Guild Wars 2

Asuran thief with Engie goggles is nice too.

Generally speaking:

-increased level cap
-new areas
-new skills, items, enemies and all that
-new custscenes, music, art, and all that
-new gameplay types, such as types of dungeon, pvp arenas, as appropriate to the game genre
-lots of advertising and media hype

Now, that’s your typical MMO. GW1 managed to do all of that but left out the level cap. Whats’ relevant to GW2 (som say) is the advertising, since everything else is already delivered via living story.

The quality of what’s being delivered via LS is also debatable (how to write a LS update: pull 2 factions out of a hat… etc).

Problem is not that simple. With so much of the Ranger’s damage assumed to be coming from the pet, all this would be is a 40% nerf to self in exchange for a 5% buff. I can see why Anet doesn’t want to encourage that, even if pets are bone dead stupid and can’t be relied upon anyway.

Here’s a post I made elsewhere that addresses the problem where it’s needed. It doesn’t delve into pet AI either, so there’s a chance it could actually be done.

I hate the idea. The 1-chain as it is is pretty core to what the GS currently does, which is an attrition/control weapon. Also, I think if anything gets a utility function it’s Maul. As it stands, Maul is nothing more then a DPS boost that you punch on cooldown. Giving it a minor secondary (2 sec blind, removing 1 boon, transfer 1 condition, something like that) function so you have a reason to think about using it or not would be better then changing swoop, which I desperately do not want changed because it would probably have it’s cooldown nerfed in exchange.

Re: Rangers Overall and the Class Mechanic

Pretty much everyone agrees that the pet is holding the Ranger back. I’ll summarize since it’s been discussed to death: too much DPS is assumed to come from the pet, an entity which doesn’t respond to commands on time, generally misbehaves, can be killed or CC’d, and generally just isn’t under the players control.

Pet AI doesn’t appear like it will be fixed, and removing the pet is another enormous rework, I propose the following compromise. Shift Ranger pets from a DPS-first role to a Utility-first role, and leave most of the DPS in the player’s hands. Perhaps an 80/20 split instead 60/40. This would require an extensive overview of pet abilities, but won’t require delving into AI coding or reworking the class core.

Examples of what kind of things could be done:
-Replace the many and unremarkable DPS F2 abilities with ones that grant boons, cause conditions, remove boons or conditions, create combo fields or finishers.
-Pets with low-power but useful passive abilities, similar to the Ranger’s Spotter trait. 10% Boon duration, condition duration, increased toughness, etc. Essentially turning a pet of this type into a mini-trait.
-More reliability on automatic pet skills, such as Birds granting swiftness, Canine’s knockdown, etc, or moving these effects to the active skill.
-Automatic Reaction pet skills, such as charging a foe that knocks down the ranger.
-More pet autoattacks with a utility function, such as Vulnerability (already on Cat), leeching health to the Ranger, whatever you guys can think of cause that’s it for me.

Now, that’s a lot of work, but the innate unreliability of pets means that relying on them for DPS is an insurmountable limitation on what the Ranger itself can do. With this general direction for pets, they still add a lot of utility, flavor and customization to the class, but shift more of the core gameplay directly to the players hands where it belongs. It also means pets will be more then just buff bots in pvp- ok, well, there would more then two such buffbots to choose from at least :P

o7

Ariete.6509:

Get in line please.

Melee Staff comes first. Not even to cast magical stuff, just a straight martial package bundle with some utility. Come to think of it, that deserves a thread of its own, problem is: plenty have been opened i believe.

Based on the art of staves in game, I don’t think we’ll ever see this. They all look very mystic-y and magical. Hammer is much more likely.

As for role of rifles, if they rebalance our two bows into something with less suck, it could work like this:

Longbow: AOE / Support
Shortbow: Control / Condition
Rifle: Single Target / Burst

It works extremely well on high-precision pets like cats or birds. They easily stay up 50% more or twice as long as they do without it- long enough to keep pet swap from going into it’s death cooldown.

Obviously situational, but strong within it’s place.

CylerCycle.2037:

how do you go about testing builds like this? I’m fairly new to the game and just scared to try new builds because I don’t want to waste money.

Go to the Mists (pvp zone) and try it out on the target dummies and class NPCs. Respecs and gear are all free there.

It fits as well as Sylvari Engineers. Don’t let the lore stop you.

Necromancers say ‘Hi.’

translation: it would be nerfed into a useless trait if so.

Oops!

Try this one
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMUQJATRjAV11tVCWs2Bi2DAYpzzecIE9IXBRlytOxbtA-jQCBIgQoiAJPApPTjN/BpSqIasKGYKTER1uDFRrGA-e

With this weapon combo, GS will be your main weapon and longbow will be the backup. Longbow just doesn’t have enough DPS to be a primary weapon. Only use the bow when you need a range attack. Axe/warhorn is better for dungeons, but longbow can be a usefull backup / opener.

Try something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMUQJATRjAV11tVCWs2Bi2DAYpzzecIE9IXBRlytOxbtA-jQCBIgQoiAJPApPTjN/BpSqIasKGYKTER1uDFRrGA-e

This is a strong sustained damage build with good survival but low burst. Empty traits are optional for you to choose. This build is based on using the Lynx.

Bark Skin, Companions Defense, and the natural evades and block on GS will make you very tanky. Concentration Training makes the Might Stacks from your Lynx last a very long time, giving you better damage then anyone will ever expect from a GS ranger. Lastly, the Skirmishing traits give you high crit and crit damage, and increases the effectiveness of traps as well, giving you DPS from 3 sources at once. This is needed to make up for GS’ low native damage, and additionally makes it hard to lock you down. Alternately, take 10 points from Skirmishing and put into Beast Mastery for pet skill cooldown reduction, to get higher Might uptime.

Swap Barkskin for Empathic Bond when you expect to face conditions.

I suggest, for the empty traits, either Trappers Expertise so you can throw traps at range while meleeing, or Carnivorous Appetite which will keep your pet alive significantly longer.

Utility skills have 2 traps and 3rd skill of your choice- signet of the hunt or signet of the wild are my recommended ones for general play. Quickening Zephyr or Lightning Reflexes are good options also. The two traps are to augment your DPS once again. GS damage is low, so you need to combine multiple damage sources to get good killing power. Vipers Nest can be exchanged for Frost Trap if you need more control.
Troll Unguent is your best heal when soloing, with Healing Spring for groups. Use the Unguent early in the fight for maximum regen time and earlier cooldown.

Gear for Precision / Power / x. X can be vitality, toughness, or even condition, depending on how you personally play and what aspect of your character you focus more on.

Elites are dead on arrival because of their design concept. They were originally planned to be ‘game changers’ when activated, but not ‘I win’ buttons. Now, if you’re like me, you’ll be thinking “aren’t those the same thing?”

Thus, they can’t be too powerful, or they’d be I-Win buttons on two minute cooldowns. In other words, they are not ‘elite’ in any way. They are just extra-long-cd utility skills. They need a rebalance from the core design up.

Killsmith.8169:

Rhyse.8179:

The biggest problem with GS is that it’s a defensive weapon, and not the offensive smasher that most people think of with 2 handers. I actually like it for exactly that reason, but the perception of it is coloring peoples view of it’s balance. Also, as a defense/control weapon, it relies heavily on pets for it’s DPS. Conveniently, since you are the tank when using GS, it allows you to use a high DPS pet. Fixing the pet movement AI so they can apply their damage properly and making them stay alive in AOE will do more for the GS then anything you do to the GS itself.

The only problem with using a DPS pet and GS is that even with a power build and full berserker gear, you can’t get agro off of the pet because it’s out damaging you. Now, supposing the 60/40 split on damage is true, what does that say about the damage on GS?

Actually it says more about your knowledge of aggro mechanics. Target health is a higher aggro factor then DPS is. If your Cat has more HP then you, you shouldn’t be in melee range.

Also, Jaguar stealth is an instant de-aggro. Very handy when soloing. By positioning yourself properly, you can use GS 4 to block an attack aimed at your pet. Skirmishing 20 lets your pet heal on crit, so if you choose a high crit DPS pet (cat or bird) they will live a very long time. And there’s pet swap and protection on dodge. In short, don’t be lazy and you won’t have problems keeping your pet alive.

Now, in Dungeons, PVP, and WVW, it’s a whole different issue, since you’ve got massive AOE to deal with, and that’s one of the things that needs fixed. Even micro-managing your pet to the fullest, they still die quickly here. Yes, that’s like 70% of the game. I know. That’s why I said that fixing pets is so important to fixing GS. And other weapons too, because of the assumed DPS split. Seriously, read the thread and you’ll see a complaint about the DPS of EVERY Ranger weapon. The problem is the pets- they either need fixed, or downgraded from DPS to Utility so that weapons can be balanced properly.

With all the GS talk going on, I wanted to stop by an add my $.02

Ranger GS has the most diverse skill bar of any weapon in the game. It is, without a doubt, my favorite single weapon on any class. It may be a touch weak in some areas (dps), but it has some very attractive features:
-An AOE autoattack with a very wide angle (180 deg).
-An extremely long range leap on short cooldown.
-A block combined with a strong counter.
-A near-instant on demand interrupt.

It would really be a shame to lose any of those features- although to be fair I don’t think anyone has suggested otherwise.

On the 1-evade: I use GS as an attrition weapon, with supplemental damage from pet and traps while I use the GS to control the fight. It’s unique among melee weapons in this ability. The 1-evade helps with this, simply by stopping a hit here or there and reducing total damage taken over a fight. And that’s not counting it’s potential with well timed dodges. I say keep it.

The weakest skill on the bar is probably Maul GASP!. Yes, it’s a great damage spike, but that’s all it is. It’s nothing more then a button you hit whenever it’s cooldown is up. If there’s any functionality that needs to be added to the weapon, I suggest putting it here. For example, replacing Vulnerability with a Blind would force you to chose between the DPS or saving it as a defense. Side note, I actually miss the Bleed on it. It synergized with a trap/crit/condi build and swapping it for Vuln made it significantly weaker.

The biggest problem with GS is that it’s a defensive weapon, and not the offensive smasher that most people think of with 2 handers. I actually like it for exactly that reason, but the perception of it is coloring peoples view of it’s balance. Also, as a defense/control weapon, it relies heavily on pets for it’s DPS. Conveniently, since you are the tank when using GS, it allows you to use a high DPS pet. Fixing the pet movement AI so they can apply their damage properly and making them stay alive in AOE will do more for the GS then anything you do to the GS itself.

JonPeters.5630:

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

Hmm good point. Glad to hear you’d thought of it yourself, gives me some faith that you know what you’re doing after all this time ;-)

Personally, it really sounds like massive fun to me and could tie the class together. It really fits with the manipulator/attrition gameplay style. Even if you have to make it immune to epidemic, or limit it to one target, or just make it so LF only ever comes ikittenngle target rates, just having it there adds so much potential gameplay that it’s worth putting all kinds of artificial restrictions on it in order to have it in game. IMO of course.

They mesh well with melee builds, since you can drop traps at your fit that instantly activate. Some good utility options with cripple/frost or fire+swoop. Definately doesn’t make much sense if using them for the condition damage though, which makes the 30pt trait really funky.

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

JonPeters.5630:

We are going back and forth between 2s and 3s of weakness. 3s with full condi duration and with Near to Death trait is almost 65% uptime, which sortof scared us on an adept trait that gives AoE weakness. 2s works out to 42% uptime when maxed out which felt a little better. Still open to discussion so thanks,

Jon

Don’t forget the context of that uptime. To get it, we have to use DS on cooldown, which restricts our defense by a massive amount. Trading our ability to absorb bursts in exchange for weakness uptime that benefits the whole group actually sounds fairly fair. Since it’s only an adept level trait though, 2s would still be apropriate imo. It still lets us use DS to mitigate spikes, which is what it’s needed for. In reality, very few people will use the skill for it’s uptime. They’re going to hold their DS cooldown until it’s needed.

Similar complain about staff. The argument that MOB is one of the best abilities in the game relies on the assumption of a situation that almost never happens. To get the numbers you mentioned, you need to hit 5 enemys and 5 allies simulatneously, and the conditions need to stay for their full duration and not get cleansed or pushed off. Having all of these things at the same time is so unlikely that it can be discounted completely. In actual use, MOB is a mediocre ability made strong only by it’s short cooldown and the lack of any other DPS options on that weapon. If you really want to go through with nerfing this, take a look at adjusting the autoattack damage or upping the damage of the other marks to compensate.

Nothing beyond the box price.

The Ascended gear fiasco and constant new ways to grind (which I ignore) basically guarunteed I will never spend cash at the gem store. I still enjoy the gameplay and leveling random alts, but just don’t get into the game that seriously since it changed direction. That there’s nothing worthwhile in the store (still) doesn’t help either.

Fortunately I invested heavily in gems during release when they were under 2g, and still have a large collection of them, so my character and bank slots are in good supply.

All of this, both on the part of the animators and the people complaining about it, rests on the assumption that greatswords are heavy.

5-10 pounds (tops) is not that big a deal. Complain about the difference in gender presentation if you like, but never forget that the whole situation is silly.

1. Pets can’t attack moving targets.
-Steps to reproduce: Attack something with your pet.

2. Sword 1-chain roots the player using it.
-Steps to reproduce: Attack something with a sword.

PVE:
1. Class Balance and Bugs (eg: ranger pets and moving targets)
2. Guild Halls and other community landscapes
3. Gameplay depth

I’m still leveling mine up, but I’m having great success with it. Traiting for Bark Skin is a must, and a mix of vit/tough/power on armor. You won’t have the raw tankiness of stronger classes, but with all the vigor and dodge bonuses (protection on dodge, yay!) you’ll be able to make a very fast paced “brickgility” character.

GS 4 and 5 are vital to master, since both are interrupts when used properly. Also, learn to clear target and GS 3 out of danger when needed. The build works well with traps for utility (like frost or cripple) since you drop them at your feet and are in melee range anyway. But signets or survival are good options too. Still experimenting on that count myself. Also plays well with Axe/Warhorn for ranged support on swap, or shortbow for some rapid kiting manuevers when you just can’t melee.

Gonna have to work out most of the details yourself though. Mine is only mid-60s ish and I don’t have a full build to recommend yet.

Would you tip a pizza delivery guy who insulted your mother, whizzed on your lawn, and called you a drugged-out-freeloader before giving you that pizza? The pizza is the most amazing pizza ever. But would you even accept the delivery under that kind of treatment?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Rhyse.8176:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Remove the town clothes from the gem store and what cosmetic items do you have left ?

Here’s some they could add with way less effort then designing a new dungeon takes:

How about a $60 monocle ?

Thinking of stuff they could add is easy. Problem is, the stuff isn’t there.

Hah, you’re speaking to someone who was subbed to EVE during the Jita riots.

Yeah, the stuff isn’t there- and there seems to be a general lack of thought (by players AND the gem shop operators) about why not, and what could be there. My point is it shouldn’t be that hard to get things in there.

Cheiron the Centaur.1829:

That 10,000 only means something if you have a pretty accurate estimate of how many of those ~2 million players are active posters on this forum. 20,000? 40,000? 100,000? in other words: if you know the total number of active posters on this forum, then you can estimate if it’s 1 out of 2, 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 10 players that are unhappy with this change. Given that we don’t even know that… those figures are completely meaningless.

Let me help you out.

The proportion of happy to angry people should be pretty similar, regardless of the absolute numbers involved. The question you need to ask is how much bias is present due to the medium (ie, happy people stay in game, unhappy people look for an outlet). Regardless, the trend is overwhelming. It would take a LOT of bias (like, say, 1/100 happy to angry) to get to a 50/50 split. I strongly doubt it’s that high.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Remove the town clothes from the gem store and what cosmetic items do you have left ?

Here’s some they could add with way less effort then designing a new dungeon takes:
-Animated dyes (think Svanir Ice formation type)
-Dyes with particle effects
-Glowing dyes
-Unique armor and weapon skins
-Unlocking skins you’ve earned in PVE into PVP (or the reverse).
-More toys and gizmos (like the pirate cannon)
-Guild Housing, furnishings, and services.
-Skill graphical changes (making mesmer spells blue, or adding more bones to necro spells, etc).

These things are fun. People like me, who like to hang out and mess around in game, would happily spend gems on these if we could feel invested into the game. Of course, the existence of a gear treadmill undermines that sense of investment because there’s no permanence to it.

• Step 1: Be a company who’s stock is falling rapidly.
• Step 2: Look for ways to bring in more profit. Your flagship product is GW2. Hmmm…
• Step 3: In GW2’s case, getting more profit means getting more players.
• Step 4: See why existing players are leaving. Visit forums. See complaints about “endgame.” Don’t take the basic time to read them or the responses very well.
• Step 5: Order that an “endgame” be added immediately.
• Step 6: Wince in pain as your lack of market knowledge, research, effort or business sense of any kind, and lack of respect for your internal leaders who no doubt warned you about what will happen, causes a rush of refunds and massive loss of customers.
• Step 7: (yet to happen) Downsize to cut costs; try desperately to reverse Step 5 and 6, possibly eating a major short term loss in the process.
• Step 7a (bad ending): Find a scapegoat, other then yourself, who just happens to be the person(s) most able to regain customer support for your product. Fire them. In turn, get fired yourself because the remains of your product team can’t keep it afloat. Product dies.
• Step 7b (good ending): After major internal reorganizing, downsizing and re-budgeting, and finally listening to your product developers, step back, leave the product in their qualified hands, and allow the long slow recovery to take place. Lower your ambitions to something actually achievable, doing market research this time to figure out what that is. Turn a small but consistent profit off the product over the next decade.

Elementalist – 25% speed boost while in air attunement (if traited), swiftness on demand (applies to allies too) plus a teleport. No falling damage reduction, but that shouldn’t matter unless you mess up.

2nd place: Thief for 25% speed boost.

All teleports have the same LOS limitations. They aren’t actually all that useful in most puzzles, but they can get you past gusts of wind or something.

Logun.2349:

If you got this far and are curious about the title of this post that’s how the bait and shift works when you advertise one thing and deliver something unexpected.

Epic. 10/10

Open Letter to GW2 Devs:
I’m sorry Anet. I said bad things about you. It has taken some time, but now I understand. Putting in this Flavor of the Month dungeon and Ascended gear grind was not really your idea. I was initially angry; nearly irate. Now, I am simply sad. It’s become clear that Anet is Under New Management and not fully to blame.

Instead, it is the Evil Overlords, represented by the greedy and bossy Subdirector Blingg. It’s now clear that not everyone at Anet is happy, and that the outrage resulting from this move was not unexpected.

Anet, you have my condolences. I have obtained a refund for both my wife’s and my accounts; this kind of behavior may harm you financially. I apologize for that. I suspect that Anet is in some deep doo doo, and may not come out of this the same. It is my hope, however, that it will show the bean counters that their meddling is counterproductive and they will give you control of your game back. If that happens, I will happily buy GW2 once again and support you for years to come.

If not- RIP, GW2. So long and thanks for all the quaggans. It’s the end of an era for MMO developers.

John Lucier.5486:

.. There are already threads asking for gearscore. This is pitiful. Well you know what comes next ladies and gentlemen. 2 months there will be Pandas and Arena PVP for PVE players

You mean this one?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-add-gear-score-2
My sarcasm meter was going overdrive on the OP there.

I’m going to go back to EVE online.

I was hoping GW2 would be a sandbox fantasy MMO of the kind I have a soft spot for (instead of a spaceship MMO) that could be my new home, but it appears that is not to be.

Adding this which I just learned:

Lord Funk over in the Threadnaught mentioned that the new jumping puzzle is called “Under New Management.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-vCstPnTd4

I think we may be on to something here.

Lord Funk.1694:

There is a Jumping Puzzle in Lost Shores called:

“Under New Management”

I seriously wonder if the devs are trying to tell us somethiung ???

Wow nice catch.

I’m starting to think there’s a crisis in the company, and that’s just one more piece of evidence. I’m willing to bet that their silence is actually shock, from the internal chaos going on as the higher-ups realize that they are losing customers with this change rather then getting some back. This very likely has huge financial implications for the company, and they have some internal soul-searching (and re-budgeting) to do before they present anything to us.

Time will tell, eh?

Ragman.1690:

All this reminds me of the Jita Riots 2011 in EVE.

In short, CCP was about to introduce a Nex Cash Shop and it sickered through that there were plans to make ships and weapons with different stats than player produced ones available there. The kitten storm was unbelievable, players kept unsubbing and others shooting a statue in a major trade hub for almost 5 days 24 hours a day.

I unsubbed too. A month later I got an E-Mail with an apology from the CEO and that they will change the direction they were taking the game to, listening more to the players wishes.

I resubbed and everything works fine now, they mostly really focus on stuff the players like to have.

o/ I’m always glad to see another EVE survivor. I think the comparison to monoclegate is more apt then it even looks on the surface- CCP aimed for a market they didn’t have any hold in (first/third person gamers, social-network type gamers) and overreached their financial capacity by neglecting their core base.

Anet is doing the exact same thing- and the way out will be exactly the same. Downsizing to reduce overhead (I’m sorry great artists and programmers, but this doesn’t look good), and re-gearing to support the market they DO have. Hopefully, and apology or at least an explanation will come before those of us who are leaving get tired and stop checking for one- otherwise, the customer hemorrhaging won’t stop.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

There is one major difference in Monoclegate and GW2’s introduction of Ascended gear:
– Monoclegate didn’t go against the core concepts of Eve. It just ate up development resources to produce a really stupid addition. Then CCP backed down quickly.

No, but the leaked internal newsletter suggested plans to do so for the future- namely, introducing pay-to-win microtransactions. That’s what really pushed the community over the edge.

Kolache.3964:

I think they confused the population leveling off to the niche audience they were marketing to with an uncontrollable bleed of players.

Undoubtedly they have. The impetus behind trying to do so I think is that, like 38 Studios, they overreached and have spent beyond their base. How much massive new content have we had in less then 3 months? A VERY in-depth holiday, and a full content addition with Lost Shores. They must have a huge team of people working on concurrent projects if this is the pace they plan to keep. If GW2 survives, I predict a large reduction in personnel, and fewer, more modest content additions. This means simpler things like more skins, skills, DE chains, titles and such. New zones and one-time events will become rarer.

What I really hope is that they return to their original vision, and find a way to make a profit within that market. Which isn’t small BTW- a lot of gamers grew up with WoW, and WoW brought a lot of non-gamers into the market. Now those people are getting older, graduating/ed from college, and getting busier lives. Lives that include disposable income. An open, accessible game with just enough depth like GW2 could make a large, consistent profit by marketing to these people.

Anet’s (and many others) mistake was aiming for WoW status, or thinking they ever could with so many competitors. WoW came into the market at a unique time, when the competition was a bunch of stagnant EQ clones with barely working software code. WoW delivered a casual-friendly (at least at first- we know where that went), highly polished product that not only knocked the competition flat, but drew in customers from outside the market as well. Now, with so many WoW copies and the market already so large, sudden success on that scale simply won’t happen again.

Downstairs Eddie.8125:

Maybe their silence means they’ve been surprised by the fierce backlash and are currently discussing what to do about it. I hope they make the right decision.

They aren’t surprised; they specifically said they expected it in the translated German post. I suspect they are biding time, gnashing their teeth, and collecting refund and concurrency data to fight off an evil overlord with.

But then, I always love a good conspiracy. They’re exciting. And it helps me keep that hope alive for a bit longer.

Alternately, make it a universal (ie, not attunement based) mini Arcane Wave+blast, with a 10 sec cooldown. Then you can’t spam the finisher by swapping attunements.

It’s evasive arcana after all, not evasive attunementa.

I want my playstyle back.

Ah I see what you mean. Soulbound=New gear must constantly be ground out.

Well, it’s hard to control inflation and prevent that at the same time. The mitigating factor used to be that you only had to do it once per character. Personally, I found that an acceptable bargain.

Kitsan.8453:

I will never pre-order a game again. I won’t listen to hype again from gaming sites and starry eyed fans.

You’re not the only one. Anet has effectively poisoned the well for future developers that depend on a pre-sale model to fund their development. It’s hit the blogosphere, and I imagine some mainstream coverage is not far behind.

Doesn’t wow even still do this, or did they stop?

EVE Online uses their test server, and the resulting feedback, heavily (although not always intelligently). It is a good thing.

It’s not fair to say it’s a copy; loot items (until now) didn’t souldbind when you picked them up. They were, universally, tradeable until someone decided to use it. This is a common sense defence against inflation.

Soulbinding a drop immediately when you pick it up, on the other hand, turns it into a rat-race gear-grabbing competition.

This article is comparing two non-GW2 games, but the description of what these two studios have done seems eerily familiar…

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/27/eve-evolved-lessons-from-38-studios/

Excerpt:

The shutdown of 38 Studios is a sobering reminder of the problems in EVE Online’s development that led to monoclegate. Both studios were mismanaged, with the jobs of hundreds of developers gambled on the outcome of poorly researched business decisions. EVE Online thankfully survived CCP’s failed microtransaction gamble, but 38 Studios’ Project Copernicus may never see the light of day.

Scroll down to the header “Stop chasing the number one spot” in particular.

I want this:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-endgame-reimagined/

KageNoKaze.7386:

you work more, you get more.

Emphasis added to highlight the problem.

It’s a game, not work.

XxRaSxX.1604:

I’ve been wondering, are people actually leaving like they claim they are? How would we even know with no subscriptions? Would it even make a difference?

I have. I requested a refunded, and it processed through a couple hours ago. If you want to make a difference, go do it now. You can buy another code for you account in a day or two if you still want to play, but with no subscriptions, this is the only way to make a statement. Otherwise, they won’t fully realize the damage until 3-6 months from now, and it will be too late.