Allona gushes FOREVER to Celeste about her time at PAX East! They go on to talk about beta news, eventual camera changes, the gem store, and answer some lovely listener questions (or get ringers to answer them). Also Pax.

Audio Version

What We Did This Week

 

Allona

• 
  
• Legen — wait for it — dary! … I have The Minstrel now! And managed it without breaking the bank … One lovely listener, Kendall, sent me 10 ectos (thanks so much!) but other than that I did it all on my own, which felt great! My heart was pounding as I was putting all the (crazy expensive) components into the Mystic Forge.
  
• PAX
  
  • 
    
  • Thursday: Drive down with Inks of YouTube’s MMOInks and the lovely, Mrs. Inks. Got lied to by TomTom and go further south than we needed. Have a hilarious drive through Boston. Find hotels. Collapse.
    
  • Friday: Hooked up with and obtained our passes from Opt from TWiT guild. Visit Anet booth, which looked amazing! Met Rubi, Stephane, and Gaile! (May have squee’d internally) Randomly found Chris as he was barrelling from one panel to the next! Visited with Jawa from chat room (surprise!) and his family! I was super jazzed! Went to the GW2 community party in the evening! It was wonderful! Talked with some amazing devs Leah Rivera, Elisabeth Claire, Hugh Norfolk, and some guy named Colin! Met Jebro (Daniel Littleton) and Kaelaris (James Carrol) who are really nice guys and were gracious in the face of my obvious ignorance of the competitive PvP scene! And that’s not even going into all the other fans of the game (like myself) I knew through twitter and in-game that I got to meet in person for the first time! It was a pretty special time.
    
  • Saturday: Ball of nerves. Mostly worried about the interview we got with the devs. Thankfully it turned out to be a demo with Matt Wuerfell and Jon Peters and they did nearly all the talking while I tried to make my way through the first instance in HoT on the Revenant! I am SUPER reliant on my gaming gear … when people watch the video — when it’s ready(tm) — I hope they take that into account! I don’t want to go into too much detail here about the demo though. I watched two WTS matches, both won by The Dankening and it was quite exciting to be there for the live competition! Went to the panel Censored! about creative freedom in the videogame industry and it was illuminating and fascinating! https://youtu.be/4UEn6hsVZBU
    
  • Sunday: Ate the largest burger of my life! Watched the final two games of WTS. Wow! They were incredible! GW2 has them on their channel if you’re interested in watching them. Helped record the Day 3 PAX video with Chris and Harry of MMO Reporter. And finally stood in line for an hour+ to try out Stronghold. John Corpening was talking with people near the head of the line so I got to chat with him for quite a while. He was happy that I have a new-found love of Skyhammer! He also gave me a really great rundown of the mechanics of the new map (and then stood behind me and coached me through the whole match! I just happened to be opposite Inks while he was streaming the match on GW2’s twitch stream so there’s proof of my team’s victory! (http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/634462393 – starts around 24:30) There was only one group that got to play after us … so that was cutting it pretty close to the wire!
    
  • Monday: Drive home! Sleep forever.
    
  
  
  

Celeste

• 
  
• Family playday! I rerolled Steak N Potato Man again and we all played through Wayfarer Foothills, Ben on a Guardian (which he’s still not sure he likes) and Kiddo on a Staff Ele that I think he’s getting pretty good at.
  
  • 
    
  • A: Because of Pax, I need to make Burger ‘n Tots Gal!
    
  
  
  
• Selling, Buying, and Trading. Filling in my T6 mats so I can catch up to Allona. Though I’m still seriously considering selling it once it’s done. Money is a lot more solvent and I may like one of the new legendaries a lot more. This seems like a much better idea now that I’m sitting below 10g.
  

 

Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm EST/6:30pm PST at twitch.tv/mmoreporter.

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Report from Lion’s Arch

 

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns’ forgotten languages and hang gliders

http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/11/8183731/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-forgotten-languages-and-hang-gliders

• 
  
• Obvious spoiler warning: if you don’t know what HoT is all about or haven’t played through Point of No Return. Duh.
  
• Expansion takes place the day after the pact fleet is destroyed and then you “ fight your way through the jungle to find and kill Mordremoth.†So for those of us that may be wondering about what killing another elder dragon might do to the balance of the eternal alchemy… yikes.
  
• “We have characters talking in the world now,” Johanson said. “In this expansion we have tried to make the experience more immersive. Conversations play out and it feels more natural. And characters have a lot more dialog because of that.”
  
  • 
    
  • C: I love, love, LOVE this change. I really hope it makes everything feel a lot more organic and much more immersive because we won’t be taken aside into a ton of different cinematics to get a lot of juicy plot points.
    
  
  
  
• Colin: “If you play as a Sylvari, you’re constantly questioned about your motives, even by your oldest friends in the game,” he said. “Whether you decide to trust a Sylvari early on in the expansion impacts what mission you end up doing.”
  
• “Another twist is that with the fall of the fleet you end up becoming, at least initially, the highest ranking surviving member of the Pact so most troops you come across will follow your orders and refer to you as the head of the fleet.â€
  
  • 
    
  • C: Awww… so the other higher ranking members, i.e. Trahearne may still be alive out there.
    
  
  
  
• They go on to explain masteries, revenants, and (very briefly) stronghold
  

 

Hot Betas, get your fresh hot betas here!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-heart-of-thorns-closed-beta-tests/

• 
  
• The announcement of the Heart of Thorns Closed Beta
  
• No NDA – can stream, record, screenshot and share this beta footage
  
• Mostly as a stress testing method for core systems
  
• Be an active player and a subscriber to their newsletter
  

 

Camera Changes

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-readycamera-changes-are-coming/ coming soon but obviously not yesterday as was anticipated (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Next-Game-Build-Update)

• 
  
• Positional offsets 
  
  • 
    
  • Controls where your camera snaps to when you’re set to having it go to always behind…
    
  • now with a horizontal and vertical adjustment
    
  • If first person view isn’t your thing you could set the game to play with an over the shoulder 3rd person view using these sliders as well
    
  
  
  
• Collision Sensitivity
  
  • 
    
  • Essentially you can adjust how much obstruction there has to be for the camera to snap in and readjust itself during a collision
    
  • “When this feature ships, it will be automatically enabled in your camera options; if you’d like to disable this new functionality, simply move the slider all the way to the left and the old functionality will be restored.â€
    
  • C: After chasing some prey between the trees in Wayfarer foothills this weekend and getting assaulted by tree trunks as I was running through this is AMAZING.
    
  
  
  
• Zoom Sensitivity
  
  • 
    
  • Mouse wheel clicks to zoom all the way in versus all the way out
    
  • “Moving this slider to the left will cause the zoom level to change in smaller increments, meaning you’ll need to roll your mouse wheel 42 clicks to fully zoom, compared to the usual 7 clicks when the slider is set to the right.â€
    
  
  
  
• Field of View Slider
  
  • 
    
  • “how much can be seen in the game worldâ€
    
  • moving the slider left will allow you to see less around you while to the right will lead to more.
    
  • helps folks on multi-monitor setups alleviate the fish eye effect that may be occurring
    
  
  
  
• First Person View
  
  • 
    
  • when enabled you can zoom all the way in and see tyria through your character’s eyes (insert pic of character with their eyes all funky and exposed, god I hope twitter finds it for me)
    
  • No restrictions on when you can use it (something contradictory to what they said in the past)
    
  
  
  
• Screwed your camera up beyond repair? Fear not! There’s a restore default that affects only the new camera settings
  
• C: All in all, these changes look amazing and I’m really looking forward to be able to do some pretty environmental scenes
  

 

Missed out on one of the 24 hour sales? Fear not this pig…

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/24-hour-availability-screwed-me/first#post4847962

• 
  
• Items were available for 24 hours as a preview and will be returning for a longer run at some point in the future
  

 

Buying HoT with Gems/Gold? Nope.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/hot/Have-to-buy-HoT-to-create-a-Revenant/first#post4867494

• 
  
• Gaile pretty much confirms that the expansion will have to be bought with real life monies and not in game currencies
  

 

Ask an Asura

Send us questions and they will be answered in the order they are received ~cues muzak~

 

One way to organize your inventory for optimal playtime

http://www.dragonseason.com/inventory-management/

 

From Twitter! @afternoonified

I’ve only been playing PvP for a few weeks now, and wonder if you have some good resources for noob PvP builds?

• 
  
• @Anet_Nightmare:  metabattle.com is a great place to look for builds. :)
  
• We were talking with Ultra (who had emailed us a bit ago about PvP and WvW). He suggested searching YouTube for some good basic builds. Addikt gaming is also a good resource.
  

 

Fantasy game and GW2 basic guides!

Hi I’m a recent viewer of the podcast. If you had to make a dungeon, fractal, or event what would you make? There would be no limitations on what you make, story and mechanic wise.

• 
  
• C: I would make a fractal where you played as a commando…. in the Year 2000 (AE) ((for reference the pact being asploded happens in year 1328)) I think it would be really great to see what sort of advances happen to the world of Tyria. And since it’s a fractal it’s a complete playground and doesn’t have to be canon or even make sense. Alternatively: I think it would be pretty cool to have the event described in Tough Love Critic’s blog post recently: “Since adventures, leaderboards, and timed activities are going to be a thing going forward in the expansion, why not riff on the Branded Corruption event of Beta Weekend Event 2?
  
  In a PvP-based activity, one team is “corrupted†sylvari, while the other is either uncorrupted or non-sylvari. Cull the infestation with each side having different skills across jungle terrain, sort’ve like Evolve but with even numbers.
  
  To give a nod to the sylvari part of the equation, no player is restricted from being on the corrupted team, but they will get a random “corrupted skin†as opposed to getting to keep their character’s look for the activity.
  
  And since it’s an activity/adventure/pick-your-nomenclature, there is no extreme negative of open world PvP. Players decide to do the activity instead of it being forced upon them.†I LOVE THIS. SOOOOOO MUCH. #PraiseMordy
  
  • 
    
  • Aside: I was SUPER happy to hear Colin call Mordremoth “Mordy†on his interview with Matt Visual during their press day. As that’s been his long time nickname on our show.
    
  
  
  
• A: Wow. This is a super tough question! I need more time!
  

I can’t think of any advice to new people that hasn’t probably already been said, but I can provide a shameless promotion. I have been working on a series where I explain Guild Wars 2 concepts to new and returning players; it is called Guild Wars 2 Basics. I’m about half way done with the initial set of videos of explaining how GW2 works and interacting with the world, for those videos I do talk about very basic information but I will be expanding it to late game content soon.

To find these videos you can look for them on YouTube at “IrishDog Guild Wars 2 basics†or you can head over to my Twitter, @Irish_41, to use the link there to get to my channel.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGXPrV8jJB-nSRvT_tevhxW18pUyy5BuY

 

Celeste’s Tip: SOMETHING AMAZING.

Allona’s Tip: SOMETHING MORE AMAZING THAN CELESTE’S.

 

Tales of Tyria

 

Foostival is on the 21st in London!

http://en.foostival.com/

 

A farewell to Chris Whiteside

There’s been a bit of news today. It was revealed through Twitter that the wonderful Chris Whiteside is leaving ArenaNet. Chris has been a big part of the community and the forums and I doubt there are very few fans of the game who won’t miss him and wish him all the best on this new adventure! Adios amigo!

Request for community events of the week/bi-week. Send us an email!

If you’ve got a burning question for our Ask an Asura segment, please let us know!

 

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Allona: @onebigpear

 

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