Guild Wars 2

My female human has dark red hair. :P

Wesley.4590:

Zaxares.5419:

Thereon.3495:

Here’s how I wouldve changed that to work with my ideas:

-snip-

I actually do like your ideas, and upon reflection, I can see how it would actually be feasible for ANet to satisfy your camp and mine. They just need to provide date/time details well in advance (5 days, while pretty generous, is actually still not enough for people like me with busy schedules or families to look after. We typically need at least 2 weeks advance notice to properly arrange our schedules), but without going into too much spoilers about what will happen. In the case of Wintersday, it might simply be a case of saying something like “Toymaker Tixx arrives in Lion’s Arch for the grand celebration! This is the most complex of all his efforts yet – let’s hope nothing goes wrong! Visit his airship workshop and lend a hand to ensure everything goes smoothly!”

I don’t know the exact date but didn’t they tell us about two weeks before the event from when until when the event would be with almost the exact amount of info in your example? The only thing they could improve is releasing the updated info a week before the event starts. I think that would be a nice timeline. Also the approximate dates weren’t a big surprise if you’ve played GW1.

Oh I know. I was predicting a GW2 Wintersday event ever since release. My “2 weeks notice” remark was in response to Thereon, where his system had a 5 day heads-up from one phase to the next. If we didn’t know how many phases there would be prior to the event starting, it would make planning and setting aside weekends for these events quite difficult.

I don’t even know where the heck CET is. XD It’s the first time I’ve heard of it!

Copper Ore still sells for around 15c each, and Jute Scraps around 20c each, so it’s actually still worthwhile to salvage most low level white armors. Rawhide tends to fluctuate a lot more wildly, but it rarely exceeds 7 or 8c, so I typically just vendor them.

Thereon.3495:

Here’s how I wouldve changed that to work with my ideas:

-snip-

I actually do like your ideas, and upon reflection, I can see how it would actually be feasible for ANet to satisfy your camp and mine. They just need to provide date/time details well in advance (5 days, while pretty generous, is actually still not enough for people like me with busy schedules or families to look after. We typically need at least 2 weeks advance notice to properly arrange our schedules), but without going into too much spoilers about what will happen. In the case of Wintersday, it might simply be a case of saying something like “Toymaker Tixx arrives in Lion’s Arch for the grand celebration! This is the most complex of all his efforts yet – let’s hope nothing goes wrong! Visit his airship workshop and lend a hand to ensure everything goes smoothly!”

Wait, Grenth is Dwayna’s son?? O.o This is gonna change my whole outlook on the whole Dwayna vs Grenth conflict during GW1 Wintersdays…

I very much doubt that orichalcum as it exists in GW2 is an alloy of gold and copper. More likely it is simply a name borrowed from mythology and given to a fictional ultra-rare/dense metal found in Tyria, the same way that mithril and adamantium/adamantine have made their way into just about every fantasy game out there.

Same here. Hopefully an ANet rep will reply here soon.

Speaking for myself, I am VERY glad for the amount of information ANet is providing about Wintersday. Under the OP’s suggestion, the Lost Shores event would have simply been “something special is happening on Day X at Y time”. There would have been no indication of how long it would take, or that you would get something very valuable at the end. Can you imagine how much more outrage there would have been if the Lost Shores finale had not mentioned there would have been a chest at all? Thousands more players would have missed out on their chance to get a Precursor.

No, I prefer this “information overload” approach. If avoiding spoilers is really an issue for you, I’d recommend not looking at the page at all, and then asking your friends to give you details on dates and times without the spoilers.

From the description, it sounds like there will be costumes and other festival stuff available directly for sale in the Gem Store, and then a special Wintersday chest similar to the Consortium chest. The BLC’s may get a makeover, but it could go either way at this point.

I’m really pleased with the way they’ve set up the event this time around. Having the event in each city take place for a whole day gives people plenty of opportunity to access it, and in case of an emergency, they can still access all the events from Dec 20 to Jan 3 (two whole weeks!) once Tixx arrives in LA. Well done, ANet. I’m glad you listened to our feedback.

The one thing I’m somewhat concerned about is they didn’t mention if there would be any one-time events when Tixx arrives in each of the cities. Things like special dialogue, cinematics etc. I probably won’t mind missing these too much if they’re just like the Mad King’s first appearance though.

Can’t wait for the new jumping puzzle!

Excellent move with the ability to replay a day’s events, ANet! I’m glad to see you’ve implemented improvements based on feedback from the Lost Shores event.

Just to confirm though, there aren’t any one-time events that take place when Tixx first shows up in the various cities?

This Wintersday I, Ploop the Didactic, will be giving away free copies of my latest bestseller, “Ploop’s Grande Bestiary – A Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Greater Tyria(1)” at special signings held in all major cities throughout Tyria! Don’t miss your chance to get your filthy paws on one of the greatest literary works ever to be produced, and (with dedicated study) raise your intellectual standards to near-compatibility with your Asuran peers!

(1) “Ploop’s Grande Bestiary – A Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Greater Tyria” utilises proprietary instantaneous ocular-cerebral data transfer algorithms. Side-effects may include headaches, nausea, blurred vision, vertigo, a temporary or permanent comatose state, and in the case of Charr and Norn users, uncontrollable drooling, prolonged flatulence and halitosis. Ploop the Didactic accepts no responsibility for any undesired effects experienced by non-Asuran users of “Ploop’s Grande Bestiary – A Comprehensive Guide to the Flora and Fauna of Greater Tyria”.

I play on a US server from Australia. Latency seems to be around the 200 – 300ms mark, but it’s manageable. You’d probably have a similar experience playing from Israel.

Scarlet Raven gave some very good examples of why I would never give out my login details to anyone. Even if the people involved are completely trustworthy and computer-smart, it’s still creating additional points of vulnerability that you can’t monitor yourself. If you feel confident enough to take the risk, go ahead, but if anything unfortunate happens, you only have yourself to blame.

The penalty for fraternizing with the enemy is DEATH!

Hard to say. It might be a single person buying on speculation for Wintersday, but you’d be chewing up a lot of precious storage to do so. More likely it’s a lot of people buying them up as speculation, or as a future long-term investment. (When prices are rock bottom, the only place to go is up!)

Heck, it could even be some high-end TP trader who’s so rich that he’s just buying stacks of Candy Corn off the TP and immediately destroying them because he can’t think of anything more fun to do with his gold.

Not having any of the raw data that ANet has, I can’t be certain about this, but I’m fairly sure that a large part of this general increase in prices is due to the fact that the “crest” of the player base has now reached level 80 and are starting to gobble up Legendaries and other end-game items at a ravenous pace. Level 80’s can also farm gold faster and more effectively than low-level players, but if they don’t farm the desired items themselves, all that happens is that players pay more for a limited supply, which leads to increased prices. Prices are increasing because players are becoming wealthier and are more willing to pay higher prices for items. Hence, inflation.

And because I’m sure somebody is going to chime in with “you’re forcing me to buy gold from gold sellers because everything’s too expensive!” at some point, it’s worth mentioning that buying gold from gold sellers will only exacerbate this problem. You’re just increasing the gold supply in the game, which means you again have more people willing to pay higher prices for items, which makes prices rise again.

The only way to bring prices back down is to increase supply, either by more players willing to farm the items themselves (ANet’s preferred option, I’m sure) or by ANet determining that prices for desired commodities are getting out of control and increase drop rates (and they’ll need to come up with a way to suck the excess gold out of the system too).

I didn’t get a chest in the mail, but as I did manage to get the reward the first time around, I guess I shouldn’t complain.

xExitium.5198:

You don’t need that many space for discovering cooking recipe. Since 101 of the mats are deposit-able & appear on discovery panel.

Ah, I forgot about cooking ingredients. It’s true that most of the materials can be deposited in the bank, it’s kind of annoying that advanced ingredients like Balls of Dough (I’m talking about ingredients that aren’t consumable food in themselves) can’t be stored. It’s not an issue for me as I bought all the extra Bank tabs and so I just dedicate one tab to cooking materials, but I agree that space can become a bit of a premium for a Chef.

Well, it depends on where you heard that particular line. If it’s from the Wolf Shaman after you complete his Renown Heart, he says that to everybody.

Flyfunner.2093:

What Hazmat was talking about

All that binge drinking the Norn indulge in probably doesn’t help their intelligence much either.

I have to admit I’m puzzled as to why people find this quest so annoying. To start things off, just grab a rabbit or a loose ore that’s lying around nearby and take it to one of the Jotun, who will probably buy it from anywhere from two to eight stones. From there, it’s just a matter of grabbing items near the jotun, running across to the other two jotun (the jotun almost never buy anything from their direct neighbors), and selling to one of them. Grab another item, run back across the snow, and repeat until you have about 30 stones. Turn them in to Albin and you’re done. This takes about 5 mins, tops.

Brechnar’s sacrifice is a little less dramatic when you could have pre-aggroed all of the Mursaat by running ahead of him so they don’t use Spectral Agony on him, only for him to run to a specific spot and then drop dead anyway. :P

My characters at the moment are still running around with 5 and 8 slot bags, and I typically never run out of inventory space. You just need to sell loot whenever you meet a merchant. Remember that you can sell loot to Heart NPC’s, armorsmiths, weaponsmiths etc. too!

Yeah, there are several food dishes whose names don’t quite match their recipe names, or who are stored in strange categories. One example I can think of off the top of my head is the Bowl of Watery Mushroom Soup you can learn from Elain in Caledon Forest. You’d think that the dish would be found under Soup, but no – it’s actually under Snacks. :P Took me a while to find it…

According to the Wiki they are a rare random drop from Young Karka, but I can’t verify that myself.

Icecreaman.5072:

ArenaNet needs to introduce recipes for creating copper, silver, and even platinum doubloons. There’s already one for gold doubloons. I don’t see why the others were not included.

With barely enough on the TP (and at crazy prices) for one person in the whole game to buy and make the Vial of Quicksilver, something needs to change.

I don’t believe that one should be able to create doubloons via crafting, as doubloons (and all Rare crafting materials) are obtained from drops only. However, I DO agree that we should be able to transmorgrify Copper Doubloons into Silvers, the same way we can upgrade Silvers to Golds, and Golds to Platinums. Copper Doubloons are a quest reward for Personal Stories, so this should help ease the shortfall.

Alternatively, the Gift of Quicksilver should be modified so it requires 150 Platinum Doubloons (to match the 150 Molten Lodestones) instead. If ANet deems that still too cheap for a Legendary Gift, change the 250 Steel Ingots to 250 Mithril Ingots as well.

AWSUMSAUCE.4372:

sorry um…. why do people want this item?

250 Silver Doubloons are needed for the Gift of Quicksilver, which is needed for crafting the Juggernaut legendary hammer.

The thing that mainly strikes me as odd is why Copper Doubloons can’t be transmorgrified into Silver Doubloons. Silvers can be upgraded to Golds, and Golds to Platinum, but Coppers are the odd one out. Seems like an oversight to me.

Prices for T1 mats have been falling steadily over the last few weeks, so I agree, farming level 80 zones and using the profits to buy the T1 materials you need is probably the most economical method at this time. However, if you still need to go back to low level zones to achieve 100% completion, or if you have alts that still need to be levelled, then it’s a no brainer to do that instead and use the mats gained on your level 80 main.

Surbrus.6942:

Zaxares.5419:

unless ANet introduces a way that players can convert karma to gold

They probably won’t do this, as you can already convert karma to gold.

Karma vender greens -> Mystic forge -> level 68+ yellows -> ectos

Just with some quick mental calculations, that’d give you about 1 gold per 30k karma at current ecto prices. Should ectos become more expensive, that exchange rate will only become more favourable towards gold.

This also acts as a large potential supply of ectos that will be made available to the market should the prices get up too high, as more and more people may opt for this strategy.

Now this I wasn’t aware of (probably because most of my characters still haven’t left the starter zones). What level do the greens have to be in order for the MF to start spitting out rares when you combine them?

It’s still a bit of a random shot, given the nature of the Forge, but you make a good case.

Sometimes resource nodes can spawn in an inaccessible location. One time there was a Rich Copper Vein in Plains of Ascalon that spawned halfway up a vertical slope with no way up.

Excellent write-up and theory, Konig. I’m also quite convinced that the “nightmare” in the Dream of Dreams is also the influence of the 6th Elder Dragon, possibly one that spreads through the earth and is uptaken by plants through their roots (which explains why they are usually the first to be corrupted). Animals can, in turn, eat these plants and take the Blight into themselves, becoming corrupted versions of their normal selves.

What remains unanswered is what “force” Mordramoth (is it Mordramoth or Mordremoth?) represents. Each of the other Elder Dragons represents a kind of primordial force or element, such as fire, ice, crystal/earth and death. Thus far Blighted creatures do not seem to indicate any kind of common theme apart from simply being “corrupted”.

However, if the Elder Dragons were inspired by the Great Old Ones from Call of Cthulhu, as ANet mentioned in their artbook, then Mordramoth may represent an unnatural form of life similar to Shub-Niggurath. In the Cthulhu mythos, creatures afflicted by Shub-Niggurath or her minions usually experience tremendous and fecund growth, but the offspring always prove to be hideously mutated or twisted in some fashion. Mordramoth’s domain may be “life”, but it is a parasitic, infectious form of life that feeds upon existing creatures instead of growing on its own.

There’s also the odd NPC that speaks in a male/female voice when their model is the opposite gender.

Black Lion Salvage Kits apparently do not give any higher chance for ectos when used to salvage items. Therefore, the only reason you would ever use a BLSK is when there’s an upgrade on an item that you absolutely, positively MUST get. (Like a Superior Rune of Divinity.) Personally I wouldn’t use it unless the upgrade I wanted to get out was worth at least 1g.

Afraid not (living in Australia myself), but your best bet would be to try whatever big game retailers you have in Canada that typically sell AAA titles. (GameStop or EBGames, for instance. Not sure if they operate in Canada.)

Awesome.6120:

Quaggan letters are the best.

LIES! Everyone knows that the most awesome letter comes from Veteran Krug. “Krug not scared!”

You can buy gem cards (I believe they come in 1000 and 2000 gem amounts) in some stores and gift those to the people you’re thinking of. That’s the recommended method from an ANet rep.

@Vendetta: Mostly when you do diving jumps. But also for some female armors with skirts, you can see their underwear (swimwear?) while you’re swimming.

Ryuujin.8236:

Zaxares.5419:

Will ANet refund the people who dropped hundreds of gold on Precursors before the Lost Shores chest was revealed to drop them? I’m willing to bet all of my GW2 savings (which isn’t that much, so don’t get excited :P) that the answer is “No”.

Little different. Precursor price is set by the players, T3 price is set by arenanet. Suddenly deciding “You know what… have T3 armour for free! – Our compliments” would enrage a lot of people, maybe even see people quit.

You know as well as I that ANet would never make T3 armor free. :P (Yes, I’m aware that it’s hyperbole, but it’s still a silly example.) As I said before, I very much doubt that ANet will change the price of T3 armor, but they may make it purchasable with karma down the track, as eventually players are going to complain that they have a ton of karma and nothing to spend it on (unless ANet introduces a way that players can convert karma to gold, the same way that GW1 let you convert Balthazar faction to gold in the form of Zaishen keys).

Ryuujin.8236:

What do you propose they do about the thousands of people who’ve spent hard earned gold on it.

T3 armour serves as a massive gold sink, it takes lots of gold out the economy and thus mitigates the rate of inflation. if you take away the gold sink the value of gold decreases and people start complaining about rampant inflation.

If you refund all the gold taken out the system to date – inflation jumps overnight. If you don’t refund the gold, thousands of players ragequit and write scathing articles about arenanet’s behaviour.

Nothing.

ANet will do nothing to refund the people who paid more to get it. Case in point: cheaper, easier-to-get Precursors. Will ANet refund the people who dropped hundreds of gold on Precursors before the Lost Shores chest was revealed to drop them? I’m willing to bet all of my GW2 savings (which isn’t that much, so don’t get excited :P) that the answer is “No”.

Early adopters always lose out over the long-term. And this is fair, because they are paying a higher price for the ability to get whatever it is they purchased earlier than everyone else.

Again though, I stress that my objection to T3 Cultural armor is not the price (which I appreciate serves a dual purpose as a prestige item and a gold sink). I just wish that T3 Cultural armor was Exotic tier (or maybe even Ascended when Ascended armor comes out), because it feels so bizarre to be dropping that much gold on a sub-par suit of armor. If Cultural armor was nothing but skins that you applied to another suit of armor, I wouldn’t have any issue with it, because then obviously you’re buying it just for the appearance. But as it stands, it just feels like you’re getting a half-finished product.

I’m not against the concept in general, but I agree that it’d be too much work for not enough reward, especially since players who want to marry their characters can simply RP it. (And maybe change their names to match once the Name Change gem store item is released.)

Yeah, it’s a known error. Like all Maintenance oils, it’s supposed to give a bonus to Precision. Sharpening Stones are the items that grant bonuses to Power.

It’s a hack. I’ve seen a few teleporting farmers myself, but not many as I’m still in the starter zones and there’s not much profit in harvesting T1 nodes. I imagine ANet’s aware of it and gathering data so they can do a mass ban and fix the code loophole at the same time.

My female Human Mesmer rolls her eyes at his antics, but still finds him endearing in the manner of an older sister watching out for a rambunctious younger brother. She knows his heart’s in the right place, but Faren’s always been a little too intimidated by her to really woo her. (In the same way I don’t believe Faren’s ever tried to court Anise or even Jennah, because he knows they’re way out of his league.)

It’ll take a much more commanding, indomitable Charr- er, man to win her heart. XD

draxynnic.3719:

Countess Anise and Jennah are two of the most powerful mesmers in the setting, if not THE most powerful mesmers.

And yet Anise crumpled like wet paper underneath the hammer of Eitel the Unlovable, leaving me to deal with him and Minister Zamon all by myself. XD Then again, I’m willing to handwave this considering that the abilities of Destiny’s Edge don’t always match up with their reputation in-game.

I was in Queensdale for about an hour last night and didn’t see the Behemoth. However, I also noticed that the event involving defending the Monastery from centaurs and its subsequent events didn’t seem to be firing either. It may be that the rollback to fix the jumping bug also ended up breaking the DE fixes for the Monastery as well.

I’m not against making Cultural armor purchasable through karma either, although my main wish is that T3 armor be made Exotic instead of just Rare. I’m fine with keeping it at its current price in its dual capacity as a gold sink/prestige armor.

I have to say I haven’t noticed any particular change in the dye drop rate since the fix/nerf. Last weekend I found a total of 4 dyes on Saturday, and another 3 on Sunday. I got another one last night during 1.5 hours of play. This is roughly consistent with the drop rates I was seeing back when I first started playing, perhaps a bit lower.

The thing is, most of my dye is found via harvesting from plant nodes. It is very, very rare for me to actually get one from a slain enemy. I’m not sure if the people reporting low drop rates of dyes are also harvesting frequently in PvE, or whether they are focusing purely on dropping enemies.