Guild Wars 2

No what you do is sign up for a new account. You’ll get the xpac on that account and you are free to keep your old account.

I asgree. I don’t see what the big deal is. The base game is completely free. So now you’ll have two games for the price of one!

But the base game is completely free. So now you’ll have two games for the price of one!

I don’t see what the big deal is. Now they’ll get another free base account and the expansion pack! Two games for the price of one.

Mightybird.6034:

If its truly free then make the core game free to download now. Or more realistically give vets a second account key with purchase of HoT to do with as they please.

Exactly right. Well said.

Finally someone who gets it.

I’ve purchased every Arenanet product on day one, save this moment. I am committed to not purchasing HoT at all at this point. They’ve given me every reason in the past few month’s to be guarded about this Expac. The lack of content patches since HoT’s announcement, the lack of detail involved in HoT’s actual content and all the elusive PR that’s been done is really disappointing and has left me an ex-fan of the series and the company. What Heart of thorns currently has to show in way of content does NOT justify kitten price tag. Most of these expansion features are quality of life upgrades that I’m sure the base game will receive for free anyway. I can understand their reasoning for wanting to bundle the base game with the expansion but they did not consider the ramifications that would cause. Who’s responsible for that? Mike O’ Brien? NCSoft? I’d really like to hear the answer. Putting the character slot behind a more expensive edition was pretty dirty as well.

I hope they listen to reason and act effectively on this debacle. Otherwise myself, and many others may never bother to log in again.

From my understanding your #2 points is wrong. If you add HoT to your already existing account you do NOT get the core game for free. You do NOT get another core code for a second account or to give to friends.

They’re giving the core game away free because they want a bigger playerbase, right? Why don’t they just send out emails to upgraded accounts with a second key that they can give out to friends? Problem solved, sorta.

If all the editions didn’t include the core game and the standard came with a character slot instead.

Enjoy your April Fools!

It’s starting to appear clearer that Arenanet is going to have the Revenant playthrough all personal story and living world story without an explanation on how, lore-wise, that could possibly happen. Because, ya know, video games.

At least that’s the impression I get from watching/reading interviews like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Nd4t6XvT8&t=385 (around 5 minute mark).

I don’t understand how they could miss such an oversight like this. You can’t give the Revenant a rich origin story that takes place years after the content that they’re experiencing. Maybe Jon Peters didn’t explain things right (he isn’t the lore guy) and they actually have a plan for this. Thoughts?

How long ago did they make this change?

The story was really disjointed to begin with, now it’s just absurd. Here’s another weird example of this strange storytelling: In story 7 “Forming the Pact: Against the Corruption” Trahearne leads our character and several NPC’s into the royal tombs of orr after doing research to determine that the royal tombs were deeply sacred. Now, we had just visited the royal tombs of orr via the pale tree’s vision in story 6. “The battle for Claw Island: A light in the Darkness”. Traehearne makes no mention of this at all, it’s only until my character reminds him at the end of the mission by saying "Wait….remember the vision that the Pale Tree gave us? An Orrian king spoke of “the Source.” Maybe that’s something that can help" Traehearne replies with “You’re right. The source of Orr…..Yes!” WHAT!?! Don’t you think if you were granted an audience with the pale tree and she gave you the gift of vision, you got to see and walk through Orr firsthand, were given the legendary sword Caladbolg and you actually talk to the last king of Orr you might remember that a little bit better? I suppose that’s a typical Tuesday for these characters.

I also like that in that same story mission Traehearne says before entering the tombs “If the dragon discovers our attempt, he’ll try to stop us.” and as soon as he’s about to start the ritual he say’s “Be warned: the moment we begin, Zhaitan will know. The corpses in these tombs will rise to fight us.” I like how he goes from not knowing for sure we would have to fight to knowing full well the coffins would open to reveal undead. On top of that you’d think he would have brought a slightly bigger force than just our character fighting all of the undead that arise, ya know, just in case.

I decided to run one of my characters through the personal story today and came across something really odd. In story step 7: Forming the Pact, after completing “The Battle of Fort Trinity” I went on to do “A Sad Duty”. This personal story piece makes no sense to me. It says my character went on a demolition mission with a character named Tonn. The mission went bad and Tonn lost his life. Apparently my character knew this Tonn very well but, I’ve never even met the friggen guy?

I’ve read that Arenanet removed some of the personal story for some reason, what is going on? Why would they deliberately break their main pve storymode?

I think the point people often miss discussing on this topic is there is a difference between grinding and challenging content. There are few items in the game I’ve earned that actually felt like rewards, one of which, is the Liadri mini. I actually had to think my way into receiving that reward. Why can’t we have more content like that? Not content that requires RNG, zergs, specific professions, x amount of time spent doing y task repeatedly or z amount of real world cash spent. Let’s get some honest to goodness, challenging content.

One of the things I picked up on in the pax presentation is that they are going to make the game “really, really hard”. This could be a great thing, or bad thing, all depends on implementation.

Derigar.7810:

Can anyone tell me how to get Tomes of Knowledge in bulk? I want to level it to level 60 so I can at least get all WP’s the fast way without dying constantly in the higher level area’s.

I’m not sure of the fastest way but I’d say SPVP is really easy. I’ve been playing to get a full glorious armor set and I’ve received tons of tomes and scrolls this way.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Morfedel.4165:

For those who have the scrolls and tomes, you could make a level 1 and, after the tutorial, level a character to level 80 in a matter of a minute or so of clicking.

After the tutorial?
Deluxe edition -> bank access in the tutorial -> instant lvl 80 -> 1 shot tutorial boss

HA! That’s a great idea. I’ve got enough tomes to make two 80’s, I’m definitely going this route. I wouldn’t mind leveling new professions the old way but that’s what these tomes are made for, as long as I have tons of them I might as well use them as intended.

Arhon.1638:

IIvIIozzie.9250:

Smitty.9432:

It will be longer for the beta since the DEMO AT PAX will be in 6 weeks.

That’s true but I believe MO used the words beta when discussing the pax gameplay.

It goes like this : DEMO->ALPHA->BETA->Release

That’s sometimes true. I rewatched the interview and I didn’t hear MO say beta… or demo for that matter, I probably heard the word beta from wooden or mattvisual. In any case, the game is most likely in beta state now, but we’ll find out for certain in a few weeks.

There will be NO new living story prior to the release of the expansion. This has been confirmed by Colin when he said “Heart of Thorns picks up right were living story left off”.

Kentaine.4692:

Three biomes (example: ascalon, kryta, shiverpeaks…) stacked on top of each other. Just 5 new ‘maps’ as shown on the world view would be 15 new maps this way. I think it’s kinda clever. Cram up to 15 maps into the space of 5. I just hope you can jump from the canopy all the way down to the roots in some places… and no, I won’t use a glider.

I wouldn’t get too excited. Yes, three levels per zone and 6 zones for HoT sounds right, but each level is likely not going to be a full map size. You will rather need to move to different levels in order to traverse the full map, just as we’ve experienced with Dry top and silverwastes. I also expect that the current location tool in the map window (the thing that breaks down layers) will be important to utilize for understanding location.

Chuck.8196:

Kentaine.4692:

Ideally, the next LS would branch away from Maguuma (perhaps head into northern Shiverpeaks or further east into uncharted Ascalon) as something comes up deserving a bit of our attention regarding Jormag or Kralkatorikk as those who bought the expansion take down Mordremoth and help out whenever we have a spare moment to WP away from Maguuma. Those who don’t get the expansion will be the first strike into the next Dragon’s domain.

There will be new content outside the expansion?
I’ve had a few people already tell me already they wouldn’t be getting it and they would probably just quit playing. The most reasonable complaint that I’ve heard from them was that players will be off playing the expansion leaving a large portion of the players behind with nothing to progress on. It does bother me because I’ve played with some of them for almost 10 years and now they are having their community taken away from them.

How is this in anyway reasonable? I don’t understand how a large portion of players will have nothing to progress on, can you elaborate? If you mean for pre-level 80’s consider that more people will be coming back to the game, leveling the new revenant profession in all of the older zones. And as far as the new zones go it’ll be just like when new living story introduces new maps (or portions of). I don’t understand what about this would make people want to leave, unless you mean these people expect ALL of the content to be free otherwise they are quitting, if that’s the case then what is reasonable about that?

Smitty.9432:

It will be longer for the beta since the DEMO AT PAX will be in 6 weeks.

That’s true but I believe MO used the words beta when discussing the pax gameplay.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

rapthorne.7345:

updated with date of showcase, Mike stated on stream that “the first playable version will be available at pax east”

Playable for the masses or playable for a few select people on their payroll?

It will most likely be exclusive only to people going to pax east.

I’m a bit disheartened at the lack of details.

- No date or even a time frame for release (Pax east first playable demo)
-What content can we expect in game prior to release?
- No pricing
- No quantity or size of PVE zones
- No quantity of new PVP maps
- No quantity of guild halls, only a few sentences uttered on such a favorite feature.
- No brand new weapons?

All in all everything we got was pretty vague.

Q. How long have you been working on the expansion
A. MO: “A long time” :/

Also, this is quite telling on release date. From the official Q&A page:

“Q: Will there be a collector’s edition for this expansion?

A: At this time, we do not have information available about specific versions. Rest assured that well before launch, we will reveal all the versions of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns that will be available both digitally and physically"

If we aren’t at well before launch now this might take awhile.

Colin said in the first interview during the post show(paraphrasing here): “Everyone will be on equal footing when playing as the Revenant, everyone will be level 1.” So what does that mean for using tomes of knowledge?

I think they would have announced it if it was free during the presentation. How much will it cost? It’s hard to say, there is a lot of details that were missing from the presentation that makes it difficult to see the real scale of the expansion. I’d be surprised if it’s more than $49.99.

I could care less how much it will be. I’m willing to pay any reasonable price for a full blown expansion or otherwise.

Guild Wars

15 chars

JLHiggs.6258:

IIvIIozzie.9250:

The new content will be both; free and paid for. You can convert your gold to gems or buy the gems outright. HoT will be released April (19th?) exclusively via gemstore.

They have previously indicated that an expansion via gem store was unlikely as it would devastate the economy. Try again.

I’ll accept your apology on or shortly after PAX.

The new content will be both; free and paid for. You can convert your gold to gems or buy the gems outright. HoT will be released April (19th?) exclusively via gemstore.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

We just merged several threads into this big one, as that keeps the conversation flowing and prevents redundancy.

Thanks for understanding and keep your comments coming!

Except the threads were on different subjects. Since every thread involves Guild Wars 2 why not just have one big thread while you’re at it? If the conversation is exactly the same then sure merge, but please quit making these extra long threads where the conversation is now crossed together.

Completed again in fullscreen 5760×1080. The middle screen turns black while the side screens stay in the mission during the cutscene.

Caithe’s actions are a pretty absurd thing to defend. She makes no real attempt to save the life of an innocent from this psychopath, and instead decides to murder with the approval of the murdered. Does the fact that Wynne tell’s her to do it make the act acceptable? That Wynne decides on the spot that this is the best option instead of the two of them defending themselves from the incoming attack is flat out bizarre.

Those that are defending Caithe’s decision let me ask, would you do the same? Would you really choose to kill your friend/relative instead of defending them? Is that what you think love is?

Nilkemia.8507:

Better option : Kill Faolain instead.

Agreed. I realize they are supposed to be lovers and Caithe cares about Faolain greatly but it’s obvious that is the only appropriate option for someone who has a shred of decency. The only excuse I could think of for her actually going through with the murder is if Caithe was certain that she would lose in a fight against Faolain

After completion of the mission I had no sound and no visual. Apparently there are supposed to be two cinematics at the end; One with destiny’s edge and the pact ships and the second starting with caithe speaking. I had no audio or visual for the destiny’s edge cutscene, for the caithe cutscene all I had were subtitles on a black screen.
This may be due to me playing in windowed mode. I replayed the mission fullscreen and got the first cutscene, although the volume seemed really low, the second cutscene didn’t play- maybe due to me replaying the mission instead of using a different character who hadn’t already completed it.

So for me I had little sound and no visual. Apparently there are supposed to be two cinematics at the end; One with destiny’s edge and the pact ships and the second starting with caithe speaking. I had no audio or visual for the destiny’s edge cutscene, for the caithe cutscene all I had were subtitles on a black screen.
This may be due to me playing in windowed mode. I replayed the mission and got the first cutscene, although the volume seemed really low, the second cutscene didn’t play.

On the one hand, I think Wanze and The Black Leech are on the right track, the trademark name does make sense as a bundle deal for season 2, especially if we fight the big flower (The heart of thorns?) in today’s update.

On the other, the trademark description indicates a lot of things; including “computer game software downloadable from a global computer network”. It’s my belief that if they decide to do expansion-style content with a fee attached it would not be a boxed copy you would buy at a game store, instead, " framework for how an MMO can grow its universe" could simply be having paid for add-on content exclusively through their in-game store via the purchase of gems. I think the PR spin that Arenanet are going for is that you can buy future content by simply playing their game and transferring the gold you earn to gems, giving gamers future content for free by “earning” it instead of buying it.

Perhaps we will get some clarification in a few hours time.

Moldur.6275:

If that was the case then it wouldn’t be much of an easter egg (at the time you found the text back then you would have already seen the “live contents” anyway) and that earlier date would in that case not have been the usual tuesday release day.
Although I have no idea what 04 and 425 mean, help appreciated!

It’s an easter egg, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a hint to future content. Consider that the box assets were likely made months beforehand, and may have been intended to be used in a sneak peak preview, like this one. Yes Oct 31st wouldn’t have been a normal tuesday release, neither was the Tower of Nightmares, back on Oct 29th… a friday. The date isn’t a release date for an expansion. They wouldn’t have it narrowed down that specific yet.

Moldur.6275:

1. In the sequence where they show the basement in the durmand priory, the wooden boxes in there actually have some very interesting new krytan written on them. For example I have begun to translate text on the boxes next to the jade wurm thing as follows on different boxes from top to bottom:

04
OCT31ST
LIVE CONTENTS
425

These wooden boxes with the words on them appeared in game during the Echoes of the Past release. That release came out november 4th. When the content was being created it’s most probable they had an intended release date for oct 31st, thereby making it no more than a faulty easter egg.

We are five pages deep and still some do not understand the argument for expansions. This thread isn’t about Living story vs Expansion in terms of a content delivery system. If Arenanet delivered an expansion worth of content via living story that would be amazing, free expansions?! In the two years of living story we’ve received thus far Arenanet haven’t delivered a quarter of the content that would be expected in an expansion, including the feature packs. Living story is Arenanets version of the content patch that every other MMO provides, in addition to expansions.

Now some of you may put in less time to this game that the living story content is all you desire, but many of us want more, and we’re willing to pull out our wallets to prove it. We don’t want to play other games, we really like Guild Wars 2, but if there isn’t enough game there it turns into a loss for everyone as the population shrinks.

This new years It’s time for Arenanet to explain what the future really holds for Guild Wars 2. Merry X-mas everyone.

GuzziHero.2467:

But what is an ‘expansion’?.

An expansion is quite quantifiable. Videogames have had them for over a decade, one only has to look at past gaming expansions; their content and how successful they were to determine what would be considered acceptable.

In terms of Guild Wars 2’s living story content I’d presume most who have been gamers for years and long enough to have played several expansions would not consider what LS has to offer as any sort of expansion substitute. The quantity and quality of content LS provides is no different then what MMORPG players have been given as free updates since their existence, it’s simply marketed differently.

Want an example of an expansions worth of new content?
- New continent with no less than 12 explorable zones
- New race
- New skills. GW2 way of accomplishing this would be to open up more weapon choices for each class, in addition to new healing, utility and elite skills for each class.
- New dungeons, no less than 4
- Elite content. This can be produced in the manner of higher FOTM, elite missions/god realms (GW1) or simply more difficult dungeon paths.
- New content that won’t divide the community, but will encourage expansion purchase. such as:
*New pvp modes and maps playable to anyone, with unique reward tracks exclusive to expansion purchasers
* expansion exclusive guild features
*expansion exclusive personal instance customization
PLUS MORE!!!

…think you get the picture.

GuzziHero.2467:

I really can see where Anet has beein going with the Living Story Concept….

But the issue here is that living story hasn’t brought an expansions worth of content collectively over the past two years. If we were given an expansions worth of content over the course of 6 month’s to 1 year there would be little complaint, but the fact is we have been given a sliver of actual content in the interim of an expansion that may not exist at all.

I would be perfectly fine with the content we’ve been given if I knew that work was being done on an upcoming expansion. I recall an article about a year old now where they (colin?) claimed to have an expansions worth of content ready but wasn’t sure what form it would be released. Where did that content go? It surely hasn’t made it’s way onto the servers. I love Arenanet and Guild Wars however this fascination with only supplying the casual gamers with content and the overpriced gem store goods is very disheartening.

Using an i7 920. I guess if I want to improve my FPS in this game I got to overclock my CPU. For shame.

Those instructions are quite old, and the options that were the same were in the correct place.

When I followed the instructions on this site I realized crossfirex does not appear to be working for Guild Wars 2. I tried three other games and each had the logo in the top right, whereas gw2 did not.

I read several sites suggest that the profile for gw2 wasn’t pointing to the correct .exe in 2012, but with the current AMD drivers it doesn’t appear I can alter profiles like you could back then. I haven’t seen any real recent discussion on this matter either.

I recently purchased two R9 290’s, I was very disappointed to find out that these cards have not given me any fps boost over my two 460’s. I’ve run 4 benchmarks in Divinity’s Reach and the results were

5760×1080 – AVG 29FPS Cross Fire enabled
5760×1080 – AVG 31FPS Cross Fire disabled

1920×1080 AVG 43FPS Cross Fire enabled
1920×1080 AVG 42FPS Cross Fire disabled

Why are my AMD cards running at such low FPS in this game? I’ve had huge fps gains in the other games I’ve tested.

If you’ve played through Guild Wars you’re going to finally feel treated and enjoy “Hidden Arcana”. I only wish they would have their writing team put together some detailed lore and stick it in the priory, as opposed to the short excerpts. It could be a great opportunity to further bridge the community between GW1 and 2 as well as answer some questions I’ve had for almost a decade.

On the topic of Dragons lair I would really like to see it become a full fledged dungeon where a group of five have to go through all six lanes or Element,Nature and Chaos lairs are added as a fractal. It’s too good to pass up.

The only downside about this content is it reminds me how we all got screwed out of the Abaddon fractal for that rubbish Thaumanova reactor.

MORE GUILDWARS 1 CONTENT!

Video starts around start of topic, GW mentioned a minute after: http://youtu.be/xzfXI7oOUTw?t=9m13s

Agreed, this is an obvious issue. There’s no reason to have the current system as it stands.

I believe only good things can come from player housing, and the sooner they incorporate it the better off we (the players) would be. While there are a lot of games that incorporate this feature, some with a plethora of options and some where it feels like an after thought, GW2 would likely benefit from this feature the most if they tried to land somewhere in between. There are many directions they could take it, here’s how I think it would work the best in GW2:

Instead of player housing, players would be given the ability to customize each of their characters home instance. Players start off with some standard models and textures they ckittene to spruce up the place, from giving rooms some new decorations or to even moving buildings around; save for some buildings due to story purposes. Upgrades like adding merchant npc’s, waypoints and new buildings/textures could be unlocked through various methods like living/ personal story completion, world drops, gem store or even player to player trades via the auction house. Players can choose one building to use as their characters personal home. Inside the home they have additional options like showcasing weapon/armor skins, mini’s, titles etc (think HOM).

While there is a lot of aesthetic possibility’s let’s delve into story and game play opportunities. Living world content could kick off at your characters own home, with visits from members of destiny’s edge, important character’s from your personal story and others; such as destiny’s orphans. As your character has developed into the boss of the destiny’s orphans crew your home will also double as a base of operations. Other characters created on your account might even swing by. The choices you’ve made when developing each character will reflect the direction conversations can go and special bonus missions you can complete, while the AI drives your alt’s. Your characters personal instance isn’t just about playing solo; friends, guildies and random plauers can be invited to join where together you can work towards goals by assisting with bonus missions and personal/living story progression.

That’s really just the tip of the iceberg, if Arenanet focused on designing this into a core feature it could be truly game changing. While I haven’t played WoW in years, after looking at their new player housing system it appeared like they might finally be turning the game around. It’s still too early to tell, but I hope they succeed. A recent beta review I read seems to suggest Blizzard has pulled back some of the features they initially announced while others have been lackluster. Even if it turned out to be amazing I won’t go back to a monthly fee, but perhaps it could help give Arenanet the encouragement they need to incorporate their version of a feature. If anything else they could mull the idea over with the Wildstar team, a team that’s already been through this process and with their help come up with something special.

Just happened to me, The issue persists.