Guild Wars 2

As amusing as five character slots sounds, I don’t have need for one, let only five. Someone started thread about suggestions here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HoT-preexisting-accounts/

What I suggested there was to throw in 1600 extra gems for anyone who links the expansion to already existing account. Thing is if you throw in plain character slots now after the fact, you’ll give nothing to people who didn’t want one to begin with. Toss in gems, and they can pick themself what bonus they want. 2 character slots was what you got for extra campaigns in GW1, this would be in line with that in value (1600 gems would be enough for 2 slots).

Firebaall.5127:

Solutions:

1) Every expansion package, including the $50 option comes with at least 1 character slot.
2) Every preexisting account that upgrades to the expansion is given a key code for an additional copy of the base standalone game.

Do these two things, and see some balance restored.

Throw in a bundle of extra 1600 gems for anyone who links the expansion to existing GW2 account, and it would start making more sense. If someone wanted character slots, they could have two – which would be similar to how GW1 handled additional campaigns (and which have been cited several times in other threads). If someone wanted character slot and bank tab, they could have it. If someone didn’t need character slot, they could have two bank tabs and change. If someone needed neither, they could save the gems and get something later.

This would be easy to implement retroactively, and would be pretty much equal value for anyone regardless of what they already had or didn’t have. It wouldn’t impact the sales of expansions negatively, it wouldn’t make it any more difficult for new players to get into the game, and people who already have an account wouldn’t feel like they were completely left out. People who bought GW2 from discount a while ago might actually feel lucky.

I have 8 character slots, I have no need for more. I have no need for an extra account either. Also some people have already bought the ‘higher tier’ expansion options because they wanted the character slot too.. if you now added character slot to base package, they’d be screwed over. But I don’t think anyone who bought the ‘ultimate’ edition to get the 4000 gems would feel cheated if they got 1600 more on top of it (if linking to existing account).

I’d rather simply have an option to buy ‘expansion only’ for cheaper, but at this point that would get way too messy – switching options back and forth would create huge potential for scenarios where people would feel cheated one way or the other, and you can’t go on refunding EVERYONE.

Zappix.7928:

You and your partner in crime that I responded to previously are missing the point.

You really applaud paying twice for the core game? Sure $50 or £50 for the xpac with a character slot is fine. No character slot and the core game for $50? I already own the core game, all of us already own the core game, what use is that to us?

Remove the core freebie for vets and add 2 character slots or 1 character slot for the Revenant profession.

Blindly defending such a foolish move by Anet is bad and you should feel bad because you encourage this sort of marketing ploy which if you read through this thread and the many threads created, many people are angry with. You are by proxy hurting this game, a game I love.

Or, for that matter – if you already have the base game and link this bundle into it, it might make sense to merge the character slots from both base games you bought together. I think something similar to that went on with GW1 campaigns, though I can’t remember exactly. It’s been a while.

Either way like I noted on another post – I don’t really have any use for more character slots, I have plenty of them already.

Well, it’s true what’s been pointed out before – that the true extent of content in this expansion hasn’t been published, and there’s no real need to pre-purchase it. Right now I feel disappointed with the pricing policy, so I’ll just wait and see how things will go.

I don’t really understand. The instant I read the core game is included in the expansion, I felt disappointed. I knew the response from the majority of existing player community would be largely same. If it was clear to me within a second, I can’t possibly imagine it was unexpected to a.net either. If that’s the case, then why do this?

I think the normal – and in my opinion much more fair – way to do this would have been to drop the price of base game to – for example – $25, and lower the cost of all expansion options by the same amount. Current players would get $25 value for their existing game and have the expansion at reasonable cost. New players would not have to pay a dime more than they do now – since they’d get the game and expansion at the same cost. It is because of this that it feels clear to me adopting this different strategy has nothing to do with making it cheaper for new players. It has everything to do with making the current players pay more for the expansion.

The people who bought the base game recently would not feel so complitely screwed over either – sure, they’d have paid more for the base game, but it shouldn’t be unexpected that the game goes on sale for the launch of expansion.

Is the extra $25 drawn from all current players really worth all the feelings of unfairness and disappointment this decision causes? Really what’s worst about this whole thing to me, isn’t the extra cost, but that feeling it leaves. That the purchase of original game was just obsolated, simply to milk a few extra coins from me.

Throwing in a consolatory character slot wouldn’t do a thing about it. Frankly I don’t need another extra character slot, I have plenty of them already – and I’d already kept a throw-away character in one slot to free it up for revenant. It’s amazing how quickly the excitement over the expansion can die.

IP 206.127.159.176
15-JUN-2015; 00:05 UTC
16-JUN-2015; 19:10 UTC – same instance, stuck for 43 hours
17-JUN-2015; 03:30 UTC – new working instance after game update (IP 206.127.159.249)

Well, it was a few days of things mostly under control – although the charr still frequently get stuck at kraal and require a couple failed defenses and an hour of work to unbug and get the chain back on track. Logged in today to find both charr AND vanguard stuck at kraal – which of course means the event chain is toast again until map reset. Apparently someone went and started the Sapper’s event chain again. Tch.

Granted it’s a bit more unusual scenario since both groups are actually inside the kraal – right next to Slacker’s Rock, at the start of the path that leads up to chieftain and guards. Ogre Wars status reads ‘Charr and Vanguard forces are assaulting Foulbear Kraal and its leaders.’

Kitsune.1902:

IP 206.127.159.137
10-JUN-2015 01:10 UTC

10-JUN-2015 12:20 UTC – stuck 11 hours

10-JUN-2015 19:00 UTC – new working instance 206.127.146.130
Someone made the fatal mistake of running Sapper side on 206.127.146.130. NPCs were left to die, while Weaponmaster and Pet Trainer were killed.. and so the event chain is dead.

This happened after successful run from charr side, but there are no further defense events on Bloodgorge either – I believe because the event chain is in ‘attack to kraal’ state, and of course will remain so until the doomsday.

Meanwhile the earlier bugged instance still lingers.. so..
IP 206.127.159.137
10-JUN-2015 19:44 UTC – stuck 18 hours

10-JUN-2015 22:00 UTC – new instance, 206.127.146.69
With enough people taxied in, this now seems to be the ‘main instance’.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

On IP 35, there were at least three successful Ogre Wars chains completing after the initial update today. (I had to leave shortly after.)

(I’m sure it bugs out consistently — I’m hoping that learning where it went successfully helps in the troubleshooting.)

IP 206.127.146.87 actually worked for several days before the update. Of course it would also constantly freeze with the charr stuck in Ogre Kraal, about one out of three or so runs, but people kept unfreezing it by failing the Bloodgorge defense until it worked again. But this latest instance (IP 206.127.159.137), it seems someone triggered the Sapper’s Delve event while the charr were stuck, and locked up the whole chain completely.

Only thing that helps then is new map instance – either with the next game update which can take a while since we just had one, or by the map getting crowded enough that new instance pops.. and then people running taxi to bring everyone to the new instance.

I just wish the event was at least modified so that whenever the defense or retake event starts, Shadowstalker, Slashclaw, Gregory and Finley will unspawn – if they are anywhere on the map. More than 90% of all lock-ups seems to be with those characters getting stuck somewhere they shouldn’t be.. and almost every lock-up I’ve seen happen, has started with the charr failing to walk out of Kraal after the chieftain is put down. Even if you manage to unfreeze the event after that, it usually takes about an hour or so.. and requires that no one happens to be in a trolly mood – or just ignoring chat.

Another weak spot is when Weaponmaster is killed before Vanguard reaches that point of event (usually because no one escorts them, and they die along the way). When Vanguard eventually comes to that spot, there’s no Weaponmaster left, and that seems to often (if not always) confuse the event chain and cause an instant and permanent lock-up. Most people know these days that Vanguard side is even more prone to locking up the map than Charr side, and so it’s rarely ran.. but it does happen, especially if the Charr side is already bugged out.

IP 206.127.159.137
10-JUN-2015 01:10 UTC

Another bugged Ogre Wars, this one right soon after game update had reset the instance. Slashclaw from Bloodgorge and Gregory from Sapper’s are both taken captive by Ogre Kraal, and the event is toast until the next map reset, whenever it happens.

More posts on this, including a.net response here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Escape-key-no-longer-opens-menu/

You could try clearing the directories:
C:\Users\<User_Name>\AppData\Local\Temp\gw2cache-*\
C:\Users\<User_Name>\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2\
Mentioned in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Lion-Arch-load-times/
And possibly also defragmenting your hard drive – unless you’re running the game from an SSD drive. Maybe it helps, doesn’t hurt to try. Just be sure you still remember your password or have it saved somewhere, before clearing those directories.

It won’t help with server related issues, but slow-motion graphics won’t be server related, it’s possible it would help on that (depending on what the actual cause is). Basically the various cache files could be out of date after patch, and it’s possible that would cause latency in all sorts of file loads from the drive.

I remember some months back there was a time when large scale fights (e.g. Mouth of Jormag for example) could lead to excessive lag. Sometimes skills would take up to 20 seconds or more to activate, also moving around seemed to be delayed – e.g. server still believed you were in one place, even after you’d moved away several seconds ago. Back then it seemed to be pretty clearly server side lag. I haven’t noticed it for a long time now, but also haven’t been in massive world events like that in a long while. I guess it’s not impossible for this to be the same issue just with lesser symptoms.

This other thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Unexplained-delay-every-few-patches/
seems like it might be related to this same issue.

IP 206.127.159.152
5-JUN-2015, 00:10 UTC
5-JUN-2015, 07:20 UTC – still same map instance, still locked up
5-JUN-2015, 12:30 UTC – stuck 12 hours and counting
5-JUN-2015, 21:06 UTC – stuck 21 hours and counting
6-JUN-2015, 03:58 UTC – stuck 28 hours and counting

6-JUN-2015, 12:53 UTC – new working instance 206.127.146.87

And so the war is over again, and Ogres get to keep their Kraal.

This time, Slashclaw is stuck inside Bloodgorge, and Shadowstalker is standing outside the first gate – seemingly waiting for Slashclaw to get over there and keep her speech before the assault would begin. Defense events are not running, and ogre wars is – obviously – once again stuck.

— update —
7 hours later, Slashclaw has vanished from Bloodgorge, but Shadowstalker is still standing in front of the gate, and event chain of course is still locked up.

Interesting, thanks for sharing this. I have almost the same size Local.dat (47,201,920). I’m running on SSD drive so it might be less of an issue since seek times and fragmentation basically don’t exist on it, but it’s good to know this.

Mortou.3251:

I checked that before starting a topic. HDD is fine, gw2 repair was done twice – on initial slow notice and today. Also checked the overheat possibilities.
Hasn’t helped.

Did you try doing defragmenting too? If that doesn’t/didn’t help, then I’d try reinstalling the whole game as a sort of last resort.

I didn’t notice any significant load times for Lion’s Arch.
I tested loading time several times through Asura gates between main cities. The results were in seconds:
Lion’s Arch: 15, 8, 9, 8, 9, 5, 9, 10, 8, 8, 8
Divinity’s Reach: 10, 20, 14, 13
Black Citadel: 3, 3
Grove: 5, 4
Hoelbrak: 7, 6
Rata Sum: 4, 4

Number of models loaded on each city was:
Lion’s Arch: 8,000
Divinity’s Reach: 11,000
Black Citadel: 8,000
Grove: 6,000
Hoelbrak: 3,000
Rata Sum: 4,000

All numbers are approximate since the info disappears as soon as the map finishes loading so I couldn’t record exact values. Lion’s Arch was loaded several times since I hopped through it between other cities. For me it seemed Divinity’s Reach was slower than Lion’s Arch.

Unless you are running the game from SSD, you could try defragmenting the drive, or even reinstalling the game – Lion’s Arch has seen some changes over time, so perhaps it’s data has fragmented over time in the data file.. and just doing a defrag on the drive doesn’t necessarily fix that.

That said I’m not really sure how GW2 maintains it’s internal structure in the data file (Gw2.dat) so I’m not sure if it gets internal fragmentation issues or not. Chances are it keeps them in particular sequence (for various reasons this seems likely), in which case regular drive defrag should be sufficient.

If you do that, let us know if it helped – I’m kind of curious. Not to mention it might help someone else in case they have the same issue and stumble on this thread.

Rainmaker.7594:

I haven’t noticed any increase in loading times. Try scanning your hard drive for bad blocks, or running gw2’s repair command.

Bad blocks are a little bit of a relic, since the drives generally have a cache of spare sectors that they reallocate on the fly (transparently to the OS, so user never sees the bad blocks happening) when original sectors show signs of wear. By the time you get actual bad blocks (the spares are exhausted) the drive is pretty much toast.. and you should get S.M.A.R.T. reports from the drive long before that. I was thinking about the repair command too, but if the data file was actually corrupt, you should see different effects – like missing textures or models, and the like.. so it seems unlikely as a cause. Still couldn’t hurt to do the repair either – but if you have sufficiently fast internet connection I’d rather just reinstall the game.

IP 206.127.146.51
Another win for the ogres.

Shadowstalker and Slashclaw were stuck in Ogre Kraal, but defenses were still running. We had a group trying to unstuck the event for about an hour. Finally managed to get it done, and had the Charr crew starting the assault.

On the way to the gate, the Charr group just.. unspawned.. and event was stuck for good. The status is still ‘Charr and Vanguard forces are assaulting Foulbear Kraal and its leaders.’ Gregory, Finley, Slashclaw, Shadowstalker – I couldn’t see any of them on the map anymore.

This is probably the most frustrating failure on this event I’ve seen so far, because the work and cooperation so many people put into getting it running again seemed to pay off – only to suddenly just go away with no rhyme or reason. I’ve never seen it fail this particular way before.

— edit —

It’s some small consolation that shortly afterwards there was a small game update that effectively created and enforced a new map instance, with working ogre wars at least for a while.

Therodin.2970:

I wonder to what level they are going to fix it. Like im sure they will remove the titles. and the hom points, but what about the 400ish achievement points? and the rewards that most players got from achievement chests from those points…Some people have suggested that the next 400 points those players earned basically don’t count but that would really discourage me from going for achievements… which is mostly all i am doing lately.

I haven’t really followed this so closely, but if it’s just achi points and nothing else, then my guess would be to set the achi points back as many points as was gained unearned. Taking back the reward chests might be practically impossible, although I couldn’t say for sure. If it simply worked so that you gain no additional rewards until you pass that mark where you were, that would probably be good enough.

But it’s kind of useless to speculate on it – we’ll see when the fix is released.

What comes to any kind of compensation, it would be difficult because different people are affected in different ways – and it’s almost impossible to determine how much a particular player has been affected. For example I’m at 50/50 but don’t feel like I’ve really been affected in my play in any major way.

At most, I’d suppose some overall nicety could be introduced for HoM that would benefit everyone regardless of them being affected by the issue or not – and at the same time it would work as an added incentive to increasing HoM ranks.

IP 206.127.159.171
Another day, another stuck Ogre Wars.
This time around I didn’t see Gregory of Finley anywhere. Slashclaw and Shadowstalker with their troupe are stuck at the position where they lead the attack against houses and pet huts. They aggro the ogres, so the event is apparently stuck in situation where the assault should take place.. but ogre houses are not destructible. Ogre Wars status says ‘Charr and Vanguard forces are assaulting Foulbear Kraal and its leaders.’

Best guess would be map with too few players for too long. If I’m on a working instance and there aren’t many people around – or I know there’s non-working main instance – I usually try to taxi people in by announcing it on LFG tool. I guess another possibility would be something really going wrong on server side. It’s not impossible either that they’d actually implemented a timer thing that kills that map after certain time – f.ex. 24 hours. It would refresh it, when it frequently locks up. I’ve not heard anything about something like that actually being in place though.

More on the subject in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Instant-God-Walking-Amongst-Mere-Mortals

Here’s another winning number:
IP 206.127.146.65

Gregory, Finley, Slashclaw, Shadowstalker – all are onthe map. Charr troupe is i Kraal, but Finley and Gregory are standing at two separate points along their path. Both Charr and Vanguard side are at state where NPCs are ready to start assault on Kraal, but they are all out of their places, and don’t actually trigger the event. Sapper and Bloodgorge are both controlled by allied forces, defense events are not running. Ogre Wars is locked up.

There’s more info about this bug in thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Escape-key-no-longer-opens-menu
It’s a known issue. It happens because of the low health hint on starter maps – when your health falls below threshold. A workaround to fix this is to move between maps. The easiest and least disruptive way is usually to use F12 to bring up menu, log out to ‘character selection’ then enter back into game with the same character. Beyond that, try to keep your health up while in the starter maps, to prevent it from happening.

Map IP 206.127.159.189
Another day, another locked-up Ogre Wars. This time all four NPCs are standing there outside the Kraal, but this time they all aggro Ogres when they meet, so it’s a bit different than usual. It looks like the Charr are in position where they should be preparing the attack to pet and ogre houses, while the vanguard is a little further back, I’d say dead on the road, on their way towards the spot where they should be directing the attack against weapons master and pet trainer. Resurrecting Gregory and Finley at this point did not help the event along, and no further Ogre Wars related events are happening. Upon logging in on the map, I also see no indicator of any kind about the status of the event (e.g. no ‘… are attacking Ogres’, no ‘ogres are holding …’ etc. No event related text at all).

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

lol. They are not going to manually hand out the skins. Turning on the rewards would be about as simple as typing a command. That isn’t where the problem is. No, the problem that they have to fix first is that many people were given hom rewards that didn’t deserve them. If the HoM rewards were turned back on, they’d then have skins they didn’t earn. Anet has to fix each of those accounts before they can re-enable it.

Just to elaborate a little further: you’d then have people who were not supposed to have the HOM rewards, but would have skins unlocked, pets unlocked on rangers, minipets unlocked and in use, item skins unlocked, items that use HOM skins that should not be available for them. The magnitude of things that would need to be fixed would explode out of hands. In some cases there might not even be a good solution anymore – because if, say, a sword was set to fiery longsword skin from HOM, there might not be a good way to tell what skin exactly it had prior to change (it might have been original skin, or some other modified skin).

Unfortunately it seems the four aforementioned NPCs are not the only possible way for the event to go into lock-up. At server IP 206.127.146.46 there’s currently map where Ogre Wars is in complite freeze. Both Sapper’s and Bloodgorge appear to be in a state where they are either waiting for defense or assault to start (they are controlled by vanguard and charr, respectively). This time however I couldn’t find Slashclaw, Shadowstalker, Gregory or Finley from anywhere on the map. Ogre Wars event status shows ‘Charr and Vanguard forces are assaulting Foulbear Kraal and its leaders.’.

At least this isn’t anything very new, since I can remember this happening infrequently, but already many months back. Generally in combat with massive number of players involved. If it’s a feature, it isn’t very nice one. It doesn’t happen often, and I end up just restarting the client after the fight is over, to fix it.

Argon.1563:

Can we have an update on how this is coming along? Is there any approximate timeframe on how long this might take to fix?

Ive been debating on getting a copy of GW1 just to do the HoM stuff, but im sceptical about doing it because I know I won’t be able to claim my rewards due to this bug.

I wouldn’t worry about that too much. GW1 is good game in it’s own right – the graphics are getting old yes, but the story is good – and gives some background to a lot of things on GW2. It’ll also take you some time if you want to get further on the reward track – and you’ll eventually have those rewards on GW2 anyway. It might be delayed a bit, but seeing the magnitude of this issue – or how many people it affects – I think it’s likely that it’ll be fixed before you’ve gotten very far with your reward track.

This seems like the same issue that’s reported in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Escape-key-no-longer-opens-menu
It’s being looked at. Meanwhile, a workaround is pressing F12 to log out to character select.. and logging back in after that will fix the issue. Still an annoyance, but manageable.

Personally I think it would make more sense – and be more intuitive – if you indeed would have to play each arc separately, for each character that made a different selection. Whether it’s because you have different race, or different order, or have otherwise a different background option. That way your story would always remain /your/ story, and you could still ‘guest’ in someone else’s story if you wanted to play the instances together. I imagine for the most people if they distinctly select one path over another, it indicates that this is the storyline they wish to experience. If at some point they indicate that they wish to accept progress, and that progress would lead them to branch that differs from what they had clearly selected earlier, I would imagine it’s often/usually by mistake, e.g. because they don’t understand the full consequence of that action. Perhaps – at the least – a clearer warning indicating that this will prevent them from experiencing their own, selected storyline, would help.

Sicarine.3985:

I have something to add.

If both invasions are started, both have to complete for ogre wars to begin. Thus if the south invasion begins and the north one is bugged, this might be what keeps the map bugged indefinitely.

In essence, south waits for north to finish, but north can’t finish because it’s not technically started

Quite possible. I’m not 100% sure if this is still the case – and I don’t care to try it – but Vanguard invasion at least used to ‘freeze up’ if for one reason or the other, the Ogre Weaponmaster/Pet Trainer were killed before Vanguard forces got to position where they order them to be put down. Essentially the vanguard reached the point where they tell ‘second squad’ to kill the ogre leaders.. but the ogre leaders are already dead, and so the whole thing will freeze up. The event might even finish up, but the next one will never start because from vanguard’s point of view the invasion is still going on.

And if that freezes up the vanguard side, then the Charr side might eventually get stuck as well, for waiting the vanguard invasion to finish (which never happens).

I’d like to add though, that although the ogre wars is still buggy, and always eventually has a seizure, it -has- gotten better over time. Some of the issues have certainly been fixed – like f.ex. the one that used to kill the event if Shadowstalker/Slashclaw died and were not rezzed at the same time.

Right now, every time I’ve seen the event frozen, I’ve seen Slashclaw and/or Shadowstalker from charr side, and Gregory and/or Finley from vanguard side, stuck in ogre Kraal. It leads me to believe that somehow these NPCs might be tied to why/how the event freezes up, although it’s also possible it’s just sort of a coincidence, and their presence in the Kraal is just tied to the phase of event that freezes up, rather than being the actual cause.

In any case, I’m more familiar with Charr side, and on that side it certainly seems somehow connected to Slashclaw/Shadowstalker not being in their proper place when needed. So maybe it would help if Slashclaw/Shadowstalker were despawned when DEFENSE event starts, the same way they despawn when defense fails and retake event starts. Same might go for Gregory/Finley, but I haven’t really followed vanguard side enough to say anything sure of that.

I hope it gets fixed. As far as I know, that event chain has never worked bugfree, ever since launch.

The map IP is now 206.127.159.215 so the instance has changed, but the situation looks similar – Slashclaw is stuck in Ogre Kraal (right inside Kraal this time), Shadowstalker is not with her, and the event chain seems to be stuck.

Also, this time both Finley and Gregory are at the spot where vanguard gets stuck (right outside Kraal gates) and Finley has the event activation circle above her head.. but talking to her does nothing.

So although there’s small variation, I think the basic setting is same, and my guess would be the chain of events that led to this lockup has been similar too.

The original post is from 2 months ago, so most likely that’s no longer relevant. More recently, your problem might be related to other bug discussed on this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Wrong-IP-joining-map

You could try logging in with maploadinfo flag to check if you’re getting connected to IP number that starts with 10. E.g. add -maploadinfo flag after the gw2.exe in shortcut to run the game (target line in shortcut would end like:
Gw2.exe -maploadinfo
notice that there is a space between the ‘e’ and ’-’ )

Note, there’s old thread about this issue, but it’s half a year (and numerous game updates) ago, so I’m not going to necro it. However, here’s link to the thread since it might be still relevant in some parts:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ogre-Wars-in-new-game-update

I’ve sent a bug report of this in-game as well (more than one, along the past few weeks, trying to provide some additional details as I observe them), but this time I was over on the map from the fully working event, to the point of complite lock-up of the event, so I’m trying to summarize it here to the best of my ability.

1) the common issue I see on the event lately is, after the event completes, Slashclaw and Shadowstalker get stuck in Ogre Kraal. Stuck as in, they will not walk off from there. They don’t aggro any ogres, and ogres won’t aggro them. The symptom this causes is, when Bloodgorge is defended from Ogres, Shadowstalker will not appear there after defense, and thus the assault can not be started. Shadowstalker will still get the quest interaction marker back in Ogre Kraal, but you can’t trigger the event from there.

At this point you can unlock the situation by letting the Bloodgorge defense fail (on busy time that’s more difficult than trying to herd cats) – which will despawn the group from Ogre Kraal, and afterwards you can do the recapture event normally.

2) However, Bloodgorge was constantlyl defended so it didn’t get a chance to despawn the stuck Charr. Instead, someone started the eventchain from Vanguard side. The event completed successfully, but this had the effect of shifting the Charr group to different position. They were now stuck outside Kraal, at the place where they normally start the assault to break the ogre houses. After the event, Gregory got stuck at Foulbear Kraal as well, and I didn’t see the event completing after this. I don’t remember if Finley was stuck at Kraal as well at this point.

3) The Vanguard camp (Sapper’s) was captured by ogres at this point, but later recaptured. I’m not sure whether the assault could not be started because of missing Vanguard NPCs, or whether it was started, but not properly completed. However, after this point I didn’t see any further activity at Vanguard camp.

4) Bloodgorge was defended two more times I think. First time, Shadowstalker had appeared in the camp at some point – I think possibly when Vanguard side event completed, she may have appeared there for possibility of triggering additional support. Either way, She was standing at the point where she normally talks to.. Ripclaw I think was the name of that Charr. She got the overhead icon for starting event, however Ripclaw was -not- standing next to Shadowstalker, and Shadowstalker – despite having the icon – did not start the assault. Afterwards, Shadowstalker despawned (this was either at the start of next defense cycle, or before it).

5) Final stand at bloodgorge: new defense event started, and a few people still held off against ogres. This time, after the defense was completed, Ripclaw walked to her place, but Shadowstalker did no longer appear. Slashclaw was (and still is as I’m writing this) still stuck outside Foulbear Kraal, as is Gregory. Right now, the event has been stuck for over an hour, and presumably will remain stuck until the map is reset – possibly at next game update.

Current map IP adddress is 206.127.159.156

To recap: Slashclaw and Shadowstalker often get stuck at Kraal, but can be despawned by letting bloodgorge event fail. However completing event from Sapper’s Side while they were stuck, cuased the evemt to get messed up further.. and after repeatedly defending Bloodgorge, eventually led to the event being complitely locked up.

You’re actually complaining the badges come too easily through achievement system? You have to realize that those badges come per ACCOUNT, not per character. They represent the entire achievements you’ve done across all your characters, ever. Not just one or two days worth. A few hundred badges is next to nothing, when you look at the big picture. It does give the people who don’t enjoy PvP at all, an alternative for getting some of the badges for their first legendary, and for that I think it’s a good idea. (They still need to do full mapping, including the WvW zones).

I would like it if much/most of the living story content would be accessible some way after the ‘main event’ is gone. Dungeons are a good example, but some open world events might also be applicable.

One possible way would be to make them available from some kind of hub that would give you access to past events. I recall from GW1 when Factions/Nightfall characters went back to missions that weren’t part of their story arc, they’d get message ‘you are about to relive events that occured…’. Those missions were not part of their expected story, but they still had a chance to play them.

We could have a place that was vaguelly similar to Fractals, from where you could ‘replay’ events and dungeons that have happened in the past. Some major events might not work out (like that massive event to kill the karka boss at the end of original Southsun event) and some open world living story parts might be a bit questionable, for example the whole refugee storyline.

The latter might still be possible through a system similar to how overflow servers work – by allowing people to access to ‘overflow maps’ that were set into earlier point in history of Tyria.

I’ve no idea how many people would agree or disagree, but personally I’d love to have the opportunity to make a party with a few friends and say, ‘lets go back to play the molten alliance storyline this weekend’. I don’t see how it would hurt anyone to make that possible. It would seem like a rather unique twist to keep doing living story events, and have some hub with portals that you could use to step into some part of past history of Tyria. The ‘present’ world would have new events rolling in, and new players – or those who missed an event, or just wanted to replay it – would have a chance to replay one.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Vayne.8563:

Yeah, 30/50 wasn’t that hard to get to. It was relatively easy. 50/50…not so much. What did you get for those other 20 insane points? 4 titles.

Was it worth it? At the time, Guild Wars 1 was my game of choice, but because they were coming out with Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 1 was barely being upgraded and the content (when it did come) was less than stellar. (Winds of Change anyone).

What some people aren’t understanding is that in order to make this game they all but abandoned that game, and we waited for this game for years.

This isn’t just about whether Guild Wars 1 was fun or not. It was about whether Guild Wars 1 had anything new to do, and how much time you spent grinding out some insane titles at the end to get that 50/50 that were distinctively not fun. Yes, most people did those titles specifically for reward in Guild Wars 1, not because they’re fun.

There’s nothing fun about most of them. They were just grind. But there was reward associated so most people did them.

In the end, though, it is a different game, and I don’t think we need to be rewarded for having played it, since I got five good years of play out of it.

But make no mistakes…the work to get to 50/50 (instead of 30/50 when you ceased getting items), was huge. It’s why most people didn’t do it.

Which is why you have GWAMM title. What is funny though is having that title most likely prevents from using any other title, making achievement titles in GW2 worthless for you unless you want to lose the most important ‘flaunting’ point of GW1 slavery.

That is, sometimes having a reward prevents from further enjoyment. I feel this way with my Black Widow spider, I feel compelled to use it most of the time simply knowing of the time commitment I put in to getting it, and being far past the ‘point of enjoyment’ with GW1 at that time.

Compared to 50/50, GWAMM was complitely trivial to achieve though (basically GWAMM was just tip of the iceberg of just one of the 50/50 requriements). I still use GWAMM title on every GW2 character though except the human guardian that uses the 50/50 title – because that human guardian is the only character I have to which the 50/50 title (Champion Of The Gods) makes any kind of sense.

Dezarys.1372:

I’m sure I clicked avenger :,( I wanted the greatsword first, then the bow…. Idk how I could have mistakenly selected..

I’d say it’s nearly 100% sure it’s just a mistake from your part. Either way you could open support ticket, explain the situation and ask if they could help you to change the selection. There’s 19 skins and you can only pick 7 of them by the time you get to 10,000 achievement points, so it’s safe to say you’ll never have all of the skins.

It’s all about preference. I decided to pick all of the water weapon skins. They’ll be usable by any and all characters, and I don’t really know any particularily good water weapon skins. And I get to look at water weapons rarely enough that I’m not likely to get bored of them very fast. Plus they look pretty good. It’s win-win-win-win for me.. but might not be for you.

For fourth and sixth skin I’ll probably go with pistol and rifle – simply because I don’t like firearms very much in fantasy setting. It’ll give me an option to use non-firearm appearance for any of the characters I may use firearms with, plus it seems pretty fitting both for mesmer – who uses the pistol more like a focus of sorts – and for engineer who is asura.

Sixth and seventh (if I ever get that far) skins I’m not really sure of. I don’t like zenith look very well for melee weapons, so those are probably out for me.

I have access to every HoM reward, so aside from water weapons I already have one reusable skin available for every weapon type. I might go with shield (it seems fitting for both engineer (with zenith pistol) and guardian. HoM scepter already looks good, and HoM focus is somewhat similar in style (sort of blue crystal theme). I might go with staff – it looks good, and a lot of classes use it. Another possibility would be longbow or shortbow. Torch looks pretty nice too, but I only really use torch on sylvari ranger, and the plant theme torch (verdant, was it?) fits better. Organic shortbow from HoM is better suited too, so most likely the last skin would be longbow.

Fish.1657:

CobaltSixty.1542:

Oh man, there is going to be 20 of these threads today.

Go to the achievements tab, click zenith weapon, click withdraw.

You can do this as many times as you want. Just like the HoM skins.

You see, this system is better than account bound.

Brilliant. Thank you mate.

Did I miss where it said this somewhere?

Yes. Bring mouse over the zenith skin, look at the tooltip. It explains you get more of them from achievement panel.

Well the design of how the rewards come is a bit… confusing. You get one skin when you select the reward, and no immediate indication of how to produce more. Once you figure it out it works very nicely. I’m not sure if the instructions were there from the start, but at least now the skin has a tooltip description that explains additional copies can be gained from achievement panel. I’m pretty sure a lot of people will still miss it though.

To be fair, all the equipment skins, minis and such are not a reward for 50/50, they are a reward for 30/50. Overall the only reward for the remaining 20 points (which are of course by far more difficult to achieve than the first 30 points) are the titles.

That said, as I recall Anet did state earlier that this was intentional – that they didn’t want people to feel like they HAVE to get all the way to 50/50, and the titles were just a kind of a vanity reward for those who went the extra mile to get there.

I don’t really want achievement points in GW2 for something I did in GW1. I certainly don’t want precursors, or anything that gives any kind of gameplay advantage.
Any and all vanity rewards are welcome though, and in that sense I think everything up to 30 points was great. I like how those rewards give a kind of nostalgic connection to GW1, without affecting the actual gameplay of GW2. I also appriciate the reusable skin options, although honestly I’m not all that fond of the armor style of light and medium sets, and only use them on one character (charr thief) to help fix the otherwice ragtag look of mixed armor pieces. The heavy armor style I do like better.

I’m mostly fine the way things are – the only problem I have is that the 50 point title ‘Champion of Gods’ is only really applicable for humans, and I don’t play humans. For a charr for example that title would be a mortal insult. The asura believe in eternal alchemy, the norn to the spirits of nature, and even for the sylvari it’s not exactly relevant – their equivalent would be wyld hunt valiant.

So if anything, I’d ask for an additional 50 point title that’s more appropriate for ALL the races, not just the humans. Beyond that, a second armor skin set for points 31-50 would be great.