Guild Wars 2

That was the description of the 1.05g chest I just got for doing CM butler path.

Tribal Sage.5642:

I recently bought the game. I’d say it was probably less than 2 weeks before the announcement of the HoT presale announcement. Now if you bought from the actual GW2 site you can get refund if it was purchased within 30 days, and I’m glad that Arenanet does at least do that. Unfortunately I didn’t buy from the GW2 site and bought mine from a different retailer so there’s no chance for a refund.

Not much you can do. You can spend $100 dollars on what would have cost you $50 had Anet not told everyone they needed to buy the core game in order to play HoT…. or you can wait on the HoT purchase:

after all, if you got the game recently, you likely won’t run out of content for a couple months — depending on your gameplay style.

Just pray that HoT comes out earlier rather than later so that when you do run out of content HoT will have been out for a while and thus more chance of a sale.

hibari.9836:

Yes OP, I agree. And all these responses telling people how they can get character slots or how the character slot issue shouldn’t matter to them are just stubbornly trying to dismiss an issue that many many people are bringing up.

If $50 is too much for the expansion (and whether or not any one person believes it is, many people are talking about that number and many people do feel so) then $60 is definitely too much. $60 is a real number, and no one can make it go away just by sheer stubborn shoving their fingers in their ears or trying to drown it out by shouting people down, no matter how much they want to shut down people having a conversation about it.

As long as HoT is released before the Christmas season (boy will it be a disaster if it doesn’t make it), there will likely be sales then.

And if this pricing/bait-and-switch debacle really affects sales and thus earnings reports, they might feel compelled to discount the price earlier than your projection.

Also, the longer people wait to buy, the less gemstore sales they’ll be making off those people — it’s not just the purchase price they’re missing out on.

Crysto.7089:

Gern.2978:

Open world boss fights are not raids, and cannot ever be a replacement for raids

So what is a raid? It’s an instanced , dungeon type encounter that requires a minimum of 10 people.

I disagree.

The word “raid” has the connotation of difficult group content that requires — as a group — lots of coordination, and — from each member of the group — high levels of skill, and knowledge of game mechanics to defeat.

Open world boss fights in GW2 require either none, or extremely limited amount of this.

Perhaps Anet should have priced the expansion at $30 with no character slot for upgrades and $50 for new players.

Most vets are going to need a character slot so that’s effectively $40 for them, but the $30 is low enough that outrage is unlikely.

Of course, that doesn’t address the bait-and-switch which is a completely different problem altogether.

If you make it first in last out, you should make the interface show them in the correct order.

Broken for several months now. Many types of weapons will do either extremely sporadic or zero damage. Hitbox is completely bugged. Likely won’t ever be fixed, so try using a different weapon (I now for sure that fire attuned staff will work on ele).

simplesimon.2084:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Tim.6450:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Will the Ascended stat swap end up taking money out of the economy?

A LOT of people never had the intention of crafting Ascended gear; but they do have a few pieces of Ascended gear with worthless stats (from fractals for example). Now these people will be very tempted to forge the gear to get good stats. As I understand it, forging will require inscriptions/insignia. Zojja’s zerker inscription sells for 50g right now.

The inscriptions require are exotic at best 2~5G.

Not the Ascended inscriptions?!

The forge recipe is the gear you don’t want, 5 ectos, EXOTIC insignia, and 10 spirit shards.

Wow! almost too good to be true. It’s still money out of the economy though kitten ectos is already worth more than a vendored Ascended.

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Looks gimicky, just like everything in EotM.
I want to be excited for the xpac but I’m actually getting really worried now.
I know we shouldn’t judge before we’ve played it, but it just feels that anet don’t understand the wvw community at all.

This. They’re taking all the worst parts of EotM (verticality, PvE gimmicks) and putting them into WvW. It’s not that they don’t understand the WvW community but rather they have their own idea for what WvW should be, and that’s what they’re going to make it into regardless what WvW players actually want.

Tim.6450:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Will the Ascended stat swap end up taking money out of the economy?

A LOT of people never had the intention of crafting Ascended gear; but they do have a few pieces of Ascended gear with worthless stats (from fractals for example). Now these people will be very tempted to forge the gear to get good stats. As I understand it, forging will require inscriptions/insignia. Zojja’s zerker inscription sells for 50g right now.

The inscriptions require are exotic at best 2~5G.

Not the Ascended inscriptions?!

Will the Ascended stat swap end up taking money out of the economy?

A LOT of people never had the intention of crafting Ascended gear; but they do have a few pieces of Ascended gear with worthless stats (from fractals for example). Now these people will be very tempted to forge the gear to get good stats. As I understand it, forging will require inscriptions/insignia. Zojja’s zerker inscription sells for 50g right now.

If they don’t allow non-HoT-buyers to enter guild halls, this will split guilds — of course, it’ll also force some players to get HoT earlier than they would otherwise. Will the extra money Anet makes from this be worth the player discord? We’ll see.

If they do allow non-HoT-buyers to enter guild halls once your guild has established one, then I see a market where non-HoT-buyers will pay those who have HoT to open a guild hall for them.

Johje Holan.4607:

In the hubbub over the Pre-Order did we miss this? In the announcement about Guild Halls it was said: (copied from Reddit)

They’re pumping out information like there’s no tomorrow in hopes of distracting people away from the pre-order hubbub.

As for airships: more gimmicky PvE stuff, no thanks.

What’s really funny is that this is exactly their reaction to the mess.

What’s going to happen after they use up their blogposts? (Back to) long periods of silence?

As I understand it HoT’s new map is very multi-level but very linear. So they really don’t want people creating shortcuts. Hence the nerf to every movement skill.

Sthenith.5196:

Rainbowsand.2438:

I wonder what Arena’s reaction would be? “We know our playerbase for the nice kittens with extra money they are, they will eat up any unfair pricing and ask for more”?

I highly doubt Anet has expected such a reaction from the ‘masses’, and if i were the boss there, i’d slap a few heads together thinking about the possible loss in revenue (the players that decided to leave and the new ones that think ‘maybe i shouldn’t buy a game that has so much controversy and trouble) and mostly , giving Anet a really bad rep. Because players really freaking out about this and seeing it on the websites everywhere, does give a bad aftertaste.

If people say ’don’t buy it, it’s not worth it’, of the 100 possible customers only 3 don’t, that’s a loss of 3% of revenue. Sure, you’ve sold 97%, but if you’d done it the smart way, you would have had it all.
If instead of adding friends to the game you tell em to stay away cause you’re going to leave it, then that too is a loss of possible revenue. Not just the buying price : the cash they spend ingame.

There’s also all those people who would have bought immediately, but will now wait for a discount. How many of these will drift away from the game and end up not buying at all?

fracture.9754:

EU, late afternoon. Can’t play earlier ’cause work yo.

On topic: CM and AC also sells poorly at these times, EU at least.

People buy CM?! Before my pause from this game, I was regularly soloing CM for the tokens (for the runes). What a waste! How much do the paths go for?

Zanshin.5379:

I’m sure their reasoning was “Veterans will buy the expansion anyway, even if they get mad at first”.

This. Seems what they didn’t forsee was the amount of mad. Hence the “surge” of dev forum communication and announcements that did not seem planned (forging ascended, dragonite eater). This surge of communication will surely recede back to normal levels once they think players have been sufficiently pacified.

“Entitlement” is just a buzz word that most Anet defenders don’t even use properly.

Threads with “entitlement” in the title invariably argue in the OP that GW2 had great value for the cost. (Then, funnily enough, they argue that because of this, Anet deserves your money for HoT!)

Palindrome.8904:

If you really believe that this was a spontaneous change, I suggest you read through this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/first

Nothing as potentially economy-changing as this is spontaneous or on a whim.

If it’s damage control, then maybe they felt they had to do it.

So if my guild doesn’t have HoT, we won’t have a guild hall, right? Will guild missions need to be started from a building within the guild hall, or does the guild UI panel still exist?

Malediktus.3740:

It definitely takes months to code and QA all a new recipe or item.

If it takes months to add a mystic forge recipe, then they’ve got some seriously bad programming practices. There shouldn’t even be any programming involved: just data entry.

As for QA, if they really needed to rush this out for Tuesday, they can do it without QA.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-objective-claiming-in-world-vs-world/

Charr car running people over? Centaurs trampling people?

IMO that’s a lot of dev time devoted to coming up with and developing gimmicks whose novelty will wear off in a couple days when we’ve woken up and noticed we’re still in the same broken, unbalanced matchups. (Yes, creating something exciting that brings people into WvW does help with the matchup issue, but I don’t think this will do it.)

Mystic forge is definitely doable in a couple days. You just need to code the formula for what goes in and what comes out as well as the probabilities. Ore-eater .. maybe it was fast-tracked?

I remember a specific dev being thanked for working over a weekend to fix(?) something a while back — also the result of some big controversy, but I can’t remember which one. For these two announcements, Colin specifically thanked the devs, as if they put in some overtime.

EU4 is on steam summer sale… if I liked Civ4 (quite a lot) should I get this?

As for harrassing the devs. There will always be trolls who do this just because we’re talking large numbers of people. It’s obviously not cool, but you just gotta ignore it.

On the other hand, Anet’s communication is just horrifyingly bad. They really could use a major rethinking of how their community relations is run.

Was it developed as a response to the HoT pricing controversy, or was it just the announcement that was?

Same question with Dragonite ore eater.

Edit: for those who missed it, they are going to allow us to forge ascended weapons and armor to change stats.

jesters.9406:

Lord Kuru.3685:

jesters.9406:

evadrepus.1280:

The silence is taking a long time. I think there’s only one way to go. I would expect to see a message like this very soon:

“Greetings fellow inhabitants of Tyria,

Earlier this week we opened pre-orders for our exciting new expansion, Heart of Thorns. We are really excited about this expansion – not only does it have the new Elite classes, only a few of which have been fully revealed so far, but it also introduces a whole new world for you to explore. We have many more teasers and spoilers planned over the next few weeks that will let you share our excitement about the expansion.

That said, we here at Anet have been aware of the voice of the community on the pricing or content of the expansion packs we’ve offered. We feel that the prices we listed are appropriate for the content we are releasing, and certainly comparable to the other releases we and other gaming companies are producing these days. We have a fantastic user base, and many of you have been as hyped as us for the expansion. Some of you have been with us from the original Guild Wars, including even some of our beta testers of that game. You veterans form the core of our userbase, and are are often the most vocal supporters for us. Or, in this case, vocal in your discontent. We do want to have you continue your journey with us through Tyria, after all, we have dragons and lore you haven’t even seen yet (are you there, “Bubbles”?).

After a great deal of internal conversation, we’re making the following change to all expansion packs: All packs will now include 800 gems, which is the current cost of a character slot in the game. Are you one of our players who has a maxed character in every slot? You can use these gems to buy yourself a new spot to roll that exciting new Revenant. Are you a newer player and still have open slots? Use these in our Gem Store to buy many quality of life and appearance items – we’re sure you’ll find something you’ll like! For our user base who want to buy the Ultimate Edition, you’ll now get these gems in addition to the ones you already are receiving as part of the package. We expect you to be the snappiest dressed Revenants in Maguuma!

Once again, thank you for your passion around our world. We are on a shared journey and look forward to you joining us in the newest chapter, Heart of Thorns!"

If this is Anet’s response to this situation, I’d not only be happy to pre-purchase now, I’d go ahead and get the Ultimate edition and I know I’m not the only one. I know for some the price of the standard is tad high so the Ultimate is unthinkable for them, but a good-will gesture of 800 gems across the board would at least mean people have equal access to content right out of the HoT “box” and to me that’s the real crux of the matter.

Honestly, I think this kind of gesture would soothe a lot of this anger (though of course not all of it) and get a lot of players back of the hype train again. It would also send a very strong message from Anet: we want new players but we also value our current players and are listening.

anet pls.

New feature announcements from Colin (Dragonite ore eater, ascended stat changes) look like they’re being used to quell the riot. So I don’t think pricing will change.

Well, personally speaking I’ve not said that the price should be reduced or ever thought it would. To my mind, making that $50 minimum stretch out over more (and not even a lot more, 800 gems as suggested) would be the wisest call they could make.

Yeah.. sorry, I meant that I don’t think anything will change with regards to pricing — these announcements are meant to appease the crowd so that they don’t need to modify the sale packages.

jesters.9406:

evadrepus.1280:

The silence is taking a long time. I think there’s only one way to go. I would expect to see a message like this very soon:

“Greetings fellow inhabitants of Tyria,

Earlier this week we opened pre-orders for our exciting new expansion, Heart of Thorns. We are really excited about this expansion – not only does it have the new Elite classes, only a few of which have been fully revealed so far, but it also introduces a whole new world for you to explore. We have many more teasers and spoilers planned over the next few weeks that will let you share our excitement about the expansion.

That said, we here at Anet have been aware of the voice of the community on the pricing or content of the expansion packs we’ve offered. We feel that the prices we listed are appropriate for the content we are releasing, and certainly comparable to the other releases we and other gaming companies are producing these days. We have a fantastic user base, and many of you have been as hyped as us for the expansion. Some of you have been with us from the original Guild Wars, including even some of our beta testers of that game. You veterans form the core of our userbase, and are are often the most vocal supporters for us. Or, in this case, vocal in your discontent. We do want to have you continue your journey with us through Tyria, after all, we have dragons and lore you haven’t even seen yet (are you there, “Bubbles”?).

After a great deal of internal conversation, we’re making the following change to all expansion packs: All packs will now include 800 gems, which is the current cost of a character slot in the game. Are you one of our players who has a maxed character in every slot? You can use these gems to buy yourself a new spot to roll that exciting new Revenant. Are you a newer player and still have open slots? Use these in our Gem Store to buy many quality of life and appearance items – we’re sure you’ll find something you’ll like! For our user base who want to buy the Ultimate Edition, you’ll now get these gems in addition to the ones you already are receiving as part of the package. We expect you to be the snappiest dressed Revenants in Maguuma!

Once again, thank you for your passion around our world. We are on a shared journey and look forward to you joining us in the newest chapter, Heart of Thorns!"

If this is Anet’s response to this situation, I’d not only be happy to pre-purchase now, I’d go ahead and get the Ultimate edition and I know I’m not the only one. I know for some the price of the standard is tad high so the Ultimate is unthinkable for them, but a good-will gesture of 800 gems across the board would at least mean people have equal access to content right out of the HoT “box” and to me that’s the real crux of the matter.

Honestly, I think this kind of gesture would soothe a lot of this anger (though of course not all of it) and get a lot of players back of the hype train again. It would also send a very strong message from Anet: we want new players but we also value our current players and are listening.

anet pls.

New feature announcements from Colin (Dragonite ore eater, ascended stat changes) look like they’re being used to quell the riot. So I don’t think pricing will change.

A dev has already explicitly stated that they were not working on any more dungeon content and had no plans for any more dungeon content in the future. There was a thread about it in the dungeon forum a while back. If you ask in the dungeon forums, someone will be able to dig it up.

That is for sure. “Challenging group content” I’m not 100% sure about, but I think that refers to VW-type content.

ShelBlackblood.7826:

I haven’t counted how often it was already explained in this forum that this whole turmoil has nothing to do with “We can’t afford it!!1!1!11!”

Geez… read at least half an hour in various threads and you know we critic/vets are not as poor as every HoT defender might think of us.

It’s meant as an insult, not to be taken literally.

maddoctor.2738:

The Elite specializations offer 1 healing, 3 utility and 1 elite per profession, that’s 32 new profession skills. We are also getting at least 2 (if off-hand) skills per profession, but some will get 3 skills (main hand) or even full 5 (2-handed). Moreover, keep in mind that GW2 skills are more compact than GW1 skills, they create chains and use the same slot, while GW1 skills (even chain skills) had to take individual slots on the skillbar. I think GW2 can easily have more than 100 new skills

Even if every profession got 5 new weapon skills that’d only be 32+40 = 72 new skills.

18 Dungeons

No idea how many dungeons we will get.

None. They already stated a while back that they were no longer working on creating new dungeons and had no plans to do so.

Ignore pls, this was referring to an earlier version of the OP.

Ranael.6423:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Bleh. They should make all regions level 80 and just scale low levels up.

That was their intention during development but then they thought it was weird for people to go to Orr two days after release while not having developed their character or not knowing how to play.

They’d still need to open up the world. Most players will start the game doing stuff in the starter area. A good developer will take advantage of that and teach the player how to play by creating good content in those areas.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to make development decisions based on the type of people who are going to beeline their way to Orr on the first day. (Anet obviously doesn’t agree, hence Ascended gear.)

IMO, the level cap should have just been 10 (or 20 just for old times sake?) to make it clear to everyone that getting to the cap only means you’ve finished the “tutorial” part of the game. Plus, you can hype “50 (or whatever it is) endgame zones!!” instead of just 2.

As it was, a lot people played as if hitting 80 meant the end of the game. Then “ran out of content.”

In any case, I personally don’t really care about open world play so if they just made all dungeons level 80, as suggested above, that’d be good enough for me.

Bleh. They should make all regions level 80 and just scale low levels up.

Atoss.1056:

I think it’s around 20-30% smaller than OS arena, just trying to look at player sizes gives me this impression. Maybe it’s because of no stairs on the sides just making it look like that, we will see…
Halls Arena: http://imgur.com/AqhJqKb,nqVXPvn,EhV0Wwg
OS Arena: http://imgur.com/IeFyqXJ,EEevbPc

Judging by the size of that spectator NPC on the right (I think that’s what it is), no way that’s big enough for GvGs.

I was under the impression that Living World method of content delivery is dead, with the expansion model replacing it. Did they say somewhere that LS will still continue?

The days of real challenging content are over for GW2. Just look at the progression of content from release to Tequatl to VW. Also, these events are to be accessible (via scaling, I guess) to both large and small guilds. That likely means more generic stand here, don’t stand there, pop the bubbles to do damage, gimmcky content.

Real challenging content that people want to come together to do is fine, but looking at Anet’s track record, I suspect it’ll turn out to be content people will begrudgingly do because they have to.

Note that if you have Ascended crafters with your old account, they won’t be able to craft stuff for your new account.

Jay.1085:

SlyDevil.3952:

The explorers are seeking guilds willing and able to mount expeditions to liberate these ruins, and Tyrian world governments have agreed to cede ownership of the ruins to successful guilds so long as they maintain a presence in those places and defend them from recapture by the dragons.

Quote from the post on guild halls, will we actually have recurring defenses of our guild hall from dragon attacks? New type of guild missions?

I saw that quote and I will bet you guys 1 gold that is whats going to happen. The new guild missions will require a defense stage or a recapture stage. Seriously Anet has to make a new guild mission right? well that’s your answer. This will address the issues of large guilds that will steam roll this event. Hell my guild is not large but during guild mission we have 20 plus people. Unless its the size of the silverwaste maps those dragon minion will be zerg down.

I also hope for smaller guilds have a chance here. lets be honest there are hundreds of small guilds. less then five people how will they capture their guild halls? The answer if anet was fair would be a story instance for them. Like the living story.

Anet has a lot riding on this and with this lack of public relations! has been reaching a breaking point. But its there fault Anet has promised its player base and new players that HOT will be a grand experience. But if it becomes another South sun map god help there souls. hell hath no fury as a scoured group of nerds XD

No one likes doing events to open dungeons, you just want to do your dungeon. In the same way, people aren’t going to want to do events to reopen their guild hall.

It’s better to reward your players for doing guild missions rather than punish them if you they don’t do them. I forsee frustration over this.

Paulytnz.7619:

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Totally worth it.
Really wish they’d let me trade a few of the Molten ones I bought each of my toons for a couple Watchwork

Agreed I have most of the other tools that I wish I could trade for this one or that they would put the same bonus onto them.

As it is I have not bought any of the newer picks after the Watchwork simply because of this fact, I was waiting for this one to resell for my other alts. So in a way Anet got less gems from me or delyaed I guess you could say lol.

Me too… nor any other infinite tools. Who’s to say they won’t release a sprocket sickle in the future?

I just (couple weeks ago) spent several hundred gold getting to and unlocking guild rushes for my 1 man guild (for the extra commendation per week over the 2 that bounty gives). Will the fact that I’ve already unlocked it help in my Guild Hall progression?

Seems from the Guild Hall announcement that at least getting to Politics VI and Economy VI will give me progress to some degree, or did I read the announcement wrong?

What’s the possibility the guild events will be 5-man type content where guilds have to do the content many times (like Guild Rush)? That way, small-man content can be developed, but with large guilds still having their time occupied.

It would be a good way to satisfy large groups of players. In the end though, I don’t think Anet is even interested in making small-man content.

DaShi.1368:

It’s very likely ncsoft ordered them to do this.

Anet = good cop
NCSoft = bad cop

OP thinks Anet would be a nice place to work because its website looks cool. Seriously?!

By the way, OP’s argument boils down to “If you don’t buy the game, I’m going to taunt you with my new Legendary.”

Now that you reminded them…. maybe?

Crossaber.8934:

The way silverwaste is doing, you got connected event filled most corner, and everyone is working for 1 ultimate goal, the replayability value is much much higher than any of the core map is able to provide.

The reason SW is full because it’s the best/most effortless farming in the game.

Eponet.4829:

By making ascended gear more important, people aren’t going to experiment at all given the insane price of switching ascended gear sets. If you thought the berserker meta was bad now, wait until they’re punished even more for trying a second stat combination.

People were saying exactly this when Ascended gear came out. And your fears already have come to pass. Those who picked Ascended gear stats assuming their chosen traits would cover some of their needed stats got completely screwed. Will they go back and recraft more Ascended gear?

The problem is that people who do this are mostly WvW players as its the only game mode that requires careful balancing of stats (and has Ascended gear), so I don’t think Anet will do much about it.

The good news is that PvE content is moving more towards content like VW so it doesn’t really matter what gear you use.

I think their plan is to discontinue GW2 core and only sell HoT from now on (reasonable as the more people have core but not HoT, the more split the population becomes) — so it’s highly unlikely they’re going to give you a separate code for GW2 core when you upgrade.

My guess is, given the outrage, vet players maybe will get an exclusive mini, or perhaps a few gems for upgrading.

You’re in T1, right? Just convince the three T1 server leaders to treat the next 4 (or whatever) weeks as fully competitive. Since T1 servers are effectively locked in terms of matchups, you don’t have to worry about matchmaking messing up the tournament.

Plus, you can make your own rules — for example, 3 points for win, 0 points for 2nd and 3rd place … or whatever you think is appropriate to make the tournament competitive.

This is actually a win for everyone. T1 gets their tournament, and other tiers don’t have to suffer through weeks of matchups even more ridiculously unbalanced than the ones we normally have.

Merathkira.7041:

To make sure this doesn’t get completely lost, for those of you who are concerned that the players are not being listened to on the HoT pricing structure issue:

Hey all,
We understand that there are many opinions and suggestions about the game versions and the pre-purchase program. We will continue to read your thoughts and thank you for sharing them.
Edit to add: We will share your input with the team.

From this post by Gaile.

We have been heard and we are not being ignored.

Hope this puts a few minds at ease!

That is roughly their standard response to big forum threads.

They said approximately the same thing (“we’ve heard,” “the issue has been forwarded to the appropriate team,” “we’ll update you in the next few days”) when the Lupi autoattack bug blew up the dungeon forum. That was April 1. As of today, it has not even been confirmed whether the bug was a bug or an intended change.