Guild Wars 2

I took the liberty of updating the wiki to now say:

• If the player tries to teleport to a full map, the player will be unable to do so but the item will still be used (effectively wasting the item).

Hopefully that’s a little more clear. :-)

The latest Asuran intelligence reports have located Rytlock:

http://i1.2pcdn.com/node14/image/article/201403/21/20140321061132a0dqmkfip8xfvgmn.jpg

He’s roaming the Mists, looking for brave heroes who are ready for the big leagues and trying to convince them to step up to the plate and join the elite group of VIP members who enjoy exclusive benefits that “make like worth living”.

He’ll be back home as soon as he hits his sales quota.

All this is showing is the price difference between buy orders and sell orders, and making the (incorrect) conclusion that the difference between them is your ROI.

To make money, you’d need to know whether those orders are moving at a decent velocity. It doesn’t do you any good to put in a bunch of buy orders for things no one is selling, or to list sell orders for things no one is buying.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Why introduce this to GW2? I see dual-class systems as basically saying that the existing professions don’t stand well on their own and need to be supplemented by skills from other classes.

If they did it right and balanced the skills and traits properly, I think we’d have some interesting debates about pure vs. dual builds. Staying with a single profession would be more straight forward, and would be perfectly viable for folks who just want to jump in and play without too much number crunching. But allowing the option of secondary professions would bring back some of that collectable card game like deck building that we had in GW1. Back in GW1 there were plenty of viable pure builds.

Also, people are itching for new skills and traits. While introducing a dual profession system wouldn’t really be adding “new” skills and traits, it would be adding a lot more variety to every profession without as much additional work. ArenaNet would still need to do some balancing, but they wouldn’t have to create all new skills and traits from scratch. Also, many of the skills and traits could be used by every character, which adds a lot more mileage for every new skill or trait they add.

But to your point, I think the key to the system would be to ensure that single-profession builds were still very viable. It would be like playing with the standard starter deck in Magic: The Gathering vs. playing with the starter deck plus several boosters. Both are just as viable, but the latter provides more options and variety but not necessarily more power (hello, horizontal progression!).

It ends on the 13th. Although it wasn’t mentioned in the actual Wintersday article — it was mentioned in the article talking about the conclusion of Season 2.

Agreed that it would be nice to have mentioned that in the actual Wintersday article and release notes. I know some people who were going to be out of town for Christmas and were worried they would miss everything. They felt a lot better when told it actually runs through mid-January.

The quick and easy way: you gain the healing skills, utility skills, elite skills and first four trait lines from your second profession. You still get the same number of trait points, but you now have 4 additional lines to spread them across. The fifth trait line is not included because it boosts your profession-specific attribute, much like how in GW1 you cannot raise a secondary profession’s primary attribute. Your armor-class, weapon skills and profession-specific mechanic remain tied to your primary profession.

While some traits simply wouldn’t be applicable since they only affect your weapon skills (e.g. the warrior’s Stronger Bowstrings, which increases long bow range, would be completely useless on an engineer), there would still be room for some interesting builds. For example, a thief/guardian could spec into Radiance (increases Precision and Condition Damage), and take Blind Exposure (applying Blind also applies Vulnerability) and Powerful Blades (sword and spear damage is increased). Or a Guardian/Ranger could spec into Nature Magic (increases Vitality and Boon Duration), and take Nature’s Bounty (regeneration you apply lasts longer) and Two-handed Training (great sword damage is increased; great sword attacks have chance to grant Fury on hit).

Don’t feel like you have to get one of the Ultra-Extreme-Super-Snazzy-Edition motherboards. They may give slightly more headroom for overclocking or be a little more stable at extreme overclock speeds, but you’re not going to notice much — if any — difference outside of synthetic benchmark tests. Save your money and put it into a better graphics card or CPU, or upgrade to a solid state hard drive — those are the places where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Pick a motherboard based on what features you need, not performance — because any decent motherboard from a major manufacturer will perform pretty much the same. Asus has been my manufacturer of choice for over a decade, and I build about 1 – 2 PCs a year for friends, family or self. I’ve also used Gigabyte and ASRock on occasion and have had good luck with them too.

Basically, figure out what CPU you want. Then pick a motherboard family that supports it. Then pick the specific board model that includes the extra features you want.

As a point of reference, my system is:

MB: Asus Z97
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600k
RAM: 8GB DDR3-1600
GPU: NVIDIA GTX780
Drives Corsair Performance 3 128GB SSD (OS and favorite games) + Western Digital Black 650GB SATA-III HD (data drive)

The game runs very smooth at ultra settings, even during crowded boss events. However, I don’t think an i7 is necessary for gaming. I got it because I’m a software engineer and I’m running development applications which do take advantage of it. Unless you’re going for an extreme-gaming setup, a high-end i5 will serve you just fine.

One thing I didn’t see you mention was the power supply. Make sure you don’t skimp on this! A flaky PSU is very difficult to troubleshoot, and a cheap unit can actually damage your other components if it shorts or surges. Go with a major name brand, 650 – 850 watts, at least 80PLUS Bronze certified, with a multi-year warranty.

Good luck with the new build, and have fun! :-)

You may already know these things, but here’s a few tips to make communication easier…

If you have the chat window displayed, you can just hit ENTER to start chatting — you don’t have to click it. Pressing \ will hide/show the chat window.

You can ping a location on the mini-map by holding shift while clicking. It doesn’t even have to be an object – just shift-click anywhere and your team will see a red ping symbol on their map. Hold shift while dragging on the mini-map to draw on it. Press ALT and click on the map to set a waypoint (you can’t travel to it – it just marks a location).

Press CTRL + T to mark a target for your party. Everyone else in your party can press T to select your called target.

Between drawing on the map and pinging targets, you should be able to direct your party with minimal to no typing needed. But if you really want to TALK, then Skype, TeamSpeak, etc. would be best.

While it may sound silly at first, try using a baby name website. I especially like this one:

http://www.babycenter.com/baby-names

You can search based on cultural origin, meaning, sound patterns and syllables.

If you look up the different races on the Wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Race), they give tips on each race’s naming conventions.

So if you’re making a Charr (who have Latin names) Warrior, you could search for a male Latin name that means “strong”, or whatever.

And as others have said, remember that you can include spaces in your name – so you can use surnames and/or titles (for a sylvari: Warden Cedric, Cedric of the Dawn, Cedric Duskborn etc).

Or spell a name slightly different: Jacen, Jaycen, Jhaycen, Jayson, etc.

If you’re really stumped, post on the forms with your race, profession and what sort of name you’re looking for (fierce, mysterious, sneaky, etc), and some folks can probably make some suggestions.

For me personally, I would not drop 1,050 gems (about $12.50) on 10x temporary Experience Boosters. There are so many ways to get extra XP in this game, there’s just no sense in spending real money on temporary boosters. Just buy 800 gems ($10), then get one set of cosmetic armor, convert a handful of gems to gold to buy an 18-slot box/bag (hint: the leather ones are usually cheaper than the mithril ones) and do whatever you want with the remaining gems. The Heroic Edition only lets you choose between three specific armor skins; if you buy gems you could pick from any of them.

If you’re really wanting to spend 1,600 gems to get the legacy armor, 10x XP boosters and 18-slot box, you may as well just buy the Digital Deluxe Upgrade, which costs 400 gems more and will give all those items PLUS the Chalice of Glory (PvP rank bonus), Tome of Influence (guild influence bonus), Miniature Rytlock, Golem Banker and Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill. It occasionally goes on sale for half off. I thought it was very overpriced at 2,000 gems ($25) but when it went on sale for 1,000 gems ($12.50) it fell into the realm of “fun luxury splurge” for me.

I have a programmable keyboard (Razer Anansi) and have programmed one of its macro buttons to repeatedly double-click when held down. This seems to be the simplest and most elegant solution.

Salt in the Wound
Kill 5 ambient creatures in Rata Sum

:-)

My wife has carpel tunnel and fibromyalgia. While she enjoyed this year’s Halloween event and the “mountains of loot” we were getting from the Mad King’s Labyrinth initially, it eventually turned into a rather painful experience when she tried opening all those bags.

I created macro on my Razer keyboard that repeatedly double-clicks when I hold one of my macro keys down (and then logged into her account on my PC to open all her bags). I am not going to get carpel tunnel syndrome myself and cut the life expectancy of my rather expensive gaming mouse by an order of magnitude because I have to individually open every single loot bag/box I get (especially when some bag/boxes spawn EVEN MORE bags/boxes).

We DESPERATELY need a Use All option on the right-click menu for those folks who do not have macro-capable keyboards, or either don’t know or aren’t comfortable using AutoHotkey or similar utilities. Perhaps Arena.Net is secretly on the payroll of all the major mouse manufacturers. (I’m joking, of course. :-) )

Arena.Net — you really need to consider that some of your players have physical conditions which make repeatedly double-clicking multiple stacks of boxes/bags painful. Heck, at the rate we’re going some people are probably going to develop repetitive stress conditions as a result of this. Even playing rather casually for a single night I can amass quite a large collection of loot bags. This much rapid repetitive motion is not healthy, not to mention that it’s going to put some serious undue wear and tear on our mice.

Your primary means of leveling up is exploring the world. Check your world map and look for a little telescope icon. That’s a scout, and he will point out various tasks in the area that you can complete (the yellow hearts on your map).

Most tasks give you the option of performing a variety of combat and non-combat activities, but I would recommend focusing on the combat-related activities to fulfill the task objective since you’ll kill two birds with one stone — getting experience from completing the task itself as well as all the monsters you kill to fulfill the objectives of the task (and you’ll get loot from the monsters too).

As you’re traveling from task to task, look for dynamic events along the way that you can complete. The best events for leveling are the ones that involve defending an area from hordes of monsters (like in the norn staring area, there’s one where a horde of dozens of minotaurs stampede through the area). Use your area-effect skills to blast as many monsters as possible and you can rack up experience very quickly.

Also visit any nearby vistas, way points, points of interest and skill points as you’re moving between tasks and events.

If you run out of tasks and get bored with the events, head to your racial capital (Hoelbrak for the norn), travel through the Asura Gate to Lion’s Arch, then take another Asura Gate to a different racial region and start playing through the tasks and events there. Also keep in mind that events in the lower-level areas tend to recycle fairly quickly. So if you find a rewarding event, swing back by that area in 5 to 10 minutes and you can probably catch it again.

I believe new accounts now give you 10 experience boosters in a starter pack. Don’t be shy in using them, especially when doing those events with hordes of monsters.

Good luck, and enjoy the journey!

Something long-time GW1 players will hopefully get a chuckle out of:

Superior Rune of the Hamstorm (6/6)
(usable only by Warriors)

(1): +1 Energy Recovery
(2): +5 Energy
(3): 15% chance when you call a target to shout “Strategy in real-time!” and random squiggly arrows and the word “Go!” appears on your mini-map.
(4): 15% chance when attacking from behind to strike with a hamstring attack to cripple your fleeing opponent
(5): 50% chance when attacking a crippled opponent to cast a firestorm and rain fire down upon him as he slowly limps away, while you shout “A deadly combination!”
(6): When attacking with a bow and you don’t have any bow skills equipped on your skill bar, 25% chance to shout “Skill, not hours played, decides your fate!” (100% chance when attacking a bone dragon)

If you don’t get the joke, it’s based on the box art from the original GW1, which showed a warrior using an absolutely ridiculous build based around the skills Hamstring and Firestorm, which has affectionately been dubbed “The Hamstorm”:

Left flap: http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/guild-wars/cover-art/gameCoverId,45610/

Right flap: http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/guild-wars/cover-art/gameCoverId,45611/

Firelysm.4967:

If graphics would be the same as GW2, GW2 would not be even worth mention ROFL.

Considering the game is approaching 10 years old, the graphics have aged surprisingly well — especially in Eye of the North and the latter parts of the game. It may lack all the high res textures and eye candy of a modern game, but it still looks pretty decent.

This is about the best we have concerning the origins of the world, the elder dragons and the ancient races:
The World of Tyria: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyria_%28world%29
The Elder Dragons: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elder_Dragon

The presumption seems to be that during the elder dragons’ last awakening they almost completely wiped out the world. A small number of the elder races survived, but they were effectively thrown into a Dark Age and much of history was either completely lost or blurred into legend and myth. History essentially started over with the last awakening.

What’s your video card? Having nothing come up when you press Play is an indication that either your video card may not be powerful enough or you might not have current drivers installed for it.

Also, try installing the latest DirectX 9.0c runtime drivers:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=34429.

Even though DirectX 11 claims to be backwards compatible with older DirectX versions, I’ve found many instances where you still have to explicitly install DirectX 9 for a game to work.

Aeikon.1467:

RPG means you are already playing a role defined by the devs. When you RP, you are essentially roleplaying within a roleplay, it just seems needlessly redundant to me.

You’re confusing playing a role (class) vs. playing (acting) a role. Someone who participates in in-character role-playing defines his own personality, background and story for his character, independent of what the game developers provide in the game. In-character role-playing provides the opportunity to go far beyond the linear dialog the game provides. For example, a friend and I (both playing human characters) sat around in Lion’s Arch one day discussing whether the charr would become hostile against humanity again once the threat of the elder dragons was taken care of. Nowhere in the game’s actual dialog are you given a chance to say whether your human character is okay working with the charr, is fearful of them or has a deep hatred of them. The charr NPCs in the game are going to react to you the same, regardless. But put a real person behind that charr, and you can have some fun seeing how such an interaction would play out.

The game worlds in RPGs (particularly MMORPGs) generally tend to be much larger and more flexible than any other genre. MMOs in particular tend to have a lot of non-combat activities in them, and large areas of the world where you can just hang around. That’s why you’ll see in-character role-playing in RPGs more than any other genre. But even then, it depends on the game. Diablo would be a lot more constrictive than, say, Neverwinter Nights.

Aeikon.1467:

Why something where someone just passing by can accidentally ruin your RP experience?

Not every role-player gets upset about random people passing through or interfering. Most of us can filter out the noise and aren’t bothered or distracted by it. But the few that are tend to be rather vocal about it (vocal minority), leading to the false impression that all role-players get all uppity about people “breaking their immersion”.

Aeikon.1467:

Wouldn’t it be better using a forum, with Tyria as the backdrop?

Some people do. But, a forum isn’t real-time. And text-chat clients aren’t very action-oriented. Online games provide a much stronger shared experience (particularly a shared visual experience). Also, some of us are not coming to an MMO expressly to role-play – we’re playing an MMO, and happen to do some role-playing along the way when the opportunity presents itself.

Aeikon.1467:

I used to RP back in the day but I could never see a video game being a medium for one, it just seems too constricted.

In many ways it is, particularly when you compare a video game with the flexibility of the human mind. But what leads most people to role-playing in online RPGs is the shared visual experience. And again, some of us aren’t going for total-immersion role-playing. We’re playing a game, but we add some of our own RP elements to it.

I will agree that if someone wants a highly immersive, in-character online role-playing experience with minimal to no distraction from non-role-players, Guild Wars 2 is not the ideal game for that (because it was not designed to be so). Something like a private server in Neverwinter Nights would be much better for that.

They’re around more often than you think. They can choose when to display their guild tag. And some of the more well-known ArenaNet folks have multiple accounts. Back in GW1, I believe Gaile Gray said she had at least three accounts and only one of them was her “official” ArenaNet account — the others were for when she wanted to go incognito (and for alts to store her vast menagerie of mini-pets ).

Gaile Gray.6029:

Would you rather hear something rather specific, like “in the next couple of days,” even while you know that it could change for reasons outside our control?

Yes, I would.

Go ahead and preface it with something like, “If all goes according to plan, we expect to release this feature in an update within the next two weeks. But please remember that if QA finds any significant bugs then we may need to delay the feature until the following month to ensure we deliver the quality you expect from us. We know this feature is very important to you all, and we will let you all know if the schedule needs to slip.”

Yeah, if the schedule needs to slip you’re going to have a few people stomping their feet and gnashing their teeth while screaming “you PROMISED we’d get it in TWO WEEKS!!!” But I think those people would be a lot fewer than the current number of people who are upset with having to figure out whether “soon” means “we’re putting on the finishing touches” or “we’re seriously thinking about it but haven’t actually done much with it yet.”

And you guys just need to do what Scotty (from Star Trek) does: always tell your captain (or your customer) that a task will take two to three times longer than you think. If there’s a delay, you’ll still meet their expectations. But if it goes according to your plan, then you look like a miracle worker. Tell people the feature will be coming next month, then release it the next week and everyone will be saying “Wow! You guys must have really put out some extra effort to deliver this early! Thank you for giving so much attention to this and supporting your customers!” Wouldn’t that be so much better than “You guys stink! Do you even have a plan?! You’re flying by the seat of your pants. This game is dying. I’m going to go post something from the MMO Manifesto video and misquote Mike O’Brien to show how much you’ve let us down.”

I think a fair number of us would like a way to take a screenshot without our character in it. First person camera would obviously solve that, but failing that we’d like a simple way to take a screenshot without our character that’s a little easier than “use /sleep and try to fajiggle the camera around until you hit an angle where you can’t see your character”.

Branden Gee.2150:

(1) If we want the camera to point down at a sleeping character we would need the camera to know about the emote happening. On top of this right now, from my understanding, most players who do screenshots use /sleep in order to get their character out of the frame. If we were to change this functionality we would want to give players another alternative to hide their character.

Branden, I know first-person view has been said to be difficult to implement due to the camera mechanics. So yes, many of us like to use /sleep and careful camera angling to get our character out screenshots. But I understand the OP’s request too — sometimes you may want to have your “sleeping” character in the screenshot too.

Would it be possible (and not too difficult/time consuming) to add a toggle key that would simply hide our avatar on the local client? Maybe a “Take Screenshot without Character” key?

I’d be fine with the camera centering on a sitting/sleeping character so long as there’s another method so that every screenshot doesn’t have to be a selfie. There are other reasons why people want first-person view, but allowing us to take environmental screenshot without our character would at least solve part of the problem.

Maximus steps up to the Mystic Forge and throws in all his worldly possessions, along with a passing Quaggan. He raises his hands to the heavens and shouts, “Mighty Zomoros! I beseech thee to hear my plea! I yearn for new adventures! New lands to discover! New foes to vanquish! New challenges to conquer! Grant me this one wish: I wish for a new zone to explore in the next living world update!”

A deep and rumbling voice echoes through the swirling zephyrs of the Mystic Forge. “I hear your words, noble warrior, and I shall grant thee thy wish. Thou shalt have a new zone to explore in the next living world update!”

There is a slight pause… then a mischievous laugh.

“And it shall be about the size of the Hall of Momuments. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Because at level 100 the level 0 recipe will no longer give any experience. If you happen to have the higher level materials, it’s another means of getting crafting experience from discovery. If you’re just looking to craft the rune or sigil, use the lower level recipe.

Redenaz.8631:

Since I’m posting, I might as well reiterate that the default town clothes should be made into either armor pieces or (preferably) an outfit.

I’m really confused by this too. Why weren’t town clothes just converted into an outfit item? I know we might have had to compromise and not be able to mix-and-match the special clothing like the Cherry Blossom Shirt and Riding Pants, but it seems like the basic town clothes everyone starts with could have been an outfit. I don’t see any technical difference between them and things like the chef outfit or the pirate captain outfit.

Check out MaximumPC’s April build guides for some ideas on components:
http://www.maximumpc.com/build_pc_recommended_builds_april_2014

NVIDIA also has some decent do-it-yourself guides on their GeForce site (although they’re obviously biased toward Intel and NVIDIA products and don’t mention AMD alternatives). Their latest guide is for building an SLI graphics system, but if you ignore the SLI part and stick to a single graphics card the rest of the guide is still a good read (again, keeping in mind that it’s biased toward NVIDIA):

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/diy-how-to-build-an-sli-rig-part-1#1

You’re going to be hard pressed to get “high graphics settings and 30fps” on a $600 budget, especially if you need to buy a monitor too (since you’re coming from a laptop, don’t know whether you have a separate monitor).

At an absolute minimum I would recommend:

CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD A8 series
RAM: 8GB (2 × 4GB sticks)
Graphics: GeForce GTX 750 (or whatever AMD’s equivalent is)
Power Supply: 500 watt
Hard Drive: as much as you can afford

You’re probably looking at about $700 for that and it will play comfortably at medium settings. Plus you may need to add the cost of a monitor and the operating system, which could push you over $1,000 easily.

For a norn, here are the two possible personal story steps where you select an order:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sabotage
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Code_Breaker

Make sure you’re at one of those story steps, have performed all the listed objectives, and spoken to Eir once you’ve completed the objectives, then you should get the option to select your order.

And, of course, look at the quest tracker in the top right of your screen. It will tell you what you need to do next.

That depends on whether you’re trying for a precursor of a specific weapon type or just want to get a precursor from any weapon type. If, for example, you’re shooting for Dawn or Dusk then you probably don’t want to use a Mystic Forge Stone since there’s a very good chance you won’t get a Great Sword back out. Instead, use 4 actual Great Swords. But if you just want a chance at ANY precursor then throw in any three random exotics or high-level rares plus a stone, and you’ll save a little money.

Personally, I save my stones to make Mystic Salvage Kits since those are guaranteed (and quite useful). I refuse to play the Mystic Lottery in a vain attempt to get a precursor. Zommoros and his Random Number Generator of Doom can kiss my little white Krytan behind.

I respectfully disagree.

While I frequently see people picking up my banner and moving it around, I can’t ever recall someone picking it up and running off with it in the middle of a fight. I like that other people can use it, and I encourage people to do so. I’m pretty mobile during a big fight, and I don’t have time to keep breaking off to pick up my banner, cast the buffs, then run back into melee again. I would much prefer that whomever is closest to my banner do so. Or better yet, have several people do so in rapid succession. Banner skill 5 is a blast finisher. When someone throws down a combo field, you can easily stack buffs by having several people take turns picking up the banner and slamming it down in the field. If I see another warrior’s banner, I will always try to pick it up, cast the buffs, then plant it again.

As for elementalist weapons, their conjuration spells create two weapons — one in the caster’s hands and one next to the caster. You can never deprive the caster of her weapon. The intent is that someone else can and should pick up that second weapon and make use of it. I suppose an elementalist may want to keep the second weapon to herself for when the first one runs out of charges, but I’d say that’s far more selfish than someone picking it up and making use of it immediately. If we’re fighting a tough foe and I see a lightning hammer or ice bow sitting on the ground, you better believe I’m picking that thing up and making good use of it for the benefit of the team!

Now, I will agree that if someone ran by, grabbed my banner or lightning hammer and used the speed buff to run off into the sunset with it, that would be rather rude and annoying. But I’ve yet to see that happen.

Custom Adventure Zone Administrative Commands

These commands can be used by the custom adventure zone’s creator or other players designated as administrators for the map.

– add/remove the specified player as an administrator
– add/remove a player to the list of members for the map (if the map is private, only members may join)
– add/remove a guild to the list of members for the map (if the map is private, anyone representing that guild can join)
– bans/unbans a specific player; banned players are removed from the map and cannot rejoin
– remove the specified player from the map
– remove all players except for yourself and the map’s owner from the map
– immediately activate a specific event on the map (there would be a limit to how often a player could claim the rewards from an event to prevent rapid farming)
– immediately terminate the specified event (it neither succeeds nor fails, it simply de-spawns and no rewards are given)
– cycle time of day between dawn, midday, evening and night
– choose the weather: sunny, overcast, fog, light rain, heavy rain, light snow and heavy snow; if you have weather cycling enabled your chosen weather type will remain in effect until the next cycle, if it’s disabled your chosen weather type will be permanent until manually changed
– activate big-head mode, as seen in the 2014 April Fool’s Day joke
– trigger a glorious fireworks display across the entire map
– broadcast a message to all players on the map which will appear as yellow text in the middle of their screen

A few notes

Skill challenges, points of interest and vistas will not be present on the map. Renown tasks, jumping puzzles and other challenges will be present, but completing them will not count toward World completion or achievements, and any rewards associated with them will be significantly reduced. These types of activities are intended to take place in the open world to receive full credit.

There is no cost to use waypoints on the map.

If you use an administrator command to manually start or stop an event, you must wait a certain amount of time before restarting the event again (to keep server performance in check, and prevent exploiting events).

There is a two week grace period at the end of your custom adventure zone rental time to apply additional time tokens. After that two week period the zone will be shut down and you’ll need to purchase another Starter Kit.

With all the discussions around mega-servers and people complaining that they won’t be able to have as much control do what they want with who they want, an idea came to me for a new service ArenaNet could offer using this technology…

Custom Adventure Zone Starter Kit: “Create your own customized zone for PvE adventures. You can configure the zone’s base map, password, event spawn timers, monster density, challenge level, and many other options. Adventure Zones start with 30 days of active time.”

Custom Adventure Zone Time Token: “Each token adds 1 day of time to a Custom Adventure Zone”.

Custom Adventure Zones work similarly to Custom Arenas, but for PvE content instead of PvP matches. With a Custom Adventure Zone you can create your own personal instance of many of the PvE maps throughout Tyria, including the capital cities, and customize many of the map’s settings.

Want your own private copy of Divinity’s Reach for your weekly guild meetings? Now you can!

Are you part of a role-playing group and want to have a private copy of Queensdale for your group’s in-character adventures, with many of the random events disabled and without the distraction of non-role players? Custom Adventures Zones can provide the ultimate RP playground.

Want to give your friends a real challenge and organize a raid on the temples of Orr where every enemy on the map is at least a Veteran? A Custom Adventure Zone will let you do that.

Do you want to offer Tequatil training sessions to the community, where novice players can take on a scaled down version of the encounter (with minimal to no rewards) so they can focus on learning the mechanics? A Custom Adventure Zone can serve as your virtual classroom.

The possibilities of what you can do with a Custom Adventure Zone are nearly endless. The world is literally yours to command!

Getting Started

To get started, you need to purchase a Custom Adventure Zone Starter Kit. This will let you set up your zone and gives 30 days of access time. Time Tokens may be purchased by you or other players and applied to your zone to extend its active time by 1 day per token.

The first choice you’ll need to make is which map to base your custom adventure zone on. Most of the PvE maps are available, with a few exceptions for those maps with mechanics that wouldn’t work well for this type of customization system.

You can choose to make your zone public or private, and may change between those options at any time. Private zones may be password protected or you can grant specific players access by adding them to your member list (you can also add entire guilds to the member list).

Customizing your zone

There are many other options available to you to customize your adventure zone to your liking:

Maximum Players: The maximum number of players allowed on the map at any time.

Number of Reserved Slots: Reserved slots may only be taken up by players who you explicitly add to your member list. This ensures that if you make your map public there will still be a few spots reserved exclusively for your friends.

Level Scaling: Sets the base level range for the map. Monsters and events will scale in strength according to the level range you select, and players will be level scaled accordingly as well. Alternatively, you can disable level scaling. Disabling level scaling or lowering a zone’s level range below its original value will significantly reduce the quality and quantity of rewards.

Challenge Level: This will provide you with several options to increase the overall challenge level and strength of monsters. “Easy” makes all monsters on the map normal-tier, but rewards from loot and events are significantly decreased. “Standard” uses the default monster tiers. “Expert” uses the default monster tiers but increases their health, defense and damage. “Master” upgrades all monsters to the next tier (normal becomes veteran, veteran becomes elite, elite becomes champion). “Ambient Only” removes all monsters from the map, except for ambient creatures.

Respawn Time: Allows you to set the respawn time for normal, veteran, elite and champion monsters. Decreasing respawn time will also decrease loot quality and quantity, and will trigger diminishing returns more quickly to prevent rapid farming of monsters.

Event Timers: You can adjust the respawn timers on any of the events on the map, or disable specific events entirely. Decreasing the respawn timer on an event will decrease the quality and quantity of rewards which players receive from that event to prevent exploitative event farming.

PvP Mode: "None” = you cannot attack other players. “Squad” = you can attack players outside of your squad. “Party” = you can attack players outside of your party. “Free for All” = you can attack any other player.

Weather Cycle: enables or disables random weather cycling

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’ve definitely simplified the way it actually works with the above description. A more accurate way of putting it would be to say that when you travel/log-in to a map, the game finds the best instance to put you in at that time. But the game won’t remove you from a map forcibly and put you in another.

But once a map on your server gets into an “underflow” state where players are getting moved/merged with another server, how would you ever get out of that state? If my server has no players on Iron Marches and I load that map, it will move me to a merged copy with other servers. If another player from my server then loads into Iron Marches, there’s still no players on my server’s copy because I got moved to a mega-server copy. Next player after him loads… same thing. I’m guessing eventually the load balancer says “Oh hey, there’s 50 people from Server X on the merged copy of Iron Marches now so I’ll let subsequent players from Server X load into their home copy of that map.” But then the next player who loads in will load into an empty map (and probably come to the forums to rant about how the mega-server system is totally messed up because his map was still dead).

I know I’m probably treading closely to asking for the recipe for your secret sauce. I’m just curious how this would work.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but I think it really applies here: allow us to override the automatic map instance selection and manually select which instance we want, as we were able to in GW1.

RPers could simply say “We’ll be meeting in Divinity’s Reach, District 5”. And assuming the map isn’t full, you can select “District 5” from a drop-down list and move there. That’s how we rolled in GW1 and it worked just fine for over 6 years.

Would work great for non-RP reasons too, for anyone wanting to organize an event that isn’t specific to a guild or home server.

One final piece that’s missing is a “manually override” that lets you select your own map instance, similar to how we could choose our district in GW1 towns and outposts. If you’re trying to organize a multi-guild boss raid or group event you can specify in advance “meet in Queensdale District 4” or something like that. Or if you’re feeling like playing solo and want a less populated map, pick the highest district number and you’ll probably get a less populated map.

Possibly, depending on the item. But they’re asking people to please wait until after the April feature update goes live, then submit refund requests.

Nabrok.9023:

Right now if I wanted to keep the same appearance and rune on a piece of armor but change the stats…

I think the easiest way to do this would be:

1. Equip the first item (with appearance and rune) so you unlock the appearance in your wardrobe.
2. Use a Black Lion Salvage Kit on the first item to remove the rune. Or use a Master’s / Mystic Salvage Kit if you’re comfortable with an 80% chance of recovering the rune. This will destroy the item, but the appearance is still in your wardrobe.
3. Use a transmutation charge to apply the appearance to the second item (the one with the stats you want).
4. Apply the rune to the second item.

The only time you need to use an upgrade extractor is if you want to keep the original item (not just it’s appearance, but the actual item) and the upgrade.

Since we’ve started to see more items get moved out of our inventory and into their own UI (dungeon tokens, finishers, transmutation stones) I’d like to suggest another area that could be applied to: boosters.

The “Booster Wallet” would be a tab on our Hero panel and work in a similar manner to the Finishers tab. The UI would display all the different booster types (experience, karma, magic find, etc) and how many “charges” of each you have. Click the “Activate” button under a booster to use it. Click the “Buy” or “Buy 5” buttons to purchase more. If you receive a booster from game-play (daily rewards, achievement chests, Black Lion chests, etc.) it will simply add another charge to that booster type in your wallet.

There are two benefits to this system. First, it will free up some of the clutter in our bank storage. Second, it will provide easy access to use your boosters out in the field without having to carry all of them around (and switch them between characters) to be ready for the off-chance that you might want to use some of them.

A similar “Utility Wallet” (or maybe “Utility Belt”?) could also be used for all the convenience/services items like Bank Access Express, Trading Post Express, etc.

Bottom line: provide a more convenient and accessible way to use those items and people will probably use them (and buy them) more often, rather than just throwing the freebies we get into our banks and forgetting about them.

The dervish would be a fun addition, and offer a unique style of play the other professions don’t have. The basic concept of the profession from GW1 is a medium armor melee combatant who rapidly casts enchantments (boons) on himself and allies, and strips enchantments (boons) from himself and enemies – with stripped enchantments providing additional benefits. An ebb and flow of boon build up and tear down would be the corner stone of the profession. The scythe was the weapon of choice for the dervish, but I think it could be expanded to other professions as well. I could also see the dervish using the axe (as a ranged/thrown weapon), shield and focus. The sickle could be introduced as a one-handed melee option. For underwater weapons, I’m thinking spear and trident.

Aspects of the ritualist and paragon have been absorbed into other professions. I’m not sure there’s enough left to make them really stand out on their own. And the thief is of course the evolution of the assassin.

For race… obviously tengu! Skritt and quaggan would be super fun too. Lore-wise the quaggan are supposed to be a bit uncomfortable and awkward out of the water, so most of their racial skills could center around enhancing underwater combat. The skritt would, of course, have a lot of engineer-like racial skills.

Beldin.5498:

I mean .. look at that picture .. that beetle is uses as a MOUNT !!

But we already had mounts in GW1: desert wurms and siege devourers. I’m betting the idea behind the beetle was similar to the siege devourers.

There’s actually an entry for it on the official wiki with a little background info:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wizard%27s_Tower

It’s known as the “Wizard’s Tower”. It was in Kessex Hills in GW1, but was in a different location. You couldn’t go into the tower, but it was implied in the original game that the villain Galrath was trying to capture the tower to steal it’s secrets and there was a quest to slay Galrath and his army. The tower is now in the possession of the benevolent wizard Isgarren, who moved the tower to its present location and is the one responsible for providing all the elemental guardians to the town of Garrenhoff.

The biggest part of the problem is that the three stats on Berserker gear have a MASSIVE synergistic effect with each other. Your overall damage is increased, you crit more often and your crits cause more damage. Those three stats should never have been together on the same piece of gear. You should have to decide whether to crit more often but not cause as much damage per crit, or vice versa… or to hedge your bets and simply increase base damage across the board (flatten out the peaks and valleys and emphasize a strong consistent average). But having all three of these together is a level of epicness equivalent to a guitar-playing undead dude riding on a dinosaur that’s standing on a laser that’s mounted to a rocket which is strapped to the back of a shark.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6r71meMvq1qzozj1.jpg

If each piece of gear only had one offensive stat, one defensive stat and one “utility” stat (gold find, XP gain, karma gain… perhaps Agony Resistance and other special types of fractal/dungeon damage resistances…) then we’d have a lot more variety of viable builds.

Using this system, there is no struggle between offense and defense.

Everyone has offense – it’s just a question of what ONE type you choose:

- Precision: I crit a lot but each one isn’t very hard
- Intensity: I don’t crit as often but when I do I hit hard
- Power: I don’t crit as often but I have a higher base damage

And everyone has defense – again, it’s just a question of what ONE type you choose:

- Vitality: I can survive a spike but am weak to pressure
- Toughness: I can survive pressure but am weak to spikes
- Healing Power: I’m fairly squishy overall but compensate with strong heals

Mix and match one stat from each of those two categories to your heart’s content, and throw in your “utility” stat for flavor. Most gear would be on even footing unless you’re facing specific mechanics that call for one gear type over another (i.e. a boss that exclusively uses condition damage, but you’re wearing your spike-defense gear).

Again, there’s no issue of offense vs. defense – each piece of gear has one (and only one) stat bonus from each of those two categories. But there’s still plenty of room to create builds by choosing what type of each category you bring, and how they synergize with (or compensate for) your skill and trait choices. The whole concept of Tank and DPS is thrown right out the window as far as your gear is concerned (though your skills and traits can still lean you toward one of those roles).

And you can also mix and match stats between armor pieces. For example, do you play it safe and choose toughness on half your gear and vitality on the other half, or go 100% into one at the expense of the other? Perhaps you have traits and skills which grant you extra Intensity, so you’ll complement that by wearing gear with higher Precision. Or maybe you have skills which proc special effects on a crit – the crit damage isn’t as important as simply proccing that effect, so you heavily emphasize Precision as your exclusive offensive stat on all gear (you’re triggering special effects more often at the expense of overall damage).

Unfortunately, the Berserker genie has been out of the bottle for far too long, and I doubt we’re going to see any kind of significant gear overhaul like this now. But really, I think a system like this would create a much more diverse set of gear builds that we have now.

Several POIs have been added to existing maps through the Living Story updates. If you had already completed those maps before the new POIs were introduced, you’ll still be counted as having completed the maps. But if you pull up your world map and hover over the names of each map you’ll inevitably find two where the POI count is now off by one. (By the way, you will not get another map completion reward for finding the new POIs. You just get the satisfaction of seeing 725/725 on your world completion tracker.)

One is probably Wayfarer Foothills. The other I think might be Diessa Plateau or Plains of Ashford (whichever one was updated for Flame and Frost), Divinity’s Reach or Kessex Hills. Those are the maps I recall being updated with Living Story events.

They need to look at the appearance system used by The Lord of the Rings Online. You have an account-wide wardrobe which will store the appearance of any item (just the appearance, not the stats). Each character has multiple appearance sets on his character sheet where you can copy the appearance of any item from your wardrobe (or directly from your inventory). Your character can switch between appearances freely. You start with three sets (actual armor, plus two other appearance sets), and the true fashion divas can purchase more. You can also purchase wardrobe expansions to add more item slots there.

Simply put: most of the Halloween rewards require far too much materials to obtain this year. The materials drop far less frequently as well, which just compounds the issue.

I took one look at what it would take to get just the bag and immediately gave up on it. The Halloween content is fun in limited doses, but to get that much candy corn would require you to grind the dungeon until your eye bleed (which I suppose is in the spirit of the season, in a sick and twisted way…)

There are two which are pretty easy to get, though: the candy corn elemental from completing the achievements and the mask from Mad King Says. So it’s not like I felt like I walked away with nothing this year. But there were other rewards that I might have tried for, but given how much materials they took I just laughed and said “I’m not even going to bother.” As a result, I ended up playing the Halloween content a lot less than I potentially would have.

Player: “Why don’t you always summon 6 minions?”
Trahearne: “Because the manifesto says I can play my way.”

:P

I’m not sure I’d go full-on evil, but they could have had an “ulterior motive” path to the story with the Pact. The “hero” path involves supporting Trahearne, building up his own self-confidence and convincing the Pact members to put their faith in him. In the “ulterior motive” path you use him as a figure-head leader — you convince the orders to follow him, but then you play upon his self-doubt and manipulate him to give you command authority over the orders. You know the other two orders won’t follow you directly, so you set Trahearne up as a figure-head so you can effectively command the Pact through him.

The actual mechanics and flow of the personal story missions would be exactly the same. But some of the dialog would be different, and it would put a completely different spin on the story and your character’s place within it. It would also address some people’s concerns about your character not being in the spotlight of your own personal story enough. In the “heroic” path, that’s because you’re focusing on helping Trahearne find the hero within himself. In the “ulterior motive” path, it would be because you’re intentionally trying to turn the spotlight away from yourself so people don’t realize exactly how much influence you actually have over the Pact.

Simply put: it’s a variety of fantasy sub-genres smooshed together (often times without much consistency).

A very simple request — remove the tiny orange “bubbles” that float up from my warrior when Signet of Rage is equipped. Makes it look like he’s always drunk or something. The effect constantly plays, so it’s not conferring any sort of visual information — it’s just distracting.

Not a game-breaking issue by any means. Just a simple request.