Guild Wars 2

BALD ASURA!

Okay, so it’s not really just the Asura that have this issue. More so than not, it is an issue covering every race within the game. The problem is helms in this game mostly make one’s hair completely disappear while having it equipped and visible.

Now I’d say that this isn’t an issue for the Heavy armor types that wear something fully covering their head 100%. This is more for the Medium armor types that have hoods and half-head covers.

Special interest note: ZOJJA IS NOT BALD!
Well, okay she might now have to be because the figurines and pictures and whatever showing her as such. But that helm that she’s wearing -Tier 3 Asura racial, Cloth class- is what’s causing that premature baldness in many Asura adventurers.

There are helms such as “hoodies” that should not make a character’s 3inch long bangs suddenly disappear; yet they do just that. When I wear a jogging hoodie, my bangs stick out and are clearly visibly sticking out from the shadows surrounding my face. A beach sun hat is no different in that hair sticks out from the back and sides, where only the top is covered [as it should be].

Many helms should act like the Season 2 Carapace helm where it goes over some side hair, but tucks under and behind the front hair. The Honor of the Waves does the same and works very well for Medium and Light armor types (Heavy is a full head cover yet again).

“Why is this such a big deal?”

~Self-Style Hair Kit: 250 Gems. ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Self-Style_Hair_Kit )

~Total Makeover Kit: 350 Gems. ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Total_Makeover_Kit )

Both of those contain hair colors and styles that are not in at character creation. These are things that people are paying real money for [besides doing the whole Gold-to-Gem conversion] to get said uniqueness to their character. It matters because it is a power play for a source of income for the developers of this game. It’s not like it is a change that wouldn’t bring them profit, quite the contrary the whole idea of getting this changes around is that it would contribute to more purchases of those kits and more income for the developers.

Image #1) Asura Tier-1 helm to show the effect of baldness

Image #2) Honor of the Waves helm, Light class to show how all helms should interact with hair in such a way.

More than $0, but less than $1,000,000.

There. You have your answer now. Now we can stop asking this same question that has been asked since the expansion was officially announced; one that hasn’t been and will not yet be answered by the developers any time soon.

If anything, they’ll become a key race role in whatever expansion related to Bubbles. But don’t expect any relation to the non-water jungle with Mordremoth, as there is none.

Considering that GW2 is an international game and pot is 100% legal in countries like Amsterdam, I highly doubt it matters at all. Be a good bloke and smoke a toke, just don’t go broke or have a stroke. Mkay?

1) You bought the game earlier, thus have had more time to experience it and get the other armors that released with the now discontinued Living Story Season 1.

2) You are not entitled to the new items included in the DDE just because you purchased it previously. You purchased the version with the features it had at the time of purchase; not on any stipulation that future added perks also are entitled to you,…because they’re not. In fact, many products and companies update their already older version to try to appeal to new customers (and yes, 2.5 years is quite old!).

3) In the time you’ve been playing GW2, you could have earned the gold for the 800 gems to purchase the armor set; or you could have gotten the gems through the achievements awards. Either way. Also, the armor set is only $10 in the gem store anyways.

“Stress test”.

It’s not a demo.

It’s not a free play to experiment with specializations.

It’s not a free play to fiddle with the entire expansion’s Masteries.

It’s not a free play to go through all the story content of HoT.

It is a stress test. A stress of player characters and connections within new zones (most likely the starting zone of the expansion) as well as some of the new physics features related to; such as 100’s to 1,000’s of people activating the Glider or a Jump Mushroom in the same area. These are things that the developers want to test to make sure that their new engine tweaks are stable with their new features of HoT. Same goes for testing such things as possibly the new WvW map…maybe (hopefully).

Abilities and classes can be balanced internally between staff members of A.Net. Mass map connection and group is why they need to “stress test” things.

Guild Wars 2 has an expansion coming. (“Duh?”)

That expansion has no release date or price point. (“Duh, again? Thanks, Captain Obvious!”)

April 1st [aka April Fool’s Day] is coming up soon. (“Gee, you’re good at making pointless statements of the already known.”)

So, what kind of shenanigans (smack!) will Arena Net pull with the combination of a Fool’s Day and anticipation for any speck of information about Heart of Thorns?

• ~Fake release date?

• ~Astronomical pricing model?

• ~Change of business model to subscription only?

• ~Trahearn replaces the Pale Tree and becomes King of the Sylvari?

• ~New race: Tengu (oh the outrage that would happen at this joke!)

• ~New zone: Elona (again, more outrage at this joke)

• ~Class specialization ruses (Mesmer specialization is turning into a magical Moa that uses feathered rainbows to heal allies!)

Others?

I remember when….

….during Beta in the WvW zones, rams could destroy walls. This would lead to a group building 3-6 rams next to a wall and just sitting there pummeling it.

….when fireworks could be used in WvW.

….when the biggest “destruction” to Lion’s Arch was the Lion Fountain that had been attacked twice.

Curtis.1562:

They made the suppression filter even more sensitive. It’s now across all characters/maps. You can no longer reset it by logging off, changing areas, or changing characters. You can no longer hop from map to map advertising your guild.

Seriously annoying. I thought it was bad before but now it’s even worse.

You did this? Well, I’m glad they changed it then. Every time I’ve seen peps advertising their guilds repeatedly like this, I’ve done the right-click report + Spam on them. Every one of them.

Want to advertise your guild in-game? Do so in PUG dungeons, in groups you’re in during WvW and sPvP, in groups at world events. Actually talk with other gamers. Do not do a generic copy&paste advertisement that is as invasive to chat as it is annoying to view.

Easter to bring back the bunny ears? Why not take the opportunity of the holiday prior to Easter to bring back the SUPER ADVENTURE BOX on April 1st (aka April Fool’s Day). They could sell the ears at the same time as SAB is open to double down their Gem Store options by selling the Infinite Coin (again), Bunny Ears, new SAB Minis Series #3 (which could have a bunny in it), and more. Seriously, make it so!

One thing I see constantly in this thread, a theme that is of considerable concern: “big boys”, “non-casuals”, “real skill” and other such attitudes from the pro-raiding group. This is the exact kind of stigma that the raiding community is well known for and why players of this NON-RAIDING GAME are so against such content. It’s not a matter of having the content optional or not, having it just because, and all the reasons in the world. No, it’s a matter of the type of community disdain that brings with the “I raided X and have these shinny ruby slippers so I’m better than you” attitude. Also it is a matter of locking away content from a large portion of the non-raiding PvE community. And as even Blizzard has admitted, only a fraction of their community raids, so developing for that fraction of a community that is even a lesser fraction here in GW2 would be a waste of development time and resources for A.Net.

Expensive? It costs $17.50 for all LW-S2 chapters. There is tons of story and content related to it (plus the skin unlocks too). That is not much at all and factoring in that it came with DT and SW, it’s well worth it to pay it forward to A.Net in support of their game. Still cheaper than something like WoW’s subscription ($15 each month or no game at all), or eating out at a fast food place twice.

Left-handed characters?

Currently there is an overwhelming prejudice in this game. All characters must be made right-handed. Tyria is stripped clean and clear of any trace of left-handedness. Why is this? What fear have brought this forsakening?

• ~“But wouldn’t that require tons of time for development that could go to the rest of the game?”

Yes and no. Basically looking to change the hand of which the main weapon goes in as well as the casting hand. So for example a staff Elementalist would be holding the staff in the right hand and casting out of the left. Stances with greatswords would also be reversed, swinging a bit from the left.

• ~“Would this change weapon skills?”

Good question, but no. This is strictly an aesethic change for the sake of immersion and character reflection. Animations of the character’s holding and position would be mirrored off the right to the left, but nothing to skills or their animations would change.

• ~“South paws are such a low population. Nobody cares!”

Oh how wrong you are. While right-handedness ranges between 70-95%, left-handedness ranges between 5-30% of the population in the world. Yes the higher number is skewed due to mix-handness and even ambidexterity (although that is a rarity that takes up barely a percentage itself), but not at all reason to dismiss it. Still measuring up to be close to 1/3rd the population is a major thing to consider.

Snaff ability 1st slot:

Suicidal Charge
Charge forward 400ft with bravery. Upon reaching destination (or any enemy target), explode for 86dmg. Inflicts 110% HP self damage. Also causes nearest human male ally to run in fear (effect only breaks in presence of Queen Jenna).

JUG.3562:

Thats stupid by anet. I missed this as well, and also cant find Grawnk in my home instance. The letter should be trigger to making grawnk appear in the home instance so you can talk to him and do the scavenger hunt.

Not really. All the items for the scavanger event were removed post the holiday patch months ago. It was just that: a holiday event. I’m sure you might be able to repeat it next year in 9 months from now, but tough luck in missing out on something that was available for well over a month.

Same issue here. And if you “reactivate” a track while trying to activate this one, it will cause a critical client error and close it. I’ve repeated this twice just to make sure and submitted the crash report twice on it. Kind of very odd that it’s causing a client crash and wont’ activate at all.

Vargamonth.2047:

lordkrall.7241:

Vargamonth.2047:

Closed beta tests were announced to start shortly after Rezzed (which is already over) and to be free of NDA, so I expected to have loads of information by now.
Either I have a completely different idea about the meaning of “shortly”, or the amount of content on those beta tests is going to be ridiculously small at best.

Rezzed ended yesterday.
Shortly doesn’t mean 2 seconds after.
It means a couple of days or possibly a week.

I don’t expect the beta tests to start rigth now, but if people are expecting to have specializations introduced on a weekly basis, that would mean a 2 month dealy at least, which I wouldn’t call “shortly” at all.
It’s either that, or beta testers not having access to specializations (which is definitely something that should receive extensive testing and feedback) and some other relevant features for quite a long time.

What if that’s not what they’re “beta testing” at all? What if they’re only testing new zone dynamic events, player capacity on server loads, and a few tweaks like that? I really think that they should be holding back features from the Beta client, because revealing it all means that those that play -instead of test- it all have no purpose or reason to purchase it when it launches. It also cause things like Dulfy to push every known aspect of the expansion on it’s site, spoiling and ruining it all.

Take a look at FFXIV’s expansion. I don’t see a Beta test for it, yet they have the whole expansion dated, priced, and rearing to go. They don’t want the content ruined by min-maxers trying to ‘play’ a Beta to get ahead of everyone else. It ruins the game’s experience.

Unfortunately, no ETA yet. And that is very worrisome too.

See, when Heavensword was announced back in October 2014 for FFXIV, they still had a ballpark of “Spring 2015” rearing and ready. Now it’s only 5 months later and they’ve got a solid release date, pricing, and versions.

GW2 HoT announced in January of this year with 0 ballpark and 0 information about anything other than that there would be a boxed version. No season for release, no year, and certainly no pricing.

BlackDevil.9268:

Honestly let’s not start calling eachother bad, cause in every game mode there’s people smashing their face to their keyboard. However, the majority of people you are talking about can’t be listed as ’’pve’’. These people are listed as ’’casuals’’; Aka people who play every game mode and don’t have the intention to be among the best but rather just play for fun. This, however, does not mean PvE should be introduced in a major form into WvW. WvW should stick to what it is disigned to: Fighting for your server by capturing objectives and gaining as much points possible. This should not require mass PvE zerg festing by doing PvE events, but by capturing and defending towers and keeps. The way to do this is obviously by fighting eachother and using siege to attack or defend.

Aside from this, WvW has developed into such way that multiple guilds who actually try to be among the ’’best’’ of this game mode to fight eachother. This requires open field area’s and not tiny choke points. This group is more than large enough (even after losing about 25-50% of the guilds over the period of time) to be taken seriously into designing the map. Just by adding a couple big open field terrains the map itself could become a warm welcome for new and casual players, aswell for guild groups. So unless the map will be 1 big mess of tiny choke points and PvE events filled with mobs, this map should be pretty interesting for all area’s of WvW.

It’s funny you should mention that bold part, as right now it sums up to: PvDoor, attacking undefended camps, towers, and keeps. There is little to no ‘siege’ now save for the same exact lackluster ones from the start of the game: rams on doors, trebs from the NE and NW towers to the North Keep, and a very occasional [Guild/Superior] Cat stack 3ft from a wall to against yet another undefended keep.

This is even though the developers have put much time and effort into trying to inject spice into WvW by making materies for cannons, ballista, catapults, oil, and so many other things too. However their use is such a rarity that shock can arise when seeing such a thing.

WvW is not design for “fair fights”, never was and never will. If it was intended to be so, people would be the same level across the board, stats and all -not simply ‘boosted’-; it’d basically be like sPvP where gear would be universal and stats removed. Want that? Because that seems to be what’s being requested time and time again when people are asking for some random GvG mode for even fights between even number evenly. That is NOT WvW!

WvW is about 15 people trying to defend a keep against 30+ with nothing more than 2 arrow carts and a prayer. WvW is about a small “havoc squad” of 5 attempting to take a supply camp only to have a group of 7 steam roll into the circle at the last second and a fight breaks out between the 5 and 7. Who will win? A matter of a multiple factors such as real player levels, Ascended gear, builds, ability combos, group synergy, the one guy in the corner keyboard turning, who is better at dodging large hit skills, and so on. But at no point will the fight be ‘fair’ at all. And this is WvW.

A bit off-topic: A huge thing they need to change with this WvW revamp in Heart of Thorns is how the PPT (Points Per Tick) is accumulated. They need to change it to make sure that there is no time-gap between ticks were teams see it as an opportunity to flip at the last second, get a tick, allow the enemy to retake it because “more than enough time until the next tick to get it back”. There should be value to HOLD and KEEP the point giving objectives. Flipping should be punished in a point system, not rewards in this audacious way.

I’m think that the point system should be fractioned off based on the length of hold that any given team has said objective so as to prevent last second objective flipping. So with 15 minutes on a 100 point Keep, holding it for the full 15 minutes accumulates 100pts. However breaking it up into 5x 3 minute periods to where every 3 minutes accumulates 20% of the points for the total of that point tick period. This way a team that flips it at the last minute….well tough luck sally, they actually get 0 pts. However the team that held it for the previous 14 minutes within that cycle will be getting 80pts ( 14/3=4.6, rounded to 4 for the 12 minutes. 4x(100/5)=80). Sure there is a lost 20pts that nobody obtains because the keep is not held be anyone one group for the full minimum length of that 3minute period. But that makes the tick system much more interesting and make holding objectives a far more valued thing because it wouldn’t be about flipping them right before the tick only, but instead holding them for long intervals of time to obtain the tick per 3min portions.

johnno.7543:

Either way you look at it your going to lose players by not keeping a balance between both groups. Would it not make more sense to develop somthing that appeals to both sides?

No, it’s not and no it doesn’t. You’re essentially asking them to create something that wasn’t there to appeal to a group that they’re not aimed at appealing to. This game was never and will never be about GvG in the set up sense that you’re talking about (guild zerge of 15-30 vs same number); they got a bone tossed at time with the Obsidian Sanctum area and the up coming GvG sPvP roster (5vs5 mode).

But to say this game is going to lose players over not designing something to appeal to a group that they weren’t designing for in the first place is like…. Okay, that’s like saying that this game will lose raiders for not having raiding as a major feature for HoT. It’s like saying that this game will lose gear progression chasers because they’re not adding in new gear tiers or new levels. These are things that this game just isn’t being designed for, period. If they lose delusional players who thought this game was something it wasn’t, so be it. Those players aren’t going to be strongly vocal enough to force a change out of A.Net from the design paths they chose. We’re playing the game they designed, not designing the game for them.

johnno.7543:

Replacing all the old BL maps, which a lot of guilds who are out looking for fights enjoy is a big mistake. I know a lot of people who don’t want random pve events, statues that blow you off ledges, jumping puzzle mechanics all going on in the middle of a fight.

The map looks cool and has some interesting looking mechanics but forcing it on players who have repeatedly told you this is not what we want, not exactly a good way to get people to buy your expansion and continue to support GW2. I for one will be waiting to buy the expansion till after I see the effect these new maps have on WvW. If large scale fights are ruined by siege, ledges,pve content. Well I probably won’t be buying the expansion if that is the case. I already am frustrated by ANET refusing to support GvG, but at this point it seems like you are giving us the middle finger and saying well we just don’t care about you, if your goal is moving the fights oriented guilds and players to a different game well you might just accomplish that.

They’re refusing to support GvG because it’s a minority feature that they don’t like to support for this game. They support PvE guild events (missions) because it’s fun community things that get guilds to do things together (such as jumping puzzles, boss kills, races, and more). That’s why they’re doing Guild Halls too. WvW is a community (server) driven PvP event that allows a whole server to identify together as one and fight as one against another server. But GvG is not that, it’s a way of segregating communities way further, making huge arguments and fights and just way too much political drama. Besides that it would take way from their designed WvW, which is something that they don’t want to do at all.

GvG is not a majority feature.

GvG is not a community friendly feature.

GvG is not fun [for 80%+ of the community].

GvG is not what GW2 is about.

It’s been 2.5 years since launch. If you haven’t figured that out by now, then there’s really no helping you. I’m sorry it’s taken this long for the GvG community to realize it, and will probably take longer too.

Edit: OH, and another thing. WvW isn’t strictly PvP. If you want strictly players fighting players, you’d go into the Mists and queue for sPvP. World vs World is about worlds fighting against other worlds for the most points/control of the map. That doesn’t prevent the inclusion of PvE objectives. Quite the contrary, they are fully included in that. World vs World is a matter of this world trying to obtain the strongest bosses, build the strongest walls, set up the hardest hitting traps, and getting the biggest lasers against the other worlds. That is how they dominate. That is how WvW is designed. In fact, originally the EB JP was part of this in that your team could block off an enemy entirely from getting to it because the entrance was inside keeps that could be captured; that was to prevent enemies from getting the siege in there.

Deniara Devious.3948:

It is essential that a solo player is able to capture a normal camp. Outside the busy prime the number of players per map can be very low even in the top tiers of EU. Now imagine if are the lonely guy on the map and the objectives are upgraded like the original poster suggests, you cannot get anything done! Solo roaming should not be punished. A great game mode caters many different gaming styles.

Most players have trouble soloing a fully upgraded camp, unless they use a build like this (which is made for this role):
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_Solo_Camp_Flipper

And I am sure majority of the players never solo a tower or a keep. The time window to do this in top tiers is usually very small. You have to be able to kill all the NPCs in less than 1 minute. I have often failed to capture a tower with 1-3 players, because the enemy forces have come there.

I don’t think you will find so many threads in this forum about solo roaming being too powerful in this game mode, but almost everybody agree that zerging is too prevalent. We often have massive blobs which mow over any objective, defended or not. A blob of 50+ players can very quickly flip the entire map and if the defenders have much less players, they can just use some siege disablers and supply traps, drain supplies etc. to slow them a bit, but in about 20 minutes is gone. This is highly irritating especially if you spent many gold pieces to upgrade and siege these locations. And of course players do this as it is the most rewarding way to play WvWvW (I don’t count EotM as WvWvW). Currently WvWvW is often border hopping flipping as much as possible in one map and then hopping to another to gain maximum of points.

I have suggested:
Capture camp/tower/keep/castle events are scaled to the amount of enemy players just like the pve events are. Extra archers will spawn to defend the objectives if a very large enemy force comes there (the very large could be 5+ for a camp, 10+ for a tower, 30+ for a keep and 50+ for Stonemist. The extra NPCs do not drop any loot and vanish if the location is still not captured after 3 minutes. This is to avoid EotM style of farming. The camp/tower/keep lord could be scaled in amount of hit points to make it harder to kill by a large enemy force. This would balance the population imbalance issues and make off-time (aka “night” capping) more time consuming and difficult.

There is just one thing which I would want to see a bit harder for a solo player:
killing a dolyak

A dolyak with guards should be either completely immune damage or take just 1/3 damage (thus you need to kill the guard and scout escorting it first). Because in its current state, the NPC guards are completely useless. You just spam damage to the dolyak and both of these guards vanish as well.

If you want to solo, then you’re in the wrong game mode, my friend. There are plenty of NPC mobs and outside events for a solo player to participate in (see Hylick camp in EB, Centaurs in Borderlands, etc.). But by no means should the active WvW objectives, the ones that are relevant to PvP interaction for defense and offense, should not be soloable by individual players. That makes for a weak gameplay that becomes a boring faceroll for those that are in a larger group as well as equally making it frustrating for those that do upgrades to make it more defensive.

In fact, even with current integration it’s rather annoying that a group of no more than 2 player can take a fully upgraded camp in less than a few minutes. This is a camp that a team wastes some 500 supply + 1g and nearly 1/2hr to upgrade. Does that seem right that all that work and effort be so easily overthrown by so little? No, it does not! It is wrong and should be tweaked so that a fully upgraded camp can only be taken with a minimum effort of 5 or more players.

Donari.5237:

I found a site that has the whole presentation in a video as well:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-12-first-gameplay-of-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-world-vs-world-desert-borderlands-map
(video at the bottom)
And in the closing video, 34 minutes in to the whole thing, it looks like a … cow? … gets trebucheted at a wall.

The cow is nothing new. It’s the 2nd mode for the Trebuchet in which throws a toxicly poisoned cow at an area to create a poison cloud. Investing Mastery Points into it will cause the cloud to also eat away carried supply as well. Very useful in prolonged siege defenses when enemies are trying to build siege engines and dig in position.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I’ve been wondering – will we get new conquest and deathmach maps that aren’t in the stronghold formula? And speaking of stronghold, is it just gonna be this one map, or will there be more?

Cause you know…spvp isn’t exacly overflowing with content right now…

Deathmatch was more a bone thrown in for certain sPvP players that just wouldn’t hush up about the feature. However there’s a reason why it’s not in Ranked. They don’t plan to ever balance the game around Deathmatch and would most likely not make more of that map type (especially since it does NOTHING for the game’s eSports scene).

Once the first Stronghold map is fully balanced to a point that they -A.Net like- they will most likely make more maps of that type and variety. It is a matter of getting statistical feedback from player games such as ratio of Red wins vs Blue wins, class types mostly winning or losing, and those things. I see at minimum 3 months of statistics needed to be gathered in order to make even the slightest changes before looking at a secondary design.

As for Conquest, we’ve had maps that have been made for it that haven’t made it into the Ranked circuit. I’m looking at the Spirit Watch and Skyhammer maps particularly. Neither are in Ranked, most likely due to their inclusion of additional mechanics such as the Orb and the Laser. This is once again a matter of balancing these features to make a variety for sPvP while trying to keep it even enough for eSports. A balancing act that they must follow.

Mischief.9740:

First off will HoT include new crafting materials and secondly are the premium gatherers that clearly state “all metals” and so forth going to work with them?

1) Crafting will not raise with Heart of Thorns. The developers said this in an interview. They didn’t clarify on the ones not yet to 500.

2) Every crafting material that has been added to the game thus far as been able to be gathered by the unlimited tools. All of them. So I see no reason that there would be an exception.

Randulf.7614:

Report, block and move on. If it was genuinely an accident, then it is one of those things – certainly nothing of significance.

It’s an online video game where this is rampant sadly- such behaviour isn’t worth acknowledging or dignifying.

Andred.1087:

You can’t stop jerks from being jerks. Especially on the Internet. Forget about those losers and move on.

They’re absolutely worth acknowledging. They’re toxic vile that is filling up the community and must be pointed out to be taken care of and removed from the community. Ignoring them or excusing it as “just the internet” only gives the impression that their behavior is tolerated and is allowed to continue.

There is a reason why people punish a dog for peeing on the carpet and eventually dogs learn not to. Dogs that just do not learn are either put outside or taken to the pound (both being a metaphor for being banned).

ZudetGambeous.9573:

In a typical boxed expansion, the majority of the repeatable content is in the form of dungeons/raids. Generally for a $40 expansion you will get 8-10 dungeons with 8-10 additional hard modes, and 2-3 raids. These dungeons are generally what keep people playing the content as they search for new gear and master the encounters…

Is there an equivalent in HoT? What will keep us playing after we finish the story 2-3 weeks in?

I just haven’t seen any info on this, i’m sure it is somewhere, but I can’t find it.

Because for GW2, the majority of the “repeatable content” is not within the dungeons or raids. It is, in fact, in the game’s world zones where the major bosses and Dynamic Events reside. It is those open world zones that group play with the rest of the community is encouraged and embraced, instead of being segregated out via small groups of predetermined class archetypes through which a dungeon is ran.

Invictus.1503:

Randulf.7614:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

There is no information regarding purchasing HoT with Gems in-game, one way or the other. There is information, however, regarding the Revenant. You absolutely will need to purchase the expansion to be able to create this new profession.

Good luck.

Actually, there is information about purchasing the game, as opposed to acquiring it for gems. (Emphasis added for clarity.)

Q: Is the expansion “buy to play”?
A: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is a paid expansion to Guild Wars 2, but once you buy it, there are no subscription fees. This means that you can continue playing and access future updates for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns with no subscription fee.

Since gold can be acquired simply through playing the game, using in-game currency is not a form of payment in this context.

And yes, owning Heart of Thorns will be required in order to create a Revenant.

I would suggest updating the FAQ to highlight the the fact that the gem store will not be selling the expansion. Clarity is better than amibiguity

They can’t do that as they haven’t decided whether Gems will be able to be used. They’ve said this in multiple interviews and I believe on these threads too. They know it will be purchasable by real money (thus the wording), but they haven’t decided whether it will be purchasable by Gems yet.

OMG!, Yes, they have! Read what Gail just posted. You CANNOT purchase the expansion with Gems because of the possibility of exchanging Gold for Gems. You can only PURCHASE the expansion using MONEY, PLASTIC, REAL CURRENCY! You will NOT be able to use Gems. Let me say it a 3rd and final time: No GEMS to be used to get the Expansion!

The answer is without a doubt YES!, They said this in the revial when mentioning that the expanion will have 3 different bioms: tree tops, mid jungle, and the root system underground. It will be much traversing areas up, down, and all around. They’re taking much design concepts from Silverwastes and Dry Top (similar to how each of those are far more improved upon ideals of what Orr should have been).

I will say this:

They sell boosts in the Gem Store.

They sell Boon Fire bonfires in the Gem Store.

Both of these things cost gems and yet after a certain time frame are gone/done with.

SAB 2.0 was available for over 3 weeks (Sept 3rd through 30th, well actually that’s relatively 4 weeks).
The use of the 600 Gem coin was available that entire time, 24/7 (well, at least when servers were up, if they were down for the 4-6hr weekly period, then it was more 24/6 +18) That would be more than 522 hours available for SAB. Being reasonable let’s subtract 8hrs per each day for sleep and an additional 8hrs (x5) per each week for work time. So that’s 522-224-160= 138 hours accessable to the SAB with the Infinite Coin and a full time job.

That is still a large time. Far larger than you would get out of Boosts for the same amount of Gems. And the skins you got out of it? Shall we put a market gold value on them or the generic 800gem price that most Gem Store skins are? Either way definitely got the value out of it there too.

There is no reasonable expectation for a refund on this item. You got more than it’s value out of it when available and it will release at some point in the extended future (and no, future doesn’t just simply mean weeks or months from now, but years can be included in that term). There should be no sense of entitlement here -which is what requesting/demanding a refund is doing-, because delivery and fulfillment have been met. Future use is bonus icing on the cake.

Next update will be the 17th, just enough 2 weeks inbetween to have the following “build” on the 31st, which will trigger SAB on the 1st of April.

SAB confirmed on the 1st of April!

joneb.5679:

Boanoah I wouldn’t trust Colin or anyone representing any publicity or information about modern industry of any kind, whether video games, movies, technology. It has been proven time and again they will lie or use word play and things that were once promised will change and things denied are often proven to be true.

It wasn’t that long ago they denied there were plans for a paid for expansion etc though to be honest I dont think there were for a long time. This expnasion is really just content they were originally working in as LS and timed feature updates I believe.

Want to talk about liars? I kind of smell one right now. Well, okay more like a conspiracy theorist with wild accusations that are unfounded and unproven.

This expansion encompasses an Elder Dragon. They’ve always planned from the beginning to have the “big bads” as expansion content that they can sell. It’s the main story of the game’s continuation. The Living Story can be seen as filler content that only through a string of revelations was exposed to be a build up to the expansion.

They were right in saying that they had no plans for an expansion in the first year, because they didn’t. At the time they were still evolving the Living Story and changing aspects of the game. I’d think that only around the time that Scarlet’s Thumper Towers appeared in Tyria were they making solid plans for a Dragon Awakening.

OT: I’m unsure the source of the OP’s Q/A that was posted, so I’m unsure the validity of it. However I’ll address it like it is real:

• Q: If there’s players that are playing and don’t buy the expansion will they still be able to do things in the Living World?

• A: They will not, no, if you… basically everything that comes after the expansion you will need to own the expansion to be able to access, basically. Pretty much all updates from that point will be expansion specific and the core world will be what it is today.

I’m thinking he means that they’re not going back to the world to continually change it for the sake of vanilla only players. They’re not going to go back and tweak/change things that are already in a fine state [like they’re not going to change Orr to make it “clean” after the Pact destroyed Zhaitan] (in fact, he mentioned something similar in this interview here: http://www.guildmag.com/pax-east-2015-guild-wars-2-developer-interview/ ).

And I’m sure that Living Story stuff will end up in the game’s base world, but will not be accessible without the expansion (like a new instance to talk to Jennah for something diplomatic between Divinity’s Reach and the Mursaat). It’s just content that non-expansion players cannot access because it is relevant to the story’s continuation after the expansion.

Also, don’t think for a second that we still won’t have Wintersday and Halloween, amongst other festivals and events.

steve.2945:

Linken.6345:

why should he save up gems its a pay real life money expansion not grind gold get it for free since someone else bought the gems for you.

they never even said the payment model, also, it would be terrible management on their part if they didnt include to be able to buy it with gems. Not everyone has a disposable income.

Then those people won’t get the expansion. This game is not Free2Play; it is Buy2Play. What does that mean? It means that the game’s boxed client must be purchased to play the game. It means that the game’s boxed expansions must be purchased to play. There is no going around this.

Oh, and yes they did announce the business model already. It’s in the FAQ:
https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/105801626-General-Guild-Wars-2-Heart-of-Thorns-Questions

Q: Is the expansion “buy to play”?

A: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is a paid expansion to Guild Wars 2, but once you buy it, there are no subscription fees. This means that you can continue playing and access future updates for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns with no subscription fee.

No.

The expansion will be the same price to everyone. Well, most likely it’ll have 3 different versions:

-Normal

-Digital Deluxe

-Collector’s Edition

But don’t expect a discount.

So the WvW Borderland preview trailer ran through during the ESL Championship at PAX East.

Edit: http://youtu.be/FmHF_YbUKKA (at least until A.Net does a better quality one)

What is everyone’s thoughts on this new addition to WvW?

Mine are that it is interesting to say the least. They for sure expanded on their “verticality” push that they’ve done with PvE (and lesser extent, the revamped Borderland lakes currently in the game).

The map mechanics that they’ve added into the game seem interesting, but might become annoying or trivial with constant participation. I’m referring to the part showing the bridge that players are trying to cross as dragon statues blow breath and knock them over the edge (wonder if it’s triggered similar to the EB jumping puzzle’s dragon statues that burn players while breathing fire?)

There is a large tower with several levels sitting on top of a huge bluff with long paths of zig-zag stairways up to it. A choke point to say the least that will become a true nightmare filled with arrowcarts along the way.

The map itself looks HUGE. Like 1.5-2x the the size of a regular Borderland. The dry canyon, the lush oasis, the burning ghost area (?), it all seems so massive!

So the classes I see at dominating this with specific mechanics:

-Necromancers (fear)

-Elementalists (blowbacks, push backs, twister, summoned hammer, etc).

-Mesmers (mass AOE pull off cliff?)

-Engineer (Big bomb, magnet, etc)

-Guardian (bubble push off a cliff)

I think this map will also bring resurgence of the “Portal zerg” that Mesmers were once constantly utilized for. Fear the solo Mesmer that runs headfirst towards you up the stairs, as once the portal opens up there will be a swarm of 50 or so people rushing through.

Stormbrook Thunderbinger.4369:

I would appreciate it if the inventory were upgraded in Heart of Thorns. I think it would be nice if backpacks remained but have a list items, or a sort function, and the ability to have more streamlined effort in sorting items. I also feel the economy could be fixed and improved so there is not so much lag in the marketplace by separating two tabs in the online ‘store’ from the BL market. This really, annoys me. I know you can buy various boxes, but I also feel that it would be nice in HOTs if the professions added a bigger inventory bag of say 40. Now this may throw some economics off but there’s ways to create a better inventory overall.
I have some more ideas about the BL market but I’ll share them later.

1) The reason the store is attached to the BLTC is that it is showing players that there is a Gem store to purchase items and support the developers. This is needed in a game that relies on those to stay in business (box sales alone don’t support the Living World/Story or additional content updates).

2) Want more bag space? Purchase a new bag slot from the Gem Store. Buy a new bank tab as well. Both of these options support you as a player by increasing storage, but more so support the developers by giving them a bit of $$ that can be used to churn out more content. Win/Win scenario!

BrunoBRS.5178:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Sure, give me back 200 gems per episode then or give me something that those with Ls2 not unlocked will not get.

it’s a ridiculous notion that you should be refunded for something because it was bundled on another product a year later. do you also ask valve for refunds when games go on sale? do you lose your kitten when humble bundles happen?

the funniest part is that more likely than not, you didn’t even pay for the episodes.

It is no more ridiculous than asking for something to be giving for free yet again after the developers gave clear and open opportunity to get it for free for a long period of time (2 weeks is HUGE time to take less than 2 minutes to quickly log in and log out of a game).

Giving it free with the HoT expansion would make the expansion less valuable for those that have played the chapters already than to those that haven’t.

Giving it free with HoT would also make those that have paid for the chapters -any of them at all- feel like they’re being scammed and cheated by the developers.

They said at PAX South that they announced all the major features of Heart of Thorns as to what is being included in it (without specific details, of course). Living Story Season #2 is not a listed feature of Heart of Thorns; it will not be included in that expansion. At most they’ll include a video compiling the works of Scarlet up to and including her death, then the rise of Mordremoth right up to the Pact ships being attacked. That is what new people will get for free.

If they want to play the LS S2 chapters to get the loot items included within it and a more detailed story, then they’ll have to pay the Gold or $$ to get it. Period. End of story.

P.S. I didn’t purchase all the chapters myself, only the 1 single one I missed while I was moving and my PC with GW2 was in storage. That one was well worth paying the $2.50 for and the rest I’d unlocked via logging in to the game. Also that $2.50 chapter got me to sink in $20 worth of Gems for the game, so just as business planed by A.Net, their content baited me (welcoming) into spending money on the game’s Gem shop. How about that….

Ardenwolfe.8590:

That makes the most sense. It reminds me of what Whedon is doing between Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the various Marvel movies like the Avengers.

The television show is like Living World and the movies are like expansion packs.

In theory, it could be quite successful.

Hmm, that is the best comparable example of what the Living Story is. Right down to how the Living Story focuses on characters not in the main story, but main characters from the main story pop in the Living Story to add focus to them melding together as one consecutive set of interweaving pieces of the same thing. Although I really wish they’d kill off one of their major “movie characters” by the name of Trauhern. That is one actor that very few want to see getting more work.

DanteZero.9736:

I suspect living story S3 will be the content bridge between HoT and the next expansion after that. Looking at the current trend, which is S1 and 2 acting as a content bridge between base GW2 and HoT, it would make sense. However, it’s still too early to say for certain.

If the Summit was anything to hint at, I would think that it is going to be either Krawlkatoric or Jormag. Those are the only two who are major threats that are awake and making havoc in Tyria right now in large quantities. Primordus isn’t an issue other than a few spurts of his underground minions popping up; that is unless after Mordremoth dies, the minions of Primordus uses the tunnels from the vines to easily run to the surface and invade. Ohh, the plot thickens! That is a way better tie-in than the other two.

S2 relied on backstory that players couldn’t access any more. There’s no replay option, no unlock. S1 was a one-and-done series of unfortunate events, but was direct character and plot lead to the S2 adventures.

Such is the way that Guild Wars 2 works. If you missed something, you missed it. There’s no getting that event back for free. However since they tweaked the UI and interfacing system as well as the story instances of S2, it’s possible to replay the ones you’ve unlocked. If you’ve not unlocked any when they were put into the system to be unlocked (the 2 weeks of the events related to that story chapter), then for a small nominal fee you can unlock them to replay the events that have technically already happened.

But GW1 was not free to owners of Guild Wars 2. Although it’s events lead directly -300 years later- to many of the stories and plot of Guild Wars 2. Why? Because A.Net is a business and not a charity. The only reason they were given away in the first place was to promote player log-in so that they could have them view the “temporary” cash shop items related to the events and use that as a platform to sell them. It was a business move.

There is no business benefit to giving away the LS S2 with the expansion over instead including the last part cut scenes. None. Instead if there is someone interested in the story related to the expansion and it’s build up, I’m sure there will be some promotional thing added to the cash shop saying “Catch up on Season 2 and prepare to enter the Heart of Thorns!”. They make more money off that, period. And it is a good thing for us players as the turned profit goes to the developers who are making more content for the game.

It would be pretty hard to do such a thing in this game without overhauling many aspects of the game. Right now take for example how attack circles are marked by Red for enemy/danger ones and grey for ally/good ones. All attacks look similar and it is only this color distinction that shows the difference for allies or enemies.

And further color distinction is being put into HoT with how the Wyvern’s incoming attack is shown by the belly turning a fiery red, followed up by the neck and then head before the attack.

Kaleban.9834:

ANet would have to do it in such a way that it didn’t seem like plagiarizing the idea behind WoW’s strongholds. The Revenant already seems a little DKish, so tread lightly is my thoughts there.

You mean like how WoW plagiarizes ideas from every other game on the market? Let us see> Lost Isles is a copy of GW2’s Dynamic Events. And that’s just the only one that I can majorly think of off the top of my head. There are dozens of examples to look at if you search it’s “features” added with major content updates and expansions over the years (in fact, it’s pet battles is a copy of Polymock from GW1, which is similar to Pokemon overall).

And the garden idea isn’t a rip on Garrisons either, as Farmville, Cityville both came first. Even minecraft had a matter of growing your own things first. SimCity anyone? Oh and I do think that ArcheAge came out before WoD by nearly 1.5-2 years, and it had gardens and housing out the wazoo! (amongst the rampant hacking and troublesome management of the game, that is).

I wouldn’t mind something like growing a guild vineyard and winery similar to the one in Queensdale. I think that is where the idea of killing grubs comes from anyways.

Ralanost.8913:

Sadly, that is the problem with Asura. Almost everything is too small to see so it makes collecting skins on them largely useless and a waste of time.

Staffs are excellently displayed, and the same with Scepters too. And I think certain Rifle skins look down right HUGE on an Asura. All the shields stick out just find and dandy. Daggers, Horns, and Focus(es?) (Foci?) all have the visual microscopic appearance with the brilliant miniatures. So it really is a hit or miss based on the weapon model with the Asura. Then again my character -although considered very small by the other races of Tyria- is considered big for an Asuran.

Dominik.5162:

Can you please stop balancing stuff just for sPvP, things going to be ridicoulos for Melee in WvW espeacially Guardians. The amount of CC (and stacked CC) is so high Stability will be very unreliable.
Somebody needs to use a brain before implementing sh** like this.

First off, please don’t go directly insulting the developers as it’s disrespectful and rude. You have no way of knowing exactly what they’ve tested and worked with to come up with these changes.

Secondly, this change is equally for WvW and a good one at that. Right now Guardians -and Warriors- are stacking stability so heavily that it is an impossibility to CC them during fights. The “zerg blobs” that go from gate to gate to gate all consist of a heavy amount of Guards/Warriors at the front with that anti-CC “all or nothing” push of theirs. By making this change it allows for groups of players to whittle away that anti-CC and start using theirs to defend a bit more.

I’m pretty sure change is in line with the other changes they’re going to be making to have defending be more beneficial to the individual as well as the overall realm.

If you have to ask, it can be assumed that it’s not safe to use.

Plagued with disconnects?

I know the game had some issues in the beginning (ugh, memories of Guild VOIP during Karka’s event shutters), but many of those got fixed by the …3rd month in. By month 6 there was almost no disconnect issues save for the occasional server reset/crash that happened once in a blue moon. Yesterday I was logged into the game for 7+ hours straight without any disconnects or issues with the game. I did log out twice during the second hour to swap characters at the selection screen, but that is it. So I’m thinking that your internet might be the major issue and not the game. Or I’m just a really lucky SOB?

There’s a huge press event happening at A.Net this week. We know this by relations to Angry Joe going there (source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/AngryJoe-Interview-HoT-Questions-for-Devs/first#post4820613 ) and MMORPG talking about it as well here: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/news/page/1/read/33934/Guild-Wars-2-The-Daily-Quest-Got-Questions-About-Heart-of-Thorns.html

This means that with the Press Event, they’re going to pre-show most of the HoT stuff that they’ll have on at PAX East (March 6th-8th). Nearly 2 weeks early.

So the question remains if they’re going to embargo this event for 2 weeks or if we’re going to have a huge reveal this week?

AngryJoeShow.5864:

snip

So here’s what you’ve missed in the game for story:

~Many seemingly unrelated groups attacked the rest of game’s world. Molten Alliance, Sky Pirates, and Twisted Clockwork armies up until the big ol’ revealing that it was puppet mastery by Scarlet Briar. Later she gets a few more groups with the Krait and the Nightmare Court too. Eventually she takes her whole shebang army and attacks Lions Arch with a giant drill in the middle. The whole thing was a lengthy manipulative plot to find and crack the Ley Line of magic running smack dab in the middle of the harbor there so as to wake one of the Elder Dragons. Players killed Scarlet at the end just before the drill breached, but the drill still breached anyways.

~And all the above just happened in Season 1. Season #2 was the waking of the monster as Mordremoth’s vines attacked towns, forts, and Waypoints. Players do some major investigation, some things happen, we lose Rytlock to a floor that eats him, and then it ends right where the assumed expansion is going to start at. That is to say that a bunch of “nice” Sylvari went all psycho on the Pact and started attacking allies while the ships also got diced up in Mordremoth’s vines in Maguuma.

So that was the story related aspects of the game over the past 2 years summed up as simply as I could. There was also events that happened for players as added annual events:

• -Halloween (annual at …Halloween)

• -Wintersday (annual around Christmas)

• -Dragon Bash (might not happen again, as Lion’s Arch has since been obliterated)

• -Bazaar of the Four Winds (might not happen again, most sabotage destroyed ships of the Zephyrites and many died)

• -Super Adventure Box (hopefully will happen again…World #2 left with an absolute cliff hanger that even hinted at World #3 with a partial level designed there too).

• -Chinese New Year (added this year, probably due to Chinese launch of game within the past year. Expected annual.)

• -World-vs-World Seasons (happen whenever, not sure there’s a pattern as to when they start a new one)

• - Queen’s Jubilee/Crown Pavilion (Gladiator events in Divinity’s Reach with bosses, mobs, skill challenges, and cool stuff).

I don’t think I missed any, but I’m sure that they can add in more if they’d like. We’ve cleaned up a lot of the Southsun Cove area to being a now beach resort area for the Consortium, so they could always do a summer themed thing there if they’d like (yes, please?!).

Few feature changes:

• -Character armor look is universal across both sPvP and PvE (due to the changes that they’ve done with the Wardrobe system), and so unlocked skins are also universal for both aspects of the game too.

• -Gold, Dyes, and mostly everything related to customization and/or collections is now Account Wide. A big, HUGE plus for aesthetic obsessed players such as myself.

• -World vs World Masteries (were you here for them?)

• -Edge of the Mists (added WvW map to alleviate WvW queues, however no real WvW or PvP is done there. Comm PINs working those maps are there for the purpose of circle-flipping for currency, which ends up being PvE only)

• -Quaggans, Quaggans, and mooore Quaggans. You no like Quaggans? Shame on you!

Some questions that I’d like you, Mr. Angry Joe, to consider asking please:

1. What kind of mini-games are going to be added with HoT?
2. How many jumping puzzles will be added? Will they be exclusive to Maguuma or any added to “the old world”?
3. What’s your position on Polymock and allowing that lone Asura to finally finish the work on that gate?
4. If your “fix” for injecting more defensive use in WvW fails, with players falling back to the current mechanic of zerg flipping, do you have backup changes to adjust for the possibility of that happening?
5. What’s your favorite race and why?
6. What’s your favorite class and why?
7. Trauhern stole the spotlight from the player in their “personal story” and in the end it became all about him [that glory hog!]. Will this happen again with the main story of the HoT expansion? Will Trauhern even be a factor or will he be one of the corrupted Sylvari that we may end up killing (please say “yes!” to that second part)?
8. What ever happened to Reaper’s Rumble and why has it not returned to the last two year’s Halloween events?
9. Are there currently more sPvP maps in the works? If so, are they set with the mechanics of the new one or the old point capture system or a third, yet unrevealed system?
10. How hard was it to design a lane-centric MOBA style game mechanic in a MMO space PvP mode?
11. Release date?

Thank you for your time.

Yes, it includes the Revenant Class. Not purchasing the HoT expansion means not playing the Revenant Class.

dennie.9237:

Really? Taunt? What’s with you dev’s? Its not WoW, not L2, its game with unique experience, where we don’t need tank/healer/damage dealer trinity.

First let’s establish that WoW is NOT the first game with the “Taunt” ability, nor shall it be the last.

Secondly, it’s a form of crowd control, not the end of the world.

Lastly, this game is FAR from anything close to WoW: Abilities that don’t need targets (i.e. read as real projectiles, location based, semi-action style). A skill bar that actually involves skill building and management instead of face rolling a keyboard over 30+ skills on 4-6 different action bars. Mobs that are shared in credit. Quests that are regional and area specific rather than just NPC directed. Level scaling within zones. Legit world siege PvP instead of ….whatever they keep on trying since WotLK.