Guild Wars 2

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

not a traditional paid expansion.
delivered via living episode, over the year 2015 in 12 months.
purely funded by gem store goodies.

paid expansions divide the community.
living story is good.

Cheap people who refuses to pay 300 people for their efforts divide society.
So basically you want an expansion that is living story, so you want living story…ok.

Those who say you don’t want new classes, plz go away.
Those who say “staff for warrior”, “spear for necromancer”, “rifle for guardian”, plz go away.

Name.9128:

Moldur.6275:

Ashen.2907:

Moldur.6275:

Placing HoT in the gem-store will make it feel like just another LS episode to buy in retrospect. Gold-sellers will be used by morons to convert to gems. Selling it with real money, without gems involved, will remove all gold-selling prospects. And not to be forgotten: there is no way to make better marketing for their product than having it in flashy boxes covering the walls of the retail stores or advertisements online with directions to the place of purchase. If Anet decides to simply sell it through the gem store, new players wont even be able to buy it! Maybe the posters above didn’t keep in mind that an expansion should attract new players aswell, and the gem-store found in the game would not offer them any ways to purchase the expansion. Forcing them to buy the original game before even being able to glance upon the expansion seems like a rather stupid move don’t you think?

Why would new players not be able to buy it if its in the gemstore?

Because a new player doesn’t have the game and cannot log into the gem-store that is IN-GAME omg.. like rly did u even try..

If it’s an expansion in the traditional sense, new players would need a copy of the original GW2 meaning they have access to the Gem Store.

“a new framework for how an MMO can grow its universe. The Living World was just the beginning”. No it will not be an expansion in the traditional sense.
With that said, it is very likely that Anet will include the original game upon purchase of the expansion, but if you try to sell it through the gemstore though, it will require a new player to first buy the original game, log into it, go to the gemstore, buy expansion. That is a lot of steps for a new players and it will not happen.

Gemstore will also make the expansion feel very cheap and “just another update” ish. Believe me it will not be in the gemstore.

My guess is that HoT will introduce Land Spear 1h (ranged, melee or both), Great Axe, Halberd (it functions similarly to a 2h spear)

Gudy.3607:

Moldur.6275:

So after I finished the point of no return, I noticed that the skritt who were building their underground ship in the silverwastes in the previous episode were still there. A map on their task board clearly shows how they plan to sail south and past Rata Sum, but I have not found any signs of progress on that side so far. I cannot see why Anet would introduce such a large storyline if it wasn’t planned to be continued, I mean it seems like too much work just for the beginning of a jumping puzzle.

Uhm, have you actually done the whole jumping puzzle? If not, do it, and All Will Be Made Clear. If yes, do it again and pay more attention to the dialog.

Yes I have done the JP (duh) and yes I know about the dowsing rod and the storm wizard and basically everything except the topic. And btw that didn’t make it any more clear if you think the little storyline we saw in there was all there was to this.

CureForLiving.5360:

I think it just reusing visuals to indicate cracking and destruction. If you look at http://youtu.be/PJfXl_4mivw?t=48s you’ll notice rytlock is making the same pattern on the husks he’s killing. Unless he’kittenting them so hard that they went flying into the mists.

Even though the mobs aren’t a perfect match pattern wise, I do still think that another link to Rytlock is proving what I wrote earlier even more. (Unlikely for 3 patterns to coincide all in the presence of Rytlock/Destinys edge) And I mean DE-ish group falling through mist scene is not reused visuals I can assure you that. And a similar portal + mist is pretty much proof that it is the same portal type as Rytlocks.

So when I was watching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UimxbqUXpM#t=116
I found a very interesting thing. If you go forward to 1:56 you will notice that the ground is shattering on the ship, devouring Zojja and the gang, causing them to fall down into it.
Now if you compare that cracking on the ground just before the fall to 0:41 in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpzAUWmklA#t=41
You will see that the cracking pattern is a perfect match. They do both show a cracking in the ground, and afterwards the Zojja gang falls into it just like Rytlock did when he jumped into the mist portal in The Dragon’s Reach: Part 1. If you continue watching a few seconds from the first video, you will see that they do actually fall through mist.
Conclusion: Either Rytlock opened a portal beneath them in order for them to reunite, or someone else did for an unknown purpose. It is safe to assume that both of the events were the act of a mist portal, and whether those two lead to the same place is yet to be uncovered. But what be do know, is that the Heart of Thorns cinematic actually shows Rytlock in Tyria for the first time since he went into the mists, and I am therefore sure that these two portals are some how related to each other in one way or another, and that both are mist portals for sure.

So after I finished the point of no return, I noticed that the skritt who were building their underground ship in the silverwastes in the previous episode were still there. A map on their task board clearly shows how they plan to sail south and past Rata Sum, but I have not found any signs of progress on that side so far. I cannot see why Anet would introduce such a large storyline if it wasn’t planned to be continued, I mean it seems like too much work just for the beginning of a jumping puzzle.

Has anyone found something / has any theory if this skritt boat story could somehow link to Heart of Thorns?

What is the point of this thread lol

Also keep in mind that it is only a fraction of Anet working on the Living Story, the rest, well, Heart of Thorns.

Theologus.7085:

Decisions about new classes, races and other huge gameplay stuff are taken long before anounce. Dark Knight can be suggestion only for second exp.

And yep, mainly Dark class_name not viable. Because our characters not evil – they are commanders, sunbringers, combat healers and other good guys.

Dont forget good guy necromancer

Ashen.2907:

Moldur.6275:

Placing HoT in the gem-store will make it feel like just another LS episode to buy in retrospect. Gold-sellers will be used by morons to convert to gems. Selling it with real money, without gems involved, will remove all gold-selling prospects. And not to be forgotten: there is no way to make better marketing for their product than having it in flashy boxes covering the walls of the retail stores or advertisements online with directions to the place of purchase. If Anet decides to simply sell it through the gem store, new players wont even be able to buy it! Maybe the posters above didn’t keep in mind that an expansion should attract new players aswell, and the gem-store found in the game would not offer them any ways to purchase the expansion. Forcing them to buy the original game before even being able to glance upon the expansion seems like a rather stupid move don’t you think?

Why would new players not be able to buy it if its in the gemstore?

Because a new player doesn’t have the game and cannot log into the gem-store that is IN-GAME omg.. like rly did u even try..

Zaxares.5419:

Moldur.6275:

http://south.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/guild-wars-2-beyond-the-point-of-no-return
It seems the point of no return points in an exciting direction after all.

Still a bit too vague. It could be that they’re announcing the return of Living Story Season 1 as buyable content (grandfathered in for veterans who were there), the Personal Story being revamped to use the same system, and then using the same system as LS2 going forward.

Or simply read the word “NEW”. Yea you are very wrong.
/closethread

Just google “Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns” omg just do it stop refusing it

“more damage oriented than a warrior” Like srsly what about the pve meta since release…
Btw this is a complete rip-off of warriors and guardians and other games classes plz stahp.

Vix.6730:

Liz.1497:

woah, really? Everyone I know and talked to (and this seems to be the general consensus on the forums as well) seems to be incredibly excited and happy about the announcement. I mean clearly you’re entitled to your own opinion, but I’d be surprised if there are a lot of people out there that share it.

I was happy to hear about the PAX announcement too. At this point we can bet it’s an expansion is some form, but to see an advertisement in-game was immersion breaking and distressing. Stick the ad on the loading screen, character select screen, fine, that works. But in-game? What’s next, The Goodyear Pact Blimp? Trahearne offering us a 20% discount on the Deluxe Bundle? Where is the line drawn between production and marketing?

[SPOILER] Computer games are not real, sry if i broke your immersion.

Vix.6730:

I guess all of social media, word of mouth and whatever print ads you’re running for PAX wasn’t enough – you have to bombard players in-game too? Shameless advertising. The trailer was done in very bad taste. A nice kick to the groin for those players still around to enjoy your content.

PAX better be worth our trouble.

At the moment you’re the bad taste.

Silberfederling.9302:

so a net u just made your biggest mistake everrrr. really if you do not deliver the next season or wossname that is going to follow, you leave me no other options than; either swim over this big pond of yours and crack the wipps as to get you guys deliver faster. or i will simply die because of excitement. that was one hell of a finale. this was one hell of a render trailer, and that was all in all pretty amazing. keep it up, right now i am simply amazed what you guys just delivered!
seriously though pls do not wait another year with the next expansion (gotta know if i can trust those sylvari in my guild or not^^, were always kinda twitchy with this wooden stare of them )

I have mixed feelings if you’re whining or shining.

Reanne.5462:

there is no expansion. and if there is, it will take them at least 2 years to release it. How quickly you forget how long it took them to release GW2 after deciding to abandon gw1.

You must be fun at parties, maybe you missed “Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns”

goes into the topic
introduces Druid – (ritualist and dervish fusion) – a spirit warrior
leaves

Placing HoT in the gem-store will make it feel like just another LS episode to buy in retrospect. Gold-sellers will be used by morons to convert to gems. Selling it with real money, without gems involved, will remove all gold-selling prospects. And not to be forgotten: there is no way to make better marketing for their product than having it in flashy boxes covering the walls of the retail stores or advertisements online with directions to the place of purchase. If Anet decides to simply sell it through the gem store, new players wont even be able to buy it! Maybe the posters above didn’t keep in mind that an expansion should attract new players aswell, and the gem-store found in the game would not offer them any ways to purchase the expansion. Forcing them to buy the original game before even being able to glance upon the expansion seems like a rather stupid move don’t you think?

The “E” is either Evon Gnashblade or Ellen Kiel, as that would leave us with an
“E-named-winner” in the Cutthroat Politics, no matter who came out as the winner.
If anyone wondered, the probability that both of those two people got names starting with an “E” at the same time on coincidence is about 0.15%, or 1 out of 676 times. That is not very likely to be a coincidence, and it pretty much speaks for itself. Evon or Ellen.

I totally agree that the Nightmare Court probably are minions of Mordremoth, as the “Nightmare” could act as the counter to the “Dream”.

KaosNinja.4967:

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

Plot twist, SAB comes back, we have to rescue princess Rytlock from the Lord Vanquish

i would play this plot twist

Plot twist 2, SAB gate is actually a portal to the mists, and what we see inside is Moto’s manipulation of our mind to do something unknown

Very interesting reading, I really like the idea of the sylvari being linked to spirits and the possible threat of mordremoth to take control of the ascalonian ghosts, as that could further link Rytlocks involvement to the plot with his blindfolded eyes (ritualist = spiritmasters, maybe that links to druids, and they might become a new class in Heart of Thorns), aswell as Marjory’s Greatsword which is fused with her ghost sister.

crouze.3078:

Lets try to hit the brakes.

I remember their “great” show at the gamescom last year.
What did they give us back then?
A complete messy explanation about the game for new players.
Twitch

Just because they present something at a convention does not mean it’s something new.
Looking back at the PAX description:

hear how we’re setting up a new framework for how an MMO can grow its universe

Could also mean that they will just explain Livin Story.

B please, they also said that “The Living World was just the beginning”. Don’t mislead a thread like that by quoting “hear how we’re setting up a new framework for how an MMO can grow its universe” completely out of context and in an attempt to trash talk, without even adding the concluding sentence. And btw maybe you missed the NEW word? Just a hint from my side that it might be not old.

aspirine.6852:

Gnat.9405:

I am hopeful though. It’s obvious that ANET is going to announce their alternative to a boxed expansion, and I’m anxious to see what they’ve come up with. In the long run, ANET has yet to disappoint me.

They will release Elona and Cantha at the same time

PAX <3

Trevor Bennett.3691:

Hmm, I love getting them. Once I finish my 8th alt so I have all the classes I’ll use them on new characters to 1)Run through the personal story, 2)Map complete, and finally 3) Cash out the skill points for w/e.

At minimum you get skill points out of them, with a little more effort you get all the level up rewards.

“Once I finish my 8th alt so I have all the classes”
8 alts + 1 main = 9 classes! New class confirmed

http://south.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/guild-wars-2-beyond-the-point-of-no-return
It seems the point of no return points in an exciting direction after all.

leviathan.2148:

The official trailer for the Point of no return seemed to me lacking in hype and was too peaceful for me. And because I really can’t wait for the Season 2 finale, I’ve decided to create my version:
http://youtu.be/vyDt7KacfK8

Epic

Living world is made only by a fraction of Anet. The rest is working on “two big side projects”. Conclusion: we are not getting the large volume you might expect from living world because what they will present at PAX later this month has kept most of the devs busy. I count that as a good thing.

200 gems per episode is not too expensive. It is the price of 3 bigmacs for a whole season. Be there in time and get it for free or pay them for their efforts afterwards.
Simple as that.

This thread burns my eyes. Seriously think before you propose ridiculous combos.
Dual wielding shields? wow..
Warrior staff? scepter? focus? just stop it..
Mesmer shield? kitten ..
Ranger staff? Then my guardian wants chicken golems to compete with necro cus class diversity what is that even..
Elementalists are not a physical melee class just realize
And those complaining about the lack of 1200 range thief weapons…its a thief dude
Engi focus? yea magic engi lets gogo

No matter how much you modify this it is still a core necromancer with melee and will always be. We need new concepts not reworks of current.

uknortherner.2670:

Considering that Anet has said nothing at all about an expansion and all of the current hype has been generated by deluded players feeding off rumour and speculation that they themselves have invented, I would not be surprised if Anet make no big announcement – nor would I be disappointed. It’s only a minority of players deluding themselves with their own hype and lies who are going to get frustrated by this in the end, regardless of the outcome, and to be perfectly honest, they get what they deserve.

I can already see the cries of “Anet broke their promises” and “Anet are liars” from that deluded minority now.

The one who said your post was a good idea is the liar. Get back on earth and realize Anet didn’t write “a new framework for how an MMO can grow its universe. The Living World was just the beginning” if they hadn’t something huge incoming.
That is a greater hint than this made up earnings forecast.

I call this thread troll.

Dalanor.5387:

lordkrall.7241:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

They reserved the largest room for the longest amount of time of anyone at the conference… if that isn’t hype then what is?

Oh, I am fully aware about what they have done. But they have not SAID anything at all about it. Without people checking PAX we would not even know about it at this time. And that is a rather large difference.

The community is hyping it up. ArenaNet have done nothing other than scheduling an event.

Exactly. If the announcement would be meaningfull it would be all over the place, right? Right? It will be just a PR move to the masses to proove how the LS busines model can work unlike sub based games. Or im just overly paranoid again.

“A NEW FRAMEWORK for how an MMO can grow its universe. The Living World was JUST THE BEGINNING”

B please. How could anyone read that as just an ordinary living world release? Seriously this negative whining about disappointment is so dumb please stop it and look to the facts.

Considering “the living world was just the beginning”, we can expect a greater concept to take its place.

0:27
Hint: waving tail.

They did wait with the ep8 release because srsly what logic do you find with launching the concluding episode when a majority of the player population is busy with irl holidays?
It is the exact same reason why games are not being launched in the middle of the summer when everyone is busy with other stuff.

Might be a reference to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Forgotten
Their seal http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Forgotten_Seal
Note though that it is lore from the original gw game wiki, which they might want to bring back into gw2.

Guys, you need to realize one thing:
In a few weeks they will host a huge event @ PAX. That is the date when the “big side project” will be revealed, and due to Anet’s revealing policies, they are only allowed to talk about them when they are nearly finished.
That means only 1 thing: They will reveal it and it will be nearly finished. Therefore Q3 is too far away, and we can expect its date to be in this spring.

My suggestion:

• Heavy armour
• Dervish’s martial arts, scythe weapon and Paragon’s spear, among others
• Ritualist form of magic theme

Basically a spirit warrior with an elonian fighting style, and we have the third heavy class.

ekimsfree.9406:

It is clear as day that they are working on expanding the game, they probably won’t call it an expansion, but they are going to show something bigger than just LS season 3. They are introducing new elements into the game.

People get caught up in managing their own expectations, “avoid the hype” and whatnot, but if you just look at the evidence, it is ridiculous. Anet is isn’t denying in anymore. They are in the office laughing at these comments.

First, they were looking to hire a raid designer last year, they even hired that dude who works on consulting for AI, who tweeted last year that he was excited for people to see what he was working on.

They have the main stage at PAX with their two biggest guys. I don’t think they have done that since post launch.

The earnings report, which to be clear, said in 2013 Anet was working on an expansion, then in 2014 said an expansion would arrive in 2015. Now it being 2015, reports in being released later this year.

One of the writers from Massively visited Anet’s offices and came away with the feeling that something big was going on, things he wasn’t allowed to see and hushed whispers.

Also looking at the content they have released, which clearly didn’t require that much staff.

Of course, all this individually means little. However, when looking at everything, it’s obvious. Whether it is new classes, skills, mounts, tacos, who knows. But it is bigger than anything they have created so far. Bigger than LS, bigger than a feature pack, bigger than a new map.

100% true. Thanks for putting this list together, so the depressed people can read it in advance to PAX and finally admit something huge is incoming until then.
/bow

Wanze.8410:

I am pretty sure they will announce that Ellen Kiel is getting kicked off the Council.

She had it a long time coming…

After a long campaign during Season 3 in the summer, Evon Gnashblade will take over and lead Tyria and the game in general to new heights in Q3 and 4 of this year.

Mystery solved.
Please close this thread.

Wrong

The PAX-announcement will be the biggest in GW2 history. Wouldn’t hire biggest theatre and cba to get game lead there for nothing.

Gameplay programmers doesn’t post curiosity like that very often, it is usually done by the communication staff. And why would he out of all devs post here, if he wasn’t involved in and closely kept watch of the topic? That involvement is probably “programmer of race and class gameplay” btw.

As the thread where I first published the “OCT31ST LIVE CONTENTS” discovery, feel free to specify a legit date to which that text is referring to that has not already happened in the game. (No they would not have a “hint” about the halloween festival in this ep8 trailer as someone mentioned above, as that would “hint” to already discovered content, even if that text was forgotten left-over from the echoes of the past release which would be a sad). I think you understand that my point is that even if this is not the possible expansion date, it is a date in the future that anet thinks has such a significant value that it is hinted in the last trailer of the season.
Also the translation of KRALKATORRIK on another box doesn’t really lower the odds of large content related to the topic.

The spear needs a LotRO warden playstyle (being a melee weapon that can be thrown if needed) where the spear would have those two as weapon-sets to swap between.

(I do think Anet should remove the swapping of different weapons in combat overall and instead have two skillbars for each weapon to swap between with different characteristics like the spear idea i mentioned).

FoopOplo.7914:

Notice how when they merged the Wintersday feedback thread, Gaile said that the devs would read it, and even responded multiple times herself.

When she merged the expansion thread, she did NOT mention the devs ever reading it, nor has she responded once throughout the 12 pages of begging.

I’d buy an expansion, but I’m not betting on one.

Due to Anet’s policies regarding content revealing, I would say the devs staying away from this topic actually speaks in the expansions favour. If such a hot topic wasn’t in their plans they wouldn’t be in this muted state. The highlight of the Wintersday thread can be seen as the devs not having “two big side projects” involved in that area and can therefore talk about it with more ease.

If that was the case then it wouldn’t be much of an easter egg (at the time you found the text back then you would have already seen the “live contents” anyway) and that earlier date would in that case not have been the usual tuesday release day.
Although I have no idea what 04 and 425 mean, help appreciated!