Guild Wars 2

I don’t mind the 200 gem fee for unlocking episodes you may have missed. It reminds me of the Bonus mission pack, which was a rather beloved addition to Guild Wars 1 that people played a lot because it gave out some nice weapon skins. (tengu skins for the win!)

I do wonder though if this means they’ll revisit the trophy rewards that you don’t actually get for completing personal story steps. They’re listed every now and then on certain entries (like Romke’s Horn, or the various order related items), they always seemed like a bit of an abandoned feature to me.

Oh god, people referring to their characters as ‘toons’… that is one of my few true pet peeves. It’s like nails on a kittening chalk board! I use the terms character or alt interchangeably.

Vexander.9850:

Honestly I could see Rytlock and Rox getting together. They seem like they’d make a pretty good pair. But yeah, there aren’t many male NPCs that you can tell are actually homosexual. Its never bothered me though. If the defining trait of a character is their sexuality, then you have a weak character in terms of narrative and development. That’s why I’ve always liked how Arena.net has done their relationships. Caithe and Faolin aren’t defined by loving one another. Kasmeer and Marjory aren’t -defined- by being a couple. Its a part of their character, but both are highly developed beyond that.

The way I’d go about it would be to have a new major character who is male and homosexual to have some dialogue options. Take the one I suggested earlier, the really scholarly guy.

“So, you’re a Loremaster? I bet that leaves little time to go to the taverns and find someone special.”
[If the PC is Male]: “Why go to taverns when I get to work with handsome men like you? Ha! Don’t worry, I’m not actually interested in you. You’re not quite my type, no offense meant.”
[If the PC is Female]: “True, but the kind of men I find attractive don’t tend to frequent taverns.”

I used to think the same (at least a little, I personally thought Rox/Braham was more interesting) concerning those two… until I saw a data-mine on reddit. If it pans out to be true, let’s just say that a relationship like that would generate more outrage than any homosexual one.

Vexander.9850:

Fluffball.8307:

My wife finished GW1 with a competent ele. The only interest she’s ever shown in GW2 has been when I told her there was a gay male couple in beta. We’re in a very liberal US state, and we both are as well, so that really perked her interest in the game.

Just sayin’, in case Anet is interested in selling to females…

Must have been the two Sylvari. They’re the only male couple I’m aware of in the game. Which is a bit of a shame, but let’s be honest, when the world is facing the apocalypse, I don’t think people are typically going to be too worried about their dating life.

I’ve heard murmurs of there being a gay male Norn npc in one of the Vigil story lines for Norn, but I’ve not personally done it myself. The npc is Wjerd Bladeborn, whom might have a crush on Fibharr Ygosson based on his dialog, or perhaps he’s implying that Fibharr has a crush on Famke the Fair instead.

To my knowledge there aren’t that many gay male npcs. You really have to look hard to find what few there are, and just about all of them are locked behind personal story choices that you might not even take. I can however count at least 5 gay female npcs quite readily. There are of course the big four; Caithe, Faolain, Marjory and Kasmeer. There is also a widowed female Charr named Fronis Darkstone in Diessa Plateau who tells the story of how her mate was killed by the Flame Legion. (She only has this dialog when she isn’t patrolling Ebonshore Plant) Sariel could also be interpreted as being in a relationship with Faolain. She gets very thorny about the prospect of Faolain wanting Caithe back.

I’d love for there to be a prominent male pairing that isn’t shown once and then promptly forgotten about (I.E. personal story), or just a case of fandom crack shipping. (no matter how much some of us may want it, Logan and Rytlock will never be a thing…)

Druss.6917:

The drill is shown to be hitting the magical ley line on the screen, not some dragon. The reason Modremoth was still asleep was he had no need to wake. He had tapped into the lines and was sort of drip-feeding off them. When Scarlet interrupted the major convergence of them, it woke him up cause his drugs were cut off. Now he’s going on a withdrawal-induced rampage to get his world-juice back. I think she really believed she could defeat him after he woke up, which shows how truly nuts she was.

But hey, one plant lady’s schizo is another persons new content lol.

Not quite correct there. Mordremoth was dormant because it wasn’t receiving enough magic. That’s what the dragons do; they eat up all the magic and then go into dormancy again until the magic replenishes enough to sustain them. When Scarlet hit the convergence underneath LA, she redirected all that magic and sent it flowing straight to where Mordremoth was resting. That influx of energy is what woke the dragon.

Personally, the Zodiac Armor isn’t to my taste (mainly due to the blue skin thing) but I do have to give props to the art team for stepping outside of their comfort zones in regards to silhouettes and skin coverage. Light Male armor that isn’t a coat or robes!? Medium armor that’s not a trench coat!!? Despite the blue skin, the Zodiac armor is certainly a breath of fresh air when so many of the other armor sets in the game start looking very much the same.

DeWolfe.2174:

Thobek.1730:

Meanwhile Kiel is forcing Evon to relinquish all of his stock or face execution by firing squad.

Speaking of slander, where is this in game, Hmmm???? This thread stinks of Evon supporters, including the OP, trying to twist the good name of Kiel!

You were saying?

Ben K.6238:

Losing LA is bad for business, and if there’s any priority Gnashblade holds above all others it’s what’s good for business. I still can’t pick what Ash is getting out of the deal, though. It could be a project intended to procure supplies for the legion that they couldn’t easily get east of the Blazeridges – that’s probably how it started, anyway.

Perhaps they’re making a profit from Gnashblade’s endeavour – but power in charr society is derived from firepower, not gold. That much gold would only help them if they need to pay for something expensive.
Perhaps it’s the information that’s more desirable. Ash tends to collect that regardless of whether it’s immediately needed. Much like the Order of Whispers, they’ll send operatives into every place they can – including the Order of Whispers – just to learn what’s going on. Even if Gnashblade is a money-hoarder with little interest in his legion, providing them with information would be an easy way for him to keep them happy.

What they intend to do with such information, if anything, is anyone’s guess. I doubt we’ll be seeing them in Demetra again any time soon.

It’s often forgotten that the Ash Legion Imperator, Malice Swordshadow, has been pushing for the peace treaty between humans and charr for quite some time. She sent agents (Ember Doomforge) to the Vigil to aid in the recovery of the Claw of the Khan-ur, and then persuaded Smoldur into beginning negotiations with Queen Jennah. I see the BLTC as just another extension of her aims to smooth racial relations across Tyria and get us all well supplied and fighting on the same side, against the dragons.

Magically extended lifespans are a thing in the GW universe. I don’t see any reason why a person who is supposedly as powerful as Queen Jenneh is stated to be couldn’t use some of that power to extend the lifespan of someone or something precious to them.

Apollo.6573:

With the introduction of achievement chests, 500 badges of honor is easy to get without getting into WvW, and WvW is a big part of the game.

Lol… It’s only a big part of the game in WvW players heads. It has no significant impact whatsoever on the greater pve world or the pve player base, and forcing them into it will only make them dislike the mode and it’s dedicated player base even more than they already do.

I do like Marjory and Kasmeer, although their relationship makes me wish there was an actual prominent male pairing that isn’t fan shipping and isn’t only mentioned once in one personal story path which you may not even pick and then promptly forgotten about. They do however make me worry that the Anet writers may pull the ol’ Bury Your Gays trope on us. Of course it wouldn’t really matter if they’re gay because Anet has a notorious history of taking certain characters, making them likeable and then killing them off to elicit an emotional response. The most recent examples of this were the Order Mentors.

You can set up a different chat tap, uncheck everything except npc chat and you won’t have to worry about emote spam.

ThiBash.5634:

Gotta say…really liked the long dialogues between the various cast members of the Living Story. A lot. The story from Kashmeere was a bit out of nowhere, but the rest seemed very fitting. The small Asura I liked especially, and boy does that golem look awesome (especially with her riding it).

The Kasmeer story may not be as unrelated as we think. This is just a hypothesis of mine, but I think that Scarlet may have been connected to those gamblers in Lion’s Arch. People have been wondering where she gets her funds, and I’d say that the bulk of a noble family’s holdings would be a nice start.

My Norn Elementalist.

declan.3968:

mtpelion.4562:

I personally think that killing low level champions should reward low level loot (this would help with the Silver Doubloon problem, if done correctly). I am not opposed to trains, but I think they should be level appropriate. If you want level 80 loot, hit Frostgorge Sound or Orr.

If they were level appropriate then you would see nobody in low level areas. As it stands there are still players in both Harathi and Queensdale because of the current loot scaling to your level.

What ANet needs to do is to make the other zones equally profitable so players can split between multiple zones and Champ farm.

That might not be true actually. With the release of Ascended Armor crafting, the cost of the lower tier textiles used to craft Damask have skyrocketed. None more so than Linen. Even the lvl 46-60 light armor that you can salvage to get linen scraps has seen a huge increase in cost. Having champ trains in various level ranges give appropriately leveled drops would be great if Anet introduces a need for those ingredients.

Tweak blasting staff and give it the ability to make Arcane Wave ground targeted. Lets staff users continue to enjoy a ranged blast (we have so few as is), doesn’t screw with other builds rotations.

As a Staff Ele, I enjoy the ranged Arcane Wave but I do find it to be absolutely horrible to use underwater now. Unless you’re against a wall or at the very bottom it’s pretty much unusable, but who cares about underwater combat anyways right?

Just turning down the lighting doesn’t suddenly make things creepier. There was much more to the horror that was the Realm of Torment than darkness. It really came down to the shapes and the sounds you encountered there. All the giant, dismembered insectoid body parts, the strange skittering and unidentifiable noises heard in the background, the sounds that your characters footsteps made in certain sections of the Realm of Torment. All of those things together are what made that place as unnerving as it was.

A lot can be accomplished with sound, or a lack of in the right situations.

Randulf.7614:

Tremain.4623:

I don’t understand the Scarlet hate. She is no worse than treahern or kormir or shiro or rurik. People act like she is ruining some incredible story, newflash: it already sucked just as bad before. This ain’t lord of the ring folks.

I’ve noted this as well. The Lich and Shiro weren’t well fleshed out villains (Shiro was exceptionally dire) and Rurik was generally despised in the same way Logan is. The Prophecies and Factions stories were beyond woeful – I’m playing through them again now on HM and the story and the missions are cringeworthy to play. Far more than most of the GW2 storylines. And then Nightfall came along and whilst an improved story, suddenly everything that came before was suddenly and conveniently “oh yeah that was all Abaddon”.

…Um… what? Concerning Rurik… did we even play the same game, are we even part of the same community? People didn’t like Prince Rurik because of the mechanics of the escort missions he was tied to, not because he was ‘terribly written.’ He’s disliked because his AI made him a Leroy Jenkins in areas where his death resulted in having to start a mission all over again. Logan Thackeray is disliked because he is perceived as a moody, whiny little boy utterly smitten by the first woman who ever seemed to give him any measure of attention. He abandoned his band of true friends in their hour of need to save a (very important) damsel in distress.

angelpaladin.7921:

Here I give you a great example of why this is a good thing.

Lets say you buy something rare and exclusive your promised that item will be rare and exclusive. Fast forward 6months to a year you find out that the item is available to anyone for far less then it cost you and far less time it took you to get.

Naturally you be extremely upset. That’s what happened here ANET made a poor choice and is now having to fix it. There nothing selfish about wanting something you earned. Wanting something for free could be selfish or wanting shortcuts to get something could be selfish.

Your statement hinges on the assumption that everyone that seeks this example item cares about meaningless things like status and exclusivity. I honestly don’t give a kitten about lording my perceived superiority over the heads of others. All I really want are aesthetic options that allow me to make my characters as cool looking in game as I so desire. It took me a long time (and no small amount of gems) to settle on mixed armor sets for my characters and it doesn’t help that I am notoriously picky about my aesthetics. Personally, I wasn’t really planning to buy the flamekissed set but it did open up so many more possibilities for the other races. There are surprisingly few pieces of armor that allow Norn to showcase their tattoos. The original flamekissed would have helped that a little.

The “ideal of cultural armor” was flawed from the very moment they mentioned it while the game was still in development! They make racial skills practically useless so people don’t feel forced to roll certain races for certain classes, but if you want a certain aesthetic in your armor you’re pretty much forced to roll a certain race, even if you like nothing else about them.

I’ll remember this when human scholars start clamoring for access to the Norn’s awesome cultural sets.

Interesting…. it seems like a combination between a Tesla Coil and a Pumpjack. Maybe Scarlet is trying to extract energy from the Ley Lines?

It’s a shame they aren’t used for anything at all. I think they could’ve made cool trophies that could show up in your personal instance.

I have to say that I really like this hair option for male norn… but it still clips with certain shoulder options, although not as badly as my previous hair style.

Taken from an old Wartower lore interview concerning the Norn.

“Wartower: What about family structure. We’ve only seen the dynamic of brother and sister. We would love to see how they raise their kids. Do we get to know something more about how the family structure works?

Jeff: The family structure is close but loose. Again, the independence of the norn. Knut’s wife does not live in Hoelbrak. She has her own setup. Yet, they have together raised two sons. Often each child will go with one parent or another. Parents will stay together for the important early years. We never really stated it, but norn have more of a monogamous relationship. Like swans mate for life. They have that relationship, that closeness and that comes from common interests and common adventures and they are apart of the world together."

Concerning the death of a mate and moving on, it would depend on each individual Norn, the specific circumstances and how profoundly the loss affected them.

Elementalist 0/0/20/20/30 S/F condition build, using a mix of rabid gear (from temples because I wasn’t about to waste money on making a full carrion set) and two carrion pieces, some ascended trinkets that weren’t really suited for condition damage and a valk/berz weapon set. I didn’t keep track of how many tries it took, suffice it to say that many a ticket was spent.

As for the fight itself? Not fun at all. The people who enjoy this kind of stuff must be masochists or something. Ridiculous one hit kills, bad camera for anything other than a Human, Asura or Sylvari (I was a norn), cosmic rifts that spawn with no real pattern, being killed by clones that didn’t even touch you, hard to see aoes and the moments when you pick up or throw orbs where you can’t dodge. I will never stomach getting into the ring with that wench again! My only solace is that I finally had the satisfaction of wiping the floor with her smug face!

Udyr.9283:

After 30+ tries (and much rage) at Liadri, I finally got her! Tried many specs on my ele (even my mesmer, but I’m a crappy mes), I found a spec that I consistently got her to 20% and below. Full carrion gear, 0/0/20/20/30 with IV and X in earth, V and IX in water, and V, VII and XI in arcana. I used S/F with Lightning Flash, SoAir (passive, not alot of swiftness in this build) and Mist Form utilities. Shorter CD traits for focus 5 and LF of course.
First phase I spammed my projectile blocks and reflects to keep HP up, and juked when standing still. Second phase I kited her spamming earth scepter auto-attack. Those bleeds stack fast and ticks her down when you need to switch to water to remove cripple and heal (or use Ether Renewal). Save Mist Form for when you get pulled by orbs, otherwise use LF to get back in kiting circle.
That’s pretty much how I did it
(Also being asura helped with that crappy camera xD)

After a lot of pain and suffering; I finally managed to beat Liadri using your build, with some tweaks. I swapped out lightning flash for Signet of Fire, for even more condition damage; and I used the 4 pieces of Temple gear that had condition damage (rabid stats), along with 3 rabid trinkets, a sentinel earring and two ascended items unrelated to condition damage. I used a full set of superior Undead runes, a valkyrie scepter with an energy sigil and a berserker focus with a doom sigil (which I didn’t really notice helping much.)

Bonetti’s Rapier, rare chance to get it from Embroidered Coin pouches, which drop from outlaw type champions.

Symaro.7940:

Yeah they are all kitten about kiel winning, but if evon won they would probably tell us that we should shut up and deal with it :P

Oh, you mean exactly like what your side is and would be doing if they had lost instead? Drop the holier than thou act, no one’s buying it.

Let’s get right down to it; the fractal format isn’t good enough to do either of the scenario’s proper justice to begin with, so they might as well be a non-issue along with cheaper waypoints or cheaper keys.

Sitkaz.5463:

It’s offensive to say people are voting for Kiel purely because she’s a “nice pretty human lady.”

Too bad for you if people are voting for reasons other than your pet consideration, but welcome to democracy.

And it’s naive to say that there aren’t people who are voting Kiel purely because she’s a “nice pretty human lady.” Have you seen map chat? Or perhaps some of the posts in this very forum?

That’s the thing, Kiel doesn’t really have any motivations to join the Council. Magnus pretty much told her to and served the position up to her on a silver platter. It’s my opinion that she’ll be little more than a puppet for Magnus if she actually wins. I would much rather Evon take the seat since he would have a greater degree of autonomy than Ellen does, and it would balance the council’s racial profile a bit better. Currently the council is made up of three Humans, two Asura, one Norn and one Charr.

While exploring in Dredgehaunt Cliffs I came across an NPC, Explorer Gaerwyn, in Mantelet Refuge who states that the Dredge were formally enslaved to the Asura. It should say that they were enslaved by the Dwarfs instead.

ghettogenius.9174:

Haven’t heard many eles chime in here. But for the record, I got this done on my S/D aura support elementalist (30-0-0-30-10) using lightning hammer, signet of earth, and tornado to delay the turn ins. Also, you can burn/bleed them as they run away and by the time they get back you can rotate through your cc skills and then kill them easily as they are in the field – usually wont spawn an additional plunderer.

I finally managed to get both of them done with a 0/10/0/30/30 d/d Ele using signet of earth, arcane blast, glyph of storms and glyph of elementals. The only reason I believe I was successful was because the right side plunderers didn’t spawn…

Anyone find out how to do this solo with an Ele yet? I’ve tried a lot, but the moment it starts spawning two plunders is where it falls apart for me.

Well… as a Charr, perhaps Gnashblade wants this researched so he can learn how to defeat other gods? You know how Charr feel about them, after all.

Honestly, I wish they’d do what they did in GW1 concerning festival hats. Add an NPC that will catalog these back items so they don’t suck up inventory space and we can always reacquire at our leisure, presuming that we already earned them of course.

Of course, it took Anet years to do that in GW1….

There’s also the fact that Glint was much older than most of the other Dragon Champions we see in game, and was active for a longer period of time. If she worked the same way Elder Dragons do concerning magic (and the short story does sort of give that impression), then she must have amassed a large amount of magical energy within her body over the millenia.

From the snippets of it that I’ve heard on the Zephyr Sanctum proper, I believe the song refers to Glint. It talked about a hero who died and mentions a desert; and then there is the woman near the front of the ship teaching a group of children about Glint, the Elder dragons and Eir.

Kralkatorrik couldn’t simply squash DE because he had Glint harrying him, and Snaff inside his mind, keeping the elder dragon from concentrating. It wasn’t until his minions got past the ground defenses, which were stretched too thin due to Logan going to save Queen Jennah, and killed Snaff that Kralkatorrik could turn his full attention to Glint and kill her. At that point, the battle was lost and DE retreated.

Personally, I’d like to know (in lurid detail) exactly what Gwen did to earn a title like “the Goremonger” from the Charr. They aren’t exactly a squeamish race after all…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

jheryn.8390:

4. What happened to the other Tyrian Heroes? Olias, Livia, Hayda, Anton, Vekk, Xandra, Kahmu

We can find Anton’s ghost. I forget where though, but one can find him in-game. He’s in Gendarran Fields, I think…

Gendarran Fields, Snowblind Peaks near Vollym’s Battle Pit

Honestly, I think I’d be happy with more light armor in the style of the Ritualist armor from GW1. “Skimpy”, nicely detailed, fairly equal amount of skin shown for both sexes.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ritualist_Armor

Nice hairstyles, the bottom left one reminds me of Zorg! Honestly, all the non-human races could use more hairstyles, especially the Charr.

Normally I don’t care for revealing armor, but I want to make a male Norn Elementalist. There are only two chest pieces for the light armor classes that would allow the chest tattoos I like to be visible, and one of them (Tribal) was removed from PVE for who knows what reason.

Seriously, what is the point of the tattoo/fur pattern/bio-luminescence options when there are so few armor sets that let you actually showcase them?