Guild Wars 2

why should a paid discount apply to gems that can be bought with in game gold?

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Given the amount of time between play>feedback>talk>changes/dev test>second “open” test with non-Anet staff I just can’t see them getting this out the door before a year’s time. If they do, then color me both impressed and very worried.

well that sneaky profit report that got dug up predicted profits in Q3-4 2015, so probably summer

They were talking about the state of the original game

eh, why assume that people will follow your own personal trends of equipment fitting what you think goes with the profession?

PookieDaWombat.6209:

rapthorne.7345:

updated with date of showcase, Mike stated on stream that “the first playable version will be available at pax east”

Playable for the masses or playable for a few select people on their payroll?

I would expect it will be a showcase available at booths at pax (ie, play in premade test accounts for a small period of time on on-site machines with presentation showcases of more in-depth content)

updated with date of showcase, Mike stated on stream that “the first playable version will be available at pax east”

tigirius.9014:

Zanshin.5379:

Guild Wars 2: ArcheAge

Actually WoW MoP had them before AA.

and Aion had this mechanic for years, air currents and all.

I interpreted it as being only available in Heart of Maguma (otherwise I imagine it would invalidate a lot of jumping puzzles). But yes, Hang Glider mastery skills were mentioned as used to access various areas in the new map(s)

Q: Is the expansion “buy to play”?
A: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is a paid expansion to Guild Wars 2, but once you buy it, there are no subscription fees. This means that you can continue playing and access future updates for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns with no subscription fee.

Q: Will this expansion only be available digitally, or will there be a boxed edition as well?
A: Both. Once Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is available, you’ll be able to buy it digitally or get boxed editions at retail stores.

from https://help.guildwars2.com/home

I was a little surprised at the lack of launch date and price, but how it was presented makes me think it’s not actually ready to ship for a while.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en

PAX EAST WILL HAVE THE FIRST PLAYABLE HEART OF THORNS VERSION (MARCH 6-8). NOTE THIS IS NOT A RELEASE DATE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Q: Is the expansion “buy to play”?

A: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is a paid expansion to Guild Wars 2, but once you buy it, there are no subscription fees. This means that you can continue playing and access future updates for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns with no subscription fee.

Q: Will this expansion only be available digitally, or will there be a boxed edition as well?

A: Both. Once Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is available, you’ll be able to buy it digitally or get boxed editions at retail stores.

from https://help.guildwars2.com/home

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Listing the features mentioned thus far in the stream.

New Region: The Heart of Maguma, three “Biomes” (roots, ground, canopy)

No level cap/gear tier increase: We were very specifically told that no new tier of gear or level cap was coming so people’s work on characters wouldn’t be invalidated

Masteries: post-80 character progression allowing new skills, abilities, etc (mentioned were: hang gliding, learning languages of the locals)

New Class: Revenant, heavy armour class, channels power of the mists and GW legends that change skills

Class Specialisation: Allowing new class mechanics and weapons to be used (mentioned were staff ranger and greatsword necromancer)

New WvW and PvP maps: New WvW map (Borderland) involving dynamic keeps and objectives. New PvP map, Stronghold

GvG and Guild Halls: guild vs guild pvp and guild halls for guild socialising, etc

Precursor collections: completing complex collections to obtain precursors

New legendaries and precursors: no specific details on this

get your kitten in here: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Confirmed. oh god yes.

given that GW2 is a 0 downtime game, I think they can be forgiven a little lag when they’re fiddling with their hardware

that heart of thorns is just season 3, no new classes/weapons/etc.

It’s the most disappointing scenario, but also highly likely, unfortunately.

X T D.6458:

I dont understand why zerker is the problem its just one of many available stats. If you or someone want to run a party full of clerics or condi builds nothing stopping you. Whats wrong with people running whatever they want, how would you feel if people were telling you what to run, and that what your running is wrong, chances are you have heard that so why go ahead and do the same exact thing to others? Let people run whatever the heck they want, dont like it, dont party up with them, dont run with them simple as that. People will always find the fastest way to do something. Get over it.

I will say that condition builds do need a long overdue buff for pve.

Berserker isn’t the problem, the fact that berserker is the only efficient way to PvE is. Something needs to be done to make things other than pure dps decent options

As far as I can understand it, a group cleanse is a pretty kitten useful skill to have (though, in my opinion, not the best of the ranger pet actives by far) Why is there so much hate towards “bearbow” rangers?

Define trolling.

Just because someone doesn’t want to fail an event doesn’t mean they’re trolling. Just because someone wants to play the game as designed doesn’t mean they’re ruining your experience.

they need a set in there all the time. tired of having to keep gems sitting there for weeks waiting for the right tool to suddenly pop up

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Well . . . that didn’t long.

Okay, all the new areas, achievements, bosses, fights, etc. aren’t new content. Got it. And no amount of new permanent content, besides Living Story which is the biggest plot pusher for new content. That doesn’t count either. Got that too.

And forget the gem store content, the seasonal content, Dry Top, Silverwastes, new PvP zones, WvW zones, Edge of the Mists, and the . . . of hell . . . forget all that. Doesn’t count either.

Yep. No new, huge, or permanent content. Yes, understood.

. . .

Like I said before, some people are just never happy.

Have you actually played other MMORPG’s, or is GW2 your first MMO? if you were able to compare with past experience of expansions in other games, you would see that the content GW2 has offered over two years pales in comparison to even low budget, small dev team anime MMO’s

I’d rather just not aoe and not stir up drama in some form. Most of the classes I play deal the most damage when using single target skills anyway

Aesthetically? The Jaguar. Practically? The wolf or the bear. 2 second aoe fear or group-wide cleanse

Bernie.8674:

Zanshin.5379:

Now, maybe the bosses at ArenaNet don’t care about veterans like me. Maybe they prefer new blood and would prefer if we just stayed away from the game. But if they do want us back, they’re gonna have to give us a lot of content. Doesn’t matter how.

Traditionally a player in your position is on the hunt for the latest and greatest skins. That was the paradigm in Guild Wars 1. In fact, there was no hunt for ascended gear back then. Your character ascended through the story line and then you purchased your end game gear for a nominal price. After that you spent a couple of weeks hunting down the superior runes that you wanted. From then on it was all about finding cooler gear models. As you pointed out, there are plenty of games out there that are more than happy to reset the gear treadmill for you every three months (WoW is a prime example). I, for one, am relieved that this isn’t one of those games. Try playing one of those games for a few years like I did, and then come back and tell me how much fun it was to have your character’s gear reset to sub-par status every three months.

For many people, playing dress up gets old quickly. Perpetual progress (ie, increasing caps/releasing stronger stuff, etc) while a turn off for others is what a large number of people PLAY MMO’s for. the sense of progress.

I for one already have the skins I want that aren’t legendaries, and I’ve only been playing a few months. I don’t want to play dress up with my characters because they’re already dressed very well until a precursor falls in my lap somehow.

I’ve wanted to wear our own head skins with outfits for a while. would be nice. I can think of a few things that go well with the count outfit

Bernie.8674:

I personally don’t understand why so many people want an expansion. ArenaNet has been constantly giving us additional content for free. Why do players want them to start charging us for it? We’re not getting many new skills. They tried that in Guild Wars 1, and it made managing game balance a nightmare for them. They probably won’t raise the level cap. In fact, one of the reasons I came back to this game was ArenaNet’s aversion to tinkering with level caps. So when I imagine a Guild Wars 2 expansion I see us paying $40 for a new race. I’m not particularly enthusiastic about that idea.

While ANet have been adding additional content, half an hour of predictable story every so often isn’t a good amount of content.

In the time GW2 has been live and given us mini dungeons (fractals), a few new maps and some living story, other games (including FREE TO PLAY games) have given their customers entire new continents, new classes, new equipment types, entirely new system mechanics, new pvp maps and modes, new races, I could go on and on.

While yes, GW2 is free to play and you only pay once, other games that are 100% free to play with 0 obligation to pay for any content throw out massive content updates regularly (and don’t bring up item malls, because we have one too, and I’m sure GW2 has it’s mass spenders as well as any other F2p game).

I would personally much, much prefer waiting several months between content updates and getting substantial updates that take days/weeks/etc to complete than get sporadic content every 2 weeks (between breaks) that gives me content that is done and forgotten in less than an hour (excluding repeating content for achievements which takes 1-2 hours tops with a group).

People are tired on using the same things, they’re tired of the same stale metas, they’re tired on having no more choice in how to play their characters than they did several years ago. This is why a boxed expansion with massive updates and additional mechanical content (classes, races, weapons, etc) are so vital to MMO’s staying alive.

Every single person I talk to regularly that’s been playing the game for over a year says yes, they enjoy the game, but they are also very bored of doing the same things

I want it to be an expansion, but I am worried about the potential side effects it may have on the community based on how they deploy it if it is.

If it’s a paid for, boxed expansion, the community will be segregated on the content they can do. If it’s simply an extension of the living story, then it may simply fizzle out in to the stale content additions and developer silence we have currently, if it’s something entirely different, it may simply not go the way they hoped and it may simply all be a massive let down regardless.

Everything hangs in the balance, and I think ANet are very much aware that the 24th will define the future and long term success of GW2

I honestly can’t count the times I’ve been holding control without thinking about it while on the lookout for nodes/objects/etc/whatever only to need to start fighting and ending up spamming guild/map/etc with my skill/item/etc links because I’ve clicked something with control held down.

I also see this happen a lot in map chats at events/in pvp/in wvw/etc. It would be really great for my fingers and really useful overall to have an option in the menu to toggle interactable object name hovers on/off (similar to the show all player/npc names. a “show all item names” option), rather than having to hold down a key to see things

wait I can think of ONE downside.

throwing yourself off cliffs with sword 2.

Done that too many times >.>

Dunno about anyone else, but what are the actual drawbacks to ranger? (I mained mine and it was my first 80 and only character I played for months). We have massive damage burst in pvp, the longest range in the game, easy rallies from pets, our own personal aggro magnet, high boon uptimes from horn/various pet active skills, one of the best elite skills in the game (rampage as one)… it just feels like there’s no challenge or downside to ranger that I can think of.

Anyone else think this way?

all the newbie map trainers have this. no matter what level you are, they tell you to come back later. they need to simply be removed

Literally until this point Sylvari were the ONLY race that weren’t corrupted by the dragon. We’ve seen:

Risen Humans, Norn, Asura, Charr.

Branded Humans, Norns, Asura, Charr

Icebrood Humans, Norn, Asura, Charr

Now one race may be susceptible to the influence of a dragon that controls pretty much exactly what they are (ie, plant life) and the community has all these nasty conspiracy theories about open PK and exclusion of sylvari and segregation.

I just can’t even.

sell dawn, buy the legend. easy peasy.

my only issue with GW2’s launcher is it doesn’t tell us the size of patch downloads, never experienced any issues with it at all (except with the recent patch server blip for new LS client build)

I suspect the pact will support the sylvari and the pale tree, in recognition of how much the pale tree has done for Tyria, but there will be a potential civil war within the pact. Those who trust the sylvari, and those unwilling to risk being on the same side as potential dragon minions. Either that or we will find that the “nightmare” is the dragon’s influence, and Faolain will become the next Scarlet.

Also, as someone who really enjoys the sylvari lore and has multiple sylvari characters, I have not seen any ranting or raving about the sylvari, merely idle speculation as to the direction this twist may take the story in regards to the sylvari’s standing with the pact and tyria as a whole.

Only people I’ve seen on the forums hating on sylvari are very obvious trolls making a poor attempt at stirring up drama

a good friend I’ve played multiple MMO’s with recommended it and it was on sale at the time, so I thought why the hell not as I had absolutely adored GW1 for several years. Definitely a worthy investment both in money and time.

I’ll honestly not be attending the event again now I have my coat box. Map chat was absolutely disgusting when I attended an event not going well, full of insults and rage being thrown at anyone and everyone.

ANet allows the hype to generate with their perpetual silence, so it is mainly ANet’s fault for not simply telling us what’s happening

can they do it? of course they can. it’s their game, they can do what they want. Will they? That’s an entirely different question

looks good. would be nice if you could somehow filter out the items that shouldn’t be on the TP/have a massive and obvious disparity between supply and demand

downvoted the youtube video for being like the 50th person to upload that kittening cutscene to youtube in bad quality

no thanks, let’s not make it even easier for the annoying guild recruitment spammers and gold sellers.

is it really that difficult for people to keep track of boons?

Just… don’t attack when retaliation is up?

demand for them will always be high by investors looking to sell them on when they inflate to 5 tickets

I’d rather keep eyes on those I report in case they need to be reported again.

they look absolutely hideous. more like underwater sea anemones than ground based plant life, and as has been stated, there’s absolutely nothing armour wise in the game that they fit with.

a bug got fixed, so what? if you like the aura, draw your weapon. You can set a hotkey to weapon draw so you don’t have to enter combat for it.

There’s your on/off button

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Yup, carrying a Norn around on my Asura. Seems legit.

this would be equally, if not more, awesome.

Tom Gore.4035:

rapthorne.7345:

It may simply be a renaming of the game, much like other games do when they release substantial updates (IE, RIFT: Nightmare Tide/Storm Legion, AION: Ascension/Steel Cavalry, etc)

A substantial update is pretty much what an expansion is, by definition.

Have the naysayers really reached a point where they are now arguing semantics? “Yeah we’re getting five new zones, new race, new class and new skills for each profession, but it’s just an update. It’s not an expansion!”

I consider an “expansion” something paid for to access extra parts of the game on top of the base game(akin to GW1 expansions/WoW expansions), but an update something part of the base game, that will change the game as a whole potentially for free/an optional cost

It may simply be a renaming of the game, much like other games do when they release substantial updates (IE, RIFT: Nightmare Tide/Storm Legion, AION: Ascension/Steel Cavalry, etc)

That’s not to say there won’t be a substantial update to the content, but it may not be a paid expansion (given developers have in the past said that wasn’t a direction they were going down)

For example hugs/kisses/piggybacks/carry/etc (would love to see an asura piggybacking on a norn)