Category: Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns is More Fun

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Ok. I admit it. Heart of Thorns is fun. I was frustrated when I first started playing it because as you start out you die frequently. But I’m not sure whether it’s just me learning to play more effectively or Arena Net balancing the game a little, but it’s more fun now.

I’ve stayed away from HoT for a while. I’ve been just doing map completions on my Alts and Halloween, which is fun too. But I do have a goal of completing the Revenant Mistward Armor. That seemed out of reach a while ago, but I’m very close with only one piece to go, the coat. I don’t need the scrim [head piece] since I have that skin from creating my Revenant. Continue reading “Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns is More Fun”

Unavailable Items?

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Many Items are No Longer Available

World of Warcraft is notorious for this. Making items “no longer available” in the game.

Why should an item become “no longer available”?

The item must be kept in the client forever. Yes FOREVER, since some players will have the items and they must be displayed or otherwise operate correctly when they are used.

If an item is truly “removed” from the game, it must be replaced by something of equal value and there must be an overwhelming reason to remove it. I’m having a very hard time thinking of a reason that would call for an item to be permanently removed from the game.

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Removing an item is not the same as changing it. If a weapon or armor piece or set is too powerful, or too weak, then one can easily change the stats on it to make it more in line with the play styles of the game. This is done all the time.

Here are some of the Excuses that game designers have used to remove items from the game, and the reasons that none of them hold up.

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Flying Mounts – Why Dumb Them Down?

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Windrider over Orgrimmar

In January 2007, Blizzard released World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. This expansion included flying mounts in Outland. You had to reach level 60 to purchase flight training and a mount. You could only fly in Outland, the new continent. In the Cataclysm expansion flight was possible in all areas, except the starting areas.

Now, after all this time, other MMOs are adding flying. Guild Wars 2, in Heart of Thorns, has added flight, well Gliding actually, where you can glide in the whole world, but only for a limited distance.

In a few  days on May 17, 2016, Tera is adding flying mounts. Again these mounts have limited range. Why are these games dumbing down flight?

Continue reading “Flying Mounts – Why Dumb Them Down?”

GW2 – Heart of Thorns – Go with Friends

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Guilded Hollows Guild Hall

I’ve recently been playing the Heart of Thorns expansion for Guild Wars 2. I resisted it for a while. $50 seems like a lot to pay based on all the money I’ve already spent to buy and upgrade the original game. I think that Arena Net could have given the expansion away and made it up in in-game purchases that folks would purchase, or at least have priced it at $29, which would have been a no-brainer purchase price.

But regardless of that, I now have the expansion and I’ve played it enough to recommend it, with a provisio. Don’t try to Solo the new content. It apparently is designed for groups only. And not even one friend is enough. Join a Guild. It is best to run with a half dozen to a dozen folks to get the full experience and avoid the heart break of being left alone in the jungle. The Maguuma Jungle is a very nasty place with groups of powerful Veteran bosses just around every corner.

Continue reading “GW2 – Heart of Thorns – Go with Friends”

Windows 10 – Upgrading another system

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BTW, I have no idea why this system shows an Alienware Logo in the System Control Panel. I have completely swapped out the guts of this system and reinstalled a new copy of Windows 7.

I just upgraded this system to Windows 10 using the DVD burned last time and did the following steps:

  • Backup everything on the system drive from C:\Users\Yournamehere\My Documents etc., if not to another system, at least to one of the data drives.
  • Uninstall any crufty old programs that I’m not going to need in the new world.
  • Reboot
  • Make a record of all the things you have installed by taking screenshots of the “Programs and Features” control panel list.
  • Download the latest Nvidia drivers for the card for both Win 7 x64 and Win 10 x64.
  • Update the [Nvidia 560ti in this case] driver to the latest and greatest for Win 7 x64.
  • Reboot
  • Run setup from the Windows 10 DVD.

Continue reading “Windows 10 – Upgrading another system”

GW2 – Falling Through The World

Falling Through the World
Falling Through the World

I was working Diessa Plateau in the North West corner in a quarry being attacked by the Dredge. The Dredge and their vehicles are popping up around the area and I’m working on an event to kill them. At one point, I think I was killing a vehicle when I suddenly fell through the world. I immediately hit Print Screen to capture the screen as I was falling.

I wandered around for several minutes taking pictures and trying to find a way back into the world. I was unable to get back into the world from below. After several minutes I took a nearby waypoint to return to the normal area of play.

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GW2 Killing Zhaitan the Elder Dragon and Other Things

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It has been a busy week. We have been working on our personal stories to get ready for the upcoming update. A future update will be changing the storylines One of the changes will be to the last segment of the original GW2 story – the Killing of the Elder Dragon Zhaitan. Briefly, the story segment will go from a 5 man dungeon, to a 1-5 man instance that can be solo’ed. I wanted to experience the original before the change. There are no plans to change the Explore mode of the dungeon.

There is a photo album here of our fight, certainly not complete, but there are YouTube videos of the entire hour long encounter, so no need to be detailed. There are no real details or spoilers, except pictures of Zhaitan, which is pretty amazing. Continue reading “GW2 Killing Zhaitan the Elder Dragon and Other Things”

GW2 – Don’t Forget Runes

Asura Engineer
Asura Engineer

As as Engineer or a Guardian you will find that you are one of the two races with no speed boost skill built in. So you need to find a way to move faster. Runes are the answer.

There are two types of runes that boost your speed if you use all 6 of them. That is, if you use an identical rune in all your armor pieces.

Superior Rune of the Traveler and Superior Rune of Speed both provide a 25% boost in movement speed, but the Traveler Rune costs almost 3 times as much.

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GW2 – Mix and Match for Nicer Armor

Pit Fighter Chest, Phalanx Legs
Pit Fighter Chest, Phalanx Legs
 Here are some interesting armor looks by mixing and matching various armors. Here our Guardian model is wearing a Heavy Armor mixed set with the Phalanx armor from the gem store on her legs with the Pit Fighter chest for a bare midriff. My taste is to keep the gloves and boots smaller and hide the shoulders and helm. This shows off the bare shoulder and arm and does not hide the hair style.
Dyes are Winter Ice and Midnight Blue. Just perfect for exploring the Shiverpeak Mountains.She is wearing the “Full Makeover” exclusive hairdo with a flower and the dark blue hair color.

Continue reading “GW2 – Mix and Match for Nicer Armor”

GW2 – Do Dungeons

Diviner Armor
Diviner Armor

Once you get to level 80, and craft some armor and weapons. Then you’ll need higher strength gear. One way to get this is to go to WvW [ World vs World] and try to keep up with the Chaos. I tried this for about a day, and got about 1400 Badges of Honor.

The cloth armor looks pretty good actually. Here’s an example of Diviner’s Armor that I got with those Badges and some gold from an Armor Merchant in the Mists.

Another way to get better armor is to Grind dungeons.

There are a number of Dungeon currencies. To get enough for armor will take a few days or a couple of weeks. As you do the dungeons the first time during a day, for any character on your account, you get bonus chest[s].

In addition to these dungeons, there are the Fractals. I’ve only done those once, but my gear was not high enough a level. I’m building up my gear with dungeons, and crafting the next level of gear, which begins to get quite expensive. Ascended gear is the final level, and it’s very complex to craft and costly.

All the Dungeon Weapons and Armor have pretty much the same stats, but different looks. There are some details that are different, so choose carefully.

 

Continue reading “GW2 – Do Dungeons”