Bug Fixes:

Fixed an issue that rewarded multiple Hero's Choice chests when players completed the Road to Heitor meta-event.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from opening more than one Greater Arcane Chest in Amnytas per day.
Fixed an issue that caused opening the Greater Arcane Chest in Inner Nayos to count as opening a Greater Arcane Chest in Amnytas, and vice versa.
Fixed an issue that caused reward chests claimed from repeatable Convergence achievements to reset the respective achievement's progress.
Reduced the number of Clots of Congealed Screams needed to craft the Kryptis Wall decoration from 20 to 1.

It'll take cannonballs to get out here alive!
- my HMS Divnity

I like the reactive skills, fits the Mesmer theme. Do I want my sword 3 clone to stay and cripple, or shatter it? Which of my 30 shatters should I use? Or do I use the reactive skill? Do I use it for the teleport, the root, both or neither?

Having a similiar decision chain for my support and healskills will be neat, even if it's Mesmer Light. The emergency exit portal is fucking dope and will give me life. Hopefully the rest of the weapons offers actual heals so spamming clones and Mantras won't be the only source of actual heals.

Just wanted to do Amnytas for the weekly, but the meta simply didn't start. That's new to me.

So I finally finished my mastery and did a convergence.

And I had a blast.

The current NCNet design has a lot of chains you're being janked around on. Dance, monkey, go search for your loot chests! Where is your loot?! Yes where is your loot??? E.g. Archipelago, Gyala.
So much fun.

It's all disruptive. Stop what you're doing and wait for the boss to finish its invuln animation. For the sixth time. Go run after your loot chests after you killed your boss. Wanna do a Rift? Hunt down every single enemy that spawned at the arse end of the area and actively runs away from you.

Those orbs though? They remove a significant chunk of your health while providing a significant chunk to your DPS. If you get downed, you drop your balls like Sonic drops his rings, and others can pick them up to replenish their lost balls.

Those orbs add something to the encounter without interrupting it. Suddeny you're much more concerned with your own safety, and have a minigame of "loot the corpse" whenever someone else gets downed. It also gets slightly tactical because should you hang on to them or give them to Zojja?

I like this kind of design and I'm happy to see that it's not all barriers and disruptions and chain-janking.

So far neither reversed nor acknowledged. Support plays dumb:

We understand your frustration about this matter. As a Support Team, we don't have a direct influence in-game since we are not part of the Development Team. We can only reiterate what we said earlier, which is relevant to our team's investigation of the issue, by providing a bug report.

Based on that report, if they identify any issues with this in-game mechanic.

You'd think they should be able to verify feature or bug, them using weasle phrasing has me believe that this is actually how it is intended.

Insanity.

Sales Q3 2023

GW2 sales appear to be almost unaffected by the SotO release (2023-08-22) . Not looking good.

Sales Q3 2022 for comparison

EoD release (2022-02-28) was in Q1 2022 and sales didn't significantly increase before Q2 2022. Similar to PoF (2017-09-22) where it also took until the next quarter (Q4 2017) for sales to really pick up (almost 35K million). So maybe there is hope, i. e. how many people did you tell that they should buy SotO after you have played it?

Source: https://kr.ncsoft.com/en/ir/irArchive/earningsRelease.do

I haven't been following the general reactions to the new patch, but fair warning going into this that I personally was pretty disappointed in it from a story standpoint.

I was very pleased with Soto overall, and I think they seriously improved on many of the issues I've had with the writing over the years, but I can't help but feel that somehow it has regressed in the newest patch.

The crux of my issue is that I want to distrust peitha and keep her at arms length, but it really feels like the story is making it crystal clear that I'm not allowed to feel that way. The speed at which not just my character, but even the astral ward, an organization dedicated to stopping her kind for thousands of years, is happy to not only help her, but to frequently espouse how much they trust her completely. I don't think I've ever felt less connected to my character.

I was hoping for the story to keep her in a suspicious and interesting place, where we're helping her for now but no one is sure what to think yet. Instead we're back to the often hamfisted story telling of the end of dragons era, where it feels like every character is to be taken at complete face value.

To be honest I hope she does betray us, because that would at least be an interesting direction, and something to shake my character's naive level of confidence. Though if they do go that way at this point they laid it on pretty thick with the implicit trust angle.

I'm curious if anyone else feels the same, or differently. Would love to hear other's takes on it.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/139721-legendary-weapon-starter-set-2-contains-weapons-which-were-already-in-set-1-intended/

• It contains Weapons which were already in Set 1. i. e. Quip and Bolt.
• I used the new starter kit for bolt and got literally nothing. (maybe a false alarm)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_Weapon_Starter_Kit%E2%80%94Set_2

~~Choosing the Bolt or Quip starter kits currently results in no items being received. This has been confirmed as a bug. It is suggested that players do not select a kit until this is resolved.~~

cross-posted from: https://peertube.wtf/videos/watch/40342598-217e-4550-b3f4-7bbad01b3e42

The hunt for the truth continues today! Picking up the narrative of the launch story, "Through the Veil" introduces the realm of dreams, Nayos—taking players to an entirely new world for the first time. Discover new secrets, join new encounters, fight new bosses, acquire new masteries, and get new rewards. This first major content update will bring your demon-hunting skills to a whole new level. If you already own Secrets of the Obscure, jump in and play for free, or buy now and embark on a new adventure.

Buy now: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/secrets-of-the-obscure/

... since this will prevent LFG from showing that the Commander's map is full.

Moving yourself (Commander) to a separate subgroup was once used to help others to find the player whose map they should join. But this is no longer needed, since

Commanders and lieutenants are now sorted first in their subsquads following the patch on November 8, 2022.

But since LFG apparently uses Subgroup1 to determine whether a Squad's map is full, keeping this habit does more harm than good.

Yep, I agree, LFG is a mess.

-> Concert for the Ages

... also known as The best Event in the entire Game

One Charr!

E. g. Sandswept Isles

Today I made some progress (5 Tier 3 Rifts) by joining a commander in Amnytas who was using Rare Motivations to track and open Tier 3 Rifts. Then I joined a squad in Sandswept Isles doing the same thing, but I wasn't making any more progress towards the task while the commander (who was using the motivations) apparently did. Though I received Tier 3 Essences from the event itself, i. e. not (only) from weekly reward chests.

Also, Sandswept Isles did not work for the Rift Hunt Vault Daily Task (a day or two ago) and there is a [merged] bug thread on the forums about various Rift Hunt Reward Issues.

With Side-Lace Pants (500 Gems) and possibly Stylish Shoes (400 Gems) for a total of 1400 Gems ≈ 17.50 € ≈ 70% SotO

Preview on Norn

That's the content we want, not hunting stupid demons for months and months. On the other hand ... in RPGs this is the kind of content the community typically provides via mods.

Despite of mixed feedback on the forums it's pretty clear that this (kind of) armor will make ArenaNet a decent chunk of money. Well played!

An interview.

Enjoy.

cross-posted from: https://peertube.wtf/videos/watch/1612eb34-0c8c-44b1-bebc-0537b2ab2b50

Experience the epic moments from the launch of Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure and get ready for what lies ahead. On November 7, the adventure gets bigger, with new stories, content, maps, and rewards coming in the expansion’s first major update. Available for free if you already own the expansion.

If you haven't embarked on this journey yet, seize the opportunity and buy Secrets of the Obscure now. For more information, visit the official site at https://guildwars2.com/secrets-of-the-obscure, or purchase today at https://buy.guildwars2.com

So, I've finished the card collection of Dagda and listened to a few lines she had to say about the Jotun. Which reminded me of another lore post I did a long time ago.

Interestingly, Dagda's tale matches the tale of Thrulln the Lost. That once upon a time the Jotun were godlike themselves in their use of an older, more primal magic. That they slaughtered each other and fell from grace.
"We were once mighty, wielding mastery over primal magics... Tyria once likened us to the gods themselves in power alone. But despite these gifts, we butchered each other. Stifled our own..."

#Ingame text Thrulln

The jotun
My people have walked these mountains since before the humans came, since before the gods put limits on magic, since before the dragons slept, since the Age of Giants.

About the Gods
The gods once favored the giants, the jotun. They gave us magic and blessed us with knowledge of mechanical and magical things.
The gods threatened to take magic from us. They were afraid we would use it against them. Our confusion was great, and the jotun kings began to fight among themselves.
The gods became unhappy with us. They took magic away from us and handed it in measured bites to their favorite races. My people have been sliding deeper and deeper into darkness ever since.

The arrival of the humans
The humans came in boats from across the great water. At first, they kept to the shores, but then they spread across the land and into our mountains. In the beginning, humans lived like grawl. The gods had not yet noticed them. Their magic was primitive: fire, earth, air and water. My jotun ancestors helped them survive.
Humans collected on the high plains. Tribes became settlements. Settlements became a kingdom. And that was when the gods noticed them and betrayed the jotun.

The dragons
Stories of the ancient time of dragons are rare, mostly forgotten. When I was young, an old jotun came to our fire, and told us about a time before the dragons slept.
Magic was wild. The dragons were merciless conquerers. They had the entire world under their talons.
They went to sleep, and the surviving races rebuilt. My jotun ancestors formed kingdoms. Giants, like the jotun and the norn, grew powerful. The chaos was tamed—until now.

The Age of Giants
The Age of Giants was a time when all the world's giants ruled Tyria. Your people [norn], my people, we had magic like you will never know. Wherever we walked, the ground shook.
The other races looked up to the norn and the jotun. We were superior to all other races, and we were gaining on the gods.
The Age of Giants ended when magic was stolen from us. You norn turned to your Spirits of the Wild to redeem your strength and self-respect. We jotun have had no one and nothing to pull us from the quicksand.

It was a time when the norn and the jotun were not like you see us today. Our kingdoms were the most advanced in the entire world. We protected and defended other races.
You won't understand. We had everything taken from us, and in out confusion at the betrayal, we lost all hope of ever being the great culture that we once were.
The norn have come far. Their Spirits of the Wild returned much of their dignity, heroism, and power to them. They are what I wish the jotun had become.#

Disclaimer: I haven't played Fractals since Anet nuked ArcTemplates. Started them half a year ago because I helped a friend and have ran them daily ever since, starting out at T1 and all the way up to T4 so my friend could learn them and get AR and whatnot. Thank the Lord for my half-static of two others who happen to always run around somewhat the same time, so I wasn't completele forlorforsaken. If I were to have to do that bollocks entirely by myself, I'd drop that shite like hot coals. And no, getting an actual static and working my day around the game is not an option.

What I noticed is the utter insanity that has taken hold of the "community". What is it with people being drastically under-AR'd trying to get into high-level fractals? It's enough of a bother to check if that 137 or 126 AR guy has enough AR for the highest-level daiyl today, because people are raging cunts and will lie straight into your face, but arguing about dodging everything with 109 AR at Silent Surf? Fucking hell.

Todays highlight was a group where two our of three PUGs ran after me, a Mesmer, at Volcanic, while the initial Grawl event was still ongoing. Yes, I was preparing the portal at 50%. Yes, one of them ran all the way back up. The other stood around like a deer in headlights and then used my portal after I gave up and went back to do it myself.

Fucking hell.

made some clean up and scaled it up to 4K resolution

Wiki wizards aren't appreciated enough.

Hi everyone,

not so long ago I created weapon previews for reddit (via youtube) - Sometimes you are not at home (work, school etc.) and want to get a glimpse of the new content the game has to offer. Other creators make similar videos, but they talk to much and the music sometimes annoys me, that's why I'm giving it a different spin.

If you like it, let me know and I'll create more in the future. Plus, feedback is always welcome.

Cheers and have a nice day :)
peet