What are /r/Guildwars2's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

9:20pm BST/ UK time.

10:20pm CEST (european time).

1:20pm West Coast Time

4:20pm East Coast time

Edit: Other Time Zones

Edit 2: 20 min delay now ;(

Breathe. No matter what anyone does to your account, they won't compromise anet's backup information. You might find your account state rolled back a bit, but there's a pretty good chance they'll be able to recover your everything. Your main goal is to collect yourself and prevent any bleed-over.

In the meantime, secure your other accounts.

• Run a virus scan. It's unlikely you have a keylogger, but do it just in case
• Lock down your email(s) disconnect any other sessions if your service has that option, set a new password, and enable two factor authentication.
• Do you save passwords in your browser? Try not to. Go through every password you have there and change it in order of importance, Make each password new, not guessable, unique, and long. Don't take any shortcuts like using the same core password with slightly different capitalization or different digits at the end.
• If you don't save passwords in your browser, do the above step anyway.
• If you have trouble keeping up with all those password changes, consider a password manager like lastpass.
• Pay special attention to any place where you used the same password as you do for GW2. Really, make sure you're not reusing your passwords anywhere. A lot of breaches happen because your information is compromised on one site and they try the same combination on a bunch of other sites.
• It may also help to look at Have I been Pwned to see if there are any particular things you need to pay special attention to.
• Two factor authenticate anything important. Keep a look out for other breaches in the future.
• if you use public internet a lot, consider signing up for a vpn?

It's okay. You'll be fine. This is incredibly stressful, but you can recover from it without any long-lasting life impacts. If you make these changes now and keep up with them, you probably won't have to worry about anything like this for a long time.

If you want to ensure the help of the community, release all collected builds and user generated input (but, of course, none of ANets image assets) under a proper open data license (e.g., CC-by-sa-4.0). It is not good style to ask the community for help, and then claiming the copyright of the created content.

Also, in your own interest, before copying and republishing stuff in bulk from other sites (or allowing users of doing so), make sure that you have the proper rights of doing so. Just because builds are published somewhere on a web site doesn't make them property of the public domain.

I also had to quit GW2 due to it being too addicting. Personal two nickels: quitting video games cold turkey doesn't work, especially if you haven't changed your living environment, like the computer with all the potential games is right there in your house/apartment waiting to be played. It is an instant trigger reminding you to play again. My happy medium was strictly sticking to single-player games when I'm solo, and ONLY playing multiplayer/online games with people I have met and know in real life - as a way of socializing. Luckily the few friends that I have are busy and can only play on weekends so it's working out for now.

A few books that helped a TON in understanding why I had such a hard time quitting:

The Power of Habit

Mini Habits

I hope it works out for you! IMO you are doing the correct thing getting back to old hobbies, but it definitely does take time.

Ranger does not mean ranged fighter. The word comes from the verb to range, and has nothing to do with the range of a bow. So please, adapt to the fight and switch to melee when it's better.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ranger#ranger

1: a keeper of a park, forest, or area of countryside: ‘park rangers’

2: a member of a body of armed men, in particular a mounted soldier, a US a commando or highly trained infantryman

3: a person or thing that wanders or ranges over a particular area or domain

It's not Arenanet's fault that other games have restricted the rangers as a ranged fighter.

That image is at least 5 months old according to tineye

and you posted the same image 10 months ago...

Just stop.

You can.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/9340/page/2
Colin Johanson: ''Correct, and then you can swap back and forth, you can say “My character's a druid, but I'm going to play as a ranger today.” It's very similar to changing out your skills and traits, you can go in and change whenever you want, as long as you're out of combat.''

https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=USD&To=EUR

It's $1.18/1 euro.

It's been as low as $1.05 / 1 euro as recently as 2017.

(shrug)

Once you add US sales taxes (anywhere from 0% in Alaska to 10%+ in Chicago and Long Beach) it's basically on par.

Glad you like the site, always happy to talk about this stuff!

> Like, is it a monolith or broken down into Microservices?

The frontend and backend are separate, but both are monoliths.

> If so are they containerized and deployed with docker/k8?

They are containerized (into "frontend", "api", "worker" and "scheduler", but the latter all run the same code with different config). I use Docker Swarm, but if I started again or found some time for it I would swap for K8. I've found K8 (which I use for other projects/at work) to be much more stable.

> Is it all hosted on the same server or distributed?

It is distributed across 17 servers.

> What kind of database are you using?

MongoDB, but I would probably use PostgreSQL if I was to start again.

> Is it all written in js (node) or are there other things involved (besides html/css for the website obviously)?

It's all JS/TS, a good chunk used to be PHP years ago. There's also a little bit of Python for specialized tooling, but that doesn't directly run the site.

> What kind tools do you use to monitor your service/s? (Uptime, load, statistics etc)

Self-hosted Open Distro ElasticSearch/Kibana for logging and statistics, https://uptimerobot.com/ for uptime alerts, https://healthchecks.io/ for server & backup healthchecks (load/storage space/sanity check if containers are running etc)

I tried to use DataDog and Newrelic for a little while but both are way to pricy for our volume.

> Do you have some kind of special API key? I can't imagine the default rate limit is enough for such a big site.

The rate limiting is based on IP, and the IPs of our worker servers are whitelisted and excluded from the rate limit. You can request the whitelisting if you have a use-case that requires it :)

>Reading through this thread has also inspired me to create a brand new, totally unique password. I guess I'm guilty of the "It'll never happen to me" mentality, seeing some people here with accounts that look like they may have been compromised, kinda hit home.

Just a recommendation, but look into Lastpass or Keepass. They manage your passwords so you can have completely unique passwords for everything and never forget anything. I prefer Lastpass, but they're both good and both free. Lastpass is stored in the cloud (the folks over there have been pretty good with keeping your passwords secure) and is very convenient. You can always access everything from anywhere, and there's a fantastic browser plugin with auto-fill functionality that is much more secure than Firefox's remembering of passwords (which is NOT secure). Keepass is offline so you have to manage your password database file manually (don't worry, it's all encrypted so you keep a master password). Keepass is a little less convenient but you can store your database file in something like Dropbox and get a similar effect to Lastpass without disclosing your unencrypted passwords to a third party.

And I'm completely with you on the $60 as an Aussie, +respect for anyone who sells a AAA game here without charging +50%.

It's the flame war build you see a lot in pvp.

Rom starts playing here starting at 1:25. He does a full overview of the build in the last 3 minutes of the vod. Probably the most effective condi-war build I've seen in pvp.

TL-DR: It's distracting strikes/body blow using krait runes and viper/sinister gear. Add in sigils that apply extra condis after weapon swap.

So many Red Posts! With an estimated 900+ responces on the Official Forums, Arenanet has blown us away with how they respond to feedback. We cover a lot of the more interesting responces from the most recent Beta Weekend before heading into more World vs. World discussion. Sorry for the long show guys! We'll try to keep it to an hour in the future :)

Episode 30 Show Notes

• 03:00 - Feedback: Best WvW Story?

• 10:30 - News: Arenanet Responds, Dynamic Events Behind the Scenes

• 49:40 - Bridger Rant: Default Keybinds: WTF 6-0?

• 53:09 - Roundtable: WvW Re-Visited

Weekly Question: Question of the Week - What are your thoughts on the balance of the Eternal Battlegrounds?

Let us know what you think and send us feedback. Also, watch us live on Sunday nights @ 8pm EDT.

Well, for the sword you have two skills. "Leap" and "Illusionary Leap"*. Leap teleports you to a new location, leaving a clone behind, while Illusionary Leap leaves you in the same place while a clone is placed in a new location. I'm guessing they'll probably have similar skills for the other weapons.

The spells in the trailers were actually phantasms, not clones. They still look like you, but enemies are going to see them in a purple shade** anyway (given their increased strength and resilience), so I'm going to assume for those, you stay in place.

Hope that helps!

*I remember reading this from a dev, but currently I'm getting it off the skills page on the wiki.

** Question 8 in the mesmer section.

The generally opinion is that Mumble has better quality and lower latency than Ventrilo something which I have personally observed. I don't know about Skpye but I dislike how it doesn't have PTT (Push To Talk).

A 15 slot server is about $20 a year.

You can check out something like C3 which is free if you want to try a VoIP program long term without paying, also many hosts (Mumble or Ventrilo) offer week long trials or demo servers.

If you're supporting a non-profit via Amazon Smile, please use https://smile.amazon.com!

This sale (no matter what URL you use) is for today only!

Could only save the first 4 pages, still a nice read : https://www.mediafire.com/?wrkgckcrqpca5al

For those who wonder, yes I got infracted for my OP, but that was worth it as it led to their ban.

I'll keep fighting as I am the hero Tyria deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So I'll be hunted. Because I can take it. Because I'm not your hero. I'm a silent guardian (but I play the other classes too), a watchful protector. A dark knight.

I would recommend watching both of these videos. Combined, the run time is around 14 minutes, but it is definitely one of the quickest ways to familiarize yourself with GW2. Considering you are at work, they may need to wait until later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBC_ig73aMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3uMlHSbPSY

Honestly, all of his videos are great. With regards to your questions, as others have said, there are no dedicated tanks or healers in the game. Guardians are the closest thing the game has to healers, though through support abilities rather than raw healing. Guardians are also formidable damage dealers. Which role you play is determined through your choice of weapons. A guardian can have 2 sets of weapons equipped to switch between during combat to quickly change the role they are playing if the situation demands it.

Regarding ranged attacks, all professions in the game are capable of attacking at range. I believe ArenaNet's goal is to leave the option of melee, ranged, or both up to the player. For instance, Thiefs can wield daggers and swords or they can opt to equip pistols. Each profession has a similar option.

Edit: I also forgot to include that while the release date is still not announced, ArenaNet has said that Closed Beta will definitely start before the end of the year.

Yeah, Anet and NCsoft as a whole have avoided E3 since NCsoft was fined for excessive noise (article). Since then I think they've basically avoided E3.

As for Anet's response: "E3 is a sales and marketing oriented industry show. We prefer to spend our resources on shows that will put the game in front of fans." - Regina

I miss the Factions login screen. :(

While I love the painterly style they went with for GW2, I'd really love to see something like that make a comeback for the character selection screen. I think we're due to at least a background change considering LA is nothing but a pile of rubble now.

And the poll results are in, organized with (what I hope) is a nice little graph. Some notable results and discussion questions:

• Even though Charr is the "least" popular race, most people here on reddit want to play a Charr warrior. Is there any appeal of a Charr Warrior over, say, a Charr elementalist? Is it an aesthetic issue?

• Even though Guardian is the "most popular" profession, both Warrior and Elementalist come in as close seconds. Does anyone else find it is odd that the three classes that commonly associated with "the holy trinity" (Tank, DPS, Heals) are also among the top three classes?

• Ranger is the "least popular" profession, at least for first picks. Is it because it feels like other classes (at first glance) can do what the the Ranger does better, or is there another reason people shy away from Rangers?

• What makes the Sylvari and the Asura so appealing? Personally I find the Sylvari satisfies both my needs for an "upstanding" race and also a "innocent" race, one who is still curious about the world.

Link to the data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApEen6A9_EvTdGZEYjJTNFAwcVJFNVE2VGlZVDFNNHc&hl=en_US Feel free to use it as you like. I could only find one instance where the polling was abused and I marked it as such.

The (imho) best combination was proposed to me under a RedditNoir post:

RainyMood + Midnight Walker by Bohren & Der Club of Gore

Then read one of the top comments aloud.

It worked flawlessly for me since launch. Here is a script someone made for me. http://pokit.org/get/img/51b7f9537fdd7f3d3da59f273d7a65e3.jpg

It only works in GW2 window, it doesnt work when you alt tab. So whenever you hold right click, which you almost always do, it will show names of items. Unless you're playing with action camera. It also wont spam chat when you open, click anything, it works only when right click is pressed.

I've been using auto hotkey script for that since launch. Whenever I hold right click (and you'll do that all the time for camera), it shows object names. Just bind "show object names to J or whatever you want" and use this script: http://pokit.org/get/img/f8d1595c6c65ff3314ba061fbe3032a5.jpg

I have no idea how to format in reddit, so there's a picture xD

Hmm perhaps it is not clear in this video but it adds reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, removes the gw2 bloom and adds a better one, artistic hdr, adds more detail to skill effects and emmisive materials. Have a look at how skills look with it on here: https://medal.tv/clips/41322731/d1337cGtdOud

Well they have a mobile site. Currently the best App for GW2 is the GW2 Sidekick App.. developed by /u/fireprufe

Ff14 and gw2 fanboi right here. Before people lose their mind and still circlejerking around. Please consider that 30% of the ff14 playerbase is/are japanese. Reddit is not even such a big thing there. http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/JP

Also ff14 is massive in china too.

Someone has your log in credentials. Change the pw on your gw account, and probably your email too. You might want to use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if your login credentials for any other website have been compromised and make the necessary changes there too.

>Will my laptop run GW2 smoothly?

Almost certainly not, if you can't run WoW. You'd need to give more information about the processor (i.e. the model), double check your RAM (300GB is too high for a laptop) and the model of the graphics chip would be useful (if it's integrated, unless you have an i5, you don't have much hope.)

Official requirements (from the FAQ): >Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better • Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better • 2 GB RAM • NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better) • 25 GB available HDD space • Broadband Internet connection • Keyboard and mouse

Try Can You Run It?

The laptop you posted is complete and utter garbage - a clearance item that stores hope some fool will buy for full price.

The components in it are over 3 years old!

mov3on posted a decent option but i think the price is in USD. Here is the best i could find for your price range.

Generally you would want an intel 8th gen or newer or an AMD ryzen 3xxx CPU + dedicated GFX card. 8GB RAM should be enough and an SSD - 250GB is a bit small but i dont know your needs. Spending a few hundred $ more might be a good idea but dont ever expect the price to reflect the quality and performance when laptops are concerned.

GW2 Toolkit

> * Customizable, modular homescreen > * Crafting progress with gold calculation (how much gold you need to spent to finish an item) > * Complete recipe of items > * Details of items > * Achievement Browser with progress tracker > * Daily achievements with useful hints > * Event timer > * Fractals and daily fractal list with related infos to your account > * Exchange Rates (Gold to Gems) > * Wallet > * Search Items in your account > * Trading Post > * Raid tracker

I use ZPN connect and connected to germany. I got mine just fine. Once you get it you can get off the vpn and play normally. The effect lasts until you get a skritt.

Joke's on me though, i got peg-leg boots :|

Silver Wastes it is

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/news/gameId/473/showArticle/32933

> Staging for War > The Pact has set up a staging area in the Silverwastes, a new area in the Maguuma Wastes nearer to Mordremoth’s domain. Players must be on guard when reporting to Camp Resolve to observe Pact efforts as they will be in enemy territory. Mysterious ruins in the area will provide key battleground locations in the ongoing war against Mordremoth’s expanding armies. Players will fight to hold strategic locations, call in Pact allies for aid and take a stand against the growing threat.·
> Silverwastes Treasures > While players fight against the Mordrem hordes in the Silverwastes, they will accumulate new Bandit Crests, which can be traded into Pact Vendors for Sinister gear recipes, crafting materials, and more – including pieces of the brand-new Carapace armor set.

I am one of the people that wants an expansion. I would be more than satisfied if they announced an expansion. I would be ecstatic. Which, honestly, if investment firms are to be trusted (and seeing as giving out bad information to people in the stock world is a great way to get blackballed) one has already been announced, even if not by ArenaNet. Seeing as NCSoft tells them to jump and ANet has to say how high, the likelihood is pretty large.

The example I always use of integrating the community well into the development process is Planetside 2's roadmap. A simple list of high- and low-scope additions to the game, sometimes with a set date, sometimes without. Often the date is missed, features get pushed back, removed, overhauled; more than once the community has had a very negative response to something on the roadmap and it's been radically changed to reflect community concerns or binned/postponed entirely. I'm running out of fingers to count times Anet has made a stupid change that the community has gone berserk over, that could have been avoided with even a tiny bit of community feedback.

It doesn't always work out perfectly of course, but it's a hell of a lot better than half the game turning into a lynch mob every 3 months because Anet have done something else absurd without thinking twice about it.

You're a good parent for this!

Gem cards can be purchased in certain brick-and-mortar game stores (Best Buy, Gamestop) in $15 and $25 amounts, or in $25 amounts on Amazon. The $25/2000-gem card is worth 2-3+ cosmetic items depending on what your son wants, so that's a decent amount already, but if he's greedy and wants a bigger bundle of goodies, you're better off doubling it.

Any available edition upgrades are not particularly worth it, so don't worry about those.

As an alternative suggestion, GW2 has tees and other merchandise here.

Thanks OP! Lots of interesting trends here.

I'm sure other people were curious about the distribution of race/gender/profession combination, so I did it myself. Here's the spreadsheet with all 90 combinations sorted from most popular to least popular

edit: a preview for if you don't want to click the link

1 - Human Female Ele (most popular)
2 - Human Female Mes
3 - Human Male Guard
4 - Human Male Thief
5 - Human Female Necro
...
86 - Female Charr Revenant
87 - Male Norn Revenant
88 - Male Norn Thief
89 - Female Charr Guardian
90 - Female Charr Thief (least popular)

Incidentally, the stereotyped Female Charr Mesmer falls at #55... there are 11 Female Charr Mesmer mains, and only 2 Female Charr Thieves. I probably should have included the percentages here :/

Goodness. Don't use AutoHotKey for what Keepass was designed for. https://keepass.info/ and your logins are stored securely in an encrypted DB with auto-completion based on window name with the ability to allow you to select from multiple logins in cases where you have more than one.

So for example, you could have LoginA, LoginB, LoginC for Guild Wars 2, you setup a Keepass entry for each login with the appropriate password for each, then you tie those logins to the Guild Wars 2 login window so Keepass knows that those logins are bound to that program and when you press whatever your Auto-Completion keystroke is, it'll pop open a dialog to allow you to choose which account it should enter from among LoginA, LoginB, or LoginC (it will only suggest logins that you've tied to that window) and then it will fill in the login automatically and submit it. It can do this for everything on your computer so you need only know the password to decrypt your database and you're good to go.

It was quite a creativity sadly it's not his just straight up copy paste from here

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Frame_rate.html

You guys should consider a more detailed post somewhere explaining all the software engineering and project management considerations that big changes entail. There are so many requests for things like this where the requester has no sense of tradeoffs in time, resources, value, etc. or any of the implementation edge cases that arise that could knock a theoretical schedule way off. It's as if they've never read Mythical Man Month or Peopleware or anything.

This update contains mostly text files.

All credits for the datamining go to ralmante.

Using a program called Xpadder and a cheap gamepad with a joystick on it, you can get very smooth camera movements. If you don't know how to achieve the first person perspective, check this guide!

Here

>The young Asura's the ward of well-known golemancer Zojja, and as such, has a way with golems. Actually, she rides one, which is a convenient way to follow Scarlet around Tyria and show up in the Shiverpeaks just in time for the fireworks to begin.

Plus she acts as a kid with "I'm behaving" and "It wasn't me!" when you talk to her, so I assume it's a child :)

The "not speculating about the future = not saying anything to the players" is just the worst kind of company policy I know of.

I completly get why you can't be too open about things and why you don't give dates, simply because 95% of the people can't handle it and completly explode when a date can't be reached, but not even telling, what they have in mind, is just ridiculous.

You want to have a look at a great roadmap? Here you go: http://www.planetside2.com/roadmap It was even updated yesterday.

Do they miss certain features or do they delay them? Sure, but that is not the point. The community simply knows what's going on in the next 6-12 months and what they have planed and this helps A LOT to keep many people interested in the game.

Currently, we don't even know what is 2 weeks ahead of us, are you kidding me? Seriously, there is no other developer in the whole MMO market, which is so tight lipped like A-Net, not even Blizzard, which usually won't tell us much as well. I don't know, that is probably one of the reasons why I can't play GW2 like a normal MMO because I have nothing to rejoice over because I don't know what happens in the future.

Before you go ahead and doubt level cap increases, here is a quote from Mike O'Brien from November 27th 2012:

Mike O’Brien wrote:

> “I hope we’ve been clear that GW2 is not a game with virtually no stat progression in it like GW1 was. That’s why GW2 shipped with a higher level cap, and with a hard separation between PVE and PVP.

> “In GW1 we never advanced the level cap through four campaigns/expansions. The game design didn’t allow for it. But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.”

Source

My simple helper memory editor is indeed just to help users, just makes it simpler than to tell someone to download a special version to be able to debug stuff, which I'm sure if I did so I'd be even more accused of distributing a "secret" version with a memory editor.

Trust me, if someone wants a memory editor (and knows what to do with it) they don't need my bare bones memory editor, they just download the free debugger x64dbg which is orders of magnitude more powerful than a simple memory editor.

> Rich would be... [having] Omni-Infusions in every slot of gear for max stats.

Someone needs to read The Millionaire Next Door. :)

I suspect that the majority of people who are "rich", have managed to amass thousands of gold because they don't spend their money on things as soon as they can "afford" them. If that was their attitude, they'd never have more than a couple of hundred gold because they'd always be buying and consuming stuff with it.

I'm fairly confident in saying that someone can only amass thousands of gold, if they can look at an omni-infusion and say "five stat points is not worth 150-ish gold". (I don't mean to say that people are wrong to spend their gold on omni-infusions; just that if they make this choice, there's an almost infinite amount of stuff they would be prepared to buy, and thus they'll never amass any significant wealth.)

It wouldn't surprise me if you could use nVidia or AMD software to changes the hue/saturation of your screen or monitor. W10 also seems to have some greyscale options.

Thanks for this project!

It looks like your website is missing a SSL certificate and so it's flagged as unsafe. Your host may support a free certificate themselves or one from Let's Encrypt. I highly recommend that you enable this and automatically redirect all traffic from http to https.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/10256/Heart-of-Thorns-One-Week-In-with-Colin-Johanson.html The interview where Colin mentions they wanted to do a revamp in the expansion but it didn't make it but it will probably be coming soon. Its towards the end of the article.

FYI, you don't need a phone to use Google Authenticator. Check out the options here - http://www.howtogeek.com/129014/how-to-use-google-authenticator-and-other-two-factor-authentication-apps-without-a-smartphone/

Thanks for open sourcing this project rather than simply abandoning it!

Do you have a plan for the maintenance of the website and packaging/distribution for future releases? It's great to have the code out there; but, I've seen other projects in which the community took over development; but, the official website with a link to a really outdated GitHub repository are relics (e.g. DS4Windows (old vs current)

16 million already. Star Citizen, Trion and Funcom games are not accessible from Russia anymore.

This IGN event seems to be a straight up "we're posting the keys, first come first serve." When this post is 17 minutes old the first batch are going up

I would love for Arenanet to take a page from Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile cash shop. Seriously, take a look around there. Particularly the Skill Effects, Weapon Effects, and Animations (though we do have "How to Dance vol. 1" - where the hell is vol. 2, eh?).

I would heartily buy 'skins' for things like engi turrets, necro minions, mesmer skill color changing (blue or green skill effects, for instance), etc.

Could you maybe upload to mediafire instead of 4shared, 4shared is a crappy service that wants everybody's money. Download free wait 20 sec's, download with social media, buy now, you can't download cause you're not paying us. https://www.mediafire.com/ is far better trust me.

There are innumerable reports that buying from G2A can get your account banned. It's not an official retailer. I think Amazon has it on sale for $20.00 at the moment?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers/#UnitedStates-physical

http://www.amazon.com/Guild-Wars-2-Pc/dp/B001TOQ8X4

I made a sheet at some point for my WvW guild: http://i.imgur.com/jeOpj.png

The Art of War upgrades are obviously there because we're a WvW guild, but they still fit in pretty well, the rest should definitly be there. The list is abit short because I don't know the research times for the higher level upgrades.

You want those extra upgrades slots as soon as possible (guild workshop and asuran outsourcing).

As for temporary upgrades, I think you would want the influence buff up all the time, and then the magic find is pretty decent too, and if you're not a WvW focused guild, then when all permanent stuff have been upgraded, you can also have the karma buff up at all times.

Your timezone

Countdown

A slow news week, we spend a bit of time responding to some feedback regaurding last week's discussion on Entitlement in the gaming community. Then, after a short news discussion, we dive into the mailbag for some viewer questions. From RP to baddies, and everything in between.

Episode 27 Show Notes:

02:30 - Feedback: Gamer Entitlement

17:03 - News: Prepurchase,

26:10 - Mailbag: RP Servers,- do we need gold sinks?, how do you tell someone they are bad?

Weekly Question:

Question of the Week - What makes a better pro gamer, Innate Talent or Supreme Training?

About 20,815 hours (give or take a few hours total downtime)

I know the logic behind "why" mounts are behind and I don't think it's accurate. Just because something is "free" doesn't mean no one will buy the paid for ones, there's plenty of ways to incentivize paid versions (Like I said, more dye channels, higher quality skins). WoW has proven that you can sell something even if you have the majority of the same thing in game for free.

The problem is when the opposite happens and you aren't providing meaningful gameplay rewards while simultaneously moving all sorts of rewards behind a paywall. Players will simply have no desire to play the game and if no one plays your game there's no way you are selling anything from an in game shop.

If GW2 was a game where rewards weren't constantly being brought up as one of the worst parts of the game then I'd probably give your opinion more weight, but that's just not the case. GW2 has consistently struggled with making rewards feel good, there's a lot of theories around why this is and a lot of them point to the fact that the Gem Store exists and the way things that could be good rewards are gated behind it.

well, its rather know that "words cant hurt me" is a load of dogs bollocks and literally kills people by ignoring bullying as something irrelevant because its "only words."

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236107430_Sticks_and_stones_may_break_your_bones_but_words_will_always_hurt_you_A_review_of_Cyberbullying) and many, many more... Like if you only google "sticks and stones, bullying" you will see a ton of research who show how scaring words can be. (and also interesting.. this study says 95% of the bullies perceive their behavior not as the verbal violence it is , but as fun, so only 5% intend to truly harm their victims.)
but thats irrelevant...
if you step on my toe, it hurts even if you didnt intend to. If you normalize this shitty behavior just because it doenst hurt you, you giving the signal that hurting other people is okay, that ignoring other people is totally okay because your cool detachment or fun with slurs matters more than them. Which is pretty shitty.

>Guild Wars 2: Path Of Fire Devs Dive Into Elite Specializations [Exclusive]

I don't think they know what that word means..

http://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/videos/path-of-fire-elite-specializations-dev-diary-1000005503

It's a shame they took down the original blog post from when they first officially announced the sylvari. Fortunately it survives thanks to the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20110810170026/http://www.arena.net/blog/kristen-perry-on-designing-and-redesigning-the-sylvari

"What’s more is that the team is also working very hard on finding a way to make it so that every profession has access to every weapon and their own weapon skills for those previously locked weapons. Engineer plus Hammer? Check. Again, there’s no specific timeline for this, but a new progression system is coming."
Interview can be found here.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7597/Guild-Wars-2-ArenaNets-Master-Plan-for-2013.html

this is the part that hinted towards it.

"What’s more is that the team is also working very kitten finding a way to make it so that every profession has access to every weapon and their own weapon skills for those previously locked weapons. Engineer plus Hammer? Check. Again, there’s no specific timeline for this, but a new progression system is coming. Finally those level 80s you’ve been hoarding will get some use, as they’ll be adding more and more skills and traits to the game for years to come and on a regular basis for players to obtain."

I know this isn't 100% what's going to happen and it would be really weird to have like a guardian using daggers or a warrior with a staff but it is hope. They have said multiple times that they don't want to bring in new classes so they are kinda forced to add new skills and weapons are skills.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/6574/The-Legendary-Endgame.html

No, the endgame just doesn't take the form of a short list of dungeons you can play over and over on different levels of difficulty. The best part is that at max level you can go back to any content and still be rewarded, and it will still be challenging. There ARE endgame dungeons, but at end-game you'll be able to go to any of the dungeons in the entirety of the game. Beyond that there is Orr, which is a series of island that will have a ton of event webs, creating this constant PvE war in the zone, with some crazy dungeon at the end.

There's also legendary gear, which all look really awesome but don't really give you some crazy advantage over other people. It's different. It's not endgame like any other MMORPG.

Personally I spent years playing mostly RvR in DAoC and WAR, and I think I'll do the same with WvW. That in itself is enough endgame for me, haha. I think the huge amount of content, crafting, sPvP, and WvW will keep people busy for a long time. At the very least until the next expansion comes out. I think this game has a lot of staying power.

Run your email address through https://haveibeenpwned.com/

if it pops up anywhere, then that site's security has been breached. If you had a password like puppies1 on one of those sites, then you can bet your bottom dollar someone somewhere is trying puppies2, puppies3, etc on every platform out there. Time to beef up your security and protect your account, your email account and so on.

Have a read through here https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/sections/200307188-Account-Security

To build on this, I would also strongly suggest using a password manager like 1Password, LastPass or similar. Having randomly generated passwords that you don't need to remember is much safer than reusing your old passwords. It's slightly time-consuming setting up and going through to change your password everywhere you have an account, but I can't stress enough how much safer it is.

There was a lore interview with Angel McCoy where a question like this as asked.

> Esprits d'Orr : Do Shadow Arts have anything to do with magic, or should they be considered as advanced fighting techniques?

> Angel McCoy : Those who practice the shadow arts (such as thieves) utilize a combination of physical prowess and magic. Their magic enhances their stealth and other skills, but they have also worked hard to get good at the arts. Just as a guardian has a deep understanding of combat strategy and can read a battlefield in the blink of an eye, a thief can read the landscape of rooftops and find just the right place to step. Magic, for any profession, is nothing without the knowledge, diligence, and alertness that any user brings to it.

The webpage is down atm but you can view the full inerview in an archive here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150128164059/http://esprits-dorr.fr/node/261

There were several magic/profession lore questions asked. Keep in mind that this is an interview and since the time this interview was given ArenaNet have taken a big step away from anything said in interviews as canon.

We're back from PAX with some great stories and swag! This week we're discussing a lot of the recent news, including a long dicussion on the recent blog about the Squad's system. Before all that, we've got to talk PAX! It was exciting, we met Martin Kerstien! We got Beta keys! Stay tuned after the show ends for some bonus conversation that just kept going after we ended the show. Also, if you want to help the show: Subscribe to us on youtube.

Show Notes

• 04:45 - PAX Recap - We met Martin! And came back with Keys!

• 18:00 - Feedback: WoW Memories

• 20:30 - News: Custom Animations Suggestion, Oceanic Servers, Squads

• 66:00 - Post of the Week: Gold Farmers OP?

• 80:30- Post Show Commentary - Freelancer Rants!

Weekly Question: Question of the Week - Thoughts on Gamer Entitlement?

Let us know what you think and send us feedback. Also, watch us live on Sunday nights @ 8pm EST.

Looking at your username, I suppose you're Dutch. It's at 17:30 for us dutchies.

See: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Guild+Wars+2+-+PAX+South&iso=20150124T1030&p1=400&ah=1&am=30

I bet you're not as bad at math as you think. Math is a practice skill, like playing the piano. I've found that many people that think they're bad at math, just get discouraged early on and then give up. Check out khann academy, they work wonders. And, practice practice practice

> they're probably making 30k or 35k

That's almost minimum wage for the Seattle area. In Seattle proper they're ramping people up to $15/hour, which is a salary of about $30k. ArenaNet is in Bellevue, so isn't directly bound by the law, but wage competition will drive the minimum to about the same number, because it definitely is not cheap to live in Bellevue, Seattle, or neighboring cities.

The average game dev salary in Bellevue is probably closer to 6 digits than you might think. Senior salaries are in the ~$110k range, and other salaries are somewhere around $80k.

Given that people talk about ArenaNet paying "below the industry standard" (which I doubt, but whatever), $60k is a reasonable entry point for devs there.

Source: I live in the Seattle area and work in tech.

If you're on desktop, check out Reddit Enhancement Suite, you can tag someone with a nice bright red « creep » if you still want to see their comments yet have a warning to remember who you're talking to, or outright ignore them. Example.

>[...] as mostly right now it’s predominantly the folks who only play WvW that are battling it out in the mists.

Looks like Colin Johanson disagrees with you there. That interview is more current than the video from the OP btw.

> It's no secret that you guys are notorious for crying wolf about 'laying the groundwork' for the next big feature instead of maintaining the systems that are already in place.

I'm not normally a fan of treating every little thing a developer says as an iron-clad promise, but I do think this Colin quote is relevant:

> That being said, I’d also add one of the goals of Heart of Thorns was to address every major game system to ensure they had all the core components we need for the future of the game. Our goal was to ensure we didn’t really need to tweak any major game system again after this expansion and our focus could be entirely on adding new content, and building on top of – rather than expanding outward systemically.

Source

I'm willing to believe in that statement.

Did you buy the expansion from somewhere like G2A or Kinguin? Avoiding those sites is recommended due to the chance of illegal keys which would result in that message.

If you didn't get it there it might be worth checking your email at something like https://haveibeenpwned.com/. I finally got around to getting a Netflix account and set it up using an old default password. ~3 days later my account has be upgraded and switch to Spanish, so now I'm back to being Netflix-less.

> GW2 players can be young. Very young

GW2 is a Teen/12 rated game: https://www.igdb.com/games/guild-wars-2/age_rating - so they shouldn't be younger than 12.

And Roman numerals are taught in schools from all countries: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/6xjm12/does_your_country_still_teach_students_how_to/

So I don't see how you can excuse it.

Just report, they shouldn't be playing the game if they're bots they make my experience worse.

I believe -image is irrelevant now compared to what it did for GW1.

GW2 always downloads all the files before launch (if any are outstanding), rather than the GW1 way which was to immediately download only what it needed at that moment, and then download everything else in the background. So if you've launched GW2 and got into the game, you have all the files - it's all or nothing for everyone.

As far as -repair or -verify, these are maintenance/troubleshooting commands for when you suspect the file is corrupt in some way, rather than to be used as a regular part of running the game, or optimising anything. I can only think of 3 occasions where these commands need to be used - disc corruption, memory corruption, or a bad download, and all 3 of those will show symptoms in-game (crashes, corrupt visuals, etc) and possibly out-of-game (BSODs, other instability) to prompt you to troubleshoot, and fixing the hardware/drivers/OS should probably be much higher up your list.

In other words, the game should take care of itself. Running this kind of operation every patch is just stupid, and if you're getting slowdowns, this is probably not the solution unless you're HDD is on it's last legs, in which case you should probably look at replacing it anyway.

If you're looking for a tiny bit more performance on a HDD (not a SSD), you might want to check if it's worth defragging the volume GW2 lives on, or maybe defrag just the gw2.dat file.

I would suggest running diagnostics before spending money on anything.

For RAM: https://www.memtest86.com/ For storage (HDD): https://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

If you are lucky, you will get some errors/warnings on one of those. However, it is possible for diagnostics to miss an error in your hardware. So if the memory test comes up clean, that does not necessarily mean the RAM is not the issue.

There are quite a few hosters which are reliable and give you enough power to handle quite a lot of page views in their free tiers. Like OpenShift or AppFog. There are probably more. But I used both of them and so far never had any problems with downtimes etc.

I don't know what you use on your backend to return the data or if it's all static but I suppose either hoster should be able to handle it.

edit If you need help with setting this up just sent me a PM

Hey guys, we are aware of the issues with the game and the forums. The team is working on them as fast as possible. We don't have an ETA for a fix, but we're aiming for "A.S.A.P." In the meantime, we've added more beta screenshots from our players to our Pinterest board, so feel free to take a look while you wait. http://pinterest.com/arenanetteam/ (And you're welcome to give us links to more if you'd like.) ~RB2

HEY EVERYONE. Why not just pre-order it through Amazon? No stress, no $.

http://www.amazon.com/Guild-Wars-2-Pc/dp/B001TOQ8X4

• Add to cart
• Put in your information ( Credit card will NOT be charged )
• confirm purchase
• Sit back and wait 5 minutes for your beta key.

Enter the key in here: https://register.guildwars2.com/

• Download the client.
• Play GW2 Friday Afternoon.

i just book mark, this and run it in the background.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers

the app i use if i don't want to alt tab out.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Akeno.Guild_Wars_2_Helper

We clear w1-6 consistently with this ping.. so it's not that big of a deal. Once you get used to it, you'll be okay! As for WvW, we play just fine with our ping as long as there is no packet loss on your end.

I personally use NordVPN, another guildie uses mudfish

If you used to play on NA I think you should continue playing on your old account(I know you said no opinions but hear me out) because China gw2 is very different from what we're used to. I think you should try to get NA gw2 working somehow :) 300ms isn't unplayable!

You have glasses that do that but it's a worthwhile investment only if you spend a lot of hours in front of a computer everyday. Alternatively softwares like f.lux can help you out, you just need to find the setting that works for you (and play in windowed fullscreen, not in fullscreen for it to also apply to Gw2).

Ya, recently ive been taken up with astroneer & thats mostly because of how incredibly communicative the developer team is. They have spoiled me. They have weekly vlogs and Q&A's. But best of all they have an amazingly organized roadmap for the game that has been continuously updated and talked about ever since the game launched.

Use adwcleaner against the adware. Had this once before too. After use of adwarecleaner everything was gone.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

And i mean after using malware bytes or something to remove the malware and then remve the adware :o so it doesn't come back I hope for you.

Most likely a B-Stock item from EVGA. Those are items that get refunded or are exchanged in order to upgrade to a better GPU for a lower price.

Gamespot has a few http://www.gamespot.com/guild-wars-2/

Gamebreaker.tv has a bunch. http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/guild-wars-2-mmorpg/

It seems like there were other game sites that hosted their own videos, but none are coming to mind right now. Vimeo may have a few. Good luck in China.

>don't want to show their game at E3 because its a press event

They were fined for making too much noise and haven't been back since.

I don't think it's a decision that came out of wanting to to avoid press and only appeal to fans (I know I thoroughly enjoy watching all the HD trailers and footage to emerge from E3), but more that they had a tiff and aren't seeing each other right now.

There are portals in your Home city called Asura gates.

Refer to article 4 in this link. :) http://www.ign.com/wikis/guild-wars-2/Starter_Guide

Edit: The link above shows you how to get there through PvP. The Home city Asura gates are easy to find if you look on your map using 'M' while youre in the city.

> #1 live development priority after HoT launch, bro.

I don't think any decision-makers at ANet have said anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way.

CoJo did say "so for now we’ll just say WvW is the final big game system on our radar", but in the context of that interview he seems to have no understanding of just how badly they've fucked up WvW with HoT.

> Having a tantrum and throwing around hyperbole doesn't make things go any faster :)

• Tantrums are the only thing ANet actually responds to.

• I'm not throwing a tantrum. I'm expressing pointed criticism.

• That was not hyperbole. HoT addressed precisely none of the points that Corpening mentioned three months ago.

Colin addressed WvW in his MMORPG interview and acknowledged that they weren't able to give it the treatment it needed. > one of the goals of Heart of Thorns was to address every major game system to ensure they had all the core components we need for the future of the game. Our goal was to ensure we didn’t really need to tweak any major game system again after this expansion and our focus could be entirely on adding new content, and building on top of – rather than expanding outward systemically. WvW is the one major feature I’d say we didn’t end up accomplishing this goal, the project is so large it didn’t end up fitting into the scope of the expansion and we still have work to do to address core fundamental issues like population balance, rewards, scoring, night capping, etc. ... so for now we’ll just say WvW is the final big game system on our radar – and we’ve had a lot of great conversations with our players about what they’d love to see from epic large scale PvP combat.

Link to interview MMORPG - Interviews: Heart of Thorns One Week In with Colin Johanson

> Dim Post as String

> If Post Contains "Cantha" then Downvote

> Else If Post Contains "Tengu" then Downvote

> End If

Really folks, we know why Cantha is not coming so give it a rest already!

The orders give expensive rare level armor so they are only good for aesthetics, look up all the looks and decide which you like the most

Story wise they all are really good, most people like the Whispers story more because of the character Tybalt. Tybalt is awesome and you will never look at an apple the same way again.

> A company will do whatever it can to minimize damages, and admitting they were wrong is one of the last things in their list.

I completely disagree.

> Phenom X2 720

Do you mean X3? AMD Phenom II X3 720? Yeah, that's not good news I'm afraid.

If you take a look at the X3 720 performance against other common CPU's: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X3+720&id=343

Well, you can see the X3 720 averages around 2700 while other common in 2014 CPU's start around 8300. That's a pretty huge difference. What you should pay the most attention to is single thread rating. Modern CPU's are around the 2000 mark, the X3 720 is at 980, which means it's roughly twice as slow performing a single task.

Of course these are just synthetic benchmarks but it's a good indication of how fast your CPU is compared to other CPU's performing the same test. It doesn't mean if you get a new CPU your game will run twice as fast.

I'm running a CPU with a 6500 score and I get good FPS all the time except when I'm in a massive zerg (but I have a powerful graphics card as well, which helps).

The launch party stream is still on Twitch. If you skip to about 1hour 25mins and 2hours 10mins in they have some footage from Times Square. It's pretty barren.

That being said, it was a midnight launch and as it's all entirely downloadable unlike way the WOW Burning Crusade launch where you had to physically go to the shop to buy it there's no real draw to be anywhere but sat at your PC ready to play it. Not sure why they felt the need to do it tbh.