Guild Wars 2

Seeing as the Deep ocean dragon will probably be the last one standing, one’s gotta wonder about an age defined by water and… tentacles…

I don’t see them often, but there is an elementalist rotation which uses a large earth shatter skill. Its a rotation a friend of mine used before rage quiting – as well as about 3 other elementalists I’ve seen since then.

It is the most devastating PvE rotation I’ve seen across all the classes. I cant mentally handle the elemental switching and timing required to do it (and the complex clicking) but every time I’ve seen someone pull it off, the zerk runs I’ve been in have ended 2-3 minutes sooner then usual – which is impressive given how fast zerking runs go anyway?

Why did friend rage quit? He came back to the game to give it another try, entered a zerker group with full zerker gear elementalist and was near insta-kicked for not playing the boon/healing elementalist rotation that zerkers are familiar with.

What I’ve found upsetting with many pug zerker groups is that zerk gear often seems to be a replacement for intelligence. Don’t like what someone’s doing? Take note of the clear speed of dungeon events before kicking people for performing acts beyond your comprehension. You dying because there’s an unfamiliar rotation user in your party (and the boss fight finishes as fast as usual without your added dps), look to your own incompetence before blaming the stranger -.-

So boys and girls, into today historic class (which we were forced to stand outside of due to our late arrival), we found out that Elder Dragons have 2 spheres or influence. Where previously Zaitan looked to be the dragon of Death and Death, it now appears he was the dragon of Death and Shadow.

Go figure.

The interesting parts are the facts that Mordremoth is the dragon of Plant and Mind and that Mordremoth was supposed to wake up much much later.

Why is this interesting? Dragons convert magic into dragon magic (which seems to be magic tuned to a different behavior). In this episode the comment was made that every time an Elder dragon died the other Elder Dragons got stronger (as they didn’t have to share the total magic pool with as many other dragons). The last Elder Dragon standing would thus be the strongest Elder Dragon – as it would get to soak up the most magic.

Why is choosing which Elder dragon is last important? This is because the last Elder Dragon standing would release the most magic back into the world. The quirky point here is that a dead Elder Dragon wouldn’t release normal magic back into the world (as Elder Dragons don’t store normal magic). When an Elder Dragon dies, its immense DRAGON MAGIC would seep back into the world.

So we don’t get generic magic back (although dragon magic probably returns to normal through continuous interactions), we get themed magic. If Primordius died last you’d expect a whole lot of fire magic to be released, resulting in a molten age. If Jormag died last you’d get a lot of ice magic, resulting in an ice age.

In short, the two spheres of influence of the last Elder dragon to be killed would be the defining theme of Tyria’s biome after that dragon died.

So why was Mordremoth always the last to awaken? Mordremoth’s spheres of influence are mind and plant. That means that whenever Mordremoth dies last the world gets an abundance of intelligence enabling magic and life enabling magic. Which means the dominance of jungles and the growth of thinking creatures over the expansion of ice tundras or molten primordial eruptions – as both these have less of the themed dragon magic needed to fuel them.

By killing Mordremoth first, we ensure the last Elder Dragon will not be the one that causes Tyria’s climate is hospitable to intelligent apes.

So if you be believing any of this, Scarlet really messed things up for those who like plants. Or thinking.

There be valid reasons, but the implementation irks me. GW2 introduced mf and luck essence as a major grindfest. The moment they did however, they removed the effect of mf from 70% of the game. Bags containing 3 master craft items? You seriously invalidating my mf roll on common loot now?

Lol. I’ve always thought the living story releases have been of high quality – especially when they are actually coming out at two week intervals -.-

Seeing that the Durmon Priory was more then a floating tablet chamber and with a school sized library underneath really extended the image of the scholars – which I approve of. Epic quest, really nice non-linear character behavior (you trollish rock dwarf you) and an entertaining battle zone.

One word of caution though is that these battlezones are not sustainable. Dry top is fun, Silverwastes is also fun (and much more fast paced). As far as maps go these sorts of dynamic battle fields offer the most replay value of all our map types. That said, I’ll get a wee bit annoyed if every single map between us and Mordremoth takes on this flavor. Its a fairly grind oriented approach and I enjoy gaps in the grinds.

Finally, as a necromancer player, could someone please explain why the story’s central necromancers keep losing their necromancer weapons in favor of great swords? Trahearne, Majory… When do I get one? :<

Well, I managed to achieve universal disapproval. Delivered in great detail. Yay me.

I’ll start off with things said against me which are correct:

- Denying people hard earned Zerker gear is unfair. I agree, I said it would be unfair to take this gear way from anyone and so it would be too late to try something like this anyway.

- Dungeons being solo-able. Yes. This is not an area I know in detail and I’m assuming everything people have said about this (against my idea) is correct. Most MMO dungeons require some level of mastery to beat, GW2 is odd in that with enough mastery you can negate the need for any defensive stuff. There is probably a competency curve in what most people are capable of – and I assume that soloing dungeons without exploiting really dubious mechanic deficiencies is above most people. What level one should set the bar at is probably a matter of personal opinion.

- People don’t care about the boss fights, they care about the rewards. Correct. In most other MMO’s I’ve played though, there was a certain amount of prestige attatched to equipment obtained from really hard boss fights. Though in this game the trade house and buying completed dungeons probably mitigate that sense of achievement anyway.

Then the things I found funny:
- Olba’s claim that by my logic all offensive stats should be removed. The scenario I was proposing would render ferocity an extremely weak stat. This was a discrepancy between how I would see things working and the game as it is – an issue with my own plan I was trying to point out. By all means leave it in, and then dont use it.

- Olba saying the new meta would definitely be Givers while Harper stated it would be either Knight’s, Cavalier or Valkyre. I like the debate, its what I was hoping a change like this would be able to achieve.

- The idea that removing Beserker and Assassin would force everyone into support roles. Someone stated that there are tanky builds which give bonuses damage. I know that necromancers have traits that give a percentage of toughness to power – and that identical trait exists on other classes. Just because you not a beserker, doesn’t mean you being forced into a stat combination which renders you a support.

- The idea that support builds would somehow be doing the same damage as glass cannon builds. I promise you that stating into healing will still provide less damage then stating into “magic duration” or some secondary stat that synergies into damage. The difference comes in with what skills you choose, whether they are self serving or party serving, nothing more.

Going to finish off with the first half of Hayashi’s post because that was at the core of what I was trying to tackle when I made this post. People gravitate to the most efficient builds and the builds which aren’t too complicated to use. GW2 is a very movement oriented MMO. Most MMOs I’ve played forced mages to stand still while casting spells, not hop over shock waves or golf with holographic pirates. Different people find different types of combat easier to approach. In this situation I feel that killing things should come down to personal style over gear builds. I guarantee that people who can master more complex rotations will always deal more damage, people who master the mechanics of bosses will also deal more damage.

The ends of this exercise was not nerfing damage potential, it was to decrease the gap between the different ways of dealing damage so that all would be as viable. Someone stated that this game is about cosmetics and economics. If some builds clear events much slower then others, I believe they’ve been rendered economically unviable – which is a problem when all that’s left to an intent PvE player is grinding for stuff.

@All: These are all valid points. I think many people have forgotten what dungeon bosses can be like without the use of full zerker parties or line-of-sight exploitation though. Stacking only works until a point, after that point the idea of zerking breaks down completely. Hard bosses are still a dps race between the zerker parties and the boss. The moment your zerk is not sufficient to kill the boss quickly, you forced to dance to the tune of mechanics. Pure healing builds are strong in stacks, the moment you forced to break that stack, the healing you receive is not enough to continue fighting on indefinitely. Trade offs have to be made between durability, damage and utility. In the abscense of full zerker gear, i do believe these trade offs with become more meaningful with far more varied responses.

@Azrael: Better AI, always good. The flanking Mordred Wolves introduced in the last two releases shows its possible. I’ve been grinding Sorrow’s Embrace and if Dredge bombers were given the AI to back off a few meters from their targets, to AoE locations which would hit enemies not in Line-of-sight (or even to keep chasing the intruders no matter how far they ran), then the dungeon would be much healthier.

The problem with trying to introduce situations where more tanky stats are necessary is that I can’t think of a single situation where non-zerker classes would not suffer them worse then zerker characters. Zerkers can kill the source of damage quicker, therefor they take less damage. Without dedicated healers its very hard to balance these situations so the right people suffer.

Also, while I hope they do come up with mechanics to discourage full zerker approaches, the approach seems akin to trying to treat symptoms instead of causes. Anet has introduced some novel ways to deal with Zerkers recently (Teq being a structure, Clockwork sentinel’s condition shield) and some simple boss mechanics would be possible to punish people for stacking. Still, this seems to narrow the job of developers to developing a set of scenarios which would punish zerkers instead of developing as varied a range of scenarios as possible – which I i find disheartening.

@Maha: I agree that the faceless masses will always gravitate to the most OP build to come up in a google search (My warrior would be a near decent example of this). Two things though:

1) Without triple damage equipment, I believe the gap between the most OP builds and viable party builds will be much smaller then they are currently. I guarantee that maxing Power and Crit will still provide the most damage, what to dump into the third stat though will likely differ from build to abilities to weapon.

2) “FULLZERK” is so wide spread because its easy for pugs to muster. If 5 different specific builds are required to achieve top meta (each with a different class) then they will not be viable in pug groups. Currently we have “Zerk warrior or WE KICK”, if the required LFG message is “Knight Warrior, Magi Guardian, Boon Engineer, Assassin Hunter and 1 Bezerker Elementalist or WE KICK” it will never even show up in the lfg finder.

Will a new preferred meta emerge for organised guild parties? Possibly. Without Assassin and Bezerker gear though I truly believe there will be far more experimentation for optimization per specific dungeon instance.

@oxtred: Halving Boon duration would be bad, I dont think I said that. I was talking about non-boon spells like “Reflect” being shortened if not stated into. Boon durations could actually increase dramatically if people were able to spec fully into boon duration. Dungeons will take longer, FGS will probably do less damage (not sure how it’s damage mechanics are calculated), I’m not sure that this will make necromancers obsolete though – we provide odd things to longer fights, efficiently ^^

@Jerus: Let me start with Magic Duration being overpowered. This is a matter of balance. If you specced fully into Magic duration you losing an entire stat slot for it – a hefty price. If your zerker guardian uses his third slot for prolonging “Reflect”, he is going to be extremely squishy during the longer boss fights. If your Guardian is more cleric oriented, which of it’s 3 stats can it sacrifice for “Magic Duration”: Power, Healing or Toughness? An Auto-downed melee Guardian isn’t that useful after all.

Even a mesmer with a +50% duration Time warp. Time warp used to increase attack speed by 100% instead of 50%, you back to 75% of the original efficiency. You now getting about 17 seconds of +50% speed boost instead of 11 seconds – this once per 2 consecutive boss fights tricks has depleted a third of your mesmer’s stats, you sure its worth it?

I’ll concede that fully specced “Magic Duration” giving +50% duration may be overpowered. Someone with math would need to calculate how much shorter reflect walls should be without it (as this is the purpose of this stat, making people pay for the epic utility of non-scaling reflect stuff) and how much longer reflect walls should be with Magic Duration fully specced.

As to Boon Duration being the other only viable option, note that if everyone is providng the same boons you going to run into the same problem as conditions. If an elementalist can provide a constant 25 stacks of might, having another 2 characters providing extra might is wasted stats. I’ve seen warriors getting shouted at for specking into Phallanx. Without knowing if your next group will prefer a warrior booner or a Warrior zealot, who knows what ascended gear each warrior will lock themselves into?

Greetings.

My favorite character is a minion necromancer. My build provides me with above average bruiser capabilities and exceptional damage is extremely specific situations – for example, I’ve had Germans desperately playing around with online translators to ask how I get that gate controller in CoF path 1 down near instantly.

Regardless of what I think of my necromancer though, pure zerkers are clearly more efficient at clearing dungeons and fractals both. In my endless grinding of dungeons, I’ve landed up playing a full zerker warrior . The full zerker approach shaves minutes off of every run as well as helping me clear bosses before the less “experienced” grinders can succumb to silly mistakes.

So how does one promote different builds when your 3 stat equipment can be piled completely into straight up damage potential – in a game where defensive capabilities either don’t matter or don’t scale off stats? Simple. Simple yet brutal. We should never have been allowed to obtain equipment dedicated to [Power, Precision and Ferocity]. The number of stats dedicated to straight up damage should have been 2. At most, [Power and Precision] or [Precision and Power] plus one of those other “undesirable stats”.

How does this help? Well the exceedingly obvious answer is that if full bezerker builds don’t exist, the bezerker build is no longer the most powerful in game. kitten .

Looking a bit more in depth, the ability to doll our extreme amounts of damage nullifies the mechanics of nearly every boss fight. By decreasing the absolute speed at which bosses can be burst down, you force parties to engage with those mechanics for longer – and thus prolong the period of time in which stats like boon duration, condition, healing and defense are useful.

Lastly, if only two stats can be put into damage, you are forcing people to use a third of their stats in a more creative way. Everyone in your party is going to have maxed Power and Precision, as each of you has a third stat which isn’t damage related, each of you are forced to think of what unique benefit you want to bring to the table with that third stat. Full knight gear for your warrior? Fair enough, but will that really increase your party’s clear time over dedicating that third stat to healing, conditions or boons?

To achieve this, I’d suggest allowing equipment stat combinations including the illusive “Boon Duration” and “Condition Duration” into circulation. You’d have to replace the Beserker stats [Power, precision, ferocity] and the Assasin stats [Precision, Power, Ferocity] with combinations like [Power, precision, Boon Duration] and [Precision, Power, Condition Duration]. The Rampager stats [Power, Precision, Condition Damage] are fine in my personal opinion as weapons which do Condition damage suffer a loss to normal damage anyway – plus the lunacy of Condition caps on enemies renders 5 Rampager parties pointless.

The last change to enforce this mindset would be replacing Ferocity with a “Magic Duration” effect. Admittedly if you can’t major in power, precision and ferocity at the same time, ferocity becomes an exceeding weak stat – useful only in specific builds which can force continual crit procs. Precision would have to include a secondary effect of slowly increasing critical damage, making main Precision builds have higher crit damage the main Power builds . Talking of “Magic Duration” this new stat would be tied to the duration of all effects “magical”. What is a magical effect? Any ability which counts as a magic buff or has a timer not tied to condition or boon duration. This stat should thus control the duration of “Reflect walls”, “Time warps” and “Absorption bubbles” as well as increasing the length of circles that various classes put on the ground. For the ground circles, this should be a straight up buff, defensive reflect skills like “Reflection walls” however should not last nearly as long without a character actively speccing into it – but possibly 50% longer if your prime stat is dedicated to “Magic Duration”. You want 2 Guardians in a fractal to reflect all incoming projectiles? Fine, but they should be forced to dedicate a third of their stat points to achieve that effect.

These changes would be brutal, the masses would feel robbed. I feel it is too late to make these changes anyway. That said, I like theorizing on this sort of thing. If you’ve read this far and can get over the revulsion of having your ascended zerker gear taken from you, I’d like to know if you think this would increase build diversity and allow game developers to build a wider variety of boss encounter mechanics. If you don’t think this would work, I’d like to know why as well ^^

Wouldn’t be for teaming up with all the ghosts although I will admit that there are two non-primary race characters which I wish I could drag along into an active future. One is a Giant you escort through some caves in the Hirathi Hinterlands (i think) where he passes by the graves of all his friends – the only event in this game to draw the slightest bit of emotion from me. The other character is a ghost left behind by a pact soldier that was torn to shreds in a Mount Maelstrom swamp. You converse with her spirit under a ledge and then walk away. I did not feel right about just walking away there.

But onto factual stuff, and then pure speculation.

Zhaitan may have corrupted spirits. He claimed one of Grenth’s Reapers and the dead royal family he twisted into his “Eyes of Zhaitan” may also have been spirits. Another thing to note is the asuran take on magic. By their eternal alchemy, everything is magic. Magic just has a tendacy to change shape. If ghosts are magical constructs, so is everyhting else – ghosts may just be closer to being a purer source of magic and thus more easily absorbed.

Another interesting take on Mordremoth going for the ghost’s “Souls” would be the question of whether or not Mordremoth drains the souls of the creatures that Mordremoth personally strangles? The various vines dotting the landscape which hold aloft dead bodies, I’m left wondering if there is any chance that Mordremoth continues feeding off those corpses once they die? We know that Mordremoth is connected to the Sylvari dream. I’m left wondering if Mordremoth doesn’t perhaps absorb souls and store them in the Dream, where those souls are corrupted into the form of Sylvari souls and later released into the world through Mordremoth’s Lietenants?

PS. While I haven’t checked this personally, lots of people are saying that the prophesy about freeing the Ascalonian ghosts is different from the prophesy people keep quoting involving royal Ascalonian blood. Royal Ascalonian blood seems connected to releasing the blood shards, a seperate prophecy says that the ghosts can only be freed by a true ruler of Ascalon – which could be any ruler of Ascalon, even a ruler of the Char?

While I’m not sure why Rytlock wouldn’t have wanted to break the curse before, the probable reason for him doing it now was laid out in the first quest of “Entanglement” – where you rummage through Scarlet’s basement.

There are an assortment of Lore giving objects within Scarlet’s basement. The was one object in specific which was out of place with regards to the story during that release, but now it’s relevance seems blatantly obvious.

One of the Lore books in Scarlet’s basement details a theory that GHOSTS are in actual fact MAGICAL CONSTRUCTS.

Mordremoth has been expanding towards major sources of magical energies since he reawakened – he likes to nom them. Mordremoth attacked the waypoint system and in another quest attacked a priory shipment of powerful magical artifacts (and substancially drained their magical energy).

Given that the trailer shows massive vines spouting up over ascalon, and the revealed fact that the hordes of Foefire ghosts are a massive concentration of magic, Rytlock is probably trying to release the ghosts to deprive Mordremoth of an extremely potent source of magic (which the Elder Dragon currently seems to be targeting).

Sometimes people demand big things thinking those things are deserved, sometimes people ask for big things thinking those things are small. Sometimes people ask for small things when in fact the things they ask for are, well, small.

Yet this is not an excerpt from Great Expectations. This is a tale of frocks, pants and a medium more tedious then washing powder adverts.

There is seldom much creativity seen with general leggery. As a swath of gem store items will denote, the creative potential of helms, gloves, boots and back pieces greatly outweighs what one can achieve with chest pieces and leg wrappings. Gloves stick out, helms denote the intent of the user and shoulder pieces often consist of exotic (dolyak skull) ornamentation glued to the upper segment of the shoulder blades.

The smaller pieces of armor thus allow an extreme level of customization which chest and leg pieces seldom match. Near all female chest pieces offer little more variety then the amount (and selection) of chest which is showing – or in the case of the Zodiac armors’ percentages, the UNIVERSE!

Legs are possibly the worst of the lot. Past the heritage armors, the only notable variation in heavy legs pieces seems to be the size and shape of the loin cloth (both genders) in front of the heavy plate. Light armor leggings seem to unilaterally consist of baggy pants surrounded by a dress – with varying amounts of pant and dress lopped off per item.

And this is where the sadness enters my tale. While it can be disheartening sifting through the heaps of drab leggings left discarded in yonder wardrobes, it is truly unfortunate when a spectacular piece is lain low by pure silliness.

I talk of the Norn tier 3 light cultural leggings, the lupine leggings. What are these lupine leggings you may ask? Well, I might say, they are a kilt with crytally bits left dangling on threads.

Imagine that? Something creative done with a dress, no less. Doing something besides trimming the frock to bear serrated edges – actual Mystical Devices “TM” have been ornately strung from yonder pants.

The look is actually impactful, highly ceremonial, and given the textural detail of a tier 3 cultural armor. And then having gathered the… generous… amount of gold required to buy these lupine leggings, I encountered a snag. The crystals of the lupine leggings are not colour customizable.

This is quite odd. Obviously special effects are not something that should be customizable on armor pieces. The crystals of the lupine do not have any special effects however, they are just a very striking hue of blue. And so, the leggings which are potentially the most striking man-dress in game, are only applicable if you can colour co-ordinate your entire character to a fixed hue of blue – the likes of which I haven’t seen outside of limited time dye packs.

Why are these crystals not dyable in the dye section? Why is a forth trim colour not added to replace the swath of blue with the swath of colour of your choice? Why are these epic manly dresses not made applicable to men of all stylish preferences?

We may never know.

All I know is that my necromatic norn, with his glowing green eyes, spare mantle adorned green eyes and glowing green snake regurgitating knife thing if left with un-greenable crystals strung to his leggings. This brings my necromatic norn to tears – big, husky man tears.

- sad face

I’ve been unlocking all the in game skins since the wardrobe system came out and I just noticed an annoying (and extremely expensive) glitch.

Fashion Achievements (such as the “Norn Speciality Armors” achievement) require that a certain number of different cultural armor pieces be souldbound to accomplish. As cultural pieces are soulbound on acquire, you’d assume this would mean that once you bought enough norn cultural pieces the achievement would be completed.

Apparently not.

When I bought all 18 of the tier 1 cultural armors for my norn (the light, medium and heavy sets), the skins of all of the items were unlocked in the wardrobe but the achievement only registers that I’ve acquired 6 of the 18 skins I bought.

I checked the other fashion achievements and a similar thing seems to have happened with my human and Charr fashion achievements. Judging from the lesser purchases I made for my human, it appears that only the cultural pieces that your character can equip get added to the fashion counter.

Unless anyone can point out something I’m doing wrong here?

Two things, which I will re-iterate elsewhere. Once I find a better place to iterate them :/

1) The displayed "0 transmutation charge’ on dyes is confusing. A slightly more responsive system would be appreciated. One that doesn’t display the transmutation cost at all unless there actually is one (and states the cost is for armor changes). Besides that I do like the system

2) Many of the Historic Living World skins that were unlocked through achievements will never be available again. Seeing as many players did unlock them (and this can be visibly checked by looking at historic living world achievements), I feel that Anet should do a patch at some point that unlocks all these skins.

Anet has done such lookups on logins on many occasions. I just find it annoying that I’m going to have to look at the locked “Toxic injector” back piece slot in the wardrobe without any way of unlocking it, despite having a completed achievement in my achievements panel which proves without a doubt that I’ve unlocked it :/

Personally though, I’m lucky enough to have hoarded every historic achievement skin except that toxic injector and those three hideous dragon bash helmets – which are all laughing at me now -.-

Meh, i dont come to the forums often. Wouldn’t have started a new post if I’d seen any others or knew where they were. It just sickens me that it is so easy to pull off a scam of this level :/

I want to know if this has happened to anyone.

I joined a pug group for a lvl 49 fractal run. These usually take me between 1:30 hours and 2 hours to complete. This time however, after an hour and a half, the party hit the dredge fractal.

After 2:30 hours, the party enters the Jade Maw instance. A vote goes up to kick the 5th member of the pug. Someone clicks yes. I type to ask if its possible to invite him back, a vote goes up to kick the 4th member of our pug. Guy 4 gets kicked.

I type “What the hell”. I get kicked.

I’m dumped back into Gendarran fields. My chat logs been wiped of party messages so I’ve lost the names of the people who were kicked and the ones who kicked us. I can’t message to ask what happened and I’ve got no way to report the people who did it.

I’m pretty sure the two people who were left were from the same server and I’m left with the impression that this was planned from before the Fractal started.

I’ve never complained about any aspect of GW2 but I find this instance sickening.

The amount of time required to rise to fractal lvl 49 is insane. Easily over 90 hours considering you never have a single wipe or failed fractal. I know hard core players who regularly slay world bosses (tequatl and 3 headed wurm), I speak to the people who organize these massive events over teamspeak and vent but none of the people I know have lvl 49 fractal clearance or the AR required to transverse it.

Unlike the other dungeons in the game, I do not have the option of joining a guild or “running with friends”. And so what if someone kickes me from CoF? Who cares. There is a physical limit to how much damage can be done to me, and usually only if I’m clumsy.

In this however there is absolutely no way to tell if someones going to use the rest of your afternoon to sell off 3 lvl 49 fractal chests to friends or buyers. The people need not even be from the same guild or even server. There is no way to stop this from happening and no way to pin these people afterwards.

The situation has been engineered to the point where it is impossible to avoid the scam and impossible to do anything about it afterwards.

You’d need 4 of the people in your party to be known and trust worthy to stop this sort of thing from happening. So we come down to pugging a single person max or abandoning LFG. A choice which is not an option if you trying to run high level fractals. And dare I add to the debacle that my lvl 49 runner is neither a Warrior, Mesmer nor Guardian. What about stating that about once every 4 days my internet connection stutters, killing my connection to games like GW2 – that being the person to hold open the 1.5 to 2.5 hour long dungeon is both feasibly and morally questionable to me.

I do not accept this is as being the players responsibility. The set up of this instance is plain malicious and guarantees the success of any two people wishing to perform the scam – without worry of repercussions.

The commitment required for these high level fractals is too high to shrug off as “the player’s fault” or “join a guild”.

I want a counter vote in kicking the 5th member of high level fractals or at least a three fifths majority. Failing that, the ability to report the people who kick me from level 49 fractals – and heck, only send it through to Anet for adjudication if OVER HALF OF THE GROUP HAS BEEN KICKED BY THE SAME TWO PEOPLE.

But please let me know, am I alone in this grievance or have other people suffered the same instance that I just did?

I came across a note somewhere saying that an Asura was going to be introduced in the upcoming “Origins of madness” event.

It has me praying for the return of an already introduced Asura from the Asuran personal story quests. His name is Shodd. What can be said about Shodd? Nothing too specific, no singular trait which raises him above the rest. Except perhaps that going along with his humblest suggestions almost turns your character into an overlord that out-inquests the inquest.

One of my 3 most favored characters in the game, Shodd personifies the sheer audacity of science. The unrelenting potential that can amount to, well, anything. Few aspects represent the prospect of science as well as second guessing can. Sure, bizzare contraptions can pull one out of the most dire of living story events, but staring down at that oh so innocent face of Shodd you are left wondering what you contemplate unleashing – because with Shodd by your side, you’ll fly higher then the flames left in your wake.

Few are the dreamed up characters who manage to portray a passive double edged sword.

Braham portrays quite well the confused desire to do good, or failing that, awesome. Marjory a cynical eye on those she stands besides as well as those she confronts. Kasmee is endearing in ways that are hard for me to pin down, aside from her admissions of how she garbs herself when heading into battle – and I’m sure someone can come up with a reason why Rox is awesome.

Should an Asura step forth? Well, if not Shodd, then I pray for one who steps boldly into the fore. Hardly discernable from the blinding bright energy cores erupting into life behind him as he excitedly cries out, with no reference point to moral or practical goals:

“FOR SCIENCE!”

Vexander, while its true the Jotun and Sons of Svanir haven’t been used, it would be breaking a trend if they were.

The Jotun are not an evil faction. You fight with some tribes while you do quests for others. Every faction Scarlet has brought together have been purely evil – evil with the official Evil stamp of approval. There are no nice people in the inquest, the Krait, the pirates (bar like 2 pirates who were kicked out), the Dredge, the Nightmare court or the Flame legion. It would be a nice deviation if the Jotan were included in some alliance but it would be a break from the simplicity of the Scarlet norm. Plus it would be nice to see what Jotans could actually provide to an alliance. Their only claim to fame is that they used to be powerful before the gods took their power away -.-

The Sons of Svanir are a unique case but also unlikely (in my eyes) to be scarleted. The Sons of Svanir are dragon minions. The only sentient free willed dragon minions in the entirety of Tyrian lore, but still dragon minions. They assault the other factions with ice corrupted creatures in tow, a clear alignment. Scarlet hasn’t been dragon related so far, she seems to be taking a different approach to chaos. To tie in with the Sons of Svanir would indirectly ally her with the ice dragon. Which would be an interesting turn, but again one I don’t see happening.

That said, I did forget about the Sons of Svanir

People seem to have decided for some reason that any sentient being in the shape of a horse would have a problem being ridden. I can think of several fantasy creatures across many medias and stories who didn’t object to having smaller creatures all over them.

In guild wars however, given the long lasting war between humans and Centaurs, it would definitely be extremely indignant for the centaur – and no human hating centaur would ever agree to it.

That said, still gonna happen

ps. Give me a live skritt on a harness as a backpiece and it will be the first time I spend money on this game since buying it

A bold and totally unforeseen alliance featuring the only two unused enemy groups in the game.

Bandits
And
CENTAURS!

From the centaur: Mobility, cavalry, a warrior based society and primordial earth magic.
From the bandits: SADDLES!

Playing off the Centaur’s hatred of humans with the unquestionable fashion sense of the common thug: 6 legs, 4 arms and two heads! And to this abominable horde, a phenomenon never before seen in the world of Tyria. Mounts! (And the Priory burst into tears)

What twisted mind could have devised such an alliance, what dark genius could have orchestrated this unlawful horde charging forth from the scarlet horizon? The mind boggles.

And yes, this is but a plausible joke. That said, I just started levelling a human warrior and the joke went from funny to hilarious. In Kessex hills, at Kenna’s bandits, there are both “Bandit Trainee”s and “Centaur Trainee”s firing at archery targets together (with Toxic Alliance people directly above the targets).

At the fort by the Kessex Haven waypoint (this one may be old), a centaur diplomat arrives, a local shouts at the head lion guard for selling them out to the Centaur, the lion guard accuses the Centaur of robbing some Lion’s Arch caravans (which the Centaur proceeds to deny) and then the Centaur rides off. A few moments later a villager at the fort comments of the mountain rumbling. Mountain Rumbling, Earthen magic, DO NOT TOUCH pillars sticking out of the earth? That doesn’t work for you? Okay. It would seem odd if this wasn’t a new addition to the game though. The Centaur was treated with civility, the Centaur refugee at Lion’s arch is held permanently at gun point by the local authorities. If the trade agreement mentioned with Lion’s Arch existed back then, the Centaur refugee shouldn’t be having such a bad time.

On a side point, I admit that I don’t like the convergence happening between every faction in the game. The good guys did do exactly that. The pact is just a big factiony glob. This glueing together of every dedicated enemy faction under scarlet’s reign however (without advancing the base story of any individual enemy faction) does seem to be destroying diversity – and the sense of an unimaginably big world where different struggles are going down between different people.

Regardless, you’ve faced down the MOLTEN ALLIANCE, you’ve faced down the AETHERBLADE PIRATES, you’ve faced down the TOXIC ALLIANCE but are you ready for the horrors of BANDITS RIDING CENTAURS!?!

ps. the factions after BANDITS RIDING CENTAURS will start with the word “ALLIANCE”.

Instead of growing though, the game seems to have started cycling. Stuff available for brief periods of time, returning and leaving activities.

It’s not fair to say a dungeon path was added in this patch. A dungeon path was replaced in this patch. Almost as much content was destroyed as was added.

Should I be as worried about the other dungeon paths? Should I be as frantic to finishing those as I am about finishing the living world stuff? Should I try participate in all the old world content before it is, without warning, brushed away to make space for the new?

Or is this prospect as futile as it is silly – and as silly as the prospect of removing old dungeons, removing them without a word more then “supplant”?

Had to split this into 2 posts
———————————————————————-

I like Guild Wars 2.

There are many aspects to the game which I greatly approve of and many more which I hope will some day be implemented. The direction the game has been going with “Living Story” content however is not exactly to my liking.

This is not because I don’t like the content of the “Living world”. The pace of the living story and the focus on small events as apposed to large conceptual struggles is grating to me at times. Granted, this last Dungeon ended with a few chosen words with Caithe, which seem to link to something quite old and quite big; which is promising – plus I must admit to a degree of trollish glee every time Arena Net announced yet another boat load of Karka. Unfortunately this sort of fast paced, steady content growth seems to be stifling the sort of additions which usually only accompany expansion packs.

I won’t say I cry myself to sleep at night due to the absence of the Largos as a playable race. For that would be unmanly. The double edged sword of openness and honesty on Arena Net’s part has developed a trend of cutting both ways though, especially on the subject of hope

Regardless of my mixed feelings on living story content, this last release took a turn which was downright bizarre. I like words; you may have gathered as such from this text wall type apparition. I pay attention to them and thus I nearly fell off my chair when I hit a snag in the release notes for Twilight Assault.

The Twilight Guide talked about the new dungeon path, the Release Page also talked about the new level 80 dungeon path. The Release Notes however? The release notes read: “The Aetherpath supplants the Fyonna explorable path in Twilight Arbor”.

At first I thought this was put in as some sort of flora based pun. “SupPLANTS”. Funny. Then, after some looking about, I was shocked to find out that it wasn’t. When this dungeon path was added to the Twilight Arbor, an old path was removed. Some points should be made clear about the path that was removed:
1) It was the least played path.
2) It was a very buggy path.
3) I had never gotten round to playing that path.
4) I now will never get to play that path.

The first oddity is why the path had to be taken out to begin with? The layout of the new Aetherblade path is awesome. It also, by the looks of it, was nearly completely redone layout wise. So I have no idea why a fourth path couldn’t just have been opened in the wall and why an entire dungeon path had to be DELETED to make space for this new one? Secondly, a piece of the Twilight Arbor original story now seems out of place. Talking to the old guide still makes reference to stopping the three Twilight aspirants from reaching the evil tree – despite the fact you can now only try stop 2 of them.

It just seems… Silly?

My entire group of friends moved through and out of Guild Wars 2 before “Living Story” got into full swing. We did lots of dungeons together but they wanted to wait till me and some others were fully geared before doing the harder ones with us – great friends aren’t they. Since they left I’ve been working through group content on my own. The LFG tool has been great. I inform lost souls about it from time to time. Several of them have expressed their desire to kiss me. Hopefully most of them are female. I’ve been doing it slowly, at my own pace. Unlike the hectic “Living Story” content, The dungeons are relaxing to do – because I can do them at my leisure.

And then an entire dungeon path was removed from game without any forewarning – with a silly plant pun to boot? I nergled. I nergled hard. I have no idea what nergle means, but it seems to accurately describe my response to the bizarre direction Arena Net took when implementing this new path. I didn’t rant, I didn’t try to understand, I just nergled – and I nergled hard. I sunk my head into my hands and made strange murloc noises, because I just googled the work nergle, and that seems to be what it relates to.

Its not just about enjoying a game. The amount of time I’ve invested in Guild Wars 2, I care about this game. I want to see it succeed. I want to see it get better. I want to see it GROW. I want to see more stuff appear in it for me to do, I want the horizon’s of the world to expand. I want to walk on foreign shores, greet new people and then kill them with my SAB themed pistol.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the changes made to Tequatl. There finally seems to be visual evidence as to why the races of Tyria are running around like panicking, headless azura – of the undead variety.

Its cool, and once or twice a day I rock up, get shunted into an overflow, get slaughtered and leave grumbling. Good times ^^

What doesn’t seem to add up anymore is Zhaitan. Obviously his quirksome demise is necessary for storyline purposes. Without overtly revealing anything to those who haven’t done it yet, Zhaitan meets his end to spoofles, rainbows and a steel butterfly.

This is not to debate the legitimacy of spoofles, rainbows or steel butterflys however, this is just to say that the 100 man slaughtering Tequatl is far more fearsome than his “5 man ousted” lord and master – Zhaitan.

Perhaps Zhaitan has epic mind control powaz, perhaps he offers good retirement packages. Perhaps Tequatl is just lazy :/

I guess it would be nice if some intermediate 50 man raid was put between the story quests and story mode Arah, in which people (enmass) could privately queue to be eaten to Zhaitan. Thoroughly. And without any spoofles or butterflys – to which Zhaitan seems to be allergic. And as that is never going to happen :), it would be nice if any future elder dragons we get to take on more closely resemble Sir Lieutenant then Sir Zhaitan.

But such debatable topics are perhaps premature. Far more pressing is this fool on the froggy gloop launcher, who either be AFK or unaware of the “2” button’s location on his keyboard. You will need excuse me while I reiterate to him the truths of his existence, in a calm and civilised manner…