Guild Wars 2

• Cost of ascended weapons: ~50-80g
• Cost of AR+9/Stat+5: ~60-70g

So the costs are comparable.

Mystic.5934:

we should also add recipes to change weapon types, like torch into sword. cause, you know, maybe people change their minds about their builds.

Those don’t seem parallel to me. Weapons can be re-purposed to other characters (with appropriate stat changes), while a power infusion isn’t useful for a condi build.

sorudo.9054:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

your choices do have in game consequences.

sorudo.9054:

i have yet to see any such consequences and i have plenty of characters, absolutely nothing really changes and i end up with just the same.

Take another look then. Your choices decide which allies you have with you at the end, for example.

i have taken 15 other looks, looking at it many times doesn’t change it.

Then you’re still missing the changes that take place in the personal story and in your home instance.

This idea comes up every month or so. I think nearly every player would support this as a QoL change.

The precedent already exists for Bauble, Winter’s Heart, & Phospholuminescent Infusions:

• Original Infusion
• Anthology of Heroes
• Infusion-related material sink (respectively: Mystic coin x5, Pristine Snowflakes x10, & Tattered Bat Wings x5)
• Stat-related material sink: 25x of one of the original T6 fine mats (e.g. Powerful Venom, for condition damage)

So it’s “simply” a matter of introducing new recipes to destroy the old infusion and replace it with a new one, perhaps re-using the bauble infusion model (5 mystic coins) (In practice, this apparently is a lot more work than we think it is.)

Arnox.5128:

I’m going to be blunt. I think a lot of your guys’ arguments are spurious at best here. If someone wants to be unimaginative with their name,

1. It’s their decision.
2. They already do it anyway.

Sure, but you want to make it ANet’s problem, too, by asking ANet to create an entirely new mechanic to support your preferences. I don’t have a problem with other games allowing one name per world or forcing identical last names on all characters — that’s the choice of the developers of those games.

There are pros & cons of any naming convention in any existing MMO and if you want to debate those for a theoretical future game, we can do that (although not in these forums). The idea of attaching a number to a name isn’t unreasonable. The point is that it’s not without cons and it’s definitely not free to implement.

Vayne.8563:

your choices do have in game consequences.

sorudo.9054:

i have yet to see any such consequences and i have plenty of characters, absolutely nothing really changes and i end up with just the same.

Take another look then. Your choices decide which allies you have with you at the end, for example.

I’d love to see this, plus removing the need to play the episode first, before repeating it to work on achievements. But… it’s a lot of work for something that only affects people once per account. Given ANet’s limited time, I’d rather see them deliver better, newer stories, with new and fun achievements of their own.

Carighan.6758:

A bigger problem is how all HoT stuff is accountbound because they couldn’t find a different way to keep non-HoT owners away from it.

I agree that it’s a problem. I’m just not sure what else they could do, that wouldn’t require creating a difficult-to-manage mechanic.

We could, for example, imagine that items get a new flag, “Game unlock,” with a value of 0 for free accounts, 1 for Core, 2 for HoT, 3 for Expac #2 and so on. Players wouldn’t be able to consume “higher numbered” items than the game they own. But that presents other issues: would people still be able to craft? buy from the TP? salvage? sell to vendor? Would players still be able to unlock recipes?

It probably seemed to ANet to be much less work and much less future maintenance to use the existing binding system and call it a day.

I’d be happier if they went with a more nuanced solution. I’m not sure, however, whether that is practical now (or whether it was in the first place). I have a tiny bit of hope that they’ll have rethought this for the new expac.

There are two types of reasons people have trouble finding a name that isn’t already taken:

• They hate inventing character names.
• They have imposed a set of requirements that limits the choice of names.

In the first case, the OP’s solution won’t be of much help; they still will hate inventing names. In the second case, I don’t understand why ANet or especially other players need to indulge one player’s personal preference for names.

Worst of all, it removes something from the game. Right now, the game only allows one character named Arnox. Under the OP’s system, such names would no longer be unique; they could be shared among thousands of people.

Also, this is an “easy to describe” idea, not necessarily an “easy-to-implement” one. The game currently has no mechanism for forcing a rename of toons (and, call it whatever you like, adding “.####” is a “rename”). Programmers would also have to deal with existing mechanics, such as /invite, /sqinvite, /join, and /sqjoin (all of which use character name). Are you allowed to name all your characters the same? or will there be restrictions in place?

It probably would be simpler to implement than a lot of ideas; that doesn’t guarantee that it would be easy or even cheap to do.

In short, this is a lot of work to cater to the subset of players who don’t want to spend a little more time figuring out a name.

If you use PvP or Fractal crafting, the cost is the same for commanders as any other stat.

Sartharina.3542:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The single fail I’ve seen in the last 8 months was from South being too quick (we were short on time and the non-natives were restless, so South going forward too soon demoralized everyone).

However, it hardly ever fails. The lynchpins as the OP refers to them are:

• The main job of the exalted armors is to deal with adds — stay away from the Octovine until you’ve made things safe for democracy your allies.
• If there’s lots of people, consider helping the armors do that — the “plenty” can deal with breaking the vine’s protection.
• Everything specific to the lane is simple enough that you can ask during the event: south & north are trickier than east & west, but not much.

As for guides, they are many (and most of the older ones remain accurate):
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gw2+auric+basin+meta+event+guide

Main Job of Exalted Armor is to deal with the Bonebreakers, which will ensnare the bomb(Requiring armor to break it free), and kill players. It’s not the armors distracting the frogs normally – it’s the frogs distracting the armors.

I guess I consider the Bonebreakers to be adds, too. My point is: the armors shouldn’t be on the vine, unless the area is otherwise safe. (To be fair, it’s a harder job to learn and people get criticized if they aren’t perfect, so I understand why people avoid doing it.)

Arnox.5128:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Both are ways to sink materials from the economy. Without such sinks, the game can suffer overstock of mats as well as gold. So making exotic soulbound on use means that someone else has to make (or buy) their own gear after you’ve used yours.

Actually, it’s not so much the soulbound items that get on my nerves I suppose. It’s all the account bound ones. And again, I understand why some items need to be account bound, but the amount of them that are is silly.

What currently account bound items do you think should be made tradeable? How will that impact supply & demand of such items, including whether those items feel valuable?

This appears to be primarily a situation unique to the OP, based on the reddit thread, reporting the same issues

Further the OP has stated that their intent is to “keep pushing those limits” of the TP mechanics.

The OP has

• 7,269,218 items listed for sale
• 438,768 items as buy orders (3150 individual buy requests)

There’s some additional information in the thread that suggests that the OP could suffer a lot less headache by removing some orders. And, to be fair, the OP should not have to. On the other hand, it’s also fair to realize that ANet isn’t likely to engineer the TP to serve the tiny number of people with (literally) millions of items for sale; their goal has to be efficient maintenance of a system that works for the vast majority of people.

Arnox.5128:

It’s really baffling to me. It seems like at least 50% of items you get are one of these. I mean, I understand the need to keep some of these items bound but this is silly. You can’t even give it away via mail.

Both are ways to sink materials from the economy. Without such sinks, the game can suffer overstock of mats as well as gold. So making exotic soulbound on use means that someone else has to make (or buy) their own gear after you’ve used yours.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Maybe they could reconsider it for dungeons and stories though. They could sell mercenaries in the gem store for players to gear up for instance use only.

I’m sure people would spend gems on it, although likely not enough to pay for designing the system.

However, I doubt ANet would go for it this year — they’ve alread nerfed the story NPCs (Anise or Kasmeer et al), stating that they want the player to fight the AI, not have the AI fight itself

killermanjaro.5670:

Fluffball.8307:

Some people do that for newbies, were you asking for help in map chat or something? Either way, pretty weird for them to not send a note like “welcome to gw2” or something with it.

They do? With this kind of amount? Wish I knew where those people were when I was starting out lol.

There’s 2-3 people I’ve known who distributed non-coin items worth that much. They made tons on the TP and would make tons more. It was a drop in the bucket to toss a few hundred on random folks (or trivia contest winners or someone who said something interesting in chat).

I doubt that’s what happened in this case — there was always some sort of communication besides the ‘gift’. Still, stranger things…

Right, it’s only about 6 weeks until we see 5th year presents. I agree with Donari that if you’ve narrowed it to two, wait — you might not have to choose.

GW2 is designed to be multi-player, to allow for pick-up groups. GW1 was designed for 8-person parties (with two larger and a few smaller instances). I’m sure many people would enjoy it; it’s just not how this game is configured.

tigirius.9014:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Nokaru.7831:

Defending the fact that quick-loot doesn’t work while defeated is suggesting that, “Well, you had loot rights, but they’ve been revoked temporarily.”

Or it’s saying that mechanic works differently in different games.

(As a counter example, it’s fine; it’s equally fine for some games not to reward loot if dead.)

Actually you can’t because in dungeon settings in WoW and other games like it, the amount of time that it takes for loot to disappear is very very long. Dungeons are their sole process of getting loot and having events in games like WoW whereas GW2 has loot that disappears after just 60 seconds. Often that means that people cannot release, go to a waypoint that is a long distance away, avoid all of the mobs on the map to get to said chest only to find it gone.

And then there’s the issue of the chests being out of view while in the midst of battle.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve noticed a wooden box from enemies that bosses in the open world summon that when they finally move out of the way so we can see it through all of the AOE fields other players are doing as well as the boss attacks, I run up to get them only to find they go poof!

So it’s not just a downed problem it’s a problem with the timer on loot itself.

Right, loot gathering works different in different games; there’s nothing wrong with that.

The fact that there’s a tiny chance I might miss out on loot in GW2 encourages me to die less. I’m okay with the mechanic the way it is. Having autoloot also work while dead would be great, too; I just don’t think it’s worth ANet’s time, when there are so many other things we want from their limited time.

larv.3456:

I think all GW1 veterans wanna see it again with this engine:P

Not me. I’d rather we visited parts of the world we’ve never seen before.
(There are plenty who would like to see Cantha or Elona, and not just based on rose-colored remembrances of GW1. It’s just not universal.)

Risensoul Shockwave.1564:

Thx Astral…your da best….just tested it, it works. Thought it was for something else.

It is for something else — it just also works for your purposes, too

The single fail I’ve seen in the last 8 months was from South being too quick (we were short on time and the non-natives were restless, so South going forward too soon demoralized everyone).

However, it hardly ever fails. The lynchpins as the OP refers to them are:

• The main job of the exalted armors is to deal with adds — stay away from the Octovine until you’ve made things safe for democracy your allies.
• If there’s lots of people, consider helping the armors do that — the “plenty” can deal with breaking the vine’s protection.
• Everything specific to the lane is simple enough that you can ask during the event: south & north are trickier than east & west, but not much.

As for guides, they are many (and most of the older ones remain accurate):
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gw2+auric+basin+meta+event+guide

caveman.5840:

we need more staff skins that look like a spear for the reverent and daredevil, skins like the dragonfury, impaler, krytan spear would look great on land.

You (and many others) would like it; I’m not convinced we need it.
I do like simple staff skins for melee — I’d also like to see more.

caveman.5840:

and its not like anyone fights underwater anymore, why not just make a second version of some of the spear skins as a staff.

I’d like to encourage you to remove this part of your argument. Lots of people do fight underwater (I love aquatic WvW — it’s usually a win for me because people don’t know how to do it).

And even if WvW was super popular, there’s still good reason for cross-trope skins — weapons in GW2 are there to focus magical energy; they rarely relate directly to the skills. So why not repurpose a tiny number of skins?

Besides, we already have a scepter that looks like a staff (Emberglow), a hammer that looks like a ship’s deadweight (mecha anchor), a sling-shot skin for a pistol, a candy cane hammer, etc. (And GW1 released about half a dozen similar cross-dressing skins as part of Winds of Change .)

In other words, the skin’s current playtime is irrelevant — it’s enough to say you like simple staff skins and you have a couple existing models in mind.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PoF

The dev was saying that’s the actual name. It’s not an acronym.

Thread ended like that, poof.

Of course, developers have the jargon abbreviation, EoF (End of File), so maybe the dev was referring to PoF = Pretend of File (not the real end of the story).

If you dodge at a certain point in its channeling, you’ll interrupt the renewal. If you’re suffering latency (as many of us do in ZvZ), then you might dodge too soon. At least, that’s been my experience.

What did you do to test it?
For example, maybe it’s only PvP or only WvW or just in cities. Or only out-of-combat, but works okay in combat. (Those would be bugs in the description, if not the skill itself, but all require different sorts of fixes.)

Besides mentioning it here, next time you do test it, also use the in-game /bug reporting tool. That gives ANet additional data that they’ll need to troubleshoot.

Your options are:

1. Return the gold to them with a note.
2. Return to sender, i.e. without a note.
3. Take the gold, say nothing
4. Take the gold, send in a support ticket to ask them to review the situation.

(1) is great if the person made a mistake. They might even tip you a reward. (2) costs you nothing. (4) is less altruistic than (1) or (2), but covers you in case there’s something odd going on.

The only option with risk would be (3), to take the money and run.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Basically, instead of having to fix and change the UI to accommodate dye channels on the back pieces, you just use the dye channels already there for the glider.

The back skin and the glider skin aren’t the same ‘object’; they can’t be used interchangeably. They only share design features, to they pair well together (aside from color).

If you use the so-called eaters, the value of a stack of gifts is about 14-20 gold (depending on the markets and the gifts). Since each gift requires 50 ascended mats, that’s closer to 0.40g per stack at best.

And if we’re shortcutting the existing system, I imagine, ANet would expect us to take a loss. So let’s say, 0.25g/stack, about 10 copper per mat.

However, as Fleshie points out, that’s gold out of thin air, as opposed to the gifts which generate mats mostly (which help reduce inflation, since it costs to sell them on the TP).

So all in all, I imagine that they can’t have a vendor value of more than 1 copper or 2.5s/stack and not 2.5g/stack. I wouldn’t say no to 2.5 silver, but a lot of people would just delete instead.

Seems like a lot of work for ANet to put in, without a lot of player benefit.

Impressive, Hizen. How long did it take you in real time? And would you care to share your build?

I like the charr version much better than the norn. (I also think it goes better with your charr than the norn one does with your norn.)

perilisk.1874:

Arden.7480:

Also Jory’s voice is weird- it’s mysterious, but not like Caithe’s.

She started out characterized as a detective, and it’s an obvious attempt to affect a sort of noirish, Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep, sort of thing. It’s unavoidably a little cartoonish, which might be off-putting.

It’s a hard-boiled detective, intended to be more like Bogart than Bacall (or more properly, probably like Kathleen Turner as VI Warshawski). Maybe the actor didn’t nail it and maybe it no longer fits the narrative.

infrequentia.3465:

the complaining was also because players already got spirit shards/skill points for leveling before HoT , when people suddenly couldn’t is what made them complain.

Except that’s not quite what happened. Prior to the specialization system, there were no spirit shards and no way of obtaining skill points other than XP and skill challenges.

When the system was introduced (long before HoT), they divided skill points into hero points (for learning skills) and spirit shards (for use as a currency). At the same time, they added lots and lots of methods for gaining shards, independent of XP. Before HoT, I was acquiring spirit shards at roughly the same rate as I did before specializations.

So people might have expressed themselves as complaining about a change due to HoT or due to receiving shards from xp, but that was inaccurate. What is accurate, no matter than point of view, was that XP became valueless after masteries were maxed (something that few were able to do for months after HoT).

Specializations were added in June 2015, at which point: XP after L80 had no value. HoT launched in October 2015, at which point XP was used to level masteries. It wasn’t until July 2016 that spirit shards were first made available for those who maxed masteries.

People complained about the lack of meaning for post-mastery XP. Some people asked for spirit shards; some asked for something (anything) else, because they knew they were already gaining lots of spirit shards from other sources. Lots of people don’t realize just how many, because we don’t get them in inventory usually — it drops into our wall automatically.

So, the short story was that people were upset about the lack of value for XP and ANet offered us the least valuable existing reward, a spirit shard, which was pretty close to what we used to get. But, that’s still above and beyond the amount of shards we already get from other sources. It’s never been that useful of a reward, except for a tiny fraction of players who managed to spend all their shards (I have tried to do so and I’ve never made a dent; the number keeps growing for me).

We used to be able to get ascended from PvP & Fractal vendors, without crafting. ANet looked at the system and decided it didn’t fit the economic balance/reward balance for which they were aiming.

So they could change their mind again. I wouldn’t, however, expect them to do that anytime soon, especially not without a really powerful argument that they haven’t seen yet.

Nokaru.7831:

Defending the fact that quick-loot doesn’t work while defeated is suggesting that, “Well, you had loot rights, but they’ve been revoked temporarily.”

Or it’s saying that mechanic works differently in different games.

(As a counter example, it’s fine; it’s equally fine for some games not to reward loot if dead.)

Forging should unlock the skin; making Eternity should unlock the others.

@Sam: you’ll need to contact support to see if they can manually adjust it (or if there is some other reason why it didn’t trigger).

https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

good luck and please let us know what you find out.

There are a couple of methods:

• Try at reset.
• Wait for Iron Marches to be a 4-event daily (tends to reset often then).
• Guest to another world (be careful not to Transfer — the buttons are close together and the warnings look similar).
• Look for LFGs (uncommon).
• Try on Saturday or Sunday, when people do guild missions (that sometimes causes more instances to spawn).

What I do when I need an event to spawn (whether bugged or I’m just impatient):

• I first try guesting & LFG (because it’s easy to try)
• If that doesn’t succeed, I park a character at the start of the event (chain) and return to it “often”. Eventually, the event is up and the item I need drops.

It’s 100% reliable, as long as I don’t care about when I finish. For what it’s worth, the longest I had to wait using this method was 7 days. Typically, it’s usually closer to 2-3 days max.

Good luck

Larathia.5284:

Hm. Thank you! It seems odd to have it that way, since we’re always told PvE players ’don’t need’ raids. So I always considered that branch optional since it starts out locked.

I’ll see how many mastery points I have left after the last S3 ep comes out, then, and once that’s done I’ll …honestly probably have to pay someone to take me through that escort thing given how raiders feel about their raid wings. But at least it’ll be done after that.

There are lots of other ways of earning spirit shards, so it shouldn’t be an issue for the vast majority of players. The spirit shard-from-xp system wasn’t added until months after HoT; it was the least ANet could have done in response to players complaining that XP should have some value.

Palador.2170:

Behellagh.1468:

NCSOFT owns ANet (indirectly through a holding company NCSOFT owns outright) but I believe, being NCSOFT’s first acquisition in NA and with former Blizzard “superstars”, ANet negotiated to keep the IP under their name so if NCSOFT every decides to sell off ANet, the IP will go with ANet.

At least that’s the scuttlebutt I heard over a decade ago.

I heard something similar, but I’m not sure I believe it any more. They’re going to be using GW2 characters in that new NCSoft MOBA, which tells me that NCSoft has some solid claim to the rights no matter what happens with ANet.

Both could be true. For example, as part of the deal granting ANet autonomy in publishing, NCSOFT could have e.g. retained rights to re-use character names or pay ANet a nominal fee to license such use.

Nikal.4921:

We are paying good money for these things after all.

That isn’t the only consideration. The price of backpacks (and combo packs that include them) is based on them not being dyeable. If you don’t accept that, don’t pay. If you do pay, then accept that they can’t be dyed today.

Even if ANet was convinced today, by the force of the arguments in this thread, it would be a minimum of six months and more likely 12-18 months before we would see this addressed.

Personally, I’d prefer that level of resources be focused on other things, such as designing new skins, new types of animation, separating auras from infusions or jewels, etc.

• “Purity of Flame”

• Veteran Flame Legion Fire Shaman (Urban Fractal)
• Veteran Flame Legion Ritualist (Iron Marches effigy event)
• Champ Drakin Cinderspire (aka the Fire Shaman, in Iron Marches)

I’m sure there’s a couple of other flame legionnaires who say something similar.

I would like to see it applied to LS2, also, but I can’t imagine it will. It’s a huge amount of work to retool the instance and, unless lots of other things also require fixing, that’s not a good enough reason to divert resources to older content.

We are impatient for new stuff, for which we also have QoL suggestions and bug reports, and there’s only so much time in the day, in the week, in the year.

In other words, I’m not holding my breath.

Two of those aren’t bugs, strictly speaking. The “load all” was scrapped in favor of something less taxing to the data request queue. And that’s also why going back between sell & buy orders requires a refresh.

The third & fourth… I’ll look at the video, but I’ve never experienced them.

There is a fifth item: if you look at your buy orders, sort by any column, remove an offer, then re-sort, your (should be) removed offer remains. (Or at least that was present the last time I did a complete review of my current transactions.)

And a sixth (although, again, this isn’t a bug): the past transactions history is very limited and it’s not clear to me how many buy|sell trades it remembers.

That said, I’d rather see some QoL improvements over fixing any of these — I can live with slower loading of transactions, if I can also filter by price or date or quantity (for example).

sorudo.9054:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

sorudo.9054:

ps. the change only happened AFTER cryptic left, it was never an issue of time but knowledge.

time is always an issue for development — there is never enough time to do all the things that people want. (Knowledge is sometimes a blocking issue, sometimes a time-consuming or time-saving element.)

ofcourse it takes time, but constantly claiming it’s impossible to do but after a dev team switch it’s most certainly possible does make some heads turn…..

Which is why no one is claiming that it’s impossible. People are saying, in different ways, that it’s expensive, very expensive. And people are further saying that there are other, important things to which those same resources can be devoted.

Suppose the cost of making the change is X, but if new dev resources are brought in (at cost Y), then it will only cost 0.1*X. Then the costs are still 0.1*X + Y and those costs could still be targeted at all sorts of other things.

Khisanth.2948:

A company of ANet’s size would either have to pay for their employees’ move(assuming they are even willing to) or they ditch most of the employees. I am sure losing a huge chunk of money or number of employees would do wonders for any company.

While that’s certainly true, that’s not why Schilling’s firm failed — moving actually brought them badly needed funds and their new offices were commute distance from the old ones.

I agree that moving HQ isn’t something that can be done lightly and it won’t be done just because someone kickstarts a bit of cash to help fun it. I’m just saying that this wasn’t a good illustration of how that can be a problem.

One per nighttime for sure. (Might even be once per day.)

RoseofGilead.8907:

Paninis of Freedom

Tanith.5264:

“Pastrami on French”.

Great, now I’m really hungry and it’s not lunch time here.

Khisanth.2948:

Danikat.8537:

I’m curious about why moving their offices from Seattle to Texas or New York is included in the list. What benefit would that provide?

How does it outweigh the disruption of requiring employees to relocate hundreds of miles away, or leave the company and be replaced?

and then we can take a look at what happened when another company did that -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios …

I don’t see any connection with Kurt Schilling’s failed gaming company. 38 Studios spent money faster than they earned it. They did cross state lines, but moved less than 70 miles, not that much more than moving from Seattle/Bellevue to Tacoma Washington, which is a far cry from moving from the West Coast to Texas.

And sure, the reason they moved out of Massachusetts was that they got very favorable terms from Rhode Island on a US$75 mil loan, but there’s little indication that they wouldn’t have gone bankrupt anyhow. Even with someone writing personal checks to cover the loan, they still couldn’t meet payroll.

That’s not to say that there’s any use in a kickstarter to try to get ArenaNet to move to a less DDoS’d area; it’s just not a good example of a company that could have succeeded and failed because of a poorly-executed move.

sorudo.9054:

ps. the change only happened AFTER cryptic left, it was never an issue of time but knowledge.

time is always an issue for development — there is never enough time to do all the things that people want. (Knowledge is sometimes a blocking issue, sometimes a time-consuming or time-saving element.)

ANet (as well as many other game companies) find that sometimes it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Open testing reveals some bugs, but more often attracts folks who are more interested in exploring the new content/mechanics and aren’t invested in quality; they burn out quickly when the release actually ships. Plus, this also takes people away from the existing game (at least for the duration of the test).

It’s also an enormous amount of work. Essentially, they have to release at least twice (once for testing, once for ‘live’) and maintain multiple versions of the game.

So a few more issues exposed, at the expense of faster content consumption, increased maintenance, and multiple versions of the game being live… it’s not necessarily worth doing.

It’s an inherent problem with content-driven software: it’s complicated, there are lots of moving parts, it gets used drastically differently by different people, there are all sorts of interrelated bits that can cause unexpected effects, there’s potential for many foreseen consequences, and so on.

Take BDO: the EU/NA version essentially gets publicly tested in Korea a month or more in advance, they have weekly maintenance patches, and sometimes, they still have to Hotfix.

Clearly, there’s a lot of preventative measures that can be taken (and maybe ANet does enough… or maybe not), but I doubt very much that we’ll ever see a major release without the need for hotfixes… not for GW2 or any other MMO.