Guild Wars 2

If I recall correctly, the Jade Wind was a kind of death effect… it isn’t something Abaddon could have set off whenever he wanted. (And it’s also possible that Shiro was somewhat special compared to the rest of Abaddon’s minions – we are talking about magic, so…) Doesn’t rule out the Harvest Temple being a place of special power, though. All the same, not all of that was due to dragons in GW1.

So far, probably Sharkmaw Caverns just for how interesting/different/well-executed it is. (Though the entrance has a nasty tendency to kill you.)

Kind of have a love/hate thing for the skipping stones though. Once you get it right it’s not too bad but you have to be quick. Or pack stability at least… before that it was awfully annoying.

Much as I wish it weren’t so, it pretty much is the case that knockbacks that can send enemies off cliffs/ledges/bridges would cause gameplay problems that are hard to work around.

This is, unfortunately, not Sparta.

That reminds me: the Eye of the North confuses me. Wasn’t it already countless years old by the time the humans found it in GW1? If so, why is it falling apart after another 250 years when it looked as-new back then?

On the asura gate thing; anyone recall how the device Logan used in his, er, run… worked? It seemed to be a kind of one-shot thing he threw out over the sand; the thing I don’t remember is whether the other end had to be an existing asura gate or not.

If not, there’s a possibility you could use a similar trick to reach Cantha. Might not be the most practical method, of course; it doesn’t help that you probably don’t know where you’ll end up.

This sounds very handy for WvW. I don’t think clutter is really a problem – guilds can only be so big, so you shouldn’t be covering the entire map in gold dots.

Lokheit.7943:

Another problem would be explaining how a Norn taking the form of a brown Kodan would get an special array of powerful (elite) skills, while a Kodan, having very similar physical attributes, are inferior to them.

Yeeeaaah I dunno about that. “Become the Bear” hasn’t exactly been bowling people over as far as power level goes… it’s got some occasionally useful crowd control abilities but that’s about it. A lot of players are saying it’s actually worse than not using it at all. The real question is how much bigger you can make a race before it starts seeming outright ridiculous that asura are packing the same physical DPS.

I also don’t think the physical similarity between kodan and norn bear form is a problem; they aren’t that similar thanks to color, plus norn bear form has no armor (though after some of the EotN concept art this is kind of disappointing actually but that’s life), plus it hardly seems to get used anyway.

Of course, we don’t actually know whether it’d be called that… but there is other land out there that may show up in later releases. It’s a big world.

I don’t know if there’s any real need to take away pets to add more… would it cause problems just to increase the maximum total?

But yeah, I’d also like to see this eventually. They don’t seem like they’d be inherently unbalanced.

I believe the race selection mostly has to do with geographical location… to find grawl you basically have to run all the way over to charr territory, so they drew the short straw instead of races that humans would have more interaction with.

More power to your beard can never be a bad thing. I’m all for this.

Yeah, there are certain types of intellectual property rights that apply and it’s hard to see how any would be infringed.
Copyright: Is only infringed by an exact reproduction of the work – like a photocopy – not a reinterpretation of the same thing.
Registered designs: Can be infringed in manners like these, but the designs do have to be registered and it has to be described what makes them so unique. The chances that this is the case are astronomically low since they’re expensive to apply for so people typically do so for major parts of products, not single sword skins like this. And they may already be sufficiently dissimilar that they wouldn’t be found to infringe anyway.
Trademarks: Can also be infringed when they’re substantially similar, but pretty sure these sword skins are not considered trademarks since they’re not used to sell GW2.

Are they similar? Yes. But that’s not actually uncommon. It’s not a given that the GW2 swords even inspired these other designs – though it’s certainly possible – and even if they did there’s very unlikely to be any grounds for legal action here because the original work probably doesn’t have the relevant protection. Not only that, I don’t see any real chance of the “derivatives” causing material harm to ArenaNet or NCSoft.

Yeah, I’m still trying to get around to doing all those storyline dungeons myself. I figure they’re there because a chunk of the players like them, but having them being part of the story kind of makes me feel I have to do them… eventually… and the LFG thingy is a bit of a drag. So I’ve sort of put it off ’til last.

Yeah most of these threads do wind up in a Linux vs everything else debate it seems – though this is probably because they tend to start out as “I want a Linux client because Windows suxxxx and I would like to be able to uninstall it finally”. Which is a valid opinion to have, it’s just that it’s also bait even if you didn’t mean it to be.

Perversely though, maybe it’s a good thing? If all the replies were just “me too, Linux is my main OS” the thread might die pretty fast… and while I personally have no interest in a Linux client it only helps show that there’s an audience (even if not all the posts actually do that, at least enough do) on behalf of those who do have interest. If that made any sense with all its vague hand-waving…

Bard.7215:

Even in games that presents an area in a realistic setting, most open world games do not take the actual in game territory range as being canon. I don’t even think the TES:Series does this. Limits of technology(and game development time/human psyche) do not allow massive realistically sized territories, nor would it be practical to do so.

Mostly that’s correct yes, with the exception of Daggerfall which was life-sized (and I believe 99.99% computer-generated because of that – also mostly not very interesting, which was the price for that in the mid-90s). The likes of Skyrim and Oblivion are pretty decent-sized, but may not have all that much more playable area than Guild Wars 2 – I think it’s on a similar order of magnitude, maybe actually smaller.

Wouldn’t rule out mursaat ever making it (lots of things can change, and the world is very big), but it’d be a gigantic lore kitten-pull for them to show up in the near future. There’d need to be some foreshadowing. And some people would probably still hate it since I’m pretty sure there’s that mystique as an unknown antagonist race…

Mystic glowy races are okay though, as long as they’re not too… um… let’s just say drow elves.

There is apparently one in the Chantry of Secrets… although exactly how accurate it is might be disputed.

Captain Seyo.4285:

Any of the 5 in the race section of the storyline will no be an option as the new race’s story would have to merge at the same point. It would be weird to see Quaggans investigating Quaggans. So that is a no for Quaggans, Hylek, Skritt, Ogres, and Grawl.

Do note that not all of those tribal races are available to each major race – it’s three each. It wouldn’t be a stretch to prevent the race from investigating itself. That doesn’t remove all the roadblocks to the above races, of course.

I guess my three “most-likely” picks would be, in order of probability -
1. Tengu
2. Largos
3. Probably something we haven’t seen yet.

However, there are a couple that knock on the door; it’s not inconceivable that kodan could take that 3 slot, since they have all, or nearly all, the requirements of a playable race. Also, once Elona opens up, it may not be out of the question for friendly centaurs to show up; the artists and animators would have their work cut out for them adapting armor and actions to their rather unique anatomy though.

By and large they weren’t there… but I think it’d work if just one more was. After all, you have those above pictures – there was at least one already.

I’m pretty sure it’s not random – it’s just being saved for when they’re ready to tell the story in a way that’ll do it justice. There’s a lot of Tyria that seems to fall into this category. I can’t imagine they just forgot about our old friend Palawa Joko!

Culzean.8571:

Why was that changed?

Because nobody used them, I presume.

Not that I’d be against indefinitely stowing pets if you don’t feel like using them at the time (e.g. too lazy to manage aggro). Wouldn’t be performing at your character’s full potential, but that’s your call. I often ignore my guardian’s special abilities as well, until the heat’s turned up.

While it’s an interesting idea, I’m really not sure ArenaNet is big enough to warrant this kind of thing. Conventions are expensive to hold and they don’t quite have Blizzard’s roughly billion-dollar annual turnover…

Ikcen.7518:

You shall make names visible in WvW, so when I kill a party of enemies they to fear me. This is fun. Now I just kill some mobs with good AI, they are not real ppl – no names, no speech – mobs.

Actually this part is by design – don’t expect it to be changed.

If there is one anywhere, I doubt it’s in Ascalon City – much too dangerous, why would you want to have to return there? That pretty much means it could be anywhere as far as we’re concerned, though.

Kain Francois.4328:

It’s a shame they built them up with Winds of Change only to abandon them in GW2.

WoC would have been chronologically after the GW2 races were set, but there still is Factions in general. The whole thing reads a lot more like a “not now” than a “never”, especially considering the questions it would raise – why is the Dominion of Winds shut off in the first place – why is it that large, even – if there are no big plans for it?

draxynnic.3719:

Unwillingness to let go of old hatreds seems something that’s been done before, though – in the form of the Renegades and Separatists. I’d rather it be in the form of a house that’s dishonoured itself in the eyes of another, such as through being involved in organised crime or through getting caught engaging itself in political advancement through assassination (similar to the Scorpion Clan in Legend of the Five Rings).

Even better if, like the Scorpion Clan, they’re not entirely black-hat. Makes for much more interesting villains.

Illiander.8049:

marnick.4305:

I don’t mean joke in a bad way. Linux is a very good way to learn the innards of computers. But on a company scale, it indeed is a joke because Linux development requires far more resources for far less results.

Apache would disagree with you. So would Skype (which is now Microsoft-owned), Google and a whole bunch of others.

There’s a common thread with those – they’re all infrastructure. In that situation, you can put something together, get it working, then nobody touches it if they don’t know what they’re doing – no end users who could do something silly. It neatly sidesteps all the problems with Linux, and that’s why it’s so popular.

There don’t seem to be a lot of companies (outside of software developers and academia) that deploy Linux desktops to their users though. I’m sure they exist, but I haven’t personally run into them.

Elder Scrolls games are some of the closer approximations to this, but they are still lacking something really important: there isn’t that much of a story. You can undertake quests, complete them this way or that way, but your actions don’t really have that many consequences. The world doesn’t seem to change when major storyline events occur, and in the end it winds up feeling like a very very big checklist. (You can choose not to check some of the boxes if you find the requests morally objectionable, simulating some kind of RP I guess – but they just sit there taunting you… forever…)

And you still resolve everything by combat. There isn’t a “diplomatic option” in Skyrim (or any of the other games to my knowledge) except in a few cases; you’re still sent on the same quests, and they’re still probably going to wind up with you killing someone. You don’t get to be the bureaucrat who never raises a sword on his own – you have to make everything happen personally.

I don’t think the whole deal is completely out of reach though. Sure, we’re not going to get a perfect life simulator, but there are guiding lights out there; the sheer amount that Dwarf Fortress manages to simulate is mind-numbing, and some pretty cool things result. It’s probably not reasonable to attempt to replicate all of that in an 3D RPG like GW2/TES/DA, but it’s certainly reasonable to reach some distance toward it.

Of course, you could sacrifice things by trying. As any DM who’s offered his or her players complete freedom in accomplishing their objectives knows, the course they take seldom winds up being particularly cinematically dramatic. But something tells me the DM is the only one really worried about this – players often like being spectacularly successful…

It would be great to have an RPG, much less MMORPG, that pulled this off to anyone’s satisfaction. We’re not there yet, but maybe one day we might be.

There has to be a middle ground; especially since they’re not in sPvP I’m pretty sure you can find a level where people would use them but not always use them. Versus the current situation, where they might as well be removed from the game entirely.

There’s a good chance!
ArenaNet don’t like to reveal their hand too early so I wouldn’t expect them to say. But there’s a giant walled-off area in an obvious position on the map, and you kind of figure they’re planning to do something with it eventually, or it’s just there for trolling purposes. Which isn’t something they’re known for doing…

I mean “planning” in the loosest possible sense though, as in there’s something in the Tyrian lore bible that talks about it. Doesn’t mean they’ve decided what it’ll look like or when they’ll do it.

We don’t really know. The majority of the remaining dwarves are presumed to be underground, and still fighting the destroyers, but it’s hard to say how many there are – I’m not even sure if the story is true. If they’re still around, it’s quite possible that there would be a lot more destroyers without them, but suffice it to say since there are no new dwarves but there are new destroyers, it’s a battle they’ll ultimately lose unless Primordus is vanquished.

Delayed probably isn’t the right word. In the GW2 CE, there is a “making of” book, which while it’s talking about various non-major races states that tengu were originally planned to be a playable race but that ArenaNet “pulled back”. It doesn’t explain their future plans, but does hint that they’re a work in progress.

In the old days (GW1, and honestly the books too) yes, individual norn were incredibly powerful – more than a match for pretty much any other race. Obviously, this couldn’t stay for GW2 player characters or bad things would happen, so they had to tone them down a bit.

Some of the results are less than perfectly satisfying, but there’s only so much they can do I guess.

I’m starting to wonder if the Sparkfly Fen blocked exit will have something to do with the incoming Sea of Sorrows event, rather than anything overtly to do with DoW. It’s far from guaranteed though – ANet have any number of other ways they could do this.

While I don’t expect anything regarding the tengu to happen this year, I’d figure it’s going to have to be addressed eventually – Primordus is sending plenty of his minions in that direction, so it’d be a pretty odd choice not to clean it up on the way to defeating him. No idea whether he’ll be our first target though, so it may not make sense to bank on the very first expansion – but then… isn’t patience one of the tenets of bushido anyway?

FYI on largos – I would point out that there are other “not-really-matches” in other races, e.g. sylvari engineers. ArenaNet’s philosophy on that was that even though it might indicate a race would rarely or never (well I guess there are the trainers) have NPCs of a particular profession, they still wouldn’t prohibit players from picking them. I figure largos could follow the same rule? Though it sounds like a necromancer PC would be more persona non grata than most.

You might be thinking of asura – they built the gate network and many/most of the deep tunnels (dwarves might have been responsible for a few as well). I don’t recall any dialogue in GW1 that indicated that tengu had anything to do with them. However, the similarities do indicate that Canthan and Tyrian tengu probably had a common origin, however they got from one place to another.

The GW2 developers and dialogue we’ve seen in game aren’t particularly ambiguous about what the Dominion of Winds is though. It’s clearly built by the tengu as their “claimed territory”. How the Lion’s Arch wall plays into that is less clear – it could be an exclave or an entrance to an undersea tunnel, maybe – but it’s at least clear that it’s either part of the DoW or leads to it (it would have to be something like that to be able to say that the Dominion lies behind the wall).

Eir did attempt to convince Logan to stay, but it didn’t exactly work well. As for calling it off… well, I guess we’ll never know whether that would be an option. Kralkatorrik was heading pretty much straight for them.

Spotted this as well. In a nutshell: there’s a map hole underwater in the sinkhole (which is mysteriously uninhabited – also very, VERY deep) roughly beneath the Behem Gauntlet chest. You can see it more easily when swimming up from the bottom.