Guild Wars 2

Vitus Dance.4509:

It’s going to happen whether you agree with it or not.

And when / if (cause they did say it’s just a plan) that happens on lvl15+ maps, I’m leaving the game.
I will miss the game I initially got though, and I will miss my server community.

runeblade.7514:

Nike.2631:

Nike.2631:

I just want to know how it works with multi-map flags like the Corrupted Statues in Orr.

Do the three Orr maps just work in permanently affixed clusters or do I face the possibility of flipping a temple in one map, strolling across the border to the next map and finding the corresponding statues there still active?

And now I know.

And frankly I’m DISGUSTED.

For a bunch of storytellers who chased after EPICNESS to the verge of complete nonsense, throwing away the ability to have any interaction carry across zone borers is a GIGANTIC STEP BACKWARDS.

Removing empty wastelands is a step backwards. okay.

That’s only a minor aspect of the megaserver system that could have been solved in other ways (see the proposed “underflow”). But it comes at too high a cost of destroying the server communities and boss gameplay as we knew them.

No, they were busy kittening up the server system creating community-destroying Overflows nobody asked for. Oh well.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Why create a separate thread? We already have this one and this one, it will get merged at best.

Because this is a HUGE GAME BREAKINGCHANGING ISSUE and needs to be discussed as much as possible and it’s problems need to be brought up to the surface in the most visible manner possible! It is difficult to do that with the other 2 threads that have 500+ posts each.

Nexxius.6017:

Blizzard added connected realms: Placing two realms of the same kind together in one group. Meaning all the PVPers of one server were put together with the other PVPers of another server and all the RPers were put with their own kind too. Much better.

“Underflow” idea that was suggested a lot is also preferable to this mega-overflow system. Cause fixing the issue of underpopulated maps like Timberline at the expense of destroying the community feeling in cities and elsewhere it too high a price to pay!
And the reason Snowden and Timberline are underpopulated in the first place is that there is nothing to do there once you explored them.

Vaugh.7193:

Im about 90% sure Ill just quit the game when the megaserver hits, so no, Im not happy with this.

Same feeling bro. And it sucks, because I love my server community – it is the reason I kept playing through the atrocity of a Living Story!

bri.2359:

Too bad if you have a job in the EU and want to daily do the mega-boss events.
Here are the new spawn times (all CEST):

18:00 Karka Queen
19:00 Tequatl
20:00 Evolved Jungle Wurm

Then nothing until the next day …

18:00 many still at work or on their way home
19:00 same as above or recently arrived home
20:00 having dinner

Given the time required for organising events like the Wurm, these events will be out-of-reach for many during the week,

THIS. The ultimate problem with restricting timers on megabosses. It really, really saddens me.
Anet, please understand that not everyone plays all day long. As with the community aspect, you are removing player’s choice and that verges on uninstalling.

Not everyone agrees, there is a lot of valid criticism. To me this is Anet’s worse mistake so far, counting Scarlet. When implemented on maps lvl15+, it will hinder established communities. While it may have worked from the start, it is NOT something to add 1.5 years after release!
It also takes the CHOICE away from us players. F-list and Guilds do not make all of our social interaction and a game system shouldn’t make the choice for us when choosing who we play with.
Organising public in-game events will become impossible. Shouting in city map chat for reinforcements in WvW will become impossible. Running with allied guilds will become very difficult (as there is not “Alliance button”). Megaboss timers limit our gaming time.
Considering Anet talked about “removing restrictions” (oh the sweet irony!), this is a very limiting development.

Palador.2170:

So, what do you think? Overall bad? Overall good? What parts work together, and what parts don’t? (Trait hunting and Megaserver, I’m looking at you.)

Overall? Bad, with the “mega-overflow-blob” system. ArenaNet can keep their account bound dyes and other little changes, the major impact of the April 15th is the destruction of server communities as they are.

The Good:

• Guilds being able to spawn own Megabosses.
  It’s not an instance that was much asked for, but at least it’s a step in the right direction, and helps Megaboss guilds after they’re making organisation much more tedious with the new all-servers-are-overflows system.
• Guilds able to get influence from all servers and chapter will not exist. That’s been asked for and I’m glad devs addressed it.
• Account bound WXP. Very useful, it will be more interesting to set up alts for WvW now.
• Free re-traiting, anytime outside combat. The cost wasn’t that high so that’s a small change, but it is very useful that to quickly change between dungeon zerk and WvW build without visiting the trainer.
• Wardrobe system. A good feature as it’s not a destructive process like the current transmutation. Nice to see all the unlocked skins in one place.
• Account bound dyes (?). Overall probably good. It’s saves money, a lot. But it makes all the hard work of the people who went for expensive dyes on their alts a waste.
• No more repair costs. Minor change, but a good one. Less dreary.
• Only ok thing about “megaserver” – places like Timberline and Snowden will now have a few more ppl.
  Problem & solution: Mid-lvl maps with low pop are empty because there is no reason to go there once we’ve explored them. With Megaserver, they will still be underpopulated. Solution is to ADD CONTENT, not necessarily merge maps.

The Bad

• Trait change. While the system seems ok, why the need to introduce something so drastically different over a year since release?
• Build change after grind to Ascended gear.
• DPS nerf with the zerk nerf. It does NOT change the game nor the meta. Crit damage changes only make the overall best damage output less by 10%. But how will this change current issues? It will just require more time for the same dmg, it will make dungeon runs longer and more tedious, it will make open world events with timers more stressful. Like increased health pools in HotW: still doable, but boring. This will still not teach people to run decent builds, and large-scale open world events will fail due to those poor-build folk who do not care to listen.
  Solution: Different mechanics, and not DPS nerfs, are needed to encourage build versatility. A good step in that direction was the need for Condition Damage parties in the Wurm event. New encounters should give us a reason to run different builds, but current ones, like Knightfall, were pure DPS-meters.
• Acc-bound Dyes (?): One Unindentified Dye does not make up for 2 Abyssesl!
• Megaserver: loosing the ability to see which Waypoints are contested. Paying much higher cost of WPing. Loosing gamig time for tedious nonsense.
• Megaserver: unable to see the status of Orr Temples. Is this the “epic connected storytelling across zones”? Nope.
• Megaserver: Gathering Nodes. Maps are likely to change as we switch between the alts when gathering in Orr/Frostgorge.
• Megaserver: loosing the ability to create a gathering map for fellow players.
• Megaserver: negative impact on ESTABLISHED COMMUNITIES.
• Megaserver: problem with running events with allied guilds – there is no in-game Allaince option. Server that chooses for us will not be able to recognise our connection to players that aren’t on our F-list or guild.
• Megaserver: TAKING THE CHOICE AWAY from players. What if we want to see our server guild tags around instead of complete strangers. Guild and F-list DO NOT make up ALL social connections in this game!
• Megaserver = overflows. Anet please take a look at feedback. Overflows are the most hated thing that came out of GW2 (except maybe Scarlet).
• Megaserver: loss of In-Game Events “meet at X pm at server Y”.
• Megaserver Megaboss TIMERS: restriction in how many times we can set up Megaboss runs. Wurm still needs lots of training and attempts; frequent runs are necessary. Also, not everyone can play all times a day! We need more options, especially for events that require a lot of organised people.

The UGLY:

• Whole Mega-Overflow-Cloud Nonsense. Wrote a lot about it in the MegaServer thread. While this might have worked from the start, it is NOT a good idea to implement such a game breakingchanging feature 1.5 years down the line when we have established communities! This is one NGE that verges on the say-bye-and-uninstall.
  With poorly developed story, and constant nerfs / changes to builds, my server community was the only thing that kept me playing. When they fully take servers away, it’s bye bye GW2.

So after reading the 2 blog posts that were supposed to explain all our concerns, I’m convinced that the only good thing in a sea of bad ideas, is that they’ve finally given the guilds ability to spawn our own Teq and Wurm. Thank you Anet, that was much asked for. If you ignored the cries for Instances, at least this is one step in the right direction.

However, the 2 blog posts still do not clearly address the key concerns that were brought up in this thread:

• Will we still have real servers we’ll spawn to upon logging in, like at present? Or are they only valid for WvW now?
• Will be have the choice to go to the real e.g. “Ruins of Surmia” server should we wish? Can someone please CONFIRM what is happening to guesting?
• Will we be able to chose between different maps in the mega-overflow-cloud?
• What about our friendly / co-server guilds? Will we still see familiar guild tags when running around the map in your sea of overflows? (since other guilds would hardly count towards gathered data – you cannot have all the friendly guilds on the F-list!)
  Suggestion: Please, if you must go on with this megablob system, please introduce an guild alliance in-game system, so that we can still have a CHOICE to be around the people we want to play with.

CoF & CoE waypoints & impact this has on node gathering saddens me. We now need to spend more money and time to get what we want. Keep your repair costs and account bound stuff, this is a much bigger restriction that that ever was.

Rhetorical questions: Since when is it a good idea for an computer system to take away our choice of where and with whom to play the game? And how is it a good idea to introduce such a drastically different system a year and a half since the release, when we already have established communities?!

kgptzac.8419:

-snip-

As I posted before in this thread, the only good thing about this new system is that places like Snowden or Timberline will maybe have a decent number of people, when/if this is applied to 15+lvl maps. It will still not be a huge number of players because not a lot of people are interested in those maps. Hence them being abandoned.
However, more populated places will suffer in terms of community spirit of you have separate overflow-clouds and if you cannot chose from them (something they haven’t explained yet). Cause essentially, the megablob system makes the choice for us.
I don’t care for playing with randoms, I want to see friendly faces I AFK next to or run world bosses next to and have funny map chat with. I wanna see my server’s guild tags around. And I definitelly dont want any server bashing, which always came up in overflows during big events like Knightfall. By removing real servers, all we have left is a cloud of overflows essentially.

But one thing is important here: underpopulated maps will still be underpopulated as there is no reason to go to them anymore, after you’ve explored them. Megaserver insn’t the solution, adding more interesting content is a solution.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Community isn’t just guild/friend list. Community is essentially everyone on your server, and that is being messed with.

One of the most exciting aspects of the new system is that it gets you playing with members of your home server more often.

Huh? We we can do that NOW. By simply going to a server we want. By simply being in a community on our own servers, surrounded by our friendly server guilds, by our server WvW brothers/sisters-in-arms. What exactly do you mean “more often” as opposed to now, when we can choose with whom to play with at all times?

ExAstris.8527:

The anxiety is this thread boils down to one thing: choice. The mega server system will be making choices for the players that we used to be able to make on our own.

Indeed. Taking the choice away is never a smart move. Especially not over a year down the line.

EDIT. @ Anthony.
A few crucial things need to be clarified here, after your post talking about maps being filled out.

• Will the megaserver system be applied just to the overflow, i.e. when a real map is full?
• Will we still have our real servers that we can choose from?
• Will we still be able to guest, an make events like “meet at X pm on server Y”?

Samuel Loretan.8601:

Will this system breaks existing communities?
The whole goal of this new system is to enhance the in-game social environment. We completely get that the community of your home world is important to you, and this is why MegaServers takes that into account. But I also think that with this tool, we can go further. While home world communities are important, they are also very abstract. Choosing which home world to pick is a difficult task, even more difficult when you’re playing the game for the first time, because more often than not, you don’t know what the differences are between each of those worlds. Also, home worlds communities can be quite unbalanced, population wise.

So wait, you are tailoring this to new players while ignoring the communities established by your old loyal playerbase. Wow. slow clap Of course communities are important! With the poorly presented, barely-playable Living Story, my great server community on RoS has been the only reason for me to play this game! Enhancing social environment? Well let us keep our social servers then! Choosing a server is not a problem if you’re a newcommer, you join an existing community. A quick web search will reveal most of the server “atmospheres”. Destroying long build communities for the small benefit of the incoming newbies is not worth it.
Again, we don’t want “different people”, if you’re in a Megaboss or a WvW guild, you want to be able to go to a city and ask for reinforcements in the map chat! You do not want to look for say Surmians in a sea of random server people, some of which will be your opposing WvW servers! It just breaks the social game aspect as we’ve had it for 1.5 years!

Also, while this feature may have worked ok from the start, adding it in the game 1,5 years after release is NOT an a wise decision!

kgptzac.8419:

I do not understand the concerns over how communities might get diluted over the new system. The original blog post made it clear that you will be more likely to be play with people on your own server. All the hypothetical ruinous situations where you got “outsiders” in your previously non-overlow (home) instance is a bit absurd.

“More likely”. Not “able to”, only more likely to. The fabled Anet’s RNG element! Whereas right now, we are not just “more likely” to play with people we want, we ACTUALLY CAN.

Wuchko.2596:

hedix.1986:

snip

who put you in charge? who are you to say what people should do? which build they want? why even complaining until 15th april? why you think everyone except your guild or other guilds are “noobs”? why do you think this will fail without even trying it?

If you haven’t sniped my post, you would have seen everything explained there. rom a lot of experience, I can state that Megaboss events only work if they have People-Who-Care doing them. That doesn’t mean 5k+ achi, that means willingness to communicate and learn. However, apart from the People-Who_Care, there are AFKers, people who don’t listen the tactics (which, yes, often demand specific builds, look it up) or who just troll for the sake f it. Those people I termed People-Who-Do-Not-Care a.k.a “noobs”. Megaboss communities went to great length to teach the event to people and get them on TS, which is crucial for success (again, this is a fact, esp for Wurm). That also meant keeping the Random-People-Who-Do-Not-Care away from the event, either by going to a specific server or a created overflow.
The Megaserver “feature” as described, when implemented in other zones than just 1-15, will hit us heavily in that regards as it will add even more random element to our already tedious organisation efforts, sicne we cannot choose who to play with.

Enzo.3906:

Unfortunately the positives outweight the negatives with this patch. A lot more people want to play and see others than those who wish to play alone.

That doesn’t not mean its positives. Of course people don’t want to play alone, it’s an MMO. But since we have established communities for over a year now, people want to see other people from their community, not randoms. This will ruin the server spirit, have impact on in-game events and WvW. The oly positive thing is that places like Snowden or Timberline might have more people when the system is implemented there, but it comes at a great cost of destroying server communities. So in fact, negatives outweight the positives with this patch.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll also continue to monitor and adapt the megaserver system once it’s fully enabled to ensure it provides the best experience possible, so once you’ve seen it in action please make sure to leave comments, feedback, and suggestions as always!

How about just not tampering with the player communities created in a game system that we all bough in the first place. This isn’t Beta for such a game breakingchanging feature to be implemented 1.5 years down the line, or am I mistaken?

My concerns from the old Concerns Thread, which was deleted (yay censorship)
In the spirit of constructive posts, I’ll present how “megaserver” is IMO not the best solution for current issues with GW2.

1) Concern: COMMUNITY
This feature, as described, is a disaster for servers with well established communities. Since GW2 has been out for over a year, I imagine a lot of servers have such communities.
What if we love our servers and do not want to play with randoms? What about people not on F-list or in guilds that you know and nod to, people we AKF next to in LA/DR/Gendarran? What about people we make jokes with while world boss running? What about server in-jokes or recognizing your allied or frenemy guild?
I like Surmia, I love our mapchats, I love our different champ train route, I love RoS guilds helping each other with g-missions, I love how Marionette bonded us even further.
This is all established via the social aspect of a multiplayer game that was released in 2012. These are rules of some other game.

Solution: Let us keep the main server map. Make server-members a priority in this new chaos of overflows, if you must introduce it to the game.

2) Concern: IN-GAME EVENTS:
What will happen to in-game events that were organised by different communities on specific servers? What about the Gunnar’s Hold monthly map completion? Or the Pink Day on a few servers? Again the chaotic overflow that is “megaserver” seems to cancel that opportunity.

Solution: Again, let us keep the old main server system. Or let us have a choice-of-overflows like in GW1, with clear designations for each overflow where event will be held. But oh wait, we have that with the current server system.

3) MegaConcern: MEGABOSSES:
Teq & Wurm, Marionette & Knightfall, plus anything coming in the future, absolutely depends on 1) organisation, 2) willingness, 3) communication, 4) cooperation, 5) “good play” (decent build and gear).
Teq guilds, most of which are multi-guild communities, or alliances of different guilds (for which there is no in game feature!) have gone through great lengths to organise the events and avoid random people.

• Issue with megabosses: As an officer in a megaboss guild, I can say that the No.1 issue with Megaboss events isn’t the gameplay difficulty nor the overflow per se, but the “Randoms / Noobs” – i.e. people who AFK or troll, who don’t read map chat and refuse to listen when whispered and who don’t want to install / join on TeamSpeak. These players clutter the map and take up spaces from the “People-Who-Care” and hinder the overall progress of the event. So far, People-Who-Care were able to have a main server map as a guiding point, and either choosing a server to go to, or pulling people on TeamSpeak into an overflow. It was stressful, but it worked. Cause these events do not work out with random people who happen to be on the map like with Temples or regular world bosses, they take cooperation and communication of like-minded folk. Not necessarily guildies though! Allies and other People-Who-Care.
  It is sad when an events becomes difficult not due to gameplay, but due to game mechanics that allows AFKers and trolls to hinder the progress of a larger group by simply being there.

• Possible solution to issue with megabosses: INSTANCES. The system is in the game, now you can just tweak it to support bigger number of players.
  What we do not need is even more randomness in our organisation effort.

4) Positive aspect of megaserver feature:
There is one good thing about this “feature”, though I believe it is outweighted by the cons. Forgotten maps would gain some much needed population.
I am not a programmer, but couldn’t this problem of mid-level maps like Snowden or Timberline be solved in a way that would not hinder the whole social aspect of the game that we initially bought?

As I mentioned already, this “feature” is NOT something to introduce in a game over a year since release when we have established communities! Have we been playing a Beta until now?!

skullmount.1758:

hedix.1986:

Moderators, WHY ARE CRITICAL “MEGASERVER” THREADS BEING DELETED?

With such an utter game changing feature over a year since release – we need the space to voice our opinions.
I went to reply to two threads only to find them gone, and the original thread posts aren’t even here.

Its because they want all feedback in one thread. Make it easier for devs to follow, or so they say…

Without the posts being merged fully? Those threads brought some pretty valid criticism.
It is pathetic to see censorship like this.

Moderators, WHY ARE CRITICAL “MEGASERVER” THREADS BEING DELETED?

With such an utter game changing feature over a year since release – we need the space to voice our opinions.
I went to reply to two threads only to find them gone, and the original thread posts aren’t even here.

bri.2359:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

TEQ and the WURM might finally be accessable to the average and / or casual player now.

Wrong!
These events, particularly Wurm, requires a very high level of organisation that the average and / or casual player are simple incapable of or not willing to do.

I am in a guild that specialises in doing these events on a daily basis. We go to great lengths to keep away from the casuals because 10 players not on teamspeak and not knowing what to do when will fail the event for the other 120 players.

Believe me, the megaserver change will cause these events to fail for everyone …

EXACTLY. It is crucial to have an organised group of people using a voice comm and being familiar with their roles and teamwork. Random AFKers / poor.build people etc have been the issue for the megaboss events, not overflows per se. And now it seems it will be even more random to organise a good map.
Instead of a much asked for instance, we get more randomness. slow clap

Wubdor.5190:

What if I want to play with the people from my homeserver only, though? There are a lot of people I know, who aren’t on my friendslist, who aren’t in my guild, yet have the same interests as me. Will I just have to be lucky to be put in the same world as them? Will I have to deal with people from other servers I quite literally couldn’t care less about?
I’m not trying to be the partypooper here, and I’ll wait for more updates and until I’ve seen it in action, but this could very well mean the end of roleplaying in Guild Wars 2, and thus, the end for a lot of players.

This. +1 Wubdor. This change is a disaster to servers with a good community. It is tailoring to the very casual population and their easier Queensdale farming and it will hinder established communities, organised Megaboss runners and RPers.
Also, what about the IN GAME EVENTS that were happening on some selected servers? Where should we go now?

Srsly, Anet, this is NOT something to introduce in a game over a year since release when we have established communities!
Will give it a shot, but I’m on the verge of quitting the game at this very moment.

O_o Whoa wait a minute. I want to play with my friends and guildies, not having an “increased chance to play with my friends and guildies” as the post says. How can we now possibly look for a noob-free map to have a good organised megaboss run in? Earlier, it was easy to achieve this by pulling everyone onto a server teamspeak, coordinate server guilds and pulling people into a chosen overflow. This creates a whole weird mix up.

Without a server system, where will the players-who-care go to kill megabosses?!
Instead of giving us instances so that we can tailor our own gaming group, we have a cloud of overflows. Yes, overflows. Any map full of random people with little guidelines (cough Edge of the Mists cough) is an overflow, except now I don’t see ways of getting into the right one. At least with main server maps, we knew where we stand and were able to wait and pull in organised people.

I use the terms “noob” and “players- who care” because that is essentially your player-pool in a given new megaboss encounter a la Teq & Marionette. Noobs would be the trolls and afk-ers and people with poor builds or those who refuse to install teamspeak (sadly a huge chunk of GW2 pop). Players-who-care are those that put in effort, but are hindered from the others in their maps. They need a space/map where they can pull in other players-who-care, i.e. and INSTANCE. A mix up of maps will not help.
Its not always easy to sort everyone who cares in a guild or on F-list. Give us an increased number of guild slots then.

Also, what about our co-serverians?! Y’know, familiar people AFKing around you in LA/DR. Ppl you know and nod to, but don’t have them on F-list or in a guild. A community. This sadly seems like a slaughter of communities.

If “what ravings” didn’t already have me, buttocks on the stick-figure Marionette certainly did.

+1 million for bringing up these basic and outrageous faults with GW2 storytelling that make it no different that a beginner’s fanfic, now if only the devs would not only read, but accept and improve…

And to the Flirtaceous Dragon – babe I love when you talk villainous to me.

This ending is more serious and more though through.
Character death would have aided greatly in feeling like something is at stake here, it would have added a feeling of dread and urgency. What do we have instead? NPC’s pub time “celebration” after we ultimately failed. Yes, failed. We killed Scarlet but did we actually achieve anything by it? Nope. Breachmaker went through, people died, LA was destroyed, a dragon woke, and due to the simpleton Bro-ham, we engaged Scarlet before she revealed her plan / plot points that are much needed.

Braham’s anger in that audio adds some character depth to him, much much much more than “uh-huh uh-huh”. It also suggests he had a reason to be absent from the fight. What is a broken leg to a hero? How many times did our characters get Cripple condi?!
Marjory truly dying is more logical than Rox saving her deus ex machina, without actually acknowledging she’s down in the earlier scene.
While Jory is a rarely interesting NPC, and I’d miss her in DE 2.0, her death would have given a lot of cause, both to us and other NPCs.

Vol.7601:

I hate all Sylvari now. I kick them from my dungeon groups.

Coming soon on LFG tool:

Crucible of Eternity
lf2m all paths, 6k achi,zerk, no sylvari

The Ruined City of Arah
Selling p1 8g. except Sylvari – drag your own leafy kitten s through the dungeon

RedStar.4218:

I don’t pity Scarlet.

But when Marjory asked me how I felt, I planned on delivering the most sober answer. Unfortunately ANet didn’t seem to think our character had some kind of respect for the dead and gave us 3 cheesy choices.

And what is worse with this ending, is that it’s not an ending. Yeah sure, we killed Scarlet. So what ? Lion’s Arch is completely destroyed, hundreds are dead/missing, we have no information on what her armies will become and most importantly she achieved her goal of waking up a dragon.

In the end, everything we did for a year resulted in us failing to stop her from killing an entire city and waking up yet another dragon.
Yeah, I wasn’t really into a celebratory mood.

THIS.
I just found that scene too unconvincingly lighthearted, considering we ultimately failed at our goal of keeping Tyria safe. Cause we didn’t accomplish much by killing the villain who reached her goals. Instead, without finding out more from her, so that we may have some understanding of what’s going on, we made our own jobs more difficult (gee, tnx Broham). But DE 2.0 seem too stupid /shallow to realise this (= poorly thought out characters).

1) New regions. But semantics are important here. I don’t mean a “new zone” like they meant with the Tower of Nightmares or Zephyrite Sanctum. I’d like actual fleshed-out open world maps with hearts, vistas, POIs and Dynamic Events, that advance the overall GW2 story and are tied with the lore. Permanent.

2) New Dungeons in those new areas, that again advance the story, give us reasons for exploring etc. It’s something that this game needs to stay fresh. And with the dungeons, ofc, more tokens for new armor sets. Not just a RNG backpiece – whole armorsets that don’t come only through the gem store.

3) Serious revamp of the overflow system for existing and upcoming megabosses. Tequatl and Wurm are super fun, they require organisation, communication and thinking, and are imo some of the best content delivered by Anet. Were they delivered well? No! What makes them hard is not strategy, it’s pure poorly thought out game mechanics with the overflows. Since these events are not something you just stumble upon, they pretty much are a raid. So to prevent getting stressed out over AFKers and trolls (and people with poor builds who don’t care), or constant fear of DC which is a gamebreaker or the boring long waiting time, these fights will have to be instanced or we should be given a choice of overflows.
Also, separating guilds and parties with the big “open world” events, like LA, is never a good thing – players want to play with their friends.

Suxen.8574:

Anet has left the WvW
Anet thinks the future of GW2 is in PVE

Selected PvE. They abandoned dungeons as well.

If this is all we get instead of proper expansions, then it’s a FAIL.

If I have to make peace with the fact that this is the best that Anet will ever provide, then ok, barely a C.

Good points: LS1 developed cool new NPCs, we (briefly!) explored new mini-areas, we’ve had grand scale events, new megabosses, the story got really interesting when they put in Scarlet’s Lair and we got some clues about the plot (but that was at the very end).

Bad points: all new areas were either small scale, without hearts and temporary (tower, mini-dungeons, Sanctum).
- Ascended gear was implememnted without any story / lore explanation. Instead, suddenly!, we have these über weapons that took epic quests GW1… but here just require mindless grind.
- Story was very poorly presented, so that players had no incentive and didn’t realise what was going on for most of the time.
- The main villain was also very poorly introduced, to players’ annoyance. There was no progress in dealing with her, everything, including the final scene was very deus ex machina.
- Biggest FAIL point: LS barely ties in to the plot of GW2 main story (PS+dungeons). LS also largely ignored all the unanswered questions and issues left over from GW1, GW2 PS, GW2 open world. See: random alliances. All while Orr is still unchanged and our main driving forces in the game came to a halt. And players, who formed a Pact to deal with big issues, ignore that Pact, ignore the big threats like dragons, but go on a merry tour of festivals across Tyria.
- New events requiring zergs without addressing the issue of overflows. Players want to play with their friends, not afk / no-build randoms. Waiting for hours is also bad.
- Most of new skins being introduced only through the gem store.

Yet another example of how important it is for Anet to address their overflow issue – which killed the server community spirit and still manages to hinder every single open world event they produce.

Not a programmer here, so cannot offer solutions. However, seeing our number in the queue to main or the next populated overflow (like with queues in WvW), or being able to choose overflows from a list would be a decent start.

Kalavier.1097:

Or teleported her OUT of danger. Or started a self destruct.

Besides, Braham letting her explain herself would just fly in the face of HIS established character. What has been his approach? “We know the bad guy is there, let’s storm in, and just smash him.”

Besides, the trial would be over before it began, that’s assuming mob justice didn’t get her and you had the angry refugees (and/or Taimi) murder her in the jail cell or on route.

True, retribution etc would not allow her to live long. And while she used deus ex machina to escape the fight in former encounters, now that she was dying, she could have delivered a Villain’s Last Stand and give us some of the much desired information.

The issue here is not that Braham took our ending from us, it was that there was no option to an ending with an ounce more information about the character we’ve been dealing with for months. Scarlet needed that better insight into her motivations if Anet wanted to save the grace of this character.

Carighan.6758:

Think about it for a moment:
We whined and whined and whined that we don’t care about Scarlet, we want her gone.
I thought the dev take on that, that she is just killed off without even trying to investigate her, was a really move. It did exactly what a gargantuan amount of people have been asking for, Scarlet is gone now. Happy now?

People stopped whining when they announced the end of Scarlet. Before, everyone just wanted some explanation for why she’s in the game and what on Tyria was she after. Giving us her Lair with all the clues was a great move for Anet. When they expanded her story to something more than a Jokerish rando villain, I didn’t see that many complaints. There was speculation, fan theories, it was fun.
This ending, with too little dialogue and no options, goes back to the early days of Scarlet’s character – when her poor presentation made people resent her.

Someone said soon after Scarlet’s was introduced that ppl don’t hate her per say, she might be an interesting character, but with the way she was presented in game, players didn’t have a reason to care and they wanted back to the original GW2. Now that we do know more, that we care, it would have been great if there was an ending with more information and more in-game story – the one thing that the community mostly complained about.

Even the illusion of choice would be better than absolutely no choice.
The final instance was good for Anet, but too streamlined.

It was obvious we were gonna kill Scarlet in the end, but I expected some dialogue to make up for those months of random villainy since Queen’s Jubilee. It would have been character development/revalation, something that is desperately needed in Scarlet’s case.

Paradox.5498:

I expect Lions Arch to become a new dungeon. It’ll be called “The Ruined City of Lions Arch”.
Explorable modes will each deal with one of the weird armies Scarlet gathered:
p1 – Molten
p2 – Aetherblade
p3 – Toxic.

Hah, I talked about this since that thumper first appeared in LA. smugface

Also, selling LA p3 15g.

We knew it was gonna be a dragon ever since Anet or whoever leaked that audio of Scarlet saying we should be afraid of the dragons! It’s a good thing though, we’re back to GW2ish themes.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1rrsh8/be_afraid/
So yeah, no surprises. Final cutscene was really nice though and I liked DE. 2.0. But we still didn’t get even half the answers – there should have been more storytelling.

Jungle Dragon was discussed for months, so nothing jaw-droppingly new. Can’t wait to find out exactly how the Sylvari fit into this, due to those (debunked) theories. And especially what’s Caithe’s secret. ^^

From the cutscene, it looked like water at first, so I got a bit excited about Bubbles (if water dragon is gone does that mean the path to another explorable area is clear? Cantha!), but yeah, lingering on butterflies and mushrooms does point to the “nature”-y aspect of Mordremoth.
Also from the cutscene, at one point we see Rata Sum (?) and then the Maguuma-ish area – could this hint at a new zone west of Brisban?

wookiee.4631:

Taimi mentions the Dead End, but there’s nothing there. Do we really have to wait another 2 weeks to have a short wrap-up instance?

Wait, Taimi was around? Where? I was wondering what happened to her as she was missing from DE 2.0 in the last instance.
I also missed Heal-o-Tron. Does anyone know where to find him?
Hard to look for NPCs in a sea of zerglings during a epilepsy-inducing fight. xD

Amethyst Lure.5624:

There is a teleporter thingy that allows it, though… I am unsure if it has a prerequisite or if you just have to find it. (As I’d done some stuff first)

You need to have the spinal back piece. Masterwork will do.
Mind, it requires iron and steel ingots, prices of which went insane since the update. GJ, TP robber barons!

The main reward on the Wurm is the title. And ofc the fun and challenge of doing it. Which admittedly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but then again the event itself is not for everyone. Saying that, they should have rewarded those persistent people who kept at it with something better than 2 blues and a green.

If cute puppies and kittens (real, not censorship kittens) will make this happen, here:

lordkrall.7241:

They don’t add stuff that are asked for: People whine.
They add stuff that have been asked for: People whine about them adding it.

Wrong. People have been asking for a LS recap tool IN GAME.
Atlas is an external feature, a brief sentence here and there about past updates scattered across the map, but it still doesn’t adequately present the story in-game, like those blog stories.

#RAISINFACE2014

I want Tengu AC… in home bl Garri.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

The RNG becomes self aware?

I’d buy gems to see that. xD

Why do you want a precursor, Dave?

Miroe.2054:

Jenna… who is an elder Dragon… because of Abbadon… and of course Scarlett planned this all along…

OMG! This totally explains why she’s always barefoot!

I did the meet-the-mentor step on my thief yesterday. That was a big immersion-breaking mess! PS happens during the campaign against Zhaitan, before the Karka invasion, before Flame&Frost, before a summer-full of festivals and Scalet’s reveal and subsequent antics. Even the official year of PS (1325 AE) and LS (1326-7) is different. They should have kept the old LA instance like the original starting instance.
Random alliances wandering around the bickering DE members makes no sense whatsoever.

THIS. We should be able to play with our friends. Choice of overflows was possible in GW1, it needs to be implemented again, considering overflows have been creating problems for all big new content events.

Mandatory overflow complaint: Anet, please let us play with out friends! If we enter in the same party we should not be split up. The next step would be to let us play with our guildies.

Mandatory cry for the obvious solution: CHOICE OF OVERFLOWS.
It existed in GW1, it is well past time that it is implemented in GW2. Overflows are one of the biggest problems with this game, that brought up so many complaints for all major events, like Tequatl, Marionette, Wurm, Tower, LA….. We have the guild system and f-list, we should be able to make use of it.

On most servers, they stopped caring. On servers that do try, it will be tricky because of the other LS interferring. Overflow galore yet again without the choice of overflows! -_-’

Seras.5702:

I’m down for Southsun City.

As for the karka, I’d like to see a giant wall built…like the one in the north in Game of Thrones. 700ft high!! No karka can breach it!!

SUMMER IS COMING.

Muahahaha, the Champion of Anet will be foiled by their own broken open world!

Coming up in the next patch: Scarlet’s Alliances form a über mega alliance TSS – Tyria Slayer Squad (which gets filled quickly and they form TSS – Tyria Slayers of Scarlet) – villain’s only hope to rise above the incompetence and defeat epic overflowed encounter.

Or…

Scarlet invades only on Desolation and Blackgate… other servers continue to live in peace in the old LA…

I love how people still can’t spell his name consistently in the title and the post…

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

I picture Scarlet singing this, just cause.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE

Oh lol, this horror came up on the TeamSpeak music bot during the last Marionette. xD

B)
It’s great having a hub for everyone, especially for servers with lower population. It’s a social aspect of a social game. I’m worried that the playerbase might be spread too thin with the coming update.

On the other hand, it is due time they give us something to care about. So far, most of Scarlet’s shenanigans haven’t felt personal, and we just ended up in the midst of things, fighting endless alliance mobs for funsies. Attacking LA is really giving us a good in-game reason to fight the villain and get involved on a big scale.

Draco Venantium is up and kicking, proud to have a chain of successfull Tequatl kills twice a week. We are also focusing on the Great Jungle Wurm and as “dragonslayers”, will take on any über mega boss Anet throws at us!
The guild operates on Gandara (EU), any people on EU servers are welcome.
You do not need to represent DV at all times, just doing organised Boss Raids (easier to organise things).

You can apply on DV’s website and learn more about the guild: http://dracovenantium.shivtr.com
Otherwise, contact the leader Lesyl Nox, or officers: Isoldë and Dune Doomforge via whisper or ingame email.

:O It was their plan all along! No Mystic Forge = excellent way to introduce precursor crafting!