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MMO Reporter brings you another new song, this time a parody of Hello by Adele. Ever played a MOBA? Felt

Celeste and Allona recap last year’s correct (or almost nearly correct) predictions! Who was the big winner?! They also give

Celeste and Allona would’t be Cellona without bloopers! They hope you enjoy a digest of some of their ‘best’ moments

Celeste and Allona discuss Guild Chat and the recently announced PvP Season news. And tearfully announce their retirement from Guild Wars Reporter. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Ran Fractals with Gord, Sick Kora, and Gallios from Shadow of the Dragon podcast and had a hoot! You can watch us go through the Nightmare Fractal on YouTube! Rhendak. Blah. Continuing to make progress on C&C! Played (for me) a bunch of WvW and finished the Gift of Battle! 3-manned CoF on Sunday when it was the daily Got a snow leopard cub for my home instance! Did it without having the cold resistance potion even. :) Some PvP when it helped for the dailies Celeste Fractals last wednesday and yeah… that’s kinda it. Opened a few BLTC chests, about 5? Nothing good in ‘em Slowly working on PS for my Guardian May have completed a daily or two? I don’t remember. Report from Lion’s Arch We start off with the gem store, just to get things out of the way https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fire-quiver-backpack-and-returning-winter-favorites-available-in-the-gem-store/ “After spending some time eavesdrop—er, researching at the trading post, I’ve determined that the hot new item on everyone’s wish list this year is…theft-proof quivers! You heard it here first. Those jerks who keep sneaking arrows from you in the thick of battle? Yeah, I’ve got their numbers.” – Evon Gnashblade flavor text A: Oh man that’s pretty great! Fire Quiver backpack skin – 400 gems Snowflake Glider – 500 gems Winter Chimes Dye Kit – 1/125, 5/500, 25/2500 Messenger’s Travel Package – Snow Owl Mail Carrier, Taimi’s Dye Kit, Wintersday Earmuffs, Merchant Express, and Heroic Booster. – 445 Gems Guild Chat – A Crack In the Ice https://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/104798449 Anthony Ordon – Mastery, Alina Chadwick – quaggans in the quaggan city, Keavan Freeman – Precocious Aurene Dragon training was important to make sure Aurene wouldn’t want to eat us Incorporates research about Codes of Chivalry and Bushido Code, Child Development, Teaching values to children in a school setting Nonlinear activities instead of having to do all of them was attempted but it just didn’t work coding/programming-wise. AKA Fishing/feeding orphans the whole time or ‘defending the weak’ the whole time wasn’t a possibility even though it was attempted. Bitterfrost has a lot of distinct areas where stories were being told then those stories were woven into a narrative for the zone Torch Mastery – Ancient magic origin, within the lore of kodan they were entrusted to look after a number of spirits and a spirit of fire seemed to be appropriate. Bittercold went through a few different iterations. It was just a chill effect that would apply randomly and then it was ‘storm guys’ that would wander the map. They didn’t want to cover the whole map bc it would’ve been very obstructive. Why does the torch skills only have 5 times before recharging? You can pick it up and dispose of it quickly if you need it for something specific. On the iteration of: Fire tornado was originally a skill that would chase down the ice tornadoes but they became less prevalent and so it was taken out. Skills were generally less powerful Braham hate his youth and naivety have frustrated him to the point of taking immediate actions. He doesn’t want to play the long game anymore. Braham resenting our (the player’s) inability to surrender our quest to defeat the dragons. Understanding that characters in the story aren’t just going to blindly follow your lead is a refreshing method but as the player playing that character we see the damage he’s done and it irks us Seeing that Braham is making his journey from lackey/sidekick to becoming a hero in his own right Fun bugs that are ironed out before release Aurene had her scale altered at one point and she was gigantic and playing hide and seek Ice encased quaggan used to waddle around with the ice chunks around them Player saying dialogue within an event area, that’s new tech because at one point the player would be talking about wolves in a different area of the forest from across the map Bouncing tech – infinite bounces with Koda’s reach Devs react to players’ reactions Players noticing the Koda staff/torch is a Koda head Murdering Kittens – his entire family dies and you don’t even have to feed them Watching player reaction and guild runs about Aurene. There are hidden toys to give to the starving orphans as well and the way that they reacted so happily about it made devs happy. Q&A Current Events team is still ongoing even though Anthony isn’t heading it up New map doesn’t have a map boss because it wasn’t a main focus of the map, they wanted to make it more about exploration. Fun thing from chat: “Aurene is the cat dragon! She does the making biscuits thing with her feet. ~Anatoli” Another Guild Chat this week on the 9th! Wintersday begins on Dec 13th! PvP S5 also begins on the 13th! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/wintersday-2016-is-coming/ Surviving the Mists Ask An Asura Hybrid PvP League Changes https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-for-pvp-league-season-5/ http://dulfy.net/2016/12/06/gw2-pvp-season-5-changes-and-improvements/ Better Matchmaking Simplifying matchmaking, removing the pip restriction for matchmaking so you will have a larger pool of players to play with and queue times will be much shorter. This will especially help high skilled players that had a long queue time before. Trying out solo and duo queue options for Season 5. New skill rating system that places you into traditional style divisions like bronze, silver and gold each with an accompanying badge. Soft reset like every season, which will move everyone’s rating closer to the average. Everyone will need to play 10 placement matches to determine their starting rating for the season. Rating decay introduced, inactive players will experience a drop in rating if they don’t play but they can earn that back by playing. This decay can drop your divisions and cause you to lose your badge just like losing matches can drop your divisions. Better Rewards Previously once you reached a division that matched your skill you stopped earning rewards because pips was a skill system and not a skill & prestige system. Now that we have a brand new skill rating system for prestige we don’t need pips to serve a dual purpose anymore. We did a rebalance pass for all the rewards in the Pips system, there is more gold and we have added avenues to earn ascended gear. As you progress through the pip system we made sure the rewards at the end are much better than the ones in the beginning. Question and tips   Rich on Facebook Asked – At what point in the story will braham be clubbed with a shovel? :-) C: HA! We can only hope we’ll be seeing that in the next patch. I want to see that cinematic again but with Rox hitting him over the head from behind XD Allona’s Tip – Even if you’re not a fan of WvW, there are a couple pretty quick WvW dailies that can be added to your roster. If you’re in a guild with the WvW building upgraded you can complete Big Spender lickety split by spending badges of honour with Davis the Survivor. Keep an eye out for Master of Monuments. If you are lucky enough to gave an alpine border land, hop in and the monuments are the ring of capture points south of the Garrison. It’s often a quick run down to nab one for an easy daily. And finally, Daily Veteran Creature Slayer. Again in the alpine border lands to the far left of the map north of Ascension/Dreadfall Bay the Veteran Wurm is a great option. Celeste’s Tip – Hey did you know there’s a tips page on the wiki?! https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tips It might be the best thing since sliced rainbow cake! A Box of WHAT?! Greetings Fantastic Forecasting Podcasting Fo.. INCOMING DELIVERY FROM WAREHOUSE SUPERVISOR FLINTBLADE Return to sender. ERROR PRIORITY CONSORTIUM MESSAGE ATTACHED, AUTOPLAYING. THOUGH YOU MIGHT BE HUNGRY, SENT YOU A SNACK. HA HA. THE PACKAGE IS A PILE OF CANDY CORN. Just put it with the other piles. *sigh* Moving on, so the game is adding new things to the box of fun? Happily the Consortium has been working on a new and improved box of fun. It’s still in beta, here’s what’s in it so far. A new set of unique dance moves. The Commander Conga Line, the Bagception Boxstep, the Leyline Limbo, and the Salty Slide. Who am I? When you interact with the box mesmer magics temporarily randomly changes your race and sex. Racial armors even change to match your new race. Warning the Consortium is required to notify users the definition of temporarily is between 90 seconds and 19203 years. Feeling legendary. For a few moments your character gains the particle effects and footfalls from a random legendary. This may be a limited time offer due to the tenuous nature of the agreement with Zommoros. Paintball Gun! You gain a Paintball Gun toy, you select one color then you can shoot other players temporarily coating them in the color of your choice. The Consortium is not responsible for damages or cleaning from any act of vandalism from the use of this toy. Well that’s what we have so far. THOSE ARE 4 OF THE 20 ACTIVE PROJECTS IN THE PROJECT. INDEXING THE OTHER PROJECTS. The other ones are more alpha, some very alpha. There is no need for sharing any of the others, especially the ones involving medical treatment. Well Particle Shift signing off. Golum send INCOMING PACKAGE FROM THIRD TIER FILE CLERK SOTARO TALAY Just send the message then we deal with the .. package. SENDING Blaise – A new surprise in the Box o’ Fun? Well obviously the rare Last Laugh, you thought these bosses and encounters were somewhere else in game or not in season well you’re right until one hops out of the box during your statue dance party. Now within Box o’ Funs is a small chance for bosses/encounters to hop out such as: The Mossman’s little brother, a Jade Maw tentacle, a random cat golem, a Lost band of aetherblades, any possible guild bounty, and of course rogue Winter’s Day that scale off of player level not the level of the zone. Ending the show? ~drops mic~ Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.comgwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

[Spoiler free episode] Hunter joins Allona so Celeste can fully enjoy Thanksgiving. They discuss (spoiler free!) the new Living World episode ‘A Crack in the Ice’ and the accompanying patch notes! Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter I’ve been doing T4 fractals on a regular basis with some people from Relics of Orr but haven’t got much to show for it. I have one armour box for a few weeks worth of fractals. I have been farming the heck out of Bloodstone Fen and Ember bay. Mostly I’ve been doing it for the Karma, and I’ve been farming karma because I have been working on the T3 cultural weapon skins for 2 years. Each weapon costs over 60k karma, for a grand total of almost 6 million karma.  With the addition of the new wardrobe unlock drop from black lion chests, I have renewed interest in finishing the sets, so I’ve spent a lot of time in there. As a side benefit I have about 3 stacks of Blood Rubies and Petrified Wood.  Anyway, each daily gives 1500 karma, and Ember Bay has a buff you can buy and upgrade 2 times so that karma drops from creatures. Bitterfrost has this as well but its been out 3 days so I haven’t farmed much. In closing, i finished the t3 cultural weapon sets today. I did a path of TA and CoF each, just for funsies. I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time in WvW working on the Dungeon Reward tracks. All but 1 dungeon are within 10 skins of being completed. I managed to grab the Fixer Upper title recently and am slowly working on the Royal Guard title for a seraph cosplay. Ran through the story for the new Living Story chapter. Zone completed Bitterfrost Frontier, started working on the achievements. Haven’t got the meta achievement yet, but working on it. Did a couple key farm runs over the past few weeks, partially due to the updated black lion chests, I really want one of those wardrobe unlocks, but also partially because the birthday level up scrolls are taking up room in my inventory. Relics of Orr switched from Gilded Hollow to Lost Precipice last week and there has been a flurry of scribing ever since Halloween.  So much of my wealth has gone into chairs, tables, and shelves. Tried out the new fractal with my fractal group, everything went pretty smoothly, got several of the achievements. I’ve been trying to build up some of the HoT currencies before a new expansion were to be released, I feel as though activity would drop in most HoT zones, so I’ve just been going through and doing a few specific event chains, ones that I know well and can do on my own if necessary. Airship parts are plentiful so I haven’t had to do much in VB. Allona Rhendak. Blah. Guested on Shadow of the Dragon podcast! Finished zone completion on HoT maps again for my 2nd gift of Maguuma for Chuka and Chumpawat. I had a bunch of guidies keep me company for that! Panther, Bane and Xero all at various times. AB metas Slowly restocking other things needed for the legendary. Successfully harangued Cal into finishing episode 2 the night before the 3rd episode dropped. JEEZ! A little bit of Fractals for dailies, but not since the patch so I haven’t experienced the new one yet. Played through the new episode the first night. And explored the heck out of the new map. Took my Necro through the first part of the new episode last night to get her access to the new map as well, plus some of the bonus cheevos. I lied and have opened BLCs because I’m weak (and I somehow didn’t realize the one slot would always have something specific in them). Got some pretty nice items actually.   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   The game has updated in spite of all haters https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-21-2016/6406969 Living World Taimi made a major breakthrough in Rata Novus when she discovered that magic can be broken into spectrums, which led her to speculate that the remaining dragons are absorbing each other’s power. She sent the commander to the Fire Islands to collect a recent destroyer sample in hopes of testing her theory. The expedition was a success, but the group was compelled to leave when a vision from Glint’s egg called them back to Tarir…just in time to see Aurene hatch! The celebration was short-lived, however. A mursaat named Lazarus crashed the party, claiming his rebirth had changed him and that he now wanted to side with the new guild and stand against the dragons. The commander declined the alliance, but Marjory was intrigued and left with Lazarus. Now, with Jormag also on the rise, the commander has to brave the bitter cold to see how the new theory of magic absorption affects the merciless ice dragon. Bundle up! New Legendary Shield: Shooshadoo A new legendary weapon is now available. Speak to Grandmaster Craftsman Hobbs in Lion’s Arch to learn how to craft the new shield precursor Friendship, and forge the new legendary shield Shooshadoo. A: I was neutral about this until I watched WPs videos and saw it in action. I…kinda love it! Fractals New Fractal—Nightmare A new fractal is accessible through the Mistlock Observatory. You may now delve into the Nightmare. A new Nightmare fractal achievement category has been added under the Fractals of the Mists achievement panel. New rewards are available from BLING-9009 in the Mistlock Observatory. Enterprising adventurers have attracted the attention of the Harbinger. Aquatic Ruins Instead of depending on scale, the path will be random with an equal chance for the dolphin or dark path. Molten Furnace The fire tornadoes in the boss chamber have had their hit boxes improved. It is now easier to dodge them. Uncategorized The pulsing-orb lightning attacks on the stairs before Old Tom have been reworked. Hit boxes have been reduced. Damage is now a flat -80% of your total health. Damage is not applied to pets. Players who are downed and teleport will now instantly revive. Underground Facility The dredge in the Underground Facility have opened their eyes and can now be blinded. Mai Trin The Champion Inquest Technician has had its health reduced by 60%. Swampland The objective timer for the final 25% will now show at all fractal scale tiers, not just the master tier. Volcanic Lava no longer deals damage to dead players. Achievements A new daily recommended achievement for tier-3 fractals has been added. Completing this achievement awards a Fractal Expert’s Research Chest. Fractal Expert’s Research Chest: contains a Pristine Fractal Relic, 2 +1 Agony Infusions, 2 Resonating Slivers, 3 Fractal Encryptions, and a Fractal Research Page. Daily fractal achievements have been moved to live under the Daily achievements category. Mistlock Singularities Mistlock Singularities now repair all equipped gear when used. Mistlock Singularities now apply Infinite Fractal Potion effects, provided the player has an Infinite Fractal Potion in their inventory. Mistlock Instabilities No Pain, No Gain now applies fury instead of stability. We noticed that the random application of stability in defiance break bars felt like an uncounterable punishment against certain attacks. The removal of stability in favor of fury should retain the threat of the boon’s application without feeling unfair. Social Awkwardness now applies a flat 70% multiplicative incoming healing reduction regardless of stack count, and it now outputs damage to the combat log. Miscellaneous Changes Added an Infinite Mist Omnipotion that can be created by combining Infinite Mist Offensive, Defensive, and Mobility Potions in the Mystic Forge with Gifts of Ascension. Fixed an issue where the Mistlock Observatory jumping puzzle awarded participation for the wrong jumping puzzle. Added a Potion Refunds tab to Dessa’s Alchemist that allows you to gain a fraction of the value in Fractal Relics in exchange for unwanted potions. Removed the ascended aquabreather recipes from Cracked Fractal Encryption. The recipes can be purchased from BUY-4373. Player skills will now reset their cooldowns when a party wipes inside the Fractals of the Mists. The Mai Trin timed mote for the Ad Infinitum legendary backpack has been moved to scale 98. The fractal scale selection UI will now disable action camera while it’s open. World vs. World – AKA All Hunter All the Time General There is now an option under Competitive to turn on WvW simple nameplates. WvW simple nameplates turn enemies’ or all players’ nameplates into circles to help reduce nameplate clutter. Upgraded objectives now reward more war score per tick and when captured. Points per Tick/Capture: Objective Base Points Secured Reinforced Fortified Camp 2 3 4 5 Castle 12 18 24 30 Keep 8 12 16 20 Tower 4 6 8 10 Sentries and shrines now grant 2 war score on capture. The chests at the end of reward tracks now stack. Plush Griffon Tonics have been disabled in WvW. Fixed a bug in which auto turrets and supply depots sometimes took damage. Fixed a bug in which the wrong skill effects for enemies were playing for mortar Fire Incendiary Shells. Fixed a bug in which Presence of the Keep wasn’t applying correctly. Fixed a bug in which players could sometimes earn 40 supply from Presence of the Keep. General Fixed a bug that prevented glider deployment animations from playing in some situations. Repeatable hearts are now properly tracked by map complete. Players will now drop bundles they’re holding if they disconnect from the game.Items The legendary shield Flameseeker Prophecies has received an updated projectile effect. Guilds A guild commendation vendor has been added to all guild halls. Structured Player vs. Player The chests at the end of reward tracks now stack. World Polish Creatures in Bloodstone Fen will no longer be able to throw rocks at flying players 6,000 units away. Their range has been reduced to 2,000 units. A Petrified Wood home instance node is now available for purchase in Ember Bay. BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE New Items and Promotions A new Crystalline Dragon Wings Backpack Glider Combo is available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 700 gems. The following items are 20% off for one week only: the Aviator Quaggan Mail Carrier in the Upgrades category; the Warrior Quaggan Backpack Set, Plush Quaggan Backpack, Fuzzy Quaggan Hat, and the Fuzzy Quaggan Hat with Bow in the Style category; and the Bazaar Quaggan Mini Pack in the Toys category of the Gem Store. The Toxic Dye Kit has returned for a limited time in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems. The Toxic Gloves and Toxic Mantle skins have returned for a limited time in the Style category of the Gem Store for 400 gems each. Improvements The Black Lion Chest has been updated and can be previewed for a full list of its contents. Frozen Exotic Weapon Fragments have been added as the new guaranteed seasonal item. The Braham’s Wolfblood Outfit is available as an uncommon drop for the duration of this seasonal change. The Bitterfrost Vantage Point item has been added as an uncommon drop for the duration of this seasonal change. Bug Fixes Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock will no longer grant the following unlocks. Mini Queen Jennah: Obtained from character’s first birthday chests. Mini Clockheart: Obtained from the Twilight Arbor achievement only. Exalted armor pieces: A crafted armor above the rare limit. Shadow Assassin Short Bow: No longer counted separately from the Merciless Short Bow.   Nightmare Fractal: Behind the Scenes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph_N6ZfSSuE Just some promo for the new fractal, doesn’t really tell you much of any importance. You know when this would have been great? When we couldn’t go into the fractal and see for ourselves.   AMA summary https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5e7o76/a_crack_in_the_ice_developer_ama_summary/ http://dulfy.net/2016/11/21/gw2-a-crack-in-the-ice-developers-reddit-ama/ Economy We’ll have to fix Auric Basin multi-looting in a future release. This one is exploity and is trashing the ecto market. A: Buy dem ectos now We’ll introduce a way to farm leather in a future release. We’re keeping an eye on mystic coins. They’ve experienced the second-most significant run-up in prices, and like hardened leather, they’re not particularly farmable. We’re watching them closely but not taking action at this time A: TAKE ACTION! THIS IS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS! BLC chests – We’ve received a great deal of feedback internally and on our forums that were pointing to it needing to be revitalized. Through those conversations there was a ton of ideas and you’ll be seeing some of them through the seasonal updates of the chest. Fractals Our focus right now is twofold: 1. We’re keeping an eye on the reception of the Nightmare Fractal. What worked, what didn’t work, where it can improve. We want to use this information to shape the decisions we make going forward. 2. Continuing work on new fractals, as well as existing fractal reworks, to bring them to the quality bar we have created with our recent releases. The Raids and Fractals teams are separate entities, but we both deal with instanced encounter design so we are working at lot closer now than, for instance, a year back. Yes you will see more revamps. We wanted to get one in for this release, but unfortunately we had to postpone it to spend more time on Nightmare after a designer left the team. We have recently implemented /gg in our dev builds and do plan to release it eventually, but we need to do more testing. As for a party ready check, my team probably does not have the bandwidth to implement something like that any time soon I am afraid. Complete revamp? Not for all of them. The goal is to just to bring up the overall quality and fun factor for them, which could really mean anything. I don’t think we would ever want to do massive revamps to the old dungeons. With the way they are structured and scripted (old scripts are pretty jank. Tools have since improved), it would be way too much work for too little gain, work better spent on new content. Raids Next raid – We’re in the final phases of testing and balancing the encounters. About half of it is ready to ship right now, but the other half still requires some additional work. If you like getting knocked off platforms then have we got a boss for you! There are only 7 bosses in game to date so we have a long ways to go when it comes to exploring new and different mechanics. With the upcoming release it didn’t make sense to have an event style encounter so we just built 4 large bosses instead. Legendary Armor – I don’t have anything to predict about release date, other than just to say we’re working on it and it’s coming along. Misc Would love to see the ability to follow your teammates with our camera once we are dead A: YESSSSSS! Material storage additions – There is a lot, especially in scribing, that ideally I think we would add but we do still need to be careful about size and organizational constraints so there is room in the future to add new materials as they are released. I’ll update everyone when I have a plan, but please do be patient as this is not my primary work and we have the holidays imminent. It’s very unlikely that we will add combat tonics of races that don’t share animations with the player races, like Skritt or Quaggan. One of the design goals for a new mastery is to create it in such a way that it can be reasonably utilized in other future content drops, particularly within the same system. What you’re seeing with the thermal tubes is an active effort to reward you guys for playing earlier episodes. Koda’s Flame is generalized enough to be used in the future, but it’s hard to know exactly how well it will work with new designs All of the maps we have done and are in progress for LW are brand new. We built these from scratch for the LW content. Each LW team gets a 6 month development cycle, from concepting to release, though the first two episodes ended up getting a little longer since we were still working out kinks in the process, staffing issues, and figuring out how we wanted to structure everything. Thanks for the suggestion on having more hair accessory dye colors available, we’ll have some internal conversations on this. A: EEEEEEEEEE! Mac Client We have new build servers coming online. We are beginning to expand the client to internal teams to increase testing. We will release an alpha version of the client for experimental use (like we did with the 64-bit Windows client) when it’s building and running internally on a consistent basis. It will probably require a bit of Mac smarts to install it so it will be for hardened explorers only.   Tales of Tyria   Allona can’t pass up quaggans or a Simpsons reference http://intervolved-fate.tumblr.com/post/153513507053/who-else-is-working-on-the-new-legendary-shield-i We needed more Norn! http://tricos-here.tumblr.com/post/153470828546/me-50-years-later-so-i-heard-its-nornvember Sketches! http://imgur.com/a/fTDcS   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

Celeste and Allona have the tables turned with Celeste taking the lion’s share of in game time this week! But wait! There was a trailer for the new Living World chapter, A Crack In The Ice! EEEEEEEEEEE! MOAR SHIVERPEAKS! Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona A couple dailies Renovated my bathroom Celeste Worked on the personal story with my Guardian. I went from just before Claw Island to just before Fort Trinity Dailies I know I did other things but I truly don’t remember XD   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   A Crack In The Ice http://massivelyop.com/2016/11/15/guild-wars-2s-next-episode-a-crack-in-the-ice-drops-november-21/ “The next episode of Living World Season 3, “A Crack in the Ice,” is coming next Monday, November 21. The season follows the aftermath of Heart of Thorns – a flood of unbound magic, the rise of two Elder Dragons, and the birth of the dragon Glint’s child, Aurene. In “A Crack in the Ice,” players will follow that story into the Northern Shiverpeaks, territory of the Elder Dragon Jormag.” Moving on Jormag ahead of Primordus. Garm with Rox! C: I’ll be honest I was a bit depressed about Garm and Eir. Hopefully Frostbite will having a nice vacation :) So much Kodan! C: I’m really wondering if we’ll get playable Kodan for the next expansion! Vinetouched Icebrood to remind us that the dragons are absorbing magical powers from Chai-Tan and Mordy. Link to WoodenPotatoes trailer breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut_GDMoDt6U And the reddit comments https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5d6hmt/woodenpotatoes_a_crack_in_the_ice_trailer_analysis/ “Along with “A Crack in the Ice” comes the brand-new Nightmare fractal. This five-person, instanced dungeon takes players on an upward climb through a massive tower, which is heavily guarded by powerful abominations and their toxic experiments.” C: I’m excited to be able to play this content again. I had a lot of fun w/ it ingame! Why Monday? Gaile Gray stopped by the forum to explain, “While we know the whole world doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving it does impact the studio, so Monday seems just the right day to roll this episode.” PSA – If you haven’t logged in with all your accounts, or know of an inactive friend, remember to login to unlock the last episode before the 21st. Heart of Thorns is 50% off until the 22nd Ink’s GW2 Buy link https://t.co/QH0y4AyI4v Black Lion Trading Company Update https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/marjorys-shrouded-outfit-and-mini-bloodstone-rock-have-hit-the-gem-store/ Marjory’s Shrouded Outfit Mini Bloodstone Rock Crystal Arbiter and Bandit Sniper Appearance Packs Return What might have been? https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dcnbr/its_been_four_years_since_lost_shores_here_are/ https://twitter.com/Peter_Fries/status/799020929032417281 Happy birthday Lost Shores! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/november-2012/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7oUDydLjKM Ask An Asura burning question Lore behind jormag? Does this mean yeti-plant monsters. Thanks Danton Here follows a lore dump on Jormag From Guild Wars 1, there was a lieutenant encased in a frozen lake that was still emanating magic from Jormag. This magic adversely affected Svanir (Jora’s brother) eventually leading the Sons of Svanir that you see in GW2. Jormag has always been a resident of the far Northern shiverpeaks, far beyond we’ve ever gone as players. Even the Kodan who are the most northern peoples of Tyria claim that Jormag was to the North of them but rampaged south into their territories. SPEAKING OF KODAN, let’s take a little look at what may be the new mastery for the new zone. A snowstorm or everlasting storm conditions. This is something that the Kodan endured at some point in their history, when the storm abated they found icebergs and made them their home. They previously wandered in sea vessels of some kind. Was this from the last time the dragons were awake? Don’t know. Is it an interesting thought? Uh, yeah! As far as yeti-plants, there’s a bit to be said there. We learned in the last episode that magic runs on a spectrum similar to light. We can assume that Jormag and Primordus are becoming more powerful by being able to absorb a separate spectrum thanks to Mordy and Zhaitan not ‘filtering’ it out, for lack of a better analogy. Can we expect planty-death-yetis? Entirely possible. We technically didn’t get Taimi to confirm this at the end of the last episode but our character stats it as fact during the Dragon Vigil (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_Vigil)   Celeste’s Tip: Daily vista viewer – it doesn’t say that the cities count, but they do! Shiverpeak vista viewer can be easily completed in Hoelbrak! Allona’s Tip: Don’t tear out your ONLY bathroom thinking you can get it all done in one day. Just. Don’t. Reminder: Game! A box of what? What new surprise would you add to a box of fun? Let your imaginations run wild with the untamed magics coming from the box on the floor. Example: Invert controls. All directional inputs are reversed for 30 seconds. Tales of Tyria Lovely landscapes http://vasburg.tumblr.com/post/153051049354 Gorgeous Asura drawing! http://gw2doll.tumblr.com/post/153147084016/my-first-krewe-old-sketch-i-forgot-to-upload-of-a Salad meets butterfly http://noituen.deviantart.com/art/Salad-Meets-Butterfly-is-Amazed-638746062 Fan-made Summary Blog in the works, have your say! https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dbmye/how_would_you_prefer_to_read_living_world_story/ I have a gaming blog and I largely write about Guild Wars 2 content. I know it’s easy for new players to have missed out on living world content if they didn’t own the game as it was being released. I’ve seen a lot of questions about what happened in season 2 and comments on how unfair it is to incoming players to charge them for previously accessible and free content. My question is if you had (or have) missed out on living world and wanted a summary, in what style of writing would you prefer to read about it? For example: Creative fan fiction (essentially like a novel) Short, concise summary covering only major plot points Longer, technical summary including a lot of details I’m welcome to other suggestions as well. Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: Lives of Lesbian Elders: Looking Back, Looking Forward (Hayworth Innovations in Feminis03studies) tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor: Civil Report of Major-General John R. Brooke, U. S. Army, Military Governor, Island of Cuba Save Save

Celeste and Allona talk and laugh and go over all the gemstore and Black Lion chest news (RNG 4 evah!). Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Rhendak maintains its unsuccessful status in my life I think I Labbed a bit… not too much. I finally completed Mad King JP! VICTORY! Finished Tier 3 C&C (music factory) by lucking into an organized Dragon Stand and a few other things Some world completion with my Necro — blazeridge and sparkfly, and working on HoT map completions for the Gift of Maguuma with Panther Started the HoT story on an alt with Voluptus Oh, and with current events I decided to side with the Consortium Got my 22,.5K cheevo chest Went into WvW to work on the Gift of Battle reward track and let me tell you it was a gem of a fun time. /sarcasm Helped Celeste with a very special achievement right before the show Celeste Labyrinthed a bit more World Completion! I’ve done about 7 zones in the past two weeks and got world completion on my ele Caught an anomaly event so now I’m seeing sad anomalies but without any context because I’m doing the current events completely out of order XD   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Black Lion Chest Update https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-1-2016 Boosters have been removed Guaranteed seasonal item (for halloween it’s 1 trick or treat bag) Every chest contains a convenience item. Every chest contains an item that will progress your account in some way. There is now a consistent chance at a fourth drop that is uncommon or rare. A random wardrobe unlock item has been added to the chest. This will unlock a weapon, armor piece, backpack, outfit, dye, glider, miniature, or finisher at random, guaranteed to be something you do not yet have. This does not include rewards exotic or better but does include all Black Lion – style items prior to September. Only for the duration of Halloween, the Grasping Phantom Glider is available as an uncommon drop in the Black Lion Chest. BLC Reddit Poll https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5bvrwu/poll_results_black_lion_chests_25g_winner/ Roughly 1900 respondents led to some unsurprising results Do you think that the event item included in black lion chest should be 4th item instead of replacing 3rd? 94% Yes, we should have three chest drops + event bag What would you REMOVE from a Black Lion Chest? 69,7% Tome of Knowledge Do you think that Chest rewards are encouraging to buy keys? 52,4% No. 38,9% Just a little. 8,6% Yes, definitely. They also added Vibrant Dye Set (http://dulfy.net/2016/11/01/gw2-halloween-black-lion-chest-and-vibrant-dyes/) Black Lion Trading Co https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-8-2016 https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/new-hair-colors-and-plush-baby-aurene-backpack-in-the-gem-store/ The new Plush Aurene Backpack Cover and Backpack Straps are available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 400 gems. https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5bwgac/i_found_a_little_secret_on_the_aurene_backpack/ As with the other plushie backpack Aurene has an ArenaNet tag A new Doomsday Preparation Pack containing a Shadow Dye Kit, a Flame Dye Kit, a Raiment of the Lich outfit, a Watchwork Mining Pick, and a shared inventory slot is now available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 2,250 gems. This item is limited to one per account, and the price will dynamically adjust due to purchase limits on available shared inventory slots. Six new hair colors in the Self-Style and Total Makeover Kits http://dulfy.net/2016/11/08/gw2-new-hair-colors-and-plush-aurene-backpack-cover/ Surviving The Mists Simplified Name Tags! https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Identities-of-Linked-Worlds/page/2#post6390660 Since a lot of nameplate suggestions are coming up in this thread I figured I would let everyone know that the simple nameplate feature will be coming. Simple nameplates will be an option to replace either enemy or everyone’s names with a colored icon – red, green, or blue – and the only thing that will show besides the colored icon is the guild tag and commander tag. We want to reduce nameplate clutter in WvW and not add to it, which is why a nameplate suggestion was not one of the 3 proposed solutions. Also it should be noted that titles do not display in WvW (outside of a soon to be fixed bug where they display to squad members.) So displaying your world name through the title system would not be a good solution either. Game: Mad King Says DANCE! DEFAULT OPENING MESSAGE no golem not for every correspondence just the ones sent automatically. Right. Greetings Magnificent Podcasting Fellows, It’s Particle Shift. Sorry I can’t offer a witty opener to this game entry, seems I must caught up in some work so with no further adieu…. Stop recor COMMENCING PLAYBACK Ok Golem this will be great, he should be here any moment. *Loud wooosh* My loving subjects did you miss me? *cheering mixed with an occasional No* Your Mad Kings Says…  DANCE! Dance for me! *clattering and grunts of adventurers dancing* What do you think you’re doing? *It goes silent except sound of one person dancing* YOU Oh dancing, I call the move the Funky Moa. You tuck your arms.. How do you feel about candy corn? It’s nice in moder.. *laughing* So my LOYAL subjects, have I ever told you about my son? *a metal slam and muffled yelling with the mad king laughing the whole time* Ready? If not, that’s unfortunate for you, because the game resumes NOW! PLAYBACK COMPLETE PARTICLE SHIFT, NO NO MY TITLE IS, HAS BEEN LOCATED BY THE CONSORTIUM IN WAREHOUSE 531. TIME TO RETURN WITH GAME DEADLINE TRIGGERED AUTO-RESPONSE. GOOD DAY, SHOP CONSORTIUM. New Game! A box of what? What new surprise would you add to a box of fun? Let your imaginations run wild with the untamed magics coming from the box on the floor. Example: Invert controls. All directional inputs are reversed for 30 seconds. Tales of Tyria Frostgorge Sound https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5c2pfo/powerful_blood_charged_lodestones_and_giant_eyes/ Pact Scout’s Mapping Materials PNG of Your Guild Emblem http://guilds.gw2w2w.com/ Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Celeste: Lives of Lesbian Elders: Looking Back, Looking Forward (Hayworth Innovations in Feminis03studies)   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor: Save Save

Celeste and Allona don’t have as much GW2 news to go over, but they make do with the official forums, the legendary armor first look, and such. Also they digress on occasion, like ya do. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Falling down on Rhendak. He may have broken my spirit. A wee bit of Labyrinthing. Maybe three times? I went into WvW by myself! Casually partnered up with another player and we roamed successfully for a while. It was actually a lot of fun. Didn’t have enough MoCK peeps for raids, so a few of us completed a few of the Ley Line Anomaly events that were outstanding. Guild Missions with Maven! There was only one race so I was happy. Went into the Ascent to Madness mini dungeon once. For the dailies! Worked more along tier three for C&C. In the process finished the tiger mini cheevo with Celeste and Hunter! I copied an ingame halloween costume of Zuzu Cat of Darkness! Got the feline familiar and upgraded candy corn for my home instance Celeste Labyrinthed a bunch Got a mini spirit tiger Worked on world completion in frostgorge, got so close to killing the bloodstone crazed shark but we ran out of time :( Feline Familiar!   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Legendary Armor First Look https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-first-look-at-legendaryarmor/ Heavy, Human Male version “Let’s be clear: what we’re previewing today is just the heavy armor. This has gone through many iterations and redesigns to get to a place where we think it’s ready to share with you. At the moment, the light and medium armor sets are not at that level. We remain hard at work, and release is still some months off.” C: Personally I was expecting a lot more. At least some particle effects a la legendary weapons. A: It was more than I was anticipating actually! I could see particle effects still being possible. Material Collection Page Update https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/What-s-Missing-from-Material-Storage/first No crafted Components No keys No pure salvageables “Please remember that this is “Material Storage”. Not “Stuff I Don’t Want To Spend Bank Slots On Storage”.” “Sigils, Runes, Tomes of Knowledge, Boosters, etc are all not going to be chosen to add.” Blade Shards will definitely be added (C: Man, this really would’ve been nice when I was making my awesome backpack -_-) “I am still very seriously considering things like Chak Eggs, Blood Rubies, and Petrified Wood.” Lv 80 foods and potions – “Definitely not. There are way too many of them and I don’t think Material Storage is an appropriate place to store that stuff.” A lot of the offerings from the community would be better served by being stored in the wallet instead: bl ticket scraps, bauble bubbles, queen’s gauntlet tickets, “I’m happy to poke the Commerce Team about adding some kind of conversion to allow folks to condense multiple 25 use BL salvage kits into one larger kit. I only promise to poke, I can’t promise they will do it” C: I’d like to see recipe books added as well, I’ve got a ton of them and have been filled with indecision for a LONG time. Also, zephyr sanctum model, I mean, I don’t want to junk it but it pretty much is useless. And please make collection expanders go on sale when this updates. Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?   Black Lion Trading Co https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/ghostly-outfit-hovering-mad-mirror-and-bloodstone-glider-in-the-gem-store/ http://dulfy.net/2016/10/25/gw2-gemstore-updatehovering-mirror-ghostly-outfit-bloodstone-glider/ Ghostly outfit – 700 Hovering Mad Mirror – 250 Bloodstone Glider – 500 Executioner’s Outfit – 700 And an intriguing clue: “By the way, the cat I picked up to guard the vaults is coming in handy. The storerooms are spotless, and I haven’t seen any vermin for a week. That said, I’m pretty sure I saw her fly past on a riding broom just now…” Surviving The Mists Want to give Anet Feedback? Here’s some tips! https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback-1 The ArenaNet Team recognizes that, as a forum member and a player, you may want to share your feedback about the game. We welcome your doing so! We cannot reply to every thread on the Guild Wars 2 forums, but rest assured that most are read. When posting feedback, please keep these considerations in mind: Suggest improvements: “What can I suggest that will make this game content better?” How do you think this particular element or aspect of the game could be improved? What changes to other Guild Wars 2 content resulted in improvements that you liked? How have you seen this particular problem solved in other games? Give details and examples: Not a generic “I don’t like this!” but a specific “I think this could be improved by {suggestions}.” And if someone asks a question about the topic, don’t just answer it — explain why you answered the way you did. Present opinions as opinions, not facts: Not “This is the only possible change” or “Your idea will not work” but “This is my idea” or “I believe {alternative suggestion} would be the better because {reasons}.” Speak from experience: If you’re offering an opinion on new or changed game content, get experience with it before commenting. If you offer input on a profession, skill set, or game mode, be sure you have sufficient background in the subject to validate your opinion. Opinions are welcome, but they’re always best when they’re grounded in fact and experience and, again, when they’re presented as a personal opinion and not an immutable fact. Be accurate: If your feedback includes inaccurate information, readers may discard it completely. Do some fact-checking and read through a thread before joining in. This helps you avoid making redundant or inaccurate comments. Use references: If there’s a dev forum post, a blog post, an interview, or an external resource, include links in your post so that readers can see you’ve done your homework and have reviewed previously-released information before offering feedback or making a suggestion. Avoid making it personal: Resist arguing with a person, but by all means debate a point being made. Not, “I think your idea is bad” but “I would prefer to see this handled a different way {details} because {reasons}.” Not “I know the game better than you,” but “In playing GW2 I have found…” Don’t take things personally: By the same token, don’t be offended if someone disagrees with your opinion or suggests alternatives to an idea you’ve put forth. Also, if you make a suggestion and the developers choose to move in a different direction, don’t let that bother you or color your opinion, but review the changes with an open mind and offer your thoughts without rancor. Share positives: Not all feedback involves a suggestion on how things could be changed or improved. Sharing your thoughts on things that you like in the game is helpful, because your satisfaction can help steer us in the right direction with future development. By considering the points above, your feedback will be focused on providing solutions to problems rather than simply focusing on the problems. It will shine a light on content that you enjoy, so that we’re aware of that fact when making future updates and developing upcoming projects. These things are the heart of what we’re looking for from your feedback, and both will result in the best game possible!   Game: I’d wear that! IBE:  Now when you read my name IBeStorage I am very much built like my Norn counterpart Big, Broad Shouldered and VERY well padded in the mid section. Truth be known when I look at all the armor sets in the game only one kept coming back to mind and that would be diving goggles. Now let me explain when you are as well padded as I am you do not get cold. In the dead of winter I am in shorts and a T shirt. There may be a polar bear contest I have won without even shivering. But here is the curse of us winterbred cold-loving folks we hate summer. We keep our coats on all year long like a Kodan.  So when the summer heat starts we feel like we are going to melt. Now here is the beauty of the diving goggles, you put them on and *boom* instant boxers, for us guys at least, and the relief of being out of all those stuffy hot clothes and letting your polar bear body cool off for a few seconds. Now I am not saying using these in public is a good idea. You might get arrested or fired, so you would need to use them wisely and with great caution. But in a moment when you are going to die of heat stroke they might be a lifesaver. SO that is why I am voting for diving goggles the be in the real world. Disclaimer: Diving goggles should never be used around or by co-workers, public locations, any member of the opposite sex. Depending on your body physique in the light of day you might get harpooned by a whaler. Diving goggles are also not responsible for any legal actions filed against you and/or death from falling from great heights while in use. Product of the Consortium of Tyria please use this product with wisdom and caution. Steele: I own 3 trench coats so it’s very easy to emulate wearing medium armors but that will be boring so the spoof version below would be more entertaining. It’s a bit long and not well written (intentionally). A day in life with the heavy bladed armor. 8:00am I am late for work, took forever getting every piece of the armor secured in place. 8:15am I really am going to be very late for work, cops mistook me for a perp since one of my blades accidentally cut the purse of an old lady while queuing up at the bus station and hauled me for questioning downtown. well at least I got free transportation since the station is near where I work. 9:30am What a start of a crappy day, filling up long boring forms, being ridiculed by the cops, already late for work and now it rains. 9:35am Crap! I forgot to shave …. …. …. hey, wait a minute (looking at gauntlets), glad I wore this today. 9:45am Arrived at work, got chewed for being late and looking like a mess, right now I need lots of tissues to stop the bleeding. 12:10pm Lunch time, just my luck, food delivery forgot to provide disposable utensils. (looks around). Guess I have to improvise with my armor again. 1:15pm Late again, It’s really a hassle using the toilet in full armor. 5:45pm *censored profanity* blades got stuck in the chair, had to wait for someone to come in and help disassemble the chair. I am going to miss my favorite tv show. 7:00pm Back again in the police station downtown, this time is for theft and destruction of property. It’s not my fault that stuff gets stuck on the blade tips of my attire. 9:00pm Got released … I’m tired, let’s have dinner before going h-??? My wallet is gone!!! 9:01pm *more profanity* 9:02pm *even more profanity* 9:03pm ??? (touching self) wait! There’s no pockets in this armor. whew, and here I thought I lost it. … ?! I guess this means I’m walking home. 10:20pm Hot and humid night, wished I never wore this getup this morning. At least it kept me safe from being mugged. (as if there is something to steal) 10:25pm I’m tired and beat, the armor is rusting (from the earlier rain) and it’s becoming very hard to move, one more floor and I’m home. 10:27pm Can’t wait to get out of this stinking armor. keys? Keys! I left it inside *censored* Armor, you have to make do as a key. 12:00am Back in downtown, in a jail cell for forced entry. I’m too tired, let’s worry getting out the armor tomorrow. XeroKitsune: The medium weight Privateer Hat is amazing. I would happily wear that, it makes a statement. Probably not a fashionable or rational one though. The Vigil’s light boots just look comfy, while not flashy it looks looks like nice work wear. Arctic Explorer Outfit would be nice, it looks very fluffy and warm enough to wander about in the finest of winter storms. Though if we are talking costumes, for fine events like Halloween. Somehow translating amazing glowing Charr medium Zodiac into a costume form would be amazing! New Game! Mad King Says DANCE! What Halloween themed dance or emote would you like to see in game? Example: Thriller from GW1 as a Necro Tales of Tyria The King and Queen’s Horrorween 2016 https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/community/events/The-King-and-Queens-Horrorween-2016 By the Aurora Glade PvE Special Interests Group Time: 29th October, 6pm CEST Game world: Tyria / Lion’s Arch / Aurora Glade’s Megaserver Come one, come all to Tyria’s oldest player run event! (2016 marks its 11th consecutive year) The Snowman King and her majesty Mad Queen Malafide cordially invite you all to attend the King and Queen’s Horrorween 2016! A grand Halloween caper to fright and delight! Featuring the famous costume contests, live in-game bands and fan favorite activities you have all come to know and love! Asura cosplay! https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/59gky5/asura_guardian_cosplay/ A: The mid-wave action pic kills me! Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor: Save Save

Celeste and Allona get into the Mad King loot-stick spirit, discuss what they’ve been up to in game, and pick over Tuesday’s patch notes! You know, the one with the balance patch absolutely no one’s freaking out over. (POST SHOW UPDATE: Diminishing Returns has been removed from the labyrinth! We repeat, DR has been removed from the labyrinth!) Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Rhendak blah blah equals nothing blah blah The previous week Hunter asked if I wanted to run “some high level fractals” with Relics. I say, “Sure!” Halfway through the first one Spirit says, “Pear, is this your first level 100 fractal?” “THIS IS LEVEL 100?!” I yell. So, yeah, I accidentally did a level 100 fractal. Also the previous week Hunter walked me through the new JP in Ember Bay. We were really only going to do the entrance so I could see where it was, but then we just kept going! I’m on T3 of Chuka and Chumpawat and pretty close to finishing it actually! Fell into a Silverwaste fight one night which was fun Labyrinthed a bunch last night with MoCK! Celeste Spent 2 hours in Chalice of Tears only to find out from Dulfy that I was going completely the wrong way Played Halloween stuff! Mostly the labyrinth (somewhat related: I’d like to make a corn maze in MOCK’s GH https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bundle_of_Corn_Stalks ) ((yeesssssss))   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Patch notes https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-18-2016 Halloween: Shadow of the Mad King Come one, come all! Join us for this year’s Halloween! Play Mad King Says with old Mad King Thorn himself, jump to the top of Mad King’s Clock Tower, battle in the labyrinth, or fight Mad King Thorn in his realm. You will also see doors appearing and Trick-or-Treat Bags dropping all around Tyria. Parts of Lion’s Arch and the Heart of the Mists have been decorated. Trick-or-Treat Bags have been updated with new weapons, miniatures, and more! Trick-or-Treat Bags now have a chance to drop all over Tyria. Candy Corn vendors in Lion’s Arch have been updated with new items. Complete daily and permanent Halloween achievements! Ember Bay Fixed an issue in which Ether Towers were difficult to hit with projectile attacks from certain angles. Fixed an issue in which the Sloth Queen was not gaining her Hunger Crazed damage-reduction effect while chasing Tasty Slublings. A: No more melting sloth? Fractals Thaumanova Boss platforms have been changed to a more visible model. Items Many karma consumable items now have a Consume All option. A: Now I would like a “consume all luck” option that lets you eat each and every luck in your bags! C: DITTO! A: I’m basically a genius. Skritt Worker Contracts now have a 10-second cooldown between uses. Profession Skills General Superior Runes of the Krait, Surging, and Sunless: Fixed a bug that prevented the sixth effect of this rune from working properly with certain elite skills. Seaweed Salad: An unintentional 10 condition-damage bonus has been removed. Combo and enemy rings: Fixed a bug that caused these to occasionally be culled. Boons: The duration-based boons Protection, Quickness, Regeneration, Resistance, Retaliation, and Vigor will now only stack up to 5 times instead of 9. General—PvP Only Downed state: Players will no longer become invulnerable when downed in PvP. A: Downed Moa birds coming to a match near you! (EDIT: Nope. It don’t work.) Elementalist In this iteration, we’re looking at some specific improvements to dagger weapon types in addition to general utility and miscellaneous updates. Abilities with very long cast times have been reduced to no longer provide extended interruption openings. Glyph of Elemental Power: The trigger chance of this ability has been increased from 25% to 100%. Weakness duration has been reduced from 6 seconds to 3 seconds. Internal cooldown can now be shared between elementalists. This ability will no longer apply conditions to non-enemies. Ice Bow: Ice Storm damage has been doubled in PvP only. Engineer We’ve been looking to improve the engineer and to support the areas it’s been lacking in so that the profession can perform more effectively in a DPS role. In order to improve purity of purpose, we have removed the daze functionality from the Gyro utility type for scrapper. Poison Dart Volley: The projectiles fired by this skill will now land more consistently. Gyro utility skills: Gyros will no longer daze anything in the area they affect when they die. Guardian The guardian is faring well in multiple game types with a few exceptions. In the next balance patch, we’ll be normalizing some of the dragonhunter specialization’s defensive capabilities while increasing some effects for baseline guardian abilities. Merciful Intervention: The recharge time of this ability has been reduced from 50 seconds to 40 seconds. Base healing power has been increased by 20%. Healing-power contribution has been increased by 83%. Hunter’s Verdict: This ability can now be used underwater. Mesmer In this update, mesmers will see a reduction in readily available boon output through Signet of Inspiration. While we feel the reduction of boon uptime is necessary, we also want to help mesmer DPS builds remain sustainable. We have implemented several changes to help it maintain its effectiveness. Mind Slash and Mind Gash: The damage of this ability has been increased by 6% in all game types. Blurred Frenzy: The damage of this ability has been increased by 100% in PvE areas only. Phantasmal Disenchanter and Defender: The casting time of this ability has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. Mimic: The recharge time of this ability has been reduced from 90 seconds to 75 seconds. Signet of Inspiration: Added stability, quickness, and resistance to the signet’s passive skill. The active skill of this ability has been reworked and will now apply one of each of your boons to nearby allies for the same duration the passive skill applies them. Signet of Humility: The signet’s casting effect will now occur at the beginning of the ability. This ability can no longer target enemies behind the mesmer who casts it. Necromancer We feel that necromancers have been faring quite well gamewide, providing play and counterplay in many spots over the last few months. In addition to a couple of minor bug fixes, we wanted to improve the viability of necromancer power builds, which have been somewhat lacking in presence. Lich Form—Jagged Horrors: These minions will no longer lose health over time and will instead die 30 seconds after they’re summoned. C: So much salt about this change Ranger After a period of observation, the balance team will be changing the druid specialization’s nature somewhat. In this iteration, we’ll now be making healing types more healing-power based. We’ve reduced base values of many healing abilities while substantially increasing the overall healing-power contribution. This patch will also upgrade the ranger’s short-bow weapon—a change we’ve been looking forward to doing for a long time. Quick Shot: Rangers will now gain swiftness regardless of whether they’ve hit their target. The recharge time of this skill has been reduced to 8 seconds. Crippling Shot: In addition to its existing functionality, this skill will now immobilize your foe for 1.5 seconds if you are behind them. Crossfire: This ability will now bleed foes for 1.5 seconds when they’re struck from the front. Poison Volley: This skill’s cooldown has been reduced to 8 seconds. Its poison effect will last 2 seconds longer when this skill is applied from behind your target. Revenant One of the bigger changes for revenants in this update will be the reduced boon duration for the herald specialization’s Naturalistic Resonance effect. We’re adjusting a few different boon durations as a result of this and will continue to monitor the effects as time progresses. Inspiring Reinforcement: Stability duration has been increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds per pulse. The resource cost has been increased from 30 to 35. Naturalistic Resonance: Boon-duration increase has been reduced from 50% to 33%. Unwavering Avoidance: This trait now triggers when an attack is successfully evaded instead of during dodge rolls. The recharge time has been increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds. Stability duration has been increased from 2.5 seconds to 3 seconds. Thief Changes for the thief profession are not overly extensive, but they are direct. The team is still observing the changes from previous balance updates, and we’re looking to fine-tune the profession so that it maintains a unique role in the game without breaking its core philosophies. Bound: The damage of this ability can now be triggered in midair or underwater. Skelk, Skale, Spider, and Ice Drake Venoms: The recharge time of this ability has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds. Its duration has been reduced from 30 seconds to 24 seconds. Warrior Warrior continues to hold its place among each game type, so the team isn’t looking to make massive adjustments at this time. For this update, we have a few quality-of-life adjustments and bug fixes, as well as a few functionality changes to skills like Whirling Axe and Rupturing Smash, which will help them achieve their purpose. King of Fires: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait’s detonation from functioning with Head Butt. Whirling Axe: While channeling this skill, you move 50% faster. “On My Mark!”: This skill now applies revealed for 4 seconds in addition to vulnerability. Rupturing Smash: This attack now strikes as a single hit within an arc rather than a cascading damage attack. The effect for this skill has been sped up to better match its new functionality. The radius has been increased to 360. The ground decal size has been increased to match the new radius. The daze duration has been increased to 1 second. Structured Player vs. Player A Halloween reward track has been added to the PvP reward tracks. World vs. World Beta Deployable cannons are now in beta! Purchase cannon blueprints from either the siege master or the permanent portable provisioner to test them out. Deployable cannons have less health and deal less damage than their static counterparts but can be placed anywhere that other deployable siege weapons can. We will be looking for feedback about deployable cannons on our forums and will be holding a follow-up poll to determine if they should become a permanent feature in the game. A: Fun fact, I kept reading that as ‘deplorable cannons’ General A Halloween reward track has been added to WvW reward tracks. New Mystic Forge recipes have been added to create 10 or 25 superior siege pieces at a time. The southeast desert dolyak path has been fixed so that it no longer goes through lava. Fixed a bug in which Legendary Defenders were no longer attacking enemy players. BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE New Items and Promotions https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/have-a-happy-halloween-at-the-black-lion-tradingcompany/ Six new, exclusive eye colors have been added to the Total Makeover Kit, which is available in the Services category of the Gem Store for 350 gems. For a limited time, a new set of Gargoyle weapon skins is available from Black Lion Weapons Specialists for 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket. Keys are available in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems each. The Candy Corn Gobbler Pack is available for a limited time in the Toys category of the Gem Store for 300 gems. Each pack comes with a Candy Corn Gobbler and 15 pieces of Candy Corn. The Black Wings Glider Combo is available for a limited time in the Style category of the Gem Store for 700 gems. The Mad King’s Outfit is available for a limited time in the Style category of the Gem Store for 700 gems. The Mad King Dye Kit is available for a limited time in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems. The Ghoul Backpack and Mini Set is available for a limited time in the Style category of the Gem Store for 600 gems. For a limited time, past Halloween miniatures are available when using Black Lion Miniature Claim Tickets. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug involving the reward tables for Personalized Trick-or-Treat Bags.   Sonder the Festival Merchant… …has some items at last year’s prices (though we’re not sure how much longer this will be true) https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/58bidn/increase_in_halloween_reward_costs/ A: The two top comments are amazing! (C: I had not in fact seen the comments section LOL)   Not Everyone is happy with Halloween this year In fact, a lot of people are cheesed over DR but at least a couple of people are upset about the lack of additional content https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/587qar/alright_ill_say_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/586hak/lunatics_inquisition_is_missing_again/ Mad Memoires, Reaper’s Rumble, Lunatic’s Inquisition and any new content is what’s really frustrating about having halloween this year C: I think a lot of people were expecting in the very least an advancement of the story between the mad king and prince thorn A: I wasn’t. There was no progression last year either.   Commanding/Mentoring Guide for the Labyrinth https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/58a25c/mad_kings_labyrinth_commander_and_zerg_guide_2016/ (u/EliteGeek) Bonus: Unmarked Mob Hotspots – Check this map to see some additional spots that are worth hitting on the way to your destination. They are usually very squishy, so only the front few people will usually get tag credit.   Ask An Asura   Good afternoon, My question is a simple yet fairly subjective one. With Halloween on the horizon I was wondering what our hosts consider to be the spookiest places in GW2? Is it the Barradin crypt’s of Ascalon, Human’s Lament perhaps??? What is the place in game that has given you that eerie feeling? Blessings on your travels! Ranglon   C: Barradin’s Crypt is definitely a spooky place as is the Chaos Crystal Cavern with it’s high jumps and ethereal lighting. I think the Karka Hive is also a bit nightmare inducing though that could just be the past trauma peeking through. Going down into the hidden depths for the nightmare maze is also a bit jarring from the bright exterior of the silverwastes A: Oh man, this is a fun question. I had to go in and look at the map to remember. I think Sunken Droknah in Mount Maelstrom, Temple of the Ages in Queensdale, The cemetery in Ebonhawke (sobbing), the hole that used to be where the Crown Pavillion is now, and basically anywhere the old Ascalonian Wall is.   Celeste’s tip: Allona demanded that I explain aftercast. Aftercast is the time the animation takes to complete for the previous skill before you’re able to cast your next skill. There’s a lot more nuance to it but that’s the general concept https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aftercast_delay Allona’s tip: Gots none   Game Reminder I’d wear that! What in game armor/armor part or outfit would you wear in real life? Example: I wouldn’t mind a real life set of Aetherblade Medium Armor.   Tales of Tyria   Mad King Returns http://gears2gnomes.tumblr.com/post/151977157109/nakaween-its-halloween-time-in-tyria-again   Some NSFW fanart (language) that is rather funny https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/58bmei/the_halloween_event_marks_my_first_anniversary_of/   ArenaNet Plays With Players https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/sets/72157675315279266 A: Fave: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/30309459512/in/album-72157675315279266/   WoodenPotatoes and LeonDeka remaster the cinematic from Prophecies! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x02jfRXHv68 A: I swore out loud when the remaster started. Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor: Save Save

Rising Flames Spoilers Within!!! Celeste and Allona had a little bit of news to go over; super exciting bug fixes, y’all (<< Allona pretending/attempting to sound like Celeste)! Actually, the new kitty collection is pretty great. 10/10 would recommend. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Rhendak = nothing. But wait… there’s more! Got my 22K AP chest Decided to hop into GW1 to revisit the Fire Islands since I don’t recall much about them. There was a reason for that… like, ALL of Perdition Rock was under fog of war! I did not sight see at all. A few PvP matches. All ranked. Lost a pip. Won a match and didn’t get a pip. It was BULL ROAR! I’ve been pretty good at doing ALL the PvE dailies. So. Many. Dailies. Guild night for MoCK happened! We did the easy missions and then all the T1 fractal dailies. Helped Veggie with a few episode 3 cheevos last night Celeste Finished Off the Seis Burntheart events, Bloodtide was a pain in the butt but only because I wp’d to Sparkfly in the middle of doing one that appeared to be very far south. Got the Elementalist Kitty cat for my home instance. https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/55uj1j/new_hungry_cat_in_caledon_forest/ Playing the Super fun minigame called let’s repair your .dat every time you start the launcher. Going to try a memtest to see if that’s what’s making it go all hinky. Worked a little on taking my necro through the rest of heart of thorns, though I am thinking of bringing my ranger through instead, it’s a toss up! Got my Engineer to 450 weaponsmith, I was thinking about making The Moot and then I just decided to wait for the next run of weapons.   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Patch notes https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-4-2016 Living World The story step “Ascend the fortress and activate the machine” has been fixed to avoid players hearing each other’s personal story dialogue. The story step “Return to Grumby” has been fixed to remove a benign condition that was placed on players. The story step “Return to Grumby” has been fixed to remove an issue that caused some players under the effect of Mursaat Armor to have a red name over their head. The story step “Complete the combat simulation” has been fixed to avoid a damage range that did not accurately reflect the fire pool size. The story step “Take the portal to activate the machine” has been fixed so that the mesmer portal does not disappear while the step is active. The story step “Start the simulation” has been fixed to add collision to the Simulation Start console. World Polish Auric Basin: Fixed an issue in which updrafts did not work as intended in Southwatch Creep. General Something unusual is happening at Gillscale Pond. SPOILERS AHEAD: http://dulfy.net/2016/10/04/gw2-october-4-current-events-guide/ World vs. World General Team chat now works across maps in WvW. Team chat works across maps for Eternal Battlegrounds and Borderlands. It does not work for Edge of the Mists. Some NPCs were moved away from tactivators so they aren’t so close together. The Endless Mushroom Tonic has been disabled from working in WvW. BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE http://dulfy.net/2016/10/04/gw2-taimis-outfit-and-spectral-glider-in-gemstore/ New Items and Promotions The new Spectral Glider is available in the Upgrades category of the Gem Store for 500 gems. A new Taimi’s Outfit is available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 700 gems. Taimi’s Dye Kit has returned for a limited time, located in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems. The Witch’s Outfit has returned for a limited time, located in the Style category of the Gem Store for 700 gems. The Phantom’s Hood has returned for a limited time with a 20% discount, located in the Style category of the Gem Store for 160 gems. The Riding Broom toy is available in the Toys category of the Gem Store, with a 30% discount, for 175 gems. Bug Fixes The autosummoning of miniatures no longer toggles off when a player is gliding while miniatures are being culled by the game server. Reenabled Skritt Worker Contracts. Fixed an erroneous message that occurred while gliding that claimed miniatures were being hidden due to server population. Fixed a server crash. Late Notes Structured Player vs. Player Conquest Map: Eternal Coliseum Using the special action skill Rally the Crowd will no longer increment the Artifacts of the Coliseum achievement. Items Skritt contract workers will now give up if they fail to loot a stash for 30 seconds, at which time they will refund their contract. Skritt Worker Contracts can no longer be used while gliding or swimming.   Shining Blade Facebook page https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/54yrc4/the_shining_blade_facebook_page_just_got_an_update/ https://www.facebook.com/TheShiningBlade/ New images put up on Sept. 28. Last update was May 21, 2010! SIX AND A HALF YEARS AGO! C: This could be bigtime tinfoil hat time or just someone realizing they could still use the page. We don’t even know who runs it.   Guild Chat http://dulfy.net/2016/09/30/gw2-guild-chatrising-flames-livestream-notes/ Thermal Propulsion was originally suppose to be lava walking but that was not very fun (you don’t get burned walking on lava, you get increased walking speed on lava, you can turn to stone like the dwarf). We found that players loved the movement stuff better. There was suppose to be a lava waterfall players can walk through if they had the Lava Walking mastery. Lava sprouts and horns on skulls are suppose to guide you on where to go next in the jumping puzzle. Originally the Karka area with filled with Smokescales but fighting a bunch of them at the same time seemed challenging so they switched to karkas. Smokescales also were hostile to Destroyers and they would fight each other.   5 On 5 Enjoy the words we heard from MMO Inks!   Tales of Tyria   Kora’s culinary cosplay on the fly! https://twitter.com/guildlores/status/781329609719554049   Pretty! http://madt2.deviantart.com/art/Guild-Wars-2-My-Way-319829276   Aurene cutie video :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M8GDUNvO28   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

(youtube to be added on Monday!~Celeste) Celeste and Allona actually got to play a chunk of Rising Flames together! How crazy is that?! Oh, then they talk about it on the show. And Allona is just a wee bit pleased with the updates to her first legendary, The Minstrel. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Rhendak = nothing Worked towards map completion with my necro. Finished three maps that had a good chunk done on them already Watched ALL of the GW2 world championships on Saturday, If you follow me on twitter the tweet spam would have made that evident Completed Herald! So I have all the elite specs done now. Took part in a Vale Guardian raid with Relics and I got my first VG kill! The loot is impressive, I received ascended boots! MoCK raids also ran VG. We did pretty good, but no kill yet. After completing it with Relics, I have a better sense of how close we actually are to sealing the deal! Go us! Did a TON of paper dolling on multiple characters Ran around in WvW for a bit on Monday. Need to get the Gift of Battle! Bought most of my way through tier two for Chuka… in the home stretch! (for tier two) Did guild missions with Maven again this week. I lost a rush and only didn’t lose the other because of a technicality! Some PvP. All unranked actually to take advantage of the Capricorn map. One group I went in with was very successful and won the matches even though we didn’t get the bell; the other group I played with didn’t have great luck but managed to ring the bell a few times! Overall I really like the map, I just wish it’s run (with time limited cheevos) wasn’t concurrent with the PvP season. Ran an alt through most of the previous episode. Partly for cheevos, partly for helping a guildie, and partly for memory refreshing. I liked how condensed the story was after playing through a second time and not having a ton of fluff and filler to wade through. Speaking of episodes: played through the new one last night, but we’re gonna talk more about that in RfLA! BREAKING NEWS! I went to check out the Fractal Lobby. I love it! I poked around for a while, I like all the different transporationy things: launch pads, teleport pads, infinite falling hole, umm…stairs. ((not sure if we should mention the JP or diving goggles…)) ((I don’t see a problem with mentioning them)) Celeste Finished Advanced Gliding with the help of Hunter and Romo Did Bloodstone Dailies for like 3 days in a row! Guild mission! Finished Rising Flames and explored Ember Bay a lot! I finished the Fire butt shooter really quickly as well and have made a decent but still disappointing chunk of progress on leyline gliding.   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Rising Flames Patch https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-20-2016 http://dulfy.net/2016/09/20/gw2-sept-20-developer-ama-on-reddit/#more-157506 No Story Spoilers this episode, Share overall opinion From The Release Page (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/september-20-2016/) “In the second episode of Living World Season 3, explore the unforgiving Ring of Fire Islands and battle in the Eternal Coliseum, in addition to gameplay and profession updates.” uhhh, I think they forgot something? AMA: “I noticed no class balance was done this time around, will class balance patches be limited strictly to being released after a PvP season ends? The desire, whenever possible, is to release major balance changes during a PvP off season.” AMA: They’re aiming to add a new map for each episode. No guarantees though, obviously. AMA: There will be a LFG category for the new map in an upcoming hotfix New Legendary Mace: Eureka A new legendary weapon is now available. Speak to Grandmaster Craftsman Hobbs in Lion’s Arch to learn how to craft the new mace precursor, Endeavor, and forge the new legendary mace, Eureka. Sorry, a new legendary what’s this about?! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/legendary-weapons/ From Matt Pennebaker & Mike O’Brien “We wanted to find a way to deliver legendaries without hurting content development to do it. And that led us to this new method of obtaining legendary weapons going forward.” “Let’s be straight that the new system lacks a lot of the story and lore of the old legendary journeys. But legendary journeys didn’t need to be that complicated. They were a solution to a simple problem: it was impossible to work toward a precursor. You either had one or you didn’t, and only a lucky roll (or a ton of gold) could get you there.” Three Main Objectives Legendary weapons should never be hampered by design implementation time. The new system should be balanced with existing legendary weapons. It should give a way to make progress toward your precursor every time you play. For those of you who haven’t seen the new system, here’s a brief rundown of how it works: When a new legendary weapon becomes available, speak to Grandmaster Craftsman Hobbs in Lion’s Arch to purchase the first-tier precursor recipe. With the recipe unlocked, play in any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ map to purchase the new, weapon-specific material with that map’s currency (including Unbound Magic). Refine the new material and use it to craft the first-tier precursor. Return to Hobbs and repeat this process for the second- and third-tier precursors. Use the final precursor in the Mystic Forge, with a recipe very similar to the other Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns legendary weapons, to craft your new legendary weapon. AMA: We’ll bundle legendary weapons with episodes whenever they’re ready, until we complete the set. AMA: There are no current plans for retroactive changes to make precursor journey streamlined like Eureka. Speaking of legendary things… AMA: Here’s an update on legendary armor. We’re putting the finishing touches on the heavy set. In a couple weeks when it’s ready we’ll cap a video and post it. But medium and light armor still need quite a bit of polish work. We’ll release all three sets together, and we’ll take time for the details rather than rushing to release them on schedule, so bear with us a while longer. General Fixed several bugs and gameplay issues with the Bashing Bauxite Alchemicals event chain in Malchor’s Leap. C: I’m really glad to see this because it wasn’t working well for a very long time. AMA: Here’s an update on insider trading. Since July we removed some alpha testers and an influencer who abused their early access to content to generate profit for themselves or others. We have a small, dedicated group of core alpha testers who help us test Living World episodes. They’re overwhelmingly trustworthy. But we recognize that it only takes one abusive alpha tester to make it all feel very unfair to those players who aren’t in the alpha test program. We’ve been ramping up other forms of testing, including internal testing and Live beta testing of WvW updates. But we’re not going to undermine our ability to put out great content releases. Content is still our top priority. Today’s release has new uses for 16 existing items. We tracked their prices and were ready to hold the release, even this morning, to change recipes if any of the 16 experienced a price spike prior to launch. None did. AMA: T6 leather.. When can we expect a fix? Historically we’ve done quite a few tweaks to supply when prices get outside the range we intended. But we’re going to hold off on that for a while. There’s actually a ton of supply of leather and flax. But apparently the trading price, while expensive, is not enough to get people to sell what they’re sitting on, or to farm them for profit. People have more wealth than they used to and it’s changing behavior. We want to give the market time to balance itself. Targeted Alerts There is now a new key binding under the Targeting category called “Alert Target.” Using this key binding while a target is selected will play an effect over their head that is visible to party and team members. The default key binding is Shift + T. Effect changes based on the state of the target: Alive Ally Alive Enemy Downed Ally Downed Enemy When players teleport, the default behavior of the camera will now be to quickly move to its new location instead of teleporting instantly with the player. The option “Enable Camera Teleportation,” found in the Options panel, will make the camera act as it did before. The “Mute Player Alerts” option has been added to the Sound Options tab. When this check box is enabled, UI alert sounds such as targeted alerts, map pings, and special action-button notifications will be muted. Fractals Mistlock Instabilities We are making many changes to Mistlock Instabilities in order to make them more interesting and fun to play. New Instabilities: Toxic Trails: Enemies leave a trail of toxic sludge behind them as they move around. Flux Bombs: You are periodically afflicted by the Anomaly’s flux bombs. Adrenaline Rush: Enemies become enraged for a time when low on health. Mists Convergence: The Fractals of the Mists are blurring together… Updated Instabilities: Social Awkwardness: Greatly reduced the radius of this instability but increased the penalty for being hit by it. Added a new visual effect to clearly show how far away players should stay from allies. Removed Instabilities: Lethargic Boon Thieves Sluggish Toughness and Health Scaling Rebalance The purpose of this rebalance is to make condition and power builds viable and also increase the duration of low-tier encounters without making them any more difficult. Overall, low-tier fractals should progress at a slower, more reasonable pace, and high-tier fractals should progress a bit faster for parties of mixed composition. Fixed a bug in which veterans would have too much health for their archetype. Mistlock Observatory The Mistlock Observatory has been updated to allow room for new vendors as well as a Trading Post Representative and a Golem Banker. Additionally, there is now an instability test area where players can get accustomed to how the various instabilities work. Added a Laurel Merchant, Golem Banker, and Trading Post Representative to the merchant area. Added BLING-9009 to the merchant area. This vendor has many rare and exceptional items available…for a price. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/BLING-9009 list of items and costs AMA: Thank you guys so much for the ability to NON-RNG buy Ascended items for those of us that hate crafting. Is there any intent to include HoT stats, or just plan to let us account for the stat swap cost in our total costs? “We want to restrict acquisition of HoT stats to players who own HoT, and as Fractals is a core game mode those stats weren’t included originally.That said, we may be able to do something similar to what WvW did for the Runes of Leadership and let you buy them from BLING while still restricting it to HoT owners in some way.” AMA: The underwater fractal is definitely lacking in some regards, and it isn’t the best experience for sure. We have plans to revisit it in the future. Raids Stronghold of the Faithful Some achievements will now allow for a player to die and still receive the achievement if the event succeeds. Items Legendary Weapons The three legendary bows—the Dreamer, Kudzu, and Chuka and Champawat—have all received custom bow strings. The Minstrel has received an update to its effects. A: UNDERSTATEMENT! Added 14 new fractal guild decorations that can be crafted by scribes out of Fragments of the Solid Ocean. Fragments of the Solid Ocean can be purchased from the Guild Decoration Trader for fractal relics. Guilds New guild-hall upgrades have been added that allow guilds to unlock a leather and cloth synthesizer node in the guild hall. Improvements Revive ob updates that we discussed last week were added into the game “Revive orb use now takes a consistent 10 seconds and returns the player to 50% health. Revive sickness no longer affects health or movement but prevents leaving combat for 60 seconds. The ghostly caretaker has been replaced with a circling orb vortex, and there is now the option Consume a Revive Orb alongside the usual return-to-waypoint UI options that appear when players are defeated. Revive orbs can be found in the Special category of the Gem Store for 250 gems.” Bug Fixes Fixed a bug that caused episodes to display out of order on the Living World Season 2 package in the Gem Store.   Surviving the Mists   Structured Player vs. Player New Conquest Map: Eternal Coliseum The doors to the coliseum are now open! Join your teammates to fight inside the coliseum. Destroy your enemies for the applause of the crowd and the glory of victory. This new map features the traditional Conquest 3-point gameplay along with a secondary mechanic that centers around two periodically charged artifacts within the coliseum, located on the sides of the map. Obtaining the power of the two different artifacts gives your team either an offensive boost or a defensive boost for a short duration. The player that captures the power gains an additional bonus allowing them to either call upon a reaper to finish off players they’ve downed or automatically rally when they’re downed. Eternal Coliseum is currently available to play in Unranked and Custom arenas. The map will be pinned to the Unranked Map Selection screen for the duration of this off-season. Have any thoughts on the map? Perhaps you have some suggestions for improvements, or maybe you’d like to see it added to the Ranked rotation? Head on over to the PvP Forums and let us know what you think! New, Limited-Time PvP Achievements: Eternal Coliseum Complete a new series of limited-time, Eternal Coliseum – specific achievements to celebrate the release of the map. These achievements will only be available from now until the end of the next PvP League season. These achievements can only be completed in rated matches (currently only Unranked Arena—not in Custom arenas). Default Builds Default Builds is a new feature for PvP equipment that allows players to select from a list of preconfigured builds. Selecting a default build from the new drop-down list on the Equipment tab in the PvP Build panel will automatically swap out weapons, upgrades, skills, and traits. Each profession has two default builds. Each build has notes to describe strengths, weaknesses, and play style. Weapons are equipped from the inventory if available, otherwise free weapons will be created. Any locked runes, amulets, or sigils will be offered for purchase upon selection. World vs. World General Reworked the Squad UI for clarity and added new features: Changed the text on several options to better represent what those options are. Commanders can now change their icons while in a squad. Added a squad message option that appears when players join a squad. Adjusted the Gift of Battle reward track to make it more legendary themed. Leather and cloth synthesizer nodes have been added to WvW. Objectives now have mouse-hover UI that shows how much war score an objective is worth, how much righteous indignation is left on the objective, which guild owns the objective, and the player’s distance from an objective. C: This seems like a really great QoL update Retired the Garnet Sanctum achievement, as the Red Alpine Borderlands is no longer in play. AMA: We recently got skirmishes, so I was wondering if you could tell us if skirmishes are working out the way you’d hoped. More specifically : do they change matchups the way you anticipated or is the skirmish system only meant as a stepping stone towards further updates such as population scaling and catchup mechanics? Players seem to enjoy that WvW has been broken down into 2 hour Skirmishes because it is more digestible. However, we are still gathering feedback and gathering data. We also wanted to get skirmishes in the game and beta them to determine if it was a complete solution or if it would instead serve as a stepping stone. There will be several balance changes in the next balance update that were specifically made for WvW. Edge of the Mists Adjusted the points on capture in Edge of the Mists to be the same as the rest of WvW.   Game Entries! Steele: In collaboration with the Krytan Ministry guards and the Black Lion Company, the consortium proudly presents Uzolan’s personal orchestra. A collection of 19 musical instruments that doubles as weapons for the travelling bard as protection against the increasing bandit activity in the maguuma and krytan lands. or [you could use them to] be a spy infiltrating parties and towns as wandering musicians. Here are samples of some of the instruments: the Mace of Bass, Longbow Harp, Harmonica Focus, Hammering Cello, Six stringed axe, and more. You can [also] rename each instrument to your liking to make it more “personal” What’s more, each attack produces a special musical tune that will either produce a morale boosting battle hymn to aid allies or a nerve wracking annoying noise to distract enemies. As an incentive, we are throwing in some Achievement Points for completing the collection, each instrument will give -1 AP, [while] completing the collection gives you +15AP [along with] a case of rotten eggs and tomatoes to give to your audience. There is also a special Achievement that awaits the proud owner of the whole orchestra, 100 AP for those skilled enough to play all 19 instruments in a solo concert! So, what are you waiting for? Get it now for a discounted price of 1 Black Lion Ticket + 500 gems + 10 gold for each instrument. Hurry, while supplies last! *very fine extra magnified miniaturized print: all weapons are of normal quality (white) level 1 weapons, soulbound and not transmutable from the wardrobe. The consortium is not liable for incompetent adventurers who are dissatisfied our product. Try sueing the black lion [trading] company instead! Greetings Potent Podcasting Professionals, It’s Particle Shift again, so music ERROR: FORMATTING REQUEST SWAPPING TRANSLATION TO SPANISH IN 3. No. 2 Golem override settings change. CONFIRMED, WARNING POTENTIALLY INVALID ENTRY. It’s fine, I don’t even know who speaks that. Is it a Jotun tongue? Nevertheless this entry is musical, golem pull up our latest musical experiment. ACCESSING EXPERIMENT 621 What num~ Ok Have you gotten tired of Tequatl’s spoons, scavenged wvw commander spoons or appropriated too much of the tavern’s cutlery? The Spoon-o-matic will combine your excess of spoons into rhythmic musical implements. Simpl~ PLAYBACK CANCELLED Ha ha yea, not the right entry. Golem playback entry 572. ACCESSING EXPERIMENT 572 Greetings, today I will share with you the newest of musical engineering. It’s the Theme-o-matic, by combining a music box with a miniaturized charr roller we have a musical mini that brings a theme song to your adventures. As you walk the Theme-o-matic will chirp out your theme in glorious mechanical music box form. PLAYBACK COMPLETE Ahh, a fine music instrument. ERROR THAT IS A PLAYBACK DEVICE, NOT CLASSIFIED INSTRUMENT. Well it good for those who don’t have musical talents. CAN IT BE INFERRED AUDIO TALENT OF RESEARCHER IS LACKING Shh. I hope the Theme-o-matic fits, though the only song it plays so far is the Hero of Shaemoor’s theme. Anyway, Golem send. [BEEP BOOP] Irish/Blaise: With high demand for new instruments from the Black Lion Trade Company our musical researchers have gone forth and found two new unique instruments! From the Shiverpeaks Mountains, a strange device that can be heard for miles in the snowcapped lands of the norn. [Something] a norn engineer so eloquently named bagpipes. Players will have a passive drone noise going (that can change in pitch) that plays as you the pipes themselves. While other races are put off by this instrument (mainly humans and asura) the norn swear by it…till they hear hours of just bagpipes. It was a good idea before hour 3! Do you enjoy playing the violin, cello, and bass at the same time? Do you love stringed instruments but get bored or are too lazy to move that stick back and forth? Well, some clever sylvari have made a crank multi-stringed instrument called the hurdy gurdy. Similar to other stringed instruments but with the added benefit to move a few strings to produce a lower or higher sound. (ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypuaJLHK_LQ ) Bigtime Topbanana: the next musical instrument that would be useful in GW2 would be the Xylophone. In game, when you drop the Xylophone, it will lay a set of colorful bars out from your character.   It is also combo finisher.  If you then switch to and fire a ranged weapon through the bars, it plays a sweet glissando (the sound when you run your fingers along a piano), and depending on the skill used has a different effect. Skill 1 is a leap finisher, providing 5 seconds of invisibility to your enemy.  Silly to use.  Catches out those people who just hit the 1 key all the time. Skill 2 is a projectile finisher, giving the enemy those weird musical notes that the grawl do, that I have no idea what the effect of is. Skill 3 is a whirl finisher, giving the enemy confusion and makes them walk around in a circle before falling over, stunned. Skill 4 is a blast finisher, providing knock-back for 20 feet Skill 5 is a leap finisher, Turns the target to stone for 30 seconds, allowing you to run up and attack them willy-nilly.   New Game I’d wear that! What in game armor/armor part or outfit would you wear in real life? Example: I wouldn’t mind a real life set of Aetherblade Medium Armor.   Tales of Tyria   BLTC Update https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/mursaat-robes-mursaat-backpack-and-glider-combo-and-new-hair-colors/ 6 New Hair Colors in the Self Style and Total Makeover Kits http://dulfy.net/2016/09/20/gw2-sept-20-new-hair-colors/ Mursaat Robes 700 Gems; Mursaat Backpack and Glider Combo 700 Gems  http://dulfy.net/2016/09/20/gw2-musaat-robes-backpack-and-glider/   Asura Character Looking Strangely Smug http://next–lvl.deviantart.com/art/Zemma-627526587   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

Celeste and Allona won’t fall into a burning ring of fire after all! The new Living World episode will be called Rising Flames and Celeste and Allona completely forgot to mention they really like the name. So now you know. They like the name. Yup. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona All caught up in Seis as of last night. Still no luck with Rhendak. Hunter had switched to his Mesmer for a bit and both of us stopped getting any world boss chests and I didn’t even get any of the common chalices. He switched again to a third character and BAM, world boss chests and a chalice! Not the chalice I needed but whatevs. Quite a few fungeons recently. Always a good time! Ran a couple T3 daily fractals with some peeps from Relics’ guild. We did great on the anomaly but fell on our faces in the Harpy fractal and they gave up at Old Tom. We had cycled through several pugs and things weren’t jelling. MoCK raid went really well considering we tried Vale Guardian again, We got him to below 50%! Which is — I think — our best showing so far! Up a little bit in Emerald in PvP. Haven’t played as much this week unfortunately. Slooooowly making progress on T2 of Chuka and Chumpawat. Celeste Found out I had my 4 year anniversary present on my Mesmer and decided to check my GW1 account. I had a bunch of birthday vouchers waiting for me :) Ran around in Bloodstone Fen and did the whole Jade Armor Unbound Magic chain (and got my bloodstone daily)   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Trailer For Rising Flames AKA Fire Skull Island https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/watch-the-trailer-for-risingflames/ “Join us on the the Guild Wars 2 subreddit on release day, after the episode goes live. Members of the development team will be there to celebrate the release alongside fans.” Great frame-by-frame by Wooden Potatoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKc4Mk41fjc   Revive Orb Changes https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Reviving-the-Revive-Orb/first#post6326383 Revive Sickness has been updated to be more in line with other forms of revival. The orb will return you to 50% of your health pool instead of previous 1 health point.  You no longer are crippled but are locked in combat state for 60 seconds and cannot use another orb while under Revive Sickness. When defeated, if you have an orb in inventory, you will receive a UI option to ‘Consume a Revive Orb’ alongside the usual “Return to Waypoint” option. C: I don’t know how I feel about this because it really does depend on where the button is located. We’ve replaced the Ghostly Caretaker with an orb vortex that circles above your body and fills in for the 10 seconds it takes for the revival to complete. Romo: https://twitter.com/RomoSSJ5/status/776116140200300544 As Anet complains about resources and lack of dev time, Revive Orb change makes it meh. It’s nice # wise, but new animation is unnecessary   Black Lion Trading Company https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/were-on-fire-at-the-black-lion-trading-company/ http://dulfy.net/2016/09/13/gw2-gemstore-update-kurzick-dual-axe-pirate-hooks-and-pegs/ Peg Leg and Pirate Hook – 300 gems each – Shouldn’t this have come out with the Capricorn map? (And then I realized it’s Pirate Week in GW1) A: It was adorable how gleeful Hunter was with these. Like, almost giddy. Kurzick Dual Axe – 600 gems – Reminds Celeste of Kanaxai’s Axe Returning Items – Fused Weapon Skins (4 Tickets each), Phoenix Glider, Molten/Fused Harvesting Tools, Zodiac Armors and various cosmetic pieces   To Change or Not To Change – Bloodstone Visage https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Bloodstone-Visage-1 From Matthew Pennebaker – “When it went out in august there was a bug that allowed it to show through the back of the head. To be clear, this wasn’t the intended look of it. Unfortunately, with attentions being divided between other living world content, we weren’t able to get a fix for it ready until very recently. But, before pushing this change through I wanted to check with you, the community, to gauge your thoughts on the skin. Many of you have earned it, and we want to make sure the general sentiment is that you’d prefer to see it changed before we do anything with it.” ((General consensus is that it needs to be fixed)) A: You could say the ayes have it! ((GROAN))   There was also another chapter of Tyrian Travels with Momo and Vikki https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/tyrian-travels-chapter-one/ https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/tyrian-travels-chapter-two/   Ask an Asura   Tip From Tybolt Greetings Celeste and Allona, This was a little trick I discovered because I have two identical characters (for RP reasons) and wanted to be able to quickly swap out my set of mad scientist harvesting tools between them. What you’ll need for this to work is three shared inventory slots on your account and a full set of permanent harvesting tools. First, place all of the permanent tools in the shared inventory slots. Then, equip cheap harvesting tools on all of your characters. Now all you have to do is open your inventory and double-click on the permanent tools to swap them out with the cheap tools on that character. Then, before you swap characters, open your inventory again and double-click on the cheap tools and the permanent harvesting tools will swap right back into the shared inventory slots. This method is a lot faster than opening up the Hero panel to move the tools to your inventory and then moving them into the shared inventory slots. I can’t remember if someone’s mentioned this already, but here it is anyway. Have fun on your endeavors!! C: It’s like one of those DUH moments where I wish I had thought to do it myself but it never occurred to me.   Running GW2 on a Potato? https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/52ku7e/psa_if_you_have_problem_with_low_fps_because_of/ I just found a perfect solution for this problem, quoting /u/moriz0: it forces the game to use forward rendering, instead of deferred rendering (which is the default for GW2). here’s a good description of the differences. for GW2, -forwardrenderer allows you to run the game on mostly unsupported hardware/software configurations, such as really old video cards, running on WINE in Linux and/or MacOS, etc. however, this comes at the cost of screwing up lighting and shadows ingame, degrading visual quality. You just need to add -forwardrenderer to your GW2 shortcut (right mouse button on game shortcut -> properties -> shortcut -> target). It looks like this “C:Guild Wars 2Gw2-64.exe” -forwardrenderer Game looks (at least for me) similar to the game without this command, but with everything on low it’s not something strange i guess, i don’t have any problems with lightning. I have shadows off, so can’t tell much about it. I also have now average of 45 FPS [From a previously stated 15FPS], which is really great, and game is fun to play again. Added Later: by /u/xAtri: Forcing the game to run in 32 bit i.e. “-32” and full screen both improve performance.   Celeste’s Tip: https://gw2efficiency.com/account/achievements to look for hidden current achievements you may have missed you can pop in your API key and GW2 Efficiency will automatically retrieve all achievements and provide a method of acquisition. Allona’s Tip: the HoT storyline isn’t very long, so if you progress your character to the 6th step, you get a black lion key. and the best way to finish the hive and auric weapons collections is by finishing the story up to buried insight on all your characters, and you should check the wiki to see which weapons you should get on which professions   Surviving the Mists Game Reminder: Name that Tune. What new music toys would you like to see next? Example A theremin (It’s a real instrument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin). A toy when placed on the ground will create a buff on the user causing the pitch to change with their distance from the placed toy.   Tales of Tyria   Asura Portrait http://goblinight.deviantart.com/art/Portrait-asura-guild-wars-2-626382127   Necro Battle! http://lorebreaker.tumblr.com/post/150405570358/oldroots-necro-battle-potatoponchos   Orrian Language Translator http://orrian.thatshaman.com/   ROO Players, Assemble! http://relicsoforr.com/blog/pen-and-paper/430193/introducing-relics-rolls   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

Celeste once again joins Allona to celebrate the GW2 Living World season 3 news from Pax West released by a variety of outlets this week, including MMO Reporter network! Audio Version What We Did This Week   Allona Finished the first two (three?) zones for Seis. Still need to do the most recent zone…Bloodtide? PvPed bunch! A wee bit into emerald now. Got my insta-80 mesmer to chronomancer. Panther helped a whole bunch because he’s taken so many characters through the HPs. MoCK raid was again successful with the escort path! Yeah, it’s the easiest path, but WE DID IT MORE THAN ONCE! Fungeons a few nights with Guildies and that was fun as always Worked toward more of tier 2 for Chuka and Chumpawat. Sooo far to go. Grumblegrumbletiertwo Finished Bo so I now have an ascended staff for my Raid Daredevil! I can kill things even MOAR quickly. Part of the above was to finish one of the HoT maps and Verdant Brink was NEARLY done, so it was the successful candidate. And Celeste joined for a bit! And THEN I needed to get the random drop from Dragon Stand Noxious Pods to finish off Bo and ended up in a successful Dragon Stand with the guaranteed drop! YAY! Oh and dailies… even some Bloodstone Fen ones. Celeste Started to finish up and replay parts of Season 2 so I could get ascended jewelry BUT THEN I SAW A CAT SOOOOOO… Spent some time in Dry Top because I needed Geodes and caught up with a bloodcrazed creature BUT THEN I REMEMBERED… Did a few errands for Seis (frostgorge and snowden) because it helped me do some map completion with my ele BUT THEN I LOOKED AT MY ELE… Played paper dolls and gave my ele a fashion makeover.   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Black Lion Trading Company https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/its-back-to-school-week-at-the-black-lion-trading-company/ Dragon Kama Dagger skin – 600 gems Wide Rim Glasses – 150 gems – embrace your inner virtual geek Some items are on a limited sale including How to Dance Vol 1, Mad Scientist’s outfit and gathering tools, and Home Portal Stones Full list of Summer Items on the seasonal chopping block: http://dulfy.net/2016/09/06/gw2-gemstore-updatedragon-kama-returning-items/   Unnamed Episode 2 to be released on September 20 (It better be Burning Ring of Fire) http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/11142/Guild-Wars-2-Episode-2-Drops-September-20th-Takes-Us-Back-to-the-Ring-of-Fire.html http://mmoreporter.com/2016/09/06/pax-west-2016-guild-wars-2-living-world-season-3-episode-2-preview/ New Map: The Ember Bay in the Ring of Fire Islands New Exploration Mechanic: Thermal Propulsion – “costs 3 Mastery XP and allows you to basically be shot around from point to point across Ember Bay. Think of it like Nuhoch Wallows, but more explosive.” Ancient Magic’s 2nd Tier Jason – Masteries will be more geared towards casual players and will be obtained from completing story steps in a more natural progression A jumping puzzle is central to the map and was credited to the dreaded Josh Foreman, of Super Adventure Box and Clock Tower infamy and is reported to be “at the heart of the Mursaat fortress” Aesthetic – “Like any volcanic fantasy place, there are rivers of lava pouring into steamy wakes of ocean water, large craggy rock formations, but also some of the most breathtaking sunrises and sunsets I’ve seen in GW2 because of the smoke and stark contrast between fire and water.  The map’s not the same as Prophecies of course. Mordremoth, Zhaitan, and hundreds of years have passed and changed the area.” From Jason’s Description – Less vertical than Verdant Brink there’s a centralized mountain with more flat island As far as the story the only real teaser that we have is that Taimi has gone to investigate the stirrings of Primordus and we are off to make sure she doesn’t get all splodey with her insides. Hearts return! Repeatable, daily Renown Hearts make a return in Ember Bay. They offer specific rewards though we don’t know what Preview of (we assume) separate events at Hearts Fire Sloth needed for a Circus – You have to feed her to make sure she doesn’t eat her young “Another one at the Mursaat Temple Ruins pays homage to the Mursaat, but it’s a memory of what was there before” Smooshatron – Help the robot fight a giant fire worm to collect data for an Asura scientist There will also be a non-gemstore weapon set! Achievement hunters will be able to get a new Helm and Shoulder skin from the new chapter as well. New Boss – Molten Dominator – “If you beat him, you’ll unlock special updrafts that can get you to special areas otherwise closed off.” Skritt Presence – Skritt Pirates Basically it’s a camp defense area but you have to calm the Pirate Queen Skritt by throwing “Skritt Juice” at her (which is meant to be equated to rum). Guys, I think our love of Fruit Juice just put into the game :P Maybe the Skritt building a boat in the Silverwastes are related to these piratical skritt New consumables: Skritt Contract – “allows you to summon a skritt to dig through piles of junk to find treasure” Leyline Gliding is highly recommended, Jason hinted that there may be a leyline that circles the entire island map (Discussion: Did you expect it to be launched so soon after Episode 1 given the delay implied by MO?) New PvP map – The Eternal Coliseum Observers that cheer and offer assistance From Reddit – Joshua Davis said that it will begin as an Unranked map and will transition dependant upon its reception 3 capping points on the map Items can also be capped (this reminds me of factions and the urn and spear) Sword of Reaping and Shield of Life “These two items either finish downed players for you or give a bunch of health and shielding as well as one revive should you fall while under its spell.”   Surviving the Mists   Git yer skirmish on! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-vs-world-skirmishes-arrive-on-september-9/ “We’re happy to announce that Phase 1 of Skirmishes will be activated on September 9!“ Now if you’re like Celeste and wondering what the heck that means, let’s read on! Skirmishes are 2 hour duration fights You’re still matched up for a full week but these change the way everything is scored up with the War Score “When each 2-hour skirmish ends, War Score is reset, but actual map state and objective status remains unchanged.” They’re adding a mechanic called Victory Points which are awarded based on how well your world did during the skirmish and will help to even out the overall scores so that worlds that would typically lose have a way to redeem their score enough to not be completely slaughtered. 3 points to 1st, 2 to 2nd, and 1 to 3rd place worlds Victory Points also takes away the sting of having everything turned over on all maps just because your server doesn’t have 24 hour player coverage. For more explanation about how this scoring works Stroubled and P4ncake explain: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/51gwri/world_vs_world_skirmishes_arrive_sept_9th/d7bzywf Say each each server gets 1, 2 or 3 points depending on their placement in their skirmish (higher placement = more points). There are 12 skirmishes in a day (24hrs). Server A (which has 99% coverage midnight to noon) places 1st in 6 skirmishes and 3rd in the other 6, so they have 6×3 + 6×1 = 24 points. Server B (1% midnight to noon, 51% noon to midnight) places 2nd in 6 skirmishes and 1st in the other 6, so they have 6×2 + 6×3 = 30 points Server C (49% noon to midnight) places 3rd in 6 skirmishes and 2nd in the other 6, so they have 6×1 + 6×2 = 18 points “Skirmishes will be activated for both EU and NA when the EU reset happens on Friday, September 9, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7). We cannot turn on Skirmishes separately for EU and NA, so this will result in the last few hours of the NA matchup using the new scoring system.“ “If everything goes smoothly once skirmishes are activated, the next update will give upgraded objectives more War Score based on their upgrade level (secured, reinforced, or fortified)”   World Tournament Grand Finals https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-guild-wars-2-world-champions-will-be-crowned-on-september-17/ 200,000USD cash monies (AKA 20,258,500 Kenyan Shillings, which I gotta say is a much more impressive number) “participate in tons of giveaways powered by our partners, featuring Sennheiser Game Zero Headsets, Nvidia GTX 9–series graphics cards, and Corsair peripherals. The winning team will also receive PCs from Alienware, keyboards and mice from Corsair, and headsets from Sennheiser.” Preview of the New PvP map as well Watch it on the livestream or watch it live in Burbank, California for 10$/person admittance and guaranteed real life swag of (at least) a World Tournament shirt Saturday, September 17 at 10am Pacific   Previous Game Entries Halls of what? If you could design a guild hall where would it be and what is its theme? Example: Rata Novus Lab 46, Newly unearthed lab deep below Tangled Depths. Large Asuran equipment, Coolant “Lake” below, and all the NPCs Rata Novus golums. Particle Shift Greetings Awesome Audio Auteurs, So Heart of Maguuma getting crowded with the pact and freed Sylvari wandering around? Seeking new hall for your guild? The Consortium has you covered. With the political upheaval in Kryta some former nobles estates have been reclaimed by the crown. As payment for services and events they were granted to the Consortium. And Krytan Estates are now available to adventures. Some assembly may be required to fit guild needs such as converting banquet halls into bars, stables into crafting workshops, gardens into training arenas, well you get the idea. Krytan Estates a bit too upper crust for you? The jungle just way too hot? Well the Consortium has a cool solution for you, we have recovered a derelict Sanctuary. The while the Kodan may consider it bad luck, this floating fortress will suit any guild’s needs with a little TLC. (This guild hall is sold as is and the Consortium is not responsible for frostbite or structural damage caused by heating items to make the Sanctuary habitable) Well if those fine locations don’t fit your particular needs we have a third option for you, in the upper branches a abandoned Tengu village is ready for your people. We call this hall the Nest and it is well furnished with updrafts and plenty of fine platforms. The buildings could use some work and some debris needs clearing(since a Pact airship kinda crashed through the village), but it’s airy feel will lift the spirits of your companions. All of these got your Asuran guild members feeling a bit agoraphobic? Well in cooperation with the moletariate, a former dwarven ruin(considered cleansed by the dredge) is available. With a bit of effort(and an amazing amount of materials), you can restore this classic to it’s former glory. Right well that about covers it, that’s all we have available. La~ ERROR: OMITTED CONSORTIUM OPTIONS Ha ha, Shhh those were the halls I get commission from so that’s all we are offering. CONSORTIUM ADVERTISING OVERRIDE PROTOCOL: TEMPORAL DETESTABLISED HOUSING AVAILABLE, FRACTAL HALL NOW AVAILABLE. WORKING WITH AN ACCLAIMED ASURAN RESEARCHER *cough*Hack*cough* AN AMALGAMATED SPACE HAS BEEN GENERATED TO SERVICE ALL YOUR GUILD HALL NEEDS. Now that’s over lets IN A JOINT VENTURE WITH THE ASURAN GENIUS MOTO You have got to be kidding THE SUPER GUILD HALL HAS BEEN CREATED. SERVING YOUR GUILD IN PIXELATED GLORY. Are you done? ADVERTISEMENT COMPLETE Right, well contact your local consortium representative for more information on moving into a new home for your guild. Let them know Particle Shift sent you. Golem send.   Steele Is your guild hall devoid of people, boring or dead? Does your guild hall have anything else for you to do except farming, upgrading, arena and crafting stuff? Look no further, The Guild Initiative has the perfect guild hall for you, We present to you, The Hall of Heroes! The hall of heroes is the perfect guild hall for the bored and the unexcited adventurers. The hall is a unique structure that you can experience different locales as every room is a PVP map with lots of random people fighting in it. This hall boasts 24 hours of non stop activities (defending) as you are besieged by 51 server worlds aiming to conquer your halls. Still unimpressed? Would satisfying your WvW and PvP dailies all in one place and there is no queues involved. We’ll even throw you PvP and GvG rooms from 300 years ago (GW1) as a signing bonus. Everyday is a challenge, everyday is excitement, everyday there is something new (since you don’t know who will conquer your hall next). For honor and glory, The Hall of Heroes.   Jawa! I would make a guild hall look like the Hall of Heroes from GW1… and side room be The Vault… All the members would have golden angelwing statues made of them. And it would be cool place to place to play live pvp chess on it’s marble floors. Slide down it’s golden waterways (like those water parks that have a river and you just relax and float by). Not super cushy, but plenty majestic.. more of a trophy room than a hangout place.   New Game Name that Tune. What new music toys would you like to see next? Example A theremin (It’s a real instrument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin). A toy when placed on the ground will create a buff on the user causing the pitch to change with their distance from the placed toy.   Tales of Tyria   Reminder! https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/51klkn/reminder_the_capricorn_limitedtime_achievements/ A: KERMIT FLAIL! I HAD NO IDEA!   Citri is a Witch! http://citriplays.tumblr.com/post/150049948288/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-spoilers-leaked   BWAHAHA https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/51lekr/out_of_the_shadows_spoiler_radioed_activity_comic/ A: I laughed more than I should have. The only thing that would improve this would be googly eyes!   SHINY! http://losbocetillosdesandra.tumblr.com/post/150042147088/yay-so-today-my-friend-and-i-have-been-painting   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

Chris and Jason take you through the Arenanet PAX West 2016 presentation on Living World Season 3 Episode 2. There weren’t any assets, videos or screenshots to share, so enjoy the audio of the discussion. Our sponsors:

Hunter and Allona talk about this week’s patch and Allona tries to get Hunter to sing Copacabana. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter I did a few rounds of T4 fractals with Relics of Orr and broke the curse collecting 2 coat chests. Also progressed the backpack so all I need are 2 fractals with 80% less healing. I also completed the fractal weapon skin collection to get a mastery point, and a free golden weapon chest. But the golden weapon chest is random and I got a golden skin I already had, the trident. Ick. Did a round of the old current event achievements where the priory, consortium, and inquest battle it out for ley line anomalies with allona and panther. Got some done. Only a couple away from completing those for good. Still need 3 more of the giant anomaly chase events. I made Eternity. Did various dungeons HOTW, TA, CoF, AC. Lots of Bloodstone fen farming, managed to get one elonian leather off one of the magic warped packets you can buy. Not sure it was worth it. Completed the blood crazed current events for the skin, not sure I’ll ever use the skin but it looks good. Did a raid or two. Spent a lot of time in WvW, completed tangled depths reward track, now on the Heart of Maguuma track. I went around feeding filthy cats. Went to Frostgorge Sound to start work on the new current events. It’s a pleasant little scavenger hunt, but I didn’t progress very far because either it’s bugged or the timer is week long. Allona Did a round of the old current event achievements where the priory, consortium, and inquest battle it out for ley line anomalies with hunter and panther. Got some done. Only a couple away from completing those for good. Still need 7 more of the giant anomaly chase events. Sorta Bloodstone Fenned out. Still a great map but I feel the need to go to other maps Played a fair bit of Ranked PvP. Had a run of losses and then a really great run of winning. Doubled up one of teh nights with the PvP guild mission because we had enough peeps! Tried some WvW one night. Found it quite frustrating because I was in by myself. I tried to join the main squad and got kicked before I could meet up with them. It was disheartening, I can only imagine if that was someone’s first introduction to WvW, how that would make them feel. Week before last had a successful MoCK raid! And then last week had an unsuccessful MoCK raid! Cat thing is part way done. I got a dead bird. A few fungeons Officially started Chuka and Chumpawat! Done the first tier and it was AMAZING! On the much less amazing second tier now. Went into silverwastes to get some more bandit crests and landed in a breach so we did that through completion and I kicked BUM and the pacman again. Also one of the bloodcrazed creatures spawned right on top of one of the post-vinewrath champs… that was fun   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Update notes be banging https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-23-2016 New Activity: Basket Brawl Citizens of Tyria! The Captain’s Council is happy to announce Tyria’s newest and greatest sport, basket brawl! The council has sponsored a public court for all to use for the next two weeks. Speak to Morris Podaulff, our first appointed commissioner of basket brawl, in the Grand Piazza to try it today! World Polish Cursed Shore Fixed a bug that caused the corrupted statues of the gods to fire at the wrong times and display the wrong effects. Straits of Devastation Fixed a bug that caused the content guide to direct players to an unexplored map sector when all map sectors were already explored. Fixed a bug that caused the corrupted statues of the gods to fire at the wrong times and display the wrong effects. Tangled Depths Moved the locations where some chak sappers appear to keep them out of the walls in the chak tunnels. General Flame Legion Effigy: Fixed a bug that cause this creature’s portrait to cover its target information. Dragon’s Stand: Fixed a bug that caused the zone name to be displayed twice on the map. Fixed a bug that prevented hungry cats from meowing at players. Tremors are coming from the north. Raids Stronghold of the Faithful Keep Construct Added a ring effect to the death explosion of projections to help clarify their radii. Fixate applied by projections now has a longer duration and will resolve itself better to prevent target swapping. Stealth and similar effects, as well as being downed, will continue to remove Fixate. Fixate applied by projections now lasts 5 minutes, up from 90 seconds. Xera Removed erroneous collision on the center tower that caused players to get stuck inside if they missed the ley line. Players will have their gliders disengaged if they somehow manage to jettison their way into the stratosphere. Structured Player vs. Player General Updated the Wall of Champions. Updated the Revenge of the Capricorn map layout. In the red and blue bases, removed the house in the center to increase visibility while in spawn. In the red and blue bases, adjusted the respawn radius and location to be consistent on both sides. Added a wall to block visibility in the blue base’s side exit, making it consistent with the red base’s side exit. On the path from the blue base to the bazaar, removed the beached ship and replaced it with a ramp. On the path from the red base to center of the map, removed the wall drop-off and replaced it with a ramp. At the center point, made the jump to get up to the ledge more consistent for both sides. Players can leave matches during the 15-second team party phase if they do not opt in to joining a party. World vs. World General There are now mixed borderlands! The red borderlands are now always the Desert borderlands, and the green and blue borderlands are now always the Alpine borderlands. Added green and orange commander tags. Fixed a bug in which guild golem blueprints would not refund players the blueprint correctly. Shortened the leash range on WvW keep lords. Desert Added a new hay bale to the southeast side of the Desert borderlands. The following changes have been made to the Desert borderlands since it was last in the game. These changes have appeared in previous release notes. Camps: Reduced the number of base guards from 4 to 3. Camps: Base guards are now a combination of both scouts and guards. Camps: Guards have been moved inside the capture circle. Southeast Camp: Fixed a bug in which the guards weren’t sharing hate properly. North Camp: The capture point’s size has been increased, and it is now rectangular. Fixed a bug with the teleporter on the dunes above the Fire Keep. Fixed a bug with automatic blessing at the east Earth Shrine. Fixed a bug with a jump pad on the north side of the Air Keep. Fixed a bug with a floating mortar in the Air Keep. Changed the jump platforms at the Air Keep so that they launch players similarly to how jump mushrooms work in the jungle maps. Removed some of the jump platforms since the new jump platforms launch players farther. BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE New Items and Promotions For a limited time only, the Peacock Scepter is available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 600 gems. A new Mini Garm is available in the Toys category of the Gem Store for 350 gems. A new Bloodstone weapon set is available from Black Lion Weapons Specialists for the limited-time price of 1 complete Black Lion Claim Ticket from a Black Lion Chest. Keys are available in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems each.   Roooollllback! https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/We-are-temporarily-shutting-down-servers/first#post6300032 https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/We-will-have-to-roll-back/first#post6300368 https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Rollback-details Forum post #1 – There’s a bug in today’s release that can cause soulbound items in an inventory bag other than your first bag to become soulbound to a different character on your account. We can fix the bug with no damage done, except we can’t straightforwardly fix it if you’ve moved one of those incorrectly soulbound items into bank storage. We’ll have to work on a solution for characters in that state. To prevent additional players from getting into this state, we’re going to shut down the game servers until we can fix this bug. We apologize for this inconvenience. ~ Mo Forum post #2 – This is an update to the situation where soulbound items have been incorrectly soulbound to the wrong characters. After further investigation we’ve determined that there is damage to almost all character records that were played this morning, not just to those who transferred soulbound items to or from a bank. To repair the damage, we will have to roll back the state of the game and characters to prior to this morning’s release. No one wants to lose a play session’s progress. We apologize for this. I’m sure you’ll also have questions about exactly what a rollback means to you. The general answer is that everything about the game state, including things like trading post transactions, will be restored to how it was prior to this morning’s release. The only unusual case will be that if you purchased the game or purchased gems this morning, you’ll still get your purchase. The process of rolling back and then validating everything to bring the game backup will take hours. We’ll keep you updated. There will be a period of time when these forums will be unavailable, but we’ll post updates through other channels. ~ Mo Forum post #3 – As we previously posted, today’s release unfortunately contained a bug that damaged character records, and in response we’ve taken down the game servers and are in the process of rolling back the state of the game to where it was before the release. We shut down the game servers at approximately 11:30 am PDT (18:30 GMT), and we’re rolling back the game state to 9:10 am PDT (16:10 GMT), so there’s a 2h 20m window where all changes to the game are being rolled back. Here are the details for what will happen to various changes made during that window. If you created a new account during that time period, you’ll have to create it again. If you changed an account, for example changing your password or applying two-factor authentication, you’ll have to redo that change. If the customer support team changed your account for you, for example restoring it to you, they’ll redo that change over the next 24 hours. If you purchased the game on an existing account, we’ll restore your purchase. If you purchased the game on a newly created account, you’ll need to recreate your account. We’ll contact you so we can restore your purchase after you have recreated your account. If you purchased gems, we’ll restore the gems. If you purchased an item using gems, that purchase will be rolled back, and you’ll have your gems back. You can purchase again. If you purchased a sale item that’s no longer on sale, you can purchase again, then contact customer support for a refund of the difference between the current price and the sale price. All in-game transactions are being rolled back, including transactions through the currency exchange, trading post, guild bank, and in-game mail. The trading post will come back online after the rest of the game does, and with buy and sell offers back where they were prior to this morning’s release. Character progress made during the affected time period is being rolled back. If you had an extreme situation, for example you got a precursor from the mystic forge and then had that rolled back, contact our customer support team and we’ll try to help you. Thank you for bearing with us through this process. We’ll be back online soon. ~Mo   Anniversary Sale https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/its-the-anniversary-sale-in-the-gem-store/ There is an ongoing daily sale going on commemorating the launch of Guild Wars 2, unfortunately these sales leave after a day. H: Keep your eyes peeled. Personally I’ve been waiting for the Sentinel outfit to go on sale. Maybe a bank slot, maybe a character slot.   Hungee KittyCats https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cat#Hungry_cats There are a series of 11 new NPC cats found around Tyria Feeding hungry cats unlocks certain cats in the account’s home instances: Feeding poultry and poultry dishes to the cats in Lion’s Arch or the Shire of Beetletun will make a Dead Bird appear on the home instance. After five days, a gray cat will also appear at the entrance every time it’s entered. Feeding ice cream desserts to the cats in Dry Top and The Silverwastes will add black cats that appear in home instances playing with a snowball. Feeding steak dishes in to the cats by the crafting stations in Lion’s Arch, Divinity’s Reach and Ebonhawke will make orange tabby cats appear near the locations where harvesting nodes appear in the home instance once unlocked. Feeding kittens in The Grove will make them appear alternatively following the day and night cycle. The black one appears during the day, and the white one appears during the night. The corresponding kitten will appear at the door and walk to a fixed position until the day/night cycle switches. At dawn and dusk the other kitten will arrive, they will meet each other, tag with a high five, and the previous kitten will leave. Cats of the same color will play with each other, but ignore cats of different colors.   Ask an Asura   Gratz and a question Allona and Celeste and Hunter. Congratulations on the milestone. Allona and Celeste – The time and effort you have put into this shows your love of the game and of community, and I’m sure the reason you have so many regular listeners is due to the unbounded joy and giddiness that you have over even the little things, like mesmer skills, and black lion trinkets. Hunter – I think it’s awesome how you have dovetailed into the show. You are like the straight man to Allona funnies. Trawling through the many double acts in comedy, I think the couple that I’d compare you to the most are Troy and Abed from Community. It’s supposed to be a compliment ;-> Anyhows… a question…  GW2 is the only MMO that I play.  I went through WoW, Skyrim, SWOTR, but GW2 has held a place that no others do, for 3 years. But do you have any idea where GW2 stands in MMO dedicated player base? Is it on par with FFXIV, WoW, ESO, Runescape or Wildstar? When we had guild exoduses last year, I was wondering where they went? Lots of love, Bigtime Topbanana H: Nothing is on par with WoW. Even as that game ages it still dwarfs the size of other mmo populations, with most estimates saying the game has between 4 and 6 million. Meanwhile most other popular MMOs seem to have populations between 4 and 6 hundred thousand.  Guild Wars 2 seems to be in that zone along with, Final Fantasy 14, Eve Online,  maybe Elder Scrolls Online, and maybe Star Wars: The Old Republic. There are a couple websites that measure popularity indirectly, http://mmo.blakey.co/ measures subreddit subscribers https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=%2Fm%2F02q25c_,%2Fm%2F064ln09,%2Fm%2F0jt2y_q,%2Fm%2F04q3kvg,%2Fm%2F07s8gkl and google trends measures how much each mmo is googled. H: Guild Wars 2 seems to consistently be the 4th most searched MMO term including WoW, while it has the 2nd most subscribers on reddit. A: As far as exoduses, I think those happen whenever there’s a new game out. Totally expected.   Question about level boost Hello Allona and Hunter and whoever else might be with you this week, I absolutely love the show.  Even when I am not playing Guild Wars 2, I still tune in and it’s usually the thing that makes me want to get back into the game again. I have been playing Guild Wars 2 on and off for about a year or so and have just recently got back into the game in a big way playing an Engineer called Doris. I bought HoT during the sale and really want to get involved in the Living World story. But I don’t have any characters that are high enough level yet. Should I use the free level boost to just get someone ready to play through that new stuff? Or should I try and level my character up as fast as possible to get there? I don’t want to miss out any more than I have already, but I also don’t want to blast through all the good stuff and miss out on the story either. Keep up the good work and Big Love to you both. Thanks, Anton, UK P.S. Congrats hitting 200 episodes. Looking forward to the next 200 A: Tough call. I think if it were me, I would use the level boost? And then go through all the other story on a different character at a slower pace.   Tales of Tyria   Heavenly Hedgehog’s cosplay double shot! Bonus instagram page! https://twitter.com/HvnlyHedgehog/status/767876142254600192 https://twitter.com/HvnlyHedgehog/status/767830242413031426 https://www.instagram.com/heavenlyhedgehog/   Great pencil work by Rait-StormDragoness http://rait-stormdragoness.deviantart.com/art/Gualach-619304812   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

(YouTube to come) WE DID IT! 200 episodes! Celeste, Allona, Hunter, and Chris celebrate by talking about what they’ve done in game, recount the news, reminisce about our journey to 200, giving away a bunch of prizes to Twitch chat, get spoiled by amazing personal messages, and laughing a ton. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter Did t4 fractals and then a bunch of dungeons with RO people. Still need 3 challenge motes for the legendary backpack. Did a lot of wvw, finished the triumphant reward track and started working on the verdant brink reward track. A little annoyed that the final reward is a glove box which is pretty much the most common armour box you get out of airship cargo. My end goal is to get the one time tracks done to finally unlock the heart of maguuma track which has all the good rewards. Had a lot of fun in EB when we suddenly decided to go for the other two servers keeps. We split up into two teams one fighting inside the keep while the other ambushed people running from the spawn point. Usually do not have the population to pull that off on Northern Shiverpeaks so the combined servers seem to be working really well. Reward tracks are definitely what pulled me back in though. Got the new bloodstone fen backpack after much farming. Nearly have enough for a ring or amulet. Did the blood crazed wyvern in verdant brink after much waiting. Tried to do one of the other ones but it never spawned. Allona Some Rhendak… falling down on this one Bloodstone Fen Dailies Regular type dailies Some PvP, both pre the new season (losses but fun) and one match post the start (win funner) Bought all the skills for the BF aerial attacks MoCK Raid night was fun but, ultimately, unsuccessful Planned this show Celeste Living World S3 story so far – it felt a bit short but that update had SO much more to do. Did a lot of random stuff in Bloodstone Fen, mostly Rift Events and working on map completion. Pro Tip: you basically can’t get it if you don’t have leyline gliding and the unbound magic skills. Chris Bloodstone Fen Story on my Revenant – Gotta get my masteries up! Crafting PvP – Loving Capricorn, when it pops…. Then No Man’s Sky happened   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Patch Notes https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-9-2016 There’s a lot of bugfixes for chaos fractals and some other areas They’ve added an access off the coast after Tequatl’s event chain for Watery Grave, It will remain open for 15 minutes after Teq has been defeated. “Bloodstone slivers have scattered across Tyria.” CURRENT EVENTS PvP League S4 is now open and lasts until October 3rd, matchmaking algorithms have been improved to better match you with people within the same pip range as you. More information: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pvp-league-season-4-begins-on-august-9/ WvW: “Siege Repair Hammers [BETA] are a new consumable that may be purchased from the Tricks and Traps vendor. They allow players to repair all siege weapons as long as they have supply, and the hammers work with the Repair Master ability line.”   Black Lion Trading Co https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/bloodstone-dye-kit-in-the-gem-store/ A new Bloodstone Dye Pack containing six exclusive colors is now available in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems. The Toxic Mantle and Toxic Gloves are available with a 20% discount for a limited time at 320 gems each, found in the Style category of the Gem Store. Crystallized Magic no longer drops from Black Lion Chests. A: BOOOOOOOO The Black Lion Trading Company has hired additional aestheticians for the Havoc’s Heir airship, the Royal Terrace, and all cities. Aestheticians allow players to preview new hairstyles, faces, and other appearance details without needing to own a Total Makeover Kit. In order to confirm any changes, players must have a Total Makeover Kit in their inventory.   Fourth Anniversary Celebration https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fourth-anniversary-celebration/ Check the hashtag #GW2BDay to see other fans share their own celebrations, memories, and well wishes. September 2nd PAX West Community Event – Enter to win tickets on the forum More Information: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/PAX-West-2016-Party [extemporaneous description of what the fan parties are like at pax] August 26 will have a celebratory livestream looking back at the history of the game and community contributions   Some of our Favourite show Titles Allona These Shared Slots Go To 11! Daamaaaassssk! Notorious PIAG Running on Cake Time Et Tu, Tengu?! Hunter SAB Returned! (AKA The ‘Shut Your Pie Hole’ Patch) The Smooth Jazz Flute Stylings of Tyria You Can’t Not Have Had Harpies Super Handsome Special Mystery Guest Do You Wanna Build a Snow Charr? Celeste To Tyria We Go Please Forgive Me Europe English as a primary language Incidental Loregasm Legendary Llama Chris Plague of Tyria Butter Battles Chauncy is the THIRD fanciest party guest Big Talk in Little Patch Steve McBubbles   Tales of Tyria   Traheane Memorial Hello Allona, Hunter & Celeste I’ve been listening to your podcast & it’s awesome! You guys really help me through my data entry job. *^_^* In some of your shows you mentioned that you might want to know about GW2 community events.  & so *IF* you’re interested, I have 1 to share with you guys & as many others who want to join in. A while ago I noticed that a lot of friends on Tumblr were upset that Trahearne didn’t get much recognition for his sacrifice in the story, so some friends and I came up with the idea to give him a fan-made memorial. We know that ArenaNet can’t do everything that they want to do/give; we also understand that the Sylvari race is too young to have any traditions/ceremonies for honoring their dead, but that shouldn’t stop individuals from honoring him in their own ways. This fan-made memorial is for anyone who wants to have some fun with the GW2 community & let their characters say “good bye” & “thank you” in a light role play & march event. We have leaders & helpers in both NA & EU serves. It will take place on Saturday August 20th 2016. 1:45am server time for NA & 10am server time for EU. (We will post in the LFG as well)  please feel free to arrive early. We will meet in the secret garden in the Grove first, where people can share what the character; Trahearne meant to either they themselves, or to their character. Then about 45ish minutes later we’ll head out on the march to Fort Trinity. The rules & some contacts are in this Tumblr post: the-starlit-sylvan: It still feels like yesterday that many of us lost a person who was close to us, and perhaps, our characters as well.  The pain of…http://guardianbeargaming.tumblr.com/post/148636884924/the-starlit-sylvan-it-still-feels-like Feel free to message us for any questions.  :) I hope you guys are having an awesome day! Thank you for your time. ~Guardian Bear.   GWR Thank yous Hosts and Guest Hosts Chris, Celeste, Allona, Hunter, Ultra, Clouded, Ben, Cal, Enzo, Bill, Sallenia, Annexxia Greibach, Spirit, Evee (for the combo shows) People we’ve interviewed Scott McGough, Regina Buenobra, Mike Z, Colin Johanson, Crystal Reid, Jon Peters and Matt Wuerffel. Kit The Traveler, Malibu Barbie AKA Rhonda, Screenager AKA Edward People who wrote reviews, commented, sent in questions, left voicemails and say ‘hi’ in game Guildies. Always thank Guildies Hunter says we should thank our husbands (and Chris should thank his wife) for putting up with our bullroar (hint: Hunter didn’t say ‘bullroar’) Special thank you to Xerokitsune for so many amazing game suggestions An extra special thank you to Artphul for going so above and beyond and creating our show openers and closers. We love them so much! And lastly, thank you to ArenaNet…insert gushing here   Bonus Show Trivia!   Who once toured Celeste and Allona through WvW? Professor Enzo Allona’s husband is famously known as what? Hero of shaemoor. What are the symptoms of Macremeitis? Knots in your stomach What did Celeste tell Europe to do? Suck it Europe! Allona’s First Episode – Episode 60 – If you want to feel better about yourself do a dungeon with me What was the name of Hunter’s blog? Hunter’s Insight Who did Allona and Celeste partner up with for a couple of super-fun episodes? Relics of Orr How many episodes has Chris co-hosted (not including this one)? 85 Hunter’s First Episode – Episode 122 – Feedback Madness Who has become ingame famous even though they have never appeared on the show? Haash Tag   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie Chris: @almazar   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

(YouTube to come) WE DID IT! 200 episodes! Celeste, Allona, Hunter, and Chris celebrate by talking about what they’ve done in game, recount the news, reminisce about our journey to 200, giving away a bunch of prizes to Twitch chat, get spoiled by amazing personal messages, and laughing a ton. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter Did t4 fractals and then a bunch of dungeons with RO people. Still need 3 challenge motes for the legendary backpack. Did a lot of wvw, finished the triumphant reward track and started working on the verdant brink reward track. A little annoyed that the final reward is a glove box which is pretty much the most common armour box you get out of airship cargo. My end goal is to get the one time tracks done to finally unlock the heart of maguuma track which has all the good rewards. Had a lot of fun in EB when we suddenly decided to go for the other two servers keeps. We split up into two teams one fighting inside the keep while the other ambushed people running from the spawn point. Usually do not have the population to pull that off on Northern Shiverpeaks so the combined servers seem to be working really well. Reward tracks are definitely what pulled me back in though. Got the new bloodstone fen backpack after much farming. Nearly have enough for a ring or amulet. Did the blood crazed wyvern in verdant brink after much waiting. Tried to do one of the other ones but it never spawned. Allona Some Rhendak… falling down on this one Bloodstone Fen Dailies Regular type dailies Some PvP, both pre the new season (losses but fun) and one match post the start (win funner) Bought all the skills for the BF aerial attacks MoCK Raid night was fun but, ultimately, unsuccessful Planned this show Celeste Living World S3 story so far – it felt a bit short but that update had SO much more to do. Did a lot of random stuff in Bloodstone Fen, mostly Rift Events and working on map completion. Pro Tip: you basically can’t get it if you don’t have leyline gliding and the unbound magic skills. Chris Bloodstone Fen Story on my Revenant – Gotta get my masteries up! Crafting PvP – Loving Capricorn, when it pops…. Then No Man’s Sky happened   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Patch Notes https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-9-2016 There’s a lot of bugfixes for chaos fractals and some other areas They’ve added an access off the coast after Tequatl’s event chain for Watery Grave, It will remain open for 15 minutes after Teq has been defeated. “Bloodstone slivers have scattered across Tyria.” CURRENT EVENTS PvP League S4 is now open and lasts until October 3rd, matchmaking algorithms have been improved to better match you with people within the same pip range as you. More information: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pvp-league-season-4-begins-on-august-9/ WvW: “Siege Repair Hammers [BETA] are a new consumable that may be purchased from the Tricks and Traps vendor. They allow players to repair all siege weapons as long as they have supply, and the hammers work with the Repair Master ability line.”   Black Lion Trading Co https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/bloodstone-dye-kit-in-the-gem-store/ A new Bloodstone Dye Pack containing six exclusive colors is now available in the Special category of the Gem Store for 125 gems. The Toxic Mantle and Toxic Gloves are available with a 20% discount for a limited time at 320 gems each, found in the Style category of the Gem Store. Crystallized Magic no longer drops from Black Lion Chests. A: BOOOOOOOO The Black Lion Trading Company has hired additional aestheticians for the Havoc’s Heir airship, the Royal Terrace, and all cities. Aestheticians allow players to preview new hairstyles, faces, and other appearance details without needing to own a Total Makeover Kit. In order to confirm any changes, players must have a Total Makeover Kit in their inventory.   Fourth Anniversary Celebration https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fourth-anniversary-celebration/ Check the hashtag #GW2BDay to see other fans share their own celebrations, memories, and well wishes. September 2nd PAX West Community Event – Enter to win tickets on the forum More Information: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/PAX-West-2016-Party [extemporaneous description of what the fan parties are like at pax] August 26 will have a celebratory livestream looking back at the history of the game and community contributions   Some of our Favourite show Titles Allona These Shared Slots Go To 11! Daamaaaassssk! Notorious PIAG Running on Cake Time Et Tu, Tengu?! Hunter SAB Returned! (AKA The ‘Shut Your Pie Hole’ Patch) The Smooth Jazz Flute Stylings of Tyria You Can’t Not Have Had Harpies Super Handsome Special Mystery Guest Do You Wanna Build a Snow Charr? Celeste To Tyria We Go Please Forgive Me Europe English as a primary language Incidental Loregasm Legendary Llama Chris Plague of Tyria Butter Battles Chauncy is the THIRD fanciest party guest Big Talk in Little Patch Steve McBubbles   Tales of Tyria   Traheane Memorial Hello Allona, Hunter & Celeste I’ve been listening to your podcast & it’s awesome! You guys really help me through my data entry job. *^_^* In some of your shows you mentioned that you might want to know about GW2 community events.  & so *IF* you’re interested, I have 1 to share with you guys & as many others who want to join in. A while ago I noticed that a lot of friends on Tumblr were upset that Trahearne didn’t get much recognition for his sacrifice in the story, so some friends and I came up with the idea to give him a fan-made memorial. We know that ArenaNet can’t do everything that they want to do/give; we also understand that the Sylvari race is too young to have any traditions/ceremonies for honoring their dead, but that shouldn’t stop individuals from honoring him in their own ways. This fan-made memorial is for anyone who wants to have some fun with the GW2 community & let their characters say “good bye” & “thank you” in a light role play & march event. We have leaders & helpers in both NA & EU serves. It will take place on Saturday August 20th 2016. 1:45am server time for NA & 10am server time for EU. (We will post in the LFG as well)  please feel free to arrive early. We will meet in the secret garden in the Grove first, where people can share what the character; Trahearne meant to either they themselves, or to their character. Then about 45ish minutes later we’ll head out on the march to Fort Trinity. The rules & some contacts are in this Tumblr post: the-starlit-sylvan: It still feels like yesterday that many of us lost a person who was close to us, and perhaps, our characters as well.  The pain of…http://guardianbeargaming.tumblr.com/post/148636884924/the-starlit-sylvan-it-still-feels-like Feel free to message us for any questions.  :) I hope you guys are having an awesome day! Thank you for your time. ~Guardian Bear.   GWR Thank yous Hosts and Guest Hosts Chris, Celeste, Allona, Hunter, Ultra, Clouded, Ben, Cal, Enzo, Bill, Sallenia, Annexxia Greibach, Spirit, Evee (for the combo shows) People we’ve interviewed Scott McGough, Regina Buenobra, Mike Z, Colin Johanson, Crystal Reid, Jon Peters and Matt Wuerffel. Kit The Traveler, Malibu Barbie AKA Rhonda, Screenager AKA Edward People who wrote reviews, commented, sent in questions, left voicemails and say ‘hi’ in game Guildies. Always thank Guildies Hunter says we should thank our husbands (and Chris should thank his wife) for putting up with our bullroar (hint: Hunter didn’t say ‘bullroar’) Special thank you to Xerokitsune for so many amazing game suggestions An extra special thank you to Artphul for going so above and beyond and creating our show openers and closers. We love them so much! And lastly, thank you to ArenaNet…insert gushing here   Bonus Show Trivia!   Who once toured Celeste and Allona through WvW? Professor Enzo Allona’s husband is famously known as what? Hero of shaemoor. What are the symptoms of Macremeitis? Knots in your stomach What did Celeste tell Europe to do? Suck it Europe! Allona’s First Episode – Episode 60 – If you want to feel better about yourself do a dungeon with me What was the name of Hunter’s blog? Hunter’s Insight Who did Allona and Celeste partner up with for a couple of super-fun episodes? Relics of Orr How many episodes has Chris co-hosted (not including this one)? 85 Hunter’s First Episode – Episode 122 – Feedback Madness Who has become ingame famous even though they have never appeared on the show? Haash Tag   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie Chris: @almazar   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

Hunter and Allona were able get back to their usual mondo convo about what they did the past week. There was a smattering of news and maybe…MAYBE…a surprise. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter Did the Chaos Ilse fractal with allona and other mockeries. Went pretty ok but we were on level 11 or something. Forced people to do some other low level fractals including swamp, urban battleground, and molten furnace. Pretty close to finishing Ad infinitium. Farmed the crap out of Bloodstone Fen and now have all but 2 achievements, which are 2 hidden achievements. I also have all the gliding skills, and should soon have enough rubies for the backpack. Did crucible of eternity and twilight arbor a few times. Hung out gathering with allona through about 3 zones, finally have my material storage back in some amount of shape following the making of dusk. Spirit bought me the ironclad glider and I spent a bunch of time dying it properly for my characters. I purchased the remaining exotic guild weapon skins that I did not have, and most of the metal plates I need for the remaining plated weapons i need to buy. Unlocked guild anthems in relics of orr and mock. Played a lot of WvW and finished my WvW gift of battle reward track, started working on the triumphant armor track. Had a fun time sieging up Ogre watch, a tower in Eternal Battlegrounds, and also placing supply traps out front, so at one point a zerg comes over the hill, trips the supply trap, runs up to pangloss for supply, I slip out and drop another supply trap, they came back and tripped that and didn’t have enough supply to easily take the tower, and I ended up defending the place. Was pretty fun. Allona Still no ring from Rhendak Zone completion with my necro who’s the next closest to being done New fractal with peeps on MoCK’s guild night. It was cool. And Celeste joined us for part of it! Got Long Arm of the Light II done with help from Hunter and Panther. Varre was the last boss and Hunter and I almost gave up on this guy after many deaths. Dude is mean! Hunter talked me through on how to get the wolf ranger pet from PvP. I named all my pets…and had a blast doing it! Tortured Hunter while doing so. AND THEN! I completed druid! Pretty sure all I have only Rev/Herald left. Revenge of the Capricorn came up during one of the time I was in PvP. I really enjoyed the map! Helped a friend who upgraded to HoT during the recent sale get some waypoints, PoIs, vistas, masteries, hero challenges in Verdant Brink done. Found myself in the possession of 25 BL keys. Used 15 of them so far and have some really good RNG! Some BL weapon skins, full tickets, and a home instance node! Guild missions with Maven. I get serious anxiety from the competitive races I apparently also get anxiety from the respawning mines in the Stronghold of the Faithful raid wing. Everyone who made it to MoCK’s raid night was witness to my embarrassment! Aside from that, we had a hard time partly because there was a bug that caused the warg that kills Glenna to teleport around. Stupid mesmer wargs. A ton of Bloodstone Fen…mostly for the dailies. I discovered the joy of the #1 aerial attack. I use it whenever I get a chance! Blue teleporty circles at Hablion? RUN INTO THEM! RAIN DEATH FROM ABOVE! REPEAT! Unbound Guardian? RUN TO NEARBY UPDRAFTS! RAIN DEATH FROM ABOVE! REPEAT! Oh and still no ring from Rhendak   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   New Items In The Gem Store https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/lord-caudecuss-sword-and-pistol-and-nobles-folly-pass/ http://dulfy.net/2016/08/02/gw2-gemstore-updatecaudecuss-weapons-and-noble-follys-pass/ Lord Caudecus’s Sword and Pistol – 600 gems each H: 600 gems seems like a bit much for these skins. I don’t find them particularly interesting. A: I love the sword! I think there might have been an opportunity for them to bundle these items together for 800 gems. The pistol is a much more, shall we say, subtle weapon that 600 for it seems high for sure. Noble’s Folly Pass – 1000 gems H: I’m not really interested in this area as I have the Royal Terrace Pass already. I feel like they would have to design a pretty spectacular area to get my attention and tempt me with one of these. A: I like they are introducing more of these though!   Blood Ruby Acquisition Guide http://guildwarshub.com/blood-ruby-acquisition-guide/ “Blood Rubies are a map currency unique to Bloodstone Fen. These rubies are used to purchase Ascended trinkets and a backpiece that have selectable stats. One of the stat options for these new items is Viper’s, which was previously only obtainable through Raid rewards (except for the Mordrem Loop Ascended amulet obtained through HoT story achievements). This guide will explain all of the different methods of obtaining Blood Rubies.” 3 maps of the varying levels of Bloodstone Fen showing node locations for mining. Review of all the major events and how many blood rubies they give. WvW reward track, map completion, map bonus rewards and story missions. A daily routine suggestion Mining Bloodstone Nodes: ~10 Blood Rubies Doing Meta Events: 10 Blood Rubies Doing Dailies: 4 Blood Rubies Should result in about 25 blood rubies a day. Mining Home Instance Node: 3 Blood Rubies H: Highly recommend not spending 50g on something that nets you only 3 blood rubies a day.   The Guild Wars 2 tumblr http://guildwars2.tumblr.com/ Guild Wars 2 has a tumblr. It is filled with volumes of fan art and we thought you should check it out. H: So many pieces of fanart I had never seen before and not some mess like most tumblrs.   Ask an Asura   From a listener whom Allona chooses to keep anonymous “Just wanted to say hello. I always listen to the podcasts and really enjoy them. Keep up the great work, you make my commute to and from the office so much more enjoyable with your updates. I do have to ask though, does Hunter ever like anything in the game?” A: Hunter… tell us what you like about GW2! H: I’m allowed to criticize and enjoy a game at the same time. :PPPPPP   Who’s daughter? “Because I am a filthy casual, who is the little girl that was pestering Rytlock during Eir’s Memorial? But the bigger question I have though is: she mentioned a magical sword her father has? Do we know this weapon? You are the bestest podcast IBeStorage” A: According to the wiki (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eir’s_Memorial_in_Hoelbrak), she’s Nyla Dagdottir, and it’s her Uncle Beemish who has a magical sword. And.. that’s about all we know.   GAME! Oh NO, magic gone wild! The energy being left untapped by the dragons has begun to twist the wildlife of Tyria! What new playable race arises from the current in game wildlife? Example: Bipedal Devourer, once little more than the pet bugs of char and ogres the infused Devourers walk upright. They now seek to join the fight against the remaining dragons encroaching on their homelands Irish Dog A – Entry 1: In recent months after the fall of Mordremoth (praise Mordy) resources have become scarce. Some would say it’s simple demand for war efforts, other say guild halls are depleting the market, but the truth is far more worrying and strange. With the influx of ley energy the environment is seeing its effects. The resource nodes which heroes depend on have been subjected to so much magic, not only from ley lines but also from Evon’s unlimited gathering tools, and they’ve gained sentience. You may be wondering how we gathered this info. While being watched, the nodes remain still to camouflage with the environment, but when they think they’re not being watched they sprout out many tiny legs and start wandering. Unfortunately their natural instinct when spotted is to sit still. The effect of this new race will have against the elder dragons is unknown, we haven’t been able to communicate with them yet. C – Entry 2: For years we’ve been hunted and slaughtered for nothing more than pure amusement. We’ve never been able to fight against the wolves, ugly two heads, or the dead giants, and especially not the fancy giants. With the death of both the dead and planty serpent titans we have gained awareness — sentience — we can communicate, we can fight. So my fellow ambient creatures, hunt down the running ore and wood, craft some weapons, take up arms, and figure out this magic thing. For we, the rabbits, birds, raccoons, and chickens, shall kill the other evil serpent titans and gain enlightenment. But first we kill the oppressors: the horned cats, the floppy eared imps, leafy people, the mundane people, and the strange smelling giants! A&H – Particle Shift I swear, Councillor Haia is going to pocket all of my discoveries. I’ll be lucky if there is even a mark 2 converter left in the lab. Golem did you move all of the CM1 subjects to lab beta? ERROR LAB BETA NOT FOUND Here! Did you bring them to the Beta lab? ERROR THIS LOCATION IS YOUR BASEMENT. Rename basement to Lab Beta. Status of CM1 Subjects. SUBJECTS B AND V POSITIVE RESULTS AT LAB BETA Golem start recording and include audio ERROR RECORDING IN PROGRESS Oh. OH! *coff* Greetings Fantastic Podcasting People, Particle Shift here again So leyline overflow messing with creatures? I have been feeding a few lab subjects Crystallized Magic to see the effect and here we have la.. by the eternal alchemy. Open the cage of subject B you malfunctioning idiot. I am soo sorry, let’s get you out of there. WARK Don’t you worry sir.. madam? Golem fire up the gate. Right this way please, we would never experiment on Tengu. My Golem mistook you for a Moa. TEST SUBJECT B IS A Shhhh! Right through this gate. WARK Right Ha ha ahh such an accent. And there we go. GOLEM what happened to the MOA?! ERROR TEST SUBJECT B WAS RELEASED THROUGH THE GATE. But then *sigh* Right so let’s get a look at Subject V. Here we have a bunny fed crystallized magic and it’s wait is that a conduit tuning wand in it’s hand? Paw? SUBJECT V HAS REQUESTED PARTS AND TOOLS. Why did you supply… *ZAP* *squeaking* REQUEST ACKNOWLEDGED OPENING CONTAINER *squeaking* TRANSLATING: THANK YOU FOR BEATING THE DRAGON AND FOR THE MAGIC. *squeaking* SENDING IBeStorage I have proof of the new creatures created by the ley line energies and the creature’s name is the Vale Guardian. This is the prime example of what would happen to a nice innocent spark elemental that got too close to ley energy for a long period of time. My other idea for a new creature would be the oozes if something as simple spark elemental can turn into the Guardian the the oozes which are underground allot anyways would definitely run into allot of lay energy. I was first thinking that the Vale Guardian was an unholy union between sparks and oozes with the lay energy. Love listening IBeStorage  Allona A good new sentient race would be Norn…I kid! Clearly my answer is wargs, I mean, since they are already apparently mesmers. Hunter Skale. Currently very primitive, in Guild Wars 1 there were some signs of sentience. “Although apparently primitive creatures, the skale (at least those in Istan) worship a powerful ancient skale by the name of Moa’vu’Kaal. The Istani skales are also known to have a lord, Jurpa” Next Game – Halls of what? If you could design a guild hall where would it be and what is its theme? Example: Rata Novus Lab 46, Newly unearthed lab deep below Tangled Depths. Large Asuran equipment, Coolant “Lake” below, and all the NPCs Rata Novus golums.   Tales of Tyria   Lemongrass Poultry Soup. Get in mah belly! https://pixelatedprovisions.com/2016/08/02/guild-wars-2-lemongrass-poultry-soup/ A: YAY! I always need GW2 culinary cosplay in my life!   @criinamancer drew a chibi drawing of @guildlores character https://twitter.com/GuildLores/status/760214045605572608 https://twitter.com/GuildLores/status/760211315013058561 A: Not gonna lie. Jealous.   Suprise! We’re having a very special episode next week! There will be contests! There will be giveaways! There will be blood! Well, not so much blood.. More like bloodstone. At any rate, we’d love for you to join us for the simultaneous 5th anniversary and 200th episode Starting at 930 Eastern, 630 Pacific!   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie Clouded: @clouded_chimera   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352 Clouded: Clouded.9670   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor:

Hunter and Allona manage to keep “What We Did This Week to under 15 minutes! Oh, and new Season 3 Living Story and accompanying patch dropped! Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter I did one ley line anomoly event, went fine, totally neglected all the current event achievements even though I really shoulda had them done before Tuesday Another failed DragonStand, some poor bugger complained he had seen 3 failed DS maps just that day, all the people doing meta events are caught up in farming the AB multi-maps. Started using my Ley Energy Matter Converter for more than just machetes, the other tabs allow you to buy other stuff and I’ve been working on getting obsidian through that. Went on a bit of a key farming run through Tangled Depths and Verdant Brink a couple times, just using up keys. Did a bit of WvW but haven’t been able to find a commander I want to follow. I much prefer defending anyway but that can be really low key and boring sometimes. I was in my borderlands Sunday night and it got to the point where we had everything and my participation level sunk like a rock because there were so few ways to gain participation. I’m about halfway through my Gift of Battle Reward track, totally kept forgetting to use the Guild Hall’s WvW reward track boost however. Played through the entire episode of Living Story. Explored Bloodstone Fen, finished many of the new achievements, attained the new bloodstone dust/dragonite ore device. Tried to name every single one of my pets on my ranger. Allona Ditto on the failed dragon stand FINALLY got almost all the pets unlocked for Ranger, just need the PvP wolf Had a few more tries for the Rhendak ring. Nada. MoCK raids on Sunday were super frustrating. All because of me. My internet was causing so much lag and grief. There was a fair amount of laughing though. Apparently the voices Cal (who wasn’t playing) and I were using to talk to each other was funny. Haash Tag made me promise to mention it. :) All on my own, without outside encouragement or prompting, I finished the Mistward armour set. I felt very accomplished. Played through the entire episode of Living Story. Explored Bloodstone Fen, finished many of the new achievements, attained the new bloodstone dust/dragonite ore device.   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Patch Notes. For real though. https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-26-2016-1 Way too many to post them all. But look! A link! Right above this line! Reddit AMA Summary https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4urm84/out_of_the_shadows_developer_ama_summary/ Balance Regarding Ele damage nerf and how the rotation feels clunky -the previous 33% reduction caused skills to be too effective when traited, causing issues with both offense and defense game-wide. As such, they’ve been normalized to a more appropriate 20%. We felt that keeping the damage per-cast of the ability as is was more desirable than a reduced damage value and same cooldown. We are not going to go back and completely separate skills between game modes. The splits shown today are a good example of the kinds of changes we’ll be going toward in the future. As for the frequency of balance, we want to give time for things to settle and gather information/feedback as to the current state of things. We’ve done some changes ‘mid-season’ before and will do them again as necessary, but will try to not repeatedly shake things up over a short period of time. Previously Venomous Aura was a grandmaster trait that you had to made some trade off for, since there is no longer a trade off given we made VA baseline, decreasing the range felt necessary and increase skill cap of the thief. Guardians in PvP – I’ve always liked the feel of less mobility but high effectiveness that scales more with more people making them strong group fighters but I think with a lot of the changes the guardian’s ability to sustain compared to other professions has been a major issue causing them to be less effective and something we need to work on but it can come into conflict with speeding the game up so it’s a bit tricky. Epidemic – There’s a bit of inconsistency with the ways that condition copies function and we are looking into how we can normalize it. Once that’s solved, we’ll be able to better evaluate epidemic’s current effect. Raids/Fractals/Legendary Armor Legendary Armor is still in development, and we are working out the final stages. Took us 5 months from start to finish designing the Chaos Fractal We have a new standard of quality with fractals going forward, and we are pouring a ton of effort into them Fractal Tonic will be more accessible in a future release. Snowblind didn’t get easier, just made the fight go more faster. Going forward we will probably create fractals that have an even higher difficulty at the highest scales. Fractal Rewards – Ascended drops need to remain tied to the daily achievements, so those can’t be added to standard Fractal loot. The boss chests already give a significant amount of gold in the form of Fractal Encryptions, so I’m not sure there is much more we can do there. No plans to legendary fractal armor at this time. No plans to change the 150 Legendary Insight requirement for legendary armor. Future Raids will keep drop legendary insights. Remaining collection items for legendary armor should be coming with future raid releases. No date given for next raid release, just anything is possible when asked if we will see new raids before the next expansion. No plans to overhaul stat-swapping menu for legendary armor to be like those in PvP. Systemic limitation caused us to replace the amulet infusion slot with enrichment slot instead. it’s actually takes fewer +1 Agony Infusions to get 150 AR post-patch. To get 150 AR now, you only need to make 12 +8s and 6 +9s. You don’t need +11s or +10s anymore Living World I feel like we’ve gotten into a really good rhythm now. Polish and those little details are a high priority for us, and it’s great to have the time and resources necessary to be able to include the “little things” that make the world feel more alive. The blood ruby equipment allows you to choose the new HoT-exclusive stat combinations like Viper and Minstrel. The bloodstone capacitor resets the stat-selector for the items, allowing you to choose a new stat combination. We’re going to be adding more ascended rewards in future Living World releases- I picked the ones available in this episode to try and address the biggest gaps from HoT. Our goal is to make sure we have a sustainable cadence and don’t have to take down Living World to deliver the next expansion. Next Living World release may not have other content bundled with it. The other teams ship content when they’ve got something great to ship. There are specific times that are good for skill balance updates, where they don’t interfere with PvP seasons and tournaments, and Living World episodes won’t always line up with those times. New map doesn’t have much much merchants as lorewise it isn’t for merchants to receive goods or have stockpiles of stuff. We plan to release living world episodes every 2 to 3 months For why no Trahearne Memorial – Eir’s loss hits much closer to home and at a time like that, it is important that we take the time to draw in those closest to us for support. Sylvari are young and don’t have traditions on how to deal with deaths. And from a development standpoint, two memorials would significantly slow the pacing of the content, and it was no small feat to make the one as it is. RNG Gliding traps – bloodstone was a repository for any magic the ancient races could hide away from the dragons, and has continued to passively absorb magic, so the rapid release of that magic created unpredictable magical storms that can trap players gliding in the area. Dodge them. PvP One of the priorities for the team is to create new maps for sPvP. We can’t say how many we will get out over the next year but we intend to include new maps as part of our teams content creation. Capricon in ranked rotation will depend on community feedback A lot of players are in Ruby. Players mostly fall in a bell curve as we expected, but skewed upwards because of the backwards progression rules. We currently do not intend to prevent players from progressing the backpack after season 4. The addition of off-season ranked will help prevent these one sided matches in unranked in offseason. We are not super happy with deathmatch to get Courtyard into the ranked rotation. It is not something we want to support as a major game type. WvW The WvW team has a different release schedule than the other teams and we will continue to release outside of the quarterly releases. Repair hammers will be coming in the beginning of August. 2 Alpine, 1 Desert and Scoring are tentatively coming the end of August. Cannons will be coming sometime after that (we don’t want Cannons and Scoring going out at the same time). No plans to refund WvW Infusions for laurels since they are still functional. As for lag, it is always something we are trying to improve. There are some changes coming in early August specific to WvW that should help with lag, but we are constantly working on improving lag for WvW. Misc We have talked about a salvaging system for runes and sigils for years, but it’s a rather large project, larger than you might expect, so we haven’t gotten to it. Taimi has already grown in size. QoL changes are usually the work of developers in the downtime between teams/larger projects. Mac Client – Currently we can patch, run around in several maps, we don’t fall through the floor anymore.It is progressing and we will let you guys know when we’re ready to go into beta. Nothing for special forces training area this patch but they have a list of things they like to improve in the future. Can always add more mystic forge recipes. Players have requested more cross-race hairstyles and we wanted to support that request. While looking at some of the more popular hairstyles for cross-race use there were some culturally aesthetic and physiological restraints. Human and Norn share more similarities and were a more natural choice when creating cross-race hairstyles. Bloodstone Ruby are not considered as a material for material storage. Armor sets are by far the most expensive reward we can make. A full set includes heavy, medium, light, times five races, times two sexes, so it’s like developing 30 sets. It takes nine months to develop. (That’s for a normal armor set — legendary is much longer.) It’s not something we can do for Living World episodes. Individual pieces are good rewards for Living World episodes; full sets are more something for expansion packs. Backpacks and gliders are different items and came into the game at different times with different goals, needs, and different technologies available. By the time we were developing gliders, we were able to intentionally create them so that they could be dyed and had missed that opportunity with backpacks.   Ask an Asura   StM Game Reminder Oh NO, magic gone wild! The energy being left untapped by the dragons has begun to twist the wildlife of Tyria! What new playable race arises from the current in game wildlife? Example: Bipedal Devourer, once little more than the pet bugs of char and ogres the infused Devourers walk upright. They now seek to join the fight against the remaining dragons encroaching on their homelands.   Tales of Tyria   Trahearne and the Jungle Dragon by Landylachs http://imgur.com/a/73YSe   Caithe Cosplay http://www.deviantart.com/art/Caithe-Remembrance-469631902   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie Clouded: @clouded_chimera   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352 Clouded: Clouded.9670   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor: Save

Hunter and Allona discuss the actual for realsies trailer for Out of the Shadows along with the regular GW2 news. They aslo chat and argue their way through Ask an Asura with predictions for the July 26 patch and whether Hunter or Allona got the /d tip first. Audio Version What We Did This Week   Hunter Did Tier 4 fractals with Relics of Orr, got my first ascended chest in ages, then I pressured them all into helping me finish my upper bound collection and my twilight collection, so I now have Dusk, and Unbound. Worked on machined weapons and specialization collections that I had been putting off because mystic coins are so expensive. I had been waiting for them to drop but in the past 6 months they’ve only gone up, so I got each specialization collection to about the 13 of 14 mark, and completed wild abandon, the priory backpack, and 4 machined weapons. Guild Missions with Mock was a lot of fun. Did all 3 guild treks which I can’t convince most other guilds to even consider doing. Did Friday night raids with Relics of Orr, didn’t really go well. Most of the people in that particular group aren’t a static group. I just get pulled in to fill in and it’s clear a more committed group of people would do better. There were at least 3 if not more people just filling in, so it was never going to go well. Spirit is working on chuupa and chumbawat and needed help with some low level fractals so we jumped into a level 7 cliffside assuming people would join us, and of course nobody did. So we ended up just doing it alone and at one point I was saying to guild chat “Me and spirit are two-personing this business! And then later “Fine! We don’t need you! Me and spirit are going to make our own guild! And spirit chimes in “with blackjack and hookers!” And we finished cliffside pretty easily but she also needed mai trin. Only the lowest level mai trin is 25 and i said to spirit i says “Surely we need more people to do a level 25 fractal?” and mabel she says “nah I’ve solo’d this before” and sure enough it was pretty much a piece of cake aside from the fact that I got downed 4 times and spirit didn’t get downed once. After all this Spirit says “oh damn I forgot to /threaten the colossus, which instantly reminded me that I’d forgotten to hand in my fractal journal to the dude in the mai trin fractal.  So yeah. Allona T6 Dry Top by accident … it was pretty great. I think the first time I was ever in a T6! As far as Raids go, it turned out I wasn’t able to go to MoCK’s rad this week (surprise family visit FTW!); but — like Hunter — I hopped in on Relic’s Friday night run. Even though we weren’t successful, I had fun and am definitely improving. Guild missions with MoCK on Saturday night! As Hunter mentioned, Treks! All the Treks! A couple fractals and fungeons at various times. A bunch of power shopping…love power shopping. Added Hunter’s Auric Basin run to the mix. Dailies of course. A couple bagageddons…stocking up nicely on leather! Since I left my Engie at the end of the Font of Rahnd, I’ve been going in nearly every day hoping to get the ring for Treasure Hunter.   Livestreaming Wednesday’s at 9:30pm ET/6:30pm PT at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and to the audio version of the podcast on iTunes and Google Play! Feel free to comment, ‘like’, and review Guild Wars Reporter!   Report from Lion’s Arch   Actual Trailer for ‘Out of the Shadows’ https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/watch-the-trailer-for-out-of-the-shadows/ http://dulfy.net/2016/07/19/gw2-living-world-s3-ep1-out-of-the-shadows-trailer/ https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/lwd/New-LS3-Trailer/first#post6249288 Tiny Doom.4380: Anyone want to explain what whoever is talking is saying? The music’s so loud I can’t make out more than the odd word… Donari.5237 Rytlock: “To a great warrior and friend! Goodbye, Eir.” (With shot of Eir’s face) Asura (I think): “There’s a hotbed of activity up north!” (With image of airship en route) Human man: “They will carry me all the way to the throne of Kryta.” (with images of White Mantle in combat) Note that the figure we see leaping and slashing with a sword is Canach, and he seems to be in the same White Mantle area as the figure in Phalanx we see right after the raid keep goes kablooey in the trailer. A: So Eir is, rightfully, being memorialized…but not Trahearne? Is it because he will return!? (fun fact: when Cal was editing the last episode, he wondered aloud to me that — since Trahearne exploded when Morderemoth died and the energy went from that point to the egg — maybe whatever ends up hatching will be sound like Trahearne. I love the trollish possibilities of this!) H: The voice at the end claiming “They will carry me all the way to the throne of Kryta” seems obviously to be Caudecus. A few glimpses of fractals and some cinematics. Too much rehash of mordremoth dying and stuff from raids. Taimi points out that we’re going north. We’ll talk more about that later.   It’s Techno Week at the Black Lion Trading Company https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/its-techno-week-at-the-black-lion-trading-company/ http://dulfy.net/2016/07/19/gw2-gemstore-update-glide-r-tron-glider/ Glide-r-Tron Glider 500 gems A: It has dyeable exhaust!!!! This week: Replica Job-o-Tron Backpack; Reap-r-Tron, Log-r-Tron, Mine-r-Tron, Thresher-Sickle 5000, and Watchwork Mining Pick gathering tools; Mini Scruffy; and Golem Banker; all at 20% off.   New Voice Actor for Male Charr Player Character https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-new-voice-of-the-male-charr-player-character/ Those of you who explore Tyria as a male charr may notice a change in your character. Our previous voice actor, Ron Yuan, was unable to continue in the role for scheduling reasons, so we have a new voice actor in our Commander ranks, and we’re excited to welcome him to the Guild Wars 2 family. Lex Lang has joined the Guild Wars 2 cast as the new voice of our male charr player character. Lex is a talented and experienced voice-over artist who has also worked on Titanfall, Crash Bandicoot, the Mass Effect series, and many other games and TV shows. He’s very excited to be taking on such an important role for Guild Wars 2. Please join us in welcoming him to our team! A: I don’t have any male Charr characters, so I don’t have a firm opinion on this. I heard some complaints online, but I also heard a lot of players saying they really like the new voice. H: There is a video of the new voice from the 3rd raid wing commenting that “the new charr voice is ass” and to be honest I think the person who posted that is a bit of a jerk.   Notes from Rata Novus Parts 2 & 3 https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/notes-from-rata-novus-parttwo/ https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/notes-from-rata-novus-partthree/ A: Three has more nuggets than two but they’re both great reads. I thought the use of the word ‘vanquish’ twice was interesting given the upcoming patch and GW1’s ‘hard mode’ history with the term. Could it be a hint? H: Cute and everything but I don’t care that much.   Guild Wars 2 and HoT are on sale for 50% off https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-is-50-off/ http://buy.guildwars2.com/store/gw2/en_US/html/pbPage.heartofthorns?_ga=1.148753022.874538593.1469053354&cid=99:5::::Global:40::: $24.99 USD for the Standard version and $37.49 USD for the Deluxe If you’ve bought the game in the 30 days before the sale you can get a refund of the difference by contacting support. You must have purchased the game from Arenanet directly in order to qualify for this refund.   Ask an Asura   Greetings and Salutations to the wonderful Guild Wars Reporter krewe. The evidence of your intelligence (by non Asuran standards) shines through by the fact you have an Asuran on retainer. Considering your earning potential must be … limited, you should be acknowledged for spending what surely must be every gold coin you acquire, to provide competent knowledge to your listeners. Now that I am positive you feel better about yourselves, on to my query. To the knowledge of your Asuran academic, is there an archive that lists which Order an individual is linked to? So that when selecting a member for a grouping, one knows what one is getting; Order wise? If not, perhaps the laborers at this ANet division might see fit to distribute such knowledge in a visual database (*ooc like part of the information under your character at the character selection screen, hello!). For the love of the Eternal Alchemy, I would hate to ponder how much time is lost trying to find a krewe … I mean teammate, for you non Asurans, that might have access to the Durmand Priory so that you can access … something they might have. Again I am relieved to know that this query is in … Asuran hands. Sincerely, Overdrive Krewe Leader, Stella H: I think it should be a part of the character selection screen, along with various other choices you make when in character creation, but as it stands, if anyone is unaware, you have to log in, go to your Hero menu, select your story journal from the tabs on the left, and look at the 3rd of 4th story step where it says which order you picked.  Personally I keep a small file saved online with each character and what I selected so that I don’t have to log in to every single character to see what I picked. A: I would love to have character screen indication to what order a particular character has joined! The only thing is they added in the crafting professions and it might start to look crowded. Even so, it would be a ‘nice to have’ feature!   Wish List/Predictions for July 26 patch H: Oh god. So many. So so many. I’d like an airship oil, auric dust, and ley line spark eater. I think they over-tuned the drop rates for these back in April and they’re building up and unless you’re making a HoT legendary, of which there are only 4, there are no uses for them. I’d like to spend my spirit shards, or anything really on Mystic Coins, they’re up to 80s last I checked, a bit ridiculous. I’d like a way to change ascended backpack stats the same way you can change ascended weapons or armour. Ascended backpacks are incredibly expensive to make and a way to change their stats only makes sense. I’d like there to be some way to get pristine toxic spore samples. Current acquisition methods are totally lacking. Only obtainable in Kessex Hills and to a lesser extent Genderren. Gathering spots are very spread out, and the number you need to make toxic sharpening stones or toxic focusing crystals, some of the best nourishment in the game is quite high. Some of the skins forgotten from the HoT beta would be nice. MistCleaver, MistRender, MistBreaker Footfalls for The Minstrel would be great if only it would allow me to stop hearing the constant bitching from Allona. A: Truth A lot of things that are just nitpicky and small quality of life features, but for substance…. A new zone. Season 2 had 2 new zones. I can’t imagine them not having a new zone at some point. A well scaled meta in that zone that does not require the entire map to accomplish like the HoT maps do. I don’t think Guild Wars 2 can afford to keep splitting up the player base to accomplish more and more map wide goals. A lot of people are guessing that due to the raid imagery in the trailer, taimi saying we’re going north, and other hints that the new zone will be north of brisban. I was thinking the long speculated about portal in the north of brisban across the broken bridge might be a likely entrance point. A festival. If you think about it all the GW2 festivals are in an 4 to 5 month period. Nothing the rest of the year. A: Hunter covered a lot of great ones, mine are minor by comparison I’ve been going on about this for a long time, but: a keybind toggle for outfits, a show/hide headpiece in the outfit panel, and finally, I would love if the town clothes tonics were made into outfits. Maybe a more permanent ‘Bash the Dragon’ festival? Hunter’s Tip So if you’ve been doing the auric basin farm you’ve likely ended up with an over-abundance of auric dust from the chests. I’ve been crafting that auric dust into auric ingots so that they don’t go to waste and free up some space. You do need to buy a recipe to actually make auric ingots however. Allona’s Tip You can type /d to get to squad chat quickly — I had been typing out/squad like a chump. (Hunter says I can “type /I’m a jerk if you can’t come up with your own tips.”) StM Game Reminder Oh NO, magic gone wild! The energy being left untapped by the dragons has begun to twist the wildlife of Tyria! What new playable race arises from the current in game wildlife? Example: Bipedal Devourer, once little more than the pet bugs of char and ogres the infused Devourers walk upright. They now seek to join the fight against the remaining dragons encroaching on their homelands.   Tales of Tyria   Awesome screencaps by virtue-of-justice! http://virtue-of-justice.tumblr.com/post/145765303386 A relaxed doodle by born to be IOP?! http://next-lvl.tumblr.com/post/145690422294/you-are-all-weaklings-a-relaxed-doodle-to IOP has the coolest Asura in Tyria http://next-lvl.tumblr.com/post/146896454504/should-i-or-should-i-not-post-8-similar-pictures   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!   Contact Info email: gwreporter-at-mmoreporter-dot-com twitter: @gwreporter site: guildwarsreporter.com voicemail: 616-666-6778 youtube: mmoreporternetwork (remember to ‘like’ our videos and subscribe to the GW Reporter playlist) facebook: gwreporter tumblr: gwreporter.tumblr.com patreon: http://www.patreon.com/mmoreporter.   Visit us on Twitter! Allona: @onebigpear Hunter: @huntersinsight Celeste: @celeookie Clouded: @clouded_chimera   Say ‘HI’ to us in-game! Allona: OneBigPear.1249 Celeste: CeleOOKIE.5046 Hunter: Hunter.4352 Clouded: Clouded.9670   Our PAX Prime 2014 Official Sponsor: