Guild Wars 2

Wupwup Breeches 119g http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/8232
Wupwup Doublet 122g http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/8352
Wupwup Footwear 81g http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/8280
Wupwup Epaulets 79g http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/8304
Wupwup Wristguards 79g http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/8256
Wupwup Masque 79g http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/8328

Today’s cost is 560g total. This is assuming you purchased everything at a premium price and did not put in bids or gather any items for yourself.

I know a nomad guardian that’s darn near indestructible in WvW.

Tao.5096:

what is WoW?

It’s the AOL of MMOs, hitting the market at the right place and time with very aggressive marketing strategies. It hit a high of 12 million players 4 years ago but has been fast falling out of favor since then, losing half of those.

Unfortunately it has spawned an almost rabid fanbase that attacks every new game on the market as DEAD if they haven’t reached WoW numbers. Which is funny when you consider that 94 million have tried and quit WoW.

The game itself is fairly generic, they don’t try new things, just recycle the same quest, gear up and raid stuff over and over. Very grindy and treadmilly.

Someone recently linked me a video of a WoW raid, thinking he was making a point about how awesome they were. Now I use to be a hardcore raider in WoW but I haven’t played it for 2.5 yrs now and haven’t watched a WoW vid in all that time.

The screen was literally covered with timers and addons, all positioned to be in the best possible viewing position. It took me back to those times immediately, how I wasn’t playing the game but playing the UI. Never watching the boss, but watching various addons for the boss abilities or timers and alerts for mine. It was a jolt, I realized just how far I’ve moved away from that kind of playstyle.

The only MMO that’s even come close to piquing my interest was Archeage, but when I watched some play throughs there were those darn yellow question mark quests everywhere. No thanks. Can’t do it anymore.

Neither one of those MMOs will be tearing me away, there’s a freedom I feel in Guild Wars 2 that’s unmatched by anything I’ve ever experienced. Not even interested in going back to timers and addons and yellow question mark linear playstyles.

Just now while I was typing this out, standing afk in Diessa Plateau, I heard some battle sounds. I switched screens and there was a dynamic event underway, tons of players had been drawn to this area and led them to where I was. I jumped in the battle for a few moments, the event passed by, the players washed over me and the living breathing world of Tyria lives on.

Draknar.5748:

Hannelore.8153:

Because the game has a bad AI that cannot compensate for it. That’s why all the other mob hacks such as Unshakeable, leash regen, etc. exist as well.

Leash regen is in place so people can’t glitch/exploit the mobs for free kills. Lots of games have leashing and regen typically follows with it.

I’ve never heard anyone refer to them as ‘mob hacks’, though. Underlying hatred for the mechanics, I detect.

Maybe he’s suggesting that the mobs have become sentient and are hacking the game they were created in?

This game is too immersive!!

Best of luck in your future endeavors, Chap. Thanks for helping create one of the best games I’ve ever played

And never forget https://twitter.com/WeLoveGameDevs

Thanks for bringing this topic up for discussion, John. As an avid WvWer, here are some of my observations.

Snowballing

Snowballing is a direct result of supply infusion. Let’s look at EBG – there are 6 supply camps, 2 for each corner. If an opposing server takes one of your camps, they didn’t just get 6 points out of a possible 695 points per tick stronger, they got 50% more supply stronger on that map while your supply was halved!

I was recently playing an undefensible match on a blue server where we were trying to hold Danelon Mine long enough to get a single dolyak out of it before the other teams flipped it. It proved impossible, we became discouraged and stopped putting gold into upgrading the camp since we could not hold it. This quickly snowballed into no supply to upgrade Langor or our Keep, while they continued to build even greater supply stores to take our weakened tower and keep. This is snowballing.

• Supply needs to have a certain amount of fixed resource, with possibly adding supply infusions to outmatched servers. Get rid of the EotM supply drop to Borderlands, a better solution is to add a supply drop based on how outmatched your server is.

• Supply Defense – eliminate the need to upgrade camps for outmatched servers, give them a full upgrade when they capture their own camp. Consider giving RI an increasingly longer duration for the defending server on their own camp the more outmatched they are.

Outnumbered vs. Outmatched

You’ll notice I’ve used the term Outmatched rather than Outnumbered. To avoid servers gaming the system by pulling their team off a map to gain an Outnumbered buff, instead have the buff based on the overall score. The greater the difference in score, the stronger the Outmatched buff becomes for the losing servers. The Outmatched buff could possibly include the following:

• Increased RI duration on all objectives held by the Outmatched server.

• Greater defensive NPC presence, strength and health.

• Increase in supply infusions.

• Reduce or eliminate the gold cost to upgrade objectives.

Glicko rating for matchmaking

I’ve been watching the rating and have noticed some anomalies that need to be addressed. For instance, there’s no question in anyone’s mind that Maguuma does not belong in T2 in its current state, however Glicko has been artificially keeping them there much longer than they should be. In fact, as recently as 3 weeks ago they gained rating for losing a match after losing the previous 4 matches against the same 2 servers. I direct your attention to Week 37.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/history/38

This is not the first time I’ve seen something like this, there’s been a number of these “Glicko Hell” moments which continue to exacerbate outmatched situations while increasing gaps or shelves in the ratings. I believe if this is addressed we would see better matches. Consider doing a complete reset of the rating system to match servers more appropriately.

Thanks again for lending us your ear, John. I look forward to some action on these topics.

Have you checked out the Glorious armors they added a couple weeks ago? Those are really sweet, I’m going for the Heavy set for my guardian.

You get them through the Glorious Reward Track in PvP.

Poor Dani. Did they at least give you a mini llama for being a good sport?

/hugs

Aguri.2896:

Wow. The outfits are looking better and better each time. Still, I really hope armor sets don’t get ignored even if outfits are super cool.

Have you checked out the Glorious armor sets they added a couple weeks ago? They are very cool, I finished the reward track for the Heavy Shoulders for my guardian today, love them to bits

Could be for an upcoming PvP tournament as well.

Korossive.7085:

I don’t see any advantage for the player in outfits. Its only easier for the developers, nothing more.

No transmutation charges needed by players, can swap freely between all outfits on all characters, a more cohesive look while leveling – plus they’re fun!

I love this new look, definitely getting this one

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/

There are no addons but overlays can be used, such as this one from Overwolf.

Iason Evan.3806:

Devata.6589:

Well I would not want guilds to be instanced so thats where ye go in a differend direction from the start.

Secondly I would see the ability to unlock building blocks for your hall (after unlock some basic hall) and then it’s not a problem if a bigger guild can get some more building block or can can them some faster. In the end I would see stuff being added during the game so in a way your guild-hall is never done. But I do not feel all guilds should have to be on a equal play-ground.

I hear ya. I want open world guild halls and housing too, but it just isn’t feasible in a game like GW2. LOTRO was an open world game that totally could have supported open world housing and guild halls and they used instanced neighborhoods where the kinship(guild)halls were and the player housing too. I could see this type of thing working so that it still had a degree of community. A neighborhood of guild halls would be really cool. The only way I could see open world guild halls is if they did away with the water areas and added a ton of land mass to each map and I just don’t see that happening.

If you don’t feel all guilds should be on equal playing ground then let’s do it by the age of guild then? How about since for guild missions, large guilds had a huge advantage over small guilds so for guild halls, small guilds should have an advantage? See how when it’s framed that way it makes no sense? Why are you treating an area of the game that promotes community as a reward but you see the clear advantage that large guilds have over small guilds?

I’m thinking open world guild halls may be not feasible due to the sheer number of guilds in this game. There’s close to 30k WvW guilds alone, and that’s just guilds that have claimed an objective.

Another thing to consider is how many players could enter a guild hall at any given time, some guilds are huge, hitting the max of 500 players.

If Chris could weigh in with some of the technical limitations on this that would be awesome

They officially say “around 300 employees” on their website.

http://www.arena.net/

http://www.arena.net/

Listing for Game Designer: Raid Content under the Careers section.

Steel Courage.1250:

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

When I built my Infinite Light I farmed coe all paths every day, as well as my usual dungeon tour. You won’t get them all, but you will get a decent number as drops. In the end you will have to buy most of them. I promoted cores to lodestones (not the best use of SP, I know, but turning SP into gold takes time and I don’t have that in as much supply, while I do have 1k+ SP). I’ve made Sunrise (100 lodestones), Infinite Light (250 lodestones) and most recently Azureflame (100 lodestones); working on Twilight for Eternity now, but after that it’s time to go full kitten and craft Mjolnir (350 lodestones…). There should be collections for lodestone weapons…

SP?

Skill Points. It’s how most lodestones are made.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charged_Lodestone#Recipes

2 Charged cores
1 Bottle of Elonian wine
1 Pile of Crystalline dust
1 Crystal (purchased with skill points)

Ty, Bensozia – I didn’t catch that

Great changes, thanks for listening to our feedback on this.

Question: Is Obsidian Sanctum included in the WvW restriction?

I would rather see the rating system adjusted to something that provides better matches than any kind of merge.

For instance, look at Maguuma right now. The problem isn’t they lost a bunch of guilds, the problem is they are still in T2 and have been there way, way longer than they should have been. It looks like this week will finally drop them to T3, yet the tournament will artificially keep them in gold league for another 2 weeks. Hopefully glicko doesn’t bork them over again before the tournament is over, last week their rating went up!!

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/history/209

I saw the same thing when I was on SoR – it took 18 straight weeks of losses before we finally fell out of T1 – that’s 4.5 months! Four and a half months of continual losses to drop 1 tier because the glicko rating system kept us there much longer than we should have been. Then it took another month to fall out of T2.

I implore you to address the rating system first – not every server needs or wants Blackgate numbers, we just want fair matches.

The prevalence of highest scoring teams being green this week is an anomaly which you can clearly see by looking at match histories.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/histories

It looks like colors were assigned by server rank, which is exacerbated this week since we have the widest variance of matches with the Swiss Style.

However, I do think that green wins more often in EotM due to some map imbalances and being green in WvW does have a small advantage with the bonus 400 supply every 4 hours. A big influx of supply can turn the tide in a borderlands map, if it was spread out over the 4 hour period it would be less impactful?

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

Actually its not in their game. Because every wow clone (which are actually better games in many aspects) would be as popular as wow.

So….no.

You call them WoW clones, so why bother playing them while knowing they are clones? Just play the original.
Where “WoW clones” may be better in a few aspect, WoW does better as a whole package. That’s why it remained popular in the first place.

So, yes!

You see, and thats why your claim is pretty much….not very applicable.

WoW was right product at the right place at the right time, not better or worse than the lot, nothing more noting less. Its not first product of that type and its not last. Stars align from time to time to allow that.

It’s ok if you don’t like WoW.
It did better than the competition because it was overall a better game than games before it and games after it (though obviously the game has now hit past its maturity). That’s how you make maintain a successful game.

In any case, I hope pdemo was enlightened by how some of us guessed the concurrency.

It did better than the other three or four big name MMOs out, but that doesn’t make it better. Back in the day, VHS recorders were inferior to beta recorders in almost every way…but VHS was used in more homes and eventually replaced beta. Popularity is no guarantee of quality. I’m sure more people eat at McDonalds than the fine steak house next door to it. Doesn’t mean anything.

If WoW launched at a time when there was 2 or 3 other MMOs, none of which were free to play, and it had an advertising budget (which most games really didn’t), that’s enough to explain its success. Now it might really have been better. That’s a possibility. But I don’t think anything is proved by its success except that it had good timing and good marketing. That’s enough to pretty much get anything to sell.

Word of mouth also affects a game’s success. WoW had a good reputation because players found it fun and overall a good quality game, because it was (still is?).
It’s ok if you don’t find it fun. Other players did, hence its success.

Last post on this topic because it is off-topic but there are as many people who hate WoW as there are who love it, including entire domains that had been set up by WoW haters. My niece, an MMO player called WoW the Evil empire.

But none of this really has anything to do with Guild Wars 2’s concurrency figures anyway. What we can deduce is that the high concurrency number given was from early in the games life and it’s certainly gone down from there, but regardless there are still lots of people playing and the game seems to be doing fine.

I think there’s a LOT more that hate WoW than love it, with over 93 million that quit playing it compared to only 6 million that do, if it were to launch today with its terribad graphics and antique systems it would fall flat on it’s face.

They can go in, they just need to manually walk through the portal.

They are disabling minis periodically if the map gets full since they are still live testing all the new changes to server architecture. It should clear up in a couple days or so

A question, Curtis. Is this going to require a maintenance for the Trading Post to switch all current orders and listings over to the new one?

Both the mini Monkey King pet and the Endless Monkey King tonic have a chance to drop off any of the bosses in Dry Top per the patch notes:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-12-2014/first#post4286545

Big thanks to the ArenaNet team for this, it’s a really great update to the game.

Argon.1563:

I can’t help but be worried about the big “BUY MOAR GOLD!” Button at the top. Im hoping its just a link to the Currency Converter though.

I see no Buy More Gold button anywhere. There is a Get More Gold which is what happens when you sell your items on the Trading Post.

Probably the biggest changes in the last 9 months were from the April Feature Pack:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/April_2014_Feature_Pack

Also all content is permanent now, all you have to do to unlock each chapter of Living Story is login while that chapter is active then you can play it and replay it whenever you like.

TC is riding high in T1 atm, they came in 2nd place in Gold League last Tournament.

jdawgie.1835:

kta.6502:

I have followed the Guild Wars franchise since 2006. With this new Sept Feature pack revelation, the game is not looking good. They’re “leaving money on the table” when it comes to us vets. There is very little in the Sept Feature Pack for long-time players. We shall see how GW2 fares against its giant American and Japanese competitors in the next few months. The US competition has a major expansion coming out this November. After what I’ve seen in the expansion’s trailer, Blizzard is looking to grab GW2 fans to their side.

We shall see how this all pans out. I love this game very much, and I don’t want to see it fail. Let’s hope there is something really good in future updates!

Blizzard taking me from Anet as a supporter and fan. NEVER gonna happen. Truth be told I agree with the thread creator to a degree. However Blizzard is famous for giving not a single thought about there vets. Blizz wud rather have 12 year olds running around instead of there B.C. vets.

And like you said we love this game so rest easy bro

I remember 2 years ago when Blizzard was all over this forum predicting they were going to kill GW2 with MoP but that plan kinda backfired in their face and they lost 3.5 million players. Looks like they are setting up to lose another 3.5 million with their next expac fail.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Azrael.4960:

Trouble is that the noise is being made by a tiny minority of players who inhabit the forums. The vast majority who play don’t even come where and only hear about changes when they log in and then check wiki

Do you have any evidence that only a small minority visit the forum?

Yes, Colin mentioned it 2 days ago when he was discussing the revamps for new players.

“We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit..”

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35771

Happy Birthday!

Thank you for making such a great game that’s brought me so much happiness

https://twitter.com/hashtag/welovegamedevs

Im Mudbone.1437:

Karizee.8076:

Most of that you can turn off yourself by adjusting the settings. I know there’s some that think turn everything up cuz moar is better!!! but the truth is if you turn up all the effects you will SEE all the effects. You can eliminate most of that by adjusting these settings.

1. Post processing – Turn it off. Seriously, why do you want to add more effects to that scene?
2. Shaders – Set shaders no higher than Medium. Higher shader settings only enhances lighting effects.
3. Shadows – Play around with the Shadow settings, they can enhance the difference in light effects.

Here is the difference I get between having those 3 items turned down or turned up.

The left pic is awesome the right pic is all blurry.

Correct. The left pic has those 3 settings turned down, removing most of the unwanted particle effects.

Also, I know some players use Sweet FX….. Unless you have found the 1% of presets that actually tone down effects rather than enhance them I would turn that off. It’s great for screenshots but it’s cancer for combat.

Most of that you can turn off yourself by adjusting the settings. I know there’s some that think turn everything up cuz moar is better!!! but the truth is if you turn up all the effects you will SEE all the effects. You can eliminate most of that by adjusting these settings.

1. Post processing – Turn it off. Seriously, why do you want to add more effects to that scene?
2. Shaders – Set shaders no higher than Medium. Higher shader settings only enhances lighting effects.
3. Shadows – Play around with the Shadow settings, they can enhance the difference in light effects.

Here is the difference I get between having those 3 items turned down or turned up.

Dusty Moon.4382:

People really want this game to tank? I thought they would want the game to do well so they can get what they want in the game.

Some people do. The over 300+ milion dollars this game has earned came straight out of some other MMO’s pocket. They post here a lot

Wrong. They are hiring.

http://www.arena.net/

Expansions are bad. Even Blizzard thinks so.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/08/19/blizzards-chilton-expansions-are-barriers-to-people-coming-bac/

Content is good however. Looking forward to how the big projects will roll out

I see a lot of guilds focusing on preparing for the tournament, whether it’s running EotM for wxp and badges, to doing some sPvP for practice, to crafting and gold making, to playing around with different masteries in anticipation of the world ability points reset.

It’s going to be a very intense Tournament since it’s so much shorter than the last one. Very much looking forward to it!

I think undoing progress every month is a terrible idea. If you want to do the hearts again, simply start a new character.

Just use the block function. You can add any notes to it you like with the Set Nickname function.

Being able to hang around and explore in a dungeon after it’s completed will also be a nice side effect to this change. Before I always felt rushed to jump over and collect the chest before the group disbanded – really liking this! TY ArenaNet

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Borderlands_Bloodlust

This should keep you busy while you’re downloading – welcome!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/wiki/newplayers

Great changes, thank you ArenaNet!

Was updated this morning.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Dishonor-Disabled

Evan Lesh.3295:

We have disabled dishonor for the time being. Upon logging in, your dishonor will be cleared, and no new dishonor stacks will be applied.

Once we are sure any players who received false dishonor have logged in or waited 3 days, we will re-enable the feature.

If you craft the new vine backpiece it gives you a pet-like item called Mawdrey II (a play on words, Mordremoth + Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors) that you can feed your excess Bloodstone dust to. Will eat up to 200 dusts per day and gives you a gift for every 50 which can be anything from rares and t6 to junk.

Dulfy has a guide on how to make:
http://dulfy.net/2014/08/13/gw2-mawdrey-ascended-backpiece-and-pet-crafting-guide/

Early access was on the 25th and official launch was on the 28th. We won’t know what the presents will be until they start sending them out on our character’s birthdays.

Just to let you know, in addition to guesting, partying, friending and joining a TC guild to ensure you always get on a TC megaserver shard, if you do create an account on another server and decide to transfer later that you can do it with gold.

My guildies got together and each chipped in a couple gold to help some friends xfer to our server, it works really well

Well, there are two points to address here.

First, map completing in WvW. I highly recommend joining a guild rather than trying to solo WvW. There are many guilds that offer map completion event nights and safety in numbers is a good motto to keep in mind until you are comfortable holding your own on those maps.

Second point is learning the different class abilities. This player you were going against, do you know what class you were fighting? There are abilities that may look like a dodge (called evades) and a player could also be using food buffs or traits that increase endurance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endurance

Again it takes time to learn how to counter the different classes, safety in numbers until you learn