Guild Wars 2

clay.7849:

Then give us stuff that will make me want to purchase gems. Like I said, I haven’t purchased gems because of RNG – same with you. So, the smart people aren’t purchasing gems. How is that helping their bottom line?

Is this a serious contention or are you being coy? I’d imagine it is helping their bottom line because the dollars of the impatient and unintelligent are of equivalent value to “smart people” dollars.

edit: To be clear, I’m not saying that people spending money on Gems to try for the skins right now are by definition unintelligent and/or impatient (okay, maybe impatient). I was just adopting the counterpoint to clay’s premise for the sake of argument.

Darlgon.9273:

Nope.. because I can still guest into two other servers for ALL the dragons and get the chest on EACH server, the way this is worded.

This is simply wrong. I hope this is reassuring!

sinzer.4018:

killcannon.2576:

Your opinion isn’t incorrect. But I believe you don’t quite understand why they introduce power creep and vertical progression. It’s to keep people in the game, and it’s effective. Very Very Very effective. A quick, but maybe not totally appropriate analogy would be that you can treat infections with things other than antibiotics, but antibiotics work so well, so incredibly well, why would you. The thing with GW2 is that it uses antibiotics, plus homeopathy, plus spiritual healing, plus sacrificing to the old gods, plus a giant gorilla. But people are focusing on it using antibiotics, and think it somehow invalidates everything else.

That may be an incredibly apt analogy. With antibiotics due to the over use (not to mention misuse) of them there is a sort of diminishing returns due to organisms adapting which results in multi-drug resistant strains. In fact resistance to antibiotics is becoming an increasingly huge problem in medicine.

I don’t think anyone’s argued that vertical progression isn’t effective at retaining players it’s the problems that are caused by it that are the issue. This isn’t to say that there should never be any vertical progression but that it should be carefully and sparingly administered alongside other forms of progression that lack its problems.

At present i’m happy with GW2 and its limited form of vertical progression. If Anet take the easy way out and use it as a default mechanism then it’s another matter.

I agree with every letter of every word here, including the very last sentence. Essentially, that is a design decision that would cause me to leave the game for good. They aren’t within a hundred miles of it at the moment, though.

3 tournament wins is 3 5v5 tourney matches. It will literally take you less than an hour.

This exact idea is endorsed by my guild and the reddit community-at-large: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1b60fy/this_pvp_laurels_mishap_may_have_been/

And I was about to make basically this exact thread to post it.

This little mishap this month has caused an unexpected funsplosion in the ranks of my guild and my surveying of the community today shows that we appear to be the rule- not the exception. People all over the game were trying the free tournaments for the first time and having an absolute blast in the Temple of the Silent Storm.

This idea for a reward compromise would still highly reward the “play as you want” philosophy by awarding the true monthly prize of 10 laurels to whichever monthly you completed first. But then if you are the sort who is happy to enjoy all different kinds of content rather than pigeonholing yourself into one- which research indicates is a vast majority of the game’s base- a bonus 5 brings them out of their PvX shells into the other, and literally everyone benefits.

I think we could really salvage some ectos out of this level 80 rare coding error. I’ll be the first to sign.

Warrior melee is like vastly considered to be among the most effective loadouts in the game :/

killcannon.2576:

Your opinion isn’t incorrect. But I believe you don’t quite understand why they introduce power creep and vertical progression. It’s to keep people in the game, and it’s effective. Very Very Very effective. A quick, but maybe not totally appropriate analogy would be that you can treat infections with things other than antibiotics, but antibiotics work so well, so incredibly well, why would you. The thing with GW2 is that it uses antibiotics, plus homeopathy, plus spiritual healing, plus sacrificing to the old gods, plus a giant gorilla. But people are focusing on it using antibiotics, and think it somehow invalidates everything else.

I expected that analogy to go off the rails, but that’s really just about accurate.

GW2 already offers essentially more than I ever imagined it would in terms of providing ways for you to keep yourself entertained. And I imagine the people having the most unbridled fun are those that do a mix of everything as it suits them rather than feeling like they need to do anything at all. The world of Tyria is essentially as close to a sandbox as a theme park MMO can get (my guildie calls it a “sandpark”).

For some people getting the absolute Best-in-slot gear is just not that interesting or important. In many other games this would be the difference between being able to access all of the content and not. In Guild Wars 2 it is nothing of the sort. Thus it is the kind of game for me; it can’t possibly be the kind of game for everyone.

Well that was refreshing.

I agree that uniting the lost factions of humanity for a common cause and reconciling with the centaurs would be compelling stuff.

I’m going to try and leave opinion out of this entirely and just offer some practical advice:

Do as golm above and, if the stat combination you are looking for to replace an accessory is not available, just save your laurels and wait. You will be unnecessarily gimping yourself, despite the stat boost, by just going for “whatever Ascended” over an exotic piece that perfectly fits your build.

An exception of course is made for people really into high level fractals. In that case pick a protective piece and throw some AR in there

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Elementalists have always had one, a utility called Arcane Blast. 1500 range and guaranteed crit. It’s a winner.

100% Projectile Finisher too. gotta love it

Of course I can see why the OP would want to know this information. I’d love to have every bit of relevant data to this question. First of all, “Very High” by all rights must mean a freaking huge range of different things considered how many servers get that designation. It isn’t possible, though All of this information is private, which makes all of the speculative offers of advice or guesses about the population pretty irrelevant.

lordkrall.7241:

No, you can get the laurels by doing EITHER the PvP OR the PvE achivements. Not both.

Going forward, this will indeed be the case. However, the situation described in the OP is accurate.

You’re given more than enough of a clue to deduce the zone- then it’s up to your guild to hunt and find the target. Some of them have their own little quirks in terms of tracking them down..

I think the Orr temples set rocks for an engineer. I’m all for tons of new skins though.

Ask and receive

The initial release of this system will be for WvW only. There are additional complications we need to solve with PvE due to the number and variety of creatures on screen that WvW doesn’t need to account for. Later this year, we’ll be expanding as much of the changes to the PvE open world as we can as well.

Graybes.8251:

Hawkian.6580:

It’s an interesting case study- not in anything having to do with the game, at all, but it terms of personal psychology.

Forum traffic goes down- “fewer people are playing so they’re not posting as much.”
Forum traffic goes up- “this is how you can tell people are bored or burnt out.”

Except, the most populated/active games always have more forum traffic because of trolls, people playing, people looking to play, people bored at work looking to keep their mind on the game they enjoy. So it really isn’t an interesting case study at all because it’s 100% false.

I meant it was an interesting case study in what people will do to convince themselves of preconceived assumptions, even if the evidence appears to contradict it directly.

Are you actually asking for the technical reason, or is “there is one” an adequate answer for now? :P

Devs have stated that they wish to roll the fix out to PvE as well but that the problem is more complex in these varied contexts than in the comparably simple player-model rendering of WvW.

It’s an interesting case study- not in anything having to do with the game, at all, but it terms of personal psychology.

Forum traffic goes down- “fewer people are playing so they’re not posting as much.”
Forum traffic goes up- “this is how you can tell people are bored or burnt out.”

Morthur.3894:

I decided to speculate (as clearly indicated by my use of the term “guesstimate”).
…

I want to caution you against using the word “guesstimate” as you have here, as though it indicates anything in particular. You made those numbers up out of thin air; you are justifying having made them up by making more stuff up. Please stop putting such specific numbers into your posts on this topic.

For all we know, you could be right on the money! But I’m mentioning this because you are literally damaging your chances of winning any argument in which you engage in this behavior.

You’re also using multiple lapses and factual inaccuracies within the text surrounding the made-up numbers. You mention you are making these guesses “based on your experience with server capacity.” However, one would imagine that if server capacity is exceeded for a given zone in Guild Wars 2, either a queue or, technology allowing, an overflow server of some form would be employed. Surely you can think of a time or two when this has been the case in Guild Wars 2. Also, regarding “many worlds are medium”- in North America, as of 3/27/2013, two servers are medium. A third one went from Medium to High the night before. The rest are literally all Very High. This was simply factually wrong; I’m sure it was an oversight and not mendacity on your part however.

Still – there are definitely more then 10’000 and less then 1’000’000 players
…1 million would require over 30% of people that bought the game to still be playing…
…estimate of roughly 20-50k players (maybe 100k.

Again, I just want to recommend you not employ completely fabricated numbers in this capacity. Merely saying that something is an “estimate” is not enough indication to the reader that the number has literally no basis in evidence of any kind.

Finally, “1 million would require…”: the 3 million sales figure was released in January. Unless you believe they haven’t sold any copies since then, or sold negative copies, obviously it has increased to some degree in the meantime. So your calculation is also outdated.

Sure sure, they are not releasing any numbers because they want to be humble.. lol… come on… pull the other one mate. Again: If the numbers were impressive then the quacks from marketing would be the first to publish them to attract new players. That’s simply how it works.

I hate to put it in these terms, but you’re describing things in my field of employment and you do not have a full grasp of the topics at hand.

It’s simply incorrect that a company will merely release sales numbers as frequently and immediately as they are able to, just because the numbers “are impressive.” There are a large number of strategic reasons to make or not make a press release or make numbers public for an earnings call, and none of them have to do with humility. On the contrary, a company might for example withhold strong sales numbers until after the release of a competitor’s product, to drive positive press back in their direction due to the comparison.

Your position also contends that it would obviously follow that ArenaNet’s marketing team would want to immediately put out sales figures “to attract new players.” But for all we know they have no need to employ financial data this way if their current strategies are working. In corporate terms, strong sales figures may attract new players but are much more relevant to shareholders than gamers. A temporary discount is often a much more solid method by which to attract new customers without revealing internal data.

Why do you think that all successful MMOs…

I unfortunately have little insight into what any of this is supposed to mean. The vast majority of MMO games in the Western market never reach 1 million total sales.

Wirldwide.8046:

With all due respect, this is misleading information.

Was this post meant to illustrate how people can take incontrovertible facts and still use them to make the opposite point of what they indicate? If so, it was well-done. It’s almost as though you’re saying- “yes, they are the fastest-growing, but the way they got there means the game is a failure!”

If not… eek. :-[ Maybe I can clarify:

1) Of course pre-purchases are counted. They are purchases before release date, how could you possibly avoid using them for a “fastest-selling” metric? For all intents and purposes they are day-1 sales; if anything they should be weighted higher. :P
2) Why on earth would pre-orders not be counted as day-1 sales upon release and factor into reported sales figures?
3) You seem to be implying that a significant enough number of people have requested a product refund for Guild Wars 2 to impact the total population or lower sales figures (i.e.: not be outpaced by new sales). Do you have any data regarding this implication?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yes, the Slave Driver utilizes quickness when he falls below 20% HP. Yes, his quickness was nerfed as well, so he benefits much less and loses a lot of burst when it activates.

Thanks for this, that’s actually really good to know.

nethykins.7986:

I do think it’s not as well as their forecasts probably were (which is why we’re not hearing much on either side of users vs sales vs concurrent players etc)

Can you explain why you think this (unless what you put in parentheses is your reasoning)?

proxy.7963:

Vasham.2408:

Two million sales and the fact they’re officially offering free transfers shows exactly how brilliant I am. Two million is pathetic for an MMO at launch these days, especially since successful new MMOs have a 50% player retention rate, GW2’s retention rate being somewhere in the order of 20-25%.

Besides, if the game was successful they wouldn’t be basing server populations on accounts tied to server. It would be based on active players.

Are those figures for non-subscription-based MMOs? And how are retention rates being considered for non-subscription MMOs that promote the concept of taking time away as much as GW2 does/did, where the concept of ‘retention’ is nebulous at best?

-edit- Also, where are those figures coming from and what MMOs are you using for the 50% / sales figures comparison?

His numbers are incorrect and/or completely fabricated, and his premise inaccurate anyway… I suggest merely avoiding further discussion with him directly.

Er, huh? Did you see my other post? I used links and multiple ways of defining “fastest” and everything. Please don’t say I’m making anything up when I’ve actually taken the time to do research. The only thing in that paragraph that is non-factual is my prediction that it will keep its record for a year or two. I attempted to make this clear by prefacing it with in my opinion.

Morthur.3894:

Since there are no official numbers there are likely less then 10% of the people that bought the game actually still playing it.

If it were any impressive amount of people then ArenaNet would be publishing the numbers far and wide.

So I’d say under 100’000, probably more like 20’000-50’000 regular players.

You can guesstimate the number of players roughly by the amount of WvW worlds: there are currently about 50 worlds with likely no more then a few thousand players in total (maybe even less). Not sure how many players fit on a single world but at least in the case of WOW a “full” shard has about 1’500 players per faction maximum.

This was an extremely unsettling read. :-/

So far as I can tell, you pulled literally every number in this post except for the final “1500” completely out of thin air:
10%
100,000
20,000-50,000
50
a few thousand

It appears that you are estimating these numbers yourself based on anecdotal experience or just your own instincts, and not a single data source. If you want to engage in wild speculation of this nature, please start by saying something like, “I’m just making these numbers up, but…” or, “This is completely speculative, but…” so that people will not be mistaken into thinking what you’re saying is true.

But anyway… no numbers from the devs = it’s not going well. Otherwise they’d be hyping it to attract more investors for their future products and expansions etc.

I hate to dismiss this so handily, but this is deeply flawed logic. ArenaNet is not a publicly traded company. As long as their private investors and corporate owners are happy, there is no tangible benefit whatsoever to revealing sales information on a regular basis, whereas there are many potential benefits to intentionally withholding this information from the public. For example, they could release a new sales milestone publicly to coincide with the launch sales of a competing product.

GW2 lost many players from beginning and continue losing

Again, I hate to dismiss a comment outright, but is this merely your own speculation or do you have some sort of source for the claim?

@Hawkian

Yes, I realize the problems inherent in my search. I do appreciate that your post was well thought out and explained why it was bad fact finding.

I do think we should note that the initial sales figures for games largely have nothing to do with how populated that game stays. SWTOR may be the second quickest selling MMO ever, and it is still considered unsuccessful.

You bring up two good points: one, that intial/launch figures have little to do with stable concurrency, and two, that SWTOR which previously held the record of “fastest-selling” is considered in large part to be a failure.

Toward the first point, you’re simply right on the money. Only time will tell if the sales figures hold. I believe there is a strong case to be made that they will, when in comes to GW2, but this is conjecture.

Toward the second, SWTOR is a case study in how initially comparable sales scenarios can take completely different paths. There are several things to consider. After reaching its “fastest-selling” milestone of two million copies in four weeks, its subscriber base did not continue to grow following this point. It dropped off and eventually stabilized. It gets muddier to compare here because ongoing subscription payments were a necessary component of their revenue model whereas this is not required for GW2. Of course, the ultimate irony is that SWTOR eventually dramatically changed its business model after these problems, “going free to play” as is the expression. This resulted in a spike in active subscriptions, followed by another falloff and stabilization. It is not an actively growing population, and that is a crucial distinction.

Another way of thinking of it is that, while it was the record-holder for fastest-growing MMO of all time, it is no longer even “a growing MMO” of any kind. Meanwhile, GW2 is currently the fastest-growing MMO of all time (and in my opinion will likely retain this record for at least a year or two), which is highly relevant to the original question posed by the OP.

edit: I don’t get how to quote properly on this board… only the first poster name shows up. Sorry to Stefan and Clay that your quoted posts aren’t attributed to you.

I just wanted to provide some clarity on the “fastest-selling of all time” issue. Also, I’ll thank killcannon for providing some contextual data to compare.

First, what does “fastest growing” mean? There are a variety of ways to measure it. Some would say that “sales within the first week” are all that should be considered. For our purposes, we can eschew a static timeframe that excludes data after a certain date in favor of “most copies sold in the shortest amount of time,” which we can compare fairly using reported sales numbers after a certain timeframe since release. That is, we can see both how many copies were sold by different games in the same period, as well as how long it took different games to reach the same sales threshold (if ever).

Two things we definitely have to acknowledge when making this metric determination are:

1) “…in the West”
and
2) Unless you count MMO expansions as individual games

clay.7849:

Then why is it when I google “fastest selling MMO” I keep getting SWTOR returns? You would think if what you said was true it would be bigger news.

This is problematic. You should never base any premise whatsoever on what you find as the top result for searching for a keyphrase on Google. For one thing, the phrase itself might be inadequate to obtain the results you’re looking for. For another, Google does not sort results by what is the most recent or the most accurate, but by which links have the highest PageRank.

News articles about SWTOR are rated highly by this algorithm. When SWTOR became the fastest-selling MMO of all time (which, in 2011, it did), it shattered the previous recordholder handily (in becoming the fastest-selling MMO, it also eclipsed the total sales of the previously fastest-selling games by a fair margin). This was a big deal!

However, it retained this record for less than a year, when it was overtaken by GW2. This is simply the fact of the scenario, not some kind of subjective assessment of what occurred. As to why it isn’t “bigger news,” I suppose it’s a fair question, but mainly one for the marketing department at ArenaNet. It might be a wise thing to base a campaign around during a free weekend/sale event.

Yes they sold 3 million fast, but they are not the fastest selling MMO of all time, that honor goes to SWTOR according to every other source I can find.

This is simply incorrect. And since you chose to say “according to every source,” I unfortunately have to question how much time you even spent looking.

SWTOR reached 2 million copies sold in four weeks, an incredibly impressive feat, especially considering the records it broke to reach that milestone. However, Guild Wars 2 accomplished this feat in just over two weeks. – and this timeframe also included a brief period when digital sales of the game were halted. It then went on to sell roughly another million in the remainder of 2012 which is significant because SWTOR simply never reached this figure at all. As of February 2012, EA was still sticking with an ‘over 2 million’ sales estimate, where the “active subscriber” pool was thought to have stabilized at 1.7 million.

Thus by either practical metric we might use based on this data- either “most sold within two weeks” or “shortest time to reach 3 million”- Guild Wars 2 wins handily and without much threat, at present, in the “fastest-growing MMO of all time” category (again, once you account for only the Western market, as well as not counting WoW’s expansions as individual games). In contrast, World of Warcraft, which was itself the fastest-selling PC game (not just MMO) at the time of its release, took roughly 8 months to reach 2 million subscribers and essentially, no other games are even a part of this discussion. EVE Online, notable for having consistent post-launch growth (like WoW, GW2 and no other MMOs at all ever in the West), has barely 500,000 subscribers total, and only crossed that line in 2013.

Regardless of how you feel about GW2 as a game, I hope we can all acknowledge these factual aspects of the MMO marketplace. Thanks for reading!

Hehe, unfortunately I don’t think it’ll be this patch, but a very strong candidate for the next!

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

honestly i don’t like alt tabbing also. did they really think that ppl will be able to find bosses in 15 min considering the map size?

Well yes, they did think that, cause you can! :P

Pre-scouting lessens your chances of anything going wrong and eliminates a lot of the variables that can lead to failure. It doesn’t guarantee success, nor is it the only way to succeed.

clay.7849:

I dunno, it seems like a lot of moan and groan when he could have simply said he never did a dungeon twice in one day. Seems to be quite the defensive fellow.

He explicitly said that he has done a dungeon more than once in a day, in fact doing all three explorable paths of the same dungeon in one day, thus avoiding DR. I don’t know where you went off the rails reading what he said, and I really don’t understand how you saw fit to say he was lying…. but I am leaving room for the possibility that you weren’t serious, in which case, you got me good. :P

Grassrab.9302:

With our guild we don’t pre scout. We simply activate the bounty, the mission leader sends groups of people to between 2 and 4 waypoints along the routes. We usually find all bounties well within the time limit. Sometimes we do not succeed at finding or killing them but then we simply go again. From the way people react on team speak it is pretty obvious that we all enjoy it, I most certainly do.

We’ve come to understand this is the more fun and superior (and apparently the “legit”) way to do it. More failures will occur, but it’ll take less time overall and be a lot more exciting.

If the guild in question in the OP can only field 7 active players during a scheduled bounty, it’s possible the guild is simply too small to take on Guild Bounties at present. At this point, T1s are simply guaranteed victory for my guild- it’s the T3s that really take coordination and active engagement, and they’re a real challenge. Can’t wait for the new bounties

You’re paying for the skins, not the stats- not much more to it

I just want to make sure I understand where you’re coming from…

You’re calling for the people who came up with Guild Bounties to be fired because you find the Tier 1 bounties too difficult to for your guild to complete? On top of this, you also want to leave your guild because you feel like you’re required to participate in them?

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Nappychappy.7046:

I quit months ago do to DR’s, but I still lurk on the forums occasionally.. Looks like I haven’t missed a kitten thing. Same old DR’s, crap drops and broken events..

I really miss launch, the game was fun then.

The game is more fun for me now than it was at launch. Not having basic things working like the marketplace sucked quite badly. Most personal stories were bugged and just about all of Orr. There’s been a lot of improvement since then.

As for DR, I’ve been playing this game for six months and NEVER experienced DR. Not once. Maybe it’s about playing a game instead of farming a game. Some of us enjoy this game because we play it.

If the farmers are the only ones complaining, Anet is doing something right.

Wow, never experienced DR? I guess you never tried to do two dungeon runs in one day to work towards a set of exotic armor?

IF I were the kind of guy who needed to get everything as fast as I could, I would run the same dungeon over and over. But see, some of us have patience and don’t really care if I get it today or tomorrow.

I have occassionally run three explorable paths of the same dungeon in one day, just for the hell of it. And I didn’t see diminishing returns because I find running the same dungeon path over and over again boring.

Even a couple of days in a row, I probably wouldn’t run the same path. Some people need everything yesterday. I’m not one of those people.

And since I KNOW about that very specific case of diminshing returns, I’d reason out it’s even more efficient for me timewise to not run the same path twice in the same day.

So yeah, I never experienced that.

Man you’re making a lot of assumptions and points when I was just pointing out that you have experienced DR.

You say you have never experienced DR, but you said you have also run the same path multiple times in a dungeon. You are aware that you get less tokens through the DR system if you run the same path more than once in a day?

So, what you said is false. You have experienced DR. Why do you feel the need to lie to people?

He didn’t say that; are you being serious in this post?

Not in this patch, but a fix is in the works.

As you can probably imagine, the rendering demands for a huge group of people fighting another huge group of people are different from those for a huge group of people fighting a giant dragon.

Karizee.8076:

Weird that the link doesn’t work. Try this.
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/guild-wars-2-expansion-confirmed/

Why do you lend more credence to this prediction by an independent analyst than to comments from the developers themselves, this month? http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/06/guild-wars-2-expansion/ “Not planned” and “coming out 2H of 2013” seem to be largely at odds!

killcannon.2576:

Bought two Penetrating Krytan weapons, sigiled them with of the nights, they did not become soulbound, but could not sell them on tp. Would suggest that natural dropped weapons of this type are rare since the ability to tp made ones is bugged.

That’s it then- thanks for trying. If you can do this with other sigils/weapons it’s definitely a bug, but either way that explains it.

The only iterations of these items on the TP are those that dropped during Halloween. As supply began to dwindle they started being listed at higher and higher prices to the point where it became ridiculous; they are the lowest-supplied non-unique weapons (of those that have supply at all), and the highest-priced masterworks, on the market right now.

They have no actual value, but the framework of stupidly high listings and buy orders will probably just stay exactly the way it is now (potentially until next halloween).

That was a good idea!

It isn’t just one item, it’s all the items that match this description: Masterwork, Level 26 or 50 , Penetrating Krytan prefix, Minor Sigil of the Night.

So far as I can tell stuff with sigil of the night in them may have only dropped during Halloween, explaining the lack of supply/“rarity.”

However, that really still doesn’t explain it. I understand how people listing slightly higher buy orders could drive the bidding up to the levels they are at, but I don’t understand anything else about this situation. Level 26 versions are being listed way higher than 50 versions. The Dagger has ENORMOUS demand, and the Longbow is listed at over 4 gold. These items have no actual rarity or apparent value. They’re proverbially a dime a dozen. Fulfilling any of the buy orders listed would represent a tremendous profit to the sellers.

Which is why I’d like to ask again, totally unrelated, just curious for no reason, can you put a sigil into a weapon without it becoming soulbound?

Saturday. My guild keeps rolling Ander!

Can you put a sigil into a weapon without it becoming soulbound?

You’re right that the transactions are very rare. The items themselves are rare, there’s barely more than 20 supplied at most for any given type. But look at all the demand. 488 buy orders placed for the dagger at 1.2g? It’s a level 26 green… What.

codpin.6542:

Probably someone stashed it or simply typed a wrong price and left it there just in case. Someone else got the same skin, checked the TP to sell it, saw the high price without seeing that it;s only one item and undercut it so they can sell it faster. And so on…

At least that’s my only logical explanation…

No, none of this makes any sense. It’s not one item, or one type of item. It’s nearly every weapon class that meets the general description offered by the OP.

http://featherfiles.aviary.com/2013-03-20/82b5cf913/e30031f2c7e549d8a7016a0ae29f0cbd.png

I have no clue. Really quite odd.

I think you overestimate the intelligence of the average player. “The sell price is so high, it must be valuable!”

That really doesn’t make much sense either. You mean that people are seeing the high sell orders and listing lower, but still outrageously high buy orders, just because the items are expensive? Even very stupid people would have to think there was some chance of profiting or getting something worthwhile out of the arrangement. Even if you thought the skin was unique, you can preview from the TP now and it takes like 2 minutes to figure out there are cheaper ones available.

No, there are buy orders for 25s+ for almost all weapon types matching that description, including the one you linked. The sellers aren’t coming down to meet them, but those alone are way out of wack; the items are essentially worthless (~5s-ish for the skin).

Something weird is definitely going on with them…

I’ve got nothing for you. I verified your numbers with spidy, it’s completely bizarre. The Krytan skins sell for 3-5s on other items, the minor sigil of the night under 1s by itself. Why…

PvP (as in structured PvP) has absolutely nothing to do with gear/stat progression. You start maxed, you are on an equal playing field with all other competitors and you can do this from the first moment you create your character. You’ll definitely find it lacking if you’re seeking that kind of thing.

That said, if the PvE and WvW do appeal to you, Ascended gear is a tier of items with a slight amount of stat progression that takes concerted effort to get, and could be right up your alley.

The world bosses do give good rewards. You’re guaranteed at least one rare item, which can be salvaged into globs of ectoplasm, which are very useful items required for many tasks. Of course they can also be sold.

There are twenty (20).

edit: I believe that 2 more are mistakenly not updated to the new rewards, and a further 1 is linked to one of the others; with those fixed it’d be 23.

Scumbag Mawile.6384:

We can still get exactly that reward seven times a day,

Just out of curiosity, where are you getting that “seven” figure from…?

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The short answer is that new content is not going to drive people away from the game. There is absolutely no evidence to support that it would.

New “good” content maybe, but badly implemented and badly designed? That’s a whole different story. I left due to new content, as did the 20+ members of my guild.
New content drove players away from the game.
There is your evidence.

I’m sorry that you aren’t enjoying the content, and that it being added to the game was enough to drive you and your friends away from the game. But you must understand this is anecdotal.

Ceraphyn.7916:

I have learned that your changes to the game are very methodical and thought through – you do not have “knee-jerk reactions”.

I agree with your whole post in total, but I just wanted to single this out. This is the aspect of their development strategy that I feel gets the least recognition.

Graybes.8251:

giving people free roam to go into any server they want, at any time, to get their world chests totally has no effect what so ever. It’s not like there is this timer website that shows the timers for all servers that people can use to see which server they could get their world chest the quickest on.

This simply isn’t how it works.

Guesting is limited to 2 servers of your choice to which you are locked-in for 24 hours. Thus the most impact anyone can have is being present on two servers besides their own in the course of a day. You cannot just keep hopping servers to go to every event you want whenever it is up on any server. It’s self-limiting.

If you use the timers to find the next time an event is up and go guest to it, you can then return to that server, or do the same one more time, then return to either of the two prior servers.

If this were not the case, and you could simply follow the timers to the nearest event on whichever server you saw fit, in an unlimited manner, the premise would have more merit. Additionally, if guesting allowed you to loot the chests with the same character more than once per day, you’d have people continously bouncing back and forth between the same three servers all day long to keep reclaiming the loot. But neither of those scenarios is the actual one.

It’s almost like guesting is a scapegoat in this scenario. The real “problem” is that there are so many freaking people desiring the rewards from these events. Yes, the fact that you can track the timers of other servers and choose 2 of them to guest on is likely exacerbating this problem to some degree. But it’s either way too optimistic or pessimistic, depending on your outlook, to assume it’s the culprit.