Guild Wars 2

Just tried it a couple of times. Really hard to coordinate with random strangers. We couldn’t even get past round 6, let alone survive 10 rounds of this with all the yaks intact.

This requires really intense coordination that you can really only have with a group of people you know (who will take “orders” from a leader) and that is able to develop a strategy for coordination. Frustrating with random PUGs. Will probably not attempt the achievements, doing it solely for the giant gifts.

Happened to me earlier – I was full, clearing up inventory, and party leader left before I could collect the chest. Please fix this so that if the party leader leaves, they leave the party instead of the whole party ends up leaving the dungeon.

Confirming that it IS possible to do the JP but you absolutely must jump into the box at the end – it’s not fully disabled, just walking in (and occasionally jumping in) for some reason.

I would just like to chip in here and say that I hadn’t logged into my Guild Wars account since 2006 and, once I could remember a character name (it was hard after 6 years), I could log into it with absolutely no issues. So I can verify that accounts don’t expire even if they’re collecting dust for many years.

I do believe the timed JPs should scale for the people who can do static ones, but can’t do timed ones because they’re not fast enough for some reason or other.

I vote no for removing jumping entirely, though. It is a part of the mechanics of the game – many vistas, for instance, involve tricky jumps. But you can usually bypass these by having a mesmer open a portal, so really, the only issue for me are the timed JPs.

Actually I think this is a nice change, and even if the price was always the same, it’d make more sense to type in the number of gems you want to purchase rather than the amount of gold you want to spend. There could also just be two input fields – one for the amount of gold you want to spend and one for the amount of gems you want to purchase, and typing in something in one field will update the other field automatically.

It’s a minor thing, but over and over we see people wondering where the heck their gem store purchase went, thinking it wasn’t delivered when in reality their mailbox was just full.

Making it so that mail from the BLTC doesn’t actually count toward your inbox total/can bypass the inbox limit, like any other system-issued mail, would solve the problem. Since the mail is deleted immediately after the item is claimed anyway, this shouldn’t pose any problems. :o

Exterminans.9723:

JP has been temporarily been shut down due to heavy botting.

Source please? I can’t seem to find out where this was stated (though I did notice the prices of gifts and their drops tanked overnight, so bots may be why).

Edit: If it’s a teleport hack, it should be painfully simple to differentiate bots from legit players actually doing the JP…

Confirming that this happened to me as well, twice now. Unsure about the first time, but the second time (just now) I definitely slid down the side of the box instead of jump. Which is odd, because I’d slid down the side before, but that wouldn’t boot me. Started happening after the latest patch.

Oh I don’t mind! I just figured that since yesterday’s repeating events were a bug, perhaps today’s were too.

It actually is ANet’s fault for introducing the gamble in the first place. The fault doesn’t lie solely with the player – ANet is cashing in on people’s want for these minis. Yes, they shouldn’t have gambled so much, but saying it isn’t ANet’s fault at all is naive imo.

Preying on people’s innate gambling nature is one of the most questionable ways to make money and the reason why gambling is illegal in a lot of places.

It seems less buggy than yesterday, but I just did a run of the Infinirarium in Hoelbrak and got several events from previous days: gifts for princesses, stop princesses from riding toy ventari, paint princesses, destroy toy charr mortars and stop the toy soldiers from attacking the center area. There were only 2 griffon-related events: protect them from toy princesses and drive them away from the helm.

Intended or a bug again?

Yeah, those make sense account bound – and they are available to everyone, even if the HoM ones take a lot of work (GW1 is still functional and the HoM minis can still be earned).

Came here to report the same thing. Had the exact same issue OP and Grene Jello reported.

Should be worth noting that the faulty turret event spawned twice – once on its own and once mixed in with the soldier toys.

People don’t love to rage. People like to feel that they got their money’s worth out of something. And dropping $60+ on minis only to not actually get anything isn’t exactly getting your money’s worth out of something when someone else spent $10 and got 3 minis. Adding insult to injury is the fact you can’t trade with people who got minis.

Waiting to add the minis for sale after a while is a dirty move, too. It would be one thing to add the box and say “these minis will be available for direct purchase at the gem store later” – then people make a conscious choice to try and get everything right away or wait until later. As it is, people are buying boxes on the premise that these minis will not be available in any other way. Adding them later is just giving the people who already spent a lot of money on chance the middle finger.

As the title says, please don’t make players get stuck with their collectibles (minis, skins) that can only be gotten via random luck.

Everyone’s been saying that they don’t like your gambling chests since Halloween, so the decision to make minis account bound on top of gambling exclusives is absolutely baffling. Not only do you have to spend money on a chance again, you’re also stuck not getting anything if your luck is bad because you can’t buy from other players.

In fact, it can be frustrating even if you get the minis.

Minis are a type of collectible you really only need one of. So even assuming you have infinite cash and can keep trying until you get 3 unique minis (the 3 extras for the quaggan can be whatever, so they don’t count) there is a chance you’ll end up with, say, 3 of one mini and 4 of another mini before you get the last unique mini. So even if you spend 3 extras on quaggan you’d still have 2 of one mini… and nothing to do with the extra, since it’s account bound. You can’t gift it to anyone, you can’t sell it – nothing.

I understand the logic behind making, say, the DDE Rytlock account bound – you only get one of them. There’s no chance of ending up with duplicates. It’s accessible to everyone, they just need to pay the set amount.

But this just doesn’t make any sense. Minis are purely cosmetic collectibles. I can understand the decision of making them luck-based like in Lost Shores, but account bound?

Michael.4791:

And what are you going to do when you travel abroad with your laptop?

It would be handy to have a way to turn this option off, though that would, of course, make it possible for a hacker to do it as well.

Another option is to just have to go through multiple hoops to authorize a different country – wait some time, have multiple confirmation e-mails, force confirmation of identity via support, and so forth.

Liavain Axon.1972:

Pennry.9215:

Liavain Axon.1972:

Ventari toys still spawn, along with skritt and now the Dolls. Each day the presents get harder and harder… I’m really not looking forward to the upcoming toys.

Hehe! I know, huh.

Related side note: Anyone else run in to the level 31 mobs in the level 13 zones? /splat But I couldn’t help laughing.

Happily, I have not experienced this bug yet. I am somewhat limited this weekend due to (hopefully) try and get my wife more hooked into the game. We have been running around as a group of three warriors and an elementalist and popping presents in the 25 and under zones. My wife just dinged 25 today.

So far my husband, wife, and son are having a blast running from present to present… As long as the boxes are not stingy and refuse to drop gifts. >.<

Your husband and your wife? You player, you. (sorry couldn’t resist)

Seriously, those dolls are a mini nightmare on your own. I can snipe them, but then by the time two/three are down the presents are gone. >:

Edit: They’ll get progressively harder? JP farming 4 lyf…

Got 10 boxes (I keep one of each unique box in my inventory since Halloween – have a Mad King’s Chest, a Consortium Chest and now a Wintersday Box). Opened 9 boxes.

Got:

21 Personalized Wintersday Gifts
6 Reindeer Tonics
2 Snowman Tonics
2 Festive Golem Tonics
2 Wintersday Dye Kits
1 Festive Hat
1 Mini Festive Golem

I used one dye kit (keeping the other) and got a Wrath Dye and a Lime Breeze Dye.

Now, assuming my luck (or lack thereof) held up, I’d need at least $60 to get all 3 minis (the 3 plus 3 more for Quaggan) which seems extremely excessive. If I got unlucky I could just not get more minis or get a bunch of repeat Festive Golems (and none of the other two). I’d also have no use for extra Festive Hats since they’re account bound.

I’m almost out of bank space and I’m not willing to gamble for the other minis. Considering exchanging the rest of my gems for gold and getting a couple of unique minis from the Lost Shores event, since I’m guessing the Wintersday minis will be back again next year.

I like all of these proposed solutions.

I really am enjoying Wintersday, but making four minis available only through chests which are essentially gambles and making them account bound has to be the single bad thing about the event. You could end up with 4-5 of the same mini and none of the others, and then they’re account bound so you can’t do anything with them other than have them sit there.

Please consider making these boxes available through the Mystery Forge somehow, at the very least, if these solutions aren’t appealing.

I think waiting rooms are in place to avoid creating too many concurrent instances, which could put stress on the server. By putting several players in the same instance you avoid needing to run several separate instances. And the wait is there because the puzzle is timed, so it needs to finish “disappearing” before you can go back in.

I don’t really like the wait either, just trying to explain the likely reason why it exists.

I do think this is easier than CT, and it was easy for me – probably because CT honed my skill, and probably because I have a much better graphics card now.

But easy is relative to your level of coordination/skill/lag/ping. Some people are running older machines, some have bad ping, some just have poor hand-eye coordination, some aren’t used to jumping. Playing the piano is easy for an experienced pianist and a nightmare for a beginner, but you don’t see an expert pianist making fun of a beginner for not being able to play an “easy” song.

I have a friend whose computer lags so badly that she can’t even see the JP – she goes in and the next thing she knows she’s back in the waiting room.

If it’s any comfort, JPs are (assuming your machine isn’t lagging) a matter of patience and practice. Practice steering your character with your mouse while you’re running, which is the most important thing. The faster you turn the camera the faster you’ll be on the next snowflake.

If it helps, what kept me sane in the 12 hours I spent trying CT was setting personal milestones – “I just want to get past the next platform”, “I just want to make the drop before the mist gets me”.

Much better than CT in my opinion. Easier, yes. Boring to people who are skilled at JPs, perhaps. But a lot more considerate of players’ average level of skill. Still… I feel like although toning down the difficulty for a limited edition JP was a sound decision (even if it’ll make it too easy for hardcore players), it’s still timed, which still alienates players who don’t have the necessary coordination.

I appreciate this JP a lot and love running it – but I still wish that event JPs weren’t timed. Add timed JPs to normal gameplay. Make them as hard as you want them to be. But for temporary events, please make activities more welcoming toward other levels of skill. The snowball PvP, for instance, was okay for me even though I’m not much of a PvPer. It would be nice if event JPs were also more inclusive.

One thing I really liked was the solution to the CT zerg – adding multiple paths elegantly mitigated the issue of being in a huge group and unable to see your character. I also liked that snowballs were available in the waiting area – kept me busy while waiting.

So overall, I personally love this JP. It’s just about the right level of difficulty for me to want to do it several times over. But I still think it has the same fundamental flaw as CT – the time factor shuts out people who can only do JPs by taking their time.

Also, a friend of mine runs GW2 on a low spec computer and she couldn’t even get the JP to load before she got kicked out of it. If there wasn’t a time limit, she could’ve at least seen the JP.

Thank you for making the hat available to everyone. I truly, honestly appreciate it.

Several times now my class when doing the snowball PvP activity has randomly switched from Scout to something else as soon as I jump down the starting platform, forcing me to return to change my class back. It happens mid-jump after I’ve already picked my class, for no discernible reason.

I caused several people to go down, but that didn’t count. The only time I noticed the counter going up was when I had singlehandedly downed and KO’d someone – which is… rare, to say the least.

Edit: Ok, just got it from dealing a lot of damage to someone and making them go down (at 3/5 now). It seems erratic, but Mega Messiah’s strategy is sound.

Yeah, this achievement is just broken (not in the buggy sense). Please make it count when you down and/or otherwise cause someone to drop the gift.

I just got a kill on a gift holder but no dice? I’m… not really sure what else is needed.

Edit: Ok, managed to get it up by 1 – you need to do the most damage, maybe? I’m not sure.

How does it work? Do you have to down/KO someone who was holding a gift? Making the gift holder drop it doesn’t seem to count and after several matches I’m stuck at 1/3.

Seems odd that making the gift holder drop the gift (by knocking them down/launching them) doesn’t count since that does stop the gift holder.

Edit: Downing the gift holder doesn’t seem to work either. Do you actually need to KO them?

Easier than CT, but I honestly appreciate this. Super cute, loved the end of the puzzle.

After the patch, when I open the “sell on trading post” tab, all of the items say “no current offers” even when they do have offers.

rootnode.9546:

neon.4863:

(I do agree though that it’s questionable planning for a company this large to not have patches run on a fixed schedule. The patch should, by all rights, be ready to launch.)

It should have been ready since at least Monday or Tuesday. If planned good and safe.

Yup. Or at least it should’ve been planned to be ready since Monday or Tuesday – that way if something went horribly wrong they’d still have time to fix the patch before today.

And if things continued to go horribly wrong, they should at least be informing players that the patch will be late – there’s no need to specify why, I don’t think, but “Hey guys, sorry about the wait, we’re having issues with the patch and it may be late, but we’ll do whatever we can to get it out today” would be better than just “it’ll be ready to launch sometime today”. Better communication overall would be nice, I think.

RobL.1239:

Actually they gave GMT timings for the rest of this event. They just gave no indication that today would be dictated by PST times only, which is the point I was making.

What they gave was the GMT equivalent time for the patches, which are still based on PST.

PST is 8 hours behind GMT. By saying the patch will be out “sometime today” (in PST), they’re saying it’ll be out sometime between now and 8 AM GMT.

Also, we don’t know why they’re not giving an estimate, but if they don’t give one, it’s because yes, it’s too tricky for them to give one. I’m not sure what makes anyone think otherwise.

(I do agree though that it’s questionable planning for a company this large to not have patches run on a fixed schedule. The patch should, by all rights, be ready to launch.)

In the spirit of all things jolly, I will make sure to serenade monsters with carols as I punch them in the face.

Avatara.1042:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Sorry, next time I’ll spend more time policing up my grammar instead of answering more questions.

Or you can do both. It is not hard, and the kids from the US hardly need more examples of bad grammar.

I would much rather have a dev answer questions than worry about whether or not their grammar is correct. It’s hardly his responsibility to be a shining beacon of grammatical correctness for all the US kids to base their grammar skills off of. Seriously.

That could be put in the Suggestions forum, perhaps? The ability to cancel your sent mail (or just view your sent mail and cancel it if it’s undelivered) would be nice, too.

I’m level 45-50! :p

Botters make me angry, so if I can spare the time to help catch a few, I will. Seems like I have most of the ones on Maguuma (the server) on my list though, haven’t caught anyone new recently. About 5 or so? of them are no longer online all the time, too, so I’m hoping they’ve been banned.

Sharkinu.8096:

Ribos.8350:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Miniature_Island_Guardian

The existence of this guy must be the bane of every “gotta catch ’em all” collector in this thread.

EDIT: I should elaborate, I guess. What I mean is that a promotional item you can’t buy but is given to people who happen to be in the right place at the right time is not a new thing for ANet and that’s fine. I have a baseball cap, someone else is going to have a wizard hat. Some Taiwanese guy who wasn’t one of the first fifty people to signup has an Island Guardian in GW1.

1. That mini was tradeable.
2. They didn’t excluded current players. Sure it was low chance to win the art contests, but they never said: “sorry, you are not allowed to enter the art contest.”

To be fair I don’t really think that’s fine, either, and I sure hope extremely limited supply promotional items like this don’t come up again.

I do have a GW1 account, but I wasn’t much of a GW1 player (I hadn’t logged in since 2006 and did recently strictly because of HoM whoops), so I didn’t know about the existence of that mini. Thanks for the info. I would’ve been pretty miffed about my inability to get that item back then, too, ngl. But if it’s nothing new… well, I’ll probably be dropping my collector hat and getting only the items I think look cool from now on.

Caledon Forest? Interesting, none of the bots in my list have been there recently. I’m guessing there’s a variety of paths they cycle through to avoid detection.

The copper ore node I was camping was in that small centaur camp south of Beetletun where events constantly pop up with the Seraph trying to take it/destroying weapon racks/Tamini trying to retake it. There’s an ore node that sometimes spawns in one of the corridors leading outside the camp and every single bot on my list stopped there.

Another node I saw and remember was an ore node in the area with the spiders near the jumping puzzle in Gendarran Fields. The spiders killed the bot though, that was satisfying…

The rich ore vein was actually a tip I got from another player who was also camping bots, though he didn’t remember where it was. It was a rich iron ore vein, but that’s all he could tell me.

Edit to reply to the above: I don’t spot them as frequently, but I also don’t run around high level areas (highest level character is 50), so that may be why. But yeah, I understand that it’s very hard to tell them from a legitimate player if you’re not actually camping the node (which is why the suggestion is to camp the node if you’re able).

I bother to camp nodes both because I have the extra time (I work at home) and because I know they’ve been sinking the TP prices lately (and it’s ridiculous, as you’ve said).

To be fair, bots will always change their tactics and come back. It’s a game of cat and mice that never ends, not unlike companies who put anti-piracy protection in their products that gets cracked within hours of their release anyway.

When they figure out a way to stop these “teleporting” bots, botters will move on to another exploit. And then another, etc etc – still, it’s important for data like this to be provided so they can be alerted re: the existence of a new type of exploit. As members all we can really do is report them and hope ANet does their part. And then complain if we feel like ANet isn’t doing their part.

tronik.9065:

I did this exact thing Gaile, and wrote you about it yesterday, and my friend has been unable to login (his game wasn’ teven finished downloading) when on his account it said he’d had Unacceptable behaviour and to try again after the ban was gone. This is ridiculous. I’ve gotten no responses from support either (and neither has he.)

There’s a topic for following up on support tickets if they’re over 3 days old, you could try that:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Tickets-for-Review-3-days-and-older-merged

Good luck getting stuff sorted out.

You don’t need to report bots if you don’t want to or don’t have the time. I don’t think anyone can blame you for that. You’re quite right in saying it’s not the community’s responsibility to sit around reporting bots.

That doesn’t mean someone else can’t go ahead and do just that, though. I just posted the info for anyone who does want to try it. If you don’t, that’s fine.

Node camping doesn’t always yield results either (for instance, right now 75% of the bots in my list are stuck in Southsun Cove). Personally, when I’m idling in-game for whatever reason (eg waiting for dragon events) I sit near a node and wait. If nothing comes up in 5 minutes or if the event starts, I leave.

I do notice (from watching my block list) that they spend more time in high level zones, but they do zap around low level zones too. I was pretty surprised by the number of them in low level Queensdale areas after I started paying attention. All the bots seem to follow the exact same path, too (you can tell because they pop up in a couple of areas with no nodes too – that farm near Shaemoor Fields is one of them – but they vanish almost instantly, usually the pet takes longer to despawn so that’s how you can tell one was just there).

Edit: By watching my block list, spots that they’ve been to today:

Hoelbrak
Black Citadel
Queensdale
Wayfarer Foothills
Plains of Ashford
Gendarran Fields
Fields of Ruin
Blazeridge Steppes
Harathi Hinterlands
Lornar’s Pass
Dredgehaunt Cliffs
Frostgorge Sound
Iron Marches
Southsun Cove

A lot of them get stuck in Southsun Cove for ages, unsure why (rich ori node perhaps).

This isn’t a bot report, but rather a post to help people catch those pesky disappeared-before-i-could-click-them gathering node bots. I would’ve liked to post it in the sticky about botting, but that’s been locked. Apologies if this is a duplicate topic.

It takes a bit more effort than reporting bots you can follow around, but if you happen to have some time or are idling waiting for an event chain, you can try it.

• These bots’ weak spot is that they need to stop and gather – giving you a window of time to click them and report. So the best way to catch them is to sit near a gathering node. Eventually one will come up in almost any node. Personally tested with a copper ore node in Queensdale and in ~20 minutes around 16 bots zapped me by.

• Rich ore veins are especially good since they can be harvested several times, giving you more time to click them to report.

• You can add them to your block list before reporting them. That way, you’ll be able to tell if they’re online and where they are (these bots switch areas extremely frequently, they’re easy to spot). You can report them daily that way or forward their names for other people to report.

• If you can’t catch one before it vanishes you can take a screenshot (Print Screen on PC) while their name is visible on the screen, then add them to your friendslist through their character name, and block/report them from there. Sometimes you can just read their name before they vanish, but most of the time they’re too quick for that, so taking a screenshot helps.

• They get stuck sometimes and there may be nodes they won’t try to harvest – it’s safest to camp a node you’ve seen one at before.

• You may get better results immediately after seeing a bot in a specific node. I wouldn’t spend too long camping the node, but from my experience they tend to come up in droves after one pops up at a node, so that’s your best shot at catching one.

It’s a bit of work since you can’t just report them as you run into them while playing, but it’s doable. Some of these may not be bots, but players exploiting – I generally report them for botting anyway since there is no “exploiting” option when reporting.

Hopefully this helps someone with the “they teleport away too quickly” problem. Just camp a rich ore vein – they’ll show up.

Thanks for talking to us!

What I really would like to see fixed for rangers wrt pets is Lick Wounds (3rd downed skill). It used to work well for me, but now it seems to fail every single time I’m not in a completely flat surface. It’s like a trump card for ranger survivability in PvE and it makes me cringe every time I use it in anticipation for whether it’ll work or not.

The worst thing you can do to the collector types – you know, the players who actually spend money on every single promotional and seasonal item, the ones who wake up at 4 AM to not miss out on an exclusive items, the ones who will splurge on cash shop exclusives – is dangle a new item in front of their face and say “well, you can have it, if you give up the rest of your collection”.

Why should they spend money on future promotional items if there will be instances like this, when they can’t get something without giving up what they already have?

This kind of exclusive item is there specifically to appeal to collectors, because other types of players probably don’t care that much about having a complete set of skins. And that being the case, it’s the worst kind of decision – attract collectors by setting a precedent that puts off collectors.

It’s a nonsensical decision no matter how you look at it.

(Also, for the record, real world item comparisons are off because collectors of real world items are actually able to track down promotional items both in cases like this and in case they missed the original promotion. So you can’t compare one way or the other.)

You can buy the upgrade for 2000 gems in the Gem Store (under upgrades if memory serves). It won’t come with the hat, though, I don’t think.

I bought GW2 for someone else – used my PayPal and my billing info, e-mail address and so forth. Serial came in my e-mail and I forwarded it to him. He’s had no problems playing so far – I should note we’re in different countries (but both countries use the NA version of serial codes) and that hasn’t caused any problems either. I’m guessing the only issue would be if you’re in a NA version area and your friend is in an EU version area, but I’m not really sure about that.

New players are not being denied their chance to get limited time items – they didn’t have the chance because they didn’t own the game/weren’t playing during the limited time the items were available in. You’re not playing the game, so of course you don’t get the chance to obtain a limited time item within the game.

This, however, doesn’t quite work out. You’re playing the game, so you don’t get the chance to obtain a limited time item within the game? That makes no sense.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Sharkinu.8096:

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies

The comparation makes no sense. I go to the store to get a new box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies anyway because I ran out of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies. My Current GW2 account is not hacked, banned or anything so I don’t need a new account. Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies are consumables, GW2 account is not.

Then if I still have Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies in my old box and buy the new box just for the toy I can’t play with the toy unless I eat Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies from the new box. I can’t just get the toy from the new box and keep eating from the old box.

Also the toy would be available for purchase separately from teh Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies box, for a smaller price than buying the Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies box with the toy. But in GW2 even if you want to BUY it for your current account, you can’t.

It’s just an example of how companies entice people to buy there product. If Anet Wants to give something away free in the game to new players to entice them to buy the game I’m not going to cry and say “I want the free stuff to I bought the game to” it doesn’t work that way. Sorry if you feel cheated its how the retail industry works. Companies do this all the time they give incentives to attract new customers.

Sharkinu (and myself) have been saying we want the ability to pay for the hat. We don’t want it for free. There’s a big difference. Companies don’t just block existing customers from getting things when holding promotions for new customers. My cable company has promotions for new customers (e.g. 2 months free for 100Mbps internet) all the time, but it doesn’t block me from upgrading my internet to 100Mbps if I’m willing to pay for the upgrade.

Feirlista Xv.1425:

You guys need to think of it this way, you go to the grocery store and buy a box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies, you take it home and for a week you eat your Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies for breakfast. Then you run out of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies, so you return to the store to get another box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies and you notice a free toy is inside the box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies. Now are you going to go up to a clerk at the store and demand that he rip open a box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies and give you a free toy because you already bought a box Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies last week and didn’t get a free toy. No you will probably buy two boxes of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies. They put free crap in serial boxes to get you to buy more serial or to entice people to try their product. It’s the same way with computer games.

No, it’s absolutely different.

Even assuming the comparison stuck (because toys in cereal boxes are physical goods):

Your metaphor specifically relies on you being done with your box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies. It’s done, over with, and you can’t eat any more. Which in GW2 would mean you being done playing with your current account for whatever reason. It’s done, over with, and you can’t play it anymore. Then you’d have a reason to go and buy yourself a new account, just like you have a reason to buy yourself a new box of cereal.

In this case we still have access to our accounts – so there’s still cereal in our box of Toasty Oaty Winky Dinkies. In fact, this cereal never runs out so long as we’re willing to eat it. Also, you’ve spent some time playing around with the box. You’ve decorated it with some cardboard cutouts you handcrafted. You bought paint, glue, paper, scissors to customize your box. You spent a lot of time and effort to make this box feel like your box. But… the store won’t let you get a box with a toy unless you throw away your current box, even though you’re not done with it yet, even though you’ve invested personal time and money on this box. You’re being denied access to the box with the toy because you bought a box before, unless you’re willing to give up everything you invested in your old box. (Edit: Or rather, you can have the new box, but you can’t take the toy from the new box and put it in the old one. You can’t have the toy and the old box all in one. Because of reasons.)

It’s just a toy, but why the hell can’t you get it if you already own a box of cereal and want to buy it?

It’s not entitlement or greed to want the ability to obtain an item – I’m not sure what makes anyone think so? I don’t even want the item for free, I just want to not have the ability to obtain things shut off from me because I already own the game – that doesn’t even make any sense. The fact it’s just a hat is actually irrelevant to the issue in question. I’m here, I’m playing, I’ve paid and am willing to continue paying – why is content being shut off from me?

If it wasn’t a hat – if it was an exclusive event for new players – would you complain? The principle is the exact same. It’s just a hat, but it opens a precedent – what will the next exclusive promotion item I can’t get be?