Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

They just haven’t explained what kind of challenging content we’re getting. So its kind of an empty statement. We haven’t heard them say “dungeons” or “raids”.

If they’re going to encourage support roles, I’m guessing the content will be guild related. That way they can force any requirements and they won’t have to care about the problems with random players and LFG complaints (can’t complain about your own guild kicking you, requiring ascended, etc).

Assuming it’s guild content, it’ll likely be instanced and considering ArenaNet’s past stance on guilds, be tuned for 10+ players. It could be open world content, but then it would likely either be just another Tequatl (tuned for a zerg) or get exploited/griefed by zergs (tuned for small groups).

However, if they go this route, I suspect they’ll release a single Tequatl in a box style encounter and that’s it. I doubt it’d be popular enough to warrant further development.

If you see the character slot as a $10 value, you might as well pre-purchase it because you likely won’t get it any cheaper. If not however, you might as well wait a few weeks after launch for a sale, which will likely be around $10 off. If you want to wait longer, like 9+ months, it might be $20 less, but don’t expect to see it any lower than that since they’ll just reset the price with the next expansion.

TGI FRIDAY.6275:

Wait till they reveal more about HoT. As of right now, there’s nothing in HoT for me.

HoT may be small, but also consider that the living story is no longer free. The majority of future content updates will be locked within HoT, until they move on to the next expansion.

Orochimaru.4730:

When they dont get as many sales as they were hoping for they will have to reduce the price to something more reasonable.

If HoT was only $20, would you buy it?

Outside of sales, I doubt the price will ever drop (from buy.guildwars2.com). If they’re going to be refunding players and resetting the price every expansion, they might as well keep a stable price and offer refunds by automatically upgrading their accounts. The price can be justified by including the living story rather than selling it separately. Alternatively, they might do the opposite and lower the price, but charge that difference for the living story.

Through 3rd parties however, the price will of course be cheaper like always. It actually already is at some places.

Archmike.5364:

Yeah i’ve got one as well for “digital delux edition” but doesn’t say which one and the refund was £10 which isn’t what any of the DDE’s cost O.o

They’re refunding people who bought the game within the last few months and have pre-purchased HoT. That was the price of the deluxe during the 75% off sale.

Gw2Setup.exe is just the launcher by another name, which downloads itself to your
%temp% folder and then asks where you want to install it. In some cases, it doesn’t ask and will bug instead (no play button, can’t login) or simply begin installing to your
%temp% folder. If it was installed to your %temp% folder, that’s why it would have been deleted.

Simply rename Gw2Setup.exe to Gw2.exe to recreate the launcher.

Program Files is a protected directory and not meant to be commonly updated. If you want to install GW2 there, you’re going to have to always run the game as an administrator. Instead, move the Guild Wars 2 folder somewhere else, for example, C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe.

DarkSpirit.7046:

I finally completed it with the help of a friend, which kind of defeats the purpose of the living stories being solo-able.

GW2 is a skill based action game and unlike most other MMOs, has higher expectations for the solo player. If you’re an average gamer, you’re going to be fine, otherwise you’re going to find the content a little too difficult. For comparison, WoW, like most MMOs (the average player in MMOs is not a gamer), treats solo content as being for the most casual of players, where you can win by practically doing nothing at all. GW2 was used to be a lot more clear in this stance, but then they nerfed the game by basically 50% during beta (even low level mobs used to feature dodge or die mechanics).

If you have trouble soloing regular enemies in Orr, Dry Top and Silverwastes, you’re going to have trouble with HoT. But that’s why people zerg. Those who can’t, believe it’s zerg content, in the same way a few people have called the living story group content.

Bubi.7942:

Btw, how do you have info on content in HoT?

With what has been shown off, at the very least, we know that HoT is going to be more mobile.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Why not go the EA route like the Battlefield series…..? The premium pack. $50 for all current DLC and any future DLC.

That is what they’re probably doing. You’re not buying HoT by itself, you’re buying a season pass for the next ~2 years of DLC, aka the living story. They could have gone the DLC route and sold HoT and the seasons individually for $20 each, but that would have been a mess, plus people didn’t like the idea of having to pay for season 2. This is simply another step in their experimental living world model.

If you contact support, they’ll just say it’s yours to keep. It’s what they’ve done in past cases like these. Once they even forgot to ban an account after refunding it, and they let the guy keep it.

As in, will they rewrite their engine to use DX12? No.

ArenaNet uses their own in-house engine which is an improved GW1 engine. Upgrading it isn’t a simple task and something like that wouldn’t happen until several years after the release of Windows 10 and only if it’s dominant within the player base. Hints of DX10 for example were found back in the days of beta and it never happened. Don’t expect to see the engine change until GW3.

HoT isn’t a bundle. The core game isn’t actually included with it. HoT’s serial key simply grants full access to the game. If they were going to allow people to give away the core game, they wouldn’t have included it like that, they would have sold it separately.

If someone wants to try the game, buy it from buy.guildwars2.com, then request a refund through support. You have up to a month to request a refund, though do note that the account will be permanently banned, including the email.

In the near future however (after HoT), there may be actual trial accounts.

azizul.8469:

that mission can be soloed.

(the living story, including all of the achievements, is solo content)

Slapinator.4196:

What’s the new crafting profession?

http://dulfy.net/2015/06/19/gw2-scribing-and-crafting-in-guild-halls/

At this time, there is no way to pre-purchase the actual boxed standard edition. What is currently available is the pre-purchase box, which is just an empty case. It can be found in-stores from the official retailers, though it seems to be rather rare. The actual standard edition will come later, likely not until after launch.

Season 2 is basically an expansion to the personal story (level 80 content). There is a gap in the story however since season 1 and what came before that was temporary content and is no longer playable.

You have to purchase it if you want to unlock it for your account. You can however play it for free if you join someone else’s instance, but you won’t get any of the rewards out of it. To purchase it, you buy it as a package under the gem store (rather than the story journal).

For a summary of season 2, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_2

Azrael.4960:

Sounds like you’re being shoveled into maps with few players or maps with experienced players.

You only need 3 people per fort to successfully do the entire event. It can actually end up being a lot easier as long as you’re not plagued by overly bad players. You only need 1 experienced player per group to carry them (zerkers can solo breaches and melt lanes).

SirDrygan.1823:

Players are just melting them.

It was just as fast before the patch, it was just more rare. However, the same group that could do it pre-patch is now much faster post-patch. (when only zerkers show up)

You can contact support to undo the transfer, but they won’t reset the waiting period.

Why 3 years?

Because ArenaNet had a vision – a living world. Their model has always been an experiment and the goal was to offer an expansion’s worth of content over time. They didn’t actually want to do an expansion, but the problem however is that free content doesn’t sell the game. From an outside perspective, would you normally hear about some patch an MMO gets? Now what about an expansion? Expansions are treated like a new game and because of that, reach a larger audience. It’s just another step in the experiment and it’s far better for marketing.

Why the price?

The price of a (new) game reveals a lot about it. The price they chose is the standard price of a full expansion. With what they’ve revealed so far however, it doesn’t look like a full expansion. They would have confirmed that if they had chosen a low price. I doubt HoT is going to be a traditional expansion, but rather another experiment; a living world styled expansion. You’re not paying for just HoT, you’re paying for the next ~2 years of DLC – the living story. If they do go this route, the price could remain constant for the remainder of the game’s life.

Why a full price when they feature microtransactions?

WoW’s expansion is the same price as HoT, has a subscription and a cash shop. Why do subscription games even charge for their expansions? A part of it is simply perception. Something that is free is garbage whereas something that is expensive must be better.

Chroro.8930:

How do I activate HoT on an existing account?

https://register.arena.net/content/code

If you bought the game from buy.guildwars2.com between Jan 23rd and June 16th, you’ll get it refunded if you purchase HoT through buy.guildwars2.com. The refund is automatic and will be processed once a week.

The core game + heroic edition was being sold for only $10 just a few months ago and the bonuses of the heroic edition alone were a $20 value. The core game has no value, so they simply “included” it, as in a HoT serial key grants full access to a GW2 account.

The refund only applies if you purchase it through buy.guildwars2.com.

The free character slot is only for accounts registered prior to Jan 23 or accounts purchased from a 3rd party retailer and registered prior to June 16.

You would not be eligible for either.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/94582027-Heart-of-Thorns-Pre-Purchase-FAQ

If you want the actual standard edition box, note that you’ll have to wait until after launch. The physical box you can get currently is only a pre-purchase box, which is just an empty case. Normally you’d get both, but considering how they’re handling accounts now, I doubt it.

Khristophoros.7194:

GW1 had AI that avoided AoE, and guess what happened?

GW2 also had it during the betas. Imagine if every tick of an AoE also applied a short duration fear. That’s basically what happened. Although it made AoEs rather useless as damaging abilities, the fear component was easily exploited since enemies could be kept in a constant state of fear.

Test.8734:

Do you need to get anything more than the core game to play through the content we got after the core game’s release? No?

Yes. Season 2.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Where does Living Story lie then?

The living world was ArenaNet’s own vision of an expansion. The idea was to keep the players active through a constant stream of new content, while funding the game through the gem store. All content added post launch has been a part of the living world concept, which has always been very experimental.

Furthering the living world concept, I suspect that expansions will act as a gateway to it, rather than being traditional expansions. Basically, HoT will be the season pass for future DLC content, aka the living story. What was once free is now paid for up front, and unlike the living story, the simple keyword “expansion” sells itself. This is just another step in their experimental concept.

Elite specializations are meant to be endgame progression. Allowing new players to access them would increase the complexity and overwhelm them, plus they might cost more.

Assuming there’s actually a story behind them, I doubt you’ll even be able to unlock them before 80. Rather than simply making it available with HoT, I would expect that access to them would require completing a certain story step.

As for alts of the same profession, there’s really no reason to not make that unlock account bound, except for the fact that it’s meant to be endgame character progression. In the future, there may also be cases where an elite specialization simply isn’t possible prior to 80. For example, if they implement a new weapon type, they can save resources by making it for level 80s only.

If you think scrolls are bad, just wait until HoT. Guild missions only. Let’s hope they actually scale now. Considering ArenaNet basically told smaller guilds to PuG for guild halls however, I’ll assume small guilds are dead.

Vayne.8563:

And yes, I know in lore, Destiny’s Edge was five people, but in reality, the Guild Wars, for which the series of named, was about large guilds, who went to war.

The guilds banded together and went to war. Every guild doesn’t have to be large, nor do they even have to be combat guilds. Traders, banks and cooks for example were some of them.

A guild can be anything, from a few elites to a mass of casuals. Sure, you can say one isn’t a valid guild, but it’s not right. A guild is nothing more than a house. It doesn’t matter how many people live in it, it’s still a home.

Considering you bought the game less than a month ago, your account likely holds no value and you might as well start a new one. It all comes down to how much work you want to redo and if you actually care about it.

If you bought your account from ArenaNet and upgrade to HoT, you do get your original purchase refunded however.

The free character slot will be given on July 10th. Any account that upgrades after that date will have to wait for the weekly batch to receive their slot. FAQ

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Was there a statement where they explicitly said that if you buy the basic expansion after release, you will not get a char slot? I’d like to see it as I haven’t so far.

They can add whatever bonuses they want after launch, but it wouldn’t be the same deal. As it is right now, the veteran character slot is only available to those who upgrade prior to launch. Under the FAQ they have it listed as an exclusive pre-purchase bonus.

HoT will be required for the next season at least, because it will take place in HoT. The continuation of season 2 will be HoT’s personal/living story – whatever they call it. Whether they lock future seasons that take place outside of HoT, you can only guess.

imo, HoT isn’t going to be an expansion like what you’d expect. Instead, it’s going to be ArenaNet’s own twist, further building on to the living story. The living story itself will no longer be free and instead be paid for up front through the purchase of expansions. In terms of DLC, instead of HoT being a full expansion, it’ll be more like a DLC combined with a season pass for the future DLC, aka the living story. Depending on how they want to market it, the game may remain at a stable price (no more sales) as long as they continue development. I suspect that HoT’s actual expansion content will be released in the same format as the living story, rather than giving everything at all once. For example, HoT may only feature 2 maps on release, but every couple of months, they’ll expand further into the area, eventually reaching the size of a full expansion. That was the original purpose of the living story – an expansion over time.

Telia started in Sweden, which is why some databases will list Sweden as the default location. IP location data is only an estimation or is provided by the ISP controlling those IPs. If you lookup GW2 EU for example, it traces back to NCSoft US. If you own a public IP range, you can use it anywhere you want in the world, which is also why location data can be very inaccurate as they move around.

You can estimate the location of an IP by judging the ping’s response time. If you’re going overseas for example, you’re going to take a 100-200ms hit. If you were actually going back and forth, you’d be seeing major jumps. The link between hop 10 (NCSoft’s connection to Telia’s network in Texas) and 11 (NCsoft’s network in Texas) is too high for that short of a distance. There’s something wrong there, plus some packets are being dropped throughout (marked with a *).

Your home network (the first hop) is also experiencing problems and appears to be unstable. A bad wireless signal perhaps? That 150ms in the first response could potentially be affecting every packet and be the cause of the packet loss. Restart the router, try reconfiguring/resetting it and look for any potential sources of interference (generally only a problem with wireless).

Instead of using tracert, use pathping to see more information. If you want something more graphical, use PingPlotter.

Lastly, http://www.iplocation.net/ shows multiple database results when looking up IPs.

Guizao.4167:

What? FEW BETA WEEKENDS and REAL BETAS AND STRESS TEST, the announcement on the pre-purchase page is very clear, that is, pre-purchasing it grants you access on ALL beta weekends. Plus, what do you mean by ‘real betas and stress test’?

Pre-purchasing only grants you access to the beta weekend events, aka BWEs. Like the name implies, these betas are only open on weekends and are more of a public demo than a beta test. The original BWEs ended with an special event as the finale, which they may or may not do again. The actual closed beta is ran in the background, is under an NDA and is only accessible to select people. Stress tests are single events where they want a certain amount of activity at a certain time, which is why they generally only last a few hours.

Whether pre-purchasers are invited to stress tests or any other events is entirely up to ArenaNet. This WvW stress test was announced prior to pre-purchasing as being invite only. For future tests, pre-purchasers will probably be invited.

IP geolocations are only an estimate. Use different databases to see different results. In this case, the host names include a hint about their location (sea, sjo, las, dls), which are all in the US. The link between hop 10 and 11 looks bad though.

yakuza snowdragon.4639:

I would like to see you solo 60+ mobs in HM without knowing the gear weapons skills and timing combination and I mean solo not with hunches or heros.

Without knowing… the build you’re using? Impossible.

Anyone can go to the build wiki, find a farming build and casually solo however many mobs there are. Some of the builds are so simple, all you have to basically do is spam the skills on cooldown.

If you want to find a challenge, stop zerging. The more people you bring, the less effort each individual has to put in. Except for the elite events, all events scale for 4 people minimum (per section). Instead of looking at the low level world bosses, try doing the temple of grenth with only 1-3 people. Unfortunately, megasevers can make that a difficult task.

To the original point however, if you’re good enough, then #1 is really all you need as long as you can meet any DPS requirements. The same can be said for a lot of skill based action games.

May 14th 2012 – high res screenshot test (bugged)

online.1278:

Then why not make Linux Beta like Mac Beta using Wine.

Because then they would have to officially support it and continue to do so. That means more work for customer support, QA and development. There’s simply not enough users to warrant the increased cost.

Vancien.1980:

In all honestly, having to submit a ticket to reset a password is absolutely ridiculous. There should be a simple email method or a series of security questions to answer in order to do a reset.

If your GW1 account has a legitimate email address (not @ncsoft/etc), you remember a character’s name and the account’s serial key, you can use the forgot password option in the same way you would for a GW2 account.

If your GW1 account doesn’t have a legitimate email address, support is required because there’s no way to contact you. Once you regain access to the account, you’re supposed to change its email using account.guildwars2.com.

If you have an idea of what your password is, you can attempt to brute force it by logging in using account.guildwars2.com. Since a character name isn’t required, this is how you can check your password. If you don’t know a character’s name, look through old screenshots or if you can vaguely remember one, use hom.guildwars2.com to verify it.

Vallily.8741:

Are you referring to arena net customer support through email, in game support , or digital river customer support by email or phone?

There is no in-game support and Digital River is not ArenaNet. There is only 1 way to submit a ticket: https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

Vallily.8741:

Instead of a three word error message with no context.

The error is basically the equivalent of a login error (the lack of a detailed message is to prevent abuse). The details you provided failed to pass a security check. Contact your bank/credit card issuer for further details. They likely thought the transaction was suspicious and blocked it.

Vallily.8741:

Gaile can suggest to management that they review their relationship with digital river to ensure that their customers aren’t being treated like dirt when trying to resolve payment difficulties.

You’re not supposed to contact Digital River. You contact GW2 support.

Considering they didn’t upgrade the original physical copies to the heroic edition, it’s very unlikely.

Does it have to be a .zip? WinRAR (RAR5) and 7-Zip (7z) have far better compression ratios.

For example, the entire templates/guide file is 325 MB as a zip. It’s only 5.5 MB as a 7z and 43 MB as a RAR5. A single temple (61 MB) is only 3.5 MB as a 7z and 4.5 MB as a RAR5, but 45 MB as a ZIP.

Anyone can easily get 7-Zip (it’s open source). If it’s allowed, that would be a much simpler alternative and potentially save a lot of bandwidth.

The card might not be the problem. Your IP could be linked to a known scammer, your billing address could be blacklisted or your email could be flagged (hacked account).

If you use a proxy to change your IP, pay through PayPal and enter a different billing address and email, there’s no way they can know it’s you and therefore there shouldn’t be any problems.

For starters, use your browser’s private mode, then try using a different email for your billing address (it’s where the receipt is sent). If you have a dynamic IP, force it to change. After that, try entering a partially fake address, then try a proxy or VPN to change your IP range. Also, only try the website in case your account is the problem.

Alternatively, use a 3rd party instead, like Amazon.

Support can’t tell you any private information because they have no way of knowing who you are. Did you directly give them your entire billing information? If they think you’re highly suspicious however (a scammer), you’re basically dealing with identity theft and they’ll never trust you.

You could try using PayPal as a middleman if you want to avoid them or one of those gift card/credit cards.

Lowering the kick timer won’t change anything because they’re not actually AFK. Even if they were, they would simply use auto run or a macro to bypass it.

As an alternative, teach them how to AFK events without griefing them. To get credit for an event, all you have to do is deal a bit of damage or kill a few enemies. Either participate in one of the boss fights or simply assist with killing one of the waves. After that, you’re done. You have enough contribution to simply AFK the rest of the event, so go AFK around Indigo so you don’t count towards scaling.

Until ArenaNet fixes contribution, there is no solution to leechers. The problem with fixing contribution however is that the casuals are punished and there’s little incentive to participate if you’re late.

Mo Mo.1947:

Seems like a bug or programming oversight for Vinewrath to scale with afk’ers.

Scaling originally worked by only counting players that were “active” (basically in combat) with the event. The problem with that however was that a large group of players could kill a boss before it actually scaled because they didn’t actually count until they dealt damage. Scaling was changed during season 1. Now it’s simple. Everyone within the event’s area is counted regardless of what they’re doing or if they’re even alive.

Compare your experience to the old video I linked a while ago. The claws have always attacked in pairs back to back, but if you’re saying they’re happening while they’re happening, it’s bugged. Sounds like it may have quickness.

The original beta event occurred ~2 weeks after pre-purchasing was announced. They would always announce it at the start of the week, with the beta always occurring on the weekend.

If they are on a similar schedule, they would announce the first beta today. However, this coming weekend isn’t going to work for them, so it likely won’t be this week.

They automatically converted the scrolls because you would have complained about needing to click through an entire stack. They would have only given you spirit shards either way.

Hero points are the new currency used for skills and traits and they’re meant to be a limited resource only gained through leveling from 1-80 and hero challenges.

~850 MB

The zerg has always been terrible at killing it. Before the zergs came along, you used to be able to solo it in half the time they usually take. Blame all the leechers – they make everything that scales worse.

If everyone that wasn’t dealing their worth in DPS simply tagged the boss and AFK’d outside of the event’s area, events would be a lot faster.

Pre-purchasing will be available until launch. From 3rd party retailers, pre-purchasing will be available as long as they have boxes remaining, assuming ArenaNet still accepts them as pre-purchase codes.

Launch likely won’t be for another 2 months at the earliest, 3-5 more likely.

It’s Josh Foreman’s signature. He showed it on the last stream:

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/672813747
17:50

If you’re going in with a geared 80, of course everything’s going to be easy. The personal story is for the newer players. Try playing the game from a casual new player’s perspective and only equip what is given to you through the personal story and level up rewards. Additionally, play as one of the low defense professions and only melee. For further increased difficulty, simply play naked and without traits. Even Queensdale can be challenging if you want it to be.

Testing the Shatterer right now, I can crit, but it’s like a 1% chance.

(~78% crit chance)

One day, he’ll be ready to work on SAB again…

SAB began as one of his experiments. He likely doesn’t have the time to work on it due to the new content.