Guild Wars 2

The Master.2893:

7. The Continued Hostile Invasion of the Mists and the Engagement of other Worlds… a War on Tyria elsewhere in the Mists Unjustified

How dare you suggest the Mist War is unjustified? The “people” through that portal are evil and will destroy us so we must destroy them first!

Have you been in there? Spend some time in Mist War and you’ll get it. Have you seen what they do?! If you build anything, they come to burn it down. They take over villages and mercilessly attack the inhabitants and leave evil, twisted version of the villagers who attack you on sight! They will attack you and kill you, too, if you give them any chance. You go afk for a moment, 20 of them will come and beat on you, reveling in your pain, and ram a kitten banner post through your skull!

Have you looked at the people through that portal? You know what they are called? INVADERS! You cannot argue with the tags above their head or the color of their text. The text is red, meaning evil and murderous, and they are called “Invaders.”

Calls for peace in the Mists are nothing but cries to surrender to evil, murderous invaders who will rampage through Tyria given half a chance. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a traitor!

[Note: this post is a joke and not meant to be a reflection on any real world political situation]

Lol! Is this a server-wide achievement?

Personally, I think popular votes are a bad idea. Expansion of the voting franchise is the gravest threat to the Guild Wars 2 Republic. Only those of proper, broad perspective can be trusted to be enlightened enough to choose leaders. I propose the following qualifications for voting:
1. Voter must have a Commander tag.
2. Voter much have at least 6000 achievement points as of July 2013.
3. Voter must have at least 1 level 80 character of each profession.
4. Voter must pass a game literacy test (e.g., “What key is bound to a dodge button in default settings?” for Asura and “How many karma vendors sold rabid accessories in the level 58-65 range as of December 2012 and how many have been added since then?” for Norn)

If we keep the voting franchise from expanding too much, all players will benefit and the game will move towards the future.

Paid for by Citizens for a Responsive Captain’s Council. Anonymity of donors strictly protected.

[Note: this was a joke and is not meant to promote of criticize any particular political view.]

Kiel did not get all the credit, Kormir did not, Trahearne did not and Togo and Mhenlo did not. Numerous times your character is praised and celebrated, and some players insist that any time someone else is acknowledged they are being given all the credit.

You might object that the lore and cut scenes mention Kormir, but not the player. Well, that is the limit of today’s computer technology. They cannot mention your character’s name and don’t know which of your characters who completed Nightfall you would want listed. Furthermore, even if they could, if I am in a party I don’t want to hear “Pwns Wit Daggerz accompanied Kormir in the Realm of Torment…”

Your characters are given plenty of credit and if you don’t see that then your attention is being extremely selective.

marnick.4305:

1/ the monthly demands 60 champions slain and Queensdale is the easiest place to farm champions.

First, I did not try and got the Champion monthly in maybe 10-12 days. Playing a moderate amount will easily get it before the end of the month.

Second, Queensdale is not the best place to rack up champion kills. For example, in Fields of Ruin, you set off the Foulbear Kraal event (2-4 events to set it off) and you will get at least 4 champions and a guaranteed gold. With two players cooperating you will get it about as fast as 4 champions in Queensdale and get high tier crafting material loot. With 3 players, you can also catch the two wasp champions and get 6 champions in the same amount of time.

Doing the full Harathi Hinterlands Ulgoth chain is worth at least 8 champions. Doing just the end part if they control junction is worth 5. You can pop over and do the giant Hidden Ouboron event chain for another champion between runs.

Willing to pay way point fees? Forstgorge Sound usually has an easy champion quaggan. You can farm a champion spider out the northeast gate of Lion’s Arch. You can kill the jungle troll in north Caledon and the spider in north Metrica. You can see if the giant is attack Nageling in Diessa by looking for a contested waypoint. That is a 5 soloable champion circuit you can do continuously.

There are probably numerous other event chains spawning champions and champion circuits.

I like everything but the ascended items. The difference between rare and exotic armor and weapons is quite substantial. However, I did not mind the ascended trinkets as much because, when you do the math of exotic jewelry v. ascended, the difference is very small compared to your normal attributes.

However, if the up base weapon damage and up the defense and the huge amount of attributes from your armor and weapons, the difference between all ascended v. all exotic could be as large as the difference between all exotic v. all rare.

My rare equipped characters cannot compete with my exotic equipped ones. When I upgrade from rare to exotic, challenging content becomes easy as long as I don’t do anything overly risky. Up it again and a lot of places that are challenging now will become like running around in Ashford or Queensdale.

Holland.9351:

Does the Rejuvenation Booster still work though?

It worked a few days ago, but my pie did not. I would say it allowed one extra juice swig.

I cannot recall the exact quote, but something very similar to this conversation happened near the crafting stations in Metrica Province:
Asura: Why do hylek tribes fight?
Hylek: That is an easy question. We all want the same things: breeding grounds, hunting grounds, comfortable places to sleep. There is not enough to go around, so we fight.
Asura: That seems terribly inefficient. Couldn’t you cooperate? Talk? Come to an agreement?
Hylek: You mean like Asura labs cooperate?
Asura: No, it’s not like… I mean… Okay, point taken.

The Fractal will either be liked or hated by the players. I doubt the lore will resolve any significant questions. We never found out anything about the existing Fractals. How would a new Fractal be any different?

If this is like every other Fractal, we would either fight the Horde of Darkness or Inquest mixed in with whatever else the reactor summoned and learn nothing.

The exchange rate will change so the gold cost of keys does not. This is a choice between reduced waypoint costs, or reduced real money costs of keys/more in game gold from gem purchases.

Thanks for the information.

Wiki is ambiguous on this and I am getting different answers in chat (from the same person, in fact…).

If I use the Gift of Quartz on “Character One,” can “Character Two” find a node in their home instance? -> This is the question that I want answered.

To avoid the problems I had in chat, here are some things I am NOT ASKING:
1. I am not asking if two different characters can both mine quartz the same day.
2. I am not asking in what city’s home instance the node appears.
3. I am not asking how to use the Gift of Quartz.
4. I have not deleted the Gift of Quartz. I am not asking how to get a replacement.
5. I am not asking how to get a second Gift of Quartz.

Edit: Okay, there was nothing in this resembling a swear. Why are the forums replacing my text with “kitten”? That is really annoying. “Kitten” replaced a string of text including the word “not” which changes it to the opposite meaning. I don’t want the forums editing my text to turn it into the opposite meaning.

It is worth noting that in Scandinavian folklore, the distinctions between elves, dwarves and trolls were not always clear. What they were and what they did varied by time and place (e.g., Swedish and Danish folklore were different, 9th century was different from 12th century, etc.). In Christian Sweden, trolls looked exactly like human women but had tail they hid. In pre-Christian Norway, trolls were very tall, had swollen noses and fingers and did not look human as adults (troll babies looked human). Dwarves went from being taller than humans to shorter with time. Jotun were human sized and later giants. Religion and folklore are not static. Look at the changing conceptions of zombies in American folklore over the past century. What do zombies today have in common with 16th century West African vodun? They were all once not zombies, and that is about all.

I am making a guess thinking I will be able to say “I called it” later. I do not have a specific name, but I have a narrow set of people in mind. Clues:
1. She got the dredge and Flame Legion together to combine their powers into something new.
2. She got the inquest working with others to form the Aetherblades.
3. She is a “snake-nosed trickster.”

Who can talk to dredge, has extensive contact with Charr, can talk with inquest, would bring different races together to form something new and can have a nose that looks sort of like a snake? An Asruan member of the College of Synergetics. Asura have close contact with all races and Synergeticists bring different things together to form new things that could not exist apart. Asuran noses often look snake-like.

I am still trying to figure out which Synergeticist it is, though, but I think I am right.

There is a saying that if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Hammer is so awesome for the Guardian I have trouble not using it. With the correct traits, it has:
1. Up to 4 kinds of CC – knockback, immobilize, ward and chill
2. Two or more ways to heal you and allies while providing protection – if symbols heal allies along with altruistic healing. If you have rangers or necromancers in your party, you protect and heal their pets while making yourself nigh invincible.
3. High damage – hammers hit hard
4. Combo fields – Some of the best combo fields are with blasts, and the hammer has a blast (that is also is distance closer). You can get retaliation and spread it to nearby allies (healing you if you have altruistic healing), or wait between symbols and blast whatever field your allies have.
5. Some ranged capability – the range of hammer #3 is not bad, the symbol of protection has significant range and hammer #2 is not bad either.

Hammer does it all in one package: damage, control, support and synergy in melee or at range. The only problem? I really don’t know how to use certain weapons because it is so hard to not use a hammer. It is usually hammer + staff, hammer + scepter and focus, hammer + mace and focus, hammer + sword and torch, hammer + greatsword, etc.

Is there any weapon the guardian has that can match to utility and versatility of a hammer? I have not found one.

Isilhgaard.4013:

Intentionally designed to influence farming the Aetherblade Caches??? Perhaps make the Aetherblades spawn at a higher rate when approaching the Hologram Projectors? It doesn’t bother me that players are farming the caches. But why make it the most efficient way to complete the achievement?

Here are my data:
On the Blackgate Server, I ran around the Plains of Ashford and set off hologram nodes and wait for them to reset. I got Aetherblade spawns 7 out of 18 times. This does NOT count the original activation of the nodes to reset them.

In Fields of Ruin, I did the same thing. I got spawns 6 out of 22 times (none on the first 9 attempts).

Verdict: this is a slow, frustrating way to farm Aetherblades.

However, if you want non-Ascalon Aetherblades, there are easier options. The dungeon and jumping puzzle give you plenty of spawns for Kryta. Aetherblades spawn rapidly (3 every 1.5-2 minutes) around the witnesses in Snowden Drifts and Caledon Forest. I got my Shiverpeaks achievement in a littel over half and hour. I got more than 50% of my Maguuma one in 20 minutes.

Warning: in Maguuma near the witness, Aetherblades spawn at level 20 while you are down-scaled to level 20. This makes the fights a bit more interesting than they would normally be.

I am not having trouble finding nodes. None spawned pirates. I changed strategy to going around in large circles activating nodes so they reset and then going back to them. This gets me about 1 blade per 7-8 minutes, which is still less efficient than spawn camping.

In the Guild Wars 2 design philosophy, spawn camping was specifically cited as a problem to be avoided. I have just run around for 45 minutes in Ascalon from projector to projector and have gotten 3 Aetherblades for the achievement (a single spawn). The Caches spawn them reliably, and every cache I came across had people waiting there. In other words, by far the most efficient way to get the achievement (maybe the only way at this rate) is to spawn camp.

Will this problem be addressed before the Sky Pirates event ends? Should I go off to Vexxa’s now and spawn camp?

Behellagh.1468:

Those at Farmer’s Markets still have to pay tax to the state based on their sales and if they don’t they can and do get into trouble.

In Georgia and Wisconsin they do not unless they are selling something other than food or seeds of edible plants. However, you are correct, Farmer’s Markets have to follow the rules of other retailers. Flea Markets had sales taxes too the last time I went (about, oh, 25 years ago…).

Oranisagu.3706:

as a sidenote: you know what would’ve stopped trade spam as well? a separate trade channel, just as many other games already have, because it just makes sense.

Guild Wars 1 did have a separate trade channel, but even when it cracked down heavily on trade spam it would never go away completely (and I define “completely” very loosely as less than twice per minute). There was an area called Kamadan which was so bad with trade spam, even in times of heavy enforcement, that most of my friends called it “Spamadan.” The Trading Post (along with a lack of a trade function, I suppose) completely eliminated it. I often turn off map chat in Lion’s Arch, but not because of trade spam anymore.

A Case Against New Playable Races

My suggestion here is to not make any new playable races. My reasons for this have nothing to do with mechanics or not wanting to make new alts. It is an argument about how ANet should spend its resources.

Brief summary of my argument – I would much rather ANet spent its time developing new high level content (like Living Story) or a high level expansion region. Guild Wars 2 has already spent a disproportionate amount of development on low level-race specific content areas and PS. Almost half of the race-specific PS will never be seen by a player who makes 1 character of each profession. ANet may be discouraged from doing any further race-specific content because some races would be left out for awhile, or the content would require 5 times as much work as any other content. Also, any new race would require redoing a lot of what has already been done.

In our personal stories (PS), we have 3 arcs in levels 2-10 and 3 arcs in levels 11-20 determined by our biography. With 5 races, that is 30 story arcs which require at least 15 characters to see. I assume most players have not brought 15 characters up through level 20 of the PS.

What would the game be like today if there were only 3 playable races? For argument, let’s say those races are Charr, Human and Norn. This would free up the development time of 12 PS arcs. This could have been used to create more alternatives, especially in areas where there are none now. Suppose that, after Claw Island, you had the option of build the Pact and doing the Tonn/Apatia/Imposter arcs or, for example, helping the soldiers from Maguuma, Kryta, Shiverpeaks or Ascalon get down to Fort Trinity to help fight Zhaitan. In the Kryta arc, you would first help secure the border against centaur incursions to free up troops, then help them get past the obstacles Zhaitan puts in the way. These would just be 4 of the 12 extra story arcs.

Furthermore, it would free up more of the map. We have 5 low level areas and four 15-25 level areas. Under my scenario, Brisban could have been a level 65-75 area, Metrica a level 75-80 area and Caledon a level 80 area which would provide far more high level content.

Another point I would like to make is that ANet cannot really support the stories of the 5 races it has now. Everything after level 30 has nothing to do with your race. I have seen people on the forums suggest content where the characters “go home” and deal with the changes around Divnity’s Reach, The Grove, etc. with the fall of Zhaitan. However, this requires essentially the same work to be done 5 times over. Flame and Frost sort of dealt with the Charr and Norn, but this was mainly dealing with a new threat and nothing was race specific.

Finally, making a new race would require making new skins for everything: 3 types of armor for each dungeon, all the crafted armors and all the dropped armors. I would rather see an expansion of skins available to current characters. ANet would have to resolve any clipping or animation issues and all the work each of the previous races required. That work is better spent on other content, in my opinion.

A few days ago I went to the Harathi Hinterlands and the notice was that the centaurs held all camps. Over time me and a few others did the entire event chain. By the end the population doing the event was quite large. I got the bonus rare, a rare off Ulgoth and 2 rares and an exotic from the chest. Needless to say, I was quite pleased.

The question is, was I extra lucky, or is this normal? Does participating in the entire chain up the rewards?

Oranisagu.3706:

as for inflation: there are other ways around it, except directly siphoning it away (exp consumables, gambling, rent etc). the problem is, everything which COULD be a good goldsink (BLC Keys, restyling, renaming etc) get’s gem-stored. that stuff in the store is what other games use as a goldsink.

BLT is the best of gold sinks. Desirable properties as a gold sink:
1. It is completely optional. Anyone can avoid the sink by not participating.
2. It scales with inflation. The higher inflation gets, the better it is at removing excess gold from the economy.
3. It does not need to be constantly tinkered with. Other money insertions/sinks need to be monitored by developers to make sure they are not causing excessive inflation or deflation. Because this scales with the amount of gold in the economy, it frees up developer time from monitoring the currency economy and allows them to work on other things.

Another desirable side effect is it stopped trade spam that annoyed me so much in GW1.

I have gotten 2 hair style kits, but do not remember if they came from Black Lion Chests or daily rewards.

Viralseed.9362:

Symbols last longer, Symbols are larger, and Symbols heal are different traits in the same tree that barely alter the function of Symbols.

In stacking situations, Symbols lasting longer and Symbols healing combo is very powerful, especially with some modest boon duration. Even alone they allow you to be lazy when fighting veterans or champions or to over-aggro.

Even if you dungeon team won’t stack, symbol traits are nice when fighting a boss. You are able to dodge out of the big effects, run back and melee the boss and after symbol of protection goes down again switch to another weapon and cycle through the skills and back to hammer with protection never going down. That is increased symbol duration with boon duration and it changes the dynamic of fighting. You can lock down many bosses so your team can unleash the fury on them (and do pretty good damage yourself).

Resonance.4216:

your money goes to NCSOFT, not ANET.

If GW2 brings in money, GW2 will get more resources to produce expansions. The money you pay does go to other projects, just like any time you spend money at a business. However, the gem store does support GW2 because NCSoft sees the money coming in from the Gem Store which means NCSoft will want to support the GW2 development team.

Kalla Scorchrazor from Pyre Fierceshot.
Queen Jennah from Salma.
Jhavi Jorasdottir from Jora.

I have not gotten around to reading the history of Ebonhawke in Fields of Ruin. There may be others.

Zero.6082:

3. Conditions too weak ( 100 health a second for the best condition builds is chump change to 3000 a second from crit).

Maybe you are not trying to be specific, but if I go condition build at level 80, I am doing a LOT more damage than 100/s. Try closer to 500/s plus the crits and ordinary hits I am scoring (and I never go full-out conditions, either). Comparing just the condition damage to just the direct damage of another character is not really a valid comparison since both are doing direct damage. Compare condition damage to the difference.

Shadowy Dawn.4703:

There is absolutely no reason to take a 5% listing fee AND a 10% sales tax from the seller. The only reason you have for this is to bleed money out of the economy to force people to continue farming/buying gems to convert to gold. If you absolutely must continue with this make the fees 5% and 5% and have the buyer shoulder some of the burden.

The reason for the listing fee is to keep people from listing at outrageously high prices and re-listing at successively lower prices. This keeps people from stying up all night constantly adjusting their items (and some players would do this if there were not a penalty). A reason to split the fees is to not overly penalize someone who makes one bad decision by charging a 15% listing fee.

You seem to be misunderstanding some economic principles. There is no meaningful economic distinction between the buyer and seller paying the tax in a sales tax transaction. If sales tax is 10%, the seller lists at 11% higher than he otherwise would in order to make the desired profit. Anyway, technically buyers pay the sales tax and sellers the listing fee.

The taxes pay everybody in the form of reducing inflation. Inflation reduces the value of the money you hold. Gold sinking reduces inflation. If the TP removes 25% of the gold from the economy over a time period, that increases the value of all the gold you hold by 33%. Games where the currency sinks are less than what players can generate have economic collapse and currency becomes almost worthless.

The reason I get stuck in builds is that they work so well, not the cost of changing them (although redoing all the traits each time is annoying – I wish I could save builds). Every time I try to get away from 30 in Honor and 30 in Valor for my guardian, I get significantly weaker in my ability to do what the guardian does best. Sure, other builds are viable, but I have found them to be weaker in the most difficult situations I face (any build works for the average and easy situations).

There are many things needing gold besides Black Lion. Crafting materials from master crafters, waypoints, repairs, siege blueprints, exotic or ascended items from some merchants (on Southsun, for example, or with guild merits) and cultural armor (to get Emperor’s New Wardrobe, expect to pay 100’s of gold).

anzenketh.3759:

Funny thing is though ooc is not as common as he thinks as it is not on the wiki.

I guess it became more common in the past 2 hours because ooc is there now.

When teaching people to present their work professionally, I need to teach people to not make certain assumptions. One of the most common erroneous assumptions people make is that your audience knows an abbreviation.

On another thread a few minutes ago, I read someone talking about the game MoP. What game is that?

In a dungeon the other night, someone who was defeated typed this in the party window:
occ
[later] ooc

After the fight died down, I typed I had no idea what occ meant. The player typed “out of combat” “sry thought that was common”

These are but two of dozens if not hundreds of examples I have seen in game or on the forums.

While sometimes you do not have time, typing does not take long. In both cases, the people had plenty of time to be clear about what they were talking about.

My advice to all the player base is: the first time you use an abbreviation, type it out. For example, type:
ooc (out of combat), please get out of combat

This will help others understand you. Both you and your audience will be happier.

draxynnic.3719:

To be honest, that’s even more of a mystery than the question of who the pirates of Lion’s Arch prey on. They’re testing a submarine, and that becomes the prototype for the Pact submarines, but the charr don’t seem to have access to any water bodies larger than a lake… so if it wasn’t purely intended for export, why?

It could be a research project, or it may be intended for lake work. The helicopter in Fields of Ruin was an individual endeavor by a researcher, if you believe what she says.

I want to know the same thing. A problem has locked me out of work for 3 days, and I may still be catching up on the 18th.

Antares.2586:

Is Piratery tolerated, supported by the Lion Guard and the Captain Council, or do they mention it only as a reference to the city past ?

Should Pirates be quiet and discreet about their real activity in the city,
or can they speak about it in the front of a Lion guard ?

In Real Life, piracy on any scale had a home base that accepted that particular brand of piracy. There were acceptable targets, and unacceptable targets. The Buccaneers, for example, often sailed on British ships and/or were commanded by British naval officers and were only allowed to attack Spanish and French shipping. The British did not even consider them pirates until British shipping became a major part of West Indian trade.

To quote “Muppet Treasure Island”:
Take Sir Francis Drake/ The Spanish all despise him/ But to the British he’s a hero and they idolize him/ It’s only how you look at Buccaneers/ That makes them bad or good/ And I say we’re all members of a noble brotherhood

I am currently fighting dragon holograms in the Fields of Ruin because it is the highest level area I found with holograms. I do this because I prefer higher level crafting materials to lower level ones. I could not find any in the Diessa Plateau even though it borders a city. What is the highest level area people find holograms? Are any in Dredgehaunt?

I liked how the City of Heroes MMO handled this: they had a time travel zone that allowed you to relive past events and you could accept special restrictions to get extra titles.

The equivalent here might be the ability to do sets of Personal Story (e.g., 11-20 quest line) with options:
No major traits (Amateur Achievement)
With your armor and weapons temporarily converted to white without runes or sigils (Simple Equipment Achievement)
All enemies have 10 stacks of might and Protection boons that renew every 30 seconds and are 2 levels higher (Mighty Foes Achievement)
You have 10 stacks of vulnerability that renew every 8 seconds and reduced toughness and vitality (Soak It Up Achievement)

Rebound.3409:

Look even at orr, the most hated map, even tho was the place we could farm T6 in big groups and have a bit of fun.

with your miraculous patches have physically and psychologically have reduced us to 3 activities:
1. Fast daily (takes 30 min max)
2. Dungeon spamming
3. Dragon/world boss runs, where u just teleport, kill…and logoff fast before u are jumped on by one of those champions u put in…. or before the RNG system won’t let us move anymore.

This is just opinion. I hated that there were too many people in a few spots in Cursed Shore. I had to find a party to get any loot when I was there, and people would leave veterans to run and group tag the next set of spawns with full DPS/magic find because with all the rain of fury onto the risen they never had a chance to attack us. However, after those mega event farms died down a bit (no, they never went away), I could actually get very decent loot. Going around in a group of 3 allowed me to use my skills and get a steady, valuable stream of loot while doing dynamic events.

If all you do is farm dungeons, do dailies and hop between meta events, that is your choice and your problem. I can go into any number of zones and do major event chains and have a great time getting plenty of loot. I cannot just do a dungeon without speed running because usually folks will do nothing but speed run (resulting in far fewer drops).

All your complaints are options given that players do to themselves. I could come up with other complaints in a similar vein:
Oh, wvw, that is just run to maps we are doing well and leave all the other maps to our enemies because this is the only way to get badges and ranks… no, that is a choice the players are making.

If I were to provide a Lore explanation, I would point out that all characters in GW1 were Chosen and could achieve Ascension (not even Turai Ossa was able to do this). This made them highly unusual. In Prophecies, it was their ability to Ascend that was directly tied to their ability to learn any skill (the Sanyi/Vanyi quest line).

If I were a writer at ANet and looking to provide a Lore explanation, it would be that the Gods have left, so nobody is Chosen anymore. Your characters are highly talented, but not Chosen.

In Eye of the North cinematics, Norn and Asura were both plural. In Prophecies Charr was plural. It can actually be tricky to find examples where they are referring to groups of individuals and not the race as a whole.

It does seem that Guild Wars writers have always had a fondness for race names where the singular and plural are the same.

Minor races where singular and plural are the same:
Hylek, Skritt, Tengu, Krait, Grawl, Kodan, Dredge, Jotun, Mursaat, Risen, Branded, Icebrood, Afflicted, Heket, Yeti, Djinn

Different:
Quaggans, Ogres, Margonites, Wardens, Centaurs, Harpies, Ettins, Giants, Dwarves

Unclear:
Largos

Note that not all these words originated with ANet, but they did often remove the “s”:
Asuras, Norns and Jotuns.

Lions could have gone extinct in Kryta as they did around the Mediterranean IRL. Furthermore, just because something is named after a lion doesn’t mean lions were around. Lions were used symbolically in Medieval Europe as mentioned about. Richard the Lion Heart was nowhere near any place with wild lions in his life. Birmingham, Alabama had no Germanic tribes involved in its settlement even though its name means “home of the Beormings.”

When I am going into battles with lots of players, I have a condition damage weapon and a non-condition damage weapon. That is my solution.

If you go to the extreme on any strategy, you are penalized in situations where that strategy doesn’t work well. Going full berzerkers against some of the guild bounties will hurt you, as it will in any situation where you cannot avoid a significant portion of the damage. My guardian has to be very careful fighting boon stealers (with riders, your retaliation owns you). Bouncing attacks hurt you in fights near hard-hitting neutral creatures. Blinding is useless v dredge and burning useless v destroyers. Stealth won’t save you from a long, hard-hitting attack chain. The list goes on.

This is rarely a problem in the most difficult content if you plan. If you are a bleeder and see a necromancer in your party, coordinate your strategy before entering the dungeon.

In the big group fights, players will step on each other. People will CC or lead enemies out of your zones. Your boons will only affect a few allies (and maybe not affect the NPC you are trying to protect). Allies will throw up flashy effects so you cannot see telegraphs.

The Asuran mentality of reputation v. personal safety. Zojja was concerned that if Kudu embarrassed the Arcane Council, or even if he just killed some of them the result could be chaos. The Snaff Prize competition they said would be boring if none of the entries nearly got someone killed. The Asura are really a lot like the Norn except the Asura want to be known for their discoveries, while the Norn want to be known for their great deeds. For both races, personal safety is a secondary consideration.

You need not resort to fancy magic explanations. IRL, cargo ships might no appear to have means of propulsion. Possibilities:

1. The means is covered up. Oar ports might be closed and too difficult to see. Masts were often taken down and put up again when the ship was ready to move.

2. The ship is not self-propelled. In ancient times and later, cargo and troop ships were sometimes pulled by galleys. You can see the same today. River barges often have no propulsion, but there are special tug ships that push and/or pull groups of barges.

3. The ship is a one-way drifter. River rafts often made one trip and were broken up for timber at the end. If there is a regular, predictable current, this same principle could be applied to a hulled ship. It could be cheap construction that would never last for more than a month at sea… which would be fine if the current carried it where it needed to go in a week.

Narcemus.1348:

Priestess Rhie is a follower of Grenth, which means she is most likely fairly knowledgeable about the necromancer profession. So this would most likely point back to what Konig has stated about necromancy taking in some of the teachings of the ritualists.

Grenth was the Human god associated with the ritualist profession, as well as necromancers, elementalists and dervishes.

There are some ritualist-like spells performed in game. For example, Priestess Rhie summons the spirit of Alastia Crow from the underworld. This is one of the defining traits of ritualist magic. Pure speculation: I suspect the ghostbore musket was built using ritualist weapon spell magic (seems like what a ritualist weapon spell would do).

From a strictly game mechanics standpoint, the ritualist role was taken by the engineer with turrets instead of spirits and tool kits instead of bundles of ashes.

Humans used monks and paragons in GW1 which later evolved into guardians, but all races have guardians. In fact, you could say this about all professions. The engineer is the token “not developed by Humans” profession.

Ultimately this is the result of a game being a sequel to a different game. Humans had almost all the lore, and minor races such as the grawl and tengu had more lore than the Norn or the Asura (not to mention races we have not seen in GW2 yet such as the Forgotten, Naga or Mursaat).

Path 2 of Sorrow’s Embrace has always been slow and Tarleov has always had a habit of stopping, walking back and generally wandering aimlessly. Now he absolutely will not move unless he aggros. After the fight, he walks back and will not move. How do we get him to move?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Which is, again, a fault that ArenaNet has – they have so much more lore written out than what they show in the game itself, which only lowers the quality of the game for folks who don’t do all the digging that could be done. You say that me saying this before was being rude, except that I was just pointing out a fact. I wasn’t insulting anyone at all, lest of all you despite saying that folks acting like you are now tend to be the result of such.

You can find out an astounding amount of lore in game if you want to by talking to NPC’s, listening to conversations and reading the yellow book icons. There is no shortage of lore in game for lore hounds.

However, not everyone is a lore hound. You can ignore the lore if it does not interest you. ArenaNet is doing this correctly. A warning I saw on City of Heores for designing a back story is that people don’t like huge walls of text. Try not to write more than a sentence or two. Put the rest of the story elsewhere. For example, dialogues between people as you walk by, or notes people can choose to read or ignore.

Most of these NPC villains (and allies, for that matter) are less cartoonish than they seem if you dig into their lore. But, do not forget, it is a game, not a fantasy history book. Many people don’t want to watch an extra 2 minutes of exposition on the Inquest, Svanir or Quaggan philosophy during a cinematic.

Semil.8279:

But that also doesn’t explain why Kasmeer is there. Either she went there to knowingly risk her life, or she went there because Faren is a creepy stalker and she’s hoping he’ll get killed.

Read the “Welcome to Paradise” section on the official web site for why Lady Kasmeer Meade came to Southsun. I expect everything on “Welcome to Paradise” will be revealed as the story unfolds (similar to Rox and Braham).

I am personally betting that it is Faren that has the hidden agenda here. My guess is he was sent here by Logan or Jennah to spy on shady dealings.