Guild Wars 2

Okay, I noticed the jiggle physics on cloth and leather, but… the heavy classes, too? oO
Now I need to make a well-endowed norn lady warrior and check this. For science. And also for facepalming sh*ts and giggles.

That happens when you practically glue your armour to the model’s skeleton. Weird stuff happens, and suddenly – bouncing boobies everywhere!
No sports bras in Tyria, apparently. But typical. When you don’t make an asura do it, it doesn’t get done at all. And since they don’t need this kind of thing, people with boobs everywhere keep suffering quietly. Silly bookahs.

Fenom.9457:

Red Queen.7915:

Erukk.1408:

Red Queen.7915:

And somehow, the Elder Dragons just hiding out somewhere and not doing anything but sending minions out into the world sort of makes me think they are not that powerful to begin with. Otherwise, Tyria as we know it wouldn’t exist anymore. I mean, if I’m one of the most powerful beings in existence, what’s stopping me from steamrolling over anyone who stands in my way?

The fact that Anet actually need to make a playable game to make money. As you said, if the Elder Dragon used the full extent of their powers constantly, Tyria wouldn’t really exist anymore. So Anet has to limit their active physical involvement in the game because they’re so powerful lore-wise they’d kinda break the story.

And this right there is what I hope isn’t true. Because that is lazy storytelling. You need a kitten good reason for someone not to use the full extent of their powers in such a scenario, and if it’s just “he’s a good guy so he doesn’t do it because it’s morally wrong”.
Just saying “they are incredibly powerful but you don’t see that because then the story would be over pretty fast” is a horrible excuse and kind of insulting your audience’s intelligence. It’s like the “why didn’t Gandalf ask the eagles to fly them to Mordor?” crap. There is an excuse, but “eagles are afraid of arrows” is so kitten flimsy it falls apart when you just look at it – what the hell kind of bow shoots its arrows this high?
Same for the Elder Dragons. The excuse for their non-presence better be good, or peole will feel cheated. “The dragons are really that dangerous but were too arrogant to see us as a threat until it was too late” doesn’t fly when several dragons have already been defeated. Mordremoth? Okay, he might think he’s way cooler than lame Zhaitan. The third dragon, though? That’s not hubris anymore, that’s being stupid and stubborn, and it would irritate me to no end.
In order for this to work, the villain needs a genuine weakness that makes sense within the story. Hell, every villain needs a weakness, perfect villains are just as bad as perfect heroes, mainly because it doesn’t make sense for them to lose unless you use the “the author said so” reasoning, and you can’t tell me that’s the hallmark of a good story. No matter how I look at it, I can’t see this working if the dragons are as powerful as you make them out to be and simply too lazy and/or arrogant to use that power, especially when they have seen where being arrogant got the other dragons. If you know a way to make this work without giving the dragons some sort of weakness that holds them back, I genuinely want to know (seriously, not being sarcastic).

Primordus and Jormag’s minions are fighting underground for the Depths and no one knows because everyone left except the Dwarves who are caught in the crossfire. They don’t have enough minions to go above.

Kralk IS being dangerous but he’s going to Elona instead.

Bubbles is highly intelligent and the strongest of all (given that water itself is ridiculously powerful), and he’s watching Tyria and what’s happening and decides to take his time and build up his army. Tyria won’t come to him because they don’t know where he is but when HE is ready he’ll show up. This dragon in the only one that has sufficient time to prepare hid army, making him more dangerous.

How’s that?

I can actually live with that^^
The dragons are not super overpowered, but dangerous enough while having good reasons to direct the power they do have where they think it matters most.
And now you made me fear a creature named Bubbles. Well done.

The beta slot is only for betas, yes. And it does not work outside of those betas, so you can’t accidentally create a character, thinking it’s a normal toon, and then come back later to find it gone.

Just for the record, are we talking about the normal char slot or the BETA slot?
Because if it’s the normal slot, it might be a bug or a relog is in order, or maybe just wait half an hour or so, sometimes it takes a little time for stuff to show up. If it’s the latter, that’s a beta slot, and since there is no beta right now, you can’t use it. Also, it will go away again after HoT is released.

Erukk.1408:

Red Queen.7915:

And somehow, the Elder Dragons just hiding out somewhere and not doing anything but sending minions out into the world sort of makes me think they are not that powerful to begin with. Otherwise, Tyria as we know it wouldn’t exist anymore. I mean, if I’m one of the most powerful beings in existence, what’s stopping me from steamrolling over anyone who stands in my way?

The fact that Anet actually need to make a playable game to make money. As you said, if the Elder Dragon used the full extent of their powers constantly, Tyria wouldn’t really exist anymore. So Anet has to limit their active physical involvement in the game because they’re so powerful lore-wise they’d kinda break the story.

And this right there is what I hope isn’t true. Because that is lazy storytelling. You need a kitten good reason for someone not to use the full extent of their powers in such a scenario, and if it’s just “he’s a good guy so he doesn’t do it because it’s morally wrong”.
Just saying “they are incredibly powerful but you don’t see that because then the story would be over pretty fast” is a horrible excuse and kind of insulting your audience’s intelligence. It’s like the “why didn’t Gandalf ask the eagles to fly them to Mordor?” crap. There is an excuse, but “eagles are afraid of arrows” is so kitten flimsy it falls apart when you just look at it – what the hell kind of bow shoots its arrows this high?
Same for the Elder Dragons. The excuse for their non-presence better be good, or peole will feel cheated. “The dragons are really that dangerous but were too arrogant to see us as a threat until it was too late” doesn’t fly when several dragons have already been defeated. Mordremoth? Okay, he might think he’s way cooler than lame Zhaitan. The third dragon, though? That’s not hubris anymore, that’s being stupid and stubborn, and it would irritate me to no end.
In order for this to work, the villain needs a genuine weakness that makes sense within the story. Hell, every villain needs a weakness, perfect villains are just as bad as perfect heroes, mainly because it doesn’t make sense for them to lose unless you use the “the author said so” reasoning, and you can’t tell me that’s the hallmark of a good story. No matter how I look at it, I can’t see this working if the dragons are as powerful as you make them out to be and simply too lazy and/or arrogant to use that power, especially when they have seen where being arrogant got the other dragons. If you know a way to make this work without giving the dragons some sort of weakness that holds them back, I genuinely want to know (seriously, not being sarcastic).

I checked, and specialisations were revealed on Thursdays? Not sure about the teasers, though…

Which pretty much makes them the arrogant Bond villain, though.

And when old, powerful and alien don’t help you, wouldn’t you try out something different? I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn’t just roll over and wait my turn to be killed if I realised that all my millenia and all my hoarded magic won’t help me if the ants show up on my doorstep intent on destroying me…

And somehow, the Elder Dragons just hiding out somewhere and not doing anything but sending minions out into the world sort of makes me think they are not that powerful to begin with. Otherwise, Tyria as we know it wouldn’t exist anymore. I mean, if I’m one of the most powerful beings in existence, what’s stopping me from steamrolling over anyone who stands in my way?
Makes me wonder if we do indeed have something the dragons need that would be lost if we all just suddenly died. Do we generate the magic that they feed on? Are they trying to figure out how to keep the magic in the world without us? Is that what the corrupted minions are, temporary “magic generators” that the dragons need to stay alive until they found another food source? It would make sense, seeing as Zhaitan tried to get his claws on powerful magical relics. And it would explain the dragons’ reluctance to launch a final attack.

You can save a little bit more by “buying” linen scraps with karma (if you have lots of that and don’t need it for anything else), i.e. getting the gloves from the charr south of Lion’s Arch, tossing them in the forge and salvaging them. Takes a little more time, but saves you 1.8g for each bolt of damask.

I’d say hoarding T6 materials, ectos and maybe getting 500 tokens of each dungeon are a good idea. Beyond that, we don’t know anything yet except that there will be a way to get precursors outside of getting lucky with RNGsus (and yes, that sounds dirty on purpose :P).
Not spending laurels if you don’t have to might also be reasonable, in case there are new T6 mats coming that you then can obtain via the bags from the laurel vendor. Even if you can’t, it won’t hurt to wait, the normal T6 mats will always be in those bags (probably, if someone doesn’t get funny ideas about that, like they did about the laurel cost of unidentified dyes…).

People keep suggesting warrior and guardian, and to this day, I do not know why…^^

I’d say stay away from mesmer, engineer and thief at the beginning, but the rest are fine.
Elementalists stand far enough away from everything to roast most lowlevel enemies before they reach them, and if they do, they have weapon heals in addition to their normal heal skill, plus Armour of Earth and Arcane Shield for even more protection.
Necromancers have a) the largest normal health pool and b) an entire second health pool. It’s kind of hard to die as a necromancer in PvE once you’ve figured out how to use Death Shroud (and aren’t reading a book on the side and not paying attention…).
Rangers – same as elementalist, plus a pet to draw aggro. They basically come with their own tank.
Warrior and guardian are as explained above by other posters.

In the end, you need to know what you like. If you don’t like a certain playstyle but pick a class that plays like this because it’s supposedly easy, it’ll take a lot of fun out of the game. I’m a sucker for caster classes, so I main eles (yes, plural; I meant to main a thief on my other account, but somehow I now main an ele again…). Others might prefer ranger/druid/nature-y characters. There’s an “easy” class for every kind of playstyle, that just gets overlooked in favour of heavy melee classes far too often.

You don’t have to show that your story idea predates someone else’s story idea. You can’t copyright an idea, only the execution. How many fantasy stories about some random kid being part of a prophecy to save the world do we have? If you could copyright a concept just like that, we’d have exactly one.
Besides, since OP used Anet’s characters and world, this pitch is technically fanfiction, and then s/he can’t claim “copyright” anyway.

Erukk.1408:

Farzo.8410:

Mortifer.2946:

Dragon demands audience? really?

Revealing that the dragons are far more than just a force of nature, and actually very intelligent beings with an evil personality.

Evil is debatable, but we kinda already knew that they were intelligent and manipulative from what little information we got on Zhaitan through the PS, Jormag from different lore tidbits, and Mordy’s corruption of Scarlet.

The difference being is the order of magnitude between us and them and how they view us. Them demanding an audience from us is like us demanding an audience from that pesky anthill out in the yard.

Only at that point, Kralkatorrik has watched us defeat Zhaitan and Mordremoth already. He knows the odds of him winning are around 50/50 – it might work, or it might not. Which is probably why he wants those artifacts in the first place, to sway those odds in his favour. Which we know, so maybe we try and cheat him, maybe snatch the sceptre back as soon as we have Jenna (who is important to make sure there won’t be another war between humans and charr). Only it doesn’t work, cue Jenna’s self-sacrifice and Livia taking the throne permanently, because now nobody can’t complain about the undead lich on the throne.
Either way, Kralkatorrik treating us as “ants” would be the equivalent of the Bond villain watching 007 mow through his henchmen like nobody’s business and then still insisting on arrogant monologuing because psh, Bond, a threat? Nah. That’s just stupid. And stupid villains are boring.

Snow.2048:

I want gender equality as well. I need Tera Castic male outfits, as a quick google search has revealed unto me =P
Then male and females will be about equal, if you add tera level female skimp, I’ll expect to see male go with it

True Manly Warrior

^ This captures the manliness and, with the right dyes, the fabulous-ness my characters, as portrayals of myself, deserve.

(Silliness aside, the fact that the male and female sets can look completely different is just annoying to me)

(Bolding mine)

This is super jarring to see, especially when you first see the set on a male char, then run to the merchant because it looks so cool, and bam! weird design that seems to be missing random pieces (looking at you, order armour sets). Happens the other way around sometimes, too (one example would be the Sneakthief armour, where the female version is “skimpy”, but also way cooler), but most often, it’s the female design that’s weird and/or bordering on lingerie.

If the design of one set is consistent, no matter who is wearing the set and whether it’s skimpy or a walking tin can, I’ll guarantee you there will be less complaints from all sides.
And more variety and choice is always good. Let’s hope for some cool designs when HoT launches :>

CureForLiving.5360:

Lucius.2140:

Can anet may give a job to him?, please!.

Video game development is a bit more difficult than simply being able to write a good story. It’s how ones implements the story within the limitations of the video-games mechanics and the resource limitations inherent in video game development.
Still a good story is a good start.

It’s certainly more than a lot of games have nowadays. “Write story” seems to be a task commonly given to interns :/

I vote for a revamp of the male Grasping Dead armor for this purpose. Make it look like a soccer player protecting his crown jewels during a penalty kick, and then the set will at least look consistent between genders :>

Also, I’m just going to leave this here…

The one day only sale was a sneak peek, if you will. They’ll be back later as a normal gem store item, for the usual amount of time (and not just one day), just like the black wings.

That should not actually be possible.
Did anyone else have access to your account? Is it possible you got hacked? Did you switch servers before you took that break and maybe didn’t pay attention to which region you picked?

Not sure about specific servers, I’m on a EU server, but you don’t need to delete any characters if you transer with gems (500 for medium populated servers, 1000 for high and 1800 for very high; can’t transfer to full servers). If you want to save that money/gold, you have to delete all characters in order to transfer. Gold, items in your bank and wardrobe as well as minis are not affected by this, you get to keep all of that.

Edit: Ninja’d.

Did you actually check your core temperatures? GW2 is heavy on the CPU, and if those other games rely more on GPU, your CPU might be able to handle that, but not GW2.

I’m pretty sure some people would jump at the chance to do this work for free. And then give up after two weeks because that’s a full-time job and just not feasible when you have to work another job to actually make money.

So, nope, a free translation is bound to fail.

The only “big” language I can think of that’s currently missing is Russian. Other than that, there are huge overlaps with the ones we do have in terms of native language and first foreign language – i.e. while the game isn’t available in Hindi, as I understand it, English is taught at many schools in India and thus a viable option. Same for most European countries who didn’t get an official translation for their native language.
It’s unreasonable to demand every single language be available, so you generally pick the most popular ones and/or the ones most popular with your target audience.

@fabry: Spanish has roughly 500 million speakers, and German also still has over 100 million speakers around the world. Those languages are rightly considered “big ones”.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Instant-God-Walking-Amongst-Mere-Mortals/page/12#post5237935

Oooh, I like the Kralkatorrik storyline. I’d love to see this become part of the game in some form.

Only, what do we do with Gleam afterwards? It would be odd to have a dragon on our side who does nothing so as to not take away the player’s spotlight. Or would s/he be a bit like the pale tree, bound to one place, and when s/he leaves, s/he gets weaker?
It just always bugs me when a story has a BFG of some kind and never uses it because then the story would be very short, but doesn’t say why it’s never used^^

Miss Lana.5276:

Red Queen.7915:

Miss Lana.5276:

+1 for this idea.

Though I do think that there should be some sort of tutorial for it if it were implemented.

Why? Just put it with the info about repairing your gear and be done with it. Why accomodate people who are intentionally exploiting the system?

Overall, I like the idea.
+1

Tutorials are now accommodating people who are exploiting the system? Tell me how that works.

I was reading this as adding an extra tutorial for anyone in endgame doing something like exploiting SW for long enough to end up in this state. Which would be very much accomodating them.

If this was meant as an addition to what’s already there, sorry, I completely missed that point. It’s late, and our football team is losing to England, I’m a little preoccupied ._.

Miss Lana.5276:

+1 for this idea.

Though I do think that there should be some sort of tutorial for it if it were implemented.

Why? Just put it with the info about repairing your gear and be done with it. Why accomodate people who are intentionally exploiting the system?

Overall, I like the idea.
+1

sorudo.9054:

well, that’s how they milk out money…..making junk and dressing it up with more crap, it’s the lipstick on a pig all over again…

You know who’s milking their players for every last penny? EA and Bioware with SWTOR. They take a bunch of features out, slap the F2P label on and then dangle the carrot in front of your nose: “Subscribe to gain experience at a reasonable rate!” – “Subscribe to hide this butt-ugly helmet!” – “Drop a load of cash in the shop for a single new hairstyle!”
That’s what milking your players looks like. A gem shop like GW2’s with completely optional fluff is nothing.

The pet rock? Just an amusing detail I really love – and do not have to buy in order to make leveling less painful or actually be able to wear the gear I’m looting.

I suppose after decades of elves everywhere, “fantasy” has adopted a very narrow definition, with everything deviating from that definition needing an extra label to be properly recognised as non-standard fantasy.
Science-fantasy, urban fantasy, historical fantasy… if it’s just labelled as “fantasy”, people expect Lord of the Rings and are disappointed when they get Dishonored. Less the fault of an individual and more of creators producing the same content over and over again (though I admit, I used to be guilty of that as well; trying to be more creative nowadays…).
It’s also not really higher expectations, rather it’s expectations of a certain standard, like the abovementioned elves, dwarves, mages with robes and a single monolith religion for an entire country. Take any of those things and change them, people will think it’s weird and “not really fantasy”. Frankly, anyone expecting those exact same things from their fantasy has actually pretty low expectations…

One would think someone could browse a wiki before purchasing a game to find out what to expect
Which is precisely why I won’t touch Mount & Blade with the proverbial ten-foot-pole. Yuck.

There really are skimpy options, you just need to go look around a bit. Personally, I prefer the ones that at least resemble actual armour. I’m fine with stylisation and some idealisation in order to avoid looking like a can of spam, but please don’t give anyone an incentive to start making metal bikinis and spraypaint chainmail. That’s what Aion and Co. are for.
Besides, GW2 has a lot of diversity regarding your armour choices (except maybe medium. I have found precisely one chest armour that is not a coat – sneakthief. If anyone knows another, I’m all ears…). If you’re norn, you can literally wear a thong into battle, so…

Strictly speaking, Star Wars is fantasy, too. There’s lots of guns in SW that nobody seems to mind – even though it also has swords^^

Technicalities aside, it doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people. It’s a sign of a carefully crafted world when technological advancement is actually depicted, as somebody else pointed out.
About the “guns are OP” thing… not really^^ It doesn’t show in the game because of mechanics, but in Ghosts of Ascalon, one of the main characters uses a pistol that she only uses for a single shot before she reloads it – much like the first guns made in the real world. So even when taking the guns vs. swords and magic thing into account, guns are hardly overpowered.

You have a ton of weapons to do that, though :O

Also, never heard of battle mages…?

+1 for the “get the old blue back” option.

Shiverpeaks were fine. Then I went to Metrica Province. And that’s just awful.
I mean, yeah, heroic gold and stuff, but it can be heroic all it wants if I can’t find it…

glehmann.9586:

What if ele gets warhorn and it turns out to be awesome? Like a skill that summons armies of crazed elementals or conjures a small hurricane?

Personally, I’m going to wait until we actually get the spec reveal to declare that the sky is falling.

Hmm, maybe Tempest warhorns actually get an ability to make the sky fall on their enemies…

I just want a weapon that allows me to smash the Archdiviner without accidentally killing myself or my teammates T_T
Seriously, on ele, so many autoattacks are projectiles, it’s not even funny. A sword would just be a nice addition to our weapons collection, as a melee weapon first and magical gizmo second.

Edit: Seriously, profanity filter. Ar – thisisnothere – senal? Because… reasons? You have a filthy, filthy mind, profanity filter…

Randulf.7614:

Red Queen.7915:

Isn’t there at least one other thread floating around about legendary dyes? Now if only the search function would work…

Legendary dyes would at least make a level 500 chef plausible. What else do you need that for?
I’m on the verge of saying “make them account-bound”, too, but then, legendary weapons are not. Mhm…

I Imagine something along the lines of Sunrise/Twilight dyes, or a “galaxy” dye, like the one below. Now that would be pretty cool.
“What’s that dye on your armour?” – “Oh, just the NGC 2440 nebula.”
The glow and glassy ones sound amazing, too.
And now I’m gonna go sulk in a corner because I probably won’t be able to afford even one of those, should they ever come, let alone all the ones I want…

I tell you what, should a galaxy dye ever be made (which is a very cool idea), I will help make you one (presuming you are on an EU server)

Aw, that’s sweet

lighter.2708:

Red Queen.7915:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but we also don’t know the Revenant’s elite spec yet? Might be they get the warhorn.

Dear god, I hope they do ._. I have a brand new flaming sword in my bank vault for my ele, which I will have no need for if they get warhorn. So I might just throw it at someone. Maybe.
I mean, come on, we are so far the only class without a dedicated melee weapon (as in, normal weapon, not conjured ones). Not cool.

revenant is shield,
it’s pretty easy to tell from the shield skin, because it’s the dragon’s wing, glint?

But nothing confirmed?
I mean, it does sound plausible, I just wasn’t sure if I missed some announcement here. Makes sense though.

So both mesmer and revenant get shield, which means that thieves whacking things with a staff aren’t completely off the table. Good to know.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but we also don’t know the Revenant’s elite spec yet? Might be they get the warhorn.

Dear god, I hope they do ._. I have a brand new flaming sword in my bank vault for my ele, which I will have no need for if they get warhorn. So I might just throw it at someone. Maybe.
I mean, come on, we are so far the only class without a dedicated melee weapon (as in, normal weapon, not conjured ones). Not cool.

Maybe they’ll ninja it in?
The retailer seems weirdly certain it’s going to happen, they even seem to have gem cards for a raffle (I think. My Dutch is pretty much structural knowledge of Germanic languages and a lot of guessing).

Isn’t there at least one other thread floating around about legendary dyes? Now if only the search function would work…

Legendary dyes would at least make a level 500 chef plausible. What else do you need that for?
I’m on the verge of saying “make them account-bound”, too, but then, legendary weapons are not. Mhm…

I Imagine something along the lines of Sunrise/Twilight dyes, or a “galaxy” dye, like the one below. Now that would be pretty cool.
“What’s that dye on your armour?” – “Oh, just the NGC 2440 nebula.”
The glow and glassy ones sound amazing, too.
And now I’m gonna go sulk in a corner because I probably won’t be able to afford even one of those, should they ever come, let alone all the ones I want…

Mr Ko Killer.7206:

Red Queen.7915:

Odd that these comments usually come from people who can find themselves everywhere, and when someone who has yet to find themselves in a piece of popular culture wants to be in something, or gasp more than a single something, the “we are all equal it shouldn’t matter” card gets played.

Odd that someone defending the topic at hand is being the very judgmental person that causes most of the suffering endured by subgroups who have been oppressed because of laws or society mindset.

Contrary to popular believe, you don’t need to be poor, have the ethnic background, nor against society, to be oppressed for something or for that matter, to be suffering because of who you are, something you don’t seem to comprehend.

Oh, sorry, I missed your signature. Never mind.

Mr Ko Killer.7206:

Egon Vidar.9125:

All people want is representation.

I just find it quite funny that people scream and shout about equality, to be treated just like everyone else, but want to flaunt representative barriers because they so badly desire to be different from everyone else.
True equality comes when everyone can be who we are, without flaunting who we are.

Odd that these comments usually come from people who can find themselves everywhere, and when someone who has yet to find themselves in a piece of popular culture wants to be in something, or gasp more than a single something, the “we are all equal it shouldn’t matter” card gets played.

kitten . My mod list is hungry

IrishPotato.6327:

http://i58.tinypic.com/4l14xf.jpg

Nice
Do you by chance know where to get that/what to search for on the Nexus? I can’t find it.

Recluce.3709:

SyllyReth.2495:

ANet shows its support for diversity in tons of different ways. You can make your own rainbow dye very easily: dye each piece of armor a different color.

When I see toons with this hanging around LA I don’t think “oh, he’s showing Pride”, I think “oh, another 10 year old who chose the 6 brightest colors off the palate.”

And other people look at my legendary and think “Ugh, another rich noob who bought it for cash”. Why do you think I care any more than the person you assume to be a child does?
People would probably apply a rainbow dye simply because they think it looks cool. It’s still a nice idea, maybe to kick off the level 500 chef, as someone else mentioned. Though they might need to rename the current pride dye to avoid confusion^^

Aenesthesia.1697:

If you get a special gay friendly colour, i want a special hetero colour, just for the sake of equality.

I mean, it’s pretty absurd to say “we are all equal” when dressing purposedly different.

Way to miss the point. Did your highest court also have to tell people that heterosexual marriage should be legal? I’m guessing nope, that has always been legal. Try to think about that distinction for a minute.
_

I kind of like the idea. I mean, you already can dye your armour in rainbow colours (more or less, some dye channels are weirdly placed…), but a special shiny dye would be pretty cool. Maybe something that makes your armour shine like the legendary greatwords
They did it with the pink dye in GW1 for breastcancer awareness month, so maybe.

Diovid.9506:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t see anything in HoT so far that would affect solo players.

I see it to some degree. If HoT is similar to the Silverwastes and Dry Top (and that seems to be the case) then most events are group events meaning that individual players stand little chance of completing them. On the other hand, as Belzebu said, the fact that one requires other players to be present does not mean that one is required to interact with them.

This, pretty much.

Those group events are not quite like group events in the rest of the open world. They are there for a very specific purpose, and need to be completed in order to advance the zone, of you will, so there are bound to be enough players around to do them at any given time. Just look at SW. You can go there as a solo player, hang on to a blob or roam the map on your own and still get kitten done.
Those events sometimes require communication – in that a commander tells you to go there and do that, and that’s pretty much it. While they did talk about new group content, I don’t think being in a group or a guild is going to be mandatory (save for the guild-specific stuff, of course) to experience much of the content.

Wouldn’t that also count as “cheating” and not give the achievement OP desires? In that cases, kudos for completing the puzzle that way, but still not hardcore mode

Just use a ground-targeted skill to “see” the stones until the sword works again.

Seriously.7953:

I don’t have a problem with people getting the basic achievement for completing the jumping puzzles by any means necessary, but I do think there should also be something extra available for people who do it without any help (such as teleporting). Just look at the new jumping puzzle in Lions Arch, its much more of a challenge with no teleport.

Even just a new title would be something.

Challenging, but also much more frustrating. Especially in the new JP, there are places where you only have to do a portion again if you fall, but then you go on, and then there are suddenly places where you have to do the entire puzzle again if you miss a jump. In a puzzle that takes this long to complete, this kind of achievement would at least demand a reassurance that you don’t have to go back to the start again. Check points like in the skritt JP would really help a lot, but then some of the old JPs would need overhauls as well (looking at you, Skipping Stones) to make this a less frustrating time sink.
Skill should be rewarded, but not at the expense of someone who doesn’t have the time do a JP ten times in a row because it has one difficult jump in it.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

bother bother bother

Thanks a lot, I meant to go to bed and now I’m watching the Potter Puppet Pals again. It’s your fault I don’t get enough sleep :P

Rata Sum and the Grove would meet these criteria, apart from the Mystic Forge.

Though how Lion’s Arch’s facilities are so dreadfully far away from each other, I don’t really know. I just speedbuff my characters, and it’s really not that long a distance.

Good old profanity filter…^^

There will be areas in HoT maps that need a certain skill set to reach. Much of that comes with masteries, though, like gliding and mushroom hopping. I’m hopeless with jumping puzzles, but the little gliding I could do during the beta didn’t feel too weird or difficult. I assume it gets a little trickier with updrafts, but it should be doable for anyone but those who just smash their hands on the keyboard and hope for the best.

The auto-unlocks were supposed to be as close to the build you had before as possible. Some was lost, devs are aware, but that was seen as neccessary to implement the new system.

As for your old characters (I’m assuming lvl 80s?), they have enough points to unlock everything (or should have, anyway). You just need to respend them. They should not have lost anything.

That’s the Living Story, though. It’s an instanced story that explores the events after Zhaitan’s death, with the player as the central character.

New players coming in now won’t even know what they are doing in the Maguuma Wastes and how they got there unless they play the “old” personal story and LS 1.
Granted, they won’t know about Lost Shores or Scarlet, but then they also won’t know there used to be a different Lion’s Arch, so that doesn’t really matter.