Guild Wars 2

Got mine from a centaur during the Ulgoth chain in Harathi Hinterlands.

Best: Ascalon, except Fireheart Rise and the branded areas.

Worst: Orr

ilr.9675:

People who say Orr looks the worst, aren’t looking up and all around them.
Yeah it’s ruins, but what remains of the structures is a lot more impressive than anything the humans of Divinity whatchacallit ever built.

Too busy running for my life. :P It’s not easy to safely look at much of anything in Orr.

While some of the architecture may be fundamentally interesting the whole ambiance of Orr detracts from it. The orangish/greenish tinge that hangs over each zone is off-putting. The fact that everything is littered with risen. The terrain is as dead as its denizens. All of the water, even in the surrounding ocean, looks sickly. It’s just not a pretty place.

The same thing happened to my bf and I. He purchased gems for the both of us for Christmas to use for character slots. I told him to let’s wait until New Year’s to spend them in case there’s a sale. New Year’s came, no sale, so we went ahead and purchased 2 character slots each. Literally 2 days later character slots were on sale (and there was only about 12 hours notice given for said sale).

We both submitted tickets thinking that the sale was so close to our purchase that getting a refund for at least the difference wouldn’t be an issue. Went through about 5 escalations before being flat out told that they never do refunds except for non-beneficial mistakes, like double ordering the CE upgrade.

Since then, we don’t buy gems with real money anymore and we never buy anything unless it’s on sale. That’s the only advice I can give you, it’s the only way to make sure you don’t get screwed.

Orr is quite possibly the most miserable place I’ve ever been in any MMO I’ve played.

It’s aesthetically displeasing on nearly every level. Even if you do find something architecturally worth looking at you’ll be hard pressed to do it safely. All of the enemies are risen. (The fact that this is at least the third major MMO I’ve played where end game is focused around undead does not help. I really feel this theme had already been beaten to death before GW2 even launched.)

Way too many map completion points reliant on owning the temples. The sheer amount of frustration in trying to get a skill point guarded by a circling veteran & entourage + a field that constantly confuses and stuns you (Lyssa) is purely sadistic. Most of the temple points are impossible to do solo and no one else is ever around to assist (not that many can be duoed/trioed anyway). Every time I go to Orr it’s a ghost town (no pun intended :P).

Despite the nerfs, it’s still a nightmare to traverse. Mob density is ridiculous in some areas even after the nerf. Nearly every hub is either contested or overrun. Few if any of those ‘takeover’ events can be done with a small group let alone solo. The last time I did Orr map completion the added waypoints did not help either, I would still have to res at almost the opposite side of the zone from wherever I died.

Loot is practically non-existent. Granted, it could just be RNG messing with me, but for the sheer amount of enemies I’m essentially forced to deal with out there it’s common to not get anything for it, not even a porous bone.

I have such a seething hatred for Orr the single only thing that lured me out there after I completed those gods-forsaken maps was the promise of riches and even that wasn’t really worth it before the nerfs (I certainly never made the gold other people claimed they were from farming Cursed Shores).

I’d be interested if they ever “healed” Orr so it wasn’t a desolate wasteland overrun with the ugliest and most annoying enemies in the game, but as for now I plan to continue to avoid that place like the plague. (I can’t even get my map completionist friend to do Orr again, one time scarred him forever it was such an awful experience.)

Geotherma.2395:

It’s not so much that I hate RNG or the RNG boxes, but the fact that the fused tickets lead to at least getting some boosts etc was nice. With these it is a big loss and not so much fun.

I’ve been disappointed with their move away from using BLCs. At least when the tickets were in BLCs there was a chance for a ‘nice’ surprise like a backpack cover or makeover kit.

Currently I have no real reason to open BLCs and unfortunately that may be part of the problem. I have over 50 keys in my bank right now all from alts + map completion. I’ve never bought a key for RL money or gold. Maybe Anet figures there are a lot of others like me and they make more money selling separate RNG boxes than BLC keys? Even though if they actually put something worthwhile in BLCs I might have reason to burn through my stock.

At any rate, I’ve never bought one of their RNG boxes and I never will.

I have more issue with them hitting like trucks now. Maybe as a level 80 in exotics+ it’s not terrible, but as a low level alt in a level 15-25 zone I was having a difficult time soloing them. The zone I was in wasn’t being farmed at all either, so every hologram I came to there was no one else around to help.

They’re definitely a lot more powerful, it wasn’t just an HP increase.

I was really hoping Moa racing wasn’t a part of the meta because I hate gambling. Plus, 50s is a lot to spend with an 80% chance to not get the achievement each time. Awesome.

I knew I made the right decision when I chose not to collect minis in this game. (I was a huge pet collector in both WoW and Rift.) Every event just solidifies that I made the right choice. I’ve saved myself a lot of money and frustration.

Vol.5241:

I didn’t cash out on my dust To be honest I didn’t think they would implement this, I feel really stupid for not considering it.

I cashed out all but one stack, which I only held onto because I really didn’t expect Anet to address the issue with this patch.

OliverT.9021:

Just thinking aloud… If after the Southsun Cove event ends, and prices don’t drop, and rises instead, are we going to blame it on “everyone is busy farming dragon bash and don’t have time to return to Orr (sorry, couldn’t help the pun)”? And then blame it on whatever event that comes next after dragon bash….

I do find it interesting that supposedly the dragon holograms are going to be found everywhere except Orr.

It’s kind of funny/sad that 50k gems isn’t that much, relatively. I mean, if I wanted to get all 3 permanent gathering tools on all 8 of my characters that’d be almost half gone right there. Unlocking the bag slots on all of my characters would be almost another 10k.

More than likely I’d sit on the gems until there were sales. Then I’d unlock all of my bank tabs, possibly get the chef’s costume for my Charr, and then stockpile the rest. I’m good on character slots and everything else either costs more than I value it or is of no interest to me.

Behellagh.1468:

Been waiting for this sale.

So who’s laughing at my “buy a few gems every day” philosophy now?

Same. Bought 2k worth of gems in March for 2g/100 in prep for a char slot sale.

Ditto. I have characters where one little thing about them bugs me, but I can’t justify using a Total Makeover Kit for it. If they had some sort of “one change” kit available at a reasonable cost I’d probably buy a few of those. Right now I have an alt who’s in desperate need of a nose job, but not much else. :P

The SAB skins are some of the best designed in the game. They’re some of the few (besides legendaries) that are animated instead of simply having particle effects. The staff and scepter especially, both weapons are woefully lacking in ‘cool’ skins.

Well, on the plus side even if they are re-released maybe player speculation will drive up the prices again. :P

I really only need the prices to go up by about 10g to break even, but I swear every time I look at them they’re cheaper than the last time. -_- Oh well, I guess if I ever end up taking an extended hiatus from the game (possible with Rift going F2P) then I’ll be glad of having a long term investment.

ilr.9675:

If you want a REAL culprit here, look no further than the overpriced Services that Nexon (not ANET) predicted people would scournge the most Gold-to-Gems towards… Server transfers, Storage upgrades, etc… Stuff that should have been a LOT cheaper considering how fast the populations dropped off in this game (thus less hardware stress & storage overall).

I have to admit, I really balked against having to spend money for additional character slots and bank space, especially considering the last two MMOs I played that went F2P offer you both at full capacity just for buying the box which was the same if not less than GW2.

I do find the gem exchange ridiculous though. I’ve been purposely using level 78-79 armor just so I don’t have to pay the exorbitant costs of transmutation crystals.

I also invested at the wrong time, but at least it wasn’t the worst time (i.e. when GS was up to almost 80g). At this point I’d be happy to break even. I sincerely doubt I’ll ever make another long term investment like this. I don’t like watching my gold gather dust while waiting for TP prices to rise to what I paid in the first place.

Mortifer.2946:

Well, I got bored of mine super GS skin and friend of mine told me I look ugly with it :/ I don’t think it will stay popular.. it’s too weird and angular

I have all Super skins on my mesmer and I think they look great. The only other option I was considering were the Vision of the Mists type weapons, until I saw the price tags. I still think the Super skins are a nice looking and affordable alternative to a lot of what’s out there.

Fenlander.9037:

OliverT.9021:

Not sure if anyone saw the spike earlier.

T6 dust supply got completely wiped out, and it was selling for 90s a piece..

Er…no it wasn’t !

Highest it reached was 45 silver according to GW2Spidy -

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24277

Yeah, it was. I had an old listing up for 75s from the last spike (months ago) that sold this morning. When I looked at what the current rate of dust was it was around 90s with only about 150 supply left.

I believe GW2Spidy only updates every 10 minutes and within that time another 350 or so dusts ‘flooded’ (if you can call it that) the market, each undercutting the last to settle around 44s.

I was watching it carefully trying to decide if I wanted to offload the last bit of dust I have or wait. I wish I’d known about the Lyssa nerf, I sold a lot at 35s (even though that was 2x profit margin for me) not knowing the price was going to skyrocket. :P

I don’t know why instanced content for small groups seems to be such an issue in MMOs. The only one I’ve seen do it right was Rift with Chronicles.

There was really no reason to hard cap it at one-player. You should have been able to bring friends like you can for the personal story. So what if it made it “too easy”? Those who wanted to retain a challenge would still be free to do it by themselves and those who usually play +1 like the OP and myself wouldn’t feel frustrated.

The sooner that MMO companies in general realize that there are actually group numbers between soloing and 5-mans the better off we’ll all be, hopefully.

Feralnex.4071:

So I can’t collect them all because I didn’t play from release?

GW2 is not a game you should play if you’re a collector.

Arduin.3029:

The waypoint at Captain’s Retreat is right around the corner.

It’s not really any closer than Kiel’s. I rarely ever see anyone at CR unless they’re wrapping up the escort event, most bounce between Kiel’s and Driftglass and you’d be going out of your way to port to CR from Kiel’s for that.

Unfortunately, due to the run to Driftglass from either Kiel’s or CR it’s easy to miss events. By the time you get there you just have to turn around and go back half the time. Maybe not so much for the instigators, but definitely for the others.

Also, like I said, it’s based on WP proximity in other zones. At least it’s been my experience to have an event hotspot without a WP within spitting distance is rare.

munkiman.3068:

Arduin.3029:

munkiman.3068:

Hmmm, the sales data on spidy doesn’t really show much about the prices going up, which is a good sign. Maybe enough people will be done with this and anet will give up the ghost. One can only hope.

Maybe the increase in gem price is halted because more and more people are converting $$$ to gems, to gold. This would be very profitable for Anet indeed

Possibly, hard to know based on the data. I still don’t think sales on keys is booming though, at least that’s my hope.

I suspect the reverse is true as well. Many consider 3g+ per 100 gems to be too high and have quit converting gold to gems.

Plus, there’s nothing in BLCs right now to bother buying keys for since they put the Sclerite skins in those southsun crates. Fused weapon tickets being any indication people wait until something’s worthwhile in them to buy keys, so I’m guessing most don’t bother to ‘pre-stock’ keys for the future.

It seems strange to me one wasn’t placed there. Not only do several events occur and/or pass through there, but there’s not a WP even remotely near it (compared to how other zones are laid out with liberally placed WPs).

LFk.1408:

The difficulty of Skipping Stones is roughly on par with Winter Wonderland, in my opinion, with very similar jump timing and mechanics to boot.

Latency for Skipping Stones is far more punishing though. I didn’t have much issue with Winter Wonderland (maybe because it was instanced?), but with SS I am often on fire/knocked down before I even see the stones begin to lower on my screen. I consider myself above average in terms of JP skill and SS is the only JP I’ve done so far that I’ve been unable to complete because I can’t even get past the first leg of it.

There have been other JPs where on my screen I’ve spontaneously died for no apparent reason only to discover on the server side of things I’d fallen to my death, but even those I’ve managed to complete. SS is a different story.

I’ve never spent more than 10s on a dye and it’s only been recently I’ve started spending anywhere near that much, I used to have a hard cap of 1s for dyes. I’m a total cheapskate when it comes to them.

As much as I wanted the F&F dyes, the fact that they were not account bound was the deciding factor. I cannot justify 30g+ for a single dye for a single character no matter how pretty it is.

No, this is not better. I’ve spent hours in Southsun and only found 2 crates. Compare to BLCs where I’m guaranteed a key every 25 minutes just running the level 1-10 personal story.

The crates are so much worse because it’s RNG (the crates actually dropping) on top of RNG (the items within the crates).

I am against RNG account bound items, but I would have preferred they be made available via BLCs than the Consortium crates, or whatever they are. At least I have chests and keys. I spent 4+ hours in Southsun today and did not get a single crate drop. I’m definitely not buying them for gems.

I also haven’t seen a single player with the new weapon skins either. I never did understand the point of creating something that maybe 1% of your user base will ever end up getting.

I think part of the problem is that there’s no real need for people to convert gems to gold to keep the exchange rate low. If I had the disposable income RL I would have more gold than I’d know what to do with because, at least for me, most desireables come straight from the gem store with very few exceptions. I buy virtually nothing off the TP compared to the amount of gold I put toward gem purchases.

I made a similar mistake. I submitted a ticket about it and the best I was told was to make a post on the Suggestions forum about it. -_-

The good news is just keep an eye out for whenever they sell the infinite axe or sickle. I’m guessing gems will go up to at least 4g per 100, you might be able to exchange them then without losing anything.

timidobserver.7925:

It’s been there for a long time. You failed because you waited until the last minute. Take some responsibility for your own failure.

No. Waiting until the last minute are those people who gripe about not completing SAB or their monthly achievement because they tried to do it the day of the patch. There was no reason to believe that with a full 2 days until the patch, and early on a Sunday afternoon, that these achievements would no longer be completable.

Dahkeus.8243:

@ Lane: here’s the link to the post Omni referenced:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/sab/The-future-of-SAB/page/2#post1895290

Yeah, that’s basically what I said, he’s not 100% sure because he’s not in charge of rewards.

Anyway, yeah, I have buyer’s remorse. I was feeling pretty good about myself during the last spike, but then prices crashed and now I’m back to not breaking even for possibly months. I didn’t invest anywhere near what Vol did, but enough that not having that money is a bit of a stress particularly if anything desirable & expensive pops up in the next few months.

I definitely should have sold last spike. I would have doubled my money and been happy.

ZBeeblebrox.4928:

And that’s why RNG gambling is both a problem and a joke. You apparently really want a fused weapon ticket, have spent $250, and gotten nothing.

I on, the other hand, had no desire whatsoever for a fused weapon ticket because I think the fused weapons are all ugly (I think CoF are all ugly too, and these are just CoF with some chains and more glow). And yet, having opened a grand total of ONE chest since fused weapons were introduced (using a key I got from my alt’s level 10 personal story quest), I got one. Could I trade it to someone who actually wanted it, making both parties happy? No. So I bought a rather ugly staff for my elementalist alt, which I will probably never use.

Black Lion Chest skin gambling is a terrible idea, and I wish anet would stop it already. But I guess they’re making too much money off of suckers, so they probably won’t.

Had the same thing happen to me, except I got a ticket on my second chest. I was actually hoping for a makeover kit or one of the Charr backpacks. :P

My ticket’s been sitting idle for weeks while I’ve tried to decide which of the skins I should get when I really don’t find any of them that great. Finally settled on the short bow only because it’s one of the few models that doesn’t look like it’s just a smooshed long bow.

Personally, I could have really used the gold from selling the ticket. Sad thing is I know if they ever stick something account bound in BLCs that I really want I’ll never get it no matter how many keys I use. That’s how it usually goes for me. :P

OmniPotentes.4817:

But as the devs have stated in previous posts most likely won’t!

Link? The most I ever saw was Josh stating that he assumed they would be but that he didn’t know for sure since he’s not in charge of rewards.

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

I’ve seen a lot of Greatswords around, yes, but I also saw a ton of Greatsaws around halloween. My GS match my charr and was perfect for me, but it was clear that most were just hopping on the newest thing.

I purchased an entire set (from Moto :P) of the skins for my mesmer. I think they fit the character and the class really well. It doesn’t concern me how many others are rocking the same skins. I use what I like, not what I think is going to net me the most attention.

I’m also having this issue. It’s happened multiple times on Shatterer and for the first time yesterday on Tequatl. I’ll receive a gold medal, but no bonus chest and no regular chest.

I am meticulous about only doing these events once per day and usually at least an hour after daily resets, so I know for a fact it’s not that.

It’d be nice if someone would look into it.

I think GS skins are a decent investment if you can get them when they’re cheap, the rest not so much. I doubt I’ll do much investing in skins in the future though.

Kain Francois.4328:

Smart investors will play the waiting game… Wait until October.

Eh, I’m still skeptical. It was never 100% certain the skins wouldn’t return with the next SAB update and I’d be a little surprised if there’s not another world added before October. I could be completely wrong though.

I’m really not much of a risk taker, uncertainties bother me, which is probably why I usually do so poorly in the TP. If I double my investment before the next SAB release I’ll consider it an adequate success.

Prices have kind of tanked since SAB was removed, which I find strange. I just looked at gw2spidy and the skins are almost down to what I paid for them before the last spike.

Ensign.2189:

The gem exchange rate keeps growing more and more favorable to the gem side of the transaction because the new ‘rewards’ are all priced in gems.

When new item rewards are introduced that require a large amount of gold (or materials that trade for gold on the TP) you will see a spike in the gold/gem exchange favorable to gold – as people rush to buy gold in the same way they’re rushing to buy gems now.

We simply haven’t seen any new rewards with a mass appeal purchasable for gold in a long time; certainly nothing since Fractals, and the Mist Essence requirements gated those pretty hard.

This makes me wonder if the exchange rate would have remained lower had the fused weapon tickets not been account bound. Not knowing how rare the tickets were or how many who received them would have sold rather than kept it’s hard to say, but theoretically some of the people who spent lots of RL $ on keys could have simply bought gems to exchange for gold to buy the tickets off the TP. Just a thought.

Ursan.7846:

RNG isn’t bad. Making them account-bound is.

Agreed. Was just about to post the same thing.

jazzllanna.1278:

so if everything you wanted in the game was easy to get with gold then no one would use money.

Which is why I said “occasional” gem store purchase. I never expected people to buy everything to their heart’s content via gold (although, that certainly seems to be plausible for some).

DarkSpirit.7046:

I don’t think it would ever be out of reach, since you can always use real money.

Which is why I specifically said “for gold”. Not everyone has the disposable RL income for gem store purchases.

One of the great things about GW2 in addition to no subscription fee was you didn’t need to have RL $ to buy things, you could use gold. Both items were draws to those who lack the excess funds to spend on a video game. However, at some point the only people who are going to have enough gold will be the TP traders and CoF runners.

If they sell the sickle and axe at the same time the gem exchange will become outrageous.

I know the goal is to get people to spend RL $ on gems, but I feel at some point even the occasional gem store purchase for gold is going to become out of reach for the average player.

Souff.2671:

Anet is still in silent.
I dont wanna think they are neglecting the issue until the heat dies down.

There’s no issue to neglect. This is how their patches usually work. Have you never seen the many similar complaint posts about monthlies? I’m sorry, but this is a risk anyone took waiting until the last minute. It should have been automatically assumed that SAB would be removed with the patch, especially since this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

I personally always make sure I have my monthly and temporary content completed the day before the patch. It’s unfortunate that so many people in this thread didn’t do the same, but I don’t know what you expect Anet to do about it. I doubt they’re going to re-open SAB or mail out consolation baubles.

You can preview the gauntlets from the PvP locker, for those who didn’t know.

Regardless, the next installment of SAB is “several months” away so there’s still going to be a dry spell where you cannot obtain any of the skins at all beyond what is in the TP.

Have you purchased any healing potions? I was never sure whether or not that was one of them, but if you’ve already completed every other achievement it’s the only thing I can think of you might have missed.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We don’t have any reason to use a different currency in future expansions. I’m certainly hoarding some bbs myself.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab/Baubles-to-be-used-in-later-expansions

Josh Foreman.8250:

I said that I think they will and that I’m personally counting on it. BUT, and this is a big, fat but… The parts of SAB that come into contact with the rest of GW2 are not in my control. There are stakeholders who run the various systems like TP, Commerce, Crafting, etc. and they all rightly have a say in how SAB will be affecting their systems. We haven’t sat down with all those people to run our future plans past them yet. So the final answer is that there is no final answer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab/Baubles-and-Bauble-Bubbles-in-the-next-worlds

According to gw2spidy there are currently less than ~50 of each skin in the TP. Is there any way to tell what the supply was a couple of days ago? It’d be interesting to see exactly how much stock has been bought out so far.