Guild Wars 2

There could be a new specialization, but it was always very unlikely outside of an expansion. I doubt they’d force world completion, but if they did, they’d only need 20 new hero challenges. Like Dry Top and the Silverwastes, the living world would need to add new zones. Alternatively, the living world episodes could simply reward hero points, though that would be an easy way to lose track of them.

I wouldn’t expect to see a new specialization more than once a year however, even though the original goal was to regularly add new skills.

The living world episodes (season 2) are basically an extension to the personal story. It’s solo content. Unlike the personal story however, it can be replayed, which unlocks a challenge mode for achievements. It does have a higher difficulty level, as does all the new content, which has led some players to believe that it was intended for groups. It’s not overly difficulty, the problem was usually that people didn’t bother to figure out the mechanics. Grouping up for it only trivializes it.

Hero points are meant to be a limited resource, so converting something is simply not going to happen. If you want an alternative method, it would have to be like WvW, but be careful about wanting that. Offering alternatives means they can justify stuff they wouldn’t normally do, like requiring PvP for PvE, like how the trait unlocks used to work.

Xernth.8561:

Having to play a large portion of the new content with your old spec of the last three years is absurd.

If you’ve completed all the hero challenges in the world, you likely will be able to use the elite specialization very early on. Assuming a similar setup to the existing specializations, you should be able to unlock most or all of the traits with just those points. You should then be able to unlock the remaining traits and skills within the first map by completing the new hero challenges, assuming they’re evenly distributed.

If this were any other MMO, you’d have to wait to the level cap to fully utilize your new build. Oddly however, at least in other MMOs you can play with the new skills as you level, without punishing yourself.

By completing the existing world, you will be 50% of the way through every time they add a new elite specialization. Considering these specialization include other stuff, you’d likely be able to fully unlock the necessities about 25% of the way through the expansion. That’s a huge difference if you actually wanted to use it.

Why scour Tyria for 1 pt each? Because the world will always be there and there’s still map completion and additional rewards. Eventually you’ll have nothing better to do, unless you’re one of those people.

Knighthonor.4061:

How many Hero Points are in the new HoT zones?

40 hero challenges and they give 10 hero points each for a total of 400, which is how many points you need to fully unlock an elite spec.

If you have world completion already, you’re halfway through the elite spec. Considering elite specs include other stuff to unlock however, you’ll likely only need 10 or so hero challenge within HoT to fully unlock all skills and traits.

They should have scaled it, but instead, everything is a fixed amount. Guild missions come in easy, medium and hard, which simply means X amount of people are required. For a zerg guild, they’re all easy, whereas for a small guild, all but the easiest are impossible.

3 is the minimum amount of people you need to be considered a guild group to qualify for credit.

The veteran character slot is given out on Fridays.

Lummw.8614:

I think i will indeed do that. But i really think that GW2 shoud search for key legitimacy befor accepting it!! thats no sence here…

The key is legitimate. The problem is that if it was purchased using a stolen credit card, that transaction will eventually be forcibly refunded. That refund is what flags the key as fraudulent. If that never happens however, the key will be fine. That’s why you should wait to use unsafe keys, because if they’re banned without being registered, nothing will happen and if you try to register a banned key, it simply won’t work.

The same problem can happen if a friend buys you the game directly from ArenaNet. Within the first 30 days, they simply have to issue a refund request to ArenaNet and the key will be banned along with the account.

The problem with resellers is that you don’t know how they obtained their keys. This is why they are not safe. People will use stolen credit cards to buy codes from ArenaNet, then resell them to sites like G2A, which is why you can find highly discounted prices. Once these fraudulent purchases are detected by the bank/credit card issuer, the transaction is refunded, which causes a chargeback to ArenaNet. That chargeback is considered fraud and your key is banned as a result. Generally this happens within the first week, but it could take up to 90 days.

If you end up using the key, I suggest waiting at the very least 3 business days after receiving it to apply it to your account.

DavyMcB.1603:

Imagine going to the first NPC and he says “so, you want to master the magic of time?”

But what if you were the first one. Marjory for example took the greatsword, asked Rox for tips and was like I am a reaper now.

I would guess that the other members of the team will basically do the same thing when they encounter the crashed ship and the old team in HoT. Perhaps the story will briefly mention them willing to teach the player, at which point access to the elite specialization (the ability to spend points) will be unlocked.

There are two boxes. One is a pre-purchase edition while the other is a standard edition. They both have the same design, however the pre-purchase box has pre-purchase displayed under the logo.

The standard edition boxes are not supposed to be released until the 23rd. What’s in them exactly you can only guess, however even if it had a disc, it wouldn’t contain the full game. The pre-purchase box is an empty case with a code inside.

You can register your serial code through account management (https://account.arena.net/modals/add-code)

heyhellowhatsnew.3578:

ANet just lost a sale until it’s 10 bucks or whatever.

The $10 sales from ArenaNet will never happen again. A new expansion would be near by the time it even got to 50% off. They may however open up HoT to everyone for free with the next expansion, if you want to wait ~3 years.

They could actually keep the price at a stable $50 for the remainder of the game’s life. The heroic edition was released to keep the price of the original game higher. They could do the same by including season 3 and so on with HoT. Doing this would create a mess for other retailers however, so they’ll probably just discount the price, which will end up costing you more if you want the story.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I have no idea how they manage to stay afloat if they aren’t going to give their work away.

But that was the original plan. No expansions. Instead, free content updates to evolve the world over time, to simulate a living world. The living story failed at marketing however whereas an expansion is obviously superior in that aspect.

Either your IP changed or you didn’t choose to remember your IP the last time you had to authenticate. You can see your authorized IP ranges under https://account.arena.net/security/settings

How dynamic IPs are leased is dependent on your ISP. Some ISPs will only lease them for a certain amount of time while others will let you keep your IP for as long as your connection is alive.

If it would normally give you XP, it’s going to give you mastery XP at level 80. If it’s not a part of HoT, it’ll count towards Pact Tyria.

The experience rewarded in dungeons is based on a percentage of the experience required for your level. The amount will stay the same for a level 80, however it will continuously feel like less due to the mastery bar increasing in the amount of experience required.

The possibilities are limited due to the use of DX9. GW2 does use multiple cores, but it’s ultimately limited due to DX9 running on a single thread.

Rather than fix the problem, they’ll likely rely on reducing the map population instead. Upgrading the engine is no trivial task. If they ever get around to it, you’ll likely hear the keywords 64-bit and DX11/12.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they launch with a partial storyline (the beginning of season 3) and immediately start up season 3 on schedule. Other than that, the only breaks in the story you should encounter is the ability to travel to them. You may need to complete a chain of events to gain access to certain areas for example. Masteries will likely be required eventually, gliding and jumping specifically, however obtaining their first level will be trivial.

Tic Tac Toe.1482:

Bonus question: can you seed an optional torrent with an updated dat file? May ease some of the network load/bandwidth strain…

In simple terms, the patch is already being mirrored. If you’re encountering slow download speeds, try a different asset server using the -assetsrv command.

GW2’s dat file is dynamically allocated. Everyone’s dat file is going to be a little different so a torrent would be useless.

Raif.9507:

Most likely you have already downloaded most of Heart of Thorns due to the betas that have been in the past have been using the live client.

You’ve downloaded a small fraction of HoT. The expensive assets, for example all the voices for the story, have yet to be added. Considering the minimum requirements suggests 35 GB, the launch patch will likely be around 7 GB.

Like Tera, GW2 features action combat. GW2 however is an action hybrid, which allows for traditional targeting. With HoT they’re adding several new features to support an action camera, which is the same style of camera that Tera uses.

You can see the demonstration after roughly 40 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5hvZkKlISA

They likely will increase how many points are rewarded, but not until they’re actually needed. Next expansion for example, you’ll have to play through the new zones to gather the hero points you need. Since I doubt there’d be hundreds of new hero challenges, the obvious solution would be to make the new ones worth more points. Alternatively, they could just tack them on to the story rewards.

Based purely on in-game distance, travelling from Divinity’s Reach to the Durmand Priory (without going through Lion’s Arch’s back door) is roughly 4.9 miles. Distances in-game, like the range of your skills, is measured in inches.

A max height norn was said to be 9ft tall. I measured it as 9.7ft, so I guess it’s roughly accurate.

Out of combat running speed without any modifiers is roughly 16.72 miles/hour. It should take roughly 18 minutes to run the course within the game.

I’m sure the actual lore would tell a very different tale.

Tuthan.3250:

Which retailer was it? It’s not cool to have a game on sale before its launch imo

Various (official) retailers have had the game on sale so far, most of which I’ve seen have been EU.

The sale yesterday was at funstockdigital.co.uk. They have it for 14% off, plus a special promotion for pre-ordering/purchasing which takes off another 25%. Under the official retailers, you can see them listed as GetGamesDirect under UK/Digital. Sales like this generally popup on reddit.

You can buy just the expansion by purchasing it through the in-game store.

Other official retailers have already had the expansion on sale. Yesterday for example, one of the UK retailers had it down to $35 US, but sold out within hours.

The original plan for ascended gear was to offer progression through infusions. One day ascended will become a requirement, but at that time, it’ll also become easier to acquire.

Raids could easily require ascended gear by simply offering new infusions. If they’re trying to appeal to traditional raiders, they’re going to need vertical progression.

The standard edition box will not be available until launch. Very few retailers seem to have it listed at this time. BestBuy has it for example.

If you don’t care about being behind, it really won’t matter when you get HoT until the living story starts up. Once it does, and assuming they stick with the same schedule and pricing, it’ll cost you 200 gems every 2 weeks you miss.

Rename Gw2Setup.exe to Gw2.exe and place it wherever you’d like to install the game, such as C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe.

Hero points are meant to be a limited resource, so anything that allows you to farm them isn’t going to happen. Next expansion for example, you’re going to have to play through the new zones to gather hero points in order to unlock the specialization. This is comparable to leveling through an expansion in other MMOs, though oddly, GW2 has the less casual implementation.

Only WvW could really get an alternative method by simply offering a secondary WvW-only build. For a general solution, they could sell hero challenges like how GW1 had skill books. The gem store would be the obvious choice, but then why not sell levels, waypoints, etc.

Wein.4952:

Please tell us you don’t reply to those request Anet.

If the person can provide the proper information, of course support will respond. In the end, whoever can prove ownership of the account will get full access to it. If ownership to a single person cannot be proven, the account will be permanently suspended.

You don’t need to login to contact support, you only need a working email.

On the compromised email, assuming it can still be accessed, change the password then look for automatic forwarding options and alternative ways to recover the account. Change the password again and if it’s an available option, set up a secondary authentication method. Do this on a clean computer in case of keyloggers/etc.

cam.6850:

(Every player is a solo act and has little need for others due to the “scaling”)

The same can be said about GW1. All you need is a full hero team and you can do basically anything. Additionally, you can practically play the game while AFK (c-space-afk-repeat) due to the heroes, which is what I basically did to grind vanquish rep.

GW1 is in maintenance mode and that does mean that they are no longer actively developing the game, however, they do still fix problems. Tweaking skills or drops is something they might do, but they’re not going to bother doing it unless it becomes a problem. ArenaNet has no reason to improve the game in that way because you’re only costing them resources. On the bright side however, GW1 likely won’t get shutdown as long as GW2 is alive. There’s still a potential for new players and GW1 is borrowing GW2’s resources to run, so it basically doesn’t cost anything.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vision_Crystal

https://account.arena.net/modals/add-code

You should only see the reminder every 5 or so logins. You can bypass the launcher entirely if you use the -email -password and -nopatchui options.

Personally, I’ve only see the reminder maybe 3 times in over 200 logins since it was implemented. The only thing special I do is launch with the -autologin option.

Instead of using SMS, you can use an authenticator. You won’t have to wait for the code that way and if you use a Windows app, you can simply copy/paste the code.

Never. It’s a discount for buying the complete pack and has been on sale since it was first released. The actual sale for it was 40% off.

A single report really isn’t going to do anything. Also keep in mind that they may take weeks to process and even if something happened, it would only be a 72h suspension, though repeated offenses will add up.

Kicking someone at the end of a dungeon is considered griefing and is reportable.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s a bit much for people later on to buy the expansion where the Living Story is located and then also have to buy the Living Story.

Like the heroic edition, they can just repackage HoT to include the first season after it’s complete.

How they’re selling the living story is how their new model works. Regardless of when you buy the expansion, you’re going to end up paying roughly full price. Next expansion for example, although you’ll get HoT for free, you’ll be missing 2-3 seasons worth of episodes which is around $30 to $50 in gems.

Linken.6345:

(hopefully you will be able to unlock but not play without hot, but that have not been confirmed by a dev)

The release page says:

“If you own the expansion, you’ll be able to simply log in to the game to gain free access to upcoming Living World releases!”

From a business point of view, it’s pretty safe to assume that you’ll need to own HoT in order to unlock the story for free. That’s the trick to their new model of giving away the past game for free.

McMercenary.1476:

(pathway should be C:\Users\(yourname)\AppData\Local\Temp\Gw2.exe )

No it shouldn’t. You had GW2 installed to your %temp% folder, which is where temporary files are stored. If you would have used a utility to clean up your drive, GW2 would have been deleted.

To move GW2 to an alternate location, all you need to do is move Gw2.exe and Gw2.dat since everything else will be recreated, or you could simply move the entire folder. You don’t need to copy the exact path either, so for example, you could move it to E:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe.

The gw2cache folder is only used by the trading post to temporarily cache files in the same way your web browser does. There’s no point in moving it as it’ll just be recreated in your %temp% folder when you start GW2. If you actually want to move it to save space, you’ll need to move the entire %temp% folder.

Patches are delivered through a CDN. Although your default server may be slow, there are many more you could try by manually selecting them using the -assetsrv option. Rather than use gw2status.de, lookup the IP for assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com yourself using various DNS servers.

The current launcher doesn’t support pre-loading, so anything like that would be delivered through a standard patch. Releasing it a day early would just mean you’d lose that day rather than the next.

What was downloaded for the betas will be used, but it’s also only a small fraction. The story has barely been touched and all those voices are expensive.

GW2 is currently around 20 GB. The minimum requirements for HoT is 35 GB. The launch day patch will likely be around 5 to 10 GB. You could rely on the streaming option to only download what you need.

Hexalot.8194:

Well there you have it folks. Looks like the elite specs are going to be unlocked via “challenges” in the new map.

As in the elite specialization itself will be locked. It would be odd to just be given access to it, so I assumed it would be unlocked through the story. You will still need to spend hero points to unlock the actual skills and traits. That was the purpose of changing the system in the first place.

Bomber.3872:

I run gw2 often in a vm (virtual machine).

If your goal is to run multiple clients, all you need to do is use the -shareArchive option to prevent GW2 from locking Gw2.dat and then kill the mutex which is what prevents multiple instances from being opened.

Yes. Early on they mentioned it as being the hard mode version. Unfortunately, groups will probably still be allowed to trivialize these achievements.

Asumir.1978:

I do not know what player misbehaviour warranted this decision

Weak security practices. The average person does not know what they’re doing. The requirement for a secondary authentication is an attempt to reduce the amount of support tasks caused by hacked accounts. It may be annoying to players, but it does save resources for ArenaNet.

For the more secure players however, email authentication is the better option. It’s unfortunate that new people will be forced to actually reduce their security due to the lack of security of other people. An email account with multiple authentications is going to be far more secure than what is being offered here and if you do use what is offered here, you lose the superior protection that your email provided. In a worst case scenario however, none of these options will save you because your IP range is a vulnerability.

Faab.8049:

Getting your phone number is whole lot harder, so the gains for your account securty far outweight the minor inconvenience. After all, it really only sends that if you login from a new IP.

The code is vulnerable to phishing. People fell for the obvious scam where they managed to type in that long URL without realizing it. If people are going to do that, they’re going to enter their code when prompted. It only takes a single code for their IP to be remembered.

MrH.2591:

And I don’t have anywhere near enough gold sadly.

I just rolled to 80 on a free account doing map completion. By 80, I had ~10g. I then dumped everything that could be sold on the trading post. I ended up with ~100g, which I used to buy full exotics, then dumped the rest into creating guild banks.

A character slot currently costs ~160g. It’s really not that difficult.

Mantisse.3062:

reallocated sectors count

All SMART programs should be giving you the same information as they’re reading it from the drive. The only difference should be the threshold at which they deem the value is a risk.

Reallocated sectors is a sign the drive is failing. If it is, the problem will begin to spread and you’ll encounter problems more frequently. Backup anything important and don’t trust your drive since you may find that a file you just saved is now corrupted. If you want to workaround the problem, begin a full surface scan of the disk (right click the drive > properties > tools > error checking > check for bad sectors – this will take a while). You should also reformat to start with a clean drive, but that may cause bigger problems. Keep in mind that working around the problem carries a great risk since it can spread.

If it spreads, you will need to replace the drive. You may just be unlucky with bad ones, but other factors can also affect it, such as the age, temperature and number of writes. The magnetism is fading. After obtaining a new drive, always run a full scan.

You can use the resource monitor to watch your disk’s queue. It’ll get stuck when there’s a read error and those read errors is what’s causing the computer to freeze, since Windows is stuck waiting on it. After a few minutes of attempting to read a bad sector, the disk should automatically abort the request or simply crash, which will either unfreeze the computer and display a message, or crash it entirely.

I recently had a bad 3 TB drive. As soon as I hit ~80% capacity, I hit a bad sector. I dumped half the drive, but within weeks, it began to spread and months later the disk was too much of a risk and would often crash. It was only a storage drive, so the crash simply resulted in a read error or the disk would disconnect and require a cold boot.

Dungeons were confirmed to be in maintenance mode quite a while ago with fractals being their focus. Dungeons simply weren’t popular enough to warrant further development, which is why they were dropped early on. They used to test various types of content through the living world releases, and by participating, you were voting for that content. Maybe there were also issues with the current dungeons since they were rarely fixed and also considering that the original dungeon dev was fired long ago.

Nerfing the rewards will likely just revert them to what they were originally, before they increased the gold reward to give a bigger incentive. Dungeons are too exploited and ArenaNet likely doesn’t want to waste any resources to fix them, so they took the simpler option.

Selkirk.4218:

who exactly is hot designed for?

The slightly above average, average player. The lower average will think everything is group content and zerging is required due to the increase in general difficulty.

HoT’s advertising has been focused on group related content because solo players are the majority. They don’t need to advertise what you’d expect, such as the continuation of the living story. GW2’s original launch failed for the players that were looking for a traditional endgame. Exotics were far too easy to acquire and all the dungeons were completed within a week. Fractals, along with ascended, was meant to be the solution, but it was far too late. The addition of raiding is an obvious attempt to pull those players back in, however I doubt it’ll last long if it only offer cosmetics.

HoT will feature its own personal story which is the continuation of season 2. The regular living story releases will continue some time after launch.

xadine.7069:

“I want to play solo in a MMO”

An MMO is simply a virtual world with other people. Instanced content like dungeons is not an MMO, it’s simply cheaper to produce.

If the crash produces the error reporting (to ArenaNet) window, click show details to see the crash log.

Commonly, the problem involves network software interfering with the launcher’s connection, which causes the crash.

There is a problem that affects certain CPUs which causes the launcher to crash every thousand or so files. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to bring up the task manager and select the processes tab. After starting the launcher, look for Gw2.exe under processes, right click it and select set affinity. Uncheck all CPUs except for 0.

Your Gw2.dat file was partially corrupted and repaired. You may want to check the integrity of the drive.