Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[PACOX]

Just finished Icebrood Saga.


What the fuck was Icebrood Saga?

A fever dream. Story started fine but mix in the beginning of the pandemic before anyone knew how to work around it being abandoned halfway through...yeah.

One of the episodes didn't even ship with voice acting, it was definitely an experience.

Bjora and the episodes that took place there are still great imo. Great atmosphere, tons to explore if that's your thing, cool encounters. Good times.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm just waiting for next year for them to pick up the storyline again since we're just getting LSS1 content for the immediate future still. Which is great still! But also a bit underwhelming since it slams the brakes on the EoD narrative pretty darned hard.

Which reminds me that I still haven't played through the latest returning episode and should probably get around to that since I missed much of S1, and what I didn't miss I don't much remember.

I've seen new players play season 1 like a prequel. I guess it could work that way after beating EOD. Kind of jealous because it is like a new post EOD story for them. I haven't touched any of it yet but looking forward to final episode because it has a new strike mission.

[Edge-]

One of the episodes didn't even ship with voice acting, it was definitely an experience.

It actually kinda worked with the generic grunts and barks. I haven't replayed those missions with voiceover yet actually, should get around to continuing my engineers story progress to finish up HoT and start working towards hearing that for the first time.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

End of Dragons



Looking back at the promotional art for this expansion, it's curious that Kasmeer was advertised as a major character... and yet she's offscreen for almost the whole story. Taimi is also offscreen for for the whole story, and yet even she has a lot of dialogue over the radio.

In retrospect, it feels like Marjory and Kasmeer hardly did anything in GW2's storyline. The most presence they had was in seasons 1 and 2, and after that they just sorta faded away into the background. Marjory came back at the end of PoF... only to then immediately disappear until End of Dragons.



Maps










New Kaineng in the distance. It took GW2 a decade to start putting stuff into skyboxes.

The harbor area of the first map, Shing Jea, looks gorgeous with water reflections turned on, reflecting the pink trees and red painted wood on the water and the floating piles of petals.




As pretty as Shing Jea is, it isn't as immersive as it could have been. There are only two settlements (the harbor village, and the gated mansion neighborhood), and the rest of the map is packed with pirates and zombies. Contrast that with say, the Jade Forest from WoW, where there were dozens of settlements populating the zone, and you could actually stroll through the woods unmolested.




The second map, New Kaineng, looks like a cool smoggy cyberpunk city you would see in Ghost in the Shell. Except that's the problem. It's a smoggy cyberpunk/modern urban city with ugly concrete streets, skyscrapers, neon lights, air pollution, 24/7 new cycle, advertisements, power grid failures, megacorporations crushing small businesses, people losing their jobs to automation, and so on. I play fantasy games because I want to explore a fantasy world, not wind up back in my own crappy world. Oh sure, the Asura were also high tech, but their aesthetic at least leaned towards aetherpunk and egyptian pyramids, and their themes were still escapist fantasy. If New Kaineng had looked a more romanticized slant, ie less Shadowrun and more Sakura Wars, I'd be more into it.




There is a new laser guided zipline mechanic. It's neat, but I find that most of the time that the zipline is too short and that I would go faster if I had just used a mount. The pictured zipline is one of the rare ziplines that goes for quite some distance and is worthwhile.




The third map is Echovald Wilds. It feels like it is made of Auric Basin/Tangled Depths assets and doesn't really have an identity of its own. It doesn't even utilize the verticality of the HoT maps that it imitates. All of the content is on the ground floor.




The only memorable area in this map is skiffing down the river surrounded by huge trees, but that area is only about 10% of the map. If the whole map was like that, Echovald could have been a lot better. Echovald is overall disappointing.




The interiors of the abandoned cathedral mansions with the beautiful stained glass windows are wasted. You go inside, grab the mastery point, leave, and then never come back again. There are no events inside or NPCs to talk to.




Wish the floating jade shards swirled around the Harvest Temple, rather than just being still in midair.

The fourth map is Dragon's End, which is set on the Jade Sea. Sadly the Jade Sea part is barely 1/3rd of the map and the rest of the map is pretty forgettable, so hopefully we will get a patch map that is 100% Jade Sea. The meta event is quite lackluster and is poorly designed, but I will get to that in the story section.




There is a jade cavern that stretches under 40% of the map. Ofcourse, the devs decided to create this cool, expansive area... and then never gave you any reason to come down here.



The fifth map is... oh wait, there is no fifth map. This is pretty sad. This is a $50 box expansion and you only get 4 zones, and they're rehashes of places I've already been to in GW1 Factions. No new original locations. And the maps you do get are nowhere near as well designed as HoT's maps were. Much of these maps are poorly utilized or outright unused.

Hopefully we will get to see new, original East Asian fantasy zones in season 6, but who knows how many we will get. Season 6 could get axed like IBS was. I'm not confident in Arena Net. We'll see.



60 players per map limit

Prior to EoD, you could have about 100-150 people in a map. EoD's map are hard capped at 60 people. I can't fathom why this is, but it's bad for gameplay. In GW2, whenever a map gets a relatively "low" amount of players, the servers begin counting down for 60 minutes until they close that instance and kick everyone to a relatively more populated instance. In pre-EoD maps, a map closing down usually doesn't happen, but when it does you really do want to join the higher population map. In EoD, though, the maps are constantly closing down and moving people to other instances. You may have been progressing an event chain in one instance, and then you get kicked to another instance, and then you see that no one in this new instance was doing the event chain, so you effectively lost all of your progress. You also lose all stacks you had accumulated, such as sigil of bloodlust stacks or fishing stacks. I feel like I am constantly losing progress.

Worse is when you are trying to join a group that is doing a meta-event. Because a map in which a meta-event is being progressed is usually full with 60 players (everyone is trying to join the instance in which the event is actually being progressed and quickly abandon instances in which the event is being progressed), you can't get in. So you have to either get to the meta-event early and hope that the other people who want to do the event also get in your same instance, or you have to join a premade group and spend 10-20 minutes quickly zoning in and out of a map trying to force the servers to create a new instance just for your group so your whole 50 man premade have a map all to themselves.

And then you have people who aren't participating in a meta event, but are on the same instance as an event that is being progressed. A player fishing in Dragon's End, trying to get his elite specialization's ascended weapon, is indirectly harming the chances of any group on that instance that is trying to progress the meta event, because the fishing player is taking up a slot that could be used for another player who could help kill the boss within the 20 minute timer (which is pretty tight). The fishing player will be loathe to leave because he has already spent a couple hours building up his fishing stacks. Changing to a new map instance would be a huge loss of time for him, so he stays.

It's been 8 months since EoD released and the 60 player cap has not been lifted. Historically, Anet doesn't go back and change things after the first few weeks, so at this point the cap will probably never be lifted. I fear this is going to be the standard going forward into future maps. I have no idea why Anet decided to do this.



Masteries



There are fish that can be pretty difficult to keep the slider on, but I was so frustrated trying to catch the Stingray that I just didn't want to fish anymore and just recorded one catch for this post.

The fishing minigame is... okay. It's a tad fun. The gameplay of driving your skiff around searching for schools of fish, and then trying to keep the slider on the fish is much more engaging than WoW's where you clicked the bobber when splashed. It is also not stupidly overcomplicated like FF14's fishing system, where you had three dozen different buttons to press and had to spend hours reading a 60+ page google doc and charts and you still didn't understand what was happening. You also don't need to keep your inventory clogged up with two dozen different baits and fishing items.

I do have two complaints: first is the insane RNG, and second is making fishing ridiculously rare fish a requirement to obtain your elite specialization's ascended weapon. I spent three hours in Seitung trying to fish for the Stingray, the last item I needed to complete the Untamed's hammer collection. The Stingray only required 150 fishing power and I had 99 skiff stacks, for a total of 450 fishing power, so I certainly met the requirement to catch it. 3 hours of fishing the and I never saw a Stingray. I'm not going to waste any more time on this fruitless endeavor so I will probably never get the hammer.

Boating around Cantha on the Skiff and seeing the reflections in the water is cool, but there is hardly any reason to use the skiff. It takes a while to get up to speed, and there are only a small handful of maps in the game with huge expanses of water to traverse. Old maps have waypoints everywhere so you don't even need to use the Skiff; you can just port right near where you wanted to go.




The Jade Bot is a mixed bag. Controlling the drone is neat, but you can only do it a couple times during the story. We might get to use it a couple more times in 6th season set in Cantha. I will be surprised if it will be used past that. Otherwise, being able to thrust upwards while gliding is nice for areas where you can't use mounts, such as jumping puzzles. However, the Jade Bot adds tedious busywork to the game, as you have to go to Cantha every 2 hours to stack up on the buffs that give you +150 stats and 30 seconds of every buff in the game upon entering combat, and you lose the stacks every time you enter instanced content like a story mission or a strike.




The Siege Turtle is a two player combat mount. The owner of the Turtle drives while a second player hops in to man the cannons. It's a nice change of pace, and it's great for exp farming since the gunner can tag lots of mobs using the AoE cannons. However, the turtle deals subpar DPS and doesn't give boons (in a meta where boon stacking is everything), so it's not worth using for boss fights. You also can't mount during combat, and it is sluggish, which is very bad in a game designed around zergs rushing from point A to point B to point C within seconds. If you dismount the turtle to change to your roller beetle or griffon, you're kicking off your gunner (who may or may not have mounts) and leaving him behind, which means you won't deal more damage with the turtle anymore and have to hope that someone else hops into your turtle. If you stick with the turtle then there is a decent chance you won't make it to the next event in time to get credit.

The Turtle also doesn't open up more of the world to you like the other mounts did. You can't use the turtle to smash through cave walls to access new areas or push boulders to solve a puzzle. Missed opportunity.




The last mastery is upgrading the Arbstone hub. Aka, grind over and over so you can give Arborstone utilities that other cities already have for free. Pretty blatant padding to cover for the fact that the expansion only really has two masteries that meaningfully impact your gameplay (the Jade Bot and the Turtle). At least I didn't have to cough up gold to unlock the utilities like with Icebrood Saga's hub. The central hall does look quite pretty. Wish there was an exterior balcony area.



Story

There are two crippling problems with EoD's story: the plot structure, and the dialogue.

Plot structure: it's an 11 hour long story, but the only exciting adventure stuff happens at the beginning with the airship setpiece, and at the end when you fight Soo-Won and then the Dragonvoid. The 8 hours in between is almost entirely standing around listening to pathetic pirate melodrama, or doing dull stuff like waiting at the DMV, or fixing people's air conditioners, or rummaging through people's apartments for clues. Boring. GW2 isn't FF14 where it has an engine and an animation budget that can allow for a lot of cutscenes to make watching characters stand around and talk for hundreds of hours palatable. GW2's strength is in adventure and setpieces and that's what the campaign should have delivered on, which it didn't.




80% of this expansion's pre-rendered cutscenes was wasted on soap-opera. What happened to cutscenes of island sized dragons falling out of the sky?

The dialogue is awful. There are too many examples to pick out. I maxxed out my screenshot folder and had to start another one. I could spend several hours putting together a massive collage of EoD dialogue. The writers can't write dialogue that sounds like something a human being would say. The dialogue is so bad, it is cringeworthy. The characters talk like they are twitter. I never want to hear a character say "amirite" in my fantasy game ever again.




Someone was paid to write this, and did not read aloud what they wrote. You can tell the voice actor is trying to make the best with what they got, but there is no salvaging this. A polished turd is still a turd.

I am not fond of the sheer amount of sarcasm that is infused into the dialogue. Nobody can be allowed to be sincere.

There is a lot of vulgar language suddenly. People taking God's name in vain and dropping f-bombs. Not just in the campaign, but in open world events you are expected to farm dozens and dozens of times to upgrade your Jade Bot or farm materials for Aurene-themed legendary weapons. I live next door to a family whose kids play out in front, and I used to be able to play computer games with my window open to let the cool air in to keep the air conditioner bill down. Seems I can't do that when playing EoD content, or perhaps any future GW2 content.




At several points in EoD's story, my character's personality inexplicably changes. My PC has always been a stoic man who never throws out petty insults. If the PC does make a retort, it's usually more subtle (Balthazaar at 10% HP: "I am fire! I am war! What are you?" PC: "Still standing"). He doesn't feel the need to have the last word in a conversation. Sometimes the old PC's personality is there, like at the start of the expansion when Minister Li is posturing and threatens the PC, and the PC says "understood" and just moves on. But then at other points, the PC just starts spewing out gibberish like in the picture above.

Another expansion where we go to distant land, and... everyone sounds like a coastal city Californian. If GW2 can acquire celebrity voice actors then I'm sure they can acquire people with different accents as well.

So, to recap: 11 hour long campaign. 8 hours of it is spent listening to the whining, sarcasm, and swearing of unlikeable narcissists, and genuinely terrible lines. What a thrilling fantasy adventure!

What about those 3 hours of actual adventure?




The opening setpiece where you jump between moving airships that are travelling through hyperspace was visually cool. However, it was very buggy for me. Multiple times I would jump to another airship or platform, only for my character to be teleported to the side and slide off and fall.

There were a couple entertaining moments sprinkled throughout the story, like the tour through the underwater powerplant, or stumbling upon Canach's party airship. The Minister Li fight was cool.

Now I will talk about the Dragon's End meta event, which is the first meta event that the PC canonically participates in. The Dragon's Stand and Dragonfall meta events canonically took place while the PC was doing the story instance battle. The Water Elder Dragon, Soo-Won, is defeated in the meta event rather than in the story instance which takes place after (in which you instead fight the Dragonvoid, a different entity). EoD also guides you to do the meta event since you have to go around setting up the extractors inside the map, whereas in HoT you could beat the story without having ever stepped foot in Dragon's Stand outside of the story instance, having never seen the meta event.

The Dragon's End Meta event is poorly designed. The final fight is really tight, so you have to arrive at least 2 hours before the final fight (bear in mind that your 50-man group has to spend a lot of time zoning in and out of the map trying to spawn an instance so that everyone gets in) and do 1 hour of events so you can gain 10 stacks of a buff to increase your stats. Unfortunately, the events during the first hour are very meh. Soo-Won is absent for the first hour and you're just doing random stuff like putting boxes on a wago, or fighting naga. It doesn't feel like you are doing anything meaningful, and this is supposed to be the climatic meta event that ends the 10 year long Elder Dragon storyline. Contrast that with Dragon's Stand where you were constantly pushing towards Mordremoth, or Dragonfall where the early events had you do stuff like establish a base camp, and gather materials so you could weaken Kralkatorik.

The second problem is the RNG on the final fight. Once the final battle begins, you have 20 minutes to kill Soo-Won. She has two lengthy invulnerability phases, and then on top of that she has several attacks that make her invulnerable while her animation plays. You can have the group get serious and adopt high DPS meta builds, but it won't matter because you can get screwed over by RNG with Soo-Won becoming invulnerable too often.




In this attempt, we had more than enough DPS to kill her within the remaining time, but it didn't matter because the game decided she should use an attack that made her invulnerable.

You also get no rewards if you time out and fail, which feels disrespectful of your time given that you have to dedicate at least 2 hours to this. You might have blown a lot of money on banners, raid food, and boosters too.

Story wise, Dragon's End is disappointing. You fight alongside a bunch of factions and characters that were just introduced a few hours prior, and the writing has done its best to make them as unlikeable as possible. Apparently the Pact does show up on an airship towards the end, but I didn't see any Vigil or Pale Reavers or Charr. I only heard Logan's voice over the radio. Dragon's Stand and Dragonfall were cathartic because you were fighting alongside factions and people you cared about.

The one thing I will give the Dragon's End meta is that the final fight against Soo-Won atop the tower is more engaging than stabbing Kralkatorik's 12 scabs at the climax of Dragonfall, or fighting the disembodied heads of Jormag and Primordus in Dragonstorm. I think hopping from island to island to fight the Mouth of Mordremoth in Dragon's Stand was cooler, though.




Then you have the story instance, in which you face the Dragonvoid, the final boss of Guild Wars 2... and he doesn't even get a unique his own model! He reuses Soo-Won's model, which you just beat 30 minutes prior. He doesn't even get unique music either. He just resuses Soo-Won's theme, which again you already heard 30 minutes prior.

Narratively, the Dragonvoid is unsatisfying. Season 2 established the Void as being an intangible threat that you couldn't solve by beating something up. It was a metaphysical interaction. Entropy. That is one of the reasons why I got invested in seeing how the Elder Dragon magic plot would end. Then you reach EoD and the solution is... to just beat up a personification of it. And before anyone says "well it's a videogame. It has to climax with you beating up the source of the conflict!" I would point to The Banner Saga 3, in which the climax was defending a wizard from a vengeful mercenary as he fixed the tear in the fabric of reality, and that was satisfying.

It's also hard to care about Soo-Won or the Dragonvoid. I only had a 2 minute long conversation with Soo-Won before she went crazy. And the Dragonvoid comes out of nowhere during the last hour of the game. Neither manage to kill any of the heroes or wreck a city or deal any visible lasting damage to the world, or damage that I care about. The Dragonvoid is most egregious. He causes a world ending apocalypse, but no one dies and no cities are wiped out. In the epilogue, you go to Divinity's Reach and you don't see any destruction. it's as if the apocalypse never happened. Zhaitan managed to wipe out Claw Island and killed several characters. Mordremoth wiped out a couple towns in Tyria and killed Traehearne. Kralkatorik killed Blish, and his brand damage spans across several maps and can be quite visibly seen every time you open your world map. Primordus forced the Asura to flee to the surface of the planet, and Jormag devastated the Charr. The Dragonvoid is supposed to be the amalgamation of all 6 Elder Dragons, and yet he fails to inflict as much damage as any one of them.




Then you have the ending. The expansion is also called, I don't know, "End of Dragons". I was expecting Aurene to sacrifice herself and magic to disappear from the world to break the cycle. Something along those lines. Instead, she can apparently contain the magic of all 6 Elder Dragons without exploding or being warped into an ugly obese dragon or going insane or unbalancing the world, in complete and utter contradiction of the rules that the story had established prior. The expansion pulls the phrase "dragon magic filtering" out of thin air to handwave that problem away. I wonder how the writers are going to try to keep the now all-powerful benevolent dragon from solving any threats going forward.

(Also, if Annka used the extractor to take Aurene's magic - which included Joko's resurrective immortality - and infused that magic into Soo-Won, then shouldn't Soo-Won now be immortal? How could she possibly die? The second extraction to get the magic out of Soo-Won and transfer it back to Aurene failed. Soo-Won dying and Aurene absorbing her magic at the end makes no sense).

The story never answered how Soo-Won's name was forgotten.



The rest of the expansion

EoD doesn't offer a new PvP mode, or a new SPvP map, or a new WvW map. No new raid or fractals. The new elite specs were broken on launch and many still haven't been fixed. I play Ranger, and not only is Untamed in a bad place design wise, but it also got the short end of the stick when it came to art and animation. This is the beastmaster spec, but now my pet is covered in ugly green goo and I can't turn that off. My new teleport ability, Unnatural Traversal, doesn't even have an animation. And when using a legendary hammer, the Untamed's green hammer swing trails are still there, rather than being replaced by the legendary hammer's trails. Also, no Kirin or Saltspray Dragon ranger pets? Come on!

Overall, a very underwhelming expansion and a sorry ending to the GW2 story. It certainly wasn't worth botching the Icebrood Saga and throwing away Primordus for. Story should've ended at season 4. It's going to be hard to care about the story going forward if the devs couldn't be bothered to execute the second half of the Elder Dragon storyline properly and if the bad writing is here to stay.



Wishes for the future

• A full season of visually imaginative Cantha maps, with HoT map design.

• A new WvW map.

• New SPvP maps.

• Untamed gets the art and animation touches it should have had (improved Unleashed Pet art or option to turn off the green goo, Unnatural Traversal gets an animation, legendary hammer trails, etc).

• Untamed gets a gameplay design pass.

• Hire good writers.

• A brand new cast of characters to adventure with. PLEASE don't pull a FFXIV where the heroes "disband" only to immediately get back together again in the next patch. I like Gorrik but I don't want to join his private detective agency that features Kasmeer and Marjory and Ivan. I don't care about them.

[Aliven]

After on and off relationship with GW2 from the very beginning I finally made decision to abandon the game. The main thing is that I dont have time for the heavy grinding required for some things - like leg weapons and Griffon/Drake - and overall frustration with how they designed unlocking elite spec. Realized i played to see the story but it never gripped me enough to endure the frustrating bits.
Shame really, this is my issue, I know it. Game is propably best f2p/b2p MMORPG currently on the market.

[VMSmith]

As much as I enjoy the gameplay aspects of GW2, now that I've seriously tried it, I find I'm having the same issue that I encounter in pretty much every MMO that eventually causes me to dip out ... there's no easily findable social aspect. And I don't mean that in the WoW-dipshit's sense of dungeons and raids, I mean guilds full of people that talk about anything and everything and do things together, no matter how difficult or trivial. I've been invited to one guild and there's never anyone on in it.

I don't want to do group content, but I do want to interact with other people in a game genre that is called "massively multiplayer". Every current MMO, even the ones I really enjoy like GW2 and STO, has this problem.

Maybe I'll just give it up and play battle royales only, at least I don't go into those expecting people to talk to.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I'm having the same issue that I encounter in pretty much every MMO that eventually causes me to dip out

Times have changed. When WoW came out in 2004, social media hadn't taken off yet. The internet was still new, and playing online with other people was a novel experience. The ways in which you could organize with other people was limited. People formed ingame guilds and created guild websites because that was how gamers formed an online men's club back in the day. Nowadays that organizing takes place out of game in Discord servers. Discord servers also have the advantage that they are not tied to a single game. A group of friends might not all play the same games.

If you want a group of people to play GW2 with, then you're best bet is to either join the United Artists of Tyria or Hardstruck discord servers. Or your world's WvW discord server. Etc. You see the same faces organizing group events at the same times each week, so you might be able to join those groups and hang with the regulars in chat.

[Ghost of Cow]

Times have changed. When WoW came out in 2004, social media hadn't taken off yet. The internet was still new, and playing online with other people was a novel experience. The ways in which you could organize with other people was limited. People formed ingame guilds and created guild websites because that was how gamers formed an online men's club back in the day. Nowadays that organizing takes place out of game in Discord servers. Discord servers also have the advantage that they are not tied to a single game. A group of friends might not all play the same games.

Yep. 100% this. (Hell, I think we've discussed it before.)

The idea of "hanging out in a virtual world with people" isn't the crazy wave of the future or whatever that it once was. Well, not to most people, at least.

[Edge-]

https://www.mmorpg.com/news/final-ep...eek-2000126527

I still need to play the last episode, but final LS S1 episode coming Nov 8.

Comes with a new strike mission and public/private instance for the event itself. I should catch up and finish the S1 story at some point since I never really fully engaged with it when it happened.

[PixelFox]

If you haven't done so, it's worth grabbing the two free Mini Toy-Eggs from the Alienware Arena giveaway. I got them a couple weeks ago whenever it started and one gave me something I already had (which I sold on the market for like 50s) and the second was some bird thing, so I at least got something new. Yesterday I was looking at the Halloween vendors to see what the most expensive thing was you could buy with candy corn and for 120,000 corn you can get [Mini Oxidecimus the Shadow Raven] which seems like a lot of work for a bird thing, but when I hovered over it, it said "Mini Unlocked".

[PACOX]

If you haven't done so, it's worth grabbing the two free Mini Toy-Eggs from the Alienware Arena giveaway. I got them a couple weeks ago whenever it started and one gave me something I already had (which I sold on the market for like 50s) and the second was some bird thing, so I at least got something new. Yesterday I was looking at the Halloween vendors to see what the most expensive thing was you could buy with candy corn and for 120,000 corn you can get [Mini Oxidecimus the Shadow Raven] which seems like a lot of work for a bird thing, but when I hovered over it, it said "Mini Unlocked".

Saw the giveaway and forgot about it. Thanks.

[Felthan]

They got rid of the lead writer for the last half of IBS and end of dragons and gave the lead role a returning gw1 writer back in march.

[Xilurm]

I really like the way the mount(s) feel in this game. Granted I've only tried the trial raptor you get at the start, but it's nice how heavy it feels to control. I can't wait to get a flying mount at the end. I hope there's a horse type of mount and a tiger/panther.

[Saradain]

I really like the way the mount(s) feel in this game. Granted I've only tried the trial raptor you get at the start, but it's nice how heavy it feels to control. I can't wait to get a flying mount at the end. I hope there's a horse type of mount and a tiger/panther.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbsF1zqt10

This is what peak MMO mount system looks like. And why Dragonflight took a lesson from GW2.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I hope there's a horse type of mount and a tiger/panther.

There is no horse, but in PoF you can obtain a Jackal mount, and on the cash shop there are $20 mount skins. For the Jackal, there are skins that turn it into a moose or a kirin, which is the closest thing to a horse you can get in GW2.


Default Jackal.



Jackal skins.


As for a tiger, you can do 8 hours of WvW an obtain the Warclaw mount (which can also be used in PvE areas). It is a big armored cat. There are a few tiger adjacent skins for the Warclaw.


Default Warclaw.


Warclaw skins.


For the flying Griffon mount, there are a few Tiger skins.


Default Griffon.


Griffon skins.

- - - Updated - - -

Be warned that GW2 uses a FOMO cash shop model where they put stuff on sale for a week, and then you can't buy it until it goes on sale again in 6 months or a year. You can follow this thread on the official forums to see what goes on sale each day, and you can use this API to see some things that will go on sale in the future. You can also check a skin on the GW2 wiki and check the gem store section to see when it last went on sale, though the wiki has been malfunctioning for the past month. If there is a particular skin you want, you should be checking these regularly and snatch it up when you can.

[Xilurm]

Oh I really like the white tiger skin for both the Jackal and the Griffon. Also the scaly looking unicorn thing.

Also glad that I'm able to hear the actual footsteps of my character and mount. Minor gripe I have with WoW when I played again recently. Been playing Classic for a month now and I love the clopping sound of my horse, went on retail after the pre-patch only to notice the sound of footsteps for both the player and any mount are pretty much non-existent unless you walk on water. Makes no sense, why would they mute them to such a degree.

Between that and FFXIV, with the latter having some really nice sound effects, I'm glad GW2 is more like the latter, and that my ears ain't bleeding once I go into combat either.

- - - Updated - - -

Be warned that GW2 uses a FOMO cash shop model where they put stuff on sale for a week, and then you can't buy it until it goes on sale again in 6 months or a year. You can follow this thread on the official forums to see what goes on sale each day, and you can use this API to see some things that will go on sale in the future. You can also check a skin on the GW2 wiki and check the gem store section to see when it last went on sale, though the wiki has been malfunctioning for the past month. If there is a particular skin you want, you should be checking these regularly and snatch it up when you can.

Thanks! Never really had problems with FOMO myself since I only buy the things I want regardless if they're on sale or not. Pretty weird thing though, why are they doing it like this? Wouldn't it be more profitable to leave the items on the store at all times since they don't have a sub model and all?

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbsF1zqt10

This is what peak MMO mount system looks like. And why Dragonflight took a lesson from GW2.

Would be nice if FFXIV took a lesson from it too, but I don't think the engine can handle something like this. Still though, whatever MMO games in the future come out and have mounts, they should feel heavy and have physics. It's not the 2000s anymore, games are starting to feel more immersive than ever, at least AAA games. Swimming in the air or moving at a faster rate without any sort of weight (talking about ground mounts) just doesn't make sense anymore. Makes me wonder what LoL's mmo mount system is going to be like.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

why are they doing it like this? Wouldn't it be more profitable to leave the items on the store at all times since they don't have a sub model and all?

Same reasoning behind the Disney vault or Warframe vaulting their prime Warframes, or gacha games rotating banners of rare characters. If something is always available and you're vaguely interested in it, then you're probably not going to get around to buying it soon. If it is going to be no longer available for a long time, then you are probably going to buy it ASAP if it appeals to you. The artificial scarcity also increases the perceived value of the thing in people's minds, seeing other people have a "rare" Disney movie or a "rare" golden Warframe or a "rare" mount skin, and then next time it does become available you will be even further incentivized to get it while you can.

[PACOX]

Thanks! Never really had problems with FOMO myself since I only buy the things I want regardless if they're on sale or not. Pretty weird thing though, why are they doing it like this? Wouldn't it be more profitable to leave the items on the store at all times since they don't have a sub model and all?


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Its a way to push people to spend money on the game without subs. If someone is on the fence it's more likely that they will make a purchase if they know that thing the want is only around for a limited time. Standard store promo practices.


There's standalone 'premium' mounts that go for $20 or less. There's are licenses that are ~$5 for a random mount from a set (there's multiple sets) or you can pay more (I don't know how much it is off the to of my head, probably $10) to select a mount from a set.


A lot of the skins are likely to come back for Black Friday.

[Xilurm]

My mount trial ended. Was a good mount experience. Does it take long until I get an actual mount?

I also just got to the third chapter of my story, wasn't expecting there to be branching quests for this game.

[PACOX]

My mount trial ended. Was a good mount experience. Does it take long until I get an actual mount?

I also just got to the third chapter of my story, wasn't expecting there to be branching quests for this game.

Raptor unlocks at lvl 10 when you have the HOT/POF expansions.

[Xilurm]

Raptor unlocks at lvl 10 when you have the HOT/POF expansions.

Wait so, players didn't have any mounts in the game prior to the first expansion, 3 years after the game released?