Guild Wars 2

Yes, I read that it was the same queue and immediately cursed out loud. I don’t want to do conquest, but would really enjoy Stronghold. Unfortunately if I can’t queue for it specifically I’ll have to end up passing. VERY disappointing as it really puts a huge damper on my excitement for HoT

Granted it is not the same system, but the Mastery system is largely based on the WvW system. That was originally character-bound and most people hated it (including me) as it limited the usefulness of alts and for me meant I would only ever play as my main in WvW. I’m glad that the Mastery system will be account-bound. I have 9 lvl 80 toons (will be 10 with Revenant), each of which I play regularly. I don’t want to have to do everything 9 times just to be able to play where I like.

Kheros.7256:

Im starving like literally starving for more information on specializations, especially which especialization every profession is getting. (New wep usage for each proffesion) To stop the madness of speculations.

First off, I don’t think the word “literally” means what you think it means (unless you’ve gone on a real hunger strike to get the info). Secondly, they said they would be talking about Strongholds, and there were recent interviews and a blog post about Strongholds. That is what I expect we’ll get.

My warrior. Doesn’t get that much play time, but I like his look.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Next Guild Halls, Specializations…………….

Revenant. Long road there

My guess is that Guild Halls are next, but that Revenant will be before Specializations. For one, they have confirmed that Revenant will be playable at Pax East. Second, I’m guessing their start with Revenant reveal, then do all other profession Specializations (each with their own blog) and finish with Revenant’s Specialization.

Ok, so those of you who’ve seen my posts, you know I’m mostly wanting information on the Revenant right now. That said, Stronghold is something I’m very interested in and happy to see a good blog post about it released and now I expect more and more detail to flow through the Ready Up and interviews.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/stronghold-the-battle-of-champions-dusk/

I love how they identified the NPC roles and the take that the NPCs are vital for specific purposes (doorbreakers, archers, etc.), but will not take the place of the player. It seems they were very concerned about making sure the NPCs didn’t overshadow the players. Excellent.

Great stuff about the types of roles for the players, sounds very interesting and adds dynamics to a match that I’m very much looking forward to. It also seems to require a good amount of teamwork and coordination.

I also picked up on the fact that right now they have a single map, but it seems they are expecting to add more in the future. This is evident by the name they used for the map. “Champion’s Dusk, our first Stronghold map…”

What are your thoughts?

RubiBayer.8134:

For the purposes of this episode, Dave had a lot of information to share as the systems designer while Nellie spent time moving around the map as much as possible so the viewers could see lots of the map. One great piece of feedback I got last week was that the character on screen wasn’t moving around nearly enough, and the view was static and boring. It was a good point—this is a brand-new map and you all want to see more of it, so she kept moving to give you all a constantly-changing view as best she could. I think she did a great job.

I’d like to say that I enjoyed this episode. The constant movement while talking about the features was wonderful. I was really hoping to see the Mastery GUI. Just seems to me that the reveals are being a bit too stretched out (not anything bad about your show, just in general). If we are going to show Mastery, let’s actually show them. Don’t have to show them all, but give us howw they work in full, not just small teasers. But that is more for Anet as a whole.

Overall, I was happy with the show and thought it was worlds ahead of last week so you obviously are learning and taking feedback as you go. Well done!

I think it sounds very much like GvG. Though remember I’m talking about the actual GvG matchups from GW1. The blob battles that take place in WvW is just a joke in my opinion (though I’m sure I’ll get flamed for that statement)

I wish they would just reveal the Revenant already!

Though I think they’ll only reveal them after they finish with the bulk of Mastery, Stronghold, and Guild Hall reveals. After those are done, we’ll likely get the Revenant first, then all the specializations with the Revenant specialization last.

Prove me wrong Anet! Reveal Revenant next week.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Invictus.1503:

I definitely see the OPs point as I saw it in GW1 with both the Assassin and Dervish. These classes (especially Assassin) received huge negativity by the community as a whole because of their beginning. Everybody and their brother made one and most REALLY sucked at playing them. This caused the community as a whole to think they were a poor class. Then when people learned to use them, they still had to deal with this stigma for a long time. It took quite a bit of time before the community started accepting them into groups again and realizing that the class was pretty good if played correctly.

I just hope that we don’t see the same with Revenant in that most will play them, and play horribly. Then for months and months after they have a reputation of being bad, even though that reputation is not justified (all classes are bad if played badly).

the hilarious part is that both sin and derv are really, really strong :P

Yep, that was exactly my point. They were thought to be horrible (especially Assassin) at first because players didn’t know how to play them and most didn’t want to learn. So they would run in like a warrior and just die. That gave them a terrible reputation and it took a long time before groups would accept them.

Eventually most people learned that a well played Assassin was a very strong ally to have in your group.

http://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-stronghold/
Well, shows I wasn’t wrong about this week

I’m going to guess we’ll get a blog post on it Thursday since they are releasing interviews today.

I definitely see the OPs point as I saw it in GW1 with both the Assassin and Dervish. These classes (especially Assassin) received huge negativity by the community as a whole because of their beginning. Everybody and their brother made one and most REALLY sucked at playing them. This caused the community as a whole to think they were a poor class. Then when people learned to use them, they still had to deal with this stigma for a long time. It took quite a bit of time before the community started accepting them into groups again and realizing that the class was pretty good if played correctly.

I just hope that we don’t see the same with Revenant in that most will play them, and play horribly. Then for months and months after they have a reputation of being bad, even though that reputation is not justified (all classes are bad if played badly).

Diovid.9506:

Invictus.1503:

Patience is a virtue. They’ve actually given a decent amount of information since the announcement. Not as much as we’d love to have, but pretty good schedule. I expect that every week we will get one new topic (if we are lucky, two sometimes). My guess is this:

This week (week of 2/9): Strongholds
Week of 2/16: Guild halls and some teaser on guild events
Week of 2/23: New WvW borderland map
Week of 3/2: Full Revenant reveal
Week of 3/9-3/30: Specialization reveals (two per week maybe)
April: More detail on some of the other options and preparation of release in late April, May, or June.

That roll-out of information seems to be a bit slow since there will be playable demos in early march and the beta is said to start shortly after that. Still, I agree with you that they will want to stretch the reveals as much as possible.

Not so sure, the Revenant reveal is should be in time for PAX to make it playable. Even though it is a playable demo, the point may not (and in my opinion won’t be) about the professions, but about the general content and mastery system. Look at what we had during the original beta weekends. We did not have all races or professions available except for during the very last one just before launch.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for a faster time schedule and am hoping I am incorrect. But that seems to make sense and keeps the hype going through until just before release.

Scoobaniec.9561:

I still dont believe in melee staff. Also where is greatsword? Would be silly to not have one.

I do believe in melee staff (after all, we have ranged greatsword), but in that we can simply agree to disagree as it could go either way.

As for greatsword, please please please NO! Greatsword is overused and I hate that so much attention has been placed on this single weapon by Anet. Ideally I’m hoping the melee staff is their TH melee weapon in place of the greatsword.

Patience is a virtue. They’ve actually given a decent amount of information since the announcement. Not as much as we’d love to have, but pretty good schedule. I expect that every week we will get one new topic (if we are lucky, two sometimes). My guess is this:

This week (week of 2/9): Strongholds
Week of 2/16: Guild halls and some teaser on guild events
Week of 2/23: New WvW borderland map
Week of 3/2: Full Revenant reveal
Week of 3/9-3/30: Specialization reveals (two per week maybe)
April: More detail on some of the other options and preparation of release in late April, May, or June.

I’m thinking it will not be one weapon per class, but one weapon set per class. Meaning you will either get a single two-handed weapon, or you’ll get 1 OH and 1 MH weapon added when you specialize.

PeskyJNixon.8236:

Invictus,

I wanted to put together a get together for Boston area GW2 players and the community members as a whole. If you’ve been to events like this, you probably noticed that the night before the events usually have lots of meetups for people who are new to the event or the area with folks that are enthusiasts of their favorite game, game company. I have 0 official capacity, I apologize if it sounded like I was saying that I was. I was saying that I would be interested in having an event for anyone that was interested. If you aren’t going, and if you aren’t interested by all means don’t worry about it.

Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. So it seems like you are using the official forums here to solicit who may be interested in such an event so you know if one should be planned and roughly how large to plan for. If this is the case, I’d suggest, in addition to this forum post, that you also post on Reddit if you haven’t already to get more coverage as making such arrangements is not easy and very frustrating if you do it and don’t have many participants.

Good luck in your endeavour.

Puls.5867:

I want to know what happens to the healing utilities and elite skill, so these skills correct me if I’m wrong change depending on the legend U call forth and channel through the mists right? So would this maybe mean that we don’t get any utility healing or elite skills to set up? Or will we have a way to exit and use a custome guild too? Just interested in what’s going on there

The answer relies very heavily on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some think that the back half of the skillbar will change the skills to entirely new skills when you channel. Others believe the skills will act similar to an Ele glyph and change function when you channel. Still others think the skills will be fundamentally the same, but add things based on which legend you are channeling.

Personally I think the latter. I believe that the skills will remain fundamentally the same, but have things added to them (similar to when a trait adds to skills). I think if you channel Jalis, many of the skills will also give you protection, stability, aegis, etc.. When you channel Mallyxx your skills will transfer conditions, convert boons to conditions, and strip conditions from allies.

cyst.3108:

Well, i dont know how, or why, but look at this picture:https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/180517/Screen_Shot_2015-02-01_at_21.28.46.png

Even if people say is a Staff/pole or whatever, HE is wielding something that looks 2 handed, yet in the lower part it seems that he got his sword stoked, i dont know id you do recongnize it but hes wielding the fire ascalonian sword.

Dont know what that may means but, thats 1. a glitch or 2. intended.

Probably just means that he is Rytlock and the owner of the legendary blade. His model will never lose that sword at his hip (or in his hand). Doesn’t mean much for the player because our second weapon set is always hidden, and frankly needs to be.

Digital version requests
- Exclusive mini (would LOVE to have the Shadow Dragon or something similar)
- An exclusive skill similar to the Spirit Wolf summon from original CE for GW
- An armor set (would love exclusive, but a themed one from gem store would be ok)
- Something for my home instance

A few special mentions I liked from other people:
- Special mailer
- Exclusive glider skin
- Exclusive outfit (though I prefer the armor so I can mix and match with other stuff)
- Unique gathering tools

LordHogFred.3691:

Invictus.1503:

I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what you are saying. Sounds like you want people to “get together” on Thursday night. Who is this “we” you speak of? Everybody attending as GW2 players? Just the Anet staff? Since you said “we” and you are clearly not Anet staff it seems to imply the former, but then that would be a huge crowd with a lot of unknowns to try to “plan”

Perhaps you should pay attention to your signature ;-)

Please enlighten me then as obviously your seeing something that I am not. I read and reread the initial post and honestly want to understand what they are asking exactly? The vague “we” and the fact that the two options to whom the “we” refers don’t seem to make sense logistically to me and so I deduce that others may feel the same. If you make a post on a forum, it is a post for the general public to review and respond to so further clarification seems prudent to me.

However, if I’ve missed something glaringly obvious, please educate me. Can you answer the questions I posed then please?

I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what you are saying. Sounds like you want people to “get together” on Thursday night. Who is this “we” you speak of? Everybody attending as GW2 players? Just the Anet staff? Since you said “we” and you are clearly not Anet staff it seems to imply the former, but then that would be a huge crowd with a lot of unknowns to try to “plan”

Scoobaniec.9561:

Actually its interesing if he will get weapons like longbow considering the fact that most likely he wont have weapon swap. I cannot imagine him being fully ranged in heavy armor.

I actually agree and went back and forth on including a longbow in my speculation. I figured that they would have at least some ranged options, however if they have skills to compensate (or channeled legends) then perhaps not. If that is the case, and no weapon swap is the case as well, I’d remove Scepter and Longbow from my speculation.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Invictus.1503:

Mo Mo.1947:

Pop? I just watched the POI number 15 to see what you were talking about.

I saw like 2 seconds of character selection where a white-bearded character face was there and a new class symbol was showing… Didn’t see a character name on the selection screen and the female host gave zero reaction while they waited for the player to select the charr and load back in.

So what the heck POI are you talking about? Is there another that isn’t up on youtube?

It was the part in game when he was fighting up around the rifle section. A Sylvari NPC named Pop came into the scene and joined the fight, using some skills that are almost certainly Reverant skills.

Not an NPC, another “player” (so dev)

Yes, that is what I meant and “NPC” came out by accident. You are correct of course.

MH – Sword
MH – Mace
MH – Scepter
OH – Dagger
OH – Torch
OH – Sword
OH – Pistol (only because of Rytlock’s signature Sword/Pistol combo)
TH – Staff (used in melee)
TH – Longbow

Mo Mo.1947:

Pop? I just watched the POI number 15 to see what you were talking about.

I saw like 2 seconds of character selection where a white-bearded character face was there and a new class symbol was showing… Didn’t see a character name on the selection screen and the female host gave zero reaction while they waited for the player to select the charr and load back in.

So what the heck POI are you talking about? Is there another that isn’t up on youtube?

It was the part in game when he was fighting up around the rifle section. A Sylvari NPC named Pop came into the scene and joined the fight, using some skills that are almost certainly Reverant skills.

Public speaking is not easy, so let’s give the devs a bit of a break. I’m a bit surprised they expect them to present as much as they do themselves. I would think you’d have a public speaker who is versed in what they should talk about present most of it while the dev plays and jumps in to add a bit of color now and again.

As for the show, frankly my favorite part was Pop. Seems he was another dev playing a Revenant on the same map. Saw a few skills and a few weapon choices from him (Rubi, you looked like you saw it too and tried communicating to the team about it ).

P.S. I’m starving for anything Revenant to the point where I can’t even enjoy the other information as much as I should. Hope they do a full Revenant reveal soon so I can enjoy everything else too without being preoccupied.

One word…Polymock!

I plan to do much the same. Make a Sylvari male Revenant, insta level to 80, then start exploring the story while learning how the Revenant plays. I’ll probably be doing that for quite a bit more than just 30 minutes.

Artyport.2084:

Invictus.1503:

Norn in a Skritt costume, that would be one huge and scary looking Skritt! I like it actually, but it would have to be in the form of a costume like Mad King Thorn’s or something the like. If it worked like a tonic (changing your stature) then I’d be rather annoyed.

This is a costume I’d buy if done as an actual costume.

I God no!
Ud become the size of the race lol

If that was the case, then no. At that point it is no longer a costume, but a tonic. So what you really want is a tonic that you can fight while using (similar to the watchwork knight tonic). Frankly I’d love a costume version (you know, clothes that your toon wheres to pretend to be of that race). Think of an cute little Asura in a Kodan costume, or my Norn in a Skritt costume

I expect there will be a bit for those who don’t buy the expansion. The WvW borderland map is a prime example of something that I think they would be nuts to lock behind the expansion. If they did, WvW population would decrease quite a bit, especially for the first couple of months while people are still saving in some cases to get the expansion.

Most things though, will likely be locked behind the paid expansion.

Norn in a Skritt costume, that would be one huge and scary looking Skritt! I like it actually, but it would have to be in the form of a costume like Mad King Thorn’s or something the like. If it worked like a tonic (changing your stature) then I’d be rather annoyed.

This is a costume I’d buy if done as an actual costume.

Code.8615:

“I scrolled over a lot of entirely valid concerns based on what’s been announced and how things have been progressing in the game already and will now make snarky remarks without actually addressing any of those concerns.”

Ummm….who were you quoting with those quotation marks?

Why females only

I was going to go with Human male as I don’t have one of them yet. However now that I read the latest blog posts I’m thinking Sylvari male (again) because it seems we’ll be playing more at night time which should make the glow pretty cool. So, that means I’ll have the following

Revenant – Sylvari male
Necromancer – Sylvari male
Mesmer – Sylvari female
Warrior – Norn male
Guardian – Norn female
Elementalist – Norn female
Ranger – Human female
Necromancer – Human female
Thief – Charr male
Engineer – Asura male

My guess (which guessing is all we can do since they haven’t said explicitly) is that they will simply add SP Scrolls as an automatic drop for certain content. Taking that even further, it will likely drop automatically from the boss chests, explorable dungeon path rewords, fractals, and maybe even the “completionist” daily reward chest.

personally, I think this is more than enough.

Belzebu.3912:

Umm … now that you mentioned, I think both options may be available, check this:
Source

Master Legends: Train in legendary crafting to learn to create all existing legendary weapon precursors and new legendary weapon precursors introduced with Heart of Thorns.

Or, it could be a single options. Perhaps some of the crafting material for a precurser will be account bound items that can only be found via a scavenger hunt style. So perhaps there will be a collection applied to getting the reward item which is then used as a crafting component for the precurser.

dragonkain.3984:

Why no new race?

They’ve already answered this in interviews (sorry, don’t have the source on me at the moment). The quick answer is that they looked at what would be gained by a new race compared to the time and resources it would take to make one playable and maintain it. They concluded that you only really gain a bit of cosmetic pieces and a small amount of early content and that was not worth the resources necessary to create them. They instead decided (inteligently in my opinion) to put those resources towards more substantial projects.

It was all because of this line

Master Legends: Train in legendary crafting to learn to create all existing legendary weapon precursors and new legendary weapon precursors introduced with Heart of Thorns.

Frankly I love that!

For some reason working with the mists just screams White to me.

Ummm….can’t tell if the OP is trolling or has a genuine gripe about such a small and insignificant sound/animation. I’m leaning more towards the former.

They are gliding, not flying (PC that is). This was announced as a Mastery since the first announcement of the expansion and in the many interviews after.

As for combat, I doubt we will be able to use skills while flying, at least not combat skills. We may fight flying things, and with the dense jungle could fight back. My guess is that you’ll have obstacles to avoid while flying (some may be living beasts).

Anet has all the information they need and are likely to use from the CDI they had a few months ago. Hopefully if you had/have unique ideas you presented them there when they called out to the community. Here is a link to that thread, it is quite good and everything covered in this thread so far I’ve seen referenced there (and a LOT more).

Enjoy
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Guild-Halls/first

The interview mentioned Fractals! They’re actually acknowledging that dungeons still exist. There is a shimmer of hope

This has been requested almost since release and I’m shocked it wasn’t included in the HoT announcement. I’m still hopeful they’ll make it happen in a feature patch relatively soon. Especially with Specializations coming, I’d like to be able to save builds so they can be switched with ease.

Huge QoL improvement this would be.

To answer your question “what if all Sylvari become Revenants” the answer is simple. Anet would lose a tone of player base to extremely upset players and the game would likely collapse soon after. You can’t take away a toon that somebody has invested potentially more than 2 years. This would be more than a simple class change, but would also render armor sets useless, legendary weapons unusable, and a whole gambit of other issues I’m not thinking about.

As to what will happen with Sylvari, they’ll likely get a unique story perspective. Not all are turning, even the trailer shows that with Canach saying “we are not the enemy!” Colin’s statement was probably just to say that he thinks it will be unique and fun and something people won’t want to miss. The fact of already having a Sylvari ready is because the content being added is all 80th level content so to get it right away you’ll need a toon ready.

Knighthonor.4061:

Rumor is they are getting their own personal story for leveling up.

Source? Where is the rumor? This forum is the only place I’ve heard such a thing. As I’ve said in other posts, I don’t think it is impossible, but I’m curious where such rumor is coming from (aside from here that is).

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Probably Sylvari for me because the glow looks really cool on the Revenant.

Darn it, I already have 2 Sylvari and was planning to finally make that male human. Now you are drawing me right back to Sylvari!

Although I’d like and expect more than one Specialization, it is not needed to still make the term make sense. As long as you lose something from the main class (traitline, skills, mechanic, etc.) in order to gain something from your Specialization, then it makes sense. When you Specialize, it implies that your studies are intense in one area, and therefore other areas are neglected. Losing something from the core profession fills this definition nicely, even if there is only just one Specialization path at first. Basically your choices then are Generalist, or Specialist.

Getefix.9150:

its not speculation – its wishful thinking – there wont be another starting area, its a new class not a new race

That sir/madam is speculation. While I don’t disagree with your point, I disagree with anybody trying to pass off speculation and/or opinion as fact. You may be right, but unless you are either part of the team, or we hear from somebody on the team involved in the project it is not a known fact.

That said, although there are some reasonable arguments made for at least a tutorial area or a way to tie it into the lore, I too speculate that there won’t be any new starting area. The tie-in will likely be a cinematic explaining the tie-in after char. creation. Would love to be proved wrong though.