Guild Wars 2

First, Don’t Panic!

The reason everyone is receiving weird response from Support is that their standard scripts don’t allow for the possibility that something was wrong with a bunch of codes. Based on ANet’s past behavior, they will resolve this, but perhaps not for a few days. Hang tight.

Second, a lot of people have offered reasons as to why this happened. Some appear plausible or even likely and some sound extreme even for the Tin Foil Hat Brigade™. Keep in mind that each one is pure speculation — we don’t know why this is happening. Yet.

Third, obviously some Support personnel need to do a better job of recognizing when something happens that doesn’t fit their scripts. Some also need to learn to express a touch of actual sympathy. They shouldn’t make legit players feel as if they did something wrong, even as they try to deny claims by scammers. But, of course, how the team members behave has little to do with the root cause or ultimate resolution of the issue.

tl;dr Be patient, this will get resolved.

The TP uses a separate executable, awesomium.exe. It spawns in the folder Beldin mentioned. Because it connects via https to ANet, it requires admin rights. In theory, if you run GW2.exe as an admin, the folder/exe should spawn with the proper permissions. Sometimes you have to delete that folder to make sure that happens.

I was there last night. Three of us had no problem seeing them; two did. The ones who couldn’t see had their video settings tuned down, but we didn’t stay to troubleshoot to figure out which setting(s) might be affecting this.

I’m finding more luck with guild wars trade.

• New items are added more often.
• The response time is better.
• Spidy is down or wigs out during a data request; gwt has always worked for me.
• Spidy is still pulling incorrect data from GW2DB, which miscategorizes items (probably about 10%).

Although spidy provides about 10 fields versus only 4 for GWT, most of the spidy data is static (and, as noted above, not always accurate).

tl;dr I used to import spidy data into excel, now I use guildwarstrade.com and I greatly prefer it for my purposes.

To learn how to import csv data into excel, use the link provided by Dr Ishamel.9685. There is a PDF that explains how to do it for Spidy and you can substitute the appropriate URL for Guild Wars Trade. The excel interface is unintuitive.

I think the point some are trying to make is: ANet decided for everyone. It does no good to explain that they did it with our best interests in mind, because each person will tend to think they better understand their own “best interests” than do a small group of developers.

As I stated above, I don’t think this was lazy or poor design, but all the same, I hope they don’t repeat this for Ascended Armor. I’d prefer to see them offer us a choice: reset the recipes (and thus be able to learn-by-discovery) or maintain the recipes (and be required to craft many more items, since we would lose out on the discovery cXP).

For those who want to dismiss the concerns as unhealthy attachment to “fluff,” it is worth keeping in mind that a huge fraction of the game is about accumulating fluff. Ugly weapons do the same damage as cool-looking ones, but few would be happy if ANet decided we’d be better off if everyone just had one choice of weapon skin. Or, what if ANet decided to increase the achievement points earned by completing dungeons and decided to reset all the dungeon completions, by saying it is in our best interests to repeat the dungeons since they have changed so much? It’s just an achievement, right?

Personally, I take the long term view: in 6 months, will I care that these recipes were reset? No, I won’t — for me, it’s just a momentary annoyance that I have to repeat something I already did. I understand why some aren’t bothered at all, but I am also sympathetic to many of those who feel this is a big step backwards.

Any time there’s an update with changes to recipes/mechanics that affect existing goods, two things happen:

1. speculators step up to try to make money by purchasing bulk quantities before anyone realizes the current prices might be too low.
2. a small subset of people completely panic that they might be left out and start purchasing at any price they can. Some of these are worried about having enough for current needs (e.g someone trying to get their last 50 ecto to complete a legendary or other high-end item) and some are worried about being priced out in the future.

Prices shoot through the roof. And then, within a few weeks, the market returns to equilibrium. Often, especially with ectos, that equilibrium is lower than before the panic market.

tl;dr you cannot judge the long-term market for ectos based on what is happening this weekend.

It’s not bugged. Access to the pavilion is blocked due to changes in the story; complete that part of the story and you can get back in.

Don’t want to? Then, as stated above, complete the other jubilee-related daily achievements, that include defending balloon escorts (open world) and defeating the queen’s champions (also open world). You only need one more, so should be doable.

I doubt I’ll get to Liadri, never mind beat her. But I love that ANet is willing to risk the ire of its fans by including content that most of us won’t be able to complete. Basic content is the Jubilee and can be completed by just about anyone; the Gauntlet is meant to be difficult and not for all of us.

The most common missing areas are usually associated with a jumping puzzle or explorer achievement. You don’t have to complete the JP/achievement; you just have to unlock the area, i.e. get the pop-up of the white name and remove the fog of war surrounding it.

Good luck.

If you’ve logged out and back in a few times since you posted and you still don’t see the gems, I encourage you to contact support (top left, third link from the left — use the “Ask a Question” option).

If you spent the gold and didn’t get credited for the gems, only Support can address it and only if you file a ticket with them. They’ll ask you about the approximate time and how much gold was involved.

Good luck.

Some areas are set up to add new mobs at regular intervals, so if one is slow clearing the first “wave,” one would have to deal with multiple waves at a time.

Like you, I found it frustrating at first. But then I decided I should try to improve my build/gear/tactics and I’m happy that the game “encouraged” me to do this.

In other words, I suspect this is intended by design and not a bug.

You need to do this on unique maps, regardless of which characters. I don’t know if this matters, but what I did to be sure I got “credit” each time was:

• Join the map within the first 10 minutes.
• Get credit for at least one event in each of the three waves.
• Get credit for at least one of each type of event: minions, pirates, and moltens.
• Remain in the map until the rewards are handed out.

This is what I did and Vorpp’s quest progressed 20% for each invasion (well, except once when everyone got kicked out of the map and no one got credit for anything).

Good luck!

Glad it got resolved!
(I meant to suggest logging out/in a few times, but based on your original post, I assumed (incorrectly) that you had been dealing with this for a few days and had already done so. My apologies for delaying the solution for you.)

When in doubt, I believe it’s worth filing a /bug (in-game) or a ticket (via the website) — it’s up to ANet to take our reports and decide how much importance to give to them; if we don’t tell them about our annoyances, there’s no chance those will get fixed.

But in this case, I believe ANet is aware of the issue and would have resolved it already if it was merely difficult to do so. It happens from time to time that people buy gems and the game doesn’t “notice” until the player logs out and the gem interface has a chance to update.

@Magician: glad you are making progress resolving the main issue of completing the maps. (I basically finished the achievement on my main, so I could stop worrying about what happens if new locations are added to the requirements, i.e. to avoid exactly this.) Good luck in 100% on all maps.

To reiterate, for anyone else with this issue: I believe based on dev posts and my own evidence that:

• The overall progress in each map is always based on what you have uncovered, i.e. if it says 11 POIs discovered, that’s always correct — you haven’t discovered 10 or 12.
• However, the requirement number or denominator shown won’t update right away. It will be correct the first time you enter a map, but if they add POIs or WPs afterward, then it won’t update to the correct number until you enter the affected area, where area refers to the wiki’s definition: the white names on the map.

To translate that into steps one can take:

• Make sure you’ve uncovered the specific POIs or WPs added to the game since launch.
• If you have them unlocked, but the total required amount for that map isn’t correct, return to that area again to try to get it to update.
• If you are still missing areas, uncover those first — you can “worry” about the numbers being off, but there’s no sense in acting upon those concerns until you’ve otherwise completed uncovering the map. For this step, you don’t have to complete hearts or unlock waypoints — you just have to uncover the area, which can be done by taking a single step into it, thus removing the fog.

Of course, we shouldn’t have to work around these sorts of things, but to be fair to ANet: they didn’t originally plan on adding new POIs and WPs (although perhaps they should have) and it only affects a particular subset of characters and therefore only a small number of players. I’m sure it’s a lot of work to untangle the mess and there are other bugs that ANet — and the players — would like to see addressed first.

Finally, it’s also true that Support should have the information I just provided and be able to recognize when someone is in your situation as opposed to showing 100% world completion and not getting credit. I believe that some support personnel do, as I’ve seen players post that they received this info via support. But it really should be “all” and not just “some.” Again, in their defense, I doubt most support personnel play the game, so the distinction between “world map completion” and “map completion” might be lost on them — it shouldn’t be, but unless we want ANet to spend a lot more on salaries, we need to be aware that some need more help from us to understand the issue(s) at hand.

IWN.9781

PS Yes, I understand about typing with crazy amounts of raaaaage. I try (but don’t always succeed) to avoid pressing “submit” until I’m sure that any ranting on my part is intended. But sometimes the force just isn’t with us.

Sorry you are having trouble with what should be a simple task.

Contact support. They should be able to help you resolve this. (Top left of this page, third link from the left — use the “Ask a Question” button.)

With regards to map completion in Gendarran and Snowden:

1. Gendarran’s new POIs and WPs include: Second Aetherblade Site POI [&BBEHAAA=]
2. Snowden’s new POIs & WPs include: Angvar’s Trove Waypoint WP [&BP8GAAA=]

Make sure you have these. If you haven’t been near them since they were added, your game won’t update to show the right total/% complete. This only affects characters who first visited the zone before the update(s) adding the WP/POIs.

(the thing in brackets is the chat code for location — copy/paste it into /party or /whisper it to yourself, to make it easy to check)

For reference, I believe this is a full list of POIs & WPs added since the game launched:

• North Nolan Hatchery POI [&BAEHAAA=]
• Langmar Estate PoI [&BPgGAAA=]
• Second Aetherblade Site POI [&BBEHAAA=]
• Proxemics Lab PoI [&BPkGAAA=]
• Shipwreck Rock Waypoint WP [&BOQGAAA=]
• Dire Shoal Waypoint WP [&BOUGAAA=]
• Angvar’s Trove Waypoint WP [&BP8GAAA=]
• Rugnar’s Steading POI [&BAAHAAA=]
• The Dead End PoI [&BA0HAAA=]
• Macha’s Landing PoI [&BN4GAAA=]
• Consortium Gift Shop PoI [&BN8GAAA=]

====

With regards to other issues raised above by the OP and others:

1. I’m enjoying the game. I’ve had problems, created support tickets, and I’ve gotten help with the relevant issues. This is the experience of most people.
2. I’ve also seen ANet support respond to a common issue similar to mine, but not the one I’ve described. I ignore this and rephrase my request. This is not unique to ANet. I’ve spoken to live support at AoL, Dell, AT&T and other large firms and seen/heard the same behavior: people follow a script that works 99% of the time and don’t know what to do for the 1% that requires more in-depth troubleshooting. Keep at it; if you get no where, post the ticket # in account support thread they have set up for this.
3. Tip: in the future, if you post on a topic, start with issue you want resolved, not with how frustrated you are. (By all means, include that if it’s relevant, but open with the immediate issue — I’ve found that consistently gets better results.)

Does anyone have a link to the correct list of standard dyes that can drop from the Flame Dye Kit and Frost Dye Kit? The current lists on the wiki appear to be incorrect, even though both lists include 25 dyes each.

• Both kits include Tarnished Silver.
• Frost shows 9 rare dyes while Flame has only 8.

The rest of the dyes seem to have colors consistent with the respective kit’s theme (hot, bright reddish/orange for Flame; cold, subdued blueish/green for Frost).

Thanks.

I can easily craft stuff today that will cost me a significant premium to learn next week. I understand why ANet decided to go this route and I don’t actually think it’s “lazy” or “poor design”, but that doesn’t mean I think this was a good thing to impose upon players.

For the next set of ascended gear (Armorsmith, Leatherworker, Tailor, and maybe Chef), I hope ANet learns two things:

1. Make sure there are enough new recipes to allow players to level up crafting ranks through discovery.
2. Give players the choice about whether to reset discoveries (and therefore gain the opportunity for easier crafting XP) or to retain the learned recipes (and thus lose out on the easier leveling opportunity).

I leveled my crafts to 400 very early in the game. At the time, T6 mats were cheap relative to the gold supply, because very few people were able to make use of exotics. Now, T6 mats are much more expensive: nearly all veteran players use exotics, the mats are required for various perks, and the introduction of the new system has ratcheted up prices due to panic-mode buying and other types of speculation.

And yes, there ought to be an exception for resetting sentinel’s recipes, since the supply of inscriptions is arbitrarily limited.

Is there any easy way for the API to report its own status? And to distinguish between EU/US for this purpose? That way, any site/app using the API can tell its users right away that the data is inaccurate, without having to ask here, on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or in-game. Currently, players seem to think that the sites/apps are broken, when the root cause is server side.

The relevant posts haven’t address this specific topic yet. To be safe, I am going to withdraw all MF-related items from Guild storage before the 3 September update.

There are two downsides to stacking sigils that don’t apply to others:

1. Stacking sigils require 25 kills before reaching their full potential; other sigils are always at full strength.
2. Stacking sigils lose all benefits after being downed; other sigils are unaffected.

Currently, there are two benefits to stacking sigils that don’t exist for other upgrades:

1. You maintain the bonus even after swapping.
2. You maintain the bonus even after unequipping the weapon with the stacking sigil.

While it might be the case that the two trade-offs are too strong relative to the first benefit, the second benefit seems unbalanced on its face: where else in the game to you maintain a benefit without the thing granting the benefit being in use? Why should one type of sigil work after returning the weapon to your inventory, but none of the others do?

I admit I enjoy the benefits of the current setup, but I also have to admit that it seems unbalanced. Is it important enough to prioritize over other issues? How much developer time is worth investing in the solution? Eh, if I were in charge, it would be far down the list, but without knowing more details, I can’t fault ANet for addressing this.

Nalora: I wonder if you might have better results if you post about this in the bugs forum. Josh Davis has been reviewing a lot of reports there and, when possible, replying to many.

What Gaile is saying is that this doesn’t sound like a support issue, because the Support Team couldn’t have changed the character creation dates, since they don’t have any tools to do so. But that doesn’t address whether (or not) there’s an obscure bug that sometimes affects this. Until now, most people don’t go around checking their character creation dates — and even if they did, they might not have noticed an issue, because /age reported the number of months.

If you get a response in the bug forum, you can add it to your existing ticket. If you don’t, other players might be able to offer their own data, too.

tl;dr This might be the result of a bug (and therefore a QA department issue) rather than an account problem (where it would be handled by the support team).

Good luck.

Also, player applications/sites can evolve much more quickly than anything that ANet can produce, they can cater to narrow groups of players, or present creative solutions to issues that ANet hadn’t even considered yet. Like any software firm wanting to release quality products, ANet software has to be discussed, scheduled, go through “formal change control,” and be thoroughly tested (and even then, we know, not everything comes out as intended). In contrast, player-developed tools can be planned on a napkin, get tested when live, and the player devs can work whenever suits them.

End result: we get all sorts of useful tools without having to compete with all of the other priorities at ANet. It greatly improves my in-game experience to have access to things like mos.millenium.com’s wvw maps, gw2stuff.com’s boss event timer, gw2state.com’s temple status, the wiki’s full set of details on events and items (recovered via the API), and various other sites.

Thanks for the update (and for working late hours to post about it).

Smith posts data shows there’s no single account manipulating the market. People continue to ascribe the increase in price of Dusk to this imaginary speculation rather than any of a number of other possibilities, most notably:

1. The demand for precursors is increasing faster than the supply, since anyone participating in any of the recently added farms is gaining enough coin and mats quickly enough to make a lot more individuals feel a legendary is within their grasp.
2. The demand for legendaries is spiking because of both the recent announcement and because, as more legendaries show up, more people are going to covet them.
3. Sudden spikes, for any reason, tend to panic a small fraction of the potential buyers, who then become willing to spend much more than they originally budgeted, to avoid “losing their chance.” The theoretically rational consumer would wait out the spike, but anyone crafting a legendary isn’t entirely rational on the topic. (I, of course, include myself.)

It’s not uncommon for markets of high price-points items to show greater fluctuations than the market in general. Home prices for the 1% will spike and dip in local markets, whenever there’s a new billionaire, someone goes bankrupt, or the owner is perhaps indicted by the relevant Securities & Exchange agency. No one is manipulating home price: many could afford to do so, but there are much easier ways to make money.

12/13 even though:

• I’ve received rewards (and gotten minion-event credit) on every map at least once.
• I always prioritize minion events over the others. I also make sure to do at least one molten & one pirate event.
• I only rarely change maps and only after DCing (once) or after having been sure I’ve gotten credit for the map.

Try manually authenticating.

Create a new shortcut to GW2.exe and add -authsrv 64.25.40.16 to it.

For example:
“C:\Program Files\ANet\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -authsrv 64.25.40.16

(or you can just type this into the run field on the windows start menu)

For information about how to use command-line switches on the mac (or more details about how to do it in windows, see the wiki): command line arguments

1. Karma boosters work again with liquid/consumable karma. True until September 3.
2. Liquid karma is reverted to the old value. True until September 3.
3. People who used the new valued liquid karma — 50% more instead of 95% more — will be reimbursed. This won’t happen until regular ANet office hours (9 am – 5 pm pacific time).
4. Those who spent karma but didn’t drink any aren’t affected by this at all.

(1) & (2) apply to everyone. Those who didn’t drink karma are unaffected, whether they spent any or not.

So the only people who should still have any concerns are those who drank any liquid karma between the initial release patch this morning and the latest patch just now. ANet hasn’t done anything yet to address this, but they will tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if that karma was spent or not, although that might affect how they reimburse you.

I’m not sure what more we can ask them to do.

the gauntlet remains open at least the first week of September

I’d recommend that people who are seeing other mesmers take screen shots and post them here. ANet is more likely to act if they have evidence showing that this gives WvW|PvP opponents an advantage. If they think it’s only a cosmetic graphics artifact affecting a handful of people, this won’t be prioritized.

It’s possible you (and/or your party) aren’t doing enough damage relative to other players. In the massive zergfests that champ hunting has become in Orr, some players are likely to be better off with AoE damage builds rather than full magic find: more damage to more targets will generate more drops.

The easiest way to test that this is the issue is to leave the zerg and fight some of the easier groups. If you are still not getting any drops while soloing or when it’s just your party, then I’d recommend contacting support (top navigation bar, 3rd link from the left; use the “ask a question” option).

Contact support (top navigation bar, third link from left; use the “ask a question” option).

I’d be more concerned if opponents in WvW and sPvP are seeing the same thing: if the phantasms exhibit graphical artifacts, but the player animation doesn’t, then that provides a huge advantage for other players.

A lot of people traited with Pure of Voice also gear up with soldier’s runes . In that case, I would presume that two conditions would be removed for each shout.

Apparently, Izzy mentioned during an interview that one sigil is supposed add condition duration and the other condition damage. No ETA for a fix.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bug-Sigil-of-bursting-from-Dev-Stream/first

Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weil:

You people can watch while I’m scrubbing these floors
And I’m scrubbin’ the floors while you’re gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town
In this crummy old hotel
But you’ll never guess to who you’re talkin’.
No. You couldn’t ever guess to who you’re talkin’.

Then one night there’s a scream in the night
And you’ll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin’ while I’m scrubbin’
And you say, “What’s she got to grin?”
I’ll tell you.

There’s a ship
The Black Freighter
with a skull on its masthead
will be coming in

Great song, especially the Nina Simone cover.

My bet is that they’d have copyright issues by doing the song itself, but … I’m sure there’s some way to add an homage into the game: black freighter, ghostly flag, crummy southern hotel… should work within the context of the game.

Bring condition removal.

I see them spawn in overflow and non-overflow. The frequency is greatly reduced from opening day of the festivities and is also random. I’ve been in a zone 2 hours without seeing a “culling” event (these are the ones that spawn champs) and at other times seen three within the hour, one each after the pairs of legendary bosses were killed.

I agree that all of the ideas raised above would be good for the game. However, they aren’t “bugs” in the sense that the TP is working as it was designed. You are more likely to get attention from ANet if you post this in the suggestions forum.

Xymon.4529:

She contacted support in game and never gotten a response.

She needs to file a formal support ticket. The in-game /bug report function is just that: it reports bugs; very few people ever get contacted directly this way.

https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/ask

Good luck.

Astral Projections.7320:

All that you can do that I know of is to watch the server population to catch it going from full to very high. Try checking in the middle of the night. Or wait till they increase the server population caps, which they have done a couple of times already.

Sorry, sucks I know.

Sorry that this happened.

Astral Projections is absolutely right. If you can get up at an odd time for the server, there will be fewer people online and you shouldn’t have any trouble transferring.

Another alternative, assuming your guild is big enough, is to ask them to setup a “blackout time” for Lion’s Arch. People have done this on Tarnished Coast with good results. It works like this:

• Set a time when you can ask all of your guild members to go offline for 5 minutes, e.g. 10 pm to 10:05 pm server time.
• About 10 minutes before the scheduled time, have one member make a request to the Lion’s Arch map that people who can spare the time also sign off for 5 minutes. (Most people won’t, but enough will to make a difference.)
  • Naturally, be gracious: you are asking for a favor from strangers.
  • During the Queen’s Jubilee, you might want to also have someone ask in Divinity’s Reach.
  • Don’t ask in explorable zones: people are more likely to respond poorly, since they might be involved in events.

Whatever method you choose, you’ll be able to transfer eventually. Good luck (by which I mean: I hope that “eventually” means sooner rather than later.)

I’ve noticed the same behavior. The bigger the zerg, the more likely it is for me to see inconsistent behavior, even though I’m doing the same (or more) damage.

Perhaps a better control example is from Frostgorge. When I joined a zerg during off-peak hours, I was getting champ loot from each champ. When I tried again during peak hours, I usually got nothing unless I was first.

I saw this same behavior before the Queen’s Jubilee release. My mesmer typically did not get the guaranteed blue from the Champ Risen Spider during the Melandru interrupter defense, whereas my guardian always did. (The guardian also gets more loot from the trash mobs.)

I suspect it’s not a “bug” as much as it’s a limitation in the way the game assigns loot credit. Players who aren’t in a party and/or aren’t geared for near-maximum DPS are at a disadvantage. If foes die too quickly, as they do sometimes during the current champ-zergs, some people aren’t going to get credit. The shorter the fight, the more likely this happens.

Is the Sigil of Bursting supposed to be the same as Sigil of Malice? Condition damage doesn’t exactly “burst,” so it seems like a bug.

On the other hand, maybe the developers wanted to provide a way that people could get two bonuses, one from Bursting and one from Malice.

(I searched, but didn’t see an existing post with this question.)

Zoid.2568:

They should be equal in the way that the level range is the same for all zones. Some zones should be tougher, i agree. Levels shouldn’t define your power. Levels should have progression only in the form of traits and skills.

So are you suggesting that, in effect, all characters start with max stats? And you earn skill & trait points only when leveling? That’s an interesting idea, but that’s not how I understood the title of the post or your original post.

I think a lot of players need a great sense of progress while leveling, especially those coming from more traditional RPGs and MMOs. But I imagine that problem could be solved in other ways than granting primary stats.

And, as you suggest, downleveling and more complex foe/AI could be used to make some zones more challenging than others.

So, I still don’t believe the game directly restricts us from exploring. And I also still believe that some zones should be extremely challenging to new players and characters, by which I mean impossible for some people to manage them right away.

However, I’d support a suggestion to remove stats from the leveling process and replace it with something else.

First, the game doesn’t prevent you from exploring zones. It merely makes you so squishy that it’s incredibly dangerous to enter a high level zone unless you are very, very careful. I actually consider that an interesting challenge rather than a game defect.

Second, I reject the premise that new characters should be able to romp around with impunity. I like the idea that some maps have deadlier foes than others. I might not like the amount of time it takes to level alt-characters to max level/skills, but I don’t think that all zones should be created equal.

I’m against this. What makes this game really interesting to me is how many different ways you can combine the fixed weapon skills with traits, utilities, and tactics to still have a lot of viable options. (Others might point out, correctly, that there are very few optimal variations. But, that’s true by the definition of “optimal.”)

Originally, I expected to hate the GW2 system, but now I wish more games did something similar.

One reason I’m against this: I really hate the scavenger hunt for skills and much prefer being able to unlock skills by playing.

Kojiden.8405:

So I consider myself a competitive achievement hunter. I try to get as many achievements as possible. The problem is that getting all the dailies can take hours, which really cuts into time I could be doing something else.

You have made a choice to prioritize earning achievement points over “doing something else.” You can reorganize how you spend your time, if you aren’t having fun.

I have decided that I prefer to “do something else” first and then finish my dailies, assuming it didn’t automatically work out that way. If I’m waiting for others or figuring out what to do next, then I’ll also see if there any fun/easy points left to obtain.

So for example, I never join Keg Brawl because I find it stupefyingly boring. Similarly, I only play costume brawl if someone else asks.

Short story: support came through! Less than 24 hours after miss-clicking and requesting help from support, I was returned to my original server and my gems were restored!

This was done as a one-time courtesy: if I make the same (or similar) mistake again, I won’t expect a refund. This seems fair to me, since I share in the responsibility. At the same time, I still believe that the dev team should make it much more difficult for others to make the same mistake: guesting should only require a single confirmation; transferring should require multiple steps, including a reminder of the gem costs.

In complete detail:

1. I filed under the category of “refund” and included my account ownership details.
2. My first response from a human was within 30 minutes, even though it was the weekend. (They merely passed my request to the next tier, but kept me in the loop.)
3. My second response came within a few hours. Unfortunately, it was a copy/paste version of no and it pains me to say, there was no sympathy expressed in the message.
4. I politely appealed by rephrasing my request and clarifying how the initial reply was not directly responsive to my original ticket.
5. The final email let me know my account was return to the original server and my initial gem costs were restored. It was extremely sympathetic and apologized for any confusion in the initial response.

Character slots have gone on sale several times, so I expect that they will again. I bought one the last time for 640 instead of 800 gems, a 20% discount. That was over four months ago, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they went on sale during the anniversary celebration that begins at the end of the month.

There are 11 zones that are entirely below level 30. So that’s 22 balloons. The next 10 balloons are in areas that run up to L50. (Yes, that adds up to 32 balloons, since I think everyone runs into at least one bugged balloon in Queensdale.)

However, if you are good at “running” (i.e. avoiding aggro while moving quickly), you can wait for others complete the events to open the gates to the towers. In other words, it’s possible to complete the achievement at your level.

But perhaps not that much fun having to worry about dying that often. Instead, why not enter the Queen’s Pavillion and level your character there? Use experience boosters, food, potions, banners, etc. A couple of hours there and you should be in good shape to handle the balloon events on your own.