Guild Wars 2

Wuuuutt??

You think he could have conquered Kryta?? Lulz, never heard that one before. Not sure if serious.

But honestly, never heard so many peeps condone running away as the “right thing to do” instead of staying and fighting. Where’s everyone’s backbone?

Lol, yeah and Rurik leaving cost him his life and Adelbern and Ascalon ended up winning the war anyway…GW2 notwithstanding. Man, I don’t get the bile caused by that scene. You don’t publicly tell the king he’s an idiot for wanting to stay and fight for his homeland, even if he is your dad. Besides, ANet even said they needed a story mechanism to get the PC over the Shiverpeaks and into Kryta. Think maybe you’re reading too much into it?

The same designers who wrote EotN and GW2 wrote her line you’re referring to: “The hour of the storm is upon us, yet Adelbern still refuses to give me audience. Old fool would rather kill us all than accept help.” He would rather kill us all than accept help, sound familiar? Think maybe ANet is setting up the Foefire scenario? Come on Tobs, use yer noggin.

“Leveling” in games exists for one simple reason: our brains are wired for it.

Human beings are wired to crave progression or building or creating. Leveling taps into that instinct by doling out little rewards during the game so that you feel like you are accomplishing something. The GW2 Achievement system works in a similar fashion, there’s nothing new about it. GW1 didn’t need it because the gameplay mechanics were interesting enough without it.

Personally, I think it’s just another way for a game company to divert your attention elsewhere so they don’t have to put as much effort into the actual combat mechanics. It’s a giant rat-race folks, and we’re the stars!! -_-

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Devona is not merely a “personality”, certaining not by the end of the GW(1) campaigns. She, Komir of the humans, along with the PC and some others were among the most famous figures of their age. Devona was the most famous after Adelbern, and ahead of Gwen, Langmar and Keiran.

She was not mere pushed aside for the purpose of writing a new narrative, she was wiped from all of human history in Tyria in GW2.

There was nothing to indicate EVER that she was a famous figure.
The people that Devona and the player character met certainly knew who they were, but it has actually been heavily indicated that outside of that, within the general populace, not a whole lot of people knew who we/they were or what was going on. A LOT of what Devona and the player character did wasn’t witnessed by anyone and a lot of what they did do had to be kept secret – take for instance their meeting Glint. Glint isn’t something you can just go telling the world about – and there is a reason Destiny’s Edge goes off to fight her thinking she is still an evil dragon champion.

Then you have to consider that their actions happened across multiple continents. Canthan’s weren’t really aware of what was going on in Tyria or Elona, and it works the same the other way around – each continent had their own problems to deal with.

Then look at the major actions within each campaign. The heroic parts take place in remote places that lack a human population. Prophecies ends on the Ring of Fire Island Chain, populated almost entirely by Mursaat. Nightfall ends in the Realm of Torment. Factions obviously is an exception, it ends in the royal palace and the actions of the heroes are certainly known. It’s actually most likely that Devona stayed in Cantha with Mhenlo and Cynn – he was offered a position there and Cynn would have stayed to marry him.

She would have been famous in Ascalon though, and I think that’s all that matters since that’s the area we’re talking about. Outside of that not so much though, you’re right about that.

I’d say the continents did have a general knowledge of events elsewhere though. Trade was certainly still going on, and ambassadors and travelers were still common. For instance, did you know that there was a Luxon and a Kurzik settlement in Kryta? ANet toyed with the idea of a “Romeo & Juliet” thing with that, but it never panned out and the project was dropped.

Yeah, Cynn would have stayed with Mhenlo in Cantha prolly. But Devona didn’t have any ties there like those two did. I could see her and Aidan going back to Ascalan tbh. For all we know Eve went to Orr…she felt at home with the dead.

I can’t believe I’m arguing with this guy lol.

“Being wiped from history” and “not being mentioned” are two different things. ANet has elaborated on things in GW1 that they think would make for good story in GW2, and simply left unsaid those things that they don’t want. They’ve also shown they are willing to bend or sometimes break established paradigms in order to serve that purpose. It’s all tied in to marketing and what kind of audience they are catering to really.

Lots of companies do that. I mean, look at Star Wars. When writing Episodes I-III, Lucas knew he had his old loyal fans in the bag but he also wanted to bring in a new, younger audience. That’s why Episode I is so cheesy and light-hearted(Jar Jar anyone?). It’s a fairly common idea for popular stories to be redux’d so as to attract a new and wider audience.

Or take Harry Potter. Rowling wrote those books specifically for an audience that was growing up as the story went on. The first books are adolescent and fun, but by the end it’s very much an adult(or at least young-adult) audience she’s writing for. The tone is much darker. It’s genius really. GW2 is no different, that’s why the themes and characters are so lighthearted.

ANet just started over Nic, that’s all. And if you strictly compare sales of this game vs sales of GW1 over the same time period, by that variable alone GW2 is way more successful. And they can pat themselves on the back saying they did the right thing by catering to both a younger and wider audience. The almighty dollar wins every time.

The dyes were account bound at first. They changed them to character bound right before launch.

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Obisdian in my understand of current Lore, many of the heros and heroines of Ascalon – including Devona were not in Ascalon, took no part in the final siege of Ascalon City, and did not die in Ascalon.

In fact they never existed. They were a work of human fiction to sell works of fiction to the nobility as entertainment. That I believe is what Anet has done to Devona and crew and is why we only have armour/gear with their name-sake.

Nah, they just chose not to expand on those personalities. Because doing so would heavily promote humans relative to the other races, and that’s not something they want to do. It’s simply a result of introducing 4 other races that are supposed to be peers to humanity, nothing more. Playing down humans is simply meant to offset GW1 bias.

The gear-naming thing extends to everything in the past really, not just Ascalon. A cursory glance at the names of Ascended trinkets attests to that. ANet just likes to use those old names for gear and such for sentimental reasons, they don’t take them seriously.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

It was just the natural progression of things.

Not at all really. Up until EotN, Ascalon was assumed to have won the war and begun the rebuilding process. This is evident in a very few off-hand remarks throughout Factions, so it was never a “natural progression” until GW2 began development and the narrative shifted.

What I never understood really was the infinite Charr numbers. The Charr army at Orr was disintegrated by Khilbron. The Charr army in Kryta was decimated by the Mursaat. The 2nd Charr assault on Ascalon was killed off by Rurik and the PC. The Charr gods(Titans) and many top Charr war leaders were killed off by Adelbern and the PC. Even allowing for another horde to magically spawn and attack Ascalon a 3rd time, the Foefire was supposed to kill off 99% of the Charr in Ascalon territory at the time.

Charr spawn timers must have instantaneous.

CETheLucid.3964:

The remaining Ascalonians in the immediate area were not only killed, but turned into restless spirits doomed to forever haunt the land claiming even more lives.

I assumed that at first too. But actually, the way ANet wrote it was that all the humans in the entire Ascalon basin were engulfed by the Foefire, not just those around Ascalon City. Ebonhawke was supposed to be just outside its radius. Heckuva spell eh?

So essentially, ANet wanted to portray Adelbern as a sort of Khilbron 2.0.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

Take Evennia, one of the most important npc’s to the Proph campaign. Last known location Ascalon. Ever seen her mentioned anywhere in this game?

Nope. But then all she was known was to have gone missing after going to have an audience with King Adelbern. Who probably had her disappeared along with the White Mantle Ambassador.

Lolz! Thank you for that, I sincerely laughed.

So many Adelbern haters…props to the ANet guy who turned him into a monster.

I read that without the “es” in “boxes” and I nearly crapped my pants in laughter.

Jski.6180:

Obsidian.1328:

Jski.6180:

CoRtex.2157:

It’s definitely not a “Guild Wars” game, it just got used as a marketing strategy. It’s more like “Tyria online”. The 2 games don’t even have the same lore really.

No its very much Guild Wars just 250 years have past in the story line. And like real life you do not see ppl dwell in the past for new things its foolish to think you can just repeat the old over and over and think you will be ok in doing so.

I dwell in the past, I’m an historian. =D

And I can tell you that GW2 has very little in common with its predecessor. Whether speaking thematically, scientifically, historically, or mechanically…they are essentially two different Tyria’s.

Well ya look at about 250 years in real life ago look how much things have changed if it was the same it would be very odd.

This is a game, not real life. The same rules do not apply. Besides, I never said change was wrong. I said the changes are not only implausible, but also fake.

If you’re going to progress a narrative, do so in a way that honestly reflects the culture, style, and gameplay of the game at hand. Throwing every single fantasy cliche and trope you can think of into Tyria is not only ridiculous, but also entirely uncalled for. It was doing just fine on its own before.

Jski.6180:

CoRtex.2157:

It’s definitely not a “Guild Wars” game, it just got used as a marketing strategy. It’s more like “Tyria online”. The 2 games don’t even have the same lore really.

No its very much Guild Wars just 250 years have past in the story line. And like real life you do not see ppl dwell in the past for new things its foolish to think you can just repeat the old over and over and think you will be ok in doing so.

I dwell in the past, I’m an historian. =D

And I can tell you that GW2 has very little in common with its predecessor. Whether speaking thematically, scientifically, historically, or mechanically…they are essentially two different Tyria’s.

My other legit reply got deleted…no idea why.

The name comes from 2004ish when GW1 ANet was toying with the idea of having Guilds control actual real-estate on all of Tyria. Think Factions and WvW mixed, but on a much grander scale.

Here’s a Guru link that explains it better: World at War.(about 3/4 down the page)

The “Guild Wars” in the lore was added later when they scrapped that idea in favor of smaller, instanced PvP like Tombs, and HA.

Ronah.2869:

…how would you call this game if you had the chance to do it?

Can’t take credit for this one: The Scarlet Variety Show featuring Dragons!

lordkrall.7241:

azizul.8469:

not even 1 % of the content in the game are related to guild, let alone warring guilds….

Hm?
About 100% of the Story Mode Dungeons are very much related to guilds (or well, one specific guild).
The Pact could be considered a type of guild as well, and so could the Orders.

Well, now you’re just being extremely general.

I have a guild too! It’s 3 members strong: me, my wolf pet, and my mini Orrian chicken. Oh the good times we’ve had. We did the Guild Trek the other day and those crazy guys wouldn’t go leave my side. Needless to say we failed it…but we all laughed about it anyway! =D

/endsarcasm

Master of Timespace.2548:

“Guild Wars” roots back to early information about Guild Wars 1. GvG was supposed to be much bigger than it was. They planned wars where guilds could take over outposts and castles, form alliances and plot against each other. Something like a mix of eve online and the WvW that we have now in Guild Wars 2. The idea was later scrapped however, and the name had to be explained somehow.

This is the correct explanation.

Ashabhi.1365:

The biggest (and most maddening, by far) problem that I have with this whole issue is that the OP (and others with the same opinion) cannot seem to tolerate those who think general PvE is being forced upon them.

Think about it… How is it different for a strictly WvW player to have to do all the PvE maps (of which there are a LOT more) in order for them to get their world completion achievement and/or their Gift?

Oh, and before you say “Because blahblahblah…,” it isn’t. It’s exactly the same, except that those who are purely WvW players have a lot more territory to try to cover doing something they hate.

I reiterate: If you want the achievement (or just the Gift for the legendary) be prepared to do a few things you can’t stand to get it. The same rules for everyone!

It’s not the same. At all. Most W3’ers don’t give a darn for achievements or Legendaries. Most just want to win the match.

And having PvE’ers all over the map doing their own thing means we have fewer numbers.

And that makes it a lot harder to win the match.

Because our numbers are smaller than theirs.

Because of world completion.

I don’t know how to be any clearer…

Melroc.8290:

So you want credit for exploring the whole world except you dont want to explore the whole world…

Technically W3 isn’t even on Tyria.

On the other side of the coin though, there’s not enough variety to the customization. Especially the female humans. Most of the options are too teen barbie-ish. It makes sense that the body shapes are fit, it doesn’t make sense that they are mostly “top-heavy” with little girl faces.

It’s faintly disturbing.

The game? Only liked WvW, but my motherboard fried on Halloween. Oddly I found I didn’t miss playing it. I have a new comp now, but I still haven’t logged in to GW2. :/

The forums I actually enjoy more than the game now. No idea why, never did before lol.

And I thought I was a die-hard Ascalonian lol.

The thing is Nic, even if your entire premise is a valid one and should hold true…it doesn’t matter. Because GW2 ANet simply doesn’t care for it. They decided long ago on the current path, and you’d have to be delusional to think they would redo all of that time and money spent developing the current storyline.

I understand you’re passionate about Ascalon, trust me I do, but it’s not going to change. If you really want to fight them on this, you need to find another avenue of protest that is more meaningful. Start your own RP Guild based in Ebonhawke. Write your own fan-fiction. Get into the game development industry and create your own world.

Or you can do what I did and just stop playing the game. Sure that’s a mere drop in the ocean to ANet, but it made me feel a little better.

What’s funny is PvE’ers want map completion out of there as much as W3’ers do. They both agree on that simple idea, it’s ANet who doesn’t want it that way.

As for the other argument, percentages don’t matter. Even if there is only 1 enemy dude on the other side of the whole map from you, and he’s afk drunk on his floor at his apartment…it’s still a PvP map. It’s an open-zone(notice I didn’t say world) PvP map, which means it’s PvP taking place in a PvE map. It doesn’t matter if you never, ever see an enemy player, the possibility of it is there. And that’s all that really matters.

Shiren.9532:

-snip-

Wow…that’s actually a really well thought-out scenario. Kudos.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

I’m pretty sure there’s a reason that we don’t know what befell Devona and Co. If they had stayed in Tyria then Im sure there would be some trace of them in GW2, at the very least we would be able to visit their grave sites.
(Unless of course they did end up in the Crystal Desert)

/shrug

Oh I don’t know about that. You may think this is biased on my part, but GW2 devs tend to favor things that happened after Nightfall. Take Evennia, one of the most important npc’s to the Proph campaign. Last known location Ascalon. Ever seen her mentioned anywhere in this game?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Obsidian.1328:

-snip-

I really should have specified that I meant kingdoms didn’t go from lineal monarchies to other systems unless said monarchy was deposed. I will admit that the way I phrased it was ridiculously incorrect O_o.

Ah, gotcha.

Very good point Zax. I always assumed that was for henchman purposes and campaign continuity…but perhaps not. After all, Devona and Co. went everywhere the player did. The Ascalonian Settlement is a possibility I suppose… if she valued Rurik’s vision over Ascalon I would say. Hard to say.

Sucks GW2 chose to immortalize npc’s like Greywind and Kieran over them…they don’t even come into play until EotN. Same with Gwen minus her little flute quest in Pre. :/

Edit: Greywind was in the Ascalon Settlement in Proph…totally missed him lol

Gany.1793:

Ascelon was definately different than Krytan. They were considered more a “Frontier” kind of Human Kingdom, having expanded into the lands formerly held by the Charr. As such, it was more a popular will and strength of arms and abilities at war that determined the next King. Duke Barradine should have become King, but the issue of the Guild Wars was always a major part of the royal succession. Alberdeen was able to take the crown because he was strong, smart and, in simple truth, ambitious. Barradine was not truly interested in the possition, or so it seems to me, which is why he did not object or try to take back the throne.

Eh…they were a full fledged kindgom, I don’t know where you get the “frontier” part. They actually won the 2nd Guild War against Kryta. Adelbern got the crown for 4 reasons:

• the current line of royalty(which included Barradin, although he himself didn’t seem to be corrupt at all) was supposedly so corrupt that the people wanted a change.
• the bloodshed caused by the 3rd Guild War(which many commoners viewed as a political war) was so bad the people were looking for a new leader to get them out of it.
• Adelbern was reportedly a brilliant and sound general.
• Adelbern was also extremely popular with people, and was “crowned king by the people’s demand” according to the wiki.

From the in-game clues and dialogues, Barradin readily approved of Adelbern over him, even to the point of vilifying renegade Royalists trying to oust Adelbern. His turn to madness in GW2 is supposed to be because he just couldn’t deal with his son’s death(which he probably felt guilty about since he was the one that exiled him in the first place) and the seemingly endless years of slowly losing to the Charr.

Aaron Ansari

Thanks for the podcast summary. It’s good to get a glimpe into the devs minds, if only for a tiny piece of the Tyrian pie. =D

Ah yeah, probably samurai for Tengu. They did have a large role in the lore of Cantha after all.

Uhh…Western civilizations did choose non-hereditary rulers Foxx. It just didn’t happen all that much. Pre-empire Rome did it all the time for example. The bulk of Medieval and Renaissance kingdoms did keep it “in the family” for the most part, but there were exceptions, without a coup.

As for Devona, she never struck me as the ruling type. And although the Prophecies trailer has her center stage(dual wielding swords interestingly), the in-game features don’t treat her any different from the others in that cadre of Aidan, Cynn, Eve, and Mhenlo. She tends to follow the fights(she was the first to volunteer to go to Cantha with Mhenlo for instance), and her bio states that she values duty and loyalty above all else. Because of that, I disagree with Zax that she would not be present at Ascalon’s demise. Her greatest wish was to emulate her father and die defending “that which is most dear to her”.

So I guess it would be a judgement call on whether she valued her home or her friends more. I choose home because her father did too. :P

FlamingFoxx is right though. GW1 lore never said anything about the Charr only occupying certain parts of the Ascalon basin when humans arrived…it just generalized the whole area. So without mention to the contrary, you have to assume it was all Charr land.

Yeah, that’s definitely no mechanical cut. And lightning strikes tend to split a tree vertically. Could be high winds. If anything it looks like it rotted from the inside and eventually fell over. Prolly fungus or parasitic insect. :P

I rolled an imaginary conglomerate DnD character based on your theory:

• Wisdom[Sylvari] = 15 (highly spiritual but know so little of Tyria yet)
• Intelligence[Asura] = 25 (mega genius that can make mega lasers)
• Constitution[Norn] = 20 (always drunk but still in top fighting condition)
• Strength[Charr] = 23 (like an orc, but bigger and badder)
• Charisma/Luck[Human] = 19/3 (drooling eye-candy/80% of heritage written off with GW2 story)
• Dexterity[Tengu] = 17 (bird races are always highly agile)

So basically you got a beautiful, roflstomping Einstein who always loses his initiative roll and keeps rolling a 1 on his 20-sided attack die. =D

Interesting theory, but I’d say the races simply represent different fantasy tropes more than anything else:

• Sylvari = elves
• Asura = gnomes
• Norn = vikings
• Charr = orcs…but smarter
• Humans = humans…duh
• Tengu = umm…no idear. Native Americans?

The main difference between Logan/Jennah and Kieran/Gwen is the latter is just better portrayed and much more fleshed out. But they both are relatively adolescent in their style and content, like teen dramas.

With Hearts of the North, half of the time is spent with Miku laboriously trying to get Kieran to grow up and just be a man. The other half with Gwen being a “woe is me” brat to him so many times you just want to walk away from it. It’s like Saved By the Bell in a fantasy setting. The Koss/Melonni/Tahlkora relationship was much more believable and better written.

With GW2, Logan and Jennah are not likable mainly for two related reasons: Logan because he doesn’t have a spine and Jennah because she wears the proverbial pants in the relationship. If they want players to like Logan they need to have him snub her and go his own way. If they want players to like Jennah, they need to make her appear genuinely remorseful; both for indirectly getting Snaff killed, and for treating Logan so indifferently. And if they are wary of a potential issues with her position as Queen and Logan’s as a Seraph Captain, then end it. Their duties to Kryta and Tyria are invariably more important than their personal feelings.

CETheLucid.3964:

However, the Fields of Ruin remains jointly owned. The greater part of the area that borders the Crystal Desert is Ash Legion territory. This is now their homeland

Fixed that for you.

Quaggan

They eat Asuran babies.

No joke.

Nicholas

Hey I feel for ya man lol. But it ain’t gonna happen. You have to understand that GW2 is trying to distinguish itself from GW1, and not necessarily be a continuation of. Promoting the other races is just one way to do that, it makes sense from a marketing point of view. You can keep pluggin’ away on these forums about it, The Six know I have lol, but I really don’t see how what you’re talking about is possible for ANet. They made their decision on Ascalon for GW2 like 7 years ago.

If you worked at ANet, how do you think it would go over at the Monday morning staff meeting if you stood up and said, “You know…I know we’ve put in like a million man-hours on this Ascalon-Charr thing, but I think we should scrap it. Or at least have them relocate up north so the humans can start repopulating it. It’s only fair, right? What do you say guys, who’s with me?!?”

crickets

moar crickets

someone hands you a cardboard box

Shanna.4762:

Perhaps, but I am speaking more about Queen Jennah is more closely related to Kings/Queens of Ascalon past than Wade Samuelsson would be. Also, historically there have been similar systems that evolved (or maybe devolved depending on your personal point of view) into purely hereditary monarchies such as Sweden.

More closely related? Probably, yeah. I still don’t think that matters to Ascalonians though. Sweden is a RL example and doesn’t reflect the nature of Ascalon politics. Historically Guild Wars speaking, they always had a distrust of Kryta…current circumstances notwithstanding.

Shanna.4762:

I do think it would be interesting to see either aspect of either a unified Kryta & human Ascalon under Queen Jennah, making it the first time in many centuries that the human Kingdoms were a unified “empire” if you will, or the ascension of Wade Samuelsson to the restored throne of Ascalon and a tight alliance between both independent Kingdoms. Either direction could make for really interesting story and timeline events to play through.

ANet will never do it like that though, at least not in any way where Ebonhawke territory starts expanding north. I mean, yeah they could have Wade be “king” of Ebonhawke and allied to Jenna…but he’ll always just be king of Ebonhawke, not Ascalon. Not because it’s not possible. It is. But because this game isn’t designed that way. Every race has their own little “homeland” area and they need Ascalon to be Charr land. They did this for two reasons: 1) they want the cultural diversity to be between the races, not between groups of a single race. That’s just how the game culture is set up. So choosing between the 2 human kingdoms in Tyria(Kryta & Ascalon), Kryta was the obvious choice since human Ascalon was a wreck. And 2) developing the historical Charr homeland northeast of the Ascalon basin meant more design time. The zones, partly because they are so beautiful, take a long time to create, and why waste all that design time when you can simply write off a kingdom that was almost dead anyway. :/ They’ve recently even gone so far as to rewrite history: The GW2 Charr wiki now states Ascalon is their “ancestral homeland” even though on a GW1 map it has it as northeast of there. The Charr are there to stay. Ebonhawke was simply made as a sentimental nod to the old game for the players, that’s pretty much it.

Shanna.4762:

Just the way they’ve set it up thus far shows so many signs toward it being a reunified human empire under Queen Jennah, rather than the other option of separate and independent Kingdoms when you take into account what’s going on in the game (the merging/hybridizing & recruiting of the Queen’s military to the Ebonhawke military in that region) and an extremely tiny role that Wade Samuelsson plays in the story overall…Along with the Wiki page update of the Queen being named regent of Ascalon per the treaty. Maybe we’ll have to choose one direction, or the other similarly to the Captains Council thing, or maybe it will just happen and be out of our control altogether. Either way, I want to see a reclaimed & resettled Ascalon…I don’t particularly care which direction it goes in after that but “Wade Samuelsson” is a terrible name for a King…..King Wade of Ascalon…LOL..

Oh I agree ANet wants it to go that direction, it’s in their best interests to downplay human cultural distinctions and promote racial unity. The game makes more sense that way. Which is probably why they gave Jenna that title…they are trying to slowly push that “one nation” ideal. I’d get all notions of a “reclaimed” Ascalon out of your mind though, it ain’t gonna happen. :P

And yes, Wade is a silly name for a king. GW2 naming conventions are kind of real-life trendy which is sad. I mean even “Jenna” is a bad name for a Tyrian queen. It sounds so…sorority girl to me.(sorry to any Jenna’s out there lol)

PattyCakeChamp.5268:

Obsidian.1328:

Atlas.9704:

We feel like WvW is a really good middle-ground between PvE and PvP and …

This snip right here is why players say they are so out of touch with the game. W3 is in no way, shape, or form a “casual middle ground” between PvP and PvE. It’s more competitive than sPvP for Christ’s sake. Yet simply because it wasn’t intentionally designed that way, they refuse to acknowledge that.

It’s like ANet is holding their hands to their ears and shouting: “la la la la la la la la la la…”

Hi. So I was an anonymous pve’er, and for me wvw was a middle ground. Anet just doesn’t spoon feed people. I happen to have a good grasp for understanding things, and after I got better in wvw I started to spvp. Boom. Middle ground.

I don’t see how that’s middle ground, you used one PvP mode to get better at another PvP mode. That you took one less seriously than the other doesn’t really make it a middle ground. I mean, I could just as easily get some buds and go into an sPvP map and kitten around for an hour and call it “casual”. W3 is simply a massive PvP map within a pseudo-PvE environment. Putting things like material nodes and crafting stations doesn’t make it PvE either.

What separates them is really very simple: PvE is Player vs Environment, PvP is Player vs Player. Even if 90% of a zone is PvE content, that other 10% makes it a PvP zone by default. Why do you think people get upset when they see players just farming nodes or going afk in W3? Since it’s population capped, they are taking up slots and inadvertently causing the server to be at a disadvantage.

Maybe it’s a Tier thing, I don’t know. All I know is my server has always viewed W3 as strictly a PvP zone, and a serious one at that. The thought of anything casual or “middle-groundish” never even entered our minds. If anything, we’d use a private sPvP map to practice on before going to W3. :/

Note: Anet…why in the world is the word “berp” but with a “d” censored??? You guys seriously need to lay off the zealous moderation…it’s quite far from actually being moderate.

Atlas.9704:

Obsidian.1328:

Atlas.9704:

We feel like WvW is a really good middle-ground between PvE and PvP and …

This snip right here is why players say they are so out of touch with the game. W3 is in no way, shape, or form a “casual middle ground” between PvP and PvE….

I too would like to know how a massive scale PvP game mode like WvWvW be a “good middle ground” for PvE’ers honestly.

Well they had said they wanted W3 to be fun combat zone that everyone could enjoy. I think they envisioned a semi-casual realm-v-realm mode that was light on competition and heavy on simple good times I guess.

There was an incident late last year where a dev player had told two guilds who were GvG’n at the windmill to basically “stop ruining our game, this zone isn’t supposed to be for that stuff”(not word for word). He later apologized, but it just goes to show how inflexible and out of touch they were with the W3 crowd.

It’s really odd they don’t cater more to the hard-core W3 crowd, there’s certainly a dedicated following for it. They did put in another overflow map, which helped, but they don’t exactly put in a concerted effort there. Comments like the quote above has everyone kinda put their palms up and say “Uhh…what?”

Why was the GW2 story written to be 250 years after GW1?

Note: “Because 250 is a neat-o reference to mat stacks” better not be the answer…

Atlas.9704:

We feel like WvW is a really good middle-ground between PvE and PvP and …

This snip right here is why players say they are so out of touch with the game. W3 is in no way, shape, or form a “casual middle ground” between PvP and PvE. It’s more competitive than sPvP for Christ’s sake. Yet simply because it wasn’t intentionally designed that way, they refuse to acknowledge that.

It’s like ANet is holding their hands to their ears and shouting: “la la la la la la la la la la…”

DavyMcB.1603:

But I was still hopeful… so I thought about it.. maybe I was doing something wrong, like, maybe I didn’t use pets correctly and then I thought about it.. you know, there’s a chance that all those ranger pets are tied to the game general pets, which means anet can’t change these pets — allowing them to attack while on the move, lowering channeling time, increasing skill effectiveness, etc. without breaking the whole game. But I thought I was imagining things so I looked on the forum… and it seems that that might be the case… which is, if true, very stupid. Why? why on earth would you just reuse the in-game mobs in the first place ? Didn’t you have any common sense to realize that they [generic mobs and mobs under player control] have totally different purposes and thus require totally different basis for their setups?

You hit the nail on the head with this.

It’s true this is like the bazillionth post on it, but the fact that a new player can figure out the root problem so fast is hilarious. Kudo’s to you.

And yes, they can’t fix it. I even think I remember a dev stating as such last year(2012). It’s very disheartening, eh?

Just one:

Permanent pet stow option with the pets power reverting back to the ranger.

They can leave the F2 blank for all I care.

The best temporary content ANet ever had was the first Southsun Cove installment. Why? Because it gave us a permanent zone through the medium of a temporary storyline arc. If you’re gonna do a “Living Story” or whatever, do it in such a way that gradually, and persistently, expands the map of Tyria. The “temporary” stuff should be the story(and perhaps a few instanced areas) as a vehicle to deliver new zones and continents.

Additionally, the “story” that delivers those zones should have the option of being done after the cycle is over. This idea that a player has to log in within a relatively tiny window of opportunity or forever miss out on content is ridiculous. The amount of hubris it takes to assume the temporary content is so good that players wouldn’t fathom missing it is incredible.

Sure there are things that are better, or more precious, that you shouldn’t repeat. Something like winning your high school football state championship would fall into that category. It’s an epic moment for anyone that you can never go back to, nor should you. A video game story arc is no where near that, unless it is just so friggin’ awesomely done that it stays with you forever. Does the LS do that? Absolutely not. Not even close to being close.

I simply cannot fathom how ANet still thinks that what we have now is working and a “good thing.” God forbid no one ever has any RL issue that would keep you away from the game for over two weeks. But I guess we all paid our $$$ already so we should be supremely grateful for every single scrap of content they toss to us under the table right? /rollseyes

Hector.1408:

anyone seen this? its a portal. and there’s a broken bridge. its never been here before

If that’s the one in Brisban it’s been there awhile. Bunch of bandits tirelessly building it if I remember right. I can only guess it’s an entrance for a new zone in the works.

It’s like that Swingers convo where the main character’s friend is trying to explain to him why the ex gf won’t call him back until the moment he genuinely forgets about her. You can’t act like you’ve forgotten either, she will undoubtedly know you are faking it.

You have to truly get all notions of a reward completely out of your mind.

And that’s when it will drop.

Nabrok.9023:

Obsidian.1328:

Nabrok.9023:

The fact remains that living story has introduced new zones, new dungeon paths, new skills, new skins … all of those things.

You need to be more specific: 1 new zone added, 1 alteration to an existing dungeon path, 1 alteration to an existing open-world boss, Several new Fractal paths, 1 new skill, lots of temporary new skins now gone, several temporary zones now gone, 1 new pvp arena(as far as I know), a few existing zones altered.

In a year and a half.

That’s not even 1/10th worth of expansion content. An expansion should give you a new continent’s worth of material: permanent new races/professions, dozens of permanent new skills, entirely new permanent storyline arc, permanent new dungeons, permanent new pvp arenas, and of course gem-store items.

At this rate, it will take them 20 years to give an “expansion’s worth” of content.

Nobody is saying they’ve already given us an expansions worth of content. What we are saying is that they have introduced and tested the mechanism for delivering the content.

What arena net is saying is that they’re going to give us expansion level content through it. I’m not making this up, you know? I don’t have links at my disposal but they’ve said stuff like that in several places.

This isn’t a new thing, they said that in 2012 too. The entirety of 2013 was ANet giving us our first installments of an expansions worth of content. Like I said, at this rate, it’ll take 20 years to do that.

Nabrok.9023:

The fact remains that living story has introduced new zones, new dungeon paths, new skills, new skins … all of those things.

You need to be more specific: 1 new zone added, 1 alteration to an existing dungeon path, 1 alteration to an existing open-world boss, several new Fractal paths, a handful of new skills, lots of temporary new skins now gone, several temporary zones now gone, 1 new pvp arena(as far as I know), a few existing zones altered.

In a year and a half.

That’s not even 1/10th worth of expansion content. An expansion should give you a new continent’s worth of material: permanent new races/professions, dozens of permanent new skills, entirely new permanent storyline arc, permanent new dungeons, permanent new pvp arenas, and of course gem-store items.

At this rate, it will take them 20 years to give us an “expansion’s worth” of content.