Guild Wars 2

now guardians can feel how it is to be some other classes when trying to get hits on enemies in zert-to-zerg combat……

hopefully all zerg participants gets reduced to melee raneg effectiveness so it all can be fair and square again

Zalavaaris.5329:

What was that super high horse thing that wvwers told the rest of the game when it came to wanting rewards in a reasonable amount of time? Oh that’s right… just play the game mode for the mode itself and ignore rewards and you’ll get it some day.

there was no such thing – there was just a lot of super-high-horse raiders telling WvWers and PvPers that they do no deserve having own legendary armor.

unless you mean also those WvW guys who were shouting up people who were complaining about stuff bing too hard to obtain… there were few of those.

personally for me it was long term goal all the way since announcement so it’s not like it matters all the great deal for me that it will take crapload of time….

draxynnic.3719:

Ah, so England, Scotland and Ireland are not and never were nations then, because they’re ‘lands’? Deutschland either?

technically speaking there is no nation [and never were] called “England, scotland, Ireland, deutschland”

actually when you look at the genesis of those names those names originated as "land of <nation> in meaning

there is english nation, scot’s nation Irish nation, german nation – see the difference?

as for lost earlier wall of text – since I am awoken and rested now instead of rebuilding that wall of text I’ll try to sum up and put into better words all my stance on the subject as it is on the moment being.

firstly and foremostly – yes as it is so far balthazar does feel like going into abaddon 2.0, and no I am not 200% happy about – I have personally hoping that there was something bigger we didn’t know about going in.

as for increase of elonian population in crystal desert – let us not forget that elon river that was goign throught whole continental elona has been redirected into crystal desert to allow palawa easy conquest – so after it it would be understandable for vabbi and kournan populations to mostly move north.

after additional thinking I have also come up with better rl analogy for the term elona – india – in real world both used to refer to the nation/state and to the specific chunk of the landmass – which is in these specific case interestign because for a change it’s same world used unlike for grand most of other pairings like that.

also as for where we are goign to go and what for in expansion – we are clearly goign after balthazar to stop him from killing elder dragon – only a 5th part of potential playerbase [humans] would really much care about his other actions here – as long as it is not global in effects, and even then that 5th – humans – can be splitted due to some of humans in kryta still being actuall followers of balthazar believing that he is completely right in whatever he is doing.

with a new map updated into a client thought it is quite easy to guess why we will reach actuall elona in this chase – it’s because dragon’s lair is just outside gardens of sebolkhin – since balthy is going after dragon it’s obvious he will not stop prematurely.

there may be some paralels and similarities to nightfall campaing but all of them are twisting the scale of the conflict – as I said – in nightfall we are chasing a servant andsince we failed to stop servant in time then and only then, we goes after the master – this is not the case in this scenario frames cause as far as we know so far balthazar is the master – and we are going on after him from ever before the expansion storyline properly started.

margonites vs forged – while it is unknown how the “conversion” of original batch of margonites – predating abaddons original fall – have happened – but kournan troops under varesh command and varesh herself were converted into demonic entity as they lived on – process was not speedy-snapy but also did not involved anyone dying and coming back as a demon – the conversion effects were seen in the cinematics showing varesh, and only because these one was completed – varesh and her troops could cross the desolations – they were no longer human at that point they were demons. – and even then you had few converted kournans scattered aroudn desolation being completely scared of a change that have hapened in their bodies, refusing it and deserting from the army hoping it can still be reverted.

from all I know on the forged so far, they are contructs powered with twisted souls claimed by balthazar – in many cases by outright killing the people to gather their souls for this army building.

actually when you’d think about it there is more paralels between risen/awakened army and the forged than between margonites and forged. branded on the other hand shares interesting amounts of paralels to margonites.

so claiming at this point that Path of Fire is reskinned Nightfall is premature and unfair for the writers – for all that is known so far these are two different plot-schemes with completely different pacings.

it may yet turn into reskinned nightfall at this point if AN decided to do everything possible to do just so and if that will be a case I’ll be utterly dissapointed – but at this point I’m farily optimistic because so far the stretch just seems to big to me.

Ubi.4136:

zedapoc.1493:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winds_of_Disenchantment

10 targets, .5 sec intervals, unblockable.

Also this GM trait:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enchantment_Collapse

I guess I was wrong. Deadeye won’t be the most broken thing this expansion.
This is so absurdly broken compared to anything in the game it’s not even funny.

do I know if exacly “broken”?

althought this levels of boonhate [and afaik spellbreaker is not the only one to be pulling it off] for sure will reshuffle WvW meta by quite a margin…..

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Using full ascended pve zerker stats and I’m usually able to kill or run from 70-80% of most pro roamers.

I have a sudden burst of doubt if you have ever faced – or recall or admitt to yourself that such event occured – an actuall “pro roamer”

as for ascended zerker builds – those are the guys against whom my exo warrior goes, win a fight and more importantly – lives to tell the tale :P when someone reaches this level of paper-iness it’s not hard to make short work of them

and here I admitt that said warrior is not in fact using a roaming build – she’s running a makeshift temporary build with full exo gear [aside from backpack didn’t manage to get her one just yet] with knights stats on armor and marauders on trinkest and assasins on the weapons I was consider swapping totally out the armor stats considering that with todays patch I can no longer use maintenance oils to convert that toughness into precision……… good bye 80%+ crit chance ;-;

[note – the build is experimental frame on which I am testing out options in preparation for spellbreaker]

Trajan.4953:

Gliding is amazing, and the sky did not, in fact, fall after all.

I’d love to confirm, bu I can;t log into a game to check it out :|

lost my previous wall of text to server outage issues, and I’m too tired to rewrite it all so I’ll settle on this part only:

Elona is not akin to Europe and Asia. It is a nation. And like all nations, the boundaries can and will shift.

the very first verse spoken in the nighfall campaign:
“Elona, Land of the Golden Sun.”
Land not nation, not country, not state.
land. elona is a specific part of a land.

and here goes my crit spamming from knight’s-marauders combo

farewell maintenance oils, it was nice to know ye….

[srsly tho none of these new utilities gives a buff to precision anymore…]

reclaimed wraith, nothing more, nothing less.

zealex.9410:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

zealex.9410:

Firebaall.5127:

zealex.9410:

Around 2 months ye. Around 4 hours per week in a semi decent group.

And that’s why Raid armor is easy mode legendary……….

Unlike the wvw armor the pve one require the basic iq check to obtain.

I’d argue that getting WvW legendary armor requires more iq that buying yourself a way to be carried througth some raids…..

at least when we are talking in anyhow sensible timeframe – cause even if one is dumbest person ever, if he throws years of time into getting “legendary” piece I’d say he deserves it…..

Yeah but dedication doesnt mean skill required. Yes someone can buy the whole lwgendary armor but that will take him an EXTREME amount of gold.

Iirc there are some special spots in squads that you can share the squad’s participation without being near . So in theory you could buy the wvw system as well.

I am not sure if I am up to date with WvW squad stuff, but last time I have heard on those AN was considering giving commander a tools to give participation to people who would otherwise get none – like scouts – very important job, but gets 0 participation generated.

but then hey it basically boils down to same amount of effort put into whichever of these – apart from raiders getting shiny skins from it and being able to get it in much shorter timeframe due to less actuall timegating.

if I were to make a complaint in regard to ways to obtain legendary armor it would be teh fact that for any legendary weapon – or trinket with recent realeases you have to put considerabel effort in all branches of the game – PvE, sPvP and WvW. while the only legendary armor available in the game comes as far as I know – purely from raids if someone asked me it should get similar requirement of playing everything to obtain – in which case the separate functionality of WvW-obtainable-only would be something weird and maybe to complain about – but with precedence of raiding-only leggie? and all those shiny features? and official announcement that for the moment being they do not plan on developing more of legendary armors? with these I’d even expect a fractal only and dungeon only sets of “legendary in name, rarity and fuctionality but no shiny visuals” legendary armors – not only WvW and sPvP variants.

trueanimus.4085:

Dawdler.8521:

Aeolus.3615:

theres more aoe, more condi spam, and a ton of visual effects, overall more lag for sure what else is needed???

Unbalanced AoE, overpowered condi spam, broken visual effects and WvW disconnects?

They can always go the extra step.

dont really have to worry about condi after the expansion im guessing.. just the unkillable thief at 1800 range sniping you down with condi and the unkillable burn guardians.

1500 as for all the footage I have seen so far – exacly same as rangers traited longbow or engies traited nades…….

kdaddy.5431:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Stand The Wall.6987:

whats the point of eotm again?

wasn’t it supposed to be a thing where you can pretend to be usefull for your server’s effort while waiting in queues to real WvW maps?

I thought it was a way for PvE players to get some AP for WvW or was i wrong?

well all I got on it really was some sort of a release announcement and I think they have said something about being usefull to the war effort while waiting in the queues to join the proper maps……

jul.7602:

The real problem is that there are no longer any viable ways for smaller groups to defeat substantially larger groups without the use of siege.

and that part baffles me a little bit – you have a great tools available guys to do bad stuff to zergs and blobs and you discard it so easilly…..

I have seen multiple times a sizeable zergs being prevented from capturing objectives dues to 3 arrow carts that happened to be manned.

so now imagine how a well “bust” of enemy grouped up zerg would be a properly equipped keep – or screw it even tower should have enought space to deploy enought arrowcarts to the point that even if they failed to actually stop the zerg from capping this tower they would be getting so much punishment that they would reconsider few times if this tower is worth it…..

[hint hint: last tiem I checked arrowcart has a target limit that happens to be for soem funny reason be exacly same as squad max size is – coincidence? I think not]

zealex.9410:

Firebaall.5127:

zealex.9410:

Around 2 months ye. Around 4 hours per week in a semi decent group.

And that’s why Raid armor is easy mode legendary……….

Unlike the wvw armor the pve one require the basic iq check to obtain.

I’d argue that getting WvW legendary armor requires more iq that buying yourself a way to be carried througth some raids…..

at least when we are talking in anyhow sensible timeframe – cause even if one is dumbest person ever, if he throws years of time into getting “legendary” piece I’d say he deserves it…..

Turk.5460:

Judging by the OP’s signature, I’m guessing he almost 1 shots people with a glass gunflame build, but can’t finish them off if they have an ally nearby. Then he gets angry about a mechanic that he already knew existed before he even attacked, and comes to complain on the forum.

why need for ally nearby, when some glassy builds can basically die from downed skills alone?

I remember a very fun fight I had in my druid few days ago against a thief – 1v1 fight we have unloaded everythign we had on each other – and he got to downed state 2 seconds after me due to condi ticks – then I have finished him off with downed#1 [all hail bleed on rangers downed#1] while helping myself a bit with pet firstly hitting him too and later – once CD came off – my pet ressing me.

I can totally imagine such thief then go into forum raging about downed states

Ulion.5476:

@Trejgon I meant that you have to run back for supply instead instantly build siege. Running back for supply enables anyone to attack the siege. The time it take for super siege to destroy a wall/gate is close to the amount of time it take for a supply run.

well if I recall correctly in this specific tower takeover we have got the catapult running in one run – although claiming a camp for +5 supply capacity for sure have helped

Konig Des Todes.2086:

*too much characters in a post is a thing *

1. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Amnoon_Oasis
if memory serves in-game references suggest the settlement origin to elonian pilgrims leaving north with turai ossa in his pilgrimage to ascention before desolation become.. well desolation. so not crystal desert should not be considered “elona” terrain despite elonian activity in the area. and the streams suggest actually that the naming and placement is pretty much the same as gw1 with only main difference being settlement growing and whole area becoming more “alive” and less inhabited by spirits of those who failed to reach ascention there

Indeed Elona is not a continent, but it is actually name bound to a geographical place – to draw an analogy it’s like europe and asia – when you look at it it’s basically same “continent” but no one really argue where the europe is and where asia is.

2. actually we didn’t even go to crystal desert to for out for abaddon – for this purpose we went into realm of torment – earlier we have just went into desolation chasing the abaddons prophet in attempt to stop her from opening the hellgate [and actually fail at doing so] and while you could argue if desolation belongs to crystal desert or not it is already a thing outside of elonian borders at the nightfall time – althought if was the middle of jokos little empire which is current “country” spanning across all of elona – and even further than that. Although it gets little bit weird here with jokos redirecting river of elon into desolation……

3. ok I have indeed noticed after writing previous post on the peachy run the dialogues of the forged herald, altho even in this there is a correction to be made – they are not takign prisoners – they are killing people and balthasar “reforges” their souls into forged so basically he’s putting souls into pieces of magical armor while strappign them of any sort of free will…. sounds nearly like mursaat soul batteries….

4. yes there is exacly one S3 map where you get waipoints in areas considered middle of enemy terrain – in bloodstone fen – with two waipoints being in the middle of white mantle holdings in the area with one being putactually in so interestign place that quite often you can expect to be attacked by white mantle and blood stone elementals as soon as you waipoint into it.

5. yes stopping him from killing a dragon is stopping him from getting power….. from thsi specifc source – you have said nothing goign against what I’ve said apart from trying to say that the effect and cause are the same – yes tehre are elonian refugees runnign away from balthazars little invasion, and it actually writes in perfectly into what I have said – again it is not a “goal” to stop balthazar from regaining his power that tickles us off our goal is to prevent him from doing harm to our world in the way of doing so – and again – if he was trying to obtain this power in a way not endangering tyria no one would really care much.

actually even if the harmless-to-tyria-method involved killing of alot of elonians core tyria would probably not even bat an eye – and we have a precedence in lore already established! no one cared to rush into elona when refugees from it were swarming to core tyria running away from palawa’s invasion! apart from kryta “somewhat” acomodating those new refugees [it wasn’t a warm welcome by the way] no one actually cared about what was going on there.

so by this I am quite convinced that if balthazar went there just for a random slaughter no one would care – again. what it triggering all the heroes of tyria is the fact that he wants to kill a dragon and we are no longer fans of killing dragons.

[again little tl:dr for the point 5: stopping balthazar is stopping him from obtaining power from said dragon, but stopping him from obtaining power is not the same as stopping him from gaining power]

As to your claim about “no one would really go against balthazar if his method of regaining power were NOT harming us” – that’s untrue, given that Balthazar’s actions are highly hostile (the trailer for PoF’s second line is talking about a flood of Elonian refugees, meaning that Balthazar himself is dispersing Elonians from their homes left and right). Our reason for fighting him would be different, but it’s clear that they’ve made Balthazar a pure destruction kind of god of war now, rather than what he was beforehand. He’s already been shown as devastating non-dragon locations (like the pyramid he crumbled into floating debris, which we can see, clearly away from any dragonbrand/branded, in one of the trailers).

No one in core tyria went hellbent to stop palawa joko when he was conquering elona and the kryta was at the time quite heavilly flooded with elonian refugees at a time. No, central tyria would not come to elonian help if balthazar would not be endangering it directly – they didn’t do it earlier they would not do it now.

Ulion.5476:

Havoc groups or dungeon groups are balanced enough that they can take anything on the map. They may have to run supply to take a keep but they have enough supply to set-up on the out wall. Not sure who came up with the name havoc group. Probably because their was a time with no sentry buffs so some groups could flip unattended fully upgraded keeps.

Roamer never have enough supply to take a tower unless they are high rank, so they can only focus on picking off the slow zergers in their pve specs or camps. I mean roamers do account for close to half of the warscore. They are the one the get bloodlust, keep your camps to upgrade keep to t3 and scout.

oh so they call these “havoc” groups now? ^-^

as for taking towers….
it’s totally not like I did capped redbriar patch tower in a “party” of 2 people….

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

So why do roamers engage in pvp that heavily favors them, is low rewarded and has minimal impact to their server? Because they like to bully others.

there is an old saying, that if you ended up in a fair fight, you have already screwed up

also you are forgetting one detail in your analysis.
group requirements.

to be precise in here – there are an interesting lot of people whom does not want to hook up with coordinated dedicated groups, while they also wants to enjoy the “fun” provided by the area of warfare in the mists. if you do not like big groups or dedicated wvw guilds have too high requirements for your tastes – you agree upon working mostly alone. and when you agree upon having lower wxp rewards [getting participation up to t6 and keep it there is not a hard for a solo player as long as there is no party of 5 actively hunting you down] you start to build yourself upon concept of working alone and it just goes through.

also some does not really care about “rewards” from WvW because they do not seem anything of worthyness there….

apharma.3741:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

apharma.3741:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

The only elite spec that provides a meaningful amount of barrier is scourge. Your examples are likely impossible unless you’re being supported by one.

… then what about supported by 25 of them, which is the most likely scenario in WvW?

then 5 targets per cast mechanics screws you over as it does with any boons that are not spammable by pretty much everyone in yer comp in large numbers…..

I believe scourge has a trait or something where they get to summon a bigger soul thingy that affects upto 10 players so can extend the barrier coverage to 10.

Theres a lot of things changing in PoF like stances and mantras are getting a shake up which is likely to extend to core abilities too. From what I hear ele gets barrier soon on earth.

well 10 targets affected per cast only push out the issue into a problem of greater player numbers in the zerg – for as long as pretty much every player in you zerg can efficiently spam barriers I just can’t see it being anyhow gamebreaking for this aspect of the game.

on the other hand the smaller scale engagements can actually see a benefit from it where the number of combatants is small enought for a such supporting scourge or whoever with barriers to be abel to keep track of the movements of enemies to the point of being able to predict the spikes – in such case it could be actually used to nullify a decent portion of enemy spike damage which on teh othe hand could actually turn the tide

but in zergs? the best I can see they could try would be attempt of elevate as much barriers as possible when going into enemy zerg or when enemy zerg is going into you – and then unless meta shifted extremely from the last point I have participied in organised zergs it would not be really a tideshifting tool at all

I dunno how it’ll play out, we will have to wait and see to be honest, could make zergs tankier or it might be unworkable because the summon gets killed too easily. It might cost too much damage or utility to run, there’s a lot of speculation to be had. It may even provide little real benefit over current comps so many won’t run it because they don’t want to regear.

indeed

apharma.3741:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

The only elite spec that provides a meaningful amount of barrier is scourge. Your examples are likely impossible unless you’re being supported by one.

… then what about supported by 25 of them, which is the most likely scenario in WvW?

then 5 targets per cast mechanics screws you over as it does with any boons that are not spammable by pretty much everyone in yer comp in large numbers…..

I believe scourge has a trait or something where they get to summon a bigger soul thingy that affects upto 10 players so can extend the barrier coverage to 10.

Theres a lot of things changing in PoF like stances and mantras are getting a shake up which is likely to extend to core abilities too. From what I hear ele gets barrier soon on earth.

well 10 targets affected per cast only push out the issue into a problem of greater player numbers in the zerg – for as long as pretty much every player in you zerg can efficiently spam barriers I just can’t see it being anyhow gamebreaking for this aspect of the game.

on the other hand the smaller scale engagements can actually see a benefit from it where the number of combatants is small enought for a such supporting scourge or whoever with barriers to be abel to keep track of the movements of enemies to the point of being able to predict the spikes – in such case it could be actually used to nullify a decent portion of enemy spike damage which on teh othe hand could actually turn the tide

but in zergs? the best I can see they could try would be attempt of elevate as much barriers as possible when going into enemy zerg or when enemy zerg is going into you – and then unless meta shifted extremely from the last point I have participied in organised zergs it would not be really a tideshifting tool at all

Ulion.5476:

1.5 wxp levels an hr. By the time you finish you should be close to gold invader. 1.5 wxp per hour is what most players I talked to normally get in wvw.

and here I am, being happy when I manage to average 1.5 WXP levels a day xD

trueanimus.4085:

beware of lag that anet cannot fix.. the server isp is bottlenecked so you will get horrid lag in wvw and most of the new maps. Relogging helps sometimes.. but the game also has a major memory leak as well. After a while (even with the 64 bit client) the game will run out of memory and you will begin to see effects/players/weapons etc disappear. Eventually the game will crash or blue screen you. After 4 years.. we are still waiting on a fix for this.

those lags happens only during the prime time of the servers, and mostly when 50+ condi zergs decide to clash with other 50+ condi zerg. as for memory leaks and BSODs I haven’t seen a single one in over a year and I have got some crazy marathons of 8h+ in WvW

[and even those BSODs year ago for all the info I could get was most likely GPU overheating due to hot summer and cooling system not being efficient enought to compensate….]

and while you could hope for a “fix” of memory leaks there is no reall way to just “fix” lags – they can try to improve optimisation of certain elements but there is no golden bullet to that one :|

as for current state of WvW for all I can tell – depends on what you are into – if you prefer small groups operating on side fronts, ambushing enemy players, ruining their lines of supply and so on – it’s quite good as long as it is not the prime time with 50+ condi zergs deciding to have a clash at that specific map.

if you are into being a zergling and running within 50+ blobs with all the meta builds and so on – well good luck with your lags :|

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

The only elite spec that provides a meaningful amount of barrier is scourge. Your examples are likely impossible unless you’re being supported by one.

… then what about supported by 25 of them, which is the most likely scenario in WvW?

then 5 targets per cast mechanics screws you over as it does with any boons that are not spammable by pretty much everyone in yer comp in large numbers…..

quite an interesting read although I’m kind of surprised by the numbers estimate you have put out.

I mean I have totally been roaming in a past with parties up to 5 people, although 5 people could already tackle a tower aside from sentries/camps/ocasional player gank…

I wonder how would you call the groups that are too big to classify as roamers for your set of definitions but too small to be called zerglings or blobs…..

as for balancing – in my little perfect world, the perfect situation would be where the game discourages blobing up to anywhere like 50 players for one encounter while encouraging strategical split of forces into groups between 10 to 20 players.

although last time I remember fortifications serving as a force multiplier strong enought for such means people were complaining over stale gameplay and impossible to cap objectives…..

also I think it is kind of shame that commitment bonus caps out at +1 on wood.
could be a nice thing to promote active participation over longer periods of time with additional pips for reaching completing higher tiers – so the commitment bonus from previous week could for example allow one to reach higher in next week giving one better bonus for the next week allowing to get higher etc. not sure what the numbers and cap should be to balance it out properly thou

welp I think I’ll throw some stuff from myself – as a little bit more casual of WvW Players I do not mind people who have invested more time in wvw in the past to get more stuffs.

however it is not right when I am required to have perfect server performance and somehow manage to get outnumbered bonus and overally rip my veins off in effort to get just about same thing as someone who have spend a “liitle” bit more time in a mode gains… by default for just being there and making sure his participation bar does not get too low.

EDIT: I do not mind not hitting the cap as well – although seeing the guy hitting the cap with exacly same amount of effort that for you does not even gets you to the half of is a little bit… disheartening when you think about it.

Stand The Wall.6987:

whats the point of eotm again?

wasn’t it supposed to be a thing where you can pretend to be usefull for your server’s effort while waiting in queues to real WvW maps?

last time I checked warrior didn’t have a burst skill when wielding banners too :P

gib me yer tickets!
would be much appreciated^-^

ugrakarma.9416:

most complaints about condi come from ppl that tried kill big zergs, and gotta plagued. basically they think “im ubberskilled, its not fair a i lose tring against a blob of 50 man, cuz 50 man is a always a no-brainer, my team of 10 man is the best”. …. Numbers still matter, ousides big zergs, i never seem condi being a issue. On 20×20, the most condi-cleanses/supports/guards win over 20 necros/condi spammers….. Condi only become a issue, on tries like 30×50.

well loosing 1v1s against mesmers, and sometimes even 2v1s [while being on the 2 side] for sure does not help either

fishoa.9648:

3. Yes. You’ll need ascended gear with the right stats. Get ready for some PvE because you’re not getting those in WvW.

firstly, from personal experience I can say you can do just fine in full exotics, secondly last time I checked ascendeds from skirmish guy had a very broad array of stats to choose from….
like everything
I’m totally sure it is this way for trinkets I think I will now recheck if that is the case for armors and weapons too

EDIT: both triumphant hero and mistforged triumfant hero ascended pieces offers a stat selection of all available in game atm. and so does mistforged hero’s weapons – you could easilly get all things you need to get these from WvW only – it would just take some time

Sarpan.9074:

Getting up to the waterfall torqued me quite a bit at first but then I realized I just had to glide around the area where the updrafts that get you there form until they showed up. It sometimes takes a couple of minutes depending on the RNG timing.

I never have the artifact on me for this because, well, I don’t find it necessary or useful.

I’ve seen the Siren Training area and choir referred to in a couple of threads now. Where is that?

south from the waipoint there is a mastery trainer NPC, once you learn Sirens of Orr mastery he offers you teleportation to the area where you can “learn” how to actually use the thing

Ider.1276:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

and after all mursaat had a huge chunk of history when they’ve struck accords with other races only to betray them as soon as it requires to put any mursaat in the harms way, and frankly they have overlived their span for quite a bit – I may sound a little judgemental here, but I do not find mursaat race to be worthy of outliving seers, forgotten, dwarfs.

Actually if the lore tablets from Ember bay are true mursaat and forgotten were the only ones who tryed to assault the elder dragon (Zhaitan). And they were completely trashed in the process while dwarfs and jotun were cowering at their homes and seers theorising in their cosy labs over bloodstone. If that information is true it explains why mursaat said “screw you guys we are going home”. Just imagine nowarday Pact, the final assault on Orr, and the only ones who show up on a D-day are asura and sylvari. In result asura lose all their golems and half of military personal. I would not blame them if they said: “We are evacuating to the fractals of the mists now, have fun with dragons on your own”.
Of course, the lore from Ember bay tablets could be false, but we will never know now (thanks, Livia).

well I must admitt I didn’t read those tablets [yet] and was basing more on earlier establishments of mursaat lore [mostly gw1 stuff]

although I have hard time believing in dwarves “cowerign at their homes” considering how berserk they went on destroyers in Eye of the North…. [dunno much enought about jotuns to say anything about expectations of their behaviour]

and then asura evacuating into the fractals would not be just as bad as what mursaat ended up actually doing… [also ironically earlier lore establishments says that mursaat withdrawn “in crucial moment” so it could just be a case of like seers developping a weapon, everyone else holding their ground in ait for those weapons and mursaat with forgotten just deciding to leeroy onto zhaitan cause who needs weapon, which mursaat loosing alot to it and then decided to blame everyone else for not actually being there, and then they decided to go hide and we get logan case over again….. or maybe a precursor to that case, as in due to lack of one of members everything collapse before the right guy has a chance to do “the thing”

Susy.7529:

To me it’s the easiest of all new map’s sections, Balthazar’s is the most annoying one due to the moltitude of mobs.

well, for my experience area poses no issues….
as long as you are not tryign to actually reach those two mastery insights

then it is just very painfull attempt to time yourself just perfectly on that single specific chain of updrafts – which is noticeably more difficult for waterfalls because quite a few of importan ones in there are barely – if visible at all in the falling water

Kovu.7560:

That not all. If anything you’re at a disadvantage while in the air because ranged opposition can deal damage to you while you aren’t able to attack in return, or defend yourself. There won’t be any updrafts to save you.
Flying won’t give you some inherent advantage, it will just allow you to traverse the maps more quickly in certain situations. And even that’s situational.

I do agree you shouldn’t be able to begin gliding whilst in combat in wvw.

~ Kovu

didn’t they mention something about bloodstone fen-like gliding skills for Wargliding?

not that it changes alot – for most of current WvW maps it will probably just serve as a sort of opener for defending zerg to initiate running throught assaulting zerg…. at least for large scale engagements – but then for small scale I can’t see it being anyhow game breaking either – even with ability to initiate gliding while in combat already thiefs and mesmers are running away much faster than glider would hope in such territories….

Malernasam.4327:

PvE components of WvW (defending objectives).
[…]
Where is any mention of what this will do for players learning builds, and rotations?
[…]
How about positioning with commander? How to play backline?

picked up these specific part because that’s pretty much essence of your post over here that I wish to adress.

1. Defending objectives in WvW IS NOT “PvE” aspect of the mode.
2. Builds and rotations are NOT “PvP” aspect of the WvW
3. stacking up huge lot of people ontop of commander is not that hard, and is not ONLY aspect of the PvP in WvW

you need to understand here that WvW also refered in game as “war in the mists” is the game mode revolving around factions fighting over a land – attacking/defending of towers, keeps, camps are not “Player versus Environment” aspect it’s the core point of the mode – and is even PvE’ish only when you attack undefended objective

also builds and rotations have just as much to do with PvP as it does with PvE – and ironically high-end PvE puts much more emphasis on this one, than any sort of encounter you will ever get in WvW environment – to quote a freidn from WvW centric guild I used to be “stack up 25 might and everyone gets dps-y” [note: quoted statement was made some time ago when main zerg meta was bringing up alof of bunker builds with AoEs, stack up might onto them and then run throught enemy group while throwing all the AoE’s in their general direction [with ocasional blasting off water fields to keep your bunkers alive]

Speaking of zergs: I am deeply sorry for bursting your bouble here – but zerg clashing is not the only type of PvP encounters that occurs within WvW – there is alot of people roaming, hampering supply lines and taking up objectives behind the line to overally reduce scores while zergs are busy clashing.
To visualise how important it is I will name here things that were happening today when I was playing WvW – on one of borderlands we have kept the bay and for most – emphasis on “most” of time at least one camp attached to said keep – and due to activity of hostile zerg along this keep, there was constant shortage of supplies – to repair walls, set-up siege engines in place of of destroyed ones – and for quite big chunk of time during that one supplies from the camps was just barely arriving in enought numbers to fill into those needs – and it would probably all go much smoother for said keep defence if not for small groups – 4-5 enemies oftenly harassing the camp I was at – and since more often than not defending force in the immediate area was inferior in stranght-numbers to harassing ones in quite a few ocasions all I could do was to keep their attention for long enought for dolyak to reach the keep [not the very long route it was] – and actually once our zerglings have showed in force, the only way I was gratefull for their presence was because they have pushed enemy zerglings and took the battle to their garri, allowing us a breathing room to fully repair and resupply the keep. other than that, the best thay were doing to my effort in that evening was lag generation… which isn’t really a merit at all.

And yes I was engaging just as much into PvP aspects on WvW as anyone else on said borderland at a time, and my effort was just as needed for score of our servers as of those zerglings .

PS. and I can promise you that there would be much more fun for everyone if those zerglings instead of amassing 90% of map population into one place for one “major battle” have split up into task forces, each responsible for their own piece of region – be it capturing and defending it or harassing instead. and the odds are that such gameplay meta of WvW would also be less stressfull for the servers

Chadramar.8156:

I also like the hints that the mursaat were unfairly over-vilified in a “history is written by the victors” kind of way

well for me, and this is also kind of a thing I actually “liked” about GW1 lore on mursaat is that they were explained in that story to not be your typical bad guy. They were just a bunch of fellas who were ready to do ANYTHING to preserve their race [and you can’t really blame them for wish to survive right?] this of course have let to multiple moraly controversial acts – like using souls of people to power up batteries on a barrier designed to keep doors of khomalie shut forever.

Of course folks from that nation that was slaughtered would feel bad about it and the funny thing really is that all it would take to secure mursaat’s more would be finding someone who is not hard coutnered by titans and streak a deal for them to get to the other sides of doors of komalie and just casualy slaughter up residends of the foundry of failed creations, or if that’s too harsh – just setup the fortress guarding the doors on the other side of it and keep a guard on it – of course that would require mursaat to pay back a favour somehow, and maybe they have felt that what they were doing to krytans was exacly this kind of deal…. expect they forgot to tell krytans about it.

and after all mursaat had a huge chunk of history when they’ve struck accords with other races only to betray them as soon as it requires to put any mursaat in the harms way, and frankly they have overlived their span for quite a bit – I may sound a little judgemental here, but I do not find mursaat race to be worthy of outliving seers, forgotten, dwarfs.

Nighteyess.2149:

I think you forgot some of us like WvW for the fights.

Personally I like WvW for the “War” aspect of it. not for the “battle” aspect of it
[on tactical level WvW meta tends to devolve into unenjoyable blob fights, when tacklign things on strategical level it gets much more variety of more interesting things]

as for pips reward changes? I’m not entirely sure – it would be nice if the new system didn’t just throw out casually getting wooden chest completed in previous week although I do see how it would multiply amounts of pips quite powerfully in this sort of setup. some sort of pip award for actually killing enemies also would indeed be nice due to quite a few roamers whom focus mostly on ambushing and killing off smaller groups of enemies without having capability to actually mount a siege of even a tower.

also speed of getting pips may be an issue although I think this one can be awerted by “just” increasing amounts of pips needed

Taglor Anwamane.9468:

LS3 was disorganized, a slew of one-shot gimmick plots.

actually if you play throught all of episodes in short span of time [like you would for example with personal story, or HoT story] you will notice that actually LS3 delivers quite a coherent story – but a multithreaded one or should I say – bi-threaded

basically you have two main threads that are intertwinning themselves and leads up to the thrid one, with first one being completed, nd the other one still going on – with one thread running slowly up in the background.

but again – the problem is that alot of connections gets “lots” in reception when you get average 70 days of break between each episode.

tbh I think the story of LS3 would sell more as a single-package-expansion. hopefully AN learns their thing and in future saves sotry multithreading like this for expacs and gives us more…. single-minded story in Season 4

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Sarie.1630:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And the goal of “prevent Balthazar from killing Kralkatorrik so he doesn’t regain his full power and destroy the world” is very little different from “prevent Abaddon from breaking free so he doesn’t regain his full power and destroy the world”. The only difference is that instead of chasing down Copy of Varesh for 80% of the storyline, we’re chasing down Copy of Abaddon for 80% of the storyline.

That’s more-or-less the plot of every game ever.

Stop the bad guy from doing the bad thing because otherwise… catastrophy!

It’s more than just “stop the bad guy from doing the bad thing”. Both plots so far are “go to Elona to stop the fallen god and his once-human demonic army from obtaining power needed for him to enact his revenge against the other gods, and along the way make an alliance with lesser of two evils Palawa Joko”.

That’s a hell of a lot more specific. The only difference is the source of that power – freedom from prison versus killing a dragon.

firstly, we are nto heading to elona per se to stop him, but we are going to crystal desert to stop him – reaching elona in chase is different thing.

secondly not all GW characters “went” to elona – quite alot of them actually started their adventure in elona – and even outsiders didn’t go there to stop any god from anything – they went there to support sunspears in attempt to overthrow insane leader on one of the provinces.

thirdly – again – we have NO proof of forged EVER being human in ANY regard – actually – the way they are refered to in annoncement rather implies them being constructs similar to jades or golems – fully artificially created army to serve specific master.

also we know nothing about any possible alliance wiht palawa joko – waipoint in his territory does not mean much – in core game we have a waipoint just outside the entrance of the main flame legion bastion, with quite a few waipoints deep within what would be regarded – their territory – does that make us allied with flame legion at any point of personal story? no.

also – we are not going to crystal desert to stop balthazar from regaining power – we are there to stop him from killing elder dragon – because said death at the moment being is supposed to be devastating to tyria – no one would really go against balthazar if his method of regaining power were NOT harming us and if we knew that his “campaign” has no impact upon us – it is not balthazar gaining bower that is bothering us but the way he is intending to do so.

as opposed to aforementioned abaddon in which case we were very interested in him not breakign loose from his prison because the thing he was intending to do with that “power” was to change our word into very dark and grim place

Taglor Anwamane.9468:

Jennah is unfit to rule. The only thing you need to know to prove that is that she demolished a former residential district to build an arena for her own amusement and lavish festivals, likely at devastating cost to the Krytan taxpayers.

no, she has took a place that was in major ruin, and gave it a purpose of existing that have fit the area – sure she could just bust off the funds to build another canthan district ontop of the great collapse – but considering the reasons why it collapsed in the first place – don’t you think that the other one would be likely to collapse in exacly same way? wasting ven more resources and killing even more people?

Gomes.5643:

Yeah….. and I just made a post about how I liked the depiction of Balthasars Followers as battlehungry but not “evil” per definition….. and then they replaced them by molten demon things ….. which slaugther unarmed civilians …… because why not?

Wasnt Balthasar a god that honored braveness and despite cowardness? I think in the new map there also was a story about this. And isnt the thing this herold of balthasar is doing in the first mission exactly the definition of cowardness? Attacking those who cannot defend themselves and avoiding those who can fight back (like the PC).

I really hope there is a deep backstory behind this and not just “Balth is evil now, because …… lulz.” But my trust in the story writing capabillities of Anet is going downhill pretty fast…..

Yes he used to be a “honorable” one.

although in flashpoint he says that he “has learned that there is no honor in war”

alot of people are jumping here to conclusion but when we stick to the hard facts tha picture we get is that balthazar has changed, and for some reason we want’s to claim vengeance on the other gods, and a hint that he feels like betrayed by them and stripped of his power.

we do not know why he wants to kill off other gods, we do not know why he feels betrayed, we do not know what kind of event have shifted so greatly his perception of war.

we also do not know if forged are anyhow related to any humans – so the argument that he makes his followers into demonic entities also is still unsupported.

yes it seems that balthy is going down the route of being second abaddon, but that alone does not make PoF a reskinned rehash of Nightfall.

JTGuevara.9018:

Chrono.6928:

i actually liked it… a lot.

Sure it was a little all over the place but that’s how they’ve done all the living world stories so far. They give a few answers and a lot of new questions. Closure? Ha come back a few seasons or expansions from now.

I am curious as to why balthazar returned? Where has he and the others been all this time? Why does he suddenly not care about us or tyria?

A little? Try a lot. Season 2 wasn’t like this. Season 2 had a central focus: Modremoth and the dragons. All the sub-plots: exposition of Scarlet, the rise of Mordrem, the attacks on Salma/Concordia, the assist of the races and the gathering of world leaders, Ogden, the story of Caithe. They all revolved around Mordremoth.

Season 3, on the other hand, was a mess. It started off ok with Lazarus, then it just lost focus. It couldn’t decide which direction to go. The central focus of the story kept changing with each episode. I’m just there thinking, “What is the story trying to communicate to me? It’s doing way too much.” I just became more confused as time went on.

“We’re going after Lazarus!”
“Wait, Jormag/Primordus are awake!”
“Ok, we’re going after dragons!”
“Wait we need a machine.” “Ok, we got the machine!”
“Wait, Balthazar is here! Lazarus is a fake…”
“Rrggh—ok—we’re going after Balthazar….”
“Wait, we’re going after Lazarus again!”
“……seriously?……fine whatever”

Granted, I will give credit that the Lazarus and Mursaat story is officially concluded. Still, the Mursaat have been dragged through the mud thanks to this sloppy writing and I just wasn’t as invested as I was in the beginning of the season.

Honestly, the storytelling needs to step it up. As it is now, I am NOT excited for the expansion.

there are two center axises of LS season 3 – and yes it did take me a re-run to arrow it just to two of them.

1. Taimis research on elder dragons
2. Wite Mantle and the Mursaat

We start off with White Mantle going “out of shadows” for full re-apperance with – what they thought was resurrected lazarus – and immediate split in it between two factions, in the backgroudn we are getting info on Taimi doing more research on certain aspects of dragons and dragon magic.

Following the reveal of Primordus going active we go back to taimi’s research on dragons. and get info on a message from braham on jormag being active too – which we assume being valid thing because we still totally trust Braham’s judgement on that matter.

Little discourse with very-handy-simulator room get’s interrupted by information that the game has changed – so we go to get samples for taimi – while gettign them we take a little detour to actually stabilise the island cause islands blowing up is never a goot thing.

Next we continue on with Taimi’s research – the samples from destroyers haeve provided enought information for taimi to form a thesis, and we go to the only other active dragon’s territory to obtain samples to check the theory out.

And we end up running into braham and talk him into waiting for Taimi’s research to give more valid info before rushing out which he ignores and rushes out for the dragon.

Then on queens request we pay a visit to divinity’s reach – and we are shifting out attention to the white mantle again – not without a siege of invitation to do just so – in the end we cut off the head of the – apparently stronger side of the splintered white mantle and end up accidentally stumbling upon a “proof” that lazarus is no lazarus.

research of taimi on dragons yields fo a result – machine allowing to kill off two at same time – due to convenient meeting we have a chance to pursue the lead of who exacly is the bloodstone powered guy who pretends to be a mursaat, and he cames out to be no one more but balthy himself – and he steals the ominious machine and runs away.

since we do not like when stuff is stolen from us, especially when it is prototype untested tech we go on after the trails we’ve got, during which tiem taimi goes back to research of things and realise that activating said machine is no good idea at all – so we prevent dragons getting killed and then go onto the track of our fresh new plotline born from White mantle path and dragons reasearch path combined, to seek answers on what this guy is into and “accidentally” end up finishing once and for all – white mantle and the mursaat path.

so we had 2 main “paths” that were intertwined, and have given birth to the third one that grows to the main path of the next expac, while killing totally off one of said parent lines – please bear in mind that I did not mention aurene path here, because by no way it was anyhow “main” path – it was ocasional sidetrack running in the background of a thing that was started in heart of thorns, goes on slowly in the background and is supposed to be – sooner or later – a major plot thing – but we are far from that point yet.

really the acusation of it beign all over the place with no logic is false claim – although somewhat justified because of two major lines and a side line being mixed together like that in releases spanning of two months+ breaks between establishments can createa feel of everythign jumpign aroudn with no sense or logic behind it – but we should focus on actuall issues and not “feels” of issues which in this case means that we should focus on pointing out that such mixing does not work well for stories with such breaks between them so AN gets the point and reserves those parts of planned plotline for expacs storylines while givign us a more focused living story seasons so the complex stuff gets to be played in short time of span so you do not get lost in stuff due to passage of time – and in the times where compent is goign out in more slowy pace there is nothing to be confused about.

Cristalyan.5728:

draxynnic.3719

In Sea of Sorrows, Livia makes it clear that the Shining Blade is dedicated to the Krytan monarchy, not to the individual who happens to be occupying the throne at the time. They can, and do, defy the monarch if they feel that the monarch is putting the interests of Kryta at risk, and this is particularly so if they feel that the monarch might be putting the continued rule of the royal family at risk.

I truly hope you are wrong. Because if true, that means the Blades are the true rulers of Kryta.
Is the same as saying that the Police Force in one country is dedicated to maintain the order in the country. And if they feel that a President is not good enough for this or that a President may not serve the purpose of maintaining the order in the country they may take action against him. Keeping the President as institution but eliminating the person they don’t like.

If the Blades are not a merely tool for the monarch and they have even the slightest degree of initiative (regarding the Monarch) based on what they feel, that means Kryta is no more a Monarchy. It is an anarchy.

I find a much better situation to have Jennah as a Tyrant than to have the Blades as the secret organization deciding who will be the Monarch, what kind of politics the Monarch is allowed to make, deciding when a Monarch should be replaced etc. All of this based on what they feel.

kinda reminds historical pretorians – whom have if memory serves auctioned throne of rome like twice.

and then I’d heavilly disagree with choice of words – it’d not be anarchy [no rule/rule of chaos] but oligarchy – rule of specific “chosen group”.

and then I suppose tha decision of this caliber [going against this specifc monarch because he/she is putting royal line in jeopardy] would at no point just pass by “I feel like this king/queen is bad let’s change it” but would actually require a common decision among most – if not all of the inner circle – probably something along the lines of – one of them raises suspition on one of their super-secret-meetings and then they discuss it and come to one conclusion together – and then also what the guy above said does nto say they pick the monarch per se – they are still bound to specific line – they couldn’t just say that jennah is bad and swap her for… for example logan even if she was dismantling kryta – because there is no other member of this specific royal family to replace her – although I’d imagine at this point of time countess anise tryign to talk jennah into “finally having some kids, because the lien will not prolong itself on it’s own kitten” :P

perilisk.1874:

I’m kinda hoping that there is some difference from the Nightfall plotline. Right now, it sounds like a shot-for-shot remake.

well the main difference for now is that we start off fighting a god that is rampaging throught tyria – in Nightfall for the most of the time we were fighting god’s servant’s in attemtp to PREVENT said god being unleashed upon tyria – quite a difference

EDIT:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Well Joko is not unfamiliar with concept of allying with outsider heroes to secure his ruleship.

Balthasar going in with all the forged blazing would be most likely perceived by Joko as a threat and by thus I’d assume he ould respond with force, and wouldn’t mind us joining in – the question is tho – if we would want to ally with him.

Certainly I’d not :P

I am happy it’s going to be PvE expansion.

for a “PvE expansion” I must say it introduce an awfull lot of PvP elite specs – we can only imagine what influence on WvW and sPvP will these have….

WvW
-Deadeye – it will be ridiculously OP/broken
-Holosmith – the dawn of the suicide bomber; people will charge up and run in to enemy groups to detonate (I’m calling it now)
-Spellbreaker – the aoe silence on warrior will be horribly broken
-Scourge – some people will try it and realize that standing still means you already died; successful blobs tend to walk in a circle like Nascar

PvP
-the only place Mirage might get used, it’s the same crap dps we have with scepter just new animations; can’t be used with shield (Chrono) – likely will never be used by 95% of the playerbase

Those are my current guesses.

well sounds mostly similar to my thoughts althought I was more thinking up in lines of – “will completely reshuffle meta” instead of “will be OP/broken”

also I’d predict quite a few of mesmers to resurface in small scale WvW – ya know small groups roaming is still a thing – and mesmer already is irritating in those [when player knows how and what to do] and with mirage stuff that is said – it will be even more irritating…

Well Joko is not unfamiliar with concept of allying with outsider heroes to secure his ruleship.

Balthasar going in with all the forged blazing would be most likely perceived by Joko as a threat and by thus I’d assume he ould respond with force, and wouldn’t mind us joining in – the question is tho – if we would want to ally with him.

Certainly I’d not :P

I am happy it’s going to be PvE expansion.

for a “PvE expansion” I must say it introduce an awfull lot of PvP elite specs – we can only imagine what influence on WvW and sPvP will these have….

flog.3485:

And please, seriously, I fail to see how “magnificent” the ending of Zhaitan was. We all know that the final instance was sooo lackluster and even Anet admitted they didn’t have enough time to design a proper endboss fight.

Background music – this is all that made the Zhaitan killing for me to be honest.
[on a somewhat related note reusing the track in the final fight of restoring caladbolg have felt out of place :| ]

As for the season 3 and it’s comparision with season 2.

Personally I have real troubles with replaying Season 2 content – be it for achievements, or just to complete the story on other characters, and so far I have not encountered those when replaying Season 3 content [haven’t run different characters throught it though]

The main issue I see at this point with season 3 is how some things didn’t really play out due to 2-3month release schedule. for example after finishing the story of “out of shadows” I was really amazed by the amounts of weight just dropped… and the “cliffhanger” attached.

but then the time passed and within this time I managed to bore myself out jump into 3 other games, nearly forget about a thing and jump back into GW2 just for the rising flames. And as I think about it right now even at that point their release schedule made it impossible to truelly capitalise on “out of the shadows” ending.

at this moment I do not remember if they dropped jormag on us on the ending of rising flames, or during crack in the ice already so I have hard time putting it here into this case.

Head of the Snake was direct follow up to out of the shadows and at this moment of going throught story one may have a feeling that previous two episodes could just as well not happen, and nothing would change, with following up flashpoint tying them actually back into the context.

One path ends suffers from few major things here: firstly – leaks of the next expansion attached to the season finale announcement have set already expectation for many that this episde must send us off into specific area – with people after flashpoint wondering how the heck even could that be sensibly done. Secondly it came out of plot thread and jumped into resolving and completing the other leaving a hang up on said thread we came out of, which may or may not be a bad method of storytelling but for sure is controversial one.

To summarise and maybe deliver some sort of TL:DR to this post – Season 3 Majorly suffers in my opinion from the clash of the story type with releasing schedule – this story could probably fell out much better with episodes released at least one per month if not even more often, but with so long breaks between the episodes, the ties between them gets lost for many which leads to feeling of randomly hoping back and forth without any real sense.

as for my future “advice” to AN – if you feel that current release schedule is good for you – try to adapt the ways of yoru story telling more to fit into delivery method – so your story don’t suffer from longish breaks between episodes

Cristalyan.5728:

Taking the definitions into account, then Jennah is indeed a dictator. He has the absolute power and nobody can challenge this.

Well taking second burst of definitions into accout, every monarch ever would be a dictator… (with few exceptions where the royal family serves no purpose other than representative one)

Actually it would make all non-democratic monarchies into dictatorships, and sicne they are noticeable differences between these two I’d say that internet dictionaries should be taken with a pinch of salt.

As for Jennah – she’s without any doubt a monarch. “dictator” is alot more modern word tbh and I am unsure if we should even consider using it in medievalish fantasy setting… at least when kryta is concerned.

We could argue upon a type of monarch she is, and one thing for sure – for all we know she wants good for her people.

Before I’ll delve little bit deeper into that one – I will adress question in the topic of this thread. By ancient Greek standard – yes Jennah is a Tyrant – but then they defined a word very simply – if country is run by a single person making decisions – then this person is a tyrant. Notable mention here would be that citizens of Athens extremely disliked the possibility of one person ruling over them – regardless of quality of said person.

By a little bit more modern standards you could argue, as people tends to associante word “tyrant” with “usurper” in a way that when they say tyrant they mean not only a person who has absolute power in the state – but also that person have got into that power throught “wrong” ways.

Back to the monarchy in kryta though – personally I’d lean onto kryta working on a more of feudal monarchy than absolute one – as far as we can see there are different areas administered by different people, responding to the queen – most notably Bettlestone village with surrounding area is clearly stated to be under the rule of local nobility family – used to be Caduceus, but I am not sure who have supposefully taken it up after death of his and all his possible heirs I am aware off.

If Jennah was and absolute monarch by the way the whole plot with caduceus would not happen – he would be most likely beheaded just after failed assasination in story mode of Caduceus Manor dungeon – with absolute monarchy no one would care about proving caduceus guilt – the mere fact that such a thing occured under caduceus nose would be more than enought for execution. Which is more than a profo to me that absolute monarchy is not a thing in kryta.

As for Shining Blade – I think that’s a notable overestimation of it’s abilities.
Sure, they know things that Order of Whispers does not, but on the other hand order of whispers seems to be in knowledge of things that Shining Blade could never even dream of – assuming they even cared.
Magical Artifacts up to Priory’s standard? well that one may actually be, but even if, the mere amounts of those artifacts in priory’s posession would probably outdo Shining Blade by quite a margin.
Military Strength of the Vigil? nah, not even close – Seraphs, maybe could rival it – but not the Shining Blade – straight military strenght was never attribute of that group by the way.

Also – Shining Blade is sword to protect kryta – if shining Blade alone had strenght and assets of 3 orders of tyria combined – would the pact be ever needed? “obviously” dragons are a danger to kryta – and the queen – so what would be stopping Shining Blade from killing off zhaitan while 3 orders were still disagreeing in their methods?

Gudy.3607:

Goatjugsoup.8637:

Would be nice if the map closure timer persisted above the mini map so that we can know for sure if a map is still going to be closed and what sort of time we have before it does.

As I understand it, once that map closure timer pops up, that instance is doomed and there’s no keeping it alive. That the timer has the unfortunate tendency to randomly vanish is nonetheless a bug that needs fixing.

my experience shows up that it used to be a case, but apparently it was patched up at a point and map does not close when properly repopulated – or at least – mostly.

regardless of whether timer is up or not if the map is on tiemr to close there is a “leave instance” arrow above the minimap goign shiny – it dissparears when population level gets restored past aforementioned point.

Ashantara.8731:

Therefore, it no longer seems too far fetched to say that “E” might be Evennia (who could be Anise indeed).

I’d only like to point out that