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[Column] Guild Wars 2: On The Bright Side...
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It's still two months until Thanksgiving, but as rough as things have been in Guild Wars 2-land recently, I thought now was as good a time as any to “give thanks” for what the game does offer – specifically, some of the major changes ArenaNet has implemented since the game's launch, even if you don't take the most recent Feature Pack into account. Today, I'd like to look back on some of those changes and reflect upon how they've made our lives in Tyria a little bit better.
Read more of Jason Winter's Guild Wars 2: On the Bright Side...
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Comments
I love the changes, I'm hopeful now that this game will actually become the one I paid for at launch eventually. I'm loving the backpacks. Sure they have a long long way to go (and I personally feel that a great step would be to remove that terrible economist they have right now) but babysteps.
I don't find what they've done contraversial at all save for the blunders with the alts for veterans. I think that all vets who already had level 80's should be exempt from having to purchase their traits for alts entirely and been allowed to bypass the newb system entirely.
Now I'm hopeful they will redouble their efforts in the next features pack to bring things the game actually needs like a fix for condi stacking, actual rewards globally instead of porous skulls, and fixing the inherent weakness of pets globally.
Umm...
The reason why this article is called "On The Bright Side..." is that the feature pack has been bashed in quite a few places, including MMORPG.com.
Hmmm...
This Feature Pack also includes:lags,disconnections,crashes(played today)
The most obvious benefit of the megaservers has been the increased population in the game's various zones. It's just better to see actual people running around lower-level zones when you're doing events or map completion and to have people around when you're trying to do a group event.
Its really nice to see how this system works:if there few players remain on your current map game suggest you to move to more populated version of same map....three times for five minutes(that was once,but still)
That's a misconception. What you're seeing are the results of the megaserver. It only appears as though more people are playing the game when the reality is you're forced into map instances with players across all servers in order to make the instance more populated.
The September 9, 2014 feature pack expanded upon this with further improvements. If you're in a map instance that a lot of players leave and it becomes underpopulated you will get a message telling you the instance you're in will close. You can choose to transfer to a more populated version of the map and you will receive a 10 minute buff for volunteering to transfer, or you can wait out the hour and it will force you to transfer over.
To be honest I love the megaserver improvements. It makes the game look less dead, for the most part. It's easier to find players in a map for doing various events that pop up now.
Edit: But it can be annoying on occasion. Several days ago I was in a map and chose to volunteer to transfer to a higher populated instance. Then when I transferred over I got the message again about the map needing to close due to low population. And again I chose to transfer over. So it took me about 3 transfers before I finally ended up in a more populated map. It's possible that particular map just isn't very populated at all even with the megaserver. *shrugs*
Dark Helmet: "What?! You went over my helmet?"
It's called megaserver.
Yup. However, you are only a cash cow if you want to be one. I uninstalled and tossed my CD in the trash with last April's Trait change clusterfudge. Given the lack of response or change, and the general direction the game is going, there is still a canyon of disconnect between upper management and everyone else. Worst level of communication from a company I've ever experienced.
"How about you? What's your favorite pre-September Feature Pack addition to the game?"
I left the game (again - first time it was before xmas for +-8 months, because 1 season of LS was so freaking baaaaaaaad), after so called "feature pack" XD. No plans of coming back. Reading GW2 forums is more entertaining now