Guild Wars 2

If you speak of a noble, then I’d prefer Faren to accompany us instead of Kasmeer and Majory. Really. He is totally useless, but his comic-like character is believable as the total anti-hero and pretender. K&M are not believable.

If you compare our NPCs with the companions in Lotr, these did know what they were in. They were selfless right from the start. The Bilbo role was chosen for our mentor in the personal story, but this was not a good move either.
K&M as Merry and Pippin – not far fetched, but they’re lacking depth. Merry and Pippin were not acting like silly childs or teens like K&M. But they acted like soldiers: Merry went to battle with Theoden and Eowyn and slew a Nazgul, Pippin went with Gandalf to the battle at the Black Gate, knowing they could not win. How strong they grew you see in the aftermath where they rescue the shire.
And the most important thing: they survived. With wounds. Not simply discarded as dead at some point.

If you compare K&M with them, then it’s time they grew up and get serious.

Oh my god! Kasmeer was stripped of her rank! I couldn’t care less.

I meant the term “warrior” as a general description of someone who joins the team to take up the fight against the powers that threaten the world. I’m still missing much vocabulary, so I wasn’t able to find a more fitting word. For example, Taimi is no warrior-class either, but she absolutely has a place in the team.

Marjory and Kasmeer are annoying as hell. I don’t care if they somewhat vanish in the upcoming story – I would welcome it. These two are acting like 2 girls on a party with bad guests, but not as warriors in a world that is threated by elder dragon forces. Their voices are annoying. Their acting is annoying. Their deeds are annoying. They don’t act like reasonable grown up people but like teens in their puberty. Nobody with the slightest instinct of self preservation would take them on a fight that leads to an elder dragon.
It doesn’t fit. If they were in a party with me, I would vote to kick them, because they don’t contribute. They stand aside and are simply annoying. It would be the first kick in my whole GW2 time since release.

They have no depth. They are designed with depth (Belinda, and the history of Kasmeer), but on a green table. It doesn’t grab me, because it feels artificial and not natural.

I don’t like them. And it’s not because they are designed to be disliked like a villain, it’s because their design is annoying. They are misplaced in the story.

Ok, enough rant.

One successful Tequatl event gives about 14000 karma once a day, which is a nice daily boost for someone who is in need of karma.

The time required for this is about 30-45 minutes. If you arrive in the area 15-20 minutes before the event, it should be sufficient to find a map with some commanders that is reasonably self-organized. The event itself takes about 15 minutes. I also found successful maps arriving only 3 minutes before the event, but the probability of failure is very high. It needs some time to taxi players in with the use of the lfg tool, so the map is filled to the limit.

Usually the commanders are only a focus point for players. The players know very well what to do. In many cases the commanders are not doing much more than validating that every turret is manned or showing which group goes to which defense event. Use the lfg tool to find maps advertized with 3 or 4 commanders. The success rate of a map with 3 or 4 commanders is about 90% – from 10 events only 1 fail. Or even less.

Join a group through the lfg tool, then join the map of the team leader. If his map is already full, tell him, leave and search again.

Well, sort of… I once extracted some psychedelic pictures from a Twilight Arbor run video where my character blends with the effects on a few pictures. Other characters are seen, though.

Illumination with Engineer grenades looks great!

If you activated some kind of restricted internet access, it may be called “parental control” or “access profile”.

In the last days, perhaps since 1 week ago, I experienced this problem more than once (while it never appeared in the years before):

• in the middle of playing, suddenly fps becomes noticeably slow (usually I have 50-60, with the bug only about 20 even in dungeons)
• sound has disappeared, suddenly the game is silent. Sometimes the sound isn’t totally silent, it is looping through the same ~1 second long noise.
• the longer I play in this game state, the lower the fps get. I once played until the fps reached 10, which is a better slide show.
• restarting GW2 helps. After restart the sound is back and the fps is back up to normal.
• if GW2 was fullscreen, it isn’t possible to terminate GW2. It hangs at ALT-F4, and it isn’t possible to open Task Manager to kill gw2.exe. The only option is to reboot.
• the music that I’m playing through my media player isn’t affected at all while the bug appears. I am also online with Teamspeak at the same time, which isn’t affected as well.

Running under Windows 10, Nvidia GTX 670. The sound driver (Realtek HD Audio) is the Windows 8.1 version for my motherboard, since there is none available for Windows 10 yet.

No decent firewall (or “security system”) for home users enforces the explicit enabling of outgoing traffic per IP address as default. Either you activated some advanced settings without knowing what you’re doing, or you don’t have a piece of hardware for home use.

Some parental controls or access profiles in SOHO routers work this way, but you have to explicitly activate this. Look into your router and verify if you perhaps accidently activated some kind of restricted internet access of this kind.

These are IP4 addresses. If they are seen on a home, work or public network depends on the setup of your local network. Without knowing this, I would say they are on a public network.

Regarding ipv4 vs ipv6 addresses: not to offend you, but anyone with the barest network knowledge will know if an address is ipv4 or ipv6 on first sight. Ipv4 are 4 numbers with 3 dots in between, and the numbers are always 0..255 like this:

1.23.123.34

and ipv6 addresses are numbers (containing 0..9 and characters a..f, this is called hex code) with colons in between like this:

2a01:488:66:1000:57e6:fc1:0:1

Usually an ipv6 address has 7 colons, but they can abbreviated with some abbreviation rules and double colons appear in this case.

This could be looked up in any documentation about the internet for sure.

I’m sorry if my post may seem like trolling, but I cannot help to say that every time I see this topic, I’m immediately thinking about the How not to be seen sketch from Monty Python.

And it’s not very far-fetched. Kick (dungeon) = boom (sketch)

This is really great news, Branden. Judging the information available so far, you really addressed the most asked and most disturbing issues/wishes about the camera. Thank you very much! I hope it turns out in the game as great as it looks from news articles and from your todo-list.

These were no small issues for players. Camera movement greatly affects the game experience as a whole. The Camera handling could be a game changer. From great to bad, or from bad to great. It’s only visual, but an important visual aspect.

As long as you don’t have many of them: use the laurels only for items that cannot be obtained by other means. Don’t waste them for items that can be obtained in the trading post. Gold can be obtained by almost every action in the game, but laurels are account bound and restricted to about 2 each day.

For example, some ascended stuff including ascended crafting recipes cannot be obtained by other means. You may decide that you don’t need ascended stuff now, but you may change your decision later. Don’t waste stuff you may regret later.

Do you have 2 monitors connected to your PC and are running GW2 fullscreen on one of them?

GW2 has the nasty behaviour that it is not able to keep the mouse pointer within its screen. Even if it is fullscreen. The mouse pointer can escape to the other monitor area, and if you press a mouse button in this moment, the desktop (or whatever application is on the other monitor) is getting the focus, minimizing GW2 in this moment.

You can reproduce this:

- make GW2 fullscreen (really fullscreen, not windowed fullscreen)
- right-click or left-click near the border to the second monitor and hold the button down (a few pixels away from the border)
- release the mouse button and at the same time move the mouse as fast as you can against the border. Eventually the mouse will appear on your second monitor
- if you now right- or left-click, GW2 will minimize

There are programs who try to keep mouse pointers within game windows. They are made for this very problem. Cursor Lock is one of them. I tried it, and it worked very good.

It’s not a fix for people who have only one monitor connected – if you have only one monitor, you have a different problem: some other application steals the focus from GW2 unexpectedly.

This is great news. Especially the work on the snappiness of the camera. Playing in narrow places with a lot of snapping currently makes me dizzy and gives me a headache (all signs of motion sickness) and is generally not fun. How good are all these shooters with their rock-steady camera in comparison.
Looking forward for any improvement, how little it may be.

Nobody can and will officially say if it is ok or not ok.

If you read forums and player feedback carefully (not only the official forum, in which this topic is tabu) you see that players actually use this kind of automatism for years and get away with it. And that such usage is somewhat widespread. It’s only that many players simply do it silently and don’t tell anyone.

- 46, although people say I’m in the early 30’s if they hear me on Teamspeak
- from Germany
- always had technical hobbies. First was toy blocks, then Fischertechnik, then electronics construction kits, then repairing TVs, then computers.
- working as software engineer for a big IT outsourcing company
- was never drunk in my life. Tried 2 times but failed.
- don’t have a drop of alcohol in my household (which is strange for guests. They have to bring their own beer)
- running the Teamspeak server for my guild for 7 years (GW1 then, now GW2)
- never thought that computer games are worth playing until a friend showed me Morrowind
- I’m a smart_ass, but I’m trying to fight it. Best therapy is my guild friends being smart_asses in Teamspeak against me
- I hate elitism and every form of extremism
- I never kicked a team member in GW2, I never left a team in the middle of a dungeon, I never ragequit
- play pen&paper rpg’s since I was 17: D&D, Traveller, Gurps, Shadowrun. My current groups all result from Guild Wars contacts: one group with physical presence, and one group via Teamspeak.

I stood behind Teq and attacked his paws from behind, and whenever he seemed to move his body or his tail, I dodged. Eventually the achievement popped up. Seemed very easy, was at my first try for this achievement.

What do you want to do with your precursor? You can still use it to create a legendary weapon out of it. The only things you cannot do any more is using it on another character or sell it.

For 100 slots, you need a TS3 server with a license. Without license, you can operate a server up to 32 slots only.
The free non-profit-license allows for 512 slots. Unfortunately, with such a license you are not allowed to host additional servers for communities other than your own, so nobody is in fact allowed to offer free servers under non-profit-license.

All other TS3 licenses cost money.

So your options are:
- operate a TS3 server yourself for free without license up to 32 slots
- operate a TS3 server yourself for free with NPL license up to 512. Be eligible for the NPL, which is quite a stretch.
- ask other GW2 guilds if they give you a guild channel within their own server for free.
- rent a TS3 server, which costs money

Interesting combination of titles you have and titles you lack. You aren’t a completionist, but pick only specific things you do in a game. And you seem to buy things.

Anyway, I recommend you pick these titles:

Eternal Lightbringer
Eternal Bookah
Eternal Delver
Eternal Slayer
Eternal Ebon Vanguard Agent
Eternal Tyrian Cartographer
Eternal Guardian of Tyria
Eternal Protector of Tyria
Eternal Tyrian Vanquisher
Eternal Canthan Cartographer
Eternal Guardian of Cantha
Eternal Protector of Cantha
Eternal Canthan Vanquisher
Eternal Elonian Cartographer
Eternal Protector of Elona
Eternal Elonian Vanquisher
Eternal Master of the North
Eternal Legendary Cartographer
Eternal Legendary Guardian
Eternal Legendary Vanquisher
Eternal Spearmarshal

Start with vanquishing, since you get the Lightbringer, Spearmashal etc. titles automatically while vanquishing. Do cartography while vanquishing.
Look at the Zaishen missions and Zaishen vanquish quests and do vanquish/missions what is asked in these quests, so you get the bounty and money and even more title points.
Look at the Zaishen Boss bounty and do the corresponding EOTN dungeon when it is asked to get more EOTN title points from the bounty.

Duncan The Black (Slavers Exile dungeon) is somewhat difficult in hard mode. If you still need him for the master of the north title, do it after you vanquished everything, so you are used to fight in hard mode. Don’t do the prerequisite bosses in hard mode, only Duncan.

2 more are required from this set:

Eternal Savior of the Kurzicks
Eternal Savior of the Luxons
Eternal Fortune
Eternal Sweet Tooth
Eternal Treasure Hunter
Eternal Source of Wisdom
Eternal Conqueror of the Deep
Eternal Conqueror of Urgoz’s Warren

Which 2 you should choose depends on your progress of some of these titles.

You have “Eternal Misfortune”, but don’t have “Eternal Fortune”? That’s strange – usually, you reach “Eternal Fortune” first. Check if you are already eligible to display this title. If you don’t have it, buy lockpicks and painstakenly open every chest while you are vanquishing. Or check for the Shing Jea Boardwalk and stand on the 9 rings to get luck points without doing anything. Stand in the middle ring. Next Boardwalk is End of April at the Anniversary Celebration.

Sweet Tooth is only buying consumables. Probably very easy, since you make much money by vanquishing. Max this title after you have done vanquishing.

The other titles are more special. Probably not as easy as the other ones.

The Deep is an exception: if you manage to find a partner, it’s a thing of one evening, if at least one of you know how this mission is done. If you don’t know how it’s done, forget it. Urgoz’s Warren is a bit more difficult, especially at the end. Urgoz is a nasty enemy if conquered alone or with only 2 human players. Not beatable if you don’t know what you are facing.

As far as I remember, this is the way the skill worked for the entire lifetime of the game. I thought everyone uses the shield skill by canceling it near the end of its channeling, and the challenge is to cancel it an instant before completion to have the short cooldown.

At least this is how I use it after I found that out by myself, probably soon after release. And I am not the kind of person who finds out things first by himself. So if there is a person in the game who don’t know this “trick” yet, he either has not yet visited that event, or never took the bazooka, or never used the shield skill.

I play the Ele since prerelease, and I find that in the first year almost nobody was able to play it properly (including me), so it appeared it was a weak class. Yes, there were of course good builds around (most still valid nowadays) and good gameplay videos, but they were not widely recognized. They already showed the potential of the class, but not many players were able to master more difficult encounters.

In contrast, playing a Warrior was much easier, so why bother learning Ele with its paper-thin armor and its tiny health pool?
Now players finished playing the more easy classes and went to explore the more difficult ones, and now much more players discover the Elementalist being not only versatile but also able to deal top damage and boost the group at the same time.

There are so many details in day-to-day gameplay with an Ele – he has 20 weapon skills where other classes only have 10. One skill for every situation. Not even counting the conjured weapons. Takes time to learn, and many deaths. Not that many players keep up with the class.

Apropos ground-targeting:

When the camera snaps/zooms in unexpectedly for a split second due to an invisible obstacle behind the camera, the ground targeting target is moved as well for this split second. If you activate the ground targeting spell just in this split second, it is misplaced and you wasted the spell.

You can try virtualization with the free Vmware player that is available for Linux. I read from some Mac users that running GW2 in a virtualization product gives significantly better performance than using the beta Mac client. The Mac client is simply running the Windows client in an wine-based emulator software. I assume this is true on Linux as well: full hardware virtualization performs better than emulation through wine.

The downside is that you need a Windows licence for the virtual machine.

No.

If you want PvP action in PvE, go to WvW. This is the “open world PvP” mode in GW2.

Giving players de-facto GM rights is not possible in my opinion. Such rights would be abused sooner or later.

A reputation system that works automatically could be a solution.
The goal: a griefer must be unable to kick legitimate players, while legitimate players must be able to kick players as usual (to kick inactive/offline players, etc.)

- usually you kick very seldomly logged-in users while being in instances, if ever.
- in rare cases, you have to kick players who have gone offline during an instance, to be able to invite a replacement.

So I suggest the following kick cooldown mechanism:

- for every account there is a kick counter that starts with 2
- kicking players from a party in the open world doesn’t regard and doesn’t change the kick counter. Kick as much as you like.
- you are able to kick players from your party who are in an instance only if your kick counter is greater than 0
- kicking an offline player from a party in an instance decreases your kick counter by 1
- kicking an online player from a party who is in an instance decreases your kick counter by 2
- your kick counter is reset to 2 30 days after you last kicked someone from an instance

This means, essentially you can kick one party member once every 30 days who is in an instance. And you can kick 2 offline party members once every 30 days (or 1 offline and 1 online member). This should be enough. If you used up your kicks for the month and still have to kick a party member, the other members still have theirs usually, so there is no problem if it is necessary to kick once more.

I see one problem with dungeon sellers: griefers will join and not leave, and they cannot be kicked due to the kick limit. According to CS, it is possible to report these players for leeching, so that could be a solution. On the other hand, I saw from the discussion here that such reports are not honored and not acted upon from CS. Don’t know what to do here.

You don’t need to attend any battery defense phase. I saw guild members who joined the event literally seconds before Tequatl was defeated. They were only able to deal a few hits, and only on Tequatl. They got all 4 chests.

On the other hand, I also saw other guild members who only got 2 chests and were present during the complete event right from the beginning and who always joined a defense event. But in the same session (we were in the same party), I got all 4 chests.

For me, armor repairs are a real inconvenience and have no actual meaning. If I die, it’s already enough “penalty”, because I fail to kill that enemy and have to try again.
Search for and running to that anvil afterwards to click it and have the damaged icon removed is a somewhat silly action, if you think about it. It serves no purpose. I already try very hard to not die in every fight – I would not try less hard if my armor don’t break if I die.

3491 hours – 2 precursors from ordinary enemies.

Was half a year ago, both drops within 1 month. One from Inquest mob during Golem Mark II event, one from a Krait Veteran in the Aquatic Ruins Fractal at level 27.

I own the permanent airship pass, and it’s really a nuisance if I log on to a character that I left in the airship.

You are loading Gendarran fields, then you see yourself for a split second in the airship, then you are seeing the loading screen again and after it is gone (which takes a while) you find yourself in the camp outside. Then you have to click the pass, then you have the loading screen again, and after this is gone (the 3rd loading screen) you stand in the lobby of the airship. You have to run in again to where you stood before.

For an expensive convenience item that costs 1000 gems, this isn’t really much of a convenience. Really.

There is hope, if the lag problems are connected to general problems with the Internet infrastructure.

In the media (at least the german media) it is reported that the Deutsche Telekom as the biggest Internet provider in Germany will greatly enhance their peering at DE-CIX in Frankfurt (where the GW2 EU datacenter is located, by the way). Telekom is also a T1 provider and a large amount of EU Internet traffic is routed through them. Telekom is planning to connect to much more providers (also smaller ones) there.

From heise.de (in German, sorry, no english sources found):

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Verstaerktes-DE-CIX-Engagement-der-Deutschen-Telekom-nun-offiziell-2535142.html

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/DE-CIX-Chef-Fuer-die-Telekom-war-das-kein-einfacher-Schritt-2535145.html

Whatever they are actually doing and which providers they connect in the end, it can only enhance the throughput and latencies of everyone who connect through DE-CIX, which is probably everyone who uses an European Internet site. The future will tell, if GW2 can profit from it as well. I hope it will. Chances are good.

Usually, I’m the first who complains that content is too difficult. But especially the last 3 episodes are fine from my point of view. Not the achievements (the centaur boss achievements are nearly impossible without expert help), but the normal story is ok.

I did the last 3 episodes with 3 different characters (elementalist, eecromancer, engineer), and it was no problem at all. Especially the dragon boss at the end. There is a certain mechanic behind the last fight, a certain choreography. If you understand how it is set up, you can beat the dragon.

Playing a ranged character in this fight is probably more easy than melee.

First, you destroy the vines and dodge red fields.
Then you attack the dragon.
Then you light the torches. If the exploding plants appear, look: they come in pairs, connected by a small vine. Run over this vine in the middle of both, and they explode without hurting you.
The tasks in this phase: 1st priority is make plants explode. Get light buff if Braham throws the light field, then light a torch. Repeat. Dodge the stones.
Then you attack the dragon and his vines again. Keep away from the red fields and circles, which are somewhat small.
Then you light the torches again. Do the same as before, but beware: now there are enemies who extinguish the torches. These are top priority. As soon as the light field appears, run into it and stay there to get the light buff that enables you to attack these enemies. Attack them. One hit is enough. Then light the torches.
It’s also more difficult to light the torches, because you are attacked more often by the dragon. Stay a bit away from a torch. Wait for 1 attack (red field) and evade it. Wait for 2nd attack (new red field) and as soon as the red field appears, dodge away to the torch and light it while staying outside of the red field. This gives you enough time for interacting.

dronikal.8150:

So the only thing that will probably stop me from buying expansion is the game performance on low end machenes.Im a student and the only thing i can use is Laptop since i have to be out most of the time during the day.Are there any plans for optymising the game for low end machenes?

We don’t know if there are performance optimizations coming with the expansion.

But it doesn’t matter! Just wait for the release and see. All players are always using the same game client, doesn’t matter if they bought the expansion or not. Even if you don’t buy the expansion, you will get the updated game client as soon as the expansion goes live.

So you can verify yourself if the performance of the game changes with the expansion before you spend any money on the expansion.

@Impact: all three IP addresses you mentioned are actually located in the datacenter in Frankfurt in Germany. I have a ping latency of about 20ms to all three. I am located in a small city near Frankfurt. Sites located in the US have a minimum latency of 120ms from here because of the length of the transatlantic cable, so it isn’t possible that your addresses are located in the US.

The corresponding IP networks may be registered for a US network, but they are actually used here in the EU.

By the way, although I am located virtually next door to the EU datacenter, I experience the same lags as everyone. The weekend was very bad.

I moved the skills 6..9 to r,t,g,b and 0 to “press mouse wheel”. Whatever was on r,t,g,b I moved to somewhere else. G for the guild window for example is not that important and could be moved to the right half of the keyboard.

I also use ESDF for movement instead of WASD, and use strafe left/right instead of rotate. Think of “move everything one key to the right”. So you can feel and use the small knob on the F to firmly position your left hand.

1..5 = weapon skills 1..5
r = heal
t,g,b = utility skills
press mouse wheel = elite skill
v = interact
c = get nearest target
x = dodge
w = get target
q = run

Do you have a mouse wheel that can be tilted left and right? If yes, use it for weapon swap and AoE loot. I use:
tilt mouse wheel left = AoE loot (“pull things to me”)
tilt mouse wheel right = weapon drop/weapon swap (“push things away from me”)

The default ^ as weapon swap is unfortunate, because I often press it instead of 1 in the heat of the battle, often throwing away conjured weapons I didn’t want to throw away yet.

Well, it’s easy. Whenever I use the lfg tool to get a group for some pve action and see someone posting a “selling item xyz” (not selling dungeon path) in the category I’m looking for a group, I report it for abuse. It’s misplaced there. It does not belong there.
It’s not the intended use of the tool and will fill it up with useless entries if used widely, rendering the lfg tool useless on the long run. I will not want to browse through pages of spam in the future, so “kill it before it grows”.

If this report is acted upon I don’t know, but as long as I don’t see a “don’t report lfg abuse for item sellers, because it’s not abuse” from Arenanet in the forum, I will continue doing it.

It’s also not intended for guild ads, or for “how do I do this” questions. There’s a time and a place for everything. The lfg tool is to find teams and exactly that.

As far as I see it, the chests are not awarded for individual contribution but to the whole crowd. You get the blue chest if Teq is below 75% at event completion, the green if Teq is below 50%, the yellow if Teq is below 25%, and the orange (and the big chest) if Teq was defeated.
For example, iIf the event fails and Tequatl was between 25 and 50% heath at the end, you get the blue and the green chest as reward.

Just recently I taxi’d a guild member into a running Tequatl event, and he was able to join the map in the last combat phase where Tequatl is below 25% health. He only hit Tequatl and nothing else, and only for a few strikes before all was over. He got all 4 chests and the big chest on the map.

But I also heard people complain they only got 2 chests where I got all 4 in the same event. I don’t see a logical explanation.

After we completed the last episode, we got a trailer for what is planned next. It ended with the Heart of Thorns theme and logo, so it’s probably the expansion what’s coming next. If there is anything planned between now and the release of the expansion, we don’t know. It was not announced anywhere, as far as I remember.

From the story’s point of view, there is no space between the last episode and what is probably coming in the expansion. So either no LS for the next months, or some filler episode(s) with a side-story to entertain the waiting players. I would like to see Lion’s Arch rebuilt and Kessex Hills cleansed, for example. Especially Kessex Hills is a real eyesore, and I mean this not only from a story’s point of view. But announced is nothing. I assume there is nothing until the release of the expansion.

The GW2 engine is much more complex and has more sophisticated features and effects than the GW1 engine.

Imagine some kind of weapon is fired during a cutscene and the bullet impact has some lingering effect afterwards, that is pertaining even after the cutscene ended.

What if the player skips the scene and the bullets are not fired? How should the bullet effects be applied to the would in the instance without them being fired off in the first place? These kind of things are what Jeffrey Vaughn was trying to explain.

It’s not only the positioning of NPCs or players that are moved within the video. It’s the whole environment that may be changed during the video. Vines grow and become borders to a combat arena, buildings are set on flame, etc… We have seen all this before.

One more example, how difficult it is to move and hide things during cinematics: if you look at the cinematic before Caithe kills Wynne, you see some strange things. If you are going in with a party, your minipets are moved to a place behind the heads of Caithe and Wynne. The cinematic ends and the party members find themselves being invisible at the same location as their minipets. The main player is Caithe and interacts with Wynne, and during this time the invisible party members are able to move. You can move behind Wynne, for example. Your minipets follow. Then the cinematic starts where Caithe kills Wynne. The party members are still invisible, but the minipets are visible and running around in the video! We made fun of it by positioning them in a way so they appear in the video. Very funny to see some Skritta Claws in this scene next to Wynne – it tells us the developers are still humans who create not perfect things like all of us.

But: this mix of history reminiscence, video and interaction with NPCs is what makes the story very alive and immersive . Arenanet should make more of these things in the future. I enjoyed this part especially. I’d prefer this over skippable videos, if I had the choice of having either this or that.

The collection system is probably what is left from the original try to implement a precursor scavenger hunt. See the Dungeoneer meta-achivement, which as well could give a precursor or a piece of a precursor as reward in the original plan. Perhaps.

But to give out only precursors from this system would change the T6 market drastically, which has an impact on the whole game. I assume the side effects of this resulted in the decision to not hand out precursors this way.

If legendary weapons should be given out in a scavenger hunt, the whole weapon must result from it: precursors and all the required gifts. Otherwise it is probably not predictable which impact on the economy it has. Probably new tradeable loot items have to be introduced that are only used for crafting legendary weapons, so their trade has (almost) no impact on the normal crafting.

I don’t play sPvP, because the core concept of player versus player combat isn’t appealing to me. I got asked by one friend in my guild over and over again over the last years why I will not join him in PvP, and I always have the same answer for him: it is not fun for me. I don’t want to do something competitive in a game. I don’t need a highscore, I don’t want to compare my capabilities with the capabilities of another person.

I don’t like being stomped on by other players who dance on my body. I don’t like the sometimes rough and unfriendly chat atmosphere. I don’t like losing fights 50% of the time (which will occur in a well balanced game) – in a game, I expect to win 100% of the time, which is possible only in PvE (almost). KI-Monsters will also never triumph after they defeated you, because they have no soul. It is stressing and not refreshing after a hard day at work. PvP is always on the same few maps, which gets boring after a while – feels uninteresting and like grind.

We tried GvG in GW1 with our guild, and after that I decided that I will never engage in any PvP action any more. Any time, any game. It’s simply not a game mode suited for me.

I do play WvW occasionally, because it is possible to view the enemy players as NPCs. But I don’t play it very much, because it is only 2 different maps (borderlands and eternal battlegrounds) and it gets boring after a short time. It’s always the same: long run from the waypoint to action after a respawn, running around in circles to capture stuff, defend stuff or carry supplies. One evening of 2-3 hours a month is enough. The advanced tactics required to get permanent fun out of this game mode aren’t appealing to me, too. For 5 minutes of combat fun, you are running around for 15 minutes.

One of my memorable moments in GW2 was actually in WvW: I was engaged in a 1v1 fight when I tried to run back to the zerg. I almost won, but an enemy zerg arrived suddenly stomped me into the ground. After the zerg moved on, my opponent stayed and bowed before me – this was a really nice gesture. Being dead, I was unfortunately unable to return the gesture, and due to the anonymity I was also unable to pm him. But such nice memorable moments are much too few in this game mode to play it on a regular basis.

I’m back with reinforcements.

I’m sorry, but my krewe needs immediate attention.

While you may perhaps be able to start GW2 twice on one PC, only one application can have the focus on a normal Windows PC at the same time.

If you connect 2 keyboards and 2 mice, all their input always goes into the application that has the focus. There is always only one focus. You cannot bind one keyboard+mouse to a running application and the other keyboard+mouse to different running application.

Even with the use of a virtual machine, you still have only one focus. Either your foreground GW2 has the focus or the GW2 that runs in the virtual machine has the focus.

Virtualization products usually provide remote access to virtual machines, making it possible to actually give 2 different persons individual access to different applications at the same time, but this requires a second PC in your home, and the performance of a graphics-heavy game like GW2 over the network is mediocre. Proper and enjoyable gameplay is not possible this way. If you get a second PC for this, it would be better to run the second copy of GW2 on it directly.

There are places where the RNG is a good mechanic, and other places where it is bad. Good where only junk and lower level stuff will drop, since it doesn’t really matter.

But it becomes bad, if you as a player start working on getting valuable items off the RNG by repeating actions over and over and feeding valuable resources that are consumed in the process. If that is the only way to get it or a (seemingly) viable way. It educates people to gamble. It educates childs to gamble. No exactly educating, but it tells young people and childs that gambling is a normal and a valid way to get stuff – which it is not.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not of the religious or pious type for which gambling is devil’s sent. I was simply raised by parents who never gambled and lived this. Whenever I asked for lottery tickets or the like, my parents told me it’s a waste of time and money. The odds to get something valuable are so low that a return of investment is not possible. They showed me the fate of people who gamble or are addicted to gambling: they are usually broke. They spend their money and get nothing in return. Now I am a grown up of 46 years, have seen some parts of the world, and I can confirm: yes, my parents were kitten right.

So I would like to ask: don’t use the RNG in places where it is used like a one-armed bandit to get stuff. We all know videos of the lost people in casinos who have a large bag of coins and are putting them into the slot machines and pull the lever hour after hour, day after day. Don’t educate childs to do something similar, for example in the mystic forge. Or in the shop with the black lion chests.

If I had childs, I would not allow them to play Guild Wars 2. In all friendship and honesty: no, the way the RNG is used in GW2 isn’t for minors, because minors don’t yet know the value of things, time and resources. The ESRB does not seem to see this aspect in games and rate games not according to it, but I do.

(Now you can laugh at me)

I would like to add that the short video sequence when Vinewrath realizes that one of her champions is gone is really nice. Your animators did a good job to transfer emotions on a somewhat emotionless creature like a plant. It reminds me of the Mirage Iboga in Polymock of GW1, who shakes her leaves in delight after she won.

“Plant animator”. Doesn’t sound like a terribly interesting job description at first glance. But only at first glance.

As long as a download speed is displayed, stuff is being downloaded. If the number of files remaining stops decreasing, a huge file may be currently downloaded. Just let it run for an hour and see how it will progress.

The complete GW2 client has about 18 GB. This takes its time to download.
If you installed from a DvD, it will still download about 6-8GB after installation.

And be aware that you will not see the single files that are displayed as being downloaded. All files and data is downloaded into gw2.dat, which is in fact a huge archive of all game files.

After I visited the entry in urbandictionary and looked up its slang meaning, if I named one of my characters this way, I would be in fact happy to rename him as fast as I can. And it’s even a free rename.

This reminds me of a recent revisit of GW1, where I died promptly because I wasn’t paying attention and realized the death penalty was gone automatically after I returned to an outpost. Just at this moment I realized that armor repairs in GW2 are a nuisance that makes no sense.

If your armor needs repairing, you have to interrupt your gameplay and the gameplay of your team of 5 and go to an anvil: “Wait folks, I must repair. Wait 3 minutes until I return, my loading times are not so fast”. From open world, from a dungeon, from fractals via leaving and reparing in LA. It’s a time waster that gets on your nerves, nothing else.

Calededon Forest and Brisbane Wildlands are areas where new POI’s and/or heart events have been added with some recent or not so recent updates. For Caledon Forest, it’s the heart event in the south west swamp area, and for Brisbane Wildlands it’s the new region that leads to Dry Top (or was it Silver Wastes?) and the waypoint for the guild challenge for Proxemic Lab in the north west corner.

You may have completed these areas with your character before and already got the reward, but forgot about that. Completing it again by exploring the new items will not give you the reward for completing the area a second time.