Guild Wars 2

Always contact support if you want ANet to do something for you specifically. Post on the forums if you want to call ANet’s attention to a general problem. Often, it makes sense to do both.

In support of the OP: I don’t know if it’s bugged or not, but it seems unpredictable. At best, it’s just incredibly tedious to try to get the achievement. It does not seem to be working as designed.

As a work-around for others: We don’t need to complete this achievement to max out the meta: there are several weeks of Wintersday and we just need to do a few dailies to make up for it.

General note: the spider queen and worm achievement create a terrible atmosphere among the player base:

• Everyone wanting to kill the event targets (for various achievements) wants to kill them fast and move onto something else.
• Everyone wanting to get the non-target achievements (clearing cocoons and jumping waves) wants to avoid killing the targets for as long as possible. The queen is, at least, typically a champion. But the wurm seems to end up being a veteran who doesn’t survive long.

People are already starting to make snide remarks at each other. (In contrast, the artificer event separates into two events: the destruction of toxifiers from the killing of the champion. This seems to work better for everyone.)

Mystic.5934:

but I was about to buy this for the griffin form!

I bought it last year for the Griffon form, since I tried the 2012 recipe over 50 times without any success. The Yak form is great though and I’ve always considered this as a bargain price for all the Wintersday tonics. Plus: one storage slot instead of 5.

Luthan.5236:

Oh okay. So there is an “event” and I probably see some orange circle at the map then? And can only donate when there is a pre-event? I will look for that later. I hope it is not too rare. Don’t want to wait 5-10 minutes doing nothing only because of achievement.

If you don’t want to wait…

Guest to a high-population server, go out into the open world and look for Mysterious Presents (stealth is useful if you don’t want to fight the mobs), or participate in the various mini games that rewards gifts.

Alternatively, farm anything you like, sell, and buy the gifts on the trading post. (IMO, they are currently overpriced for the current value of their contents, but that will vary over December and in 2014.)

The Season 1 reward is about exactly what I expected — something comparable to what we get for every other living story meta:

• Special item (in this case: a mini)
• Title (sometimes)
• Some loot that can be acquired easily doing other things, in this case: ascended raw mats, luck, and a handful of items.
• A ton of achievement points, that put you closer to getting achievement chests.

From speaking to others, it didn’t seem any easier or harder to get than any other Living Story meta:

1. Those who do this type of content already found themselves with all/most of the meta without going out of their way.
2. Those who dislike this type of content found it grindy.
3. Those who find other things a lot more fun than WvW went back to those other things.
4. Those who are completely new found out if they like this type of content and continued (type 1), persevered (type 2), or returned to the parts of the game they do like (type 3).

Season 1 motivated me to look again for a WvW-focused guild that suited my play style. I found one and had a blast playing with them and don’t really care about the rewards. (If I hadn’t found such a group, I would have returned to dungeons, boss events, and other types of PvE.)

Like every other living story achievement meta, the bonus rewards are much less than the cumulative loot received by working towards the meta: with Fractured, you got more empyreal fragments from the daily bonus chests than from the meta and with Tower of Nightmares, you got more loot from the chamber/dungeon end chests than the meta (which offered no loot).

As far as I can tell, the Season 1 reward is pretty much the same as for any living story:

• Special mini.
• Title.
• Some loot that can be acquired easily doing other things.
• A ton of achievement points, that put you closer to getting achievement chests.

From speaking to others, it didn’t seem any easier or harder to get than any other Living Story meta:

1. Those who do this type of content already found themselves with all/most of the meta without going out of their way.
2. Those who dislike this type of content found it grindy.
3. Those who find other things a lot more fun than WvW went back to those other things.
4. Those who are completely new found out if they like this type of content and continued (type 1), persevered (type 2), or returned to the parts of the game they do like (type 3).

Season 1 motivated me to look again for a WvW-focused guild that suited my play style. I found one and had a blast playing with them and don’t really care about the rewards. (If I hadn’t found such a group, I would have returned to dungeons, boss events, and other types of PvE.)

On the contrary, the idea from the beginning was to ensure that the number of conduits was limited, so that they would hold value to those who invested in them originally.

The conduit is a clear example of a luxury item and was never meant to be affordable for the masses: you can obtain the services for free in Lion’s Arch. The only time conduits are worth the investment is if you consistently offer thousands of items Zommoros.

Even so, the prices dropped between February and May, again over the summer, and also in October and November. The conduits could have been purchased for a little as 30g (March) to 50g (summer) to 100g (October).

And as it turns out, as has been true for much of the conduit’s history, you can buy one, use if for a month, and resell it without losing much coin. (Buy now at 190g, sell in January for 240g — you’d still turn a profit.)

It might be useful to throw a few more into circulation to make up for those lost due to banned accounts.

It’s just delayed.

The current implementation of the TP doesn’t do a good job of loading old data and it can time out the first time it tries. What I do is: try to “items I’m buying,” switch back to “sell” or “buy” tabs, and then try again (same thing for “items I’m selling”). Often takes 2-3 tries, but it always works after. At least, until I change toons.

BTW: I do care what I sold last year and I would review that data more often if the interface was easier to use.

I recommend you create a support ticket if you want individualized help in resolving your issue.

I buy & sell frequently and I haven’t see any issues.

Did you double check that in “items I’ve sold” that the items sold for the amount you thought it did (5g/piece) rather than the current offer price (maybe 1.4g/piece)? Are you sure you made (and sold) 60 pieces (and not somewhat less)? Do you have other outstanding items in pick up? (Until you pick them all up, you might not see all the gold waiting for you)

I’m sure you’ve tried one or more of these ideas, but it can’t hurt to double check.

Good luck.

You should create a support ticket if you want to get individual help in resolving an error. The “game bug” forum is useful for reporting issues, but if you want someone to help, you need to make an official request.

Good luck.

Overall, karma is easier to get now than when the game launched: more boosters and banners and more sources, including liquid karma from numerous sources. Plus: it’s account bound now, so it pools from all your characters.

If you play casually, expect a casual amount of karma.

I don’t oppose this change, but I don’t think it is as useful as 100s of other suggestions that would cost about the same amount of developer/testing time.

The UI already shows damage numbers; there’s really no particular reason anymore to hide the total HP or the fraction remaining. Or if ANet is completely opposed with putting numbers in the health bar, they could put tick marks at the key points: 25%, 50%, and 75% for most foes.

Reclassify the limited edition dyes so that they are Exotic rather than Rare. This will make it easier to search for them on the Trading Post without having to type the names in separately.

This would apply to the exclusive dyes from

• Flame Dye Kit
• Frost Dye Kit
• Deathly Dye Pack
• Toxic Dye Kit

Exotic would also fit better, given their limited supply.

I’ve stopped reading posts like this or responding them — there are just too many loud and strident voices who are sure that their view is correct and I’ve grown weary of repeating the same thing: I’m happy with the evolution of the living story and I like Scarlet as a villain. The current setup allows Tyria to evolve slowly and yet look extremely different to people returning after a few months.

I pay a lot attention to lore and I don’t see anything in terms of story in which major continuity is broken. There is a tendency by many “lore experts” to believe everything said about anything, if it’s in-game. In a good story, lots of people have differing points of view. Just because Pale Tree followers say nice things about the Dream doesn’t mean it’s true; just because Nightmare Courtiers say negative things doesn’t make them wrong.

Consequently, I don’t see anything in the original post that concerns me.

tl;dr Keep up the good work, Bobby Stein and fellow writers. I’m looking forward to more.

I agree with the suggestion to type the name of the intended transfer server:

1. Transferring costs gems, a lot of gems.
2. A lot of people will never transfer. Most who transfer are unlikely to do so more than once. Even those that transfer multiple times cannot do so more than once per week.
3. The cost to ANet (customer support, angry customers) of mistaken transfers is high.
4. The cost to the customer of typing the letters of the server is low, especially considering the rarity of doing so.

At this point, I know of at least half a dozen people who have made this mistake, but it’s completely preventable by adding this relatively simple step to the process. Then, it doesn’t matter if people pay close attention to the minute differences between the transfer and guesting buttons.

As a personal note to Vayne: I’m really sorry this happened. It’s uniquely frustrating and perhaps the only saving grace from your experience is if it raises enough attention so that ANet chooses to prioritize an adjustment to the process sooner rather than later.

Could someone post the correct and thorough list of ordinary dyes that drop from the limited-offer dye kits? I’m hoping for an official response because I think published player data to-date has been unreliable. I’m not asking for the drop rates, just the names of the 19 ordinary colors.

The relevant wiki articles (and the potential issues) are as follows:

• Flame Dye Kit — 19 colors; 8 rares; 5 uncommon; 6 common -> more rares than commons; more commons than uncommon; not same ratios as Frost kit.
• Frost Dye Kit — 19 colors; 9 rares; 4 uncommon; 6 common -> see above plus: different ratio than the Flame kit.
• Toxic Dye Kit — 14 colors listed; 3 rares; includes bronze & grape -> lacks full count; has dupes of another limited offer.
• Deathly Dye Pack — 18 colors listed; 3 rares; includes bronze & grape -> lacks full count; has dupes of another limited offer. Far fewer rares than the Flame & Frost kits.

Background
These articles are incomplete and/or incorrect in a few cases. I realize ANet’s policy is generally to leave it as an exercise for the community to collect data, collate it, and post results. This often works well: players get to discover things, collaborate, and investigate. A fun meta-game for a lot of folks.

Unfortunately, the dye kits are so expensive that the kind of person who buys them is unlikely to be the one who enjoys meticulously tracking their drops. Very few people are likely to purchase enough to see all 25 drops. As a result, while we know that kits can drop 6 limited-offer dyes, our information about the other 19 is problematic:

• Flame & Frost kit articles include a lot of rare dyes; the Deathly and Toxic kits do not.
• The Flame & Frost lists have no overlaps; the Deathly & Toxic kits do.
• Flame kit and Frost kit show a different number of rare/uncommon dyes.
• We don’t have the full list of 25 dyes for each kit.

Follow-up thoughts:

• “Game Bugs” might not be the best forum for this post, but I’m not sure if there’s a better one.
• I’m looking to update the wiki with accurate information, so those who feel comfortable updating the wiki should do that — no need to post the same details here.
• Again, this is about the names of the 19 regular dyes that drop from the kits; I doubt that ANet is willing to publish the drop rates.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

People report bugs all the time. ANet will never fix them all. There will never be enough Devs in the Universe, let alone working at ANet. Here’s what they will be weighing:

• Is it urgent? (Living story vs clipping)
• Is it important? (blocking issue vs cosmetic)
• How many people are affected? (everyone logging in vs just mac users vs just mesmers using staff-2 in a specific location)
• How much is each person affected? (can’t play vs easy work-around)
• How much effort is involved in resolving the issue? (dozens of devs vs fixing it while working on a similar issue)
• What else would be impacted by the fix? (affects combat balance vs text issue)
• Are there other plans in place (new content or fixes) that would resolve this issue? Can this issue be bundled with others?

Bugs are prioritized according to above and assigned to relevant coders, artists, translators, and writers depending on the issue. Some stuff that I find important is going to take 5 years to fix; some stuff that someone else thinks is trivial will get fixed today.

While I agree ANet can do better in communicating which issues reported on the forums or in-game are fixed in a patch, I am impressed with just how many player suggestions are implemented and how many player-reported bugs are fixed. If you aren’t seeing this happen, look again.

There are several separate issues:

1. Clutter from the various HUD (heads-up display) interfaces. Currently the only choice is to hide it all or show it all. GW1 allowed us to hide, resize, and move individual elements. → Proposal: enable this for as many HUD elements as possible.
2. Particle effects overwhelming foes and allies alike. Currently the only options are to tone it down slightly or make it look uglier. In contrast, for sound, we can choose to change the volume of music, effects, dialogue, etc. → Proposal: allow us to turn the brightness down on various effects or turn them off entirely. Elements might include fields, projectiles, weapon and armor effects, special animations (e.g. birds), etc.
3. Various aspects of the HUD aren’t as “smart” as they could be. For example, the mini-map control panel auto-hide sometimes hides the WP you want to click. e.g. the party display takes up a lot of real estate, but if you use “simple” than you lose information (like some effects on party members). e.g. it’s hard to see if a target has a reflecting effect up, because the icons keep moving around. → Proposal: ask players for a priority list of “quality of life” changes to the “smartness” of the UI.

I love the 2 week cycles. 99% of the time, the forums do not speak for me or anyone I know.

I don’t feel compelled to complete the meta events or associated achievements. I see them as a way to introduce me to how the game is evolving and what’s new/updated/here-for-a-bit.

ANet could do better at communicating goals and changes, but I hope they continue along the same lines for at least another year.

MatthewMedina.5419:

This change has actually been needed since launch. As noted, we’ve already been using these difficulty mobs in content, though in a more limited way. That was due primarily to the fact that both species ended up being named “Veteran”, but one was solo-friendly, the other was not, and all it did was cause confusion. There will be more updates in the future to bring the rest of the species at this difficulty level in line with this change.

Be sure to mention something like this in the update notes: there’s a big difference among introducing a new level of difficulty, renaming an existing difficulty level, and rescaling events to include a different ratio of difficulty levels.

I read the update notes thoroughly and I, too, believed that Elites were newly added to the game, rather than being simple renames.

I finished this achievement track and I was interrupted by attacks, by poison ticking (with foes already dead and when they were attacking others), and by choosing to attack or move during the channeling.

For 23 of the obelisks, I was in a party of three doing the scavenger hunt as a group and each of us experienced interrupts of some sort, but none of us ever “lost” progress because of it.

My recommendation for players is to check the progress bar after each attempt just to make sure that it counted. (My group did this because during the similar scavenger hunts for the Tequatl meta, one of us accidentally missed one…and the whole group had to twiddle thumbs for 30 minutes while we revisited the same locations a second time.)

If it doesn’t, you can try again to channel on that obelisk. If it still fails, you will have good data to include in a support ticket (time, place, and a clear account of what you tried).

The interface can be misleading to some players.

In the middle of the progression, there’s a brief moment where you get a dialogue box asking if you want to exit the instance. First time I did this, I assumed that meant to story had completed and chose, “yes” — it’s very similar to options you get for the Reliquary/Prince in the Box instances.

When I realized I didn’t have the achievement, I returned on another toon and paid more attention to the quest goals on the map.

Recommendation: update the text on that dialogue box from “Exit to Kessex: Yes|No” to “Take emergency exit to Kessex and finish the story later? Yes|No” (so you don’t have to change anything except the text — better still would be to remove that prompt or completely rephrase.)

Change aqua-breathers aka underwater helms so they are strictly cosmetic. Currently, they serve no important in-game function. At the same time, they

• Reduce stats (since there are no craftable exotics or rares and virtually no drops).
• Force players to buy a seventh rune, in order to maintain their (6) bonus.

Characters do not need the “breathing” apparatus to breathe underwater, so in a mechanical sense, the items are already “cosmetic” for wet work. By making them officially cosmetic, that allows a lot more options for customization and also removes some of the more annoying aspects of underwater combat.

+1

I didn’t play all the games a lot, but I love having the choices. Whimsy (OP) might like Snowball fight, while Nabrok might enjoy the choir — it’s great that last year, the game had room for both preferences.

I support the OP’s main point: there’s room for more color schemes. Couldn’t the dreamthistles have been green?

To be fair, weapon sets aren’t all “blue:” molten, aether, king toad, and sunless are other colors. Plus, ascended offers a variety pack, even though the colors are tied to stats.

I suspect weapons cannot be dyed because it’s a lot more work than any of think it is. I know from posts by ANet staff that adding armor sets is horribly labor-intensive, since you have to allow for dyeing, clipping, and combat animations (among many other things). Much as I would like to be able to dye weapons, I am not holding my breath.

I’ve been willing since the public beta tests to pay gems for increasing the stack limit.

I’ve seen aspects of this suggestion a few dozen times, so I’m sure that it’s not in the game because (a) it’s technically more complicated than it sounds and/or (b) because it would have a profound negative impact on the economy, e.g. drastically reducing supplies of certain collectibles or giving (yet) another advantage to hoarders.

Soulbinding some items makes sense for the economy, so I’m not sure that it should be entirely removed. However, there’s plenty of room for improving the current system.

For starters, anything you can get with account-bound currency should never be soulbound: runes, sigils, and other gear bought with karma or dungeon tokens should be accountbound — the currency is account bound, why are some items soulbound on acquisition?

Currently, whites and blues remain unbound after equipping, unless upgraded. So maybe masterwork and rare items should only become accountbound upon equipping. (I’m okay with the idea of them becoming soulbound after upgrading.)

Ascended items. Well, everything about them is soulbound. I don’t think it’s likely that ANet will change that soon.

I do not support any suggestion which serves to remove players from the “massively mulitplayer” aspects of the game. We are already spread thin between the various farms (e.g. champ or world boss trains), dungeons, and guild-specific activities.

I like this kind of customization, but prefer to see it only in the type of games in which players already have that level of control. I personally don’t think it suits GW2 in its current and established form.

+1.

I like this idea. Even if (when?) xXP becomes account bound, I think there’s still some room for character-specific embellishments.

Be interesting if the finisher fit with the class mechanic, e.g. mesmer finishing by overwhelming a foe with dozens of tiny clones, an ele blasting a foe apart (in hot|cold|sky|earth tones, depending), or a thief stabbing the foe in the back then twirling their weapons before sheathing/holstering them.

PlatypusRex.3428:

Thank you. It would help if each class had its own bug forum.

No thanks. I don’t want to visit 8+ bug forums to see what anomalies people are seeing.

Same thread: bug has been ID’d and in process of getting fixed.

1. It’s not impossible to complete the map. I just finished the “Help Doolsileep” renown heart.
2. Yes, the point is, in fact, to give invisible walls and deforestation without explanation. There’s a mystery to be solved and we will be able to watch it unfold.

In typical game worlds with relatively static content, yes, there might be, I don’t know, 10 kraits keeping up a defensive bubble. But I find it more interesting that we can’t even see what’s producing it.

And maybe it’s not even the krait. You can take a look at the witch’s cave using the nearby Vista — it wasn’t what I expected to see.

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

I feel these discussing the following three things would lead to the most important and fun changes to the game:

1. The next tequatl-like fight.
2. Updates to existing instances, including dungeons, fractals, and open world.
3. Balancing the needs of those who play daily from those who play a few times a month, including the velocity of changes due to semi-monthly updates and living stories and the time gating on refining materials.

There are a number of topics listed above that I think would be distracting to the collaborative development idea, as they affect a narrow (but vocal) subset of players. I am hoping for a balance between what various vocal minorities demand to discuss and what will actually be beneficial to the game and the community as a whole.

1. Improving competitiveness when the three servers are mismatched, e.g. in NA, the top three servers always beat #4 and #4 always outscores #5 & 6.
2. Improving the relative efficiency of non-zerg tactics compared to zerg-vs-zerg.

This is being officially tracked:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Fixed-Tab-Targetting-and-custom-key/first#post3039240

This is being officially tracked:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Fixed-Tab-Targetting-and-custom-key/first#post3039240

It should be really easy to guest to another server, but extremely difficult to transfer. Guesting to the wrong server has no costs and, at worst, the problem resolves itself in 24 hours. Transferring accidentally costs at least 1,600 gems (800 for the incorrect move and another 800 to move back), takes at least a week to fix, and creates all sorts of headaches for support and the player.

This suggestion builds from other ideas I’ve seen here (including my own):

1. Require that a player type the name of the destination server before transferring. We do this for character deletion for the same reasons: to prevent accidents and ensure the player has triple-thought things through. The burden on players is low, since no one can transfer more than once per week.
2. Move the “guesting” and “transfer” buttons so that they aren’t right next to each other. Ideally, I’d prefer to see a “Guesting & Transferring” button that takes you to the guesting panel — if you want to transfer, you have to click an additional button to take you to a new panel.
3. Make the buttons look different from each other. If using the second panel suggestion above, the panels should also have different background colors or designs.
4. After choosing a guesting server (or two), add a new button that allows one-click guesting — as it stands now, you have to search for the previously selected server every time you change characters, even though you are limited to at most 2 possible servers at any given time.

Nightingale.9714:

What about those that wanted to be there, but couldnt? They deserve to have other options. And personally, looking at people years from now who have things I never had the opportunity to get would just make me sad and resentful. There are ways of preserving the uniqueness and fun of items without limiting what people can get them.

Deserve? I don’t agree. I won’t be there for every event, so I’ll miss certain titles or items. Sure, I’ll envy those who got “cool stuff,” but why would I become sad or resentful over missing out on something in Tyria? As fun as Guild Wars 2 is for me, it’s just a game.

In-game living story events mark a moment in time and that should, in my opinion, be reflected in titles and items, such that some are only available to those who were able to be present. Plenty of new titles and new items available all the time. I have long since given up on trying to acquire anything close to everything.

There have always been in-game debuffs that cannot be removed during combat. For example, the corrupted statues of Gods in Orr create various effects that cannot be removed by the individual player.

Zylonite.5913:

So basically if you don’t play GW2 from the release date, you can never catch up in contents and achievement points?

How do you expect new players reacting to this?

GW1 had exclusive items that could only be obtained during specific events. I missed out on what I thought were the “coolest” ones. And I’m fine with that. I like the idea that some things can only be obtained by those that were lucky enough to be present.

In fact, I would prefer that GW2 had more special items and titles that were time-dependent and more that were skill dependent. If anyone can get any title whenever or through sufficient grind or coin, the titles aren’t special or meaningful.

GW2 has a balance: you can get mini collector by spending coin, you can get SAB titles by grinding (at least for things like baubles), the mini-Liadri is only available to players with certain skills, and a small number of event-related titles are one-offs.

I like the idea that in five years (assuming the game is still around), I’ll be able to recognize people who were around for the first Halloween by their title. And I know that there will be titles/minis/etc that I will miss out on. Not because I don’t deserve the opportunity, but because I just won’t be around for them.

Economic efficiency aside, I agree with the OP’s main point that the event’s preview made it seem like the 20-slot candy bag would be easier or cheaper to obtain than other types of 20-slot bags. Obtaining 15,000 pieces is hardly easy: the least tedious method would be purchasing them on the TP and that requires posting at least 60 buy orders of 250 pieces each. While that might be simple enough in theory, I find it hard to argue that it would be fun. (I got bored and gave up after posting orders for 3,000 pieces.)

About the price of candy corn: last year, you could buy as much as you wanted for 2 copper until the second week of December. I don’t expect that to change much this year, although there are some new uses for the candy (including the 20-slot bag). Source: spidy.

About the total cost: if you pay 1c for each piece, that’s 15,000 copper, i.e.150 silver, i.e. 1.5g (not 15g as stated above). The Candy Corn 20-slot bag will be cheaper than the 20-slot superior rune (never mind the 20-slot bag) as long as the price of candy is a bit below 7c/piece. I do expect candy corn to reach (and stay at) that price range some time toward the beginning of November, if not before.

I agree: it appears that the changes to tab targeting have also incorrectly been applied to “target nearest,” instead of just “target next” and “target previous” (“tab targeting” only applies if you use the default keybindings).

It took me longer than the folks posting above to figure out why I could only “target nearest” when I turned away from the nearest legendary/champ/event boss.

Since this requires someone looking at specific accounts, you & your guildies will also want to create support tickets. (Use the “support” link at the top and choose “ask a question”)

That way, Support can take a look to see what’s going on and you’ll get an individual response.

Posting in this forum is good for the reporting of bugs, but not enough to determine whether adjustments can or should be made for any particular player.

Good luck.

I’m generally in favor of leaving wealth transfers to Adam Smith’s unseen hand: I’d be happier with fewer account-bound restrictions. So I do like the idea of a currency exchange. I also like changes that allow people to focus on the types of things they enjoy them most.

However, I don’t support this suggestion as it is currently outlined.

The original idea was that only those people who are able/willing to return to a dungeon would be able to display those armor or weapon sets, e.g. if you can’t kill Lupi, you don’t get Orrian Armor or Dragon’s Deep weapons. This suggestion would leave the game with very few items that recognize personal achievements. And I think that’s a bad thing.

Current exceptions are limited to event-earned minis, ascended weapons, and fractal weapons (which are further limited by chance). I don’t include skins available from lotteries, i.e. skins bought with BL Tickets.

LF Potential Mate:

• You: interested in finding your soulmate, someone who enjoys GW2 as much as you and will love you for your beautiful spirit and mind (and not care about your lack of rare dyes or ascended gear).
• Me: interested in being able to file a major lawsuit against NCSOFT for emotional distress after using GW2’s LFG to find my soulmate and instead finding you. Nothing personal — it’s just business. (I would be willing to share 10% of my profits, if you are willing to play along.)

@OP: when there’s a major bug affecting huge fractions of the game’s population, when do you propose they release the fix? Although lots of people play WvW, it’s never the majority of people online.

This recent update affected a slew of bugs preventing people from gaining time-gated achievements in the SAB. Should ANet have told those in the EU that they can’t have the fix during their prime time, to avoid resetting WvW/EU?

Naturally it’s frustrating to be forced out of your favorite part of the game for 20-30 minutes. And, of course, ANet should do more to prevent introducing any serious bugs. But given that bugs will happen, it seems to me that ANet’s tried to balance when they release patches with regard to both the magnitude and the amount of impact of the bugs fixed. (They don’t always get it right, but I think they do most of the time.)

Elementalists and Engineers gain all the benefits of weapon swapping via their unique profession mechanics:

• For six professions, the swap cooldown is 10s without traits.
• Elementalists can change attunements 5 times every 16s, i.e. average cooldown is less than 4s.
• Engineers can swap kits every second. Swapping from a kit to weapon and vice-versa also counts.

In addition, while Warriors might have a choice of 19 weapon sets outside of combat, they only have two choices during combat. In contrast, Elementalists have four choices and Engineers have up to four choices, depending upon their utilities.

Therefore, in my opinion, Engineers and Elementalist have it much better than any other profession in terms of swapping.

Any other comparison ignores the delicate across-profession balancing: mesmers have fewer weapon set choices than warriors, but they can create summoned allies and shatter them for additional effects. You can’t give mesmers more sets without also looking at how illusions are used — the professions aren’t just about weapons.

First, please email exploits@arena.net to make sure the devs are aware of the issue.

for the rest: the tl;dr is: don’t panic! Play the game as you always have done, and you won’t be affected by any action ANet takes about this.
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Second, since we cannot avoid the side-effect while crafting, I am not worrying about this at all. ANet has yet to intentionally punish people for unintended consequences of playing the game normally.

However, some people are using this loophole to gain a major advantage in the marketplace. This is exactly the sort of thing that ANet has suspended and banned people for in the past. For a variety of reasons, there’s a huge grey area between the first group (people accidentally getting a bonus from crafting) and the second (people crafting in order to get that bonus).

How do you know if you are in the first group (no risk) or the second? Simple: if you are doing this as a consequence of crafting, leveling up your discipline, or otherwise not going out of your way to craft, you’re fine. However, those who are spending an hour at the crafting stations crafting tens of thousands of the same item (and possibly even throwing it away) are obviously exploiting the system. Sure, there’s a group of people in the habit of crafting 10,000 items in a session, but it’s a tiny fraction of the population — they are easily identified by past patterns of behavior.

For future reference: every so often, your client will lose access to the server that tracks Guild status. Evidence suggests it might be the same as one or more authentication servers, so this tends to happen more often when there are a lot of people logging on at once, i.e. during a trial weekend, a popular event, right before a major update, and especially just after a major update or hotfix. This weekend covers most of the above.

The thing is: unless you move servers, your influence/build queue is never lost — you just cannot see or adjust it. Sometimes it affects some guildies, but not others. Admittedly, that’s really annoying, especially since there’s nothing to be done except to wait it out. It always resolves itself.

@OP: did you file a support ticket? Some of the tech people seem to be quite good at working with technically-savvy players to identify exe bugs that weren’t discovered during QA. Likely, the first tier of response will give you the usual copy/paste responses, so make sure you are able to work with one of the actual techies.

Good luck.

PS I run GW2.exe on 64-bit windows Home Premium and I haven’t seen any issues. And, I fear that I, too, have been online for more than 4 hours in a session.