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[Column] Guild Wars 2: A Treat, or a Trick?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Now that Halloween is near upon us, ArenaNet has pulled out all the tricks and treats for players in Guild Wars 2. We've got a nifty preview and a few thoughts to share about the Mad King. See what you think and then leave your ideas in the comments.
The first thing a player would always notice in the original game would be the decorations. It was always fun to see ghosts and candy corn monsters running around town, causing all sorts of mischief. Pumpkins, candles, cauldrons and other decorations would litter a town, giving you the Halloween feel. Guild Wars 2 does the same thing, but really sells it. Candles float, Quagans run around in costumes, bats hand upside down watching as you walk beneath them. The best part is the change to the mystic forge, switching it to look like a giant cauldron. The effect is just what the event needs to tie the visuals together.
Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: A Treat, or a Trick?
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What surprises await us as Halloween draws closer and closer?
Comments
I saw a sword halloween skin on trading post for 5 gold, then for 7g. Far from high. maybe it's more now but it seems like as always greatswords are the most expensive.
I believe some people blew this chest problem out of proportions. ANet should have said that the drop rate is very small and that is all. It's just a skin afterall.
Yeah but it sucks for late starters on this event as a lot of the personal trick-or-treat bags have been disabled, because... I read somewhere else, of an Lion's Arch overflow queue exploit that people were using to amass bags.
Greedy players... ruining it for the honest guys :-/
Really?...and to think that I trash all the halloween stuff in my packs because they take up bag space. I personally think holiday events are a waste of time and resources.
party pooper:P
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
It's still pretty easy to get the ToT bags. Between running around doing doors in Shaemoor, mining candy corn and looting mobs I got my 100 bag achievement in just 2 nights of a few hours of play.
Edit: I'm still not positive how they expect us to get the pumpkin carving without some questionable methods...
The option they implemented to "Fix it" is barely even a band aid on a gaping wound, if you ask me.
Not every booster obtained from the BLC can be used in the Mad King Chest recipee, and the dozen or so useless black lion gathering tools sitting around in my bank still have no use for me. The chest itself also has (what it appears to be) at most the same drop rate as the BLC does, along with the obnoxious amount of candy corn pieces it tosses at you as well as halloween tonics.
People want to defend this as a "rare thing should stay rare", but that's wrong. These skins aren't rare to be rare, they are rare to encourage constant buying of keys/gems. It's not a status symbol, it's a luck of the draw, and the sad thing is only one of the skins seem to have any actual work done to it. The scythe? The Dagger? The 1-handed sword? Nowhere even close to the amount of detail the greatsword skin recieved.
What they should of done was either:
A) Put the skins themselves up to be bought in the item shop, as a character-bound item instead of tradeable.
or
I was also disappointed by the devil horns hat item. Why is it so tiny...?! The Demon Horns from GW1 were badass, why not update that model and bring it into GW2, including its sweet smoke/fire effect?
Hero Evermore
Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982.
Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
Wait.. so it is a rip off b/c you can buy it for 1-30g in game or 100$... yup makes sense oO
Considering the price of gold at the moment, 30g is probably around $40 or so (would have to doublecheck on that).
Considering how much of a bloody pain in the ass it is to make that much money when you aren't lvl 80, yes. Yes it is a rip off.
edit:
Plus, the 30g item is pretty much exclusively the greatsaw greatsword. As I said, the other halloween skin weapons (and shoulders as well) are laughable in comparison. No real detail, no real flair, it all looks pretty damn basic, while the greatsword skin seems to have gotten pretty much all the attention during the event development.
i'd wait till the end of the event.. by then a LOT more people will have opened mad king chest or BLCs so there should be a lot more of those skins on the TP bringing the price down a good bit.. just yesterday that same skin was 44 gold
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Player beware, if you do get a weapon from this event, they time out on you an may leave you defenseless in the middle of combat. The one I got had a 3 hour time out on it and as combat is what you do most in this game, there is a good chance the all will do thist!!!
The main problem I had was not that it failed but that the message I got was that I was overloaded, not sure why I got this message, it was very confusing because all I had to do was select another weapon!
I totally agree. If I want to celebrate a holiday I go out and celebrate it. Logging into a game to celebrate it seems a bit sad to me.
I'm not saying having events is a bad thing..extra content is extra content. Having reall life events in games though is strange to me, always has been.
I enjoyed Guild Wars 1, but GW2 has become an expensive hobby that I need to curtail. The Halloween theme is terrific, but even there, very hard to accomplish most of the special events.
I'm level 80 but not making the piles of gold others seem to be, and I'm already sick of grinding the same events over and over. I will wait a few months until the game and costs quiet down, before playing much more. There are other games and expansions to try.
I know. MMOs are serious business and there is no place for fun and games in an MMO. :-|
Writer doesn't mention costume brawl and the other content or what still will be added the coming days, but keeps going on and on about the black lions chests.
The black lions chests have been in the game from the start. I never liked that you obtained a crazy amount of chests, while the keys were so much more rare. It is of course an obvious way of Anet telling you to buy more keys, Which I simply won't do. But nothing has changed really. So I find it hypocrite that people who didn't find this a problem at release, get all bent over it now, just because the chests now contain something they want.
The weapon skins are just one of many rewards from the chests. So if you are not interested in those other rewards besides those skins, but are still willing to pay a lot of (relatively speaking) money for some halloween skin, then you are just gambling. There is no guarantee and even the writer acts too childish to realise that after his bad luck.
I found the event to be a disappointment. I didn't buy any keys. Used 10 I had in the bank and got 2 more from those 10. Never really expected anything and I wasn't disppointed....by that. Generally though I thought the whole affair smacked of a money grab when they should have been making a 'gimme, gimme' to all the players even if the gimmes were junk. And I a not talking about the horrendous candy corn mining nodes. Make pumpkin treats drop more frequently and give candy corn as well as a fluff short term (maybe 30 min) mask/costume or something. Wouldn't even have to have a huge drop rate on the mask, 1 in 10 or 1 in 20. Character bound. sefl-descrunt timer after 12 hours or some such.
I am not going to puff myself up and say I could run everything better, I can't and I know it. That said, most of the command decisions that have been met with a substantial public outcry all point to bad middle management or bad team management. I get more and more disappointed when I see this happening, particularly from an establish company with a big budget.
For me these events totally ruin the feel of the world.
They have nothing whatsoever to do with Tyria but everything with our (american) world.
Everywhere stupid doors and harvestnodes that stick out as festering boils.
I suppose there are some strategically placed around Zhaitan himself? - jk
Mind you - I dislike them just as much in other games unless they belong in that world.
It was a trick. Anet should have been honest upfront and cleared the odds of BLC lottery.
But then if they had players wouldn't be spending huge amount of cash on keys and gems when event just started. First couple of days is the best time to reap the crop..and boy did they reap the harvest to their hearts content. Once people realised the odds things cooled down but Anet is already laughing its way to the bank.
Well I know they are supposed to be fun but I just don't have any fun participating in the holiday event. Most holiday events in most games that I have experienced seem to target 8 year olds.
Exactly the 8 years old? not 7? 10? or 12? 8 is the magic number?
All right
Well, I'm in my 50's and I think holiday events are a blast. Thanks for the insult.
Just finished the first Act of the event, with some friends and strangers we met along the way. It was pretty cool. Can't wait for the next act.
Now I'm wandering around farming candy corns and opening Trick or treat Doors.
Well. we've been hearing that one since the very first 'holiday event' appeared in an MMO...that was, what, 2001 (give or take)? Every year, every game, endless choruses ever since.
While this is the home site for repetitive ancient humbuging, at some point you just gotta give it up already.
I just gotta say, dayum I cook a mean sausage (omnomnom)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
@half life and grim...
Poor choice of words, my bad. I just feel that the events cater to a younger audience and I get no particular enjoyment out of the events. I fully recognize that other people enjoy the events.
maybe you can do both ? oO
celebrating in real life with friends families then why not in game too?
unless you have to make a choice ? i dont see the problem ? why wasting time?