Guild Wars 2

piano man.1672:

Wait, for those saying that the base game used to be $20 as of yesterday, I don’t think that’s true (unless it was momentarily on sale or there was an error).

I checked on Monday the price for the game while speaking to a friend about GW2 (specifically June 15th, 2015 at 6:30pm, according to my Steam chat), and for the standard edition it showed $40. I doubt they were selling the game for $20 for 2 days, but I could be wrong.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2#Guild_Wars_2_editions

The boxed edition, with no benefits, was $20. At some point, a digital version of it was available, but I guess it wasn’t available on buy.GW2 – but you could still get the basic version from retailers (http://www.amazon.com/Guild-Wars-2-Pc/dp/B001TOQ8X4/ – yes it does say $40 discounted to $20, which Amazon tends to do, but that’s not the Heroic edition). The Heroic edition was the one that was always $40 on buy.GW2.com, the default option people went for, and the one that people went for during sales. The Deluxe edition was also on buy.GW2 for $60 (IIRC).

That was my mistake – there was no $20 digital edition, but there is a $20 boxed edition with no extra benefits.

The wiki lists two previous editions: The DDE (was $80 on launch), which is the current Deluxe edition, and the standard edition ($60 on launch and gave two pre-purchase benefits which were gone after launch).

The Collector’s Edition was limited to something like 10000 copies.

The $20 isn’t discounted, that was the price of the base game with no goodies on buy.GW2.com; the Heroic edition with extra goodies was $40, which got discounted to $20 or $10 depending on the discount (50/75%). I think the base game without any goodies also got discounted, but it was usually the heroic edition that people went for.

When the game launched, it was $60 for base game (no extra benefits), $80 for Deluxe, $150 for Collector’s edition. Base and Deluxe editions had both physical and digital versions.

Little note on pricing:
The original base game of GW2, as of yesterday, was $20. The Heroic edition was $40 (which is what most people go for anyway).

And no, you do not have to create a new account to play the expansion. You have the option to Link the HoT pre-purchase to an existing account (I’ve already done so), as was the case with GW2’s launch.

Much excite. Bought it as soon as it was announced too (was always the plan). Only other thing I’m waiting for is the Living Story soundtrack (and possibly HoT soundtrack).

2) $50 for an expansion is standard pricing as of 2015. Competition dictates that companies will have to keep prices roughly equal. It’s the reason why almost all high-end smartphones default to $600, or why the Xbox One and PS4 launched at roughly the same price (after factoring in the extra price of the PS Eye).

3) Of course it’s not finished. We’ve seen a small portion of it, and realistically, there’s more to come. And if the past is any indication, they’re much further along than they’re letting on. GW2 announced its pre-purchase in April and launched in August just over 4 months later. HoT is following a very similar pattern.

As for the assumption that we’ve paid for “nothing” – that’s ridiculous. So all of the beta events we’ve had are nothing?

You know what, I’m not even going to bother responding beyond that. Troll post is troll post.

Linnael.1069:

I for one will be definitely be taking this into account when I make purchasing decisions in the future, and I would feel pretty negligent in not calling attention to it when I just happened to luck into finding out about it from a random forum post.

And whether or not this affects my purchasing decision in the future, logically, would depend on how ArenaNet handles upgrading people to HoT pre-purchase, which they will be: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3a46s4/preorders_for_heart_of_thorns_are_now_live/cs96lfu

Creativity.3816:

It’s about the anticipatory aspect. You’re missing the mark here by arguing these dumb semantics… The way ANet had it worded on the FAQ made it seem like you would need to purchase the core game before being able to play the expansion. It is sleazy of them and I don’t understand why you would try to defend that…

Which is standard procedure for any MMO that’s been out in the last 5-10 years.

WoW only recently did a thing where you bought the most recent expansion as one package, and everything before that expansion as a separate package (and that only benefited new players, not older ones).

GW2’s approach is to roll the expansion and the base game (essentially free) into a single package. If you’re upset about having bought the game within the last month or so, send in a support ticket for a refund and buy the expansion for $10 more.

Linnael.1069:

Semantics. It’s false advertising. You’re naive if you think anything related to marketing and PR goes through or stays live on the internet without serious considerations.

I’m also guessing you didn’t read through the whole thread, where if you had followed the links you would have seen that the change wasn’t made until after a forum thread had been up complaining about the discrepancy for a good hour before the changes occured. I linked it once but I’ll do it again. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/From-the-Heart-of-Thorns-Q-A-Page/first#post5157198

The fact that this thread and all responses on it are timestamped hours after the presentation ended and obviously referring to the live at that point in time version of the page should make it obvious that the change was not conducted until after the discrepancy was called out and flamed, and was only conducted as a cheap response to the situation.

Also I’m seeing this thread get kind of off topic. This isn’t even really about the price. It’s about how scummy the marketing here was. Let’s keep the attention there and not get bogged down with subjectives about worth.

Alright. A discrepancy was noted, ArenaNet fixed it to reflect the change. For people who bought the game recently and feel it’s a rip-off or false-advertising (because really, those are the only people who have a right to make that claim), ArenaNet’s refund policy is very good when it comes to these situations.

Errant.1509:

Rashy.4165:

Information changes. Before they announced pre-purchase, the assumption was that you’d have to buy them separately. After the announcement, the base game is free and the expansion comes with it (for players who don’t have it already). For players who have the base game, the expansion is all they get for $50 (which is standard pricing for expansions these days).

Look at the cache…they changed the FAQ mere hours before announcing preorders. It’s a bait-and-switch.

That … is not a bait-and-switch.

A bait and switch would be saying that buying the expansion gives the core game (for players who don’t already have it) and not giving it to them when they actually buy it. A bait and switch would be saying they’re giving a free character slot for the $75 edition, but not actually giving it when bought.

A bait and switch would be promising something that’s set in stone, and not delivering. The FAQ change is something that wasn’t set in stone. It’s obvious that the core game is needed to play the expansion, so the previous FAQ reflected that. The new FAQ reflects the change (the fact that the FAQ changed hours before the announcement doesn’t matter – it just means people weren’t combing the FAQs to predict that buying HoT would include the core game) when they announced the pre-purchase: buying the expansion gives you the base game for free (for new players).

Plain and simple.

Information changes. Before they announced pre-purchase, the assumption was that you’d have to buy them separately. After the announcement, the base game is free and the expansion comes with it (for players who don’t have it already). For players who have the base game, the expansion is all they get for $50 (which is standard pricing for expansions these days).

They didn’t really have any way of tapping into the PC Gamer stream (well, besides how they did it – screen capping the PC gamer stream). A bit of prior research, and you could have found the PC Gaming show, the time it’ll be on, as well as a list of all participants (realizing in the process that each participant will only get 5-10 minutes at most), and which Twitch channel it was going to be on (bearing in mind that ArenaNet didn’t go on till at least an hour into the show). That last part wasn’t really communicated on the Guildwars2 Twitch channel.

There was no way of knowing when ArenaNet was going to go on during the PC Gaming Show. Hence the four talking heads until that happened (they switched over to the PC Gamer stream pretty quickly).

Donari.5237:

I saw in the FAQ, I think, that the glider and the guild hall item won’t be useable until HoT launch. They should have a popup that prevents it from being used, in that case. I stuck mine in my bank precisely because I was afraid they’d vanish as you posted yours did.

So I hope your account is flagged as having used it so once glider skins are part of the UI you will see it. Meanwhile you may wish to a) keep this thread link available so you can show it to Support and b) maybe even file a ticket now to document the issue in case it doesn’t appear in HoT.

The guild hall item isn’t consumable, but the glider is. Since it’s a skin (I presume), it should be considered unlocked (just not showing up under skins since Gliders aren’t on there yet).

Deedrick.4372:

The easiest way to complete this is to have a friend help you (their story start) and die before the event starts and let them solo it.

Yup. After many fruitless attempts (yay, reset mote), we gave up and decided to go with this method.

Rekliss.3856:

Gaile could you clear a big question up for me?

Those who participate in the beta and gain some mastery points, are those permanent or are they just temporary?

As with GW2’s original beta testing, character progress is wiped before each one (there were only one or two exceptions where it wasn’t wiped).

lordkrall.7241:

Rashy.4165:

We’re in the midst of specializations blog posts, and it was supposed to be the last nine weeks leading up to the release, but that would put the release at mid June at the current pace. And there’s still Guild Halls that hasn’t been covered (and perhaps a bit more about some of the other Masteries we’ll be getting). There’s a rumour that they’ll take a break from specializations at some point, give us blog posts about other things, then return to the remaining specializations, finish off with Revenant, then launch.

-shrug-

When did they ever say that specializations would be the last nine weeks leading up to release?

It also seems like we are getting three specializations now, something else and then the rest (or possible three, else, three, else, three).

It was in an interview. Maybe that was the original intention, but they’ve decided to change it up.

We’re in the midst of specializations blog posts, and it was supposed to be the last nine weeks leading up to the release, but that would put the release at mid June at the current pace. And there’s still Guild Halls that hasn’t been covered (and perhaps a bit more about some of the other Masteries we’ll be getting). There’s a rumour that they’ll take a break from specializations at some point, give us blog posts about other things, then return to the remaining specializations, finish off with Revenant, then launch.

-shrug-

Since the portal hunt is ending this weekend, sometime between Wed and next Weekend would be the earliest possible time for the beta event

NightyNight.1823:

ok so in the hero pannel says I have 70 AR.
I mistakenly counted agony infusion as agony resistance aswel.
Now everything is clear to me.
Thank you everyone.

Agony infusions do give AR – but only if slotted into Infused equipment (rings and backpieces only, currently).

Been trying for 9 days now.

I’m on my last hope – I’ve re-signed up for the newsletter.

Ascended is only useful for Fractals, and even then, you can get away with just making a set of weapons you use on a regular basis (can get to 70 AR without a single piece of armor). Trinkets are easy to get (and makes it useless to ever update Jeweler to include 400-500). Two weapons (since I use S/P, D/D and SB as a Thief in Fractals, I went for all 5), full set of trinkets/backpiece and 3x+10 Agony infusions in infused equipment gives 70AR without the armor pieces, at a reduced cost (even factoring in the cost of infusing the backpiece).

If you don’t step foot in Fractals, Ascended armor or weapons aren’t necessary.

What I would like to see is more ways to acquire ascended gear outside of Crafting, requiring significant time and effort. Bioluminescence and Ambrite weapons are a good example of collections with an Ascended armor reward – would like to see something like that tied to Fractal rewards, where you can do a repeated set of collections or achievements for Ascended armor/weapon boxes (in addition to RNG drops). This gives a time-based alternative to getting Ascended equipment as opposed to the current gold sink. Players who can afford to pay the gold to craft Ascended gear can still go for it and save the time/effort of alternative methods.

The collections themselves will be account bound, but I don’t think crafting should be as well. Even if the materials needed to craft items for the collection is account bound, that’s not a problem: account bound items can be obtained on any character and transferred to any character through the account vault.

Wait until details.

Mawdrey is a good example of what you’d end up doing. The scavenger hunt items as well as the LS rewards were account bound and can be transferred to any character for crafting (although that was largely through the mystic forge, but still).

Neither map can be zerged in the same way that World bosses and Edge of the Mists are zerged. Tequatl and Triple Trouble are fairly coordinated zergs (mindless zerging will get you nowhere with TT). So are SW and Dry Top (splitting up into smaller teams is the most effective strategy, not going together as a group as proven time and time again by DTOP and countless SW maps).

Build diversity will depend on encounter design, something which we’ve only had a glimpse of with the Wyvern fight.

Koorii.6752:

So, this doesn’t mention level 80 characters with 100% world completion. Will those characters get all of the hero points they’d have? I know Anet is usually really good about retroactive rewards, but the wording here leaves something to be desired. :s

I’m looking forward to see how this is implemented and plays out over all, though.

This could be done on a case by case basis:
-Players who are level 80 and 100% world completion have all of their skills unlocked, for sure. That could translate to having enough points to unlock all of the Skill specializations (or having them unlocked by default, grandfathered in).
-Players at level 80 with all traits unlocked (either the new system or being grandfathered in) should ideally get enough Hero points to unlock all Trait specializations too (with the exception of Elite, for which they’d need to earn Hero points first, perhaps exclusive to HoT challenges).
-Players without any traits unlocked, or partial traits (due to the current trait system) shouldn’t get any Hero points (or the number of points can be prorated) to allow players to re-unlock the traits they had previously (although it could be messy with the re-arranging of traits). In this case, Hero points will have to be earned to unlock traits specializations.

The absolute simplest approach would be to grandfather in every character made before the expansion into the new system (regardless of current skills/traits unlocked, with the requirement that they be level 80), giving them enough points (calculated based on how many they’d receive leveling up and based on how many skill challenges they’ve completed) to unlock Skill and Trait specializations, and progress tracks, with the exception of the Elite specialization track.

Time will tell how it’ll get implemented.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

PS: the retroactive mastery points will ONLY be for PRE- HoT content. all HoT content, everyone WILL be starting off exactly the same, with ZERO HoT mastery points.

Well, actually, you get one point for completing the initial story component that introduces you to Verdant Brink (it’s very brief).

Regarding OP: definitely not. A lot of us have spent years working on various achievements, and it would be an idiotic move on ArenaNet’s part to not award retroactive points for Pact Tyria. None of those mastery points will have any meaning in HoT, as it will only be used to unlock Mastery tracks in Pact Tyria.

Complaints about “Not having anything to do” isn’t a valid reason to force all of us to repeat every single one of it over again.

Honestly, it’s about time we had sweeping changes to the meta. As for specific concerns, I’d wait to see how it plays out before jumping to conclusions.

Dirame.8521:

Does the fact that they’ll be able to critically hit mean that their base damage is also reduced, for instance, should I be afraid of 4k crits from Rocket turret because it’s base damage is slightly above 1k?

Re-read the post: able to BE critically hit. Meaning, when you hit a turret, YOU can critically hit it = turret can be broken quicker.

Kurr.4179:

And honestly there are plane crashes all the time. This one just hit closer to home for you because it was disastrous.

Not really. It’s been more frequent in recent months, but almost all due to pilot tampering. Almost starting to become a bizarre fad.

Crashes before last year are fewer and far between, and usually a result of some kind of system failure. There are actually more cases of a pilot saving an entire airplane from a catastrophic crash after a system failure than actual crashes due to system failure. Considering that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of aircraft flying every single day, those odds are actually pretty darn good.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Rauderi.8706:

I turned my graphic settings up recently. Dropped me to 30fps, but the visuals are worth it.
GW2 has some of the best aesthetics I’ve experienced in an MMO. That it can be so pleasing to the eye and still run great on my machine puts it a light year away from WildStar (7-12fps for uninspired cartoons?) or even FF14 (gorgeous, but devours my GPU).

It’s crazy how badly optimized most mmo’s are right now. I mean, seriously, they tend to look like they are ten, fifteen years old compared to AAA single players and shooters, but they run like garbage.

Part of the reason is to try to cater to low-end hardware, and development starts early (potentially 4-5 years before release). MMOs starting development now can take advantage of the optimizations with new APIs (DX10+).

It’s still quite amazing what MMOs can accomplish though, despite the limitations, and GW2 is an outstanding example of that.

Guild Wars 2 is, excuse the kittens, one kittening beautiful game.

Good job ArenaNet! -sends virtual cupcakes-

loseridoit.2756:

Rashy.4165:

Iyeru.5240:

Rashy.4165:

Iyeru.5240:

Mobile can’t be the future if the processors are ARM based, at least if you don’t plan to port to Linux or iOS. Because the Windows version of ARM can’t run actual Windows programs unless they’re made for the ARM Architecture. (This includes Guild Wars 2.) If people think they won’t do a Mac Port, they won’t do a mobile port either.

Intel is making some pretty decent strides in that sense. Their mobile processors are fairly powerful for their power consumption. It’ll still be a long time before mobile platforms are as powerful as desktops, and powerful enough to run games without much problems.

performance and power aren’t an issue as long as the issue still is that the architecture =/= x86 or x64

Most of Intel’s processor line-up IS x86/x64. My point was, Intel’s x86 processors targeted at mobile platforms (U and Y series SKUs) are becoming more powerful while reducing power consumption, making mobile platforms more and more attractive for the future.

I am confused which mobile are you arguing for?

Laptops? tablets? cell phones?

Laptops already being target but the other two are completely different issue

Laptops, tablets and phones.

Right now, the low power consumption CPUs only target laptops, but it won’t be long before they’re capable of running tablets and phones (they consume too much power for tablets and phones currently, it’ll kill the battery too quickly; the other issue being cooling).

It’s only a matter of time.

Iyeru.5240:

Rashy.4165:

Iyeru.5240:

Mobile can’t be the future if the processors are ARM based, at least if you don’t plan to port to Linux or iOS. Because the Windows version of ARM can’t run actual Windows programs unless they’re made for the ARM Architecture. (This includes Guild Wars 2.) If people think they won’t do a Mac Port, they won’t do a mobile port either.

Intel is making some pretty decent strides in that sense. Their mobile processors are fairly powerful for their power consumption. It’ll still be a long time before mobile platforms are as powerful as desktops, and powerful enough to run games without much problems.

performance and power aren’t an issue as long as the issue still is that the architecture =/= x86 or x64

Most of Intel’s processor line-up IS x86/x64. My point was, Intel’s x86 processors targeted at mobile platforms (U and Y series SKUs) are becoming more powerful while reducing power consumption, making mobile platforms more and more attractive for the future.

Iyeru.5240:

Mobile can’t be the future if the processors are ARM based, at least if you don’t plan to port to Linux or iOS. Because the Windows version of ARM can’t run actual Windows programs unless they’re made for the ARM Architecture. (This includes Guild Wars 2.) If people think they won’t do a Mac Port, they won’t do a mobile port either.

Intel is making some pretty decent strides in that sense. Their mobile processors are fairly powerful for their power consumption. It’ll still be a long time before mobile platforms are as powerful as desktops, and powerful enough to run games without much problems.

Possible solution: when queuing, choose which mode you’d prefer. It’ll still be unranked/ranked queues, but with an additional step in between to choose your mode. The Matchmaking puts you into a match based on your priorities – if you choose Stronghold, the system will prioritize that, and only give you Conquest if it can’t find a suitable match. Similarly for if you choose Conquest as your preferred mode.

Map selection interface would also be based on the game mode. If you get into a stronghold game, you only have one choice, so it’s not a problem. If you get into conquest, you have your standard map selection options. If stronghold gets more maps, then the map selection for stronghold will change to include that.

I’m seeing a lot of “combined queues are bad” posts, and suggestions along the lines of “separate queues”, so this is an alternate suggestion – keeping the combined queues, but still giving players the game mode they prefer.

Or introduce Build templates in PvE and PvP – preferably before HoT.

BilboBaggins.5620:

But based on ArenaNet’s own releases we know that there is exploration with flying. There’s a reason why there are updrafts and stronger wings, so that we can find hidden areas of the map that can only be accessed this way. Sounds like exploration to me.

Also they’ve talked about these aerial beasts that will do some amount of combat with us while airborne. It’s currently unknown how extensive this combat is, but it could be a full battle just like land or water. I’ve read complaints that many of us “worriers” are making assumptions about what is in this expansion without knowing the facts, aren’t you making some assumptions here about what flying is not without all the facts?

Going to need sources on that one, because I’ve combed everything Anet has said over the past few weeks and not once did they mention aerial combat.

By extension, Wurm is too easy because TTS does it twice a day with nearly 90%+ success rate. Sometimes on two separate maps too!

Everything gets easier with time. They could very well re-design all world bosses to make use of the Mastery system, but that remains to be seen.

The current implementation of Gliding doesn’t really support aerial combat (even with updrafts), and I don’t think that was in mind when they designed it. You don’t introduce another form of 3D combat when your current one isn’t done to its fullest potential. Underwater combat could have been so much more, but it’s severely lacking right now.

Leios.8965:

I am sure all the Wine users are counted as Windows users by Anet. I feel that a good number of mac users also dual-boot specifically for gaming and are thus counted as Windows users. I don’t mean to be overly pessimistic… I just don’t think Anet sees any real desire from their gaming community to make a port.

In addition to doing the automatic hardware survey they did before the BWE, I would like to see a poll alongside it, specifically for players who only game on Windows currently:

“If we (ArenaNet) were to support (native client, not Wine-based solutions) alternate platforms (OS X, Linux), would you switch to using that platform?”

This will give a sense of the percentage of players who would like to see cross-platform support, and if it’s high enough, would be a valid reason to switch to a cross-platform API like OpenGL.

The answer for me is a resounding yes. A lot of games still aren’t on Linux, but more and more future AAA titles are coming with Linux support from release, and that’s awesome. I can sacrifice the ability to play older games well, since I don’t play them often enough to justify it, but GW2 is the game I play the most regularly, and if it had a native linux client, I wouldn’t use Windows at all. I did try to run purely on Arch linux for a few months, but the performance issues with Wine made me re-install Windows on my desktop (still running Linux on laptop).

They probably already have more recent metrics on the hardware used by their playerbase. I’d personally like to see some of those numbers -shrug-

BilboBaggins.5620:

Argue the finer details all you want, for me it’s as simple as this;

ArenaNet realized that underwater “endurance” was a bad idea and players didn’t like it so they removed it and we have aquabreathers. So what makes them think people are going to like this same antiquated mechanic up in the air?

It’s no different. You can’t get to places you’re not meant to get to, this is isolated to this map and any future maps they make to take advantage of flying. Updrafts and the mastery to use them could be used to gate aerial waypoints without using endurance. The current dodge mechanic could be used for aerial combat (if any) instead of endurance.

Antiquated, boring, frustrating, poor design.

Underwater endurance didn’t work for a different reason – underwater combat relied on staying down there a lot longer, and there were a lot of places where it was impossible to resurface for air. Gliding, on the other hand, won’t have that problem unless they introduce Aerial combat, against creatures that remain in the air and require flying around them to kill (which I don’t see happening, seeing as they need to redo underwater combat for it to become on par with GW2’s land combat).

Leios.8965:

Rashy.4165:

…
They did hire an Engine programmer with cross-platform experience, so who knows what that entails. Either way, an upgrade to their game engine should be on the table or in the process of being done – an MMO that wants to continue long into the future can’t stick to using DX9.

Hmm… did they now? I didn’t hear anything about the cross-platform developer. I agree with the DX9 stuff, but I think that mac and linux combined only amount to <10% of their playerbase. That might not be enough justification to switch to OpenGL.

If they update to even DX10, wine will have problems. Their Mac beta relies on wine just as much as linux. I cannot imagine Anet just stopping their mac beta… but most mac users are probably fed up with the beta by now anyway. Honestly, it has been in beta for years now. Surely they had some intention of writing a full client at some point, right?

Not sure if they actually hired one, but they did have a job opening for one mentioning cross-platform development experience.

Well, switching to OpenGL supports all of their player base, instead of 90% (and basically forcing the Linux/OS X playerbase to dual-boot). It’s possible that of the remaining 90%, a fair portion would switch to Linux/OS X instantly if a native version became available.

The benefit of cross-platform is that the source code stays the same across all of them, it’s just compiled differently on different platforms (as a .exe or binary file).

Maybe it’s just a question of not having enough resources to allocate, or maybe it’s something they’re working on as a long-term project. Either way, I would like to see cross-platform support.

Also, if switching to DX10-12 breaks the Mac client, if they do intend to support Mac properly, switching to OpenGL would be the better long-term decision. Wine still doesn’t have support for DX10, and it will be a while before it supports anything higher. OpenGL, on the other hand, doesn’t need Wine.

Wear that title proudly.

If they do work on an updated client, I’d rather it be OpenGL Next than DX12. Functionally, they’re both the same, except supporting OpenGL supports all three PC platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux) and also supports mobile platforms (glNext is aiming to have one API for mobile devices and desktops which would be nice once mobile platforms have enough power to run a game like GW2). It’ll probably also have less restrictive OS support (going as far back as XP/Vista), unlike DX12 (free upgrade doesn’t count, upgrading the instant Windows 10 launches isn’t really advisable, I’d prefer at least 2-6 months of post-launch bugfixing).

Wine does a good job of running GW2, but it’s not perfect in all scenarios. WvW or large zergs are basically unplayable, and different versions of Wine have memory leak tendencies resulting in crashes. There’s one version that I had the best performance on, but it wasn’t stable for extended periods. I think every Linux user would much rather have a native client than rely on Wine.

They did hire an Engine programmer with cross-platform experience, so who knows what that entails. Either way, an upgrade to their game engine should be on the table or in the process of being done – an MMO that wants to continue long into the future can’t stick to using DX9.

I like her. She has a cute face. Looking to change her hairstyle though, dunno.
Alternate look rocking out the Arcane outfit. Particularly love the dye combination on it.

Definitely want to see more race-themed armour, specifically for my Sylvari <3 Cultural and Twilight Arbor being my only options makes me sad.

I got automatically switched to the losing team, and we ended up winning that round.

RubiBayer.8134:

Nellie didn’t have the full gliding mastery line filled out. She had the initial ability to glide unlocked and I think thick wings.

Good to know! Really looking forward to seeing how updrafts work, PAX East cannot arrive sooner.

SkylightMoon.1980:

No it didn’t. Watch the livestream again. Colin said it was a new pvp mode, that had guild ladders. That doesn’t mean the mode is actually called GvG, it just has guild ladder support.

Transcript of the relevant portion.

Now, Stronghold may sound a little familiar to some of you, going back to the days of Guild Wars. It may sound a little bit like an evolution, maybe, of something that you once experienced. So what do you do in a Stronghold map? Well, you and your team fight for control of supply, you spend supply to hire troops, and you (and the troops that you hire) assault the enemy’s stronghold. You destroy the gates to battle inside their stronghold, you find their guild lord, you kill their guild lord to win. Along the way, you’re going to find heroes that you can win onto your side that join you, and join the assault on the enemy’s stronghold, to help you win and destroy their guild lord.
So we feel like if we’re going to give you this experience, this next step in what people might remember from the original GW there’s another component that needs to come along with this game mode, to provide the entire experience.. and that’s the ability to know which guild is the best at PvP in the world. So when you battle in our brand-new Stronghold game mode, you’re going to be able to form guild teams. Guild teams are teams of players that represent a specific guild, and they register on a guild leaderboard, and as they battle against one another, the guild teams move up the leaderboards, so you can once and for all prove who are the best guilds in the world.

I think they’ve learned their lesson with the Trait changes being character-bound. No.

There’s an event that can be scaled up to give about 5-6 giants every 15 minutes. That’s the best you can do.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

ekarat.1085:

Why this one spot? Because it’s the most finished.
Why not UI for masteries? Because it may change before release.
Why just 1 mushroom? Because it’s probably not done.

1. Because that area will be the demo area. This also explains the “falling to her death.” If you paid attention to the dialogue box that popped up when she died, it said “you are leaving the playable area for this demo.” When the actual game comes out, that fall will be a lot longer.

It would be kind of cool to fall all the way from the peak of the Pact fleet (Glory of Tyria) to the bottom of the jungle floor, or maybe into a pit which takes you even further underground into the roots of the jungle.