Guild Wars 2

One big step to improve underwater combat, IMHO, would be to allow you to have alternate underwater builds.

To use some examples, my guardian’s build is focused on symbols (using hammer that does a symbol every 3 autoattacks and mace that has a low cooldown one on 2)… thing is, there are no underwater symbols so half of my traits become useless the moment I go underwater. Same thing happens to my flamethrower engineer.

Hopefully 1 and 2 will be addressed in next patch when they make all boss target crittable, we’ll see.

Approximated target date: very soon.

Probably release date: soon.

For definition of these terms, see this: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Soon (replace blizzard with anet when applicable)..

I’m still happy I did..

Jaxom.7310:

i’ll agree that most focus skins are very uninspired, in that most look like they took a crescent shape, added a bar between tips, and then added some “flair”.

at least this one is unique. they could make a focus look like a sword, or a dagger, or pretty much anything they wanted, which some of them are, and those are kewl. they just need to do it more often

According to a book you can read in Orr, when the human gods introduced magic in tyria it was abused so they changed the rules and made it so you can only do magic with an object to focus trough it (some characters in the Seas of Sorrows novel talk about it as well, a mesmer and a necro are in jail and talking about magic and how it’s so bad they couldn’t do anything without a weapon).

So basically I guess every weapon used by a magic casting class is a focus, but the name “focus” is given to anything that can’t fit into any other category (staff, sword, mace and so on), which is why we have things like keys, lamps, skills and stuff like that as focus.

BTW, I’d also support some flail skins, but I’d make them mace skins instead of focus ones as you actually swing them… also, the gallant focus is supposed to be a censer, not a flail, but I guess it would still hurt if you hit someone in the head with it..

They just disabled the symbolic avenger trait (the one that causes the stacking bug in guardians) pending a fix for next scheduled release.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Update-Symbolic-Avenger-Trait/first#post5238515

Yes, I bought from Amazon and got a valid serial. So far it seems to be the regular pre-purchase, not a pre-order.

That said, I’d recommend if possible to buy directly from Anet, if anything goes wrong or you have account issues you deal directly with them, while you’d have to deal with amazon support, that while I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them, I’d rather deal directly with anet if any problem arises.

What you’d lose if you started over:

- Achievement points, including any reward skins you might have unlocked (radiant/ hellfire armor and zenith weapons) and any progress towards any title (dungeon master, for example)
- Karma.
- Any skin you might have unlocked in the past. Be specially careful about this one, as you might lose skins that were available as a one time only deal, and other skins that you might have gotten as PvP skins from achievement rewards before the wardrobe patch that are now incredible expensive to get. For example, I got the Wings of Dwayna longbow skin unlocked on one of the achievement chests (I plan on using it on my guardian when he becomes a dragonhunter), getting it now would cost me about 500g.
- Dungeon tokens.
- PvP levels and advancement into any reward track, plus the unlocking of the tracks for the dungeons you’ve done in story mode.
- Anything you might have unlocked in the HoM from GW1 if you have anything. As far as I know there’s no way to unlink a GW2 account from GW1 to link another one.
- Any upgrade you’ve made to your account: extra character slots, bag slots, bank slots and so on.
- Any item that is soulbound or accountbound.
- Any bouns to magic/gold find on your account

Calcanius.5048:

@locoman.1974

Love your responce, and are almost going to agree.
Even adde the EDIT regarding BOB being everlasting

But: you are still not giving me a reason why Person 1´s deal is the same as Person 2, do Person 1 realy get the same for his money as person 2 ?

Technically, yep, Person 1 and Person 2 are getting the same deal, they’re just deciding to do different things with the deal they got (upgrading and existing Vs. creating a new)..

Note that I do understand why Anet included the base game, and I stronly wish they had given us veterans a better deal (at least a character slot), but I like to nitpick examples like those..

Calcanius.5048:

I have been drinking all day.
You dont need to break your new BOB, since the store clerk took it away, you are still only left with the expansion for your BOB at home, while the person next to you have a BOB and a expansion, and you both payed the same amount.

Question remain: Justify how person 1 gets same value for money as person 2

Actually, if we still go by the example, they didn’t take it away, you still have your new BOB until you get home. It’s only until you’re going to install it that you decide whether you want a new factory default BOB + expansion or your personalized BOB + expansion..

Mystic.5934:

why 1600 gems? why 1 character slot?
I agree that people who bought the original game shouldn’t have to pay as much for the expansion (because they are not also buying the base game at the same time), or at least should get something extra such as a Fiery Dragon Sword.
But why would a character slot be what you ask for?

Mainly because one of the big features of the expansion is a new class (the revenant). Someone that already has all character slots full wouldn’t be able to create one unless they either get a new one (extra $10 or about 200 gold on top of the price). Not having a character slot free prevents you from experiencing part of the expansion content, nothing limits you like that for anything else the expansion has to offer. Adding a character slot just ensures that everyone will be able to experience everything the expansion has.

Anet is a big company, they can’t do anything out of a whim. Anything they decide about any changes to the pricing of HoT will need to be evaluated by a board of directors, financial repercussions of any alternate plans, report any decision to NCSoft, how to deal with customers that have already purchased at current price and so on…

Doing something as simple as changing back the gem exchange system took several days, if anything is going to be done about this it will take at least a week or so IMHO, specially considering that the higher ups are probably rather busy in E3 right now.

Not me, I haven’t bought the game and I’m not happy…..

because of legal problems with credit cards here in Venezuela I can’t buy directly from anet, I have to buy it from amazon with my gift card balance, which should be available next week according to the FAQ.

Then I’ll buy it and be happy..

William Bradley Knight.2609:

Mireles Lore.5942:

Zoul.1087:

Mireles Lore.5942:

All this fuss over pricing is getting ridiculous. It has turned into “I AM ENTITLED TO FREE STUFF!!!! Raagh ANET IS GREEDY!!!!”

This whole thing reminds me of when my nephew threw a fit that his mom wouldnt buy him candy at the check out line when he saw another kids mom buy her son something…. but you know… with adults instead.

I don’t think you get it. “The core game is free.”
Cool where is my extra account?
“You already bought the game so you don’t get one.”
Wait what?
“We will reward your loyalty by letting you pay the same price!”

How is this not a slap in the face?

I guess I dont feel entitled to free stuff simply because they are offering something I already own for free. Why should I? Because little jimmy at the check out got candy and I didnt?

I think its good that new players can get the full game for the price of the expansion, it keeps the community from fracturing, everyone new will have the same access. As a guild leader I dont have to worry about incoming players not being able to join us in the expansion.

Only people this is a slap in the face for are people with a entitled attitude, you are at no disadvantage by other ppll getting the core game for free.

Let’s say you are little Jimmy’s mom and decide to buy little Jimmy a bar of candy at the checkout. You look at the price and it is $5. You don’t believe that an ordinary bar of candy is worth $5 and decide not to buy it if that price doesn’t include something more than just a simple bar of candy. Is this an entitled attitude in your eyes? If so, then I’m afraid we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Because in my eyes it is simply economics.

Not buying it at that price if you don’t feel it isn’t worth it, definitively not entitled attitude, that’s for sure.

Yelling at the person at the checkout that asking for $5 for that candy is a literal slap on your face, standing in front of the store yelling for a boicott of the store unless they lower the price of that candy bar, telling the owner that you’ve always bought candy bars there so they owe you to give you cheaper candy or you’ll yell at everyone how much of a cheapstake he is… that is entitled attitude in my eyes.

And note, I do believe that the basic version should be a little cheaper (though the price isn’t really that far off from the price of expansions lately) or at least include a character slot or enough gems to include one as a bonus to existing customers, but I also believe that what we’re seeing in forums goes much closer to the second example.

For me the outrage comes from 4 main sources.

Outrage about basic version not including a character slot: Justified. One of the key elements of the expansion is the new class, and doesn’t feel right (to me) to expect people to pay extra money to be able to try it without deleting one existing character. That said, there’s probably enough time between now and release to farm enough gold to buy an extra character slot, specially if they do a sale on them (not unheard of). In my case at least, I did expect a character slot to be included, but just in case I bought one (already had 8 ) on last sale.

Outrage about the price: Personally I don’t think it’s justified. Last WoW expansion was $50, including 30 days game time (have to pay sub after that), the upcoming FF XIV expansion is $40, but from what I’ve read (might be wrong) you don’t get free game time with it. The Secret World Ultimate Edition (which would be equivalent to an expansion IMHO) is $60 including the base game. Unfortunately the days when expansions were $20 or $30 are long over. Personally I was expecting HoT to be between $40 and $60, so I guess I guessed correctly.

Outrage over not being enough content to justify the $50: Personally I’d say it’s not justified… yet. We still don’t know enough to make sure if it’s worth it. We don’t know how many maps, how big they are (we do know about the three levels for each), what kind of instanced content or story will there be, all specializations (what if the spec for your favorite class sucks?) and so on. Whether the little that we know is enough to justify paying the $50 is up to each person to decide. Personally I think the wise thing would be to wait until further info is available before buying. Disclaimer: I’m not wise, I’m buying it as soon as it’s available on amazon (suposedly next week).

Outrage about new players getting a better value: Up to each person to decide, personally I don’t have a problem about the core game being included, and actually I think it was a smart move by Anet. I would have probably gone back to WoW for pandaria if I didn’t have to buy the base game (I had the euro version, wanted to play on US servers) + previous expansions + current one. It cuts down the one big barrier when expansions are released, plus a new player won’t have the three years of gameplay I’ve gotten out of the base game. It’s the same opinions I had when they updated the rewards for the deluxe edition and people were complaining that the ones that bought it earlier didn’t get the new rewards. That said, it would have been a nice bonus (not required, but nice) to existing accounts, maybe by adding an extra character slot or enough gems to buy one (taking care of point 1 above as well).

Vet (assuming purchase at release): 3 years of gaming time, New: 0…

I make a proposal, vets get to buy HoT at $30 (currently the HoT – base game price) but they’re banned from the game for a period of time equal to the time since they bought the game until they buy HoT..

HoT (+base game) would probably be included in the price of next expansions. As for sales, nobody knows, Anet does sales from time to time but there’s really nothing that points about when will one come out. I seriously doubt there will be one a couple of months after release (unless that happens to land on christmas or something like that), but we’d probably see one 6 months or so after that.

Refunds are usually processed on the place you bought it, in this case it’s amazon. The way it works is that basically Amazon bought the game from Anet, then sold it to you, so it would be on their own terms that the refund would happen.

You have 30 days to request a refund from Amazon according to their website, so if you bought a week ago you still have about 3 weeks to apply for one. Currently amazon.com doesn’t have HoT, but according to the pre-purchase FAQ: “Starting on June 23, 2015, you’ll be able to pre-purchase boxed and digital editions of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns from our official retail partners…..”, which includes amazon (source: https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/94582027-Heart-of-Thorns-Pre-Purchase-FAQ )

So, the way I see it, there are two things you can try. First, contact support again and don’t ask about refunds, but about how can you go about upgrading your recently purchased game to a HoT pre-purchase if you bought it trough amazon. Chances are you’ll still get the same “contact amazon” answer.

Second one is to actually contact amazon, explain them the situation about how you bought the game a week ago and now a new version is coming out that includes the game that you bought a week ago and want to see if you can upgrade to that version (to see if you can keep your progress), or if you can’t, to request for a refund so you could buy it (you’ll lose your progress this way as it’d be a new account). Maybe wait until next week when they’ll have HoT available to ask. Amazon support has been great for me so far, they event gave me the option to return me the money or send me another item for free when something I bought got lost in the mail.

Yes, gief free gems!!!…

Seriously, though, it has been my sugestion in other posts, 1600 gems might be too much when comparing to recently released expansions (WoW’s latest one was $50, FF XIV is $40 though both are sub games), I’d say 800 gems (the cost of 1 character slot) would be enough. Players that don’t need or want a char slot could use it for other things (armor skins, unlock season 2 episodes and so on).

Lowering the price would be an organizational nightmare with the people that already bought it, but this would be an interesting option, if the serial is applied to an account that already has GW2 in, just add 800 gems to it.

Even while I’d prefer if it came with a character slot at least, I’d like to pre-purchase HoT, and I’d really like to do it directly trough anet, but because some legal chances to currency exchange here in Venezuela that took place about a couple months ago I can’t purchase anything outside of the country on the internet (basically they made a new law that blocked any credit card from being used abroad except the ones issued by a government owned bank, which I already have, but they haven’t activated the system to migrate from a private bank to a public one).

Foreseeing they might do something like that I charged enough money to my amazon account as gift cards (most people here do it so you could combine the yearly maximum purchase allowance of several people), so I do have the money saved up for HoT but on amazon.

Which is why I’m asking this, if there’s any information about future availability of HoT pre-purchase (or pre-order or purchase) trough amazon.com.

Personally I’d change it so that if the standard edition is applied to an existing account, you’d get 800 gems.

That way those with maxes character slots could use them to buy their new slot, while those that have slots free could use them in any way they want (buy a new armor skin, unlock season 2 episodes, etc).

Of course, the deluxe would have to be upgraded to include them as well (the definite version already has 4000 gems).

Contact support.

Michael Henninger (AKA GM Proheals, Game Support Lead) said this on reddit:
“We’ll most certainly help anyone out who just bought the core game and would like to make the change to a HoT pre-purchase.”
Forgot source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3a46s4/preorders_for_heart_of_thorns_are_now_live/cs96lfu

So chances are you might be able to pay $10 and change it to a HoT pre-purchase account.

Alternatively, you could just request a refund (also trough support) and use the money to buy HoT with the base game included if you want to, since you just got it 4 days ago you wouldn’t lose that much progress.

chaos.3062:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

chaos.3062:

CureForLiving.5360:

This is naming and shaming, and it’s against forum rules.

Which is a real shame (pun intended) b/c public shaming actually does go a long way in correcting behavior… for example back in the day before you could lfg que for raids in wow, if a guy ninja looted an item on a small server just one person telling mapchat could help get him blacklisted by almost everybody and most pugs who cared enough to block. This public shaming thus was a great form of punishment and a good deterrent to punishment.

A real life example in ancient times the jewish people were allowed to stone a child to death if he was often rude and disrespectful to his parents. Now I’m not arguing for or against capital punishment here especially for what our culture would consider a minor offense but I guaranty you that it got results lol. All it would take is for little johny to be stoned and little billy and all his friends would be perfect angels… just saying…

You do realize that people will lie don’t you? Or that they can be mistaken? Or that they only have part of the story and the rest of the story changes the situation?

Naming and shaming on the forum where people can lie, be mistaken or be misinformed only causes a toxic forum. Unless you are willing to be the one named and shamed on the forum by someone with a grudge against you, then I don’t think you should advocate it.

Report what happens in game and let ANet sort it out from their records.

That logic while works is less of a deterrent. For instance if anet bans people for exploiting or whatever that’s great but most of us will never know about it, thus we maybe thinking over here that they don’t do anything about the situtation overall. but if there was a long list of people that got banned for it recently i 100% guaranty you most people would think twice before attempting it.

oh and just in case anyone says its not anet’s policy to public shame go play guild wars 1 Had the most epic example of public shamining in any game i’ve ever played or seen.

It’s not against Anet policy to public shamming (when there’s a reason for it) as long as they’re the ones doing it. There’s the banning animation in GW1 and the reddit thread where Gaile Gray basically told people why they were really suspended as examples, and I’ve even seen quite a few times where someone has been publicly told what did they do wrong here on the forums.

The no naming and shaming rule in forums (and in any other official game forums I can think of) is for another reason. You could easily ruin someone’s in-game reputation by telling everyone he did something bad, kicking people off dungeon/fractal runs or scamming someone, for example, and even screenshots could be easily edited in photoshop or any other graphic software, and even question Anet’s reputation itself if you were to keep providing “proof” of wrongdoing. That’s what the rule is trying to prevent.

It’s different when Anet does it because they have access to the game logs, so they actually do have proof of what really happened.

Explodie.9428:

locoman.1974:

The beginning of HoT is supposed to be set a day after the end of season 2 (don’t remember where I read it), so I don’t really expect the story to advance until then.

However, I do expect to see some content to happen between here and then, probably the opening of SAB or return of the dragon festival or something like that, or maybe a festival for the reopening of LA.

Well if you state it that way we wont see a thing before the release because it would mess up the timeline? LA cant be reopend in a day time? That is what i think though, or else LA should have been fixed right in Season2?

Well, according to the conversations from NPCs LA has been frozen in time at not too long after scarlet’s attack, so it could be reopened as something that happened while we were busy adventuring elsewhere..

TL;DR: Allow us to preview items in the open world and not just the preview window

This is a bit far fetched suggestion but still something I’d like if anet can give some consideration to.

I don’t know if other people have had this, but it has happened to me that I see an armor or weapon skin or combination of skins I like when previewing from the bank, then when I finally get it and use it on my character, there’s something I don’t like or plainly hate of it.

Some examples, maybe there’s some clipping that only shows up when doing an animation (running/jumping and so on), maybe a weapon clips with the ground when used or when stowed, or there’s some clipping in areas that are obvious while playing but weren’t visible in the preview (on my thief, for example, the drover mask clips on top of the neck with the arah chestpiece, isn’t visible on preview), you don’t like how the materials or colors look with the lighting of the open world instead of the neutral lighting of the preview window, or you just plainly don’t look how the animations look when running of moving (the infinite wisdom focus, for example, I don’t like how the paper bit stretches when moving looking like it’s made of rubber) and so on.

Which is why I’d suggest having a way to preview items and item combinations in the open world, so we can see if we’ll really like it before making the effort to get the items or spending transmutation charges on them.

The way I could see it working, for example, you create your character look on the preview window the way you want it, weapons and all, and then you pay a certain amount of gold and/or gems and you get a short duration (5 mins or less, for example) non combat tonic that will transform you to that look so you can try it out. Even allow it to use armor that aren’t usable by your character and outfits, so that you can see how it would look on another character or even on one you want to create (I created my thief as a charr just because I loved how the chef outfit looked on charr)

Just an idea, what do you all think?

The beginning of HoT is supposed to be set a day after the end of season 2 (don’t remember where I read it), so I don’t really expect the story to advance until then.

However, I do expect to see some content to happen between here and then, probably the opening of SAB or return of the dragon festival or something like that, or maybe a festival for the reopening of LA.

Because it’s a beta, not a demo.

If it was just a demo, where the main (or only) goal was to get people to try and see the new system, I’d agree, move it to a weekend.

However, since it’s a demo AND a beta, where at least part (if not most) of the goal is to actually test the map and PvP mode in a public setting to see how people react to it, what is liked/disliked, how can it be broken and what exploits can be found to be fixed before release, makes perfect sense to have it happen in a workday where Anet employees will be in the office tracking the results and feedback.

And since patches usually happen on tuesdays in the first place…

kamix.4713:

Dungeons that ends in 5min? When devs were designing the game there was no chance that they were having this thing in mind! “LFG – Zerk only link items” o.O
People will always use exploit and the game mechanics to optimize time effort and final result.
We need diversity! Make some new dungeons with some new boss mechanics in which you’ll need guardian support build, condi necros etc…. We need to change this order of zerkers. If you want to become the best mmorpg out there you need to have more different builds that optimizes in different situations. Give us some old WoW grinding Dungeons with unique skins, weapons that are worth our efforts with nice AP addition. If you can make every couple of weeks a new edition to a living story I think you can make 1 hard dungeon per 5-6 months (optimal time to complete it). If needed make them 5+ players dungeons (10 max). I think there were tons of players that joined this game that were in to this kind of dungeon grinding (and not todayslike) and left after they realized that there is no such content in this game.

TBH, I’d like something like this as well, actual skins that could drop off specific bosses, for example, and updating of new dungeon paths and things like that.

Thing is, they did try this, they replaced one of the paths on twilight arbor explorable with the aetherblade path… and TBH it’s one of my favorite dungeons in the game so far. Bosses that need some strategy to them so you can’t just zerg them to dead, several puzzles that people actually had to figure out and an exclusive set of weapon skins that only drop there…

And what was the result?… it’s the least played dungeon path, personally once the achievements were over I’ve very rarely seen it in LFG, and only done it as part of guild runs… so, from their points of view… does it really make sense to divert so many resources to make something that experience has shown them most people don’t really want?.

Elesmod.6790:

hildegain.2106:

Windows isn’t the most used desktop OS just because of video games but also because of how it works.

It’s not because of how it works, it’s because it’s pre-installed on new computers. If tomorrow every vendor would start selling PCs with Linux, do you think everyone would grab a Windows box from a store shelf and install it? Most would just stay with Linux.
Look at the smartphone market. 90% of smartphones in the world run on Android (Linux), because it’s pre-installed.

It’s also how it works, if you take into account that what programs are compatible with it is a part of “how it works”.

It’s different with phones, on one side because android is the better and most compatible option right now for most, and also because it isn’t as easy to install a different phone OS (if it’s possible at all in some of them) as it is to install a different computer OS.

Here in Venezuela the government gives away free laptops to school and high school students (called “Canaimitas”, literally “Little Canaimas”, Canaima is a native forest god), they run a custom version if linux that’s pre-loaded with material relevant to the course they’re in… and a big complain from teachers is how many students report the laptops as lost or stolen when in reality they pay money to wipe linux off the computers and install windows on them… you can actually see ads on the newspaper for people offering to do that, even if it’s illegal since the contract signed by the parents when they receive the laptop says that it’s not theirs, it belongs to the government and they get it while they’re in school, and they’re not allowed to remove the software needed for the education.

On the linux thing, it’s a catch 22 thing… developers won’t want to invest time and money into a project that won’t allow them to at least earn the money back, and they see the amount of linux market too small for that, but the market in the gaming community won’t grow as much as we’d want unless more developers start offering linux versions of their games. And it’s specially bad for GW2, since the engine is very windows centric (the mac version is basically the windows version running on a wrapper), so creating a true linux version would mean a major rewrite of the whole engine.

Developers won’t really care much until there’s a sizable linux-native-only market for their games… which is even smaller than the “I want linux versions but I’ll dual boot windows for games” (they don’t care whether you’d go full linux the moment your games are available) and the “I want native linux versions but it runs on wine so I’m happy” markets.

To add a little bit.

We know that each class will get a specialization you can turn on and off, and with that specialization comes access to new weapons. For example, we do know the ranger can specialize into a druid, and as a druid will be able to use a staff (we also know mesmers will get shields and engineer hammers), and that specializations will mean it’ll have access to new skills and class mechanics as well.

What we don’t know yet, however, is whether the specialization is tied to the new weapons. For example, if a ranger becomes a druid, will he need to use a staff, or will he be able to use other ranger weapons as well?…. if it’s the second case, will those weapons have new skills too?… If a ranger becomes a druid, and then goes back to ranger (you can turn on and off specializations), will he be able to use a staff to or will he need to become a druid again to use it?.

We’ll find out as we learn more about HoT.

Not me… I want to experience HoT without spoilers, and since I actually have little available time to play, I’d rather give my slot to someone that can spend more time actually testing and finding (and reporting) bugs.

From the wiki:

“The Shatterer is a World boss, also called the Beast by some Sentinels, is a rank given to a champion of Kralkatorrik. At any given time, there’s only a single dragon of this rank. Once a Shatterer dies, the title moves on to a different dragon”
Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Shatterer
Source of the source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/5169-relics-of-orr/page__st__90#entry366411

BTW, we don’t know if Tequatl is actually the same one or different ones each time. According to game lore, the word “Tequatl” means “the one in darkness” in the hylek language, the “the sunless” title is a translation of that… so basically we don’t know its true name, just the name the hylek use to refer to it, so for all we know it might be a different dragon that looks just the same each time.

Introducing… the dragon warrior..

Second picture is my full lineup so far… some are the same than last time I posted it, others have changed a little bit..

I still have hopes we’ll get staves usable for melee (druid, maybe?) just like the revenant uses the hammer as a ranged weapon.

Overheard long time ago in old Lion’s Arch (paraphrasing from memory)

“My guild is so full of drama”
“What’s it called?”
“The Traveling Thespians”..

Also not in game but one of my favorites from GW1, from Zhed Shadowhoof, a centaur hero:

“I was taught peace by my people, and war by humans. If I am violent, then I can only offer you congratulations. Your kind won.”

I’m going to just leave this here..

Necromancers are getting greatswords in HoT, so I’m guessing they’ll bring it back as a limited time offer before or right after it releases, just like they did for all the other limited time weapon skins and outfits when the wardrobe change went live.

I’d like to add my support to this feature, but mostly because I have a soft spot for it in other WoW.

When burning crusade came out and I got my druid to level 70, the guild founder (I’ll call him “W”) sent me a hammer he crafted, of course with the “made by W” inscription, he was one of the nicests guys I’ve known and was always sending things to other people like that. I soon upgraded to a better one but couldn’t really get myself to destroy it, so I stashed it on the bank. Several months later, W died from a heart attack (he was 60 years old at the time)…. until I stopped playing WoW few years later (during WotLK), the hammer was still on my bank, still with the “Made by W” sign on it.

I really couldn’t care less about things made by random people on the TP… but I’ve always had a soft spot about having it on things made by friends.

Not as many options as female, and several are norn only, but there are some:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Predatory_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scallywag_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eagle_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gladiator_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feathered_armor

I’d go with sylvari warrior.

The style of Sunrise looks better with heavy armor classes IMHO, at least to me, so that leaves Guardian or Warrior. While my favorite heavy class is the guardian (my main is a sylvari guardian) the effects are heavy on blue glows, which clashes with the orangeish glow and trail of sunrise. With a guardian at the very least you’re going to be running with aegis (blue shield) about 90% of the time you’re out of combat, so it’s might be something that annoys you or not… it would to me, I like to keep my characters color coordinated with their weapons..

Warriors have much fewer glowy effects on them, and the ones they do have are usually reddish-orange, which complements sunrise nicely. Also the warrior attacks with greatsword seem to be more “swingy” than the guardian but don’t have the glowing effects guardian GS attacks have.

And silvary just because it’s my favorite race.. and it would look cool IMHO if you made one that glowed the same color than Sunrise..

Quick answers: no and no.

Longer answers: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO and NOOOOOOOOOOO..

Seriously now, on the first question, no, you can’t do that. Skills 1-5 are defined by your class and which weapon you have equipped, no way to change or swap them. Skills 6 to 0 can be changed a little bit, but with limits, 6 will always be a healing spell (within the ones available to your class), 7 to 9 utility skills and 0 the elite skill. There’s no way, for example, to put a weapon or healing skill in an utility slot, or equip more than 1 healing skill (well, the ones marked as healing, some classes also have some healing utilities and weapon skills) and so on. At most you can change the key bindings to something more familiar, but not the position on the screen.

As for linux, there are no official plans that we know at the moment, and given that the mac version is basically the windows version running trough a wrapper, I doubt there will be one anytime soon. That said, there’s a post in reddit about someone that managed to get GW2 running on linux on a chromebook here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2ty56v/tried_to_get_guild_wars_2_running_on_my/

It seems to have taken some elbow grease to get it working, though, here’s where he explains how he did it:

“With enough space available I just let the GW2 installer do its thing for a couple hours. I tried running the game through Wine (a windows loader) or PlayOnLinux without much success, as it continued freezing at the loading screens.

I ended up playing with WineGW2 which is an old GW2 loader for linux with optimized settings. It wasn’t working (I doubt it’s still supported) so I copied the settings to a newer version of Wine and used the WineGW2 launcher alongside it.

Essentially I just googled how to fix the problems and mashed all solutions together in a big pudding.

I hope that makes sense, kind of?"

I have a sort of love-hate relationship with outfits.

I love how you can use them in any character with no transmutation stones. I usually create all my characters with an end look in mind, and at least one was created specifically around an outfit look (charr thief, using the butcher like cook outfit), and another (human necro) that I usually run around in the last halloween outfit. I like being able to just change the look of a character with a single switch. That’s in general the part I love about them.

However, there’s the other side. I love to mix and match, all my characters (including the ones I use outfits on on their alternate looks) have mixed sets, and I hate how I love how most of an outfit looks.. but with a little detail I don’t like that ruins it overall for me.

To use some examples, I’d love to use the ceremonial plate outfit on my guardian, specially the shoulders… but I hate the thing around the neck and the puffy sleeves, so those two details are a deal breaker for me. Both the fancy winter and noble count outfits would look perfect for my norn mesmer (using the heritage armor now), but it would mean I’d have to give up the harlequin mask that has been an integral part of the look I intended for it since the beggining. I’d really love the raiment of the lich outfit for me human necromancer… if there was a way to replace the chest area.

I think just in case my main (sylvari guardian) is going to invest in a set of armor that completely covers the face…

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/armour/sylvari/sylvari-heavy-karma-dark-male.jpg
“no sir, no sylvaris here”…

I just finished it last night with no problems (loved the fight BTW), and while I was using a guardian, I never used any skill that gave me stability (my own fault, I had changed skills beforehand and forgot to put them back before the fight), and really had no problems once I got the general idea of the fight.

Mines were the biggest problem for me. They work in pairs, and have a tendril connecting two of them, which sometimes isn’t easy to see. If you step on that tendril, it’ll explode for a lot of damage and knock you down so you’ll most likely get attacked by the dragon as well before you manage to get up. Just check where the tendrils are, and avoid them, and if you’re inside a circle from the dragon that you can’t evade, move away from the nearest tendril so you’re not knocked into one of them. Dodging trough the tendrils have been a hit or miss affair for me, sometimes I’d roll right trough it, other times it would still get me, so I changed to just walk around them. If a divine fire is thrown on top of too close to a tendril, I just waited for the next one.

Braham will place from time to time a small bubble in one of the fire points, use it. while you’re inside the bubble you’ll get stability and regeneration. Still sometimes the dragon attack interrupted the channeling, but hitting F again right away usually meant I’d get it the second time around.

As soon as you light up a fire on the second part, a small shade will appear and move towards it to extinguish, and a divine fire will be thrown in as well. Take it and attack the shade, it’ll die in one or two attacks. My fight took longer than it should have because I kept lighting up the fires and not noticing the shades (kept thinking I was supposed to fire them up quick before they were extinguished), and once I did notice them it took me a few tries before I noticed they were invulnerable unless I had the divine fire.

Bring a ranged weapon, even if your build is entirely melee focused, bringing a ranged weapon as your secondary weapon (or kit if engineer) will make the fight much easier, specially the second part where there might be mines and tendrils between you and the shade.

It’s a big mystery!!!..

Tom Gore.4035:

locoman.1974:

Sylvari look more human than the mordrem because the Pale Tree used Ventari (and humans in general) as a mold to create them.

Ventari was a centaur.

Oops.. I meant to type “Ronan” and somehow got them mixed… correcting now..

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

What I don’t like is why didn’t Caithe and Wynne… you know… attack Faolain?! Not necessarily kill her, but at least subdue her and take her to the Tree for judgement. I mean, they were 2v1 there… I understand Faolain had growing support within their people, but this seemed a far better option to me than just killing Wynne. It can be put to shock, I guess, but it doesn’t seem proper. I like the terrible decision that Caithe had to make, but it seems a bit unnecessary. However, for the reasons above, I guess it can be alright. Just… it could have been done better, the situation could have been manipulated by the writers so as to make the decision seem the only way at the time. Not that big of a deal, though, considering how good the final episode was.

Caithe is in Love with Faolain as other mentioned, plus it’s 2v1 inside the cave… outside of it there are several other sylvari loyal to Faolain that helped kill the centaurs waiting, I don’t think they’d sit around nicely if they see Caithe and Wynne dragging Faolain out of the cave.

Draknar.5748:

… How do you even know the teragriffs and wolves have bones anyway? Have you ever seen dried out branches? They sometimes can look an awful lot like bones. And vines are plants like anything else, so that is consistent with the theme.

Actually, mordrem wolves do have bones… sorta. If you look at them, they seem to be the carcass of a regular dead wolf (or other similar canine) taken over by a mordrem flower, the tendrils wrapped around the bones controlling it. You can even still see fur on their legs.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Mordrem_Wolf.jpg

That brings up several questions about how are they created, though. Does the flower take over a dead wolf it finds, or maybe it actually latches to a live one as a seed and takes over its body as it grows? (kinda like the wasps that put their eggs on live spiders). Is there a reason why it’s only wolves or canines that are like this?… could it be done to other species (as in, sentient species)?… I don’t know, but I’d find it creepier to see a corpse controlled by a plant like that than a regular zombie like the ones Zaithan uses.

Sylvari look more human than the mordrem because the Pale Tree used Ventari (and humans in general) as a mold to create them.

The main key to the design was developing an obvious anatomy that clearly described the race as plant rather than an offshoot of human. However, because the race tightly relates to the essence of human due to the Pale Tree’s influences from Ronan, the overall form has a human silhouette. But if you look more closely, you’ll see the forms are really quite alien. They are a collection of abstract notions the Pale Tree had about what made up the human, as she really only saw the surface. They are a tree’s interpretation of humans.
Source: http://www.talktyria.net/2011/08/11/sylvari-lore-interview-with-ree-soesbee-kristen-perry/

One thing we wanted to ensure among the sylvari models was a certain sense of the ‘alien’. Yes, sylvari are based (by the Pale Tree’s creation) on a ‘human’ model. But, they are still a representation of the human form by something that is not human. Faces will show these differences, more than they will show general human differences. Rather than go for a ‘human’ ethnicity, we’ve tried to establish a unique visual identity for the sylvari using branches and leaves or features that resemble seeds or other natural plant life.
Source: http://gaygamer.net/2011/10/interview_guild_war_2s_ree_soe.html

Two words: plot armor..

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor