Returning to gaming/GW2, what's new? :)

[taelizalde]

Hi guys! So I played this game religiously since the second BWE up until the first part of Flame and Frost. Totaled about 1400 hours played from Launch until then, so I pretty much did it all at the time, including:

tons of WvW
Fractals up to 64
crafted The Dreamer
sPvP
all the jumping puzzles
Dungeon Master title
7 professions to 80

I'm excited to see what else is new after 5 months away, since part of the reason I left was because I was extremely burnt out, and Fractals and Jumping Puzzles were just getting old. I also wasn't terribly impressed with Flame and Frost

Can anyone fill me in on what's new? Thanks

[Karizee]

With that much play under your belt you're sure to have a crapton of achievement points - login and get your STUFF.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement_rewards

Let's see, content patches are every 2 weeks now, the Labyrinthe Cliffs zone is new (and amazing fun - you get new movement skills there). New Pvp maps and games, WvW has seen a few changes, different masteries now, ascended gear, WvW xp and ranks plus the matchup system has changed.

Pvp has custom arena and spectator mode now. Biggest balance update since the game launched. Bunch of polish overall with things like a new achievement UI. You've missed a few chapters of the Living Story but it won't hold you back. Right now we are voting ingame on what content comes next haha. Oh, Guild Missions would be pretty big too.

Here's the release splash page for the overview, there's tons more stuff.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

[zed zebes]

I forget what's been going on since then. Did you ever do Guild Missions? Some of those are pretty cool.

Right now, the Bazaar of the Four Winds and the Vote for the next Lion's Arch Council Member is going on. A boat in Lion's Arch will take you to the Labyrinthine Cliffs. There's multiple activities there and the zone has special aspect powers that allow you to do new movement skills. The zone is sort of like a playground/jungle gym/jumping puzzle on cliffside with a big airship at the top. The activities include Sanctum Sprint (mario kart-ish), Survival (hunger royale from beta weekend), Aspect Arena (capture hte flag pvp with aspect skills), and the canidate trials (horde mode with four tiers of difficulty). You also get vote tokens for doing stuff and you can deposit those tokens into baskets on the airship to vote for the character you want as the next Council Member.

The nominees are:

Evon Gnashblade: Black Lion Trading Company Boss - Will provide a month long discount on BL keys, bring his survival mini-game into regular rotation, and will lead to a new fractal being added to the game based on the Fall of Abbadon.
Ellen Keil - NPC from the Southsun story*. She will lower waypoint costs for a month, provide her Aspect Arena on a rotation of mini-games, and lead to a new fractal based on the Thurmonova Reactor explosion.

In Southsun Cove, the area has been changed so that there's new NPCs and outposts, along with a zone wide meta-event that has a Karka Queen boss fight. This fight drops a chest and a bonus chest like the other meta event bosses.

Aetherblades are a new enemy faction. They're sky pirates with a steampunkish style. The Aetherblade Retreat is a new jumping puzzle in Gendarren Fields that is quite punishing, but rewards rare quality item for completing it. Aetherblades are also a part of one of the Labyrinthine Cliffs DEs.

Belcher's Bluff is a new mini-game. It's sort of like the pirate drinking contest in the Whispers storyline. There's Belcher's Bluff masters in the world that you learn new drinking game skills from if you beat them. You can also purchase items that let you play the game versus others out in the world.

WvWvW has had WvWvW ranks added and WvWvW skills added. The list of skills is pretty long, but most of them help you improve use of the various siege in the game. Also, stealth traps and supply traps are now available in WvWvW. These traps reveal stealthed foes or make players carrying supply lose their supply when they walk over them.

sPvP has a map added or two. I know Skyhammer is brand new.

Finally, there is the new Achievement Point system that has tiers of rewards for getting to a certain amount of Achievement Points. These rewards include karma, gold, pvp items, badges, Gems, and special skins.

[Lazuli]

A terrible new pvp map has been added - skyhammer or better known as trololololo

Labrynthine Cliffs is the current 'living story' content and you may have missed southsun cove idk if you can still go there or not, got all my achievs there in under an hour so I have no need to check. We've been given the chance to vote between either meaningful relevant god-lore (abbadon) or reduced waypoint prices and unfortunately the latter is winning, retarded idea imo.

Belchers bluff is a new permanent minigame, enjoy your match against adnul irongut.

Achievement points now reward chests but are limited to 1 per daily reset. For example, you have 5k achievements and 5 chests to collect, you get 1 a day until there are none left then you can continue building towards the next one. Not gonna lie the rewards for these are pretty awesome and later on actually give you gems for the store and a fair amount of gold. Has given me a reason to do achievements even though it's still incredibly unfair to those that didn't do dailies 24/7 since release.

They've reverted a possible 750 AP a month from just dailies/monthly to I think 200, and not reverting any points from those that got the 750 every month making it even more retarded.

Balance has not changed much except get even more horrible, necro's are unkillable gods in the right hands and the new D/D ele. Oh they can also burst better than thieves now... enjoy.

I'd recommend waiting for this: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/l...ars-2-in-2013/ which personally has my hyped - currently GW2 has not changed too much since release and burn out is not uncommon, I find you can tolerate the game for a month or two and have to break again due to lack of content/features/balance.

Fractals is still the only 'end game'.

There are some new JP

WvW has ranks now and you can customize your character to be more proficient in killing guards or using siege weapons, other than that it has not changed a bit.

Waiting for that particle effect slider found in every other MMO...

welcome back

[Deleted]

Belchers bluff is a new permanent minigame, enjoy your match against adnul irongut.

1. Get a Box o' Fun from an achievement reward chest.
2. Go to Hoelbrak home.
3. Place the box in front of Adnul.
4. Set it to transform mode.
5. Start the belcher game.
6. Click the box.
7. Let the stupid drunkard enjoy his "bold undertones" alone.
You're welcome.

@OP
Don't ask on these forums. Really.

[Lazuli]

1. Get a Box o' Fun from an achievement reward chest.
2. Go to Hoelbrak home.
3. Place the box in front of Adnul.
4. Set it to transform mode.
5. Start the belcher game.
6. Click the box.
7. Let the stupid drunkard enjoy his "bold undertones" alone.
You're welcome.

@OP
Don't ask on these forums. Really.

I completed it in 10 tries or so, I didn't need to exploit and never would. I personally thought it was adequately challenging but made zero sense how he was the most difficult of all even the final frog guy. It's pretty obvious you have to get lucky on RNG to beat him because his coding is all sorts of fucked up... pretty sad how the only challenge in this game comes from a bugged NPC. He is not supposed to use his elite that much afaik.