Guild Wars 2

No, those are(were) only for the 3 beta weekends, which have all come and gone.
So once HoT launches those 4 will all go away.

The standard edition does not come with a slot unless your account was created before Jan 23rd of this year. If it was then you are eligible for the veteran appreciation slot, which is given out on a weekly basis now so it may take some time to show up.
If your account was not created before Jan23rd you do not get a slot with the standard edition.

Checked, same price they’ve been as long as I’ve known them.

I will never understand the mindset of “I don’t want anyone playing this content who doesn’t play it for the reasons I do”

You apparently don’t get it. They are trying to kill dungeons off completely.
(and this is also fairly telling about how rewarding HoT is going to be, if they have to nerf other content to be less rewarding to make HoT look favorable in comparison)

I think you are going to be rather disappointed if you think this is going to restore any sort of dungeoning community.

Really appreciate all the info, this answered a lot of the questions I had about banking in HoT.

As far as we know yes, that stuff should all stay the same.

I’ve picked up at least two that way, so yes you can.

The license is your online account, not the actual installed copy, technically speaking.

There are no issues with having the client installed on multiple computers, as you can only log in on one at a time (it kicks out the first when the second connects, although interesting note, I leave one at the char select screen a lot cause I’m lazy, and logging in on the other one doesn’t kick out of char select or make me re-logon unless there’s been an update)

Menadena.7482:

I am running around with 8 level 80s right now gathering HPs – some at at 85, some at 90. I have a pile of tomes saved up. A couple days after HOT my next 20 scroll drops. Insta-20 then 60 of my tomes.

The problem with an insta-80 is hero points. Assuming you need some for the elite and if we need a full unlock of everything else first ….

True, I assume I wont be able to elite spec day one, but I’ll still insta 80.
Reason being, all exp before lvl 80 is wasted on getting to 80, whereas if I’m 80 all that exp goes to mastery tracks.
So I’ll insta 80, then go HP hunting/map completing/etc.

Yeah dont forget the bday scrolls, instant lvl 20 (or 30 if you have the 3rd birthday gift) then only 58 (or 48)Tomes to 80, which you can accumulate faster than you think if you go try.
Daily logins, PvP, daily chests, its good stuff.

Wow, that’s actually really cool

Because it takes effort to wipe them vs just leaving them, they probably won’t vanish until anet is about to make the next major change (they might not vanish until just before HoT drops)

Much like a new class, a new race is a huge selling point, I don’t think its likely for them to make them playable and not advertize (plus, nothing datamined to indicate it either)

Chocolate Chip Ice cream doesn’t boost exp, only one I know of lol

Sure it would, there are people who would sooner delete and recreate a character to change their looks instead of dropping the 350 gems for a total makeover kit.

While on the other hand, its possible to just select race/class/story bits on a new toon, then as soon as you get in game hop into your bank for a total makeover kit.
Bam, new toon with one of the new faces/hairstyles.

That’s what I’m going to do anyway.

Nevermore.5487:

Oooooh, now it makes sense. I was wondering why was I the only one defending while others were just standing around and watching me fail. I thought wow, such kittens. I agree, it doesn’t really make sense, just remove the defend event I guess so it can go to world boss every time

Maybe add the High Priestess to the defense event?

Basic nodes appear a lot faster than 24hrs, and if you’re seeing Iron and Silver you’re in the wrong zone.

Rich Veins on the other hand are a daily thing, and last rumor I heard a number of the rich copper ones got removed, and I haven’t seen any myself in ages.

That….is a really good point. I’d considered the loot table stuff, possibly other item/mob variables they didn’t/couldn’t separate, but hadn’t considered the wasted exp! :O

Or buff the defense event up a bit and give it the same reward chance?

I figure they’re holding some stuff back to prevent datamining from spoiling everything (at least, everything they don’t spoil with their own blog posts anyway)
My theory anyway

I’m not aware of at least most of that being listed as part of the pre-purchase bundle, where did you see that stuff listed?

also, did you Pre-order or pre-Purchase?
And where from?

Specifically, I’ve never seen these listed as part of any bundle.
Mini 3-pack
Living World Season 2
Gathering Tools
Black Lion Keys
Bag slot

Depending on which version of the expack you buy may or may not get a character slot. Only the Deluxe and Ultimate included a slot.
They added a “veteran appreciation slot” to all 3 tiers, but only if your account was created before Jan 23rd of this year. That extra slot is only given out like once a week now so may take some time to show up if you are eligible and only purchased the basic tier of HoT.

Morfedel.4165:

Torvic.8256:

Either by sheer force or by the heroes eventually quitting the fight due to either exhaustion or despair (or both)?

After all, even with the best case scenario of Mordremoth’s defeat, there are still so many more elder dragons to defeat afterward.

Then things get interesting. A No-Prize to the first person who gets the following reference.

I’m not 100% sure but that sounds an awful lot like a Firefly reference.

Most of the giants you run across are undead, and any given mob can only count as one type, and the “Undead” type trumps the rest.

Also, as others mentioned they aren’t Giant*’s* Eyes, just giant eyes.
As in really big eyes, not as in coming from a giant.

I guess if that does turn out to be the legendary armor the raid can keep it.
Don’t see any way to fix that with particles/textures.

They really honestly only care about the human players, they commented a while back that since charr characters were in the minority they didn’t warrant as much attention, wanting to focus on “low hanging fruit” that would please more players (humans)

For example, the Selfless potions halo appears inside an asura’s head instead of above, and from what I understand it has been this way since the item appeared, as in it has never worked properly on asura and they just don’t care.

They said no, tomes will not effect masteries, just exp boosters (or at least they did during the beta)

Pretty sure this article included the relevant bit.
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=35818&storypage=2

“This training bar is in no way tied to experience, but fills up by going out and doing stuff in the world. So any item that gives you experience won’t help you train masteries.”

If you LEAVE the guild then yes its gone forever and anything in it (unless you create an alt account and invite that account to the guild, so there’s more than just you in it).

If you Stand Down you simply stop repping it, and you can rep it any time want.

I make a point of only ever hitting “Represent” to switch guilds, just to be safe.

Yessss, Mad King Says! One of my favorite parts XD

Didn’t one of them say the Rev was one of the originally planned classes that they had to drop for some reason? That its not entirely new?

No, Tomes and Writs of exp do not give mastery exp.
Writs are unusable at 80, and I think tomes just give one lame-oh spirit shard.

Exp boosters do seem to increase mastery exp though, at least during the beta weekend, so celebration/BDay boosters are better saved for mastery exp and "tome"ing to 80 seems to be the most efficient exp wise if you can.

Impala.7462:

Well if you actually watched the show…
They said the price of the collection is around the same cost of the current designated precursor.

Actually what they said was the wanted to preserve the gold/time value of them.
But what exactly does that mean?

Are the collections balanced (cost wise) around where the market has the precursers now? (yeah, great lets arbitrarily pick a point and just fix the prices in place forever)
(while at the same time making the mats required, and thus every other item that uses them, that much more expensive?)

Or are they built with a standard process across all pres (using different ingrediants obviously) that’s going to normalize the price range a bit? Will it crash the expensive ones or jack up the cheap ones?

Labjax.2465:

Prob my engi. Been getting comfortable with the class in SW, even using a squishy build. Will def level a Rev, but will prob use a metric ton of scrolls and tomes, so I don’t have to do much actual leveling.

I was planning on doing a mixed leveling thing (like use a tome every time I gained a level), and then I realized that before lvl 80 all exp I earn goes only to leveling, whereas all exp I earn after 80 goes to masteries.
So since I have enough scrolls/tomes to hit 80 not doing so would be a massive waste of exp that could have gone into masteries instead, so I’m now in the insta level camp.

A lot of people kind of miss the point. It’s not about casual vs non casual.

Its that not everyone wants every fight with every trash mob to be a white knuckle death match that leaves us in need of a stiff drink and a lie down afterwards.
They’re trash mobs for a reason.
Now, can they pack some punch? Sure, I see no reason they can’t be a threat.
Should they all be “bullet sponge” HP buckets as well? No, honestly that’s stupid gameplay, not challenging but tedious.
Cool you learned the mobs fight mechanics and attack patterns, now dodge them for 5 minutes while whittling his health away, miss one dodge or screw up one rotation by more than .000001 of a second and either you die or the mob just resets to full health.

Yeah, fun. I simply adore doing that for every single fight even when I’m just trying to get to the next event because I’d like to finish unlocking gliding sometime this century, but no I’m missing all the events because a tiny minority of extremely vocal players wants every mob on the map to be a freaking raid boss.

I don’t fear Mordremoth, he’s all bark.

Revenant mostly, probably Necro for Reaper, my usual warrior on and off for stuff

Yes! the pulsing rays of light were giving me a massive headache, as others said had to set shaders to off to get it to stop pulsing.
I like having my settings turned up

It’d be funny to see some of the halloween mobs in the labyrinth be candy corn mordrem.

Or maybe not, the mordrem are freaking annoying as it is.

Actually it might be due to upgrade limits. If someone gifts say a bank tab it sends the other person the consumable, but if they already have them all unlocked it would be unusable. It may not be possible to check properly to prevent that, maybe because it would give someone a way of obtaining info about my account I might not want them to have?

There’s new ones probably coming with the release of HoT.

They’ll be inside makeover kits as usual, so no need to release them early, as you’ll need to use a makeover kit on an existing rev to get them anyway.

There was a bug recently that allowed players to actually select and apply some of those new hairstyles. Makeover kits were disabled for a while because of it.
People who applied those new hairstyles still have them from what I hear, anet didn’t forcibly change them back.
No word on if those are actually coming with HoT, but one would easily presume that to be the case.

No, actually I think it makes sense seeing the whole picture (I’d only seen the part Flesh posted, not Colin’s interview bit)
Items that directly give exp like writs and tomes won’t work.
But boosters that increase exp from content will indeed boost the exp gained for masteries.

I assume its because the tomes/writs can be earned anywhere, whereas the mastery exp must be earned in the relevant location, so boosting exp earned in the proper location is okay.

Looked it up, he was suspended, not banned, so I was close but not entirely accurate.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2l21xk/actually_game_master_can_ban_for_preventing_maize/

Anet Comment clarifying:
“Just going to clear this up…

GM was called to the situation after multiple reports filed from a players for Griefing.
Player’s client language was set to English
Player received multiple warnings via Whisper (Whisper) in English
Player was moved from the map and placed in a different instance of the map (in case they were actually farming something useful rather than griefing)
Player attempted multiple times to zone back into this specific version of the map, eventually was successful
Returned to previous behavior
An attempt was made to make sure that the GM got this player’s attention
After attempting to contact the player one more time in whispers and in say chat (shown in screenshot), user was given a temporary suspension for griefing.

If you are toxic, and are being so knowingly and intentionally…expect a time out. Many people have quoted the Rules of Conduct. It is enforced."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2l21xk/actually_game_master_can_ban_for_preventing_maize/clqr9lt

Yes, farming ambients for the achievement it totally legit.
However, the issue at hand is specifically players killing ambients to prevent/disrupt someone else from farming them.
Doing that is against the ToS in no uncertain terms.

Which is why I suggest recording such incidents and reporting them.
A mod/GM can determine whether someone was simply not being courteous, or was genuinely griefing.

Pretty sure there was at least one incident in which one player was specifically targeting people trying to use maize balm by following them around killing the ambients, even trying to follow to other map instances.
If I remember correctly the person was unresponsive even when a GM/Mod came to investigate, and the player was eventually banned for griefing.

Griefing is against the ToS, and is a bannable offense if the person is indeed griefing, though they do not ban lightly.

Best thing you can do is video the person in action doing it, capture yourself making attempts to make peace/compromise with the person, and when they refuse/continue griefing send the video to support with as much info as you can.
They do take it seriously, but are not omniscient (the don’t watch every player 24/7 aside from a few automated anti cheat/bot mechanisms), they need reports and actual evidence of the griefing.

To address some of the other comments, no, Vilyo does not own the mobs, however neither does the other party, if someone else is there farming first he has no right to try to disrupt Vilyo’s farming or drive him off. That street goes both ways.
The other player agreed to ToS that said he agreed not to deliberately disrupt other peoples play, which IF he is just chasing Vilyo around to kill the ambients Vilyo is trying to farm then that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Except reaper can’t use shield? Maybe for Revenant?

Edit, I did see a lot of people using that shield in VB.

It’s not really insider info, but recent history has cases where anet reintroduced things that were extremely pricey and crashed the TP price (hello electro blue dye).
And that’s a lot of money to be out if it crashes and doesn’t recover, so I’d wager some are just getting what they can before the ship sinks.

Vayne.8563:

I used birthday boosters, celebration boosters and the new XP boosters. Most of us have at least some of those. Between that and food and a utility, you level pretty fast.

On topic, I agree with the OP, event reward shouldn’t wait for people to have a conversation.

See I didn’t use anything like that because I distinctly remember them saying exp boosts wouldn’t work for masteries. Hopefully that wasn’t a beta only thing.

Ranger GS has one of the best skillsets in the game, and you feel like a boss using it.
If its DPS didn’t suck like a turbocharged Hoover it’d be amazing.
But that might equal or overshadow their fetish class, warrior, and that can’t have that now can they, nooooo, warrior gotta be top dog cause its daddy’s little favorite.
Not bitter at all.

Because rangers were hoping to not be shafted and actually given a DPS spec sufficient to be considered worth taking into any content whatsoever beyond open world.

You say its as simple as changing gear and it’ll turn a healbot druid into anything else, but it really doesn’t work that way. It might for other classes anet actually cares about, but there’s no way to fix druid with a simple gear change. The best you can do is change back to the already hated ranger.

Yeah, did not see this happen; bout had a heart attack wondering if the opposite may have happened, I used some really expensive stuff on my rev, would have been heartbroken if the unlock and the item got wiped out when beta wipes lol, all good though, its all still there, my account separation worked as intended

Um, yes, the price it launches with should be the same as the pre-purchase price.
We may see a price drop/sale in 9-12 months, and people expect to see that, but a price drop at launch would be a really bad move.
If anything, pre-purchasers should be able to get things cheaper, not more expensive.
This is (for many) balanced by getting bonus stuff for pre-purchasing.

If I pay $50 for the game +2 char slots, then I can rationalize it as getting the expack for $30, as two slots are $10 each, so it feels like I’m getting a really good deal.
And since char slots are digital it costs them little to nothing to do that (you can argue that it costs a little dev time to program the slots to go with it, and the loss of those slots down the road, but if they weren’t going to buy the expack would they really buy slots? It’s definitely a complicated decision tree)

If then at launch the expack is $30, I no longer feel like I got a good deal, as that means I simply purchased a bundle.
And if it’s $30 and has slot/s?
I’ll feel like they took my loyalty and cashed in on it, and it won’t matter what other digital fripperies mine came with, I’ll feel ripped off, and it will probably be the last time I ever pre-order or pre-purchase from the company again.

I’m not sure what games you’ve seen charge more pre-purchase than at launch (I’ve never seen one).

The bone pick was available either during or just after the anniversary sale.

Some of the tools are definitely different speeds.
For example the consortium sickle is definitely faster than average.
I think the frost wasp is a bit faster, and I hear gives snowflakes when you chop stuff with it, but dont have so they could have been pulling my leg.
And the watchwork pick gives sprockets, no reason to own any other pick.