Guild Wars 2

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I think Damage Types from GW1 were a great example about how adding complexity to a system doesn’t necessarily make it more interesting or fun. Using fire damage on plant creatures? Pretty straightforward. Use blunt damage instead of piercing damage? Blunt is good against skeletons and week against…Hill Giants? Piercing is bad against skeletons and good against…Um…And chaos damage is…I need to lie down for a while…

I used Winter and Greater Conflagration against Destroyers in GW1, but 90% of the time elements weren’t worth bothering with, in my experience.

Elemental Damage is a staple of the RPG genre, but that means it shows in places where it doesn’t add much. If designers commit to it, and most enemies have a known type that can be played against or around, that’s fun, but it’s unnecessary without that commitment. In GW2’s case, which was designed without, making that commitment would be impractically difficult, and anything less wouldn’t make a meaningful difference.

Danikat.8537:

I’m still not entirely sure I agree with the change, but I understand why they did it.

Basically, this. I feel like it didn’t so much eliminate pacing problems as it did move them around. I can’t say if the new way is better or worse.

Talk to a master craftsman NPC to buy Recipe: Ascended Inscription. You can then double-click that to get Recipe: Zojja’s Berserker Inscription, which allows you to craft Zojja’s Berserker Inscription, which you’ll use to make an ascended weapon. Alternatively, you could buy them from another player for ~42 gold. Making ascended inscriptions isn’t cheap, and requires a lot of material.

Vision Crystals are made using the Mystic Forge crafted , using Dragonite Ingots, Bloodstone Bricks, Empyreal Stars, and an Augur’s Stone.

I’m pretty sure most or all Ascended gear is account-bound, rather than soulbound, due to the amount of work that goes into it. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, though.

Edit: Whoops. Vision Crystals are crafted, not Mystic Forged.

I’m totally cheap and satisfied with this.

My main uses Mystic Salvaging kits, but everyone else on my account uses the basic one.

Assuming what is Glint’s baby?

I’d be interested in playing as a Krait or Forgotten, but I’d be extremely surprised, especially given that they don’t have feet. Maybe the Forgotten could wear boots on their second set of hands?

Despite ruling those two out, I wouldn’t want to see a third reptilian race introduced. We already have viable options that don’t have to be invented from scratch.

I seem to remember one of the goals for revamping the progression system was to make the jumps in power a little more exciting and noticeable. For example, that’s why stats go up in chunks now, which are called out in the level up screen, instead of just quietly increasing.

I don’t recall how it used to be, if you earned skill points at all before you unlocked them, but this system leaves you with 76 skill points by the time you reach level 80. Tastes will vary, but I’d say getting them in packs large enough to unlock nearly any non-elite skill, or multiple mid-tier skills, is more exciting than getting them one at a time. It might be a touch slower at unlocking individual skills, since you’re probably going to overshoot what you immediately need, but that might be an okay tradeoff.

Edit: As for the salvaging kit, that does seem a little silly. I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s hurting anything, but I’m not sure what the point is. Some say “That’s better than nothing,” while others might be happier to get nothing than to get something they see as a poor reward, because player psychology does that sometimes.

Manasa Devi.7958:

If that’s not your position, perhaps you shouldn’t be stating things that pretty much imply that it is your position.

How dare a person say things that can be misunderstood!

You can probably earn enough to occasionally buy from the gem store, although that depends on how heavily you play and how much of that is focused on gold farming.

I wouldn’t count on doing it constantly, though, unless you’re super hardcore about accumulating gold. There are enough players who want to convert from gold to gems that the exchange rate stays up.

I’m not that interested in Legendary Weapons, personally, but I do think an alternative method of getting a precursor would be a good thing, generally. People seem to worry that it’ll make legendaries less special, but even if obtaining a precursor is easier, turning it from a precursor into its final form still won’t be a walk in the park. The only difference, then, is the removal or reduction of a 500-1500 G paywall. That’s all it is, really. A paywall.

Is that really the most impressive part of the weapon? The part that is most explicitly money or RNG? It wildly, dramatically overshadows the rest of the process, which is otherwise a more interesting journey across the scope of the game.

I do think precursors, if they ever do get reworked, should become cheaper; they’re way too far out of proportion compared to the costs of the other steps of a Legendary weapon. (100G for Icy Runestones seems like a drop in the bucket by comparison.) Some people play hard for their gold and can’t afford a precursor, and then there are people like me who, if we lucked into a precursor, would almost certainly sell it a for a cool 1000+ gold windfall.

As it is, it’s demanding either obscene grind or good RNG. Are those really cool? They’re currently the biggest barrier in getting a legendary, more than skill or exploration. Even if they’re not made substantially cheaper, there could at least be a more interesting way to get a precursor. Looking at legendary, I see a little of the adventures the person went through to get through it, but I mostly grinding for gold.

Does it have to be that way?

He becomes the next Tequatl, and the cycle repeats?

Thanks for the update, Curtis! This is a pretty awesome freebie.

Strange; there’s no freebie today and, as Leablo noticed, the news post about it and the new Death Finisher is blank.

The racial cities really are some of my favorite places in the game. There’s not much do there most of the time other than explore, but the exploration is fantastic.

As I said above: It seems to me that the titles are intended as the super exclusive rewards, while the weapons and armor pieces are less exclusive, since your reward for a high score is to be able to choose all of the options, rather than just your first pick. It’s open to interpretation, but I would say that’s the obvious intention when you look at the original reward chart.

Tacking on boots, and now pants/shirts at the higher ranks doesn’t feel organic to what the original reward chart was doing. It’s possible they made a specific decision to do it this way, but it feels more like the easy alternative to reworking the chart to integrate the new pieces.

(Which, I’ll grant, is more difficult than it sounds.)

Sogradde.8016:

Now riddle me this: Is the new player influx on NA/EU so much bigger than the current active playerbase, that you need to spend all your resources on “improving” the leveling experience instead of adding new content for those who finished the game and most likely supported it from the beginning on?

I could say yes or no to this question, but I’d be wrong for trying to answer it, because there’s insider information I need to answer it objectively and correctly. You’re asking an objective question more than a subjective one, and I only have enough information to give a subjective answer.

We can go with our gut feelings, our impressions, and our experiences, but those aren’t enough to make a fully-informed answer to the question, “How urgent is the new player retention problem?”

It’s important to let them know when we’re not happy with changes like the NPE. It’s also important to keep a sense of perspective about what we do and do not know as we discuss it. We can tell them we’re not happy, and we can tell them why, but there are business questions involved that we don’t have enough information to answer.

It’s a pity that “point bucket” systems, like gems or the old Microsoft points, are so popular. They have some advantages for the company, but they’re just not a consumer-friendly practice. As a consumer, I don’t have anything positive to say about them—Obviously some companies (Microsoft, for example,) have worked out the catches sufficiently that they can allow direct purchases, or, at least, allow you to purchase their funny money in the exact amount you need as a middle step.

Really, it’s just the latter I want. Keeping a cash-currency around is fine. I just don’t like that people have a limited number of options when it comes to how many they want to buy. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s still anti-consumer.

You know, I thought I remembered fighting a golem that did wacky amounts of damage.

I’m actually a little relieved to hear it was a bug, because that was just silly.

Snazzy. The last time they did a free trial, it was right after launch, and in the middle of the Southsun Cover introduction, so it was a bit of a mess. Another trial seems like a good thing to me, now that things have settled down more.

From what I’m hearing, there appears to be a bug with experience gain. Labjax has a good write-up of his/her experience with it here.

It sounds like it fixes itself after level 30, and while it’s often spotted at level 29, it can start earlier. Fighting in areas where you’re downscaled might give you normal XP, if you want to grind to level 30 rather than wait for a patch.

Ugly, but it sounds more like a bug than something intended. Hopefully a fix is coming, but you might want to report the issue anyway.

Labjax, that’s good advice.

Speaking about Abyss specifically, even though it’s probably out of the OP’s price range: It’s super popular because it’s so dark, along with Midnight Fire / Midnight Ice. It also looks bad in a lot of cases, and can look tacky since it’s one of the go-to showoff dyes. Black Dye isn’t super dark, and there are a lot of good alternatives to actual Black Dye when you keep that in mind.

And, as ever, it’s important to preview dyes by right-clicking on them before you buy them. Colors can look very different on different armors, especially across weight classes.

Edit: This was in response to Odyssey’s previous post. Couple people made it in while I was writing.

That’s fair. No matter how they’re told that _ is a major problem, if it’s not affecting them directly, they’re never going to be happy giving something up to fix someone else’s problem.

It’s basically how I feel about Town Clothes, for an example from another situation. I was perfectly happy with how they were, but I lost out on that one because other people weren’t.

You can give people something and then take it away. You might even have a good reason for it. But those people are rarely going to be happy about it, and they have a right not to be.

Odyssey.2613:

Furyan.9578:

Redenaz.8631:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users. Before we do some of the other things we want to do with Gw2, we had to fix this, period.

Or maybe they weren’t retaining people because… well, they didn’t like the game that much?

Anet would never panic and throw the baby out with the bathwater.

/sarcasm

My point is that they’re panicking over a problem that exists, not that their solution is necessarily good.

Having old bathwater is a problem. Throwing the baby out with it is not a good solution, because then you have a new problem. Knowing this, you still have to find a way to get rid of the bathwater. It’s a lot harder to fix an MMO than “taking the baby out of the bath first,” unfortunately.

Maybe we do need a tutorial on how to dodge things. Maybe we don’t. But if their metrics indicate that people stick around better if the game keeps them away from bundles for a while, I can’t blame them for keeping newbies away from bundles. They have to try something.

The Crown Pavilion, even with it’s radically nerfed reward, was still basically a farm fest. It just wasn’t a very rewarding one, frankly, which is one reason I usually found groups struggling to get organized enough to complete it. Only a strong success was really rewarding for the time/effort, and even then it wasn’t super-amazing.

Fundamentally, though, it was still a farm. People were still rushing around in a mob, trying to get loot, even if the loot wasn’t great. People realized that the rewards weren’t very good this year, and, it seems to me, they wandered back off to their preferred farms, because it was a poor farm.

I guess, I’m just not sure what a permanent CP would be good for. Would guilds do it? Would it have to be put onto some kind of world boss-like schedule?

But, yeah, I agree about Gauntlet and SAB, that they should be brought back in some form, hopefully permanently. They’re unique content, unlike anything else in the game. Even without their exclusive rewards, people would play them for the challenge.

Snorcha.7586:

My point is, why break something that isn’t broken, is that the new company moto??

The problem is, and many, many people don’t realize this or don’t believe it, it has been broken. To quote Colin from another post than the one I just linked:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users. Before we do some of the other things we want to do with Gw2, we had to fix this, period.

Most of the people who post on the forum seem not to have trouble with the game’s complexity, but those are, almost (but not entirely) exclusively, players who have been retained after the early levels, while the problem group are those who start the game and lose interest. It might not seem like a problem in my gameplay experience, but I’m also not actively studying new player retention, and I don’t have any useful tools for doing that in a scientific way, either.

Does it make sense for them to upset the apple cart on this issue if everything is okay? I’m sure it took them by surprise as well; Anet can’t be any happier than we are about stripping out parts of the game that are already developed and paid for, and were intended as permanent content. I can’t say for sure that the changes they made were completely correct—They’re certainly not the ones I’d like to have seen made, for my own experience. But I think it’s safe to say that if the devs are getting a mandate that they need to fix this problem, the problem exists.

Edit: Whoops, this one kinda got away from me. Sorry for the length, folks.

SAB, I think would be a good choice to become permanent. If it’s coming and going on a semi regular schedule, perhaps like a festival, then that would be fine, but it’s been a full year since Super Adventure Box: Back to School, and we haven’t gotten any indication when it’ll be making a return. Building a rhythm of excitement is one thing, but if it’s going to be a year and a half or more until we see it again, I think it would be better just as permanent content.

Plus, infinite continue coins are a legitimate gripe if SAB isn’t on a schedule. That’s a problem.

I’d be all right with Queen’s Gauntlet being a permanent thing. It’s high-end, single-player boss battles, which is something no other part of the game offers, unless you’re soloing dungeons, which is hardly the same thing. You could make some comparison to individual face-offs in PvP or WvW, but Gauntlet bosses have unique strategies and moves, and are more predictable than players, which makes them a unique challenge.

Only problem with the Gauntlet, however, as I see it, is that it’s in the Crown Pavilion, which is something I /don’t/ want to be permanent. The CP is largely a big farm fest, which means it has to compete with other farming spots. If it’s a temporary event, the rewards can be high enough to ensure a critical mass of players is there to make it fun and make the events doable, but if it’s permanent, the rewards have to be lower, and there won’t be as many people there on a regular basis.

If I were just spitballing ideas, I’d like to see the Queen’s Gauntlet bosses moved to The Bane, which is a large, unused arena in the Black Citadel. You’d go there, talk to an NPC, and be taken to an instance of you fighting the boss on the arena floor.* Then, when/if the Crown Pavilion reopens, the Gauntlet bosses return to their cages above the CP, where everyone can see you. Something like that.

*Having said that, there’s a problem that The Bane is larger than the cages, which would be a problem with some bosses. It’s not a work-free solution, but it would enable the boss battles to continue while keeping the CP zone special when it does open. It would also give people a reason to go to an otherwise unused corner of a racial capital, something that’s tragically neglected, giving how much wonderful work has gone into the city.

“Nerf” isn’t really the right word to use here. Usually that means a balance adjustment, and that’s just not…It doesn’t really make any sense here.

Hopefully they’ll add some options to deal with it. Personally, I’d like to see a drop-down in the options menu, with options like:

-Show All Commanders
-Show Squad Commander
-Show Guild Commanders
-Hide All Commanders

It’s a little bit tricky to solve, because if you restrict it to just the commander you’re following, it’s not very useful, but if you turn on all commanders, you see the ones who are actively commanding…swimming in a sea of commander tags. An option to show commanders in your guild is the best middle solution I’ve come up with, although I’d really like to hear some other ideas for it.

Blog Post

Moving forward, we’ll be evaluating future possibilities for recognizing experienced and prestigious commanders.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/big-changes-are-coming-to-the-commander-system/

This one’s also a puzzle, even if you figure out a way to identify useful commanders. They could do something visual to mark good commanders, like a special shape or effect, but that doesn’t solve the visual noise. I suppose they could implement some kind of commander ranking system, and then we could have an option to “hide commanders below [rank],” but that still has problems.

It’s interesting to think about.

You mention trial accounts—Have they announced some kind of free trial to the game that I haven’t heard about?

I wouldn’t say that the game as a whole is being made easier, just the beginning, which is where they were finding problems with new player retention.

The change to the WvW tournament achievements seems unrelated to me, considering they consider WvW complicated enough that you have to be a certain level before it appears on the game menu. (Even though it remains accessible via Lion’s Arch.)

While I know not everyone is happy with the new early game, I’d be wary about extending that “fear of the game being watered down” to every change or new thing that seems simpler than you expected. Watch out for the Fear Goggles.

Jessica Boettiger

For the fall tournament, participating players will earn a weekly achievement based on completing a small number of events in World vs. World. This differs a bit from previous tournament achievements in which players were required to complete several of each event, such as capturing keeps and supply camps. We wanted to experiment with a simplified version of the achievements to encourage players to focus more on playing WvW, rather than checking off an objective checklist. Siege objectives, defend your land, and you’ll be rewarded!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-world-vs-world-fall-tournament-2014/

“Champion _ " are all PvP titles, not WvW titles.

If anyone else is finding the list in the OP difficult to read, know that the wiki chart is much easier to look at:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Titles

To answer the OP, “Legend of the Arena” is for making it into the Top 5 on the sPVP Paid Tournament Leaderboards. As far as I know, it’s not longer obtainable, since Paid Tournaments were removed from the game, but I could be mistaken, since I’m not involved with PvP. Players with the old title can still have it, however, even though there’s no achievement attached to it.

Edit: I didn’t realize this was a necro until after I read Sorann Peace’s post, right below mine. Extra whoops. O.o

I’d forgotten how good Extra Credits can be. Might have to watch some more of them soon. Drives me crazy when people link to a video though and say “This is what’s wrong with ____!” without offering more of their own thoughts in the same post.

I’d like to second basically everything Behellagh said. The non-paying game doesn’t feel crippled the way a bad F2P game does. Speaking personally, there’s nothing I feel I have to buy to have a fulfilling experience, other than the base game.

People are always complaining that we don’t get new content (usually armor sets) because it goes in the gem store, and while not 100% true, I think that also hints at a wrong way of approaching a B2P game. It’s not a subscription model, where I pay constantly to get new content constantly added into the base game. I paid once, expecting to get everything in the base game when I bought it, plus some festivals, because that’s an expected part of the genre. I don’t expect new armor suits to be added to vendors / crafters / drop tables on a 1:1 basis with the gem store. Someone’s got to pay for that stuff, and I’m sure the money I put into the game initially is long gone.

(Possibly spent on the Living Story updates, which I’ve generally enjoyed rather a lot.)

I used to use Night Shade for my black-of-choice, back before dyes became account-based and I sprung for Abyss. I still use it when I want a darker grey that isn’t as showy as Abyss. It’s 1.8G.

Iron is another excellent option, and it’s super cheap, around 2-3 silver. Of course, if you’re really feeling cheap, Ebony Dye is one of the default dyes…

None of these are as dark as Abyss or, material varying, some of the Midnight dyes, but if you compare to actual Black Dye, Iron and Night Shade aren’t bad at all.

Now if I could only dye that hat, I could actually wear without having to dye my outfit Violet Tint. Such is life.

I don’t mind terribly some of these complexity reductions in the early game, but stuff like this (not updating mob info) just makes the changes seem incomplete and unpolished.

A person can argue that these things need to be more or less complex, but no one can argue that an inaccurate mob description is helping new players.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-Questions-Town-clothes-Costumes-Combat/page/14#post3817507

Here’s a pretty decent explanation as to why armor weight will definitely be sticking around, for technical reasons at the very least. There are more problems than just clipping, evidently.

Unfortuately, the Shattered Wings and Wings of the Sunless are no longer available. The holographic wings Astral points to are available on the Trading Post, but they’ll cost you 70-80 gold.

Makes me wish I’d bought some extras back when they were 15G. Ah, that’s life.

Even if they didn’t reward XP, I think these would be neat just to have around. See: Quaggan pipe organ Easter egg.

Edit: Apparently the pipe organs do have a secret chest reward. Learn something new every day~

You’re dealing in absolutes. If comparing GW2 to learning a program with a lot of tools and settings is ridiculous, learning to walk around in a room with chairs is your better example?

Yes, that definitely seems like a more appropriate comparison.

If you want an in-world explanation, consider that rebuilding takes a lot of work and money, and Lion’s Arch is short on both right now, after so many people were killed and so much property was destroyed.

The other racial capitals could help, of course, but they have their own problems to deal with. The Norn and Charr have their own wars, especially the Charr. The Asura aren’t as hard-pressed, but they don’t, on the whole, seem tremendously generous, especially if it’s a question of rebuilding a pirate city or spending funds on Rata Sum and academic research. The Sylvari might be more caring, and less-pressed after the destruction of Zhaitan, but I can’t see them as an industrial powerhouse, either.

The Zephyrites and Queen Jennah did do some fundraising back during the Festival of the Four Winds, but LA is a big place, and it’s possible much of the Zephyrite funds were lost when they were attacked and their ships crashed.

You can take it however you want—We just have to wait and see before we actually know for sure.

(Unless you’re expecting a dev to give you a direct answer. I would not hold out on them announcing their Halloween plans in more detail for a while yet.)

I wonder if Cragstead (Shiverpeaks) and Dry Top (Maguuma) count for the “Explorer” achievements. I wouldn’t expect them to, but it’s possible, and it’s possible you cleared out their surrounding areas before they were added to the game.

Good luck!

I have no idea if this was “the last word” on the subject or not, but here’s a dev post from five months ago, before the April Feature Pack came out:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

All current traits will be usable on a new character in PvP. New traits that are added to the game will need to be unlocked though, similar to how new skills work.

If someone can find a more recent remark on the matter, it’s possible this one is outdated, but if not, it looks like they announced how it would work before the new traits came out, and they’ve worked that way ever since. PvP players might not care for it, but it’s unhelpful to say a dev mislead you without having a reference to it.

Yes, it’s ridiculous that the search feature on the forum doesn’t work. Doesn’t mean we can take “but I remember them saying it!” as evidence.

Also, the fact that I’m treating a dev post as “evidence” might sum up why we don’t get roadmap posts anymore.

While I don’t like seeing old content removed like this, I was also never that crazy about Golem Chess. It worked, but it seemed a little clumsy and not very deep.

I would say that I did or did not find it tedious/frustrating, but I mostly remember thinking “Oh. Okay. That’s a…thing. Yes. Done.”

Djinn.9245:

I can’t learn how a option works if I can’t see it or it isn’t available. Imagine how this would work in RL (ridiculous).

It’s…not really that ridiculous, in my opinion. If I’m teaching someone a program with a lot of options, like Maya, I try to keep them focused on just the tools and concepts we need immediately, so that they can quickly gain confidence and a sense of understanding. Once they wrap their head around one element, I can introduce them to other ideas on a learning curve. I don’t have a convenient option to hide most things, but I still find myself telling them “don’t worry about that,” “just ignore that for now,” and “we’ll explain what that is later.”

They’re still learning by doing; you’re just keeping them focused on doing a couple things at a time. Some people are happy to dive right in, but other people need to follow the curve, and some people get intimidated if things look overwhelming.

I haven’t started a new character yet, so I can’t say whether the new experience is on the whole a good thing or not, (keeping in mind the bugs apparently being experienced,) but it’s not a patently absurd way to introduce people to the game.

Did I “get” ideas like bundles, golem chess, and a separate PvP lobby right away? Sure. A lot of people do. But it sounds like a lot of people don’t, and newbie retention rates were suffering for it.

Edit: I’d like to add that by making weapon skills character-based instead of weapon-based, that part of the learning curve actually sped up substantially. Now, if I’ve been playing with Scepter/Focus and switch to Staff for the first time, I immediately have five skills I can use, instead of having to learn each one at a time.

Has anyone actually played through the Orr storyline this week to see conclusively whether those steps are there or not?

I mean, the story-shuffle is still a problem, and cutting memorable story arcs out of the journal is also bad, but the most important question is whether that arc is still in the game or not. I haven’t seen anyone conclusively say one way or the other. (Which is easier said than done, because someone basically has to play the entire Pact arc to make sure it hasn’t been moved somewhere, not just where it used to be.)

This is where a simple “Yes, it’s still there,” or “No, it’s been removed” from Anet would be helpful. Although, if it’s the latter, I can see why a simple answer would be as much trouble as no answer. e__e

I don’t expect anything else to come of it. It’s just a little flavor trophy, like Marjory’s Journal and the Zephyr Sanctum model. At most, I could imagine them introducing some kind of trophy case in your home instance for them, but even that seems fairly unlikely.

If you don’t care for it, toss it. If you ever need it again for storyline progression or some such, I’m sure they’d give out another for players who weren’t around the first time, or have tossed it since then.

I just want to drop a quick “thanks” to the devs posting in this thread. Having some insight into the process makes things a lot more palatable, giving us a sense that things are being done for a reason, and not just “because” by some faceless entity.

When you’re developing that kind of software for a client, your goal is eliminate all surprises. That’s not the case with a video game, if by “client” you mean players.

Your client also isn’t nearly as many voices to listen to as the entire GW2 player base.

Chances are, they might do some scrum-style work internally, with teams reporting to supervisors. With the developer-player relationship, however, scrum isn’t generally a realistic option.

Generally, this seems all right. I’m waiting for the weekend before I start a new alt to try out the new early game, but if things are, indeed, unlocked at roughly the same play time, and some of these changes are, as indicated, just improving the visibility of the carrot, I’d be okay with that. While I didn’t find learning most of the game to be particularly difficult, I’m also my entire sampling pool, which limits my perspective on it.

The bug situation does make it hard to judge this system fairly. I have faith that it’ll get fixed eventually, but I also think it’s reasonable for people to judge this feature pack based on what they’re experiencing, because only so many players are going to log on to the forums to see what’s supposed to be an account unlock and what’s supposed to happen per-character.

I’m glad for the tiny wink, nudge about traits. I’m not very happy with this “no discussion until it’s ready to roll” policy. I’d rather have the old roadmaps and still have some bumps or cancellations, because then I can at least see the thought being put into things, and a recognition of problem areas.

“Korians” is an unfortunate name. In case it’s not obvious why: People are going to pronounce it as “Koreans,” and making the designated “bad guy race” a homophone to an existing group of real-world people is…not good, to put it mildly.

Anyway, I don’t see them adding a new race soon, especially not a villainous race. To fit with the existing story, and to mesh with the other five races, you, as a player, would probably be the exception to the rule, and then resources would have to be spent, essentially, to make NPCs prejudiced against you, or else leave players wondering why no one cares that there’s a <insert species> wandering around.

Setting the practicality of it aside, if we saw another playable race introduced, I’d like to see an existing race further developed, like the Tengu, who are usually the first one to pop up in these discussions. The Kodan are a reasonable option as well, or perhaps the Largos if we ever get a water-dragon-oriented expansion. (Personally, I’d love to play as Skritt or Krait, but those aren’t ever going to happen, with good reason.)

Alternatively, if they wanted to introduce a “darker” alternative storyline, they could have an expansion pack that sees characters start as part of their race’s evil faction. Asura would join up with the Inquest, Humans would begin as Bandits, Sylvari would be part of the Nightmare Court, etc. That would open up a lot of storytelling options in existing locations, and could sync up to the rest of the existing storylines through a redemption arc.

The font is called “CronosPro,” and you can buy it from the author via Typekit.

You can find it elsewhere for free, but it’s not a free font, and I see some pretty obvious copyright violations going on.

It is a really nice font, in my opinion. Thin and a little ornamental, but very readable.

Edit: “CronosPro,” not “ChronosPro.”

I’m happy to confirm that /me has been fixed!

Thanks, Anet!