Guild Wars 2

Interview

After the announcement of HoT, many players were concerned that the old game content would be left in the dust. Unfortunately, that is partially true. But Johanson wanted to reassure players that even though there is a lot of focus on the new HoTness, events like Halloween will still continue and patches will still come to the old game. Johanson believes that there will be plenty to do in the old game for free players. – Source

So Halloween will still be running this year, but as to whether it is before or after the release of HoT, we don’t know yet. It is possible it might be dropped alongside the expansion.

SkullProX.7083:

So new question again.
I got 2,256 power as a lv80 thief, with full exo set, and scholar runes, is there any way other than ascended to increase the power? I feel like my damage is kinda low…

You can use food and oil that has the power stat on it. Also check your trinkets to see if they have power as their largest stat (with berserker trinkets as an example, which is probably the best gear stat-type for physical dps output).

Also consider your precision as well as power, as Berserker-stat gear will give you both power, precision and ferocity which could give you frequent critical hits which really increase your damage output more than simply stacking power.

I just got my first one from a jumping puzzle chest after parking a level 22 there and opening every day for 32 days.

RNG is RNG, no matter how cruel.

I’ve had up to 8,000 tokens for some dungeons, and I have heard of others above 10,000. So I think it is safe to not worry about a cap!

Jana.6831:

Already described it: have to turn your mouse more to get the same effect – rotation speed only helps that much and I have to adjust it with every (sometimes unnanounced) change made for first person view – which is annoying.

Hmm, I’ve never experienced my rotation speed randomly resetting or changing after an update, even throughout the first person view release. So I’m quite confident in saying that it isn’t the first person view that is creating those issues.

1) You can turn it off in your Options. Otherwise, I really don’t understand how it has impacted your “steering”? Simply removing it would make a lot of players angry, especially as it is already an optional component.

2) See the latest patch notes:

Notes

“Altered arrow cart line-of-sight checks to be more restrictive.” – Source

Phil.7903:

But why did they remove fractal lfg then?

A certain ladybug crawled into their code.

Because fractals are considered a type of “dungeon” content. So if fractals were given an icon, it would likely have to be included in a general “dungeon” icon. And (as you mentioned) some dungeons require pre-requisite events to be opened, I’m not quite sure how that would work.

Further, if it were solely a fractal icon, what else would you put onto the fractal page aside from your personal fractal level, setting the fractal level and enter button? It just seems to me like that would be a lot of development for something that won’t fundamentally change how fractals are opened.

I like the idea, but I just don’t see it happening (but hey, who knows – there is a fractal update coming with Heart of Thorns, perhaps they will implement it).

It seems likely they will stay – I haven’t seen them remove anything that they’ve added to laurel merchants before, and I don’t see them doing it in the future. Of course, that is my speculation though.

Randulf.7614:

In the event this is a serious thread, the company has been overwhelmed with complaints, with Anet themselves issuing an apology about the event. Why would they release it again next weekend with the same reward prices? That would be nuts!

It has been suggested by players that they might bring it back the following weekend, but along with all of the fixes they intended to (but couldn’t) bring to it before the weekend hit and all of the developers went home.

So it is speculation, but still possible. Either that, or they might extend it through next week once the developers are back to fix it.

Here is the quote on that:

Gaile

We have been tracking player response and recognize that this event has not gone as intended. We’re at a point where we can’t change anything more about this event for this weekend without risk to the greater portion of the game. We also are going to postpone our plans to organize an in-game event around the Mordrem Invasion this afternoon. Instead, we’re going to continue to monitor for your feedback and collect information that will help us improve on these types of events going forward. – Source

There used to be an underwater golem-dummy (or I think an entire practice area) in the PvP lobby area, “Heart of the Mists”. However, with the removal of the “Raid on the Capricorn” PvP map which was heavily focused on underwater combat, I think the underwater golem was locked off.

It was quite a while ago, so I might be wrong.

Other than that one, I don’t think there has been any other underwater practice dummies.

I’m happy with pretty much all of the direction the game is going, but there are a few small things that would make me happy if they made it in 2016 or later:

• LS Season 1 replayable in some way (specifically the last 4 updates and their epic events, and of course SAB)
• New world boss(es) on a timer, rather than at the end of a large meta-event
• And the big one: Female idle animation returned

Currently, there isn’t any definitive DPS tracker that one can use to see their exact DPS output unfortunately.

But there is the PvP Lobby area, “The Heart of the Mists”, which has some attackable golems which players can test out builds on, and you can gather how quickly/slowly you kill the same enemy with both builds to determine the DPS output. It also has an NPC of each profession to the northern part of it for you to test out the build on other professions.

You can access it by opening up your PvP panel and clicking on “Enter PvP Lobby” in the top left.

8, one of each profession at level 80. Soon to be 9 once the Revenant comes out.

I agree that the new icon is difficult to see, but I think it would be too confusing to simply change it back at this point if Hero Points suddenly had the Skill Point icon.

Perhaps they could simply change the colour of the current icon to something that is clearer on a map?

binidj.5734:

1. At the end of each event spawn a chest containing some blooms.
2. At the end of the meta-event (in addition to daily bonus) give blooms to all participants based on the number of events completed in the zone.

1) However, what would stop players from doing what they are doing now in order to maximise the number of reward chests they get from events? – Players will still be running around tagging the events to get as many of those chests as possible. (Though of course, I wouldn’t complain at some extra blooms, but the tagging issue would still be there).

2) This I agree with; why does the total appear if it doesn’t contribute to anything? But then how could you combat against AFK’ers like in the Escape from Lion’s Arch “Miasma” event?

Hmm, “validation” – have you set up the 2-stage security for your account? That’s either the authenticator, or SMS security depending on which you chose (or which you prefer if you had not yet done it).

So it is possible that if you have not yet applied a 2-stage security for your account, it will unlock briefly afterwards. But I don’t know this for a fact I’m afraid, so it will be most likely that you have to wait for 4 days.

The reason behind this is to prevent new accounts (namely, free accounts owned by gold sellers and other like-minded people) from completely draining the BLT stock and causing prices to skyrocket for paying players.

You will see many people running around and doing things regardless of which home server you choose. This is because there is a megaserver system in place that will always put players into a map that has several other players (as opposed to a single server for each home world). If you need more information on the megaserver system, it is explained pretty effectively here.

The only place that a home server matters is for WvW, and you can have a look at the WvW leaderboards to see which server you want to join.

Higher ranking servers are much more focused on zerg vs zerg fighting, whereas lower ranking servers are much more casual and don’t have as many large-group fights.

Invictus.1503:

It was remarked here in the forums, but most people don’t look at the bug section. Here is the response found right here in these forums:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Mordrem Invasion Update:

We know that some of you are experiencing issues with the Mordrem Invasion Event. A few notes:

• The team is aware of the issues and is working on a fix, which will be rolled out as soon as possible.
• Once this is live, we anticipate future incursions of the Mordrem will take place as planned, and rewards will be given as intended.
• Those who earned rewards and did not receive them will be given their rewards. This could take several days, so please allow time this to happen.

Thanks for your patience as we work on the resolution of this issue.

Keep in mind that was only posted nearly 20 minutes ago, whereas the developer reddit post was over 2 hours ago.

That should have been in reverse; official forums should be more important for posting official updates than Reddit.

Welcome back!

Currently, legendaries are still acquired in the exact same method as with the release back in 2012. But with Heart of Thorns on October 23rd, a new method of acquiring the precursors for legendaries will be available through a new mastery track which lets each account earn every precursor once. Though the legendaries themselves will still involve some mystic forge crafting.

You can read this blog post here for the details on that.

As for dungeons, they are still very active and are run every minute through the LFG system, and with the daily gold rewards you receive from each path, it is quite a profitable method for acquiring gold quickly and efficiently.

To help with getting tier 6 materials, I recommend you spend some laurels on “Heavy Crafting Bags” which contain three random tier 6 materials each, which helps with a lot of the cost. With the new daily log in reward system, earning laurels is quite easy.

They converted Skill Points into Spirit Shards, and Skill Point challenges into Hero Point challenges, so you still have Hero Points which you will be using to unlock and complete your Elite Specialization.

Since you are given enough Hero Points at level 80 to maximize your core Training, any extra Hero Point challenges you complete will go forward to unlocking your Elite Speciliazation come the release of HoT.

You will be able to use all existing characters to play HoT once the expansion launches on 23rd October.

The beta characters you are using now are solely for that – the beta – and will be deleted come the release of HoT. This is to prevent players from receiving new items and progressing the new systems (masteries etc) before the expansion actually launches, and of course, to test.

I find it likely it will be there forever (of course, until the servers are closed in 10/20/30 years or whatever).

What the white star indicates is that this is your most recently played episode. If you hover over it, I think it states that.

It is annoying for it to have a different symbol from all of the others, but so far there isn’t anything we can do to change it back to the normal golden star (as far as I know) without causing another episode to have the white star instead.

Derdhal.6908:

Colin said in PAX there’ll be new karma merchants in HoT, so…

Enough said.

For the original legendary weapons, they are remaining the exact same as they are now (there is just a one-time alternative to acquiring the precursor of each legendary once). So you will still need to craft Gifts for the older legendaries.

As for whether or not the new legendaries will require new Gifts, we don’t yet know. But one can assume they will also require Gifts in order to create.

Then everyone will run around with the title that gives the best buff.

Like most other things in this game, it should stay purely cosmetic.

Haven’t noticed any change to my FPS.

Check your graphics settings and see if your “Render Sampling” is set to Supersample (that causes a lot of FPS issues to some machines. Also check your Character Model Limit, which if set to very high will usually reduce frames as well.

If those weren’t the issue, it might have been a hardware failure on your end, but I am not very experienced with those.

Depending on which country she lives in, if you know her address you could purchase a physical case to be delivered to her. Of course, physical copies are limited to only a handful of retailers, so there might not be any available in the country she lives in.

I don’t know any other method that won’t be simply giving a serial code or the money to purchase. Otherwise – I hope you manage to find some way of doing this.

Seth Moonshadow.2710:

I noticed the Beta Weekend achievements in the General achievements tab. I really like the Mastery Point reward for completing those achievements!! It also acts as a nice guide for things to do while playing in BWE2!

Many threads already open on the topic, one large example to be this one.

arakkune.1429:

So the base game is free to play what are you people’s impressions from it I havent noticed anything out of the ordinary no bot spam no nothing I went to metrica province and saw there were some new players but from my point of view the game hasnt boomed with f2p like most others mmos(at least first weeks). So discuss im rly interested in opinions considering how noone wanted this to happen

Already a mammoth thread on this topic, which I suspect this thread will merge with.

There was a thread on this near the start of August. That_Shaman’s data-mining found mimic chests to be an upcoming minature, but as to when it will arrive we don’t know for certain.

The real risk though is the infinite access that gold sellers will then have to posting in that forum.

Yes I agree that legitimate new players should be able to have access to that forum (maybe it is unlocked once they reach 100AP or level 30?), but I don’t think having several pages of gold selling spam would be a good impression to new players either.

Xyonon.3987:

…If you can’t pull or stun enemies that are trash mobs, the game is gonna die…

Well, that escalated quickly.

For real though, the breakbar isn’t stopping you from being able to interrupt a boss. In fact, you will be much more likely to be able to interrupt with the breakbar in place; rather than having to co-ordinate 65+ stacks of Defiant in order to get a CC on a world boss you only need to co-ordinate about ~5-10 CC skills (don’t know how much it will scale) to interrupt the breakbar.

For dungeon bosses, it has stayed pretty much the same as you currently only need to break through 4 stacks of defiance after each interrupt, and will likely only need to use 4 CC skills come Heart of Thorns in order to interrupt the breakbar.

So, I don’t see how you think this will be an issue?

I suspect that only those who have purchased Heart of Thorns will have access to the new Elite Specializations.

However, as sPvP will automatically unlock the Elite Specializations for you without having to unlock them yourselves, part of me thinks they will be available for everyone in sPVP in order to keep equality and balance in check.

Unfortunately, from the list of official retailers, Serbia does not appear to be a country which sells physical editions of Heart of Thorns. So it would seem if you really want a boxed edition you are most likely going to have to import it from another European country.

One that I know for a fact has a physical edition would be AmazonUK, which comes in a physical case and should deliver to Serbia.

Combined with some of the datamining from that_shaman, it is very suggestive we might see an event before Heart of Thorns.

Though of course, it could just be for something else far down the line. Although part of me thinks it will be something to do with the next beta weekend event.

Malligma.3459:

Understood. Does the Dev team or anyone from ANet look at these posts?

Some of them browse the forums daily, but only a couple post (mainly as they don’t have that much time to post – but they do read). And there are the moderators which read pretty much every thread.

From the Wiki, it states that Ranked arena matches have required rank 20 to participate. Are you sure you aren’t confusing them with Unranked and Custom matches?

I’ll check through notes though to see if it is one of them.

Edit: Actually, as of August 25th, Ranked arenas now require Rank 20 to participate. So you are correct that it is new. Here is the quote:

Patch Notes

Ranked Arena is now restricted to players rank 20 and above. – Source

Hmm, still look the same to me.

Just to add a little more onto RoseofGilead, go to Options → Control Options → Movement → Walk.

If a key is assigned to “Walk”, try pressing it again.

As it is not available at this moment, part of me thinks it will never be available. Of course though, it could eventually appear (possible it might after the expansion drops and sales die down a little) – no one really knows for certain at this moment, except ANet of course.

schulzki.1862:

the solution would be to make the elite specs free for wvw, as they are for pve.

They made that solution for sPVP, but as WvW doesn’t require gear/build balancing and equality, they did not make it automatic for WvW as well. Here is the quote for it being automatic for sPVP:

Blog

PvP players won’t have to worry about unlocking anything, as all skills and traits will be automatically unlocked upon entering the Heart of the Mists. – Source

As for your other question, we don’t know the exact amount, but I would suspect it is closer to the 91 you suggested, as the Elite Specialization consists of one new trait line, 4 utility skills, 1 healing skill and 1 elite skill. So it should be similar to already existing specializations.

Michael.9403:

I purchased the core game several months ago but have not gotten around to using the game code until now. I don’t want to purchase anything, but simply use the item I’ve purchased.

Then I would go to this link “register.guildwars2.com” and log in at the top right hand corner. Once logged in “Redeem a Code” should be an option on your Overview page. Try inputting the code there once you click on it and then submit.

This should upgrade your account to the full core account with no restrictions. I don’t think the code should have expired (if they can, they might not ever expire).

Since the expansion’s pre-purchase appeared, purchasing solely a core account has become significantly more difficult as ANet are trying to keep all of their players in one boat. With that said, if you are only looking to purchase the core game, the only places left are retailers that have core copies left over, ANet themselves no longer sell it.

An example of a retailer that might still sell the core game would be AmazonUS or AmazonUK, as well as Walmart or Gamestop if you are in the US.

The only other way to become an ordinary full account is to purchase Heart of Thorns, which is what I recommend since it comes with the core game fully unlocked as well.

There is no free alternative to becoming an ordinary full account.

If you have a serial code and are looking to apply it to your existing account, you can go to “register.guildwars2.com” and log-in at the top right corner and apply the code.

I hope that answered your question.

schulzki.1862:

you can not imagine how much i hope that you are right on this one but still… why is it that we have to do hero challenges to unlock class mechanics, even if they are elite…? why not give it to those ppl who purchased HoT?

Because it is effectively how ANet are giving us new profession mechanics akin to how other MMO’s make you level up to unlock new skills with their expansions. As HoT has no level cap increase, this is their method of having players unlock new skills/mechanics for their professions.

It gives HoT some more gameplay incentive, which I personally think is for the better, but can understand where it will be frustrating (I have 8 characters, and I know of others that have 60 characters, so I understand the annoyance it might cause).

TheCracker.4650:

Cheers guys.
I’ve been playing for quite a while, but not during Living World season 2. Guess I gotta buy it separately then.

As a side note, if you are only interested in Season 2’s story and not the rewards and achievements, you can party up with another player that has Season 2 unlocked and play all 8 episodes with them.

However, you won’t receive any of the rewards or unlock any achievements – that way is solely to experience the Season.

And adding on to Tuomir; once Heart of Thorns launches, if you have purchased the expansion, your leveling bar will turn into a mastery progression bar at level 80, and once it fills you will have completed one mastery. Every time you level after that will complete another mastery. An example of a mastery is the ability to glide in the new expansion areas, etc.

One more incentive to get all of your characters to level 80. At level 80, you have enough Hero Points for all of the core training, so you would only need to do some extra hero challenges to complete the Elite Specializations.

As you are already doing WvW with these characters, you should be level 80 quite quickly.

TheCracker.4650:

Heya, new to level 80, I have a couple of questions

a) Is Living World Season 2 included in HoT or do I have to purchase that seperately?
b) What’s the best way of salvaging? What should I salvage for ectos, what should I throw into the MF, what should I TP?
c) What’s the best way to start doing Dungeons? I’m interested in running all 4 paths, as well as getting Achievements. I am not part of a guild, LFG seems to only be interested in speed-clears and I don’t have a big friendslist. Any suggestions?
d) Which JP and World bosses are worth redoing for the loot? (Tequatl and TT obv.)

Thank you in advance!

A) You have to purchase that separately from the gem store, unless you were playing before January 2015, in which case you might have some episodes unlocked for free.

B) It’s mostly up to you; for ectos, you have to salvage any rare or exotic above level 68 for the best chance at getting them. Alternatively, you could sell rares and exotics to get some fair amount of coin. Or if you like chancing your luck, you could attempt to throw 4 rares or 4 exotics into the mystic forge in the slim hopes of receiving an expensive precursor item.

C) Simply join an LFG run, though preferably one that says “anyone welcome” or “first time” since you are new to dungeons. I recommend you watch some youtube guides of the dungeon paths you are most interested in completing, as that does help you in understanding how each dungeon works (and hey, you might be able to teach some others how it works too). And then you can join any LFG dungeon group since you have the experience of the path.

D) Tequatl is the best for repeating (though, you’ve already said that). Then pretty much every other world boss is good to repeat. The only few I might argue against are the Claw of jormag (Takes soooo long and gives too little), Megadestroyer (pre-events are a hassle to get started/complete) and Triple Trouble (if you have a Guild that organizes it regularly or you join a community Teamspeak, then you are set)

Welcome to Tyria, and I hope that answered some questions!

With the case of Season 1, it doesn’t necessarily need “fixing” at the moment. It was temporary content that played out for over a year and a half, and as a result, an unfortunately large number of players did not experience its story.

They had added Magister Ela Makkay to give an overview of Season 1 in Lion’s Arch, but of course that will spoil the story for you. However, simply playing through Season 2 will also be pretty spoiler heavy for Season 1.

I think it goes without saying that you will have to bite the bullet and spoil Season 1 for yourself without experiencing it fully, as Heart of Thorns will revolve around a lot that happened in Season 1 and Season 2, and you will be rather clueless at some points I am sure.

Otherwise, Season 1 will likely not return until long after Heart of Thorns drops, as the developers will need to re-work it in order for it to be re-playable with the new GW2 engine (as they did not implement Season 1 with the story journal in mind). So since Heart of Thorns is coming first, I recommend you look into the story of Season 1, as you will most likely be spoiled for it in Season 2 or Heart of Thorns anyway.