Seasons two and three provide what I would describe as “worldlets”. A storyline pulls you through the maps, but lots of side activities give you the opportunity to stick around and larger meta-map activities keep things lively. The chapters in season three (I’ve only seen the first five of six) have overarching events similar to the nighttime sieges in Heart of Thorns. I could run around in the winter storms in chapter three till the cows come home. I love the special ability you get and how it’s tied to geographic points on the map. Really clever stuff.
Yes, they have. To get the episodes for free, you had to log in between the time they were launched and the launch of the next episode, roughly. If you missed those, you have to pay gems (or real money) to unlock it. To unlock the whole thing at current exchange rates, you need either 500 gold or about US$ 30, roughly. I wrote a more detailed breakdown of the costs in the Path of Fire thread.
I guess that makes sense. I was thinking that because they didn’t have the game back then, they wouldn’t have been able to log in and get the seaons for free, so why punish them by making them have to pay for the seasons? But that’s not really how selling stuff works, is it? :)
Both Season 2 and 3 come with their own maps, and those maps have their own masteries, event chains, meta events, daily events/rewards, and collectibles. The Silverwastes (a season 2 map) and Bitterfrost Frontier (a season 3 map) also have very lucrative meta events with lots of loot and gold. And some of them just look incredible, like Bloodstone Fen (a season 3 map).
Hey, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have a subscription, so it makes sense that they would charge for this. Luckily, you can buy it with in-game gold if you don’t want to spend money - it’s just very time-intensive to do, so to speak.
I’m glad they provided those for free on their respective launch windows, anyway. Each of the living world seasons has way more content than Eye of the North had in GW1, and that one had to be bought. So I’m happy. ;)
I would love people to do them with because I can’t imagine successfully soloing any of what I have seen in our attempt at season 2 a year or two back, at least with my elementalist main.
I soloed all of Season 2 content with my ranger. I won’t say it was easy, but it was mostly manageable. It’s entirely possible that ArenaNet made changes to those parts to make them easier at this point.
Actually, I soloed all story missions - from the base game to the latest expansion (that I’m only a mission or two from finishing) - with one exception: the final boss fight in Bitterfrost Frontier (season 3 content). So it’s doable, it’s not impossible, but it can get a bit tricky sometimes. ;)
I’ve been playing this ALOT since Path of Fire came out, haven’t touched the game in years. The thing that made me stop playing in the first place was a lack of endgame content. I remember crying (on the inside) when I found out how much work I would have to do to get a legendary weapon.
Of course, logging back in now there is an abundance of content and progression for my level 80 elementalist that is fun. I really like the mounts too.
I almost got bankrupt buying the jackal (it’s 20g), and I started wondering where all my wealth went from last time I played. Turns out I had completely forgot about the existence of the material storage tab in the bank, opening that was like stumbling onto a winning lottery ticket.
PS: I am tjrneal.8041, still hoping for a guild invite and friendship requests from others here.
I came back to the game about two months ago, having not played for a couple of years, and immediately started doing things completely out of order. I had never finished the main story but decided to start doing the Heart of Thorns quests anyway. After getting a decent ways into HoT, I eventually went back to the main story and finished it. I have Living Story Seasons 2 and 3 but I haven’t even started them, nor finished HoT, but now I’m playing through the Path of Fire story. Needless to say, I have little understanding of what the hell is happening or has happened story wise.
That said, I’m really enjoying the game and I’ve been playing pretty regularly since coming back. I like how it hasn’t been overly simplified like WoW. I’ve been in the QT3 guild since launch but I’ve never done many of the group activities, so if any of you want to get together for some group stuff I’m game!
I have seven level 80 characters and have never finished the story on any of them! Just made a Norn ranger and boosted him to 80. I intend to finally play all the way through the story with him. We’ll see how far he gets… :)
So how is their customer service? I forgot my login credentials, and one of the things they want to let you create a new login is the name of one of your characters. I don’t remember my character names because it’s been years since I played. I emailed support and it’s been about 24 hours without a response. Just wondering if this is typical?
Not sure if that’s typical, but they just launched a major expansion and they have been having some technical issues, so I’d expect their support to be taking more time than usual for a while.
I was in a similar situation. It took them a little bit to get back to me and they bent over backwards and gave me multiple attempts to recall anything about the original account. Former address, phone numbers, etc. It had been 3-4 years and I was actually using an email account that I had completely forgotten.
The phone number I was telling them was an old one and I had misremembered by a digit and they kept coming back to that. They didn’t outright tell me what the correct answer was but their follow-up email definitely had a “you’re warmer…warmer…” vibe to them.
I had a friend with something similar so I think if you’re persistent you’ll get it. I think having access to any of the email addresses you may have been using at the time when you were playing would be big of course.
Gotta say I didn’t care for GW2 my first two nights playing this week. I felt lost. Frustrated. Where was my quest log? What do I do next? Why don’t these NPCs hold my hand? (Never played GW1).
Then tonight, it clicked. I suddenly realized there wasn’t hand holding or a quest log, but instead a pretty amazing open world with a ton to do and discover, and I could follow whatever path I wanted. It felt liberating actually not to have a humongous quest list staring me in the face, like I do in LoTRO.
So I scrolled back in this thread to 2012… was that the launch? @SlainteMhath had been having the same reaction, and some of you responded along the lines of what I sensed, for the first time, tonight:
Five years later, that’s what I discovered tonight.
This is precisely what I liked in the first few hours of LOTRO (past the boring opening), and what disappointed me when I learned this wasn’t the way the game was meant to be played.
I really enjoy wandering around my little lively fantasy world in GW2. It feels a lot more lively, and with a better sense of place, than the first game.
I should probably just get some ranger going, as my mesmer isn’t exactly up to the task when there happens to be stuff blocking a road!
Yup, 2012 was the launch. Doesn’t seem like 5 years since I first started playing.
Eventually, in the weeks that followed my initial frustration and confusion, I began to really enjoy GW2’s completely sandbox style of play. Taking part in the chained events from the start was really fun, once I knew what was going on. Even WvW turned out to be a blast, though totally chaotic.
Eventually, after a few months, I left to play some single player games for awhile, and when I returned to GW2 they had started the whole “log in to receive content” thing. I’d already missed a couple of months of content, and I knew I wasn’t going to always be logging in to keep up the stream, so eventually I simply stopped playing altogether.
Earlier this year I returned to LOTRO for the ??th time over the last decade, and this time it stuck. I’ve been having a lot of fun in Middle Earth, and isn’t really room on my limited gaming schedule for two MMORPGs…so GW2 (and ESO) will remain on my shelf, patiently waiting for another day.
I’m glad GW2 clicked for you though. It IS a lot of fun once you learn to stop worrying and embrace the flow. =)
Same thing happened to me. The thing I found most annoying at launch was that there was no direction and no way to know what I was “supposed” to be doing. Also, the idea of a relatively flat power level annoyed me – I wanted a gear treadmill.
Now, it’s clicked that the reward for progression isn’t power – it’s more stuff to do, or it’s flexibility. It’s like having a hundred different bars to fill up, and they all give you something, and it doesn’t matter when you do them.
