Guild Wars 2

I think the problem for a lot of people though is that this isn’t humans or norn or charr discovering that what they previously knew is part of something larger, this is Asura knowing everything and all of the other races having some reductive simplistic understanding of the world that is wrong. At least for me that is the problem, you can’t have equality between races when one race is the designated ‘we know everything/figure everything out’ race. You can argue that each race brings something unique to the collective, but the Asuras involvement has become ridiculously deus ex machina, as other people consistently point out.

I think the thing to remember with the Eternal Alchemy is that it can basically be used as an excuse to explain anything. The Eternal Alchemy is just the working of the world, it isn’t necessarily a theory of creation. So while the game does present as specifically Asuran, I don’t really think it is. The Eternal Alchemy I guess you could sort of compare to the circle of life or something like that, it’s just how things are and work?

But I completely understand hating Anet using Asura as some supremely intelligent beings who have managed to explain away everything else in the world.

What is the point of having humans believe in the gods or the norn believe in the spirits when the Asura can just come along and say ‘lol guys, all of that is just a really really tiny aspect of the all encompassing eternal alchemy, you’re such bookahs’ – it’s a cop out and it is bad storytelling.

If anything goes wrong, ever, do this:

you can try to delete the contents of the gw2 data folder, it’s a pain to get to the right one: this step is a general fix for many tp and graphics issues, even without the previous steps however, it will lose all saved log in/password and in-game settings.
To access this:
1 Click on the “Finder” icon located in your dock or the desktop of your computer to make “Finder” the active program in the finder menu bar.
2 Hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard while clicking “Go” in the finder menu bar. A drop-down will appear.
3 While still holding down the “Option” key, click on “Library” in the “Go” drop-down.
4 Once in the Library folder click on Application Support > Guild Wars 2
5 Move the entire Guild Wars 2 folder to the trash and then empty the trash.
The next time you launch Guild Wars 2 it will recreate the recently deleted folder.

Follow those instructions TO THE LETTER. If that doesn’t work then come back and say so because you have a genuine problem which needs to be figured out

I’m really sorry that you’ve unfortunately run across the bad half of the community. But there really are a ton of players who aren’t going to mind that you’re new and don’t have a lot of AP.

Just make sure you don’t join any dungeon groups that are advertising as speed runs, those are the people you want to avoid!

Yeah you probably just managed to get somewhere they didn’t expect you to get yet xD. I would hazard a guess that it will be opened up properly in the next release.

Nope, there is no referral system or buddy system or buddy keys or anything like that.

I sort of agree because it means players actually know what is going on, but the sheer AMOUNT of exposition is deplorable. Exposition is one of the least creative ways to deliver story and information, there’s a reason writers and films get a lot of criticism if they employ exposition…

Follow these instructions TO THE LETTER.

You can try to delete the contents of the gw2 data folder, it’s a pain to get to the right one: this step is a general fix for many tp and graphics issues, even without the previous steps however, it will lose all saved log in/password and in-game settings.
To access this:
1 Click on the “Finder” icon located in your dock or the desktop of your computer to make “Finder” the active program in the finder menu bar.
2 Hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard while clicking “Go” in the finder menu bar. A drop-down will appear.
3 While still holding down the “Option” key, click on “Library” in the “Go” drop-down.
4 Once in the Library folder click on Application Support > Guild Wars 2
5 Move the entire Guild Wars 2 folder to the trash and then empty the trash.
The next time you launch Guild Wars 2 it will recreate the recently deleted folder.

Wait what, are you honestly trying to say the the Oculus Rift is going to have some kind of impact on GW2? It’s not, most people don’t have the money or need for a superfluous VR headset O_o.

To be fair with GW1 they were campaigns rather than expansions. And yes there is a difference. I knew a LOT of players in GW1 who had Factions but did not have the original game, the fact that you could just buy ONE of the three and ignore the rest makes it pretty difficult to equate to an expansion. They were taking the same formula each time and creating a new level 1-20 experience, rather than simply adding on to what was already there. GW1 had the fortune of not having to appeal to the hordes of players who want “end-game”, and I think they’re sort of trying to appeal to the same people with GW2. Because lets face it, the game isn’t about a traditional MMO end-game, it’s just about fun content.

+1 to this, Tera actually has a decent solution to this, when you move the mouse it leaves behind kind of a blurry trail, which makes it incredibly easy to locate (outside of combat mode). So I am wondering if that kind of thing could work for GW2 as well, I would rather NOT make the cursor giant or anything :S

@Crovax, FFXIV is appealing to a different crowd. It’s sub numbers are very low – which is fine because as a sub game it doesn’t need a ton of subscribers to still break even. So yeah, they are able to put stuff like that in, but GW2 is doing just fine with the kind of content they’re releasing at the moment, I don’t see them changing what they’re doing. And to clarify I completely get what everyone is saying, I’ve been playing FFXIV this month because the GW2 story release didn’t take me super long, but GW2 is a B2P game which players can return to whenever they want – it was never designed to be a hardcore gamers paradise.

Waypoints in GW2 are more like resurrection shrines in GW1, which were actually scattered throughout zones, though in far fewer numbers than waypoints. What I’m saying is the point of waypoints is that if you die you can get back to the content you were doing very quickly, and if you want to play with your friend you can also get to their location quickly.

So yeah, waypoints are numerous, but it’s kind of good that they are. If they want to remove a fewwww of them then that’s fine, but if they start removing a ton of waypoints I won’t be behind them. WP’s are good, they minimise the time spent unnecessarily running from point to point.

But the same thing happens in EVERY SINGLE MMO, regardless of whether or not they release expansions. FFXIV 2.0 had a really strong user base when it released, but it’s settled quite a lot despite the fact that they’ve released large content patches and they haven’t gotten over 3million subscribers.

You are always going to see a drop in the player base, there’s a startling number of MMO players who just hop from game to game dissatisfied. GW2 is actually doing insanely amazingly in terms of player retention. The only modern MMO that has consistently held really high numbers is WoW, and that is sort of an anomaly.

Arenanet is using a content release model that speaks to the kinds of players that they want playing the game. If you’re not enjoying it then seriously find something else.

You have NO idea what they’re working on behind the scenes, for all we know they’ve been working on an incredibly large expansion for some time now. Who knows. It seems silly to complain about frequent content releases when having infrequent releases and expansions wouldn’t stop those exact same players from leaving the game. They would finish the expansion and then stop playing.

The great thing about the B2P model is that they don’t have to rely on players resubbing, so having a steady player base who spend money on the gem store is enough.

The other thing to point out is that they’re trying a completely new content release model. They’ve obviously learnt a lot from Season 1 of the living story and it is reflected in the quality of this most recent update. But it’s too early to be complaining, the initial Season 1 releases were quite small because they were about setting things up, it could be the same with this season. Perhaps the update we just had is the smallest and the next update will contain larger content. It’s a wait and see situation.

You know that the next update is coming TOMORROW right…

The quantity that Arenanet puts out on a bi-weekly basis is astounding. No other game comes close to matching that output rate. If they had released an expansion people would already have finished that content and would now be waiting a long time for the next release.

Sorry that you don’t feel like it’s enough, but it is an incredible amount given the time frame and they’re doing a greta job. If you don’t like it please feel free to game hop?

sorudo.9054:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

@Sorudo, that’s a little Deus Ex Machine – it doesn’t make for good story, especially if those Norn didn’t even consider sharing their knowledge with all of their fellow Norn who they watched suffer at the hands of Jormag – doesn’t make sense. Also why would it have a mix of Norn and Asuran architecture? Why would there be Asura there?

When an Elder Dragon comes you don’t stay and try and figure out a way to avoid being corrupted and killed, you run – hence why all the Norn ran south.

how can they share when there is no one to share with, the only norn there were at the time were the left overs.
also, what’s wrong with a group of exiled asura, what if this group traveled all the way to the far northern siverpeak because they thought no one can disturb them, finding this dome and eventually helped the norn build their city as it is now.

like i said before, i can continue the story but it’s gonna take more then the limit a threat can take and i don’t want to waste my time writing everything down when Anet will never add it.

PS. i never played deus ex so i wouldn’t know…

Deus Ex Machina is a latin term that translates literally into ‘god from the machine’ (presumably this relates to why the game has that name, though I’ve never played it either and wouldn’t know) and it is a term commonly used in reference to novels, films, television and games when something is introduced that shows little regard to what else has happened in the story and seems like a super uncreative way to make something happen. Basically something happening for the sake of something happening without there being a good reason. Randomly deciding that some Norn for some bizarre reason weren’t chased out of the far north by Jormag (which is not possible, how would they have avoided him when the rest of the Norn and Kodan weren’t able to) and chucking in some Asuran exiles is deus ex machine, there is no logic for how or why that would have happened.

If you want to open an image in a new tab just right click and say “open in new tab” or command+click (or whatever the windows equivalent of that command is)

hannah mee.7925:

No, I’m positive that the players who want/need mobile apps to do minor functions are a minority.

Yup this. If you checked what percentage of the player base bothers using mobile authentication I think you’d end up with a similar indication of how many people would actually be willing to/would want a mobile application to do things.

Also, most players wouldn’t be willing to pay for an app. Paid apps don’t do so well and the logic for most GW2 players would be ’I’ve already paid for the game, why should I pay for an app that simply lets me do exactly what I can do by logging in’. And I don’t think that an app should offer functionality that isn’t available in game, it’s just too problematic and it places an unnecessary gate. Believe it or not, not everyone has a smart phone, and even of those that do there are three major operating systems.

Eggman.1405:

Kyrel.8942:

Don’t Quaggans lay eggs? doesn’t that make them not mammals?

Not per se, since here on Earth the platypus is an egg-laying mammal.

Here is some more information on egg laying mammals (Monotremes) if anyone is curious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme

Kohlteth.3715:

Whats more immersion breaking than the rectangles is the loading screens on a newer engine than WoW…… More sandbox would be better.

There is a massive number of modern MMO’s that still use zones rather than an open world. WoW is not the most intensive game, it is easier for the engine to render that much at a time. GW2 as it is is not incredibly well optimised, so if they were to remove he boundaries between zones you would see a massive hit in performance.

Just pointing out that WvW NEEDS to be 24/7.
This is a worldwide game and the time of day that players in the US are able to play is completely different to the times of day that people in New Zealand or Australia are able to play etc. WvW makes sense the way it is.

I have to give a massive NO to guild symbols being shown next to player names. It is horrifically messy when that happens, especially if players can upload their own symbols which from a consistent design perspective is a nightmare.

It is a limitation of the engine, which is based on the original Guild Wars 1 engine from 2005 which also had square maps.

Having maps that are other shapes would technically waste space and make navigation a little confusing.

So yes, square mountains bordering every single zone can be a little immersion breaking, but it’s not a massive deal and you aren’t going to see them going away. It’s how the game is designed, it isn’t going to change (plus it would be really weird if they started making new maps that didn’t follow along with all of the old maps – and completely redesigning all of the old maps is pointless and a waste of time and money).

Yeah basically what Vv W said, magic.
I mean, aquabreathers that allow you to breathe underwater indefinitely are also technically impossible I think, certainly at great depths they would be, but in GW2 you cannot drown/run out of air!

The traits are incredibly useful for JP’s, but aside from that you are right, they’re a bit of a waste.

Just a recommendation/warning, you probably should have put this post in (and it might be moved to) the fan generated content section of the forums: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/fangen

Stooperdale.3560:

Even if the Mursaat are notionally extinct we would be shown some ruins, artifacts, poetry, or anything else to introduce them to GW2 players.

We are shown some things, but it is a relatively small amount. e.g. the Mursaat stuff in Arah explorable, the Mursaat artefacts in the Vizier’s tower, Mursaat objects in the Bazaar of the Four Winds, the ‘Ruins of the Unseen’ area in Caledon is a ruiend White Mantle temple, etc.

But I completely agree with you, if the Mursaat were in any way going to be involved with the current story it would have been hinted at. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense otherwise.

Erukk.1408:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Except the Mursaat have shown no desire to aid in killing the Elder Dragons presumably because they don’t think it can really be done. He would just phase out of the world like they did last time, why on earth would he help the other races – even if it meant he could make them suffer later. No make sense.

Because the Elder Dragons are a much bigger threat to his existence than the other races are? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Or in his case, “The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, but I will let it slide… for now”

And if he’s still around, the other races proved the Mursaat’s assumption wrong when they took down Zhaitan. That leaves him with a golden opportunity. Here are multiple huge threats to his existence, and here are his enemies throwing themselves life and limb at the problem to take them down.

Why wouldn’t he want to exploit that situation?

Because last time the Mursaat were faced with the choice between hiding or staying to help the other races, or helping the other races hide, and they just left. He isn’t going to help them when historically he has no reason to. The dragons as a threat can be avoided and it’s been 250 years you’d presume he isn’t still incredibly weak.

As for the other races proving the Mursaat wrong, that’s not necessarily true, we have no idea really how the cycles work and it is entirely possible Zhaitan will simply be replaced? Who knows. And what proof is there for him that Zhaitan is truly dead? Maybe he would just think that like the last cycle the current races had managed to put Zhaitan to sleep.

As to exploiting the situation, simply leaving them to deal with the dragons WOULD be exploiting, or at least making the most of, the situation. Regardless of whether or not he interferes the Dragons are going to be wreaking havoc on Tyria for quite some time, he gains nothing by speeding that up. If he wants to take out revenge on countless generations of humanity he is going to want to do it personally and he would most likely want them to know it was him – you get the pleasure from watching people know that you are exacting your revenge, not from hiding in the shadows watching them think something else is responsible for what is happening. If you’re going to be evil then you have to do it right.

What are your computers specs? What specifically have you tried?

@Dusty Moon, that is incredibly false. KongZhong is only the publisher in China, NCSoft is the NA/EU (aka the original) publisher. So there is no way KongZhong would know more than the company who created and runs the game. Also Arenanet maintains the servers and has access to all of their own sales numbers, the number of created accounts, the number of characters – because all of this is stored on their servers. In a sense Arenanet are the only people who can say with certainty what their sales numbers are.

Zayd Akira.1942:

RedStar.4218:

This one ? http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/a/a2/Tyria_world_fan_map_%28freestyle%29.jpg

Why the heck does this map say Kralkattorik is in the charr homelands??

Because in GW1 he was (which this map is for). In GW1 you could walk up to his sleeping body, though an indeterminate amount of him was showing/buried under the ground.

As long as you have logged in during episode 1 you will be able to pick it up/complete it whenever you do have time – same with episode 2 coming up. If you don’t log on at least once while the episode is going on you will miss out.

Like Inculpatus says, some of the open world content might change a bit, but I don’t expect it to change very much at the moment.

IMDB pages like that are run/created by users, I would assume it is just a mistake or it was a name for an ambient character that either ended up going unnamed or was removed.

Except the Mursaat have shown no desire to aid in killing the Elder Dragons presumably because they don’t think it can really be done. He would just phase out of the world like they did last time, why on earth would he help the other races – even if it meant he could make them suffer later. No make sense.

It means with that particular costume they didn’t design it in the same way as other costumes and separating it into parts would have required them to alter the design because it would have most likely resulted either in clipping issues or in seams where they currently don’t have seams.

Regarding armour design, I sort of somewhat agree. My character spent the entire game in Heritage light armour because it is one of the few that I actually think looks decent.

They are working on looking into making the first living story available through the story journal, it just may take some time/may not be possible since it was not designed with the journal in mind.

There is a 3rd party Action Combat mod which might be just what you are looking for. Googling ‘GW2 Action Combat mod’ should bring it up. The dev’s seem to be okay with it since it doesn’t actually offer an advantage.

+1 I also thought these were super helpful, though I wouldn’t mind if they were a little bigger and showed up in the story tracker on the top right of the screen.

Lazarus says “Countless generations” will suffer. The Dragons aren’t really a great way of achieving that, since they kind of just wipe everything out. If you want to make countless generations suffer you enslave them or something horrific like that. Also dead people don’t suffer, if you want to make someone suffer you keep them alive but in poor condition, rather than calling forth a Dragon that just kills them or corrupts them or whatever.

The Mursaat phased out of the world in order to escape the dragons, I don’t think Lazarus, even hellbent on revenge, would be willing to interact at all with an Elder Dragon or orchestrate events which would bring about the destruction of Tyria.

It is almost certainly something to do with your mouse. Try uninstalling the drivers and just using the built in generic mouse drivers.

Ahriman.1680:

I’ve actually found that my 27 inch iMac (2013) actually runs better than it does in bootcamp, specs help a lot I think and MBP’s just aren’t built for gaming. I tried GW2 on my i7 Macbook Pro with GeForce graphics and there’s a massssssiveeee difference.

The reason it runs better on OSX for you is because you have a fusion/flash drive – Windows can’t utilize it in the same way because the technology is built for OSX.

@Ahriman – GW2 on OSX is awful unless you have a very new machine with a fusion drive etc. Running on anything from 2013 or earlier pretty much limits you to below 25FPS.

@Sorudo, that’s a little Deus Ex Machine – it doesn’t make for good story, especially if those Norn didn’t even consider sharing their knowledge with all of their fellow Norn who they watched suffer at the hands of Jormag – doesn’t make sense. Also why would it have a mix of Norn and Asuran architecture? Why would there be Asura there?

When an Elder Dragon comes you don’t stay and try and figure out a way to avoid being corrupted and killed, you run – hence why all the Norn ran south.

I was thinking about this the other day actually, and it really bugs me because surely there would still be SOME of the old Orrian undead in underground caverns and catacombs still… I refuse to believe that we somehow wiped every single one of them out, especially the bone dragons. I don’t think we will ever get a satisfying answer though, probably something of the lines of -somehow any orrian undead still ‘alive’ when Zhaitain rose were converted to him or something silly…

Your Intel graphics card is going to be the greatest drawback for playing GW2.

Except that the Nightmare Court are aligned with the Pale Tree, they love the Pale Tree and the Dream, they hate Ventari’s teachings. It’s sort of been implied in the story that the Dream protects Sylvari from Mordremoths corruption. So while the Nightmare Court may in some way be acting in Mordremoths favour, I don’t think they know they’re doing it.

Well, it is implied that the second Pale Tree does not have/is not connected to the Sylvari Dream, which would make our Pale Tree unique and would sort of suggest that the other Pale Tree has no agency/voice like ours does – which would kind of poke holes in what you suggest. If there was another Tree that could exert influence over the Sylvari through the Dream then you would think our Sylvari and Pale Tree would be aware of its presence.

No we don’t really know anything more. All we know is that there is an Elder Sea Dragon (nicknamed DSD) and that the Inquest obviously are aware of it since they have a Zone Blue in the Crucible of Eternity.

The wiki is your friend: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dsd

@Eight O Eight, I think that is kind of unfair. I personally think that Kate is doing a great job!

Dulfy’s notes on Episode 2 of PoI: http://dulfy.net/2014/07/03/gw2-point-of-interest-ep2-livestream-notes/

But I completely agree with everyone. The game is worldwide and has a huge following in Europe. Making content available to only a subset of players is just silly. Also saying that it is an English game and therefore subtitles aren’t necessary is also silly. The developers are all American, but American English and American accents are not universal. There are plenty of people who speak English, either as a first or second language, who may have trouble understanding American accents.