Guild Wars 2

Right – I wouldn’t expect either that we’re right at Mordy’s throat from the get-go. But I expect there will be further LW episodes released periodically – just like there were in base game – and I’d expect they will eventually lead into confrontation. That just wouldn’t be included right in the release. Could take a few months, or a couple of years.

That’s actually one problem with the amount of content in HoT. We’re comparing it to base game, and saying ‘why so little’. But the base game kept expanding during it’s three years or so. It’s hard to say how much (or how little) extra will be added after HoT release, before the next expansion, and that makes comparison difficult.

skowcia.8257:

My problem is lower number of utility skills compared to old classes. Why on the earth rev has olny 12 utility skills and 15 with elite spec when old classes got 20+4 from elite? That makes absolutely 0 sense. On top of that basically 0 stunbreakers..

Racial skills are not something i care about tho.

I guess that’s basically the same thing, really – e.g. “Why does each legend only have 1 + 3 + 1 skills available?”. I’d like each legend to have a larger pool of skills available, from which they could pick a lineup. Simply making a couple more legends wouldn’t fix the problem of versatility – e.g. if you go into situation where you absolutely must have a stun break, or condi removal, or temporary invulnerability, or reflection, or evasion skill – or any number of other specific utilities… why does your entire skill lineup (for legend) have to be decided by that single requirement.

And, like I’ve pointed earlier.. it’s guaranteed that there will be some utility(s) that revenant is expected to bring to party. The ‘Jalis Road’ comes to mind as a possible one. For other classes it just means you’d need to swap one utility to provide it. Warrior banner. Guardian reflection. Mesmer portal. Whatever. For revenant it would mean you’re obliged to play a particular legend.. and thus select half of your entire skillset just to bring that one utility. Worst case there will be two ‘mandatory’ utilities from two separate legends.

Of course larger pool wouldn’t entirely fix this issue – you’d still have to pick a legend to satisfy the requirement.. but at least you’d have some flexibility within that legend.

skowcia.8257:

[&Bz9qAAA=]
[&B1RuAAA=]
[&BwNpAAA=]
[&B4ZsAAA=] <Glint.
[&B5l3AAA=] <i assume thats war utility skill, if its trait tho then rip revenant without any stunbreaks. Legit

Trololol. It also confirms olny 4 base legends. 12 utility skills hype. Btw http://imgur.com/a/8Bk6u

I don’t see that confirming anything except that we can’t yet say for sure how many legends there will be. Two of the links refer to – I presume – traits, that have different effects depending on – again I presume – what legend you have active, similar to elementalist attunements.

Two of the four legends listed don’t even have icons yet. That tells me – if nothing else – that legends are not fully implemented in current data yet. Further, we’re assuming there are at minimum Ventari, Shiro, Jalis, Mallyx and Glint.. and it’s safe bet that all of them – including elite – will have representation in those traits. So that also suggests to me that those traits are not yet finalized to include all legends. Of course it’s entirely possible there’s going to be 4+1 at launch – I’d even say it’s probable.

Either way I don’t see a problem with having 4+1 legends. The problem I see is the inability to pick your skills.

Now I know that most of the ‘random’ combinations of skills from other classes are not very useful. But if you think of the plain number of possibilities – I’ll take sylvari ranger as an example, since that’s what I play as a main.

Including racial skills, you have:
(I’ll assume 1 elite spec healing skill, 3 elite utility and 1 elite ‘elite’ skill)
5+1 healing skills
22+3 utility skills
6+1 elite skills
The number of all possible combinations is..
6 × 25 × 24 x 23 × 7 = 579,600 possible combinations.

For revenant the same number would be..
4+1 legends

5 × 4 = 20 possible combinations.

That, is my problem.

The interview I linked earlier said they wanted the opportunity to make skills synergize strongly. Like skowcia.8257 mentioned earlier, I can’t see how that prevents them from adding more options. They could easily create three skill sets for all legends, and work them out same way the traits are right now.

E.g. make two full synergized lineups of heal + 3xutility + elite, for each legend. Then make third full lineup of ‘individual’ skills that have some important utilities. Those skills could even be cross-legend, so they could include some utilities (like the mentioned condi handling or stun break) that might be situationally needed for any of the legends.

How these choices would be offered, is another question. They could be simply given same way all other classes get skills – a pool of skills where you can pick anything applicable to your bar (of course from different pool of skills per each legend). Or they could be given in slightly more limited scope, similar to how traits work – e.g. each utility slot of each legend would have 3 options you could pick from. Two of them would be planned for synergy (e.g. option 1 on each utility would synergy between eachother, option 2 would have different synergy with all option 2 skills, and option 3 would be more ‘general’ utility skill).

Personally I’d prefer just having a free choice of all available skills.

NoTrigger.8396:

in gw2 you can get good and avoid damage instead of tanking it. and you obviously didnt read the part where i said “tweak some numbers”.

mechanics make a good fight, a trinity doesnt. and the guy i was replying to was talking in another thread about tank and healers being useless even when the gear for these “roles” is in the game. just saying.

It’s not just a question of numbers, it’s the whole encounter design. Ultimately you could ‘tweak numbers’ to reduce all damage to one, or zero and say ‘see – my thief tanked it just fine’. But the ‘old school’ trinity raid system relies on tanks holding boss aggro 100% of time, and healers timing and doing their heals as planned. And DPS not grabbing the aggro. They grab aggro, just once, and it all goes to hell. In many cases there were specific spots in the boss room where you’d have to set up DPS, healers, and where you had to pull the boss. GW2 classes are not made to handle that kind of gameplay.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing in any way. Just that they are designed for different game, and wouldn’t work in an old school trinity setting. Consequently you can’t really bring the old trinity into GW2 without reworking the whole system.

I used to play back in original EQ, although I rarely went into raids. But enough to get the feel of how the system worked. It had it’s place, and usually required more skill and awareness than GW2 dungeons. I also played warrior in TERA. That class took a long time for me to learn well enough to actually work.. but after I got to that point, I really loved it.

GW2 is trying to do something similar to TERA, but somehow it doesn’t seem to work quite the same way. Maybe because for the most part ‘more dps’ trumps everything else.

Yes, apparently they have pretty much given up on dungeons, but I’d say the same isn’t quite true for fractals. More like fractals are taking the place that dungeons originally were meant to have.

I also hope they’ll eventually bring back the SAB. I really had a blast with it. It should be a permanent ‘activity’ option in the game. It’s not something you’d do all the time, but would be great to have that option when you felt like it.

Healix.5819:

Pre-purchasing will be available until launch. From 3rd party retailers, pre-purchasing will be available as long as they have boxes remaining, assuming ArenaNet still accepts them as pre-purchase codes.

Launch likely won’t be for another 2 months at the earliest, 3-5 more likely.

I wouldn’t count on that though.

For our long-standing fans and loyal players, we would like to say thank you and show our appreciation. For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account. The process of delivering your additional character slot will take us some time, but rest assured we will get it to you as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about the specific timing soon.

The wording is pretty specific about needing to actually register the game before launch date.

I was a little off with my earlier post, however.

For all players who purchased the Guild Wars 2 core game from our website and registered it between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 in anticipation of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we will automatically refund what you paid for the core game should you decide to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns from our website or in-game store any time through July 31, 2015. If you take advantage of this refund and pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, all of your current account progress will be kept intact. We’ll provide further details on when refunds will be processed in the next couple weeks as we set up this process.

So the whole refund deal for people who bought between Jan and Jun, is tied to July 31 (although it still has nothing to do with release date). Technically I see one slight loophole here. If you bought from web store between Jan-Jun, you get automatically refunded if you pre-purchase HoT from web store before July 31. However, this doesn’t mention that you’d actually have to apply the code to your existing account.

So technically you could prepurchase HoT from web store, and get refunded for your original purchase – but still keep that account active, and instead use the HoT code standalone to get a second account (fully upgraded to HoT). Of course you would then have to ‘start over’ on that account, while your old ‘main account’ wouldn’t have access to HoT.

To further complicate matters..

If you purchased the core game from a third party, we are unable to provide a refund. However, if you registered the core game between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 and upgrade it by prepurchasing any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account.

If your Jan-Jun purchase was from third party, the character slot bonus is again tied to launch date, instead of the Jul 31 date. My guess is this is just to simplify the process – since this way they can simply lump anyone who bought from third party prior to Jun 16 together with ‘veterans’, and offer them the same extra slot deal.

Only standard edition is available as retail box, and basically consists of empty dvd case with a key that you apply to your account. There are no plans to offer ‘higher tier’ boxes (deluxe, ultimate). I’d still wait it out until close to release date, to see if more options open up – you don’t really lose anything by doing that, as long as you make the purchase before actual release day.

If you buy the (empty) box, you can update to deluxe through in-game store, but the only way to get the ‘ultimate’ is to buy the digital ‘ultimate’ directly.

Also make sure if you buy from retailer, you get pre-purchase and not the pre-order, if you want the extra character slot and beta access.

From the thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HOT-have-Hard-Copy/

Gaile Gray.6029:

The standard edition will be available in a “boxed copy” version from some authorized retailers. Some of those retailers are engaged in the pre-purchase program. Others are offering a pre-order, which is not the same thing and will not gain the benefits of the actual pre-purchase.

Hope this helps!

All elite specs are supposed to alter/enhance the basic class mechanic, yes. Virtues for guardian, shatters for mesmer, shroud for necromancer. The new traits, skills and weapons are supposed to work together with that altered mechanic/playstyle.

Of course you are not absolutely forced to do anything. I’m looking at this more from the design perspective. The elite weapon is meant to work in combination with elite traitline. And elite traitline itself is designed to be the ‘next step’ after level 80. For classes with two weapon sets it’s less limiting. For those with one (engi, ele, rev), if they want to use the weapon that’s designed to work with the elite spec (and it’s associated playstyle) they have to give their only weapon set to it.

For revenant that’s designed to work with premade skillsets, it limits their already limited options even further. I’m not going to argue whether invocation is good or bad. I’m again looking at it from design side: supposedly each legend is going to support a different playstyle (tank, support, dps, condi etc). Traitlines likewise are supposed to cator for different playstyles, or ‘roles’.

While it’s true that nothing absolutely forces you to pick – say – support traitline with support legend, it’s still the kind of direction the mechanics of the class itself push towards. Ironically, it’s true that if the ‘generic’ traitline (invocation) really is bad, it essentially may gives ‘more’ choices, because then the actual ‘second choice’ might not be quite so clear.

Knighthonor.4061:

skowcia.8257:

Knighthonor.4061:

skowcia.8257:

Glint elite skill is a ranged burst attack, so here that. It might have other ranged abilities as well. Problem with hammer is that you cant kite with this weapon at all unless Shiro will gain ground targeted shadowstep like shortbow 5 on a thief. But from the sound of rev and their mobility in one of the interviews most likely shadowstep will be target based as hes supposed to be slow outside of combat like guard.

Meanwhile i pray for +25% move speed in power line or..lets say i will have to speak to someone

But going off the rumor theorycrafting, Glint Elite Spec will be centered around SHIELD as its weapon of choice instead of Hammer which is their only range weapon so far.

I believe Glint may be ranged or hybrid at least. You can say the same about Jalis after all. Jalis is centered around hammer as it weapon choice and yet his utilities are melee oriented. What stop them from creating Glint as a ranged legend to fill up the weakness of revenant – lack of ranged attacks?

Also dont forget shield abilities
http://i.imgur.com/wP1UXvH.jpg
Shield 4 – 900 range.

Shield is a one hander weapon. plus we dont have weapon swap, so that means no Shield/Hammer combo like a Warrior/Guardian.
But I see your point. Glint could have ranged skills. Seem like Glint is built around Signets right now.

Lets hope Anet does something good there. Because like I said before

Hammer and Jaris Dwarf Legend connection is STUPID, and only done from a lore perspective, which is very different from gameplay.

Range Weapon needs a Range Legend combo, not Dwarf melee legend combo.

That to me show that Revy’s lead developers not thinking deeply about all these areas of the Revenant.

They very well might not have revealed all the weapons for revenant yet, so there’s that. It’s possible that revenant’s elite will be more integrated into the class than the rest, because it was designed together with the class itself – unlike other elites that came about years after the classes themself. For other classes, there was plenty of time to ‘playtest’ them, see how they handle, and identify what they miss. For revenant, the elite is rolled into the base design.

They haven’t announced release day yet, so no one knows. However there are supposed to be more than one beta weekend, and also anet is supposed to reveal the rest of elite specializations before launch – as well as apparently talk about some major content regarding ‘more challenging content’. In short, there’s a lot of things that should still be revealed and done before launch, so it would be safe to say that there are at least several weeks left.

Donari.5237:

At a guess you have until the end of July, based on the cutoff for … um. Refunds? Loyalty slots? … from the Community blog.

That doesn’t really have anything to do with release date or prepurchase though. It’s a common mistake on HoT forums that people mix up the pre-purchase, and the actual game refund without HoT purchase. It’s actually a nice special offer they didn’t even need to make – they are basically saying if you bought the game any time after late January from their website, you can play it free for free until after summer (up to half a year in some cases), then return it and say ‘thanks for the ride’ – and get full refund of purchase price.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

If you purchased the core Guild Wars 2 game from our website and registered it between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015, and you no longer want to play Guild Wars 2, we will refund your core game purchase price and close your account provided you make the request by July 31, 2015. Please contact our Customer Support team to make this request.

The July 31 is not related to release of HoT. They simply wanted to make a finite deadline for people who bought the game, yet want to get their money back without investing anything further.

Those people are currently playing the game ‘for free’, so it’s reasonable to say that if they decided they don’t want to buy the game, or play it after all – they should contact anet and tell them to close the account – rather than continuing to play the game until the release day of HoT which is yet to be determined. Their decision has nothing to do with pre-purchase, or release date of HoT – and thus neither should their ‘deadline’.

The single weapon set actually brings in another problem. Elite spec is apparently supposed to be one thing that represents the character’s advancement ‘beyond level 80’. I’d imagine in most cases you’d want to use it. This spec comes with it’s own weapon (regardless of if it’s a shield or something else). Thus using elite spec would lock you into one specific trait line, one specific weapon (although you could still pick your other weapon if elite weapon isn’t 2-h weapon) and in case of revenant, one specific skillset.

Assuming again that you’d in most cases want to pick second traitling based on your other legend, and invocation as third traitline, your actual choices (if you want to take advantage of elite spec) would be limited to:

• 1 legend (with 5 skills, and which also defines the one remaining traitline)
• 1 weapon (assuming the elite weapon is 1-h weapon, like shield)

And of course the assignment of the 3×3 traits themself. However given the limited scope of other options, I think in most cases the traits won’t offer much true variety – because given the other options pretty much set in stone, the trait that best plays together with them is often fairly obvious one. Even with classes that actually can assign their skills freely, I find people now make pretty similar selections for their traits.

Ricky.4706:

I just discovered this review that made the expansion a little more interesting, and seems to give more insight than what I’ve seen elsewhere -

https://youtu.be/GFgCkK_ikJg

That’s pretty good summary video of ’what’s known so far’. Thanks for the link.

I decided farming for beta access wouldn’t be worth the trouble, and I’m not regretting it. However I wouldn’t see harm in letting those who happened to find the portal, to take part in one weekend beta. Probably not in the first one, but on some later one before the actual release day – it would also be a chance to see how the areas handle the increasing load.
Nothing lost, but something gained.

NoTrigger.8396:

Mordalus.8146:

The fact that nobody in a dungeon party has a designated role, other than trying not to go down, makes for difficult dungeon design.

thats just wrong. if you still think gw2 needs roles then you dont understand anything about the game.
in gw2 everyone contributes to everything instead of having a dedicated healer and tank. you dont need “roles”. the combat system could be much more complex and have more depth than any trinity combat system, if anet designed really hard pve content.

you could add any raid or dungeon boss from any other MMO to gw2, tweak some numbers and it would work. with the difference that people wouldnt be able to slack.

The argument is a bit moot, but I’ll point out anyway – no, it wouldn’t work at all.. and neither does it need to, because GW2 is not ‘every other MMO’. Without trinity, any raid boss that’s designed to smack the tank so hard that every hit brings even the super buffed tank down to 10% of their life – requiring healers to time and cycle a constant stream of full heals.. would wipe out a GW2 party, one character per hit – because there is no class in GW2 so dedicated to surviving that kind of beating.

Similarly an unavoidable AoE that GW2 party might survive, could likely wipe the glass cannons or healers of that same raid in another game. That’s neither a fault of GW2, nor is it fault of the other game – it doesn’t by itself make either of them better or worse. It’s simply an entirely different design philosophy.

‘Roles’ in dungeon party don’t have to equal ‘trinity’. There’s ‘roles’ in Tequatl fight for example – turret users, turret defenders, melee DPS, ranged DPS. There’s more complex mechanics and roles in Triple Trouble fight. Roles can simply mean that there are certain tasks that need to be accomplished simultaneously, and different members of party are assigned for those tasks.. and need to work together in a coordinated manner to clear the obstacle.

If things are reduced to ‘stack, spam 1, hit dodge when red circle appears’, there’s no real roles or strategy. And the only real challenge is to click the ‘other button’ at correct time.

Ayrilana.1396:

Kitsune.1902:

Ayrilana.1396:

Yeah. And as in one of the examples that I gave, those who only buy one item in a buy 2 get 2 free deal are getting a worse deal that those that take up the offer. That’s kind of how it works. I have also brought up when they sold the game for $10 kne weekend or sold the deluxe upgrade for half price. All vet players who bought those at full price got the worst deal.

I do have a question for you though. If the prices for all three packages were reduced by $20, would you have any issue at all?

However this has absolutely nothing to do with voluntarily passing a ‘buy 2 get 2 free’. This is ‘buy 1 get 1 free’, except that the offer doesn’t apply to those who have an existing account. And that is the issue here. Furthermore the ‘free’ portion is distinctly targeted to one subgroup of the target audience, and meanwhile would have little value to the rest even if it was offered (e.g. separate key for core game).

Doesn’t really matter how you want to twist it, the fact is the deal is significantly better for new players, than it is for existing players. And it’s plain and obvious that it’s deliberately made to be so. That’s where the feelings of unfairness come from.

I’d read my posts again. Those were examples of similar to this one and they don’t have to be exact to apply here. The point was to show that the price of the item remained the same and that the company was not transferring their “losses” to the customer. The same goes for my other examples. This all came about because of people who don’t understand how these things work and why a company would do something like this and appear to take a “loss” without passing it on to the customer.

It doesn’t matter whether a certain segment of the player base was targeted. This isn’t the first time that companies have targeted new accounts and certainly won’t be the last. There’s no reason that every type of promotion they do must also benefit existing accounts in some way. I’m sorry that you feel that this is unfair but not everything has to revolve around existing players.

I’m not about to read every post on this by now gigantic thread, much less to memorize every one of them. I feel the argument stands sufficiently against the post I quoted, and it’s honestly not very important anyway. If $50 were just plain value of the expansion, then it seems a significant portion of potential customers is feeling it’s overpriced.. and mostly just the people who perceive it as the price of the combined expansion + original game are fairly satisfied with it.

Incidentally, if I counted the value of base game to $20 where it seems to be at present – outside significant sale prior to it being phased out of selection – then the remaining $30 would coincidentally be pretty close to what I personally expected from HoT price tag. What comes to the pre-purchase bonus character slot, it’s temporary offer that was basically absolute minimum necessary to avoid a disaster. It doesn’t enter the equitation if you want to purchase the expansion in normal way after it’s official release – at which point you can expect more in-depth reviews. If it was really meant as unconditional ‘veteran bonus’, it wouldn’t be limited to pre-launch time – just as the core + HoT deal isn’t.

You can also look at it from another perspective – there’s no way the expansion could have been priced at $50 unless it was bundled into base game. The cost for new players would have become prohibitive at that point. Basically I believe that game + expansion had to be $50 or less, and so bundling them up and leaving the expansion-only option away was the only way to draw the full $50 out of players with existing account. For the new players the price would have not gone past that even if they were sold separately – it would simply have meant lowering the price of the expansion.

And this, in my opinion leads to the same conclusion, the price for existing accounts is padded due to the bundled deal – or rather, it’s the only model that makes it possible in the first place.

YuhGnomeSain.2983:

So I had purchased the a 2nd account in anticipation of HoT. Will I need two copies of HoT to get the content on my 2nd account? I don’t really want to refund it because I had made some progress on two toons already.

What exactly happens, depends on where you bought the account, and when.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

For all players who purchased the Guild Wars 2 core game from our website and registered it between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 in anticipation of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we will automatically refund what you paid for the core game should you decide to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns from our website or in-game store any time through July 31, 2015. If you take advantage of this refund and pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, all of your current account progress will be kept intact.

also:

If you purchased the core game from a third party, we are unable to provide a refund. However, if you registered the core game between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 and upgrade it by prepurchasing any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account.

So – yes, you need two copies of HoT if you want HoT on two accounts. However, assuming you bought the second account between Jan 23 and Jun 16 this year, and you prepurchase HoT expansion for it, you will either get automatically your money back from the GW2 purchase (if you bought it from GW2 website) OR you get free character slot (if you bought it from third party retailer). Also notice that if you bought your GW2 from the web site, you must buy HoT from website or in-game store also, to get the automatic refund.

If you purchase HoT from third party retailer, make sure it’s pre-purchase and not pre-order. There’s difference between those two. Pre-order will not give you any bonuses or refunds.

If you bought the account before Jan 23 this year, it counts as veteran account, and you get character slot if you pre-purchase, regardless of where you bought GW2 or HoT. If you bought the account after Jun 16, there’s no bonuses.

Hopefully this helps.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Why-only-4-baseline-Legends-and-not-5/

IP: 206.127.159.184

27-JUN-2015; 21:30 UTC
28-JUN-2015; 05:00 UTC – map instance is gone, and *.155 is the active instance

At this point it’s starting to look the way the event gets stuck is becoming so consistent I could almost use the same picture over. On the other hand, perhaps that might make it easier to look for solutions?

Knighthonor.4061:

I assume they will make the Revenant, more trait heavy vs skill heavy in terms of customization. Because if not, it will be an disaster in the long run.

I can’t see how that would work, really. If anything my feel is it’s less customizable through traits than some other classes, if (like I’ve understood) the four traitlines are somewhat tied to the four legends. It would funnel people to taking the two specific traitlines that match the two legends they pick (regardless of if one of the two was elite or not), and then use the … what was it, invocation? traitline as the third one. That would mean little choice regarding the traitlines themself, and since you can’t have control over skills, you don’t seek for various combinations of trait & skill, but simply which options out of your 3×3 picks best fit the fixed skills you are given.

But, it’s possible I’m wrong with this assumption.

The problem is deeper than just dungeons, in my opinion. The problem is the whole zerg > all, stack > all. For the most part the best strategy is to stack and spam 1 to win.. and that’s not really something I’d call ‘strategy’. Original EQ had a lot more need for planning and strategy, and that’s .. what, about 15 years back?

I guess what would be needed is ‘hard mode dungeons’, but they’d need a much deeper redesign than just scaling the mobs. Something that would actually require party to take various roles during the encounters. And I don’t mean ‘bring back the trinity’. I mean roles regarding the fight itself. Something like what you need to properly run the triple trouble, just in smaller scale.

Not all the dungeons are like that, mind you. There are ones where you actually need some skill, knowledge and coordination. But more of that would be welcome. And a bit more scaling of the reward versus effort, so that running the more demanding dungeons would feel more worthwhile.

Correction: we play as revenant long BEFORE he leaves the mists, since revenant starts from the very beginning – and there’s the whole original personal story plus season 2 that even leads to the ‘birth of the class’. If I had to point at one single mistake, it would be to call him a ‘revenant’ at all, instead of something entirely different. The intention was probably to present a cool and compelling background to the class, but it really shoots the storyline in the head.

After watching some beta footage about revenant playing the beginning of HoT story arc

Just assume the player class ‘revenant’ was always there. That’s really the only way to look at it if you want to keep a sense of continuum.

This is a bit old since it’s from Pre-PAX, if anyone has some more recent comments from anet about it, feel free to point at them:
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=35785&storypage=3

Our final question for Peters involved the Revenant’s heal, utility and elite skills. Channeling legends will change these skills, but each legend in the demo only had the specific five skills with no additional skill options. Peters said that for now this is how it works, but that he can’t rule anything out. He explained that it depends on playing it more and getting a feel for the class now that they have a couple of legends in a really good place. When you start to play more, you can get a sense of whether it needs more customization there or not. Peters said that it is their responsibility now to really dive in and play it to see if enough customization is there or not, and to address it either way.

Peters commented that there is a lot of merit to both; having no customization has allowed them to create a lot of synergy between the skills, something that they wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. So if they do go in and change it, they need to be careful as Peters said that the synergy currently feels really good. On the other hand, having options helps make you feel more in control of your character and its customization. This is another area where they will be looking at player feedback to help determine which course of action they take.

I’m one of those people who wants to ‘feel more in control of your character’, and so if it stays like this, it’ll simply kill the class for me. But, that’s just me. I’ve always liked all kinds of customizing options, and fiddling with them to fine-tune the ‘experience’.

Since this is really the ‘make it or break it’ for me, would be great if anyone can link into more recent official word about this – if such exists.

Diovid.9506:

The ‘fifth’ traitline is not unknown (as I said above).

Mallyx = Corruption
Jalis = Retribution
Ventari = Salvation
Shiro = the unrevealed traitline
The energy/legend swapping line = Invocation

We already know that Revenants are able to move around their utility skills. In fact I think remember Anet saying Revenants can use racial skills but don’t quote me on that.

About fifth trait line – that’s good then, I had missed it – thanks for pointing it out. What comes to skills, I didn’t really mean ‘moving the three existing skills around the bar’, but rather actually having a larger pool of skills that you can swap into the bar instead of the ‘standard’ skills – e.g. the way other classes do it. Racial skills would create at least a bit of variety, but not enough in my opinion, and they aren’t really part of the class itself.

If it’s pre-purchase and not pre-order, and you had your GW2 account registered long enough (before January 23), then yes, you get the pre-purchase vet bonus slot.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

For our long-standing fans and loyal players, we would like to say thank you and show our appreciation. For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account. The process of delivering your additional character slot will take us some time, but rest assured we will get it to you as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about the specific timing soon.

Also:

Gaile Gray.6029:

The standard edition will be available in a “boxed copy” version from some authorized retailers. Some of those retailers are engaged in the pre-purchase program. Others are offering a pre-order, which is not the same thing and will not gain the benefits of the actual pre-purchase.

Hope this helps!

Sarie.1630:

Am I missing something?

Do we actually know that Glint will be an Elite Spec? I didn’t think so, I rather assumed that Ventari, Jalis, Mallyx, Shiro and Glint would represent the 5 core specialisation lines of the Revenant. Isn’t it conceivable that a sixth legend will be brought to the table when they finally get on with announcing the elite specialisations?

Unlikely. It would make sense to build it similar to elementalist, where there are four elements and four traitlines which each represent an element, plus fifth traitline basically representing the class mechanic and general utility. And then of course the sixth for elite.

Ventari, Jalis, Mallyx and Shiro would be similar to elementalist’s elements, and could each be more or less tied to a traitline, with fifth as of yet unknown traitline for representing energy management and general utility.. and the elite would be Glint in that case. If you consider the figures represented in legends – Ventari, Jalis, Mallyx and Shiro – all certainly important figures. But Glint is on class of it’s own when compared to the other four, and would be very good representative for elite legend.

The ‘easy way’ would then be to pick two legends, use their traitlines plus the ‘energy management’ traitline, and pick a weapon set that fits best for whatever legend you expect to get the most use out of.

Getefix.9150:

will revenants be able to use racial skills?

That’s surprisingly good question. The answer should be trivial, but at the moment isn’t. I really believe revenants will be able to swap their skills, even if the set per legend would be more limited than the pool of all skills of other professions. And in that case it would be natural that they could use racial skills. On the other hand the more common view seems to be that their skills are locked in place based on the legends – so.. yeah, that would count out the racial skills. That’s pretty interesting point.

Ayrilana.1396:

Yeah. And as in one of the examples that I gave, those who only buy one item in a buy 2 get 2 free deal are getting a worse deal that those that take up the offer. That’s kind of how it works. I have also brought up when they sold the game for $10 kne weekend or sold the deluxe upgrade for half price. All vet players who bought those at full price got the worst deal.

I do have a question for you though. If the prices for all three packages were reduced by $20, would you have any issue at all?

However this has absolutely nothing to do with voluntarily passing a ‘buy 2 get 2 free’. This is ‘buy 1 get 1 free’, except that the offer doesn’t apply to those who have an existing account. And that is the issue here. Furthermore the ‘free’ portion is distinctly targeted to one subgroup of the target audience, and meanwhile would have little value to the rest even if it was offered (e.g. separate key for core game).

Doesn’t really matter how you want to twist it, the fact is the deal is significantly better for new players, than it is for existing players. And it’s plain and obvious that it’s deliberately made to be so. That’s where the feelings of unfairness come from.

There are useful ways in which you can utilize two accounts. The most obvious would be to fill up characters on ‘secondary’ account with 20 slot bags and use them plus the bank as extra storage. Create a personal guild, and join both accounts on that guild (since you can join up to 4 guilds anyway). With some investment you can create a guild bank over time, and use that to shuffle items between the ‘storage account’ and the ‘real’ one. Park unused characters to some useful mining spot to gather resources daily, and dump them into bank.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Kitsune.1902:

Far as I can think offhand, all classes have a traitline that’s connected to their ‘unique class mechanic’.

Except for the Revenant, if you look at it a certain way.

I actually predict that the Revenant may end up particularly underpowered because of one simple fact. Every other profession has a unique attribute that they have now been given half of as a baseline and had the other half of rolled into already decent minor traits. The Revenant doesn’t have that. No energy pool bonuses, energy regen bonuses, invoke cooldown reduction or any other such bonuses for equipping the Invocation line. And then it’s also pretty silly that the second Invocation minor does nothing but make the first minor half decent (sort of like the Ranger Marksmanship minors).

I find it extremely unlikely that they’d make a profession with one less traitline than the rest. That’s such an integral part of the game. I’d find it much more likely that they are still in process of finalizing the class mechanics, and a traitline that affects the base mechanic itself would have to come last – because you have to balance it against every other aspect of the class.

Similar argument could be made at the standard set of skills per legend – the way the legends swap the utility set of skills in the bar is a new concept. It might use the baseline of all the ‘morph’ items, but it only affects utility skills, and in the videos earlier it had the small arrow things for skill selection, so it’s not exactly same. It’s not impossible for it to be another aspect of class that’s unfinished – though I wouldn’t exactly count on that.

Far as I can think offhand, all classes have a traitline that’s connected to their ‘unique class mechanic’. Well they did show revenant in that early video that still had the old trait system – and at that point there were only three traitlines. They said at that point there will be more weapons and traits – and that it’s just the first look at the class. In that sense, like I said before, there’s no reason to assume the class is fully complete even now. It’s a ‘work in progress’ until it’s released.

Also, what comes to elementalist, that class has several skills that work somewhat differently depending on what attunement you are in.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Invention comes from limitations. Whereas, with two weapon sets, the player would generally pick the two weapons that complement their respective legends, the one-set limitation means that one’s choice of weapon is important. Your playstyle is more than just the one legend and the one weapon. The thing about the Revenant, more than any other class, is forming a cohesive style of varying goals and perhaps even clashing ideals. The weapon is effectively the part that holds your character together, defines you, and becomes a choice to either emphasize a particular legend’s style or compromise between them.

I for one approve of this. It will make the Revenant more interesting in the long run.

This I can’t agree with at all. No matter how you dress it up, having two legends and only one weapon (set) means that one set will have to be used with both legends. You can’t pick and choose your weapon skills, and current assumption is neither can you the skills of the legends. There are too few possible combinations to get ‘inventive’.

The only result I can see is, you either pick your weapon to use with one legend, and favor that one – and pick the other legend to be the least bad option.. or you pick two legends you want to use, and try to find the weapon set that’s least bad for the worst of the legends to match. Or you pick the weapon you want to use, and the two legends that best match it.

In any of the cases, you’ll have to compromise – sometimes heavily – with a system that already lacks in options (again, based on the current assumptions regarding how revenant works). If you want to get creative with class, having two weapon sets would in no way limit you from this. On the contrary, it would offer better opportunity for it. For example, you could make one legend + weapon a solid ‘all rounder’, and then get more situational or inventive with the other pair. Or you could create some 2×2 combination to mix and match in unusual way.

Though even then, if the skills are really ‘hard coded’ into the legends, it would just make the whole class crippled in the current game system.. so I honestly still fail to believe that’s the case. I’d rather think that much of the class is still unfinished, and/or they simply don’t want to give all the information of it out just yet.

The way it’s presented now, I simply can’t see it working. There’s often skills that you are simply expected to bring in many/most situations. Guardian with wall of reflection. Mesmer with portal. Warrior with banners. I’m positive that revenant will not be exception in this. The difference is that in case of revenant a single skill would define your legend – and under current assumptions your whole utility side of skills. That just.. wouldn’t work. Yes – you have two legends to pick, but that doesn’t make the situation much better.

The versatility of the class comes from being able to create your build. The revenant, as presented, is just a collection of pre-made builds. I suppose if it’s targeted for new players to be a ‘friendly introduction to otherwise too complex system’, then there’s a point to that kind of classs. But.. well. That’s not something I’d be expecting. Certainly it would go along with the whole trend of streamlining though.

Frankly, to me the new class is what I’m expecting the most from the expansion. Not to say that everything else is unimportant – just that it’s what brings the most to my table. IF it turned out to be a class I had no interest in playing, to me personally it would make the expansion itself uninteresting.

Markin.9167:

We deserve at least a main hand weapon! ^^

So far all the elite weapons – both shown and datamined – have been either two-hand (staff, hammer, greatsword, longbow) or off-hand only (shield), unless I’ve missed something.

Palindrome.8904:

As a main ele, I genuinely don’t care if we get warhorn. Many weapon implementations are not typical, so I see no reason to doom and gloom just based on weapon type. Just look at Mesmer GS and Revenant Hammer as a couple of examples. Warhorn could totally be a thematic choice and have nothing to do with current support mechanisms.

What if it ended up being a powerful PBAoE weapon?

PBAoE would sound thematically appropriate for ‘tempest’ and could very well be applied to warhorn. However elites apparently try to create new playstyles or support areas that the class is previously lacking – and elementalist isn’t exactly lacking in AoE DPS field. On the other hand I’m not really sure what field ele would be weakest on. There’s options for support, even heal, DPS, or you can build to be pretty durable. Well, I don’t play elementalist much, so it’s a bit difficult for me to judge.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

People are thinking too hard into the one legend = one weapon set ideal.

Let’s take Ventari as an example. It’s a support legend, right? Its complementary weapon is the Staff, right? Well, let’s not ignore that Mace/Axe packs significant cc (and could be used for a condi support build) while Hammer provides an additional projectile destroying field that moves with you. Both round out your support role in ways that the staff doesn’t quite cover and creates new builds.

Jalis is a well-rounded legend focused around durability and support, with some damage thrown in. Though he is designed to complement the hammer (and certainly does), the staff will, if anything, be even more effective with his design.

Mallyx, as a condition-based legend, is the only true outlier. You’re pretty much locked into Mace/Axe. He really needs a complementary legend and another complementary weapon or two. The shield will at least provide another off-hand option, but we’ll have to see how Glint and Shiro work with him.

I would actually look this from the other end. Revenant has only one weapon set available. So whichever weapon you pick, your two legends must be able to work together with those weapon skills. This would become even more pronounced if you have no choice regarding what skills come with each legend – in other words you can’t fine-tune the skill selection to work with your weapons.

In that kind of system, I can’t see why Revenant wouldn’t get two weapon sets to go with the two legends. Possibly so that the weapon and legend swaps would be tied together – e.g. when you swap a legend, your weapon will also automatically swap to the other slot.

Knighthonor.4061:

GummiBear.2756:

Knighthonor.4061:

Why do some of you assume Revenant is only getting 4 baseline legends instead of 5?

Each legend provides 3 utility skills.

3*4= 12 utility skills,
Vs
3*5= 15 utility skills.

Also elite spec could likely add an additional legend on top of the baseline legends.

Your point is what with those numbers? keep in mind each legend will have its own elite as well, where other classes currently have only 3 , the rev will thus have 4, not to mention you can use those utilities, elites and heals a LOT more often due to almost nonexistent cd, only limiter being the energy system, but still does allow for quite a lot of skill use compared to normal classes

Compared to what? Engineer also no weapon switch. They have kit elite that they can use multiple times.

Or elementalist with no weapon swap per se, but able to roll through 4 attunements and constantly spam weapon skills.

Well, if that’s the case it does sound rather… streamlined.

That would be a shame, because the whole class is very heavily rooted in GW1, and GW1 had huge variety of choice you could make.

Seeing as there hasn’t even been release date announced yet, I don’t think we can decisively assume that everything (as in all the legends) is already in the current client data. Also is there a particular reason to assume that there won’t be more than 3 utility skills per legend?

Any weapon can turn out good or bad as elite. Before chronomancer reveal, if someone had said mesmers get shield… well I wouldn’t have been very excited. But the way it was done, I think mesmer elite will be great.

So regardless of what elite weapon elementalists get, I’ll refrain from judging it good or bad until I see the tempest revealed.

So far chronomancer looks great, dragonhunter not so much. I believe DH can be effective, and guardians could use some more ranged options so technically it’s good. Just not something I’d personally be interested in. Then again I play ranger as a main, and use longbow a lot, so maybe I just want something different.

skowcia.8257:

Will be lame if all of them survive while a lot of pact members simply died.

They are plot-critical, they have determined buff

Would be very interesting to see thief with staff, and it could certainly fit the image of the class. Rangers however already get melee staff as druid unless I’m not mistaken and I’d be surprised to see two classes to get same elite weapon. Same would go with revenant though – so if shield for revenant is certain, then all of my speculation would be invalid (since I base it on assumption they want to give all classes a different elite weapon).

If you take two-handed and dedicated off-hand weapons only, that’s 10 weapons – for 9 classes. Of course it’s not impossible for some class to deviate from that, and either get a main-hand elite, or use one of the weapons that could go to both hands.

But assuming it’s 2-h and off-hand only, there’s just only torch, rifle, warhorn, short bow and focus left.

The possibilities would be:
Warrior – torch, short bow
Thief – torch, rifle, warhorn, focus
Elementalist – warhorn, short bow, rifle, torch
Revenant – short bow, focus, warhorn, rifle, toch

I don’t expect ranged elite for warrior, and out of the two the torch would feel like better match with their adrenaline mechanic, so that would leave torch.

For thief I don’t think focus would fit. That would leave rifle and warhorn. Rifle seems to fit better, and also avoids the hassle of dual-skills that single hand weapon would bring, so I expect them to get rifle.

That would leave warhorn and short bow for elementalist. Elementalists get four times the skills per weapon due swapping elements, so off-hand is more likely than dual-hand weapon (still giving them 8 new skills). Also they get only one weapon set, so 2-h weapon would mean they can only use the elite weapon skills when it’s equiped. I know same argument applies to engineers, but I think they really wanted to give engi the hammer, and they get the toolkits which gives them more weapon options regardless. And finally warhorn fits better than short bow to image of ‘tempest’.

For revenant this would leave short bow and focus. Between those it’s really a toss up. I said short bow earlier, but thinking about revenant class and their unique mechanic, focus might actually be more likely.. not to mention there’s already one heavy armor hybrid magic class with a bow elite, so second one might be redundant. Also, the same argument applies as with elementalists – 2-h elite weapon would mean when equiped they can only use those skills, since they have only one weapon set. So I’d have to actually change my guess on revenant to focus. So:

• warrior – torch
• thief – rifle
• elementalist – warhorn
• revenant – focus

But since this thread is about elementalist, my prediction would remain warhorn.

Could be the skin for new legendary warhorn precursor, or some higher phase on it’s way towards legendary weapon. Of course it could also be elementalist ‘tempest’ warhorn skin, yes.

We want to be clear about our business model for future expansions now that we are approaching our first paid expansion for Guild Wars 2. We believe that to keep the game dynamic and vibrant with a constantly growing community, it should be as easy as possible for new players to get into Guild Wars 2. For Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we didn’t want the core game’s price to be a factor in a new player’s decision to begin playing Guild Wars 2. In the future, if we release further Guild Wars 2 expansions, we plan to offer all of the prior expansions, the core game, and the latest expansion for one single purchase price.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

So no, the business model is to never sell expansions as ‘upgrades’, they will always include core game and every prior expansion in a bundle.

There’s no loss – it’s not like it’s ‘Guild Wars 3’. You’ll get some new maps to explore, a new character class (revenant) and some other stuff, but nothing you have right now will go away. It’s like any other major game update (like when silverwastes or dry top were added) except it’ll be larger, and this time you need to pay to get the new stuff added.

I think there’s several posts on this thread that try to categorize a large portion of people into much smaller subgroup. Over 25% of people can be categorized as ‘introvert’, up to almost half the people depending on where you draw the line. What OP would write about is – like mentioned in the post – a rather extreme case.

I’d count myself introverted without question, but not in quite so extreme magnitude. I liked the balance of GW1, where you could see other people in the hubs, but the explorable areas were always instanced. GW2 is for the most part soloable, which is fine with me. The more busy maps can get tiring, and I rarely do dungeon runs – although it can be fine every week or so. It’s not a question of ’can’t’, it’s ’don’t want to’ or ’don’t feel like’ – or ‘find it tiring’.

There’s a few times I’ve even put up the commander flag, f.ex. when ogre wars was stuck, and I needed to get people to stop defending bloodgorge.. and then walk through getting the event back in line. But afterwards I’d feel I’ve had my fill, and really just want to get the rest of the characters through that event quietly.

Anyway, the point is you can’t really group more than quarter of people into category, and easily exclude or include someone. If I had to define an introvert with a few words, it would be “a person to whom any social situations are tiring”. After being in any kind of social interaction for a time, they’ll need to be alone to rest, or ‘recharge’. How extreme that is, would depend on individual.

Could work as a ‘subtle’ commercial for the expansion, sure – seeing people glide all over LA. Wouldn’t mind it personally, it might add something to the atmosphere.

rapthorne.7345:

Draknar.5748:

Miriam.2506:

For 100 € lifetime upgrades and monthly 500 Gems. STO can do this for their customers, why didn’t get A-Net this also managed.

Pretty sure STO only did it because the game was flopping hard…like real hard.

this.

Cryptic offer their players perm subs for huge fees to bolster their short term profits. Were they in a better spot, they would simply never offer this, as in the long term, they lose out massively. Dealing with these offers means that the developers assume that the game’s life span is not going to be a long one.

No, not exactly. Yes, Cryptic was doing pretty bad, then PWI took over and things changed. Their business model is pay-to-win. You buy a single tier 6 ship and it costs you 3000 gems. You want full power out of that ship you buy a bundle of 3 and combine their consoles – for 6000 gems. You want to play all factions with the ship (rom, kling, fed), you pay 12,000 gems for the bundle. That’s ONE type of tier 6 ship.

Now if you want the real valuable stuff, it’s always in lockboxes. The overall consensus is it’s about 0,5% drop rate or less from lockboxes. You do the math. You’d commonly hear it referred to as ‘Lockbox Online’, or ‘Star Trek: The Casino’.

That’s the common Perfect World International model, and Cryptic was funneled into it after PWI took over.

I had LTS there back when it was still monthly sub game, before it fell. Still visit there for a while every year or so because I’ve accumulated a few thousand ‘free’ gems to blow away. But the money-grabbing in that game is from different planet. 500 gems there is nothing.

The equivalent for GW2 might be if they introduced a tier of armor and weapons beyond ascended/legendary, but it was only available from gem store. Weapons 6,000 gems each, armor sets for 12,000 gems per set – but they’d introduce a set with slightly better innate bonuses every few months.

Rynier.3629:

Kitsune.1902:

Rynier.3629:

I also said in the other thread that if they do not provide it they will shoot both the people who can afford it and the guys who cant in the foot. new players that do buy the LS2 will be stuck in empty SW and Drytop maps and new palyers wh ocant will have to skip the content that leads up to HOTS.

I still fail to understand your argument about empty SW and DT maps. Last I looked they were far from empty, and lacking the LS2 episodes doesn’t prevent you from getting on those maps to my knowledge. What you miss is the mainly single player story instances which – yes – will prevent you from experiencing firsthand the story between the end of personal story and start of HoT. If it’s for the story alone though, you can catch up on it through ’let’s play’ videos. Of course it’s not the same level of immersion as actually playing through them, but it will give you a full understanding of what went on, and what to expect.

I based my reasoning that on the day of release every one that now populates SW and drytop will move on to the new area basically leaving those areas baron for at least the first day. all the NEW players will be lvl 1 and leveling up and cant access those areas. The ones that bought Gw2 on the sale that does not pay to do ls story will simply just move on to the new area because this is where all the people will be.

Uhhh… yeee-ah? Yes, I believe suddenly opening new content will draw a lot of people away from the old areas for a while. Not just SW and DT, but Orr too, Shiverpeaks.. well basically from everywhere. Anyone with level 80 and HoT access is likely to at least go have a peek. That has very little to do with LS2 though, and bottlenecking people artificially wouldn’t make them any happier.

I’m not yet sure if I’ll get the expansion and keep up with GW2 – I’ll wait for more info on it, which is bound to come around once the betas get rolling. If I do though, then in all likelihood I’ll go have a quick spin around with my ‘main’ character, and try out the elite spec for a couple of the classes – that would likely take a day or two. Then roll a revenant – and if I like that class, will do a 100% mapping with it before getting serious about HoT areas.

nathanjameson.3542:

I’m banking on the tengu’s non-involvement being much less cut-and-dry than “didn’t want to.” considering the source material that they’re drawn from, there are probably innumerable levels of court intrigue and politics going on in the dominion.

personally, my two favorite choices for new playable races would be the skritt and hylek. their respective flavors are wonderful to roleplay

Skritt wouldn’t make much sense as playable though, due to their hive-mind. Taken out of their society they’d be barely smart enough to hold a club in their hand. Hylek would work, although I wouldn’t have interest in playing one myself. Tengu might be interesting, they had some intriguing presence in Cantha (Factions campaign), and also in the add-on Togo mission in GW1.

Rynier.3629:

I also said in the other thread that if they do not provide it they will shoot both the people who can afford it and the guys who cant in the foot. new players that do buy the LS2 will be stuck in empty SW and Drytop maps and new palyers wh ocant will have to skip the content that leads up to HOTS.

I still fail to understand your argument about empty SW and DT maps. Last I looked they were far from empty, and lacking the LS2 episodes doesn’t prevent you from getting on those maps to my knowledge. What you miss is the mainly single player story instances which – yes – will prevent you from experiencing firsthand the story between the end of personal story and start of HoT. If it’s for the story alone though, you can catch up on it through ’let’s play’ videos. Of course it’s not the same level of immersion as actually playing through them, but it will give you a full understanding of what went on, and what to expect.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

(…)
As restrictive as the new system is, I still understand that is was necessary! We can’t have elite-specialisations without limiting the choice to three trait-lines and the game can’t progress class-machanic-wise without them.

That’s not exactly true. It would have been entirely possible to introduce elites without full overhaul of trait system. Simply make elites ‘advanced classes’, and let players pick one active for character. Active elite trait line shows up in addition to base lines, along with the traits specific to that elite.

It’s just that diversity like that is a balancing nightmare. This was already case in GW1 with hundreds of possible skills and almost unlimited number of potential combinations. From player perspective it was fun to experiment, but it frequently resulted in brokenly OP builds (e.g. permasin, imbagon, invincimonk).

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I got no problems with new players getting LS2 for free, and i had to pay for half of mine (wasn’t playing gw2 at that time).

Bad blood is gonna happen when they come knocking on that pay gate. The rage will be real.

I doubt it’s going to be a big issue. People are used to games having paid add-on content. Having the base game bundled into the expansion gives a great deal for new players, and a little bit of research will show that the LS2 is not unconditionally free to anyone. There’s plenty of free content for a new player, including the personal story. There just isn’t enough justification to get on the barricades for it to spread.

I actually don’t really understand you. You paid for base game, and say you had to pay half of your LS2 episodes because you ’weren’t there’, and you don’t sound like you are bothered by it. Why would new players who got the base game as a free sider be bothered by having to pay for LS2 episodes (provided they want them), if you aren’t yourself?

Rynier.3629:

IM jsut thinking that if a new player starts he wil be lsot as to why we are going to the maguma? What led us to it? And the only way he can do it is by PAYING ? Anet very clearly says that the base game comes free with the expansion. no little star * added with a foot note reading. The base game is free but a $20 gem purchase is required to get into the story ?

I’m still standing by my opinion saying it will be very silly to not include it.

And I’m not saying that you are wrong exactly, more like that you are trying to heal a stubbed toe by cutting off the foot. Throwing even more value for new players, in a form that would not add anything to people who already acquired the access to LS2 by either logging in at appointed times, or paid for it through gems.. would add more problems and bad blood than it would solve.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

If the standard version comes with character slot baseline, no pre-purchase only bs attached then i’d call it a hard bargain, but possible one.

As it is i’m not touching HoT out of principle, until it goes 10$ lower then it’s pre-order price (their price – character slot price that should be in there no questions asked).

Keep an eye on living story while you wait, though. I haven’t yet found any info on how it will be ‘delivered’ past HoT launch. There’s a possibility that the chapters open for only people who log in with HoT registered while each chapter is active (similar to how LS2 seasons came), and those who do not have HoT would have to pay extra for them later on.

I’m hoping that’s not the case, just saying that it’s possible. Of course if you don’t care about LS to begin with, then it’s a non-issue for you.

Rynier.3629:

The way I see it the expansion is like the new sports jersey for your favorite soccer team. Irrespective of how much you spent on the previous jersey you still need to pay in full for the new Style but you do not pay extra as a first timer for the development of the previous jersey you all get the same for the funds paid.

So how We are goign about it now is saying that if you do not provide proof of a previous jersey purchase tehy will remove a certain logo and you need to pay to stick it on.

It is a very silly business model. I played the LS and got it for FREE and all i had to do was log in. The new players didn’t have that chance but sure as hell expect to have a good experience. If Anet says nothing and by the time the new players get to the living story they need to PAY to get to the content they have already paid for by getting the expansion people will go MENTAL.

At some time asking the masses for advise is simply not an option and having an unhappy few is unavoidable but its better for the logevity of the game.

lets say i do purchase the ultimate and i can afford it. I now go and play those LS missions and I am the ONLY one in drytop. My money did not buy me happiness because this is a MMO and you need people around you. So even paying extra has made it a very terrible experience ( unless you are a one man show ) And on the other end of the scale the player who cant afford to pay the extra $20 to access this area is also unhappy.

So the way I see it it will be a win win for Anet to allow the LS 2 season for all with the expansion.

Just for the record, I was never very happy about the requirement to log in at specific times to grab the LS2 chapters – but I did jump through the hoops to get them anyway. I would have prefered to be allowed to play the game at my own times and my own pace. Would have rather had it so they unlock as long as you have an active account at the time. But that aside…

Yes, I can understand what you say. Living story is one major part of the game’s content. However the whole point of the decision of putting them out free for limited time, was to make it so that anyone who came along later on will have to pay to get them. There was absolutely no. other. reason. for the decision to make it so. You are basically asking for that decision to be reversed – after some people paid the price.

What comes to paying for content they already paid for – by anet’s definition they didn’t. The base game was freebie. :p And frankly right now in a way it is – because regardless of if you had it prior to HoT or not, you pay the same price for HoT. If you told people who already paid for the base game, already paid separately for missed LS episodes, to now pay additionally for the expansion – and meanwhile giving others the base game AND the LS episodes for free as a sider.. I think it’s a different group that will go mental – judging by a few hundred threads a few days ago. And I think with fairly good justification.

Living story episodes were solo content (although you could bring others into the instance with you if you wanted to). There’s no danger of any open world areas to be ‘empty’ even if a lot of people won’t have access to the LS episodes. What comes to advice in getting through them.. just getting through the episodes shouldn’t even need any. And if you need instructions on getting some of the achievements, zone chat is rarely enough. For that there’s dulfy. The knowledge is out there if you need it.

Rynier.3629:

The one thing i liked A LOT about what you said is opening up living story 2 with one of the editions. I would have thought it comes standard but seems that it doesn’t. The ENTIRE EXPANSION continues on where the current LS story left off. Not providing that to any new player would be silly infact it would be stupid. This means that either new players get into the game then see Oh wait i need to pay 1600 gems to unlock the entire story Or existing players will complain about the fact they had to pay to get access to this.

The best balance for this would be to open up LS story by default for new players but force them to complete it before they get access to the new HOTS maps . That means that the existing players base " gets the advantage " of accessing the are at least 4-8 hours before the new players can,

( my 4-8 hours is spot on as i looked at people who bought game in special and already have a lvl 80 character but didnt purchase the LS2 . Those who did can not be punished as they spent Gems on it )

Brand new players would need to get to lvl 80 and explore all the new areas in any case so it will take them a good couple of days.

Anet said they didn’t want new players to have this massive financial barrier to get into the game and if a 1600 gem purchase isn’t a financial barrier i don’t know what is

The problem here is it’s the ‘core game’ deal all over again. It’s either 1600 gems worth of value for you, or none. It makes the whole deal so that it has different value for different people. And creates the exact same issue of ‘but I already paid for that!’, which was one major point of discontent with the whole expansion offer.

What you can do is buy the ultimate edition, and use part of the 4000 gems to open the LS2. If you prefer, think of it as ultimate with 2400 gems and LS2 opened – and if you already had LS2 open, you get 1600 gems refunded (or, 200 per chapter that you had open).

What I suggested, would actually have brought enough gems even to deluxe to open all episodes of LS2. The standard edition doesn’t need it opened because it’s the bare bones ‘HoT only’ edition, and LS2 is not part of HoT.

Of course this whole thread is moot, and academic at best. Obviously none of this is going to happen.

What you suggest is… uh, what? New players should be ‘punished’ by being forced to play the game for a few hours? They have the disadvantage of.. being required to experience 4 years of content for at least 4 hours? I don’t get it. I really don’t.

It’s like you’d say someone goes to ice cream bar, and instead of being required to pay for the ice cream, they should be required to actually eat at least a spoon of ice cream before they are allowed to try the cherry.

For our long-standing fans and loyal players, we would like to say thank you and show our appreciation. For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account. The process of delivering your additional character slot will take us some time, but rest assured we will get it to you as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about the specific timing soon.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

Any version will work, as long as you make sure it’s pre-purchase and NOT pre-order.

The standard edition will be available in a “boxed copy” version from some authorized retailers. Some of those retailers are engaged in the pre-purchase program. Others are offering a pre-order, which is not the same thing and will not gain the benefits of the actual pre-purchase.

Hope this helps!

source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HOT-have-Hard-Copy/first#post5190884

They have been clear in the community address in cases where purchase place is relevant, like in case of refund policy. But in the veteran bonus, any HoT version is applicable.