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Guild Wars 2 |OT3| Two Week Updates, One Box, Zero Subscriptions

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hythloday

Member
Evon seems like a sneaky, shady character but that Fall of Abbadon thing sounds vote worthy. This is actually a hard decision for me.
 

Jira

Member
Evon seems like a sneaky, shady character but that Fall of Abbadon thing sounds vote worthy. This is actually a hard decision for me.

Yeah I was voting for Kiel until I saw that....

Who Abaddon was for those who didn't play GW1:

Abaddon was the God of Water and Secrets, though has since fallen. Like the other gods, Abaddon's origins are shrouded in mystery. The Apostate speaks of Abaddon gaining his power from an older, deposed god, however nothing more is known about this. Abaddon was once fanatically worshiped by the Margonites, a nation of sea-faring humans. The phrase "act with magic, act within reason, act without mercy" is attributed to Abaddon's teachings. He also had a temple in Orr, the Cathedral of Hidden Depths.

In 1 BE, he spread magic to the races of Tyria, and thus indirectly responsible for the wars that came afterward. King Doric pleaded to the gods and they rendered magic into the five Bloodstones, diluting their gift. Abaddon was incensed and went to war with the others, and he was eventually struck down at the Mouth of Torment, in a blow that turned the Crystal Sea into a desert. There, Abaddon was sealed within the Realm of Torment and the city of Morah was established to watch over the spot where he fell. Shortly after his defeat, the gods left the world in an act that came to be known as the Exodus.

During his imprisonment, Abaddon sought a way to return to the world, sending out demonic servants to subvert the mortal realm. It was a servant of Abaddon who persuaded Shiro Tagachi to murder Emperor Angsiyan, causing the Jade Wind, and Abaddon sent titans, who acted as gods for the charr and gave them the capability to perform the ritual of the Searing. When the charr assaulted Orr, Razakel convinced Vizier Khilbron, who was also a follower of Abaddon, to read the Lost Scrolls and sink the land in the Cataclysm.

In 1075 AE, worshipers of Abaddon, General Kahyet and Warmarshal Varesh Ossa attempted to enact Nightfall, thereby returning Abaddon to the mortal plane with the Great Margonite Temple as the center of his rule. Abaddon, with the help of Dhuum and Menzies, was almost successful, but was stopped by the Order of the Sunspears and the Order of Whispers, who entered the Realm of Torment to defeat him. In his final moments, Abaddon's power threatened to run out of control and destroy Tyria, but it was absorbed by Spearmarshal Kormir, who became the Goddess of Truth using a power that had been granted to her by the Five Gods.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Kos may as well not login for two weeks.
He'll probably like the Candidate Trials. It's jus' killin'.
Evon seems like a sneaky, shady character but that Fall of Abbadon thing sounds vote worthy. This is actually a hard decision for me.
So it is for us all. I want to give Ellen my vote and I like the WP thing, and I'm really curious about the reactor explosion but the story of the war of the gods would be too cool to pass up...
 
We are nearly reaching the month of the anniversary of GW2, and what we get are politics.

I was hoping for an Elder Dragon invasion at this point. :(
 

Jira

Member
We are nearly reaching the month of the anniversary of GW2, and what we get are politics.

I was hoping for an Elder Dragon invasion at this point. :(

The Living Story is going to lead to Elder Dragons at some point. They're still in the setup phase for characters as we don't have a Sylvari or Asura yet for the new Destiny's Edge.
 
Holy fuck at all the back items, I'm sorry I know we complained that there wasn't enough at the beginning but now it is becoming absurd. If they keep this up they need to give us a back item bank collection slot.

The only activity I will play and hopefully with our guild (we can compete who gets most points) is the Candidates Trails Challenge because it sounds like the GW1 challenge missions and I assume we will still be using our own skills and builds.

The Aspect Challenge one is stupid, the skills still do not work right, especially #3 you ground target it where the target is green yet you miss the jump...

Hunger Royal was kinda interesting during the beta but again I really hate learning random new skills that have nothing to do with my character just for an activity.

Still might play them all for whatever achievement I can get from them and then never ever ever touch them again.

Holy shit at the Fall of Abbadon Avon Barksdale has got my vote.

Does this mean they changed their mind on Aetherblade and Molten Facility or is that still happening.

I find it really strange that they would build two fractal dungeons but only release one of them...hope they change their mind.

With the inclusion of the new fractal I think they should retire one or two of them, specifically the underwater one and maybe the unstable fractal (maw).
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
I dunno. I think the voting is wide open at this point. Though I liked Kiel calling out Gnashblade in her video for selling Consortium goods in the gem store, I thought they would just let that go :p

Erm, Dark Knight Returns the animated movie?
With the inclusion of the new fractal I think they should retire one or two of them, specifically the underwater one and maybe the unstable fractal (maw).
Hell no.
 
I dunno. I think the voting is wide open at this point. Though I liked Kiel calling out Gnashblade in her video for selling Consortium goods in the gem store, I thought they would just let that go :p

She calls him out yet she is also working with them to bring a special fractal into rotation.

You really think the UNDERWATER fractal is interesting?
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
She calls him out yet she is also working with them to bring a special fractal into rotation.

You really think the UNDERWATER fractal is interesting?
Of course she is working with them openly and has been since after her first undercover assignment. She was asked to by the Lionguard. The BLTC is nominally in competition with the Consortium and Evon is double-dealing!

I love the underwater fractal, especially being a dolphin. I love dolphins. The boss is atrociously boring but that is cause for changing the boss not eliminating an entire mini-dungeon. In total it's an extremely quick and fun fractal. More importantly, the addition of new fractals shouldn't mean that old ones disappear. The pool of options should just grow more and more over time. Anyway I like all of the fractals, but if I had to eliminate one it would be dredge with no hesitation. I enjoy the boss(es) a lot but don't really find anything in the lead-up to them to be that interesting, and they require so much coordination once you do get there that the time can really start to pile up, especially with new players. I'd love it if you just started in the tunnel leading up to the boss. As it stands if you get Dredge for fractal 3 you're potentially doubling the length of the run.
 

Complistic

Member
I"ve no idea how they keep putting out these fantastic updates so quickly. The updates every 2 weeks are now better than the updates every month we used to get.
 
Of course she is working with them openly and has been since after her first undercover assignment. She was asked to by the Lionguard. The BLTC is nominally in competition with the Consortium and Evon is double-dealing!

I love the underwater fractal, especially being a dolphin. I love dolphins. The boss is atrociously boring but that is cause for changing the boss not eliminating an entire mini-dungeon. In total it's an extremely quick and fun fractal. More importantly, the addition of new fractals shouldn't mean that old ones disappear. The pool of options should just grow more and more over time. Anyway I like all of the fractals, but if I had to eliminate one it would be dredge with no hesitation. I enjoy the boss(es) a lot but don't really find anything in the lead-up to them to be that interesting, and they require so much coordination once you do get there that the time can really start to pile up, especially with new players. I'd love it if you just started in the tunnel leading up to the boss. As it stands if you get Dredge for fractal 3 you're potentially doubling the length of the run.

You are so selfish.
You think we should keep the boring underwater fractal just because you like dolphins? You are crazy, Mr. the Blade.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
You are so selfish.
You think we should keep the boring underwater fractal just because you like dolphins? You are crazy, Mr. the Blade.
actually you should capitalize the T but yes this otherwise is acceptable to me.

edit: Hrouda definitely did swamp. Can't remember if underwater.
 
I love dolphins too and support Hawkian's idea of tweaking the boss. It's actually a quite great boss fight, in fact, just chop its health in half.

I don't want any fractal out, even the dredge. Tweak that one too. As Hawkian says, the more fractals we have, the less each individual one appears, so even when one of your least favorite pops up it's "well, I've not done this in a while, let's see how we do" rather than "gah, not this again".
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Yep, I definitely don't want Dredge out either. Just like you said every fractal added makes the value of the existing ones go up because your odds of getting any given one go down.
 
What are we to do when there are like 20 fractal dungeons and you have to try 5 times to actually get the dungeon you want to do?
 

Levyne

Banned
If you are asking "I want to do the newest fractals because I want to experience them":

A: Just be patient and reload/roll or wait to run into it?

If you are asking "I want to do an easy fractal first (like swamp, water) but now there are so many?"

A: Chances are the candidates for "starting" fractals will increase as more are added? Right now 4 of the 7 are rather easy and 2 are so much so that people will roll for them (Water, Swamp). Why wouldn't we expect similar variability in difficulty with new additions? The candidates for easy starts would increase, the number of annoying dredge-level fractals will increase.
 

Lunar15

Member
Just noticed those aetherblade ship remains from below the sanctum in the background of that banner.

As for voting, Fall of Abbadon > Thumanova. WP costs are eh, and i don't care about keys. My votes are goin towards Gnashblade.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
What are we to do when there are like 20 fractal dungeons and you have to try 5 times to actually get the dungeon you want to do?
The increase in the number of fractals will make it more difficult to do precisely that, which is how the dungeon is designed and exactly how it should be.

edit: Flutes in the Gem Shop as well as the kites
 

Trey

Member
Anet could add another goldsink/gem product into the game that allows you to pick the starting fractal. Obviously they couldn't disallow rezoning as it currently stands. It would be a quality-of-life thing like most of the other goldsinks and gem products are.
 
OK guys I will not complain about Fractals...I guess I am just over reacting to the fact that that squid monster takes forever to kill even if you use the electric cages.

I think it would be awesome if the Maw fractal didn't happen always maybe they can add another boss fractal that and show up randomly. If you guys remember playing GW1 Nightfall end boss (ie killing Abbadon) it is set up quite nicely to be a replacement for the Maw. Either or it is nice to have another fractal.

Does this mean they are not including the Aetherblade and Molten Alliance then? Maybe they are going to go with a story teller type of character that will let you know what happened and give you access to those dungeons.
 

nataku

Member
They could also limit certain fractals to higher tiers. Add the new one to levels 10+ for example.

As for Evon vs Ellen, though that Abbadon fractal does sound great, one of his options is the same as Ellen, and the Black Lion Keys still cost me actual money, or at the very least my precious gold, which I don't care for.

Ellen for me.

Plus, you know, RNG coffers. Thanks a lot for those, Evon.

EDIT: Also, do we know for sure that the Fall of Abaddon is the actual war with the Gods, or is it just what players did in GW1 nightfall?
 

Shanlei91

Sonic handles my blue balls
The increase in the number of fractals will make it more difficult to do precisely that, which is how the dungeon is designed and exactly how it should be.

People are still gonna do that.

And I just thought of a more effective way! Each member of the team splits off solo and starts their own fractal. 5x quicker!
 
They could also limit certain fractals to higher tiers. Add the new one to levels 10+ for example.

As for Evon vs Ellen, though that Abbadon fractal does sound great, one of his options is the same as Ellen, and the Black Lion Keys still cost me actual money, or at the very least my precious gold, which I don't care for.

Ellen for me.

Plus, you know, RNG coffers. Thanks a lot for those, Evon.

EDIT: Also, do we know for sure that the Fall of Abaddon is the actual war with the Gods, or is it just what players did in GW1 nightfall?

Hopefully Colin will shed some light into it today, if not they always do those live streams of the new update the day before it launches so hopefully they will preview them...but I have a feeling these new fractals will not be available July 23rd because we still have to vote...maybe they will show up in the first week of August.
 

Reknoc

Member
Don't care for fractals so I'll just fall back on the tried and true method of voting for the hottest. So Kiel it is.

(Also the only way I could care about a BL key price cut is if it was cut to 0)
 

nataku

Member
Hopefully Colin will shed some light into it today, if not they always do those live streams of the new update the day before it launches so hopefully they will preview them...but I have a feeling these new fractals will not be available July 23rd because we still have to vote...maybe they will show up in the first week of August.

Yeah, I'd definitely put them towards the end of the year. The site does say " to be completed by the end of the year", mostly to cover their ass I'm sure, but still. I wonder if they've even started on them. If they have, I'd imagine we'll get both somehow, eventually. If not, we really might get just one.

The more I think about it, the more I really hope Ellen wins. There's very little lore behind the Thaumanova Reactor, but what is there sounds amazing. I really want to see what happened there. Even though the fall of Abbadon isn't in GW1 or GW2, the lore is established and we know what happened. Would be awesome to see, but I'm more interested in something completely new.

Thaumanova Reactor is the location of a ruined asuran city in northwest Metrica Province. It was recently destroyed by an Inquest experiment gone awry, occurring beneath the city and the reactor exploding and subsequently releasing chaos magic. Due to the large amount of chaos magic in the area, creatures from across the continent get transported in and out of the area. The Thaumanova Reactor is divided into five main sections: the southwest which has been turned arctic, the southeast which has become poisonous, the northeast and lower area containing the river with an aquatic aspect, the north which contains fire-based creatures, and the central, the location of the explosion. After the explosion, the energy source that the Inquest was experimenting on was moved to the Thaumacore Inquiry Center in Toxal Bog, causing the chaos effect to spread northward. This effects of the underground experiment also affected other areas such as Chaos Crystal Cavern in Iron Marches.

You know some crazy shit happened there for it to have such a massive effect. I wonder if it had anything to do with the Goddess Lyssa, what with the chaos magic.
 
Yeah, I'd definitely put them towards the end of the year.
I stopped reading after "Fall of Abbadon" and skipped on to the next line..lol.

You know some crazy shit happened there for it to have such a massive effect. I wonder if it had anything to do with the Goddess Lyssa, what with the chaos magic.
I have a feeling that the Thumanova Reactor has something to do with the Inquest researching the power of the dragons and trying to harness them so they can use them themselves. All the different areas of the reactor also relate to the dragons that we know.
 
Like I said before

Jest Chillin said:
What has Kiel actually done? I remember her being around but she never seems to do much. Seems like a classic figurehead. We need someone on the council who has experience brokering deals. Someone who doesn't have to ask us, The Adventurers, to do their job for them. Gnashblade can get things done in the council! He's never tried to pawn off the dirty work to the citizens of Tyria!

So join me friends! When it's time to cast your ballots remember 'Vote for the Charr and we'll go far!' Vote Evon Gnashblade for Captain's Council!
 

Retro

Member
I got two exotics last night from doing temples. Those would be the first two I got in 2014.

My luck went downhill after the precursor of 2013.

2014? Can I borrow your time machine? I want to see what another year of Living Story looks like... ooh, and find out when Starbound comes out so I can plan around that.

I find it really strange that they would build two fractal dungeons but only release one of them...hope they change their mind.

With the inclusion of the new fractal I think they should retire one or two of them, specifically the underwater one and maybe the unstable fractal (maw).

I don't think they're building both; they're having the election and then building whichever wins. That's why I don't think we'll see the actual updates until the autumn.We know each Living Story team has 8 weeks to work; if the voting process ends on the 6th, that would be all of August and September to work on it, with the results coming in October, probably right before the Mad King event revs up.

As to retiring Fractals, I think they should keep them, but tweak how they're selected. Some of the least interesting Fractals have a lower weighting so you see them less often, while the newer ones have a higher weighting so you see them more often. Eventually, when they have enough fractals, you'd get something like the underwater or unstable fractal and go "Ah, yeah, I haven't done this one in forever" and maybe not hate it so much.
 

jersoc

Member
holy shit, they are bringing back the hunger game from the end of beta!

yes yes yes yes omgomgomg. so hyped for that.
 

Ashodin

Member
panel-22689868-image-b3d15170267d0bae-320.jpeg


This man will destroy your soul
 

Retro

Member
I love the underwater fractal, especially being a dolphin. I love dolphins.

tumblr_ltczdbezdc1qbwb1uz6.jpg


I"ve no idea how they keep putting out these fantastic updates so quickly. The updates every 2 weeks are now better than the updates every month we used to get.

It took them a little more than half a year to launch, switch to a Service rather than Development studio (no small task), get themselves set up to deliver content on a bi-weekly schedule, and experiment with various releases to find what works and what doesn't. We're about a year into the game and it feels like, despite a few stumbles, they're hitting their stride.

One of the alternative thread titles was "We're just getting started..." but it was too inside-y for my tastes and didn't get much traction with the folks I ran it past. I like the one we have, but that really does sum up the game at this point.
 

Ashodin

Member
tumblr_ltczdbezdc1qbwb1uz6.jpg




It took them a little more than half a year to launch, switch to a Service rather than Development studio (no small task), get themselves set up to deliver content on a bi-weekly schedule, and experiment with various releases to find what works and what doesn't. We're about a year into the game and it feels like, despite a few stumbles, they're hitting their stride.

One of the alternative thread titles was "We're just getting started..." but it was too inside-y for my tastes and didn't get much traction with the folks I ran it past. I like the one we have, but that really does sum up the game at this point.
You watch too much South Park man
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
The more I think about it, the more I really hope Ellen wins. There's very little lore behind the Thaumanova Reactor, but what is there sounds amazing. I really want to see what happened there.
I'm really curious about it too. You can see the thing that they were playing with when the explosion happened in stable form in the Toxal Bog base in Brisban, but what exactly were they trying to do? What's with all the portals and especially the rampaging steam ogre on top?

The thing is, the Fall of Abbadon, which we know all about as you said, would be undoubtedly epic in scope. And take place on or around the Crystal Sea, which would be awesome. So it's sort of like that would definitely be cool, whereas we don't know what the reactor's story was but it could be awesome.

It's a wash for me. I like everything else about Kiel more. She's genuine, whereas Gnashblade is actually making me a little suspicious. Though if it's just greed I can't really begrudge him that. And I'll take the WP reduction if even for a month.

edit: Stream is live!
 

Retro

Member
From Live Stream:
CONFIRMED: Aetherblade and Molten Facility Fractals will go live at the same time as the new fractal we get to vote for.
 
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