena) and still do the overall achievement. The new daily achievements for the Living Story really help out, because now I can ignore the annoying things and still finish the Living Story. So, keep this up please, and do not force players to do ALL parts of a Living Story update (e.g. new minigames) to get the main achievement.

Yeah, I really love the implementation of the achievements this time. I know I will probably end up barely touching QG, but I can and have still participated in the QJ achievements, and if there were any achievements there that gave me any difficulty, I could have waited for a more accessible daily to roll along.

It’s easily the most accessible Living World update to date. Cordoning off the difficult content into its own category was a stroke of genius and the dailies make the easier stuff more flexible.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

What I really think is important for us is to recognize that agreeing with the OP isn’t necessarily “stupid” or “sexist” or “anti-feminist.” If she as a woman prefers more “elegant” armor in combat, even if it’s less realistic, then that’s just her choice.

Yeah. Feminists are also (if female) women, and women unsurprisingly are not a hive mind. We all have differences of opinion over what’s feminine and what isn’t, and honestly everyone gets hung up on the word too much. If a woman likes it, fine. If a man likes it, fine. Who cares if it fits some vague definition of what’s traditionally associated to their gender.

I’m all for better diversity in the armour sets for both genders, although I’d point blank prefer to see much less gender imbalance in the sets. Some of the male versions vs female versions of one set are so different they could have been two completely different armour sets – and that would have given better options for characters of both genders, as well as stop locking out the male-default races from some of the prettified and skimpy sets that female characters seem to get.

It’s not evenly distributed across the classes, either. Light armour needs a lot more less overtly feminine sets for the ladies, and a lot more revealing and/or sexy sets for the men. Medium armour could use more revealing options across the gender board, and desperately needs fewer trenchcoat looks. Heavy armour does better, with plenty of revealing options for men and non-revealing options for the ladies, but I could get behind some more elegant-looking heavy sets. Some of the sylvari cultural stuff for the ladies is beautiful, for example, and personally I feel like I’ve got my sylvari guardian looking almost like a ‘caster’.

I know Anet probably wanted to make each armour class distinct, but they have fallen into a rut with the design patterns for each one. More diversity within each class is desperately needed, for both genders (and available to both genders, please).

It’s definitely glitchy – I had 3 towers glitch on me. Finally managed to finish the achievement this evening though . . . it was easily the worst one of the Jubilee achievements. Even without the glitches, it took too long, isn’t likely to be achievable for newer players as you need to visit so many maps, and was just grindy and boring. Hated every second of it . . . but really wanted that balloon :P

As a casual player, based mainly on time available to play, I know that my chances of beating Liadri before the QG goes away this time are pretty slim. Knowing how difficult she is from player chatter makes me not too fussed about it, though. It’s not like you get a game-changing reward from beating her.

I’m all for making the game accessible, but I’d also say there needs to be very hard content available. I think it would be nice if it wasn’t time-limited, but that’s the only criticism I’d give. There are tough challenges in GW1 that I never did manage to beat, despite playing that game for 5 years. It’s okay. I survived.

Gotta say, I also love being able to actually look up in the sky and see that something is happening. The first time I saw it I ran over there without even paying attention the event indicators because it was just so visually obvious that something interesting was happening.

I’m not sure if Queensdale needs to change, so much as all the other maps need to have enough frequently-occurring event content with a similar level of rewards to make Queensdale no longer special. That would improve player distribution. A lot of higher level maps have nowhere near the amount and frequency of event content as the lower level maps do.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Faowri.4159:

I don’t believe that all straight men enjoy this kind of content because I don’t generalise the preferences of an entire gender, but when you have sexualised female figures as art and decoration, it’s usually designed, intentionally or through internalised patterns, to appeal to the straight male demographic. I don’t think that’s unfair to say?

I think it is unfair to see that as a negative. Many sports cars are designed with curves and such that are pleasing to the eye. Many things take elements from what we consider “feminine” to make them more pleasing.

I think it’s negative when it’s exclusionary of a great deal of the playerbase, especially when you are a company that has been very outspoken about ensuring your game design is inclusive, and have many staff on board who are very passionate about representation issues in gaming. There are lots of people who do not enjoy sexualised content, full-stop, just as there are lots of people for whom a sexualised female figure (which is hardly a lacking resource in the gaming industry) does nothing, or may even find to be a turn-off. There’s not a whole lot of justification for pandering to one section of your playerbase and forgetting the rest.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Faowri.4159:

(and they do look cool, but in context I still feel they’re out of place and I’m still annoyed that sexualised content is yet again targeted at men, and only men).

This is an assumption I don’t agree with. There is nothing to support this claim at all, nor do I think it’s realistic to assume only men find this sexualized, or even all men for that matter.

I don’t believe that all straight men enjoy this kind of content because I don’t generalise the preferences of an entire gender, but when you have sexualised female figures as art and decoration, it’s usually designed, intentionally or through internalised patterns, to appeal to the straight male demographic. I don’t think that’s unfair to say?

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

It’s ok to have female robots. It’s ok to have them sexualized. The trick is to make sure it’s in context, and to make sure it’s not one sided. With all the shirtless, muscle bound, speedo wearing, manly-mans, in this game, I’m not too concerned that it’s suddenly sexist and unequal.

I don’t necessarily agree that we have a somewhat equal distribution of sexualised men in the game as we do women (and bear in mind that I do consider GW2, in many ways, extremely progressive in terms of gender representation, so I’m not outright shooting it down). There are lots of imbalanced armour sets for scholars, for example, and lots of cases like the recent phoenix set that lavished a lot of scantily-clad detail on the women and provided only a lacklustre carbon copy of the usual buttcape design for men. There are lots of designs that are very even between the genders, but at the same time we again have very few revealing sets for males of certain classes, and as a straight female I’d really like to see more of them.

Like I’ve said before, I’m really not an opponent of sexualised content when it’s done right, and I agree with your comment that what’s best for the story is best. What many people have seen as a sexualised fembot is hard to justify as being best for the story in this case, however. They feel terribly out of place to me here and there’s not a lot of lore context to support that it’s anything more than what the designers thought looked cool (and they do look cool, but in context I still feel they’re out of place and I’m still annoyed that sexualised content is yet again targeted at men, and only men).

Leading on from that, I’m of the opinion that if sexualised or sexy content is what you’re going for, then great – but remember that your audience doesn’t only contain straight males, so there ought to be a little something for everybody in there. It’s not ‘tokenism’ to be inclusive of all your players.

Kelayda.8359:

The more I think about this the angrier I get because wouldn’t it make sense to have the Watchknights look like the Avatar of Dwayna? Wouldn’t it be a smarter political move for Jennah to tie her reign with one of the six, especially the one that’s the first and tied with leadership and health?

Especially since Dwayna has feathers in her motif, it would’ve matched the Seraph well and the Watchknights wouldn’t look so out of place.
(Posting again because I like to have solutions when I critique something.)

My initial thought on where the design might have came from was the Chronomancer designs from GW1, but then somebody else with the same idea pointed to the actual concept art and they’re not as close as I thought they were: link

Still, it’s a good example of how the watchknight design could have been both desexualised and gender balanced, if that was the aesthetic they were going for.

I also rolled my eyes when I saw the design. Part of me wanted to bring it up in the forums, but the other part is kind of exhausted by similar topics. I don’t actually have a problem with sexualised aesthetics in general, but it a) feels pretty out of place in GW2, and b) as always, only seems to apply to one gender.

I assume male watchknights come with beautifully engraved, prominent, shiny codpieces. When do we get to see those?

Fishing needs to be a mini game for this reason. I love fishing minigames <3

I can’t honestly see a single compelling reason to make anything soulbound in this game. Accountbound does the job for restricting stuff to a player’s inventory, but soulbound is just plain inconvenience, and the devs are far too heavy handed with it.

Even the fireworks from Dragon Bash were soulbound – what’s the logic? They were something I might have stored in the bank for guild events and social gatherings, but then I’d have to take one particular character to those things, so instead I deleted them all.

They might as well, since there’s a well-known way to achieve the same function anyway.

Randomised weather/environment patterns would be great. I liked in FFXII how the weather affected what enemies could be found, for example, and in GW2 it would be great to see particular events only occurring during certain weather patterns.

As I said in another thread, the problem with the current ‘living world’ concept is that it’s not really ‘living’. It’s a temporary, themed release focusing very intently on a particular limited plot, that usually only affects most maps in a shallow and artificial way e.g. via the holograms or the parachute drops. For the world to really feel like it’s alive, the everyday events and enemies of the everyday maps need to be rotated and changed on a more regular basis, in a way that is relevant to that map.

On an even simpler level, having sudden flurries of snowstorms or heavy rain could impose environmental debuffs, and other challenges that make a map you’ve run through a hundred times a bit more interesting.

Overall, totally in favour of this. The human intro is my favourite due to the drama and excitement of the storm you’re fighting in.

I faced the same problem yesterday about at about 112 scraps. To bump it up I bought about a gold’s worth of Heavy Loot Bags on the TP and managed to nudge up to 150 that way. The only reason I even had that many to begin with was thanks to a one-off 50 fortune scraps I got :P

lordkrall.7241:

They never actually said that you would be able to have unrestricted guesting across data-centers, people just assumed (for some silly reason) that you could.

Hindsight’s 20/20. It was a very widespread assumption prior to guesting details being released that ‘you can play with any friend on any server via guesting’, and most importantly, it went unrefuted by ArenaNet until final guesting details were released. You’d think if they hadn’t intended for it to be interpreted the way it so widely was, they would have said something :P

Yeah, being picky and accepting inconvenience/costs that were not advertised is the only way it can be taken as true :P There was much more quoteworthy material on the ArenaNet blog, which I remember because I was glued to that daily prior to release, but it’s dead now

Either way, the impression given prior to release was that a) you can guest on any server you’re not part of, for free, if you have friends there and b) region doesn’t matter, we want you to play with the people you want to play with. That’s not how it ended up working, so I consider it a broken promise. It’s one that disappointed me considerably and ended up splitting apart me and several friends who played together during the free server transfer period when the guesting reality was finally revealed.

I think what I expected more of was ‘everyday’ changes to maps in terms of rotating out old events, putting new ones in, developing old event chains into something new, etc. When I say ‘everyday’ changes I mean stuff based on existing world conflicts and problems, rather than big releases under a huge fanfare like the Living World has evolved into.

It would be nice, when I’m replaying Map X on character number 4, to stumble across new events I hadn’t seen before, or to see that situation Y that was here when I came through last had become something else. But all the living world stuff focuses on big, temporary themed changes driven by achievement grind and reward-hunting rather that minor changes to the everyday content that would really make the world feel subtly alive.