New Scribe Out - Boardwalk Returns and Clues on 2nd Birthday

How can anyone be bored with mini-pets?

My oldest character is still at about 11 months, so I won't be getting one for at least a couple more weeks, but I've been looking forward to this since I found out about birthday presenst. Will probably end up with one I don't care for, but that's part of the fun.

If there were polls showing that the majority of players wanted something different, then I'm guessing that the other popular ideas just weren't workable with the time they had. I can understand being disappointed about that, but I still think a new set of mini-pets to look forward to is very nice.

Weekend sounds like fun too. Will be trying to farm for cupcakes and doing beetle racing again too. Still have 80 odd Victory Tokens from last time too! Glad I didn't get rid of them now.

New minipets !!! Oh, by the Emperor, what a surprise ! I am really impatient to discover what crappy monster will follow me everywhere, and how much naabs will sell them.
To make it short : another useless item to make more money flux
====> *glad to see such an a-m-a-z-i-n-g present !*
As my mesmer gamemate said it above, better get nothing than... this...
(unless there are mini-playable characters, or even better : personalised mini pets, but it will never happen)
Ah, almighty Emperor, may your wrath clean our souls !

Textbook example of the "sense of entitlement syndrome" I've been seeing a lot of lately.

You bought a game. You got a game. Ever heard the term "you get what you pay for"?

You also get dozens of nifty small things for free because they're cool like that, several of which you take the time to list. Yes, the fact that they are cool like that may very well influence the purchacing decisions of some people. You dislike one of the many free bonuses, and talk about how bad they are because this one particular free thing, out of the dozens they provide on a regular basis, isn't to your liking.

I'm sorry, but I can't convince myself to care at all. If you think you can get better service somewhere else, I wish you luck. You will fail, but at least you'll be whining in a forum for some other game I don't care about.

I agree fully and completely with this post.

I wonder if the victory tokens will be awarded for all PvP or just dragon arena...

Well, maybe I'll get a rare pet this time and not a stupid jungle troll/devourer/temple guardian and sell it for 100k+ecto before the price drops...

Giant cupcakes will fall from the sky, squashing people. Gaile appears out of nowhere and places a massive forcefield over all players two years old (or preferably one year old, for more survivors), protecting them. The cupcake shower is followed by money and minipets (reserved, one per person). But the minipets are bombs and they, too, explode, killing the players. Gaile instantly turns into an Avatar of Grenth and raises minions from our bodies, which start dancing.

Nah, that's a better idea for Halloween (save for the cupcakes).

Well even though i dont get my 2 year till june( not far at all even though im hoping its better this time than my 1st my ((((whiptail lol))))) I am getting 2 minis on my factions characters and am looking foreward to having the time to get the first tier of lucky maybe unlucky too. ANd i just say the screenies that gaile was taking yesterday when she came, it was fun being there lol.

It's interesting that instead of attempting to refute my points or make your own argument, you chose to name-call.

It is my opinion, which should be evident by my post, that Guild Wars is a service and not a one-time purchase. I also contend that enhancements to the game are made as a continuing service. I submit that fewer people would have purchased Factions if, for example, Sorrows Furnace had not been released. And although I have not empirical evidence of this (this is an opionion forum, after all), I doubt that Nightfall would have sold as many copies if Prophecies and Factions owners had only "gotten what they paid for".

Guild Wars is a service as much as any other MMO. The difference, is that Anet recoups revenue using a campaign/expansion model instead of a subscription model. It's a gamble that has paid off, but I doubt it would be as successful as it has been if the only game improvements would have occurred when the new campaigns were released.

At the end of the day, it's all a matter of opinion. I am not attacking your opinion that minipets are a bonus and better than nothing. What I am doing is questioning why Anet (Gaile) asked in the Forums what people wanted; and when numerous threads appeared overwhelmingly supporting various suggestions OTHER than minipets, Anet chose to ignore those suggestions and just do what they intended to do anyway. If you're going to give us minipets, just state it. Asking implies that we have some say in the matter.

In the end, on this paticular issue, we didn't.

You are welcome to disagree with me on any or all of my points. but it's unfortunate that you are so intolerant of the opinions of others that you feel the need to denigrate them rather than debate them.

-Forjo

So if someone gave you a High definition TV as a gift, that wouldn't be a gift because *** brace yourself *** someone got paid to make it?

You really need to work on your logic.

they also are awarded for rollerbettle raceing, and draggons nest - and they also coe in the present that you get when you trade in your festivle tickets.

Minipets would be great if:

1. You could name them.

2. They did not wander away from you all the time so no one knows you own it, thereby making owning it or "showing it off" pointless.

3. There had flag controls so you could force it to stay near you.

WTT year 2 minipet for the above things

A service? Do you pay for it monthly?

You pay one time. What you pay for that one time is access to the game. That's it. You pay for the right to access their servers to play their games, that's it. Any changes made to the game over however many years the game is online, are not paid for by you (general you).

You bought access to their game. You are playing their game. Anet has fullfilled the part of their "service" that you bought. Anything above and beyond is not something they have to do, but rather they choose to. Whether they choose to in an attempt to keep people coming back to the game or to say thank you to the players for their patronage does not matter. You got what you paid for (the one time you paid for it) and anything above it is a gift of which you are not entitled to.

If you paid monthly... you might have a point.

looking into it, this seems to be Anets one stop fix for most gripes.
You get to grind your lucky title and hopefully lockpicks might actually last upto 3 chests before breaking
The cupcake seems to be the answer to 'hard mode is too hard' and I would guess thats the best thats ever going to happen (short of maybe AI tweaks) so with the cupcakes at least they only have a 25% speed boost over you.
The novalty items they expect you to hoard and sell to make up for those loot scaling nerfs since they are unaffected.
The minipets and new year celebrations are just easier to program, you take an existing model and shrink it and give it minipet status, and you just change the settings to show all the new year stuff again, easily done. This has to mean one thing though, as the developers have it easy with GW, GW:en will be absolutely brilliant... we'll see anywho lol

I dont understand this mini-pet thing...
Does the character have to turn 1 year/2 year in the exact birthday of Guild Wars ? Or they will be given to you during the year?

The birthday is the day that your character was created. If you type /age it will tell you how old your character is.

It's still a present. If you're not giving them money on the spot specifically for it, then you're not buying it- they're giving it. That makes it a gift.

Yes it is a gift if someone is paid to provide it. As long as the person receiving it isn't the person paying for it.


If you want to get all technical like that, the gift is having access to the minipet- not owning it.

It is a gift. It's an extended feature of the service we were never guaranteed, that they never told us we'd be getting. The box didn't say "buy this game, when you've had your character for a year you will be given access to a cool ingame item".

And the number of people that asked for it is irrelevant, I never ask for specific presents- but that doesn't mean gifts that I receive anyway don't count 'cause I didn't ask for them.


All you people that think you're ought more than you really are can be extremely annoying.




Unfortunately, this came up around when the Gray Giant first came on the scene. Gaile said they have no intention of every making minis customized.

or it means they're taking it so easy, people decide to take it easy on buying GW games and don't buy GW:EN or GW2.

Awww they pick the one thing people wanted the least....
THey even had a thread with near 1000 posts full of good ideas to pick from.
This makes me sad =(

Meh. A gift's a gift, thank you anet. I just hope my first-year characters (mez and monk) get a burning titan, at least.

i didn't have time to see i someone wrote this but...

it says it deals with health and energy...which are used outside...not inside

so if u buy enough cupcakes, u can be a necro monk and run chest runs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your example is compelling, but not quite accurate. The coding IS the giving. So for your example to apply, one would have had to have been paid to GIVE the TV. Who made it isn't the issue and since are talking about a "gift" of code, my logic is sound.

From Dictionary.com:

gift
-noun
1. something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.

The minipet is not given voluntarily -- someone recieved a small portion of the money I and you spent on the product to write the code that causes a minipet to appear in the inventory of our character.

If you read my original post (as well as others in this forum), I try very hard to be fair. I am critical when I believe it is appropriate to be, but I also praise when I believe it is due.

I respect that you disagree with me. That is your right. But please be respectful in your responses.

-Forjo

wow several pages of semantics arguments......how boring

anyways, mini pets v.2 it is, so life goes on. Gaile has stated they'll be tradeable, so for those who are all disappointed, I imagine the hugely inflated prices at the outset should be some consolation.

considering every noob with a rich friend will end up with a full set of em while i just get one common one.... no, not special at all. customized weapons and armor ftw.

Your understanding of what a gift is... is quite sad. I buy video games, computer parts, and CDs from Best Buy. By your logic, I can never recieve anything as a gift from there because my past purchases say that I partially paid for my gift through physical components, research, labor, etc. You can replace Best Buy with any store, namebrand, etc. That's your logic.

No, we're not paying for the gift, therefore it is indeed still a gift. We paid for everything already. The birthday presents are additions. They're not given to us because ANet still owes us things for our money. They're given because ANet appreciates their customers - us.

I don't pay monthly, but I do pay bi-anually. $69.95 for a collectors edition and $10 for a preorder. That comes out to a little over $13 a month.

On the whole, Guild Wars is a wonderful SERVICE that provides many hours of entertainment for the $250 I have spent to play it (three collectors, three preorders). Note I am estimating "$250" because that is closer to what I would have spent if I had purchased from the beginning. (As it stands, I bought Prophecies Collectors later for a much higher price.) But even at $250, and considering that Guild Wars is not quote 24 months old, it looks very similar in real dollars to the subscription models. And this doesn't count the 11 extra character slots I bought in lieu of storage. Oh, and while I'm at it, how about the unlock packs that are now available? And the people who had to buy multiple accounts before extra character slots were available. And those who bought accounts to get around favor....

I digress.

The point is, that although on the surface the game is a buy once, there are numerous reasons that Anet have given us (either by design or by omission) to spend more money. It's not technically a subscription service, but many of us have paid more than others who play subcription based games.

In my view, that means I have a point.

And on the subject of entitlement: this is not a government program. This is a commercial product. Customers purchase products based on (among other things) what kind of product a company has already provided. If Anet demonstrates that even after their game is purchased, they'll continue to develop and enhance it, then this is an implied promise to do said development and enhancement. As I stated in another post, it is highly unlikely that Anet would still be selling a two-year old online game if it were not for continued development and enhancement. And I don't believe that Factions and Nightfall would have sold as well as they had if Anet didn't have a REPUTATION for adding content. Anet has gone OUT OF THEIR WAY to state that GW2 will have regularly updated content and NO SUBSCRIPTION. To state this is to create and expectation, and, arguably, a promise.

I felt the need to address the points you make, because so often I comment on how people fail to address the ones I make. I don't ever wish to be a hypocrite. In that light, I offer the following example of a point that, as yet, no one has addressed:

Someone else made the comment (which I can't confirm or deny as I wasn't there) that Gaile said that second birthday presents will be even cooler the first. I can confirm that Gaile posted on this forum asking our opinion about 2nd birthday ideas.

Furthermore, I believe Gaile to be an honorable person who cares about customer service and who genuinely wants to please the community.

But the very first post after her inquiry said "please, no more minis". Shortly after this threads sprang up all over debating whether 2nd birthdays should be rewarded with minis or something else. Although most if not all of these threads contained the typical flaming among the substance, most of the people who decided to post wanted something OTHER than another mini.

The poll right here on Guild Wars Guru ended with less than 9% of people favoring a new minipet.

So I stand by my disappointment -- which was based on my opinion that Anet should have done more in light of community requests.

THIS IS MY OPINION. If you like minipets then you are in luck. Judging from the Sapphir Djinn featured prominently on the Guild Wars Events page, you're in for a very cool one.

But a lot of people are disappointed. We believe we have good reasons for our disappointment and hope that by expressing that feeling that Anet will listen and do things a little differently next time. Historically, this has been the case. Therefore, I will continue to praise when I'm happy, and complain when I'm not. It is my right.

-Forjo

Minipets are gifts but they really aren't special considering that they're tradeable and can be sold for large sum of cash initially for those who get them first(some of the other players may have to wait a few months or later).That Djinn on the page looks sweet compared to those multiple turtles I recieved earlier last year.
Maybe they will give more teasers or sneak peaks on what creatures are in GW2.
Minis cannot be customized but what makes them special for 2year old vets?
Do they have some extra visuals when a year 2 character displays it?
Do they have an additional purpose besides look pretty and growl on year 2 characters?
or are they there so that the vets can make more cash by selling them?

Besides the minis, the events are quite a wonderful treat for those that may or may not actively participate in them because RL obligations keep from enjoying a great game.

Don't have time then come to the Shing Jea Monastery this weekend to play Shing Jea Boardwalk to advance the lucky and unlucky titles while keeping up with RL responsiblities.

For those that have the time to spare may enjoy winning Victory Tokens in the Dragon Arena, Dragon Nest, or at the Rollerbeetle Races.

Birthday Cupcakes which may be farmed for those looking for profit or to use in Hard mode to increase the survivalibility.
Claim prizes like the Sugary Blue Drinks, Crème Brulee, Flasks of Firewater, or one of three types of magical scrolls or make the celebration even bigger by claiming other prizes like the Champagne Poppers, Bottle Rockets, or Sparklers to make someone feel special.

Great event even for those that are not pleased with minis.

This and the other birthday gift thread are full of the biggest bunch of ungrateful jackasses I've ever seen.

Boy am I happy this whole subject will be dying soon.

If I were Santa, there'd be a LOT of people getting coal for Christmas...

Great cant wait to see what i'll get to sell it saturday so i can make some money :P

Again, you don't seem to see the distiction. It is not the act of manufacturing the item that makes it a non-gift. It is the act of paying the giver. If the person who gives a gift (not the person who makes it) receives compensation for it then it is not a gift. In the case of this particular virtual item, the giving and the making are the same thing. Now if another PLAYER gives you an item, then it's a gift. If some outside party pays Anet to code the item, then it's a gift. But the money we spent on the product pays the programmer(s) who "give" us the item.

I agree with you that Anet paid their programmers to have minipets appear in our inventories because they appreciate us as customers. I also agree that they don't enhance the game out of a sense of "oweing" the customer. But I believe that they ALSO did these things to make the game more attractive to us and other customers and thereby increase sales. When new players see older players getting perks, they want them too. And if current players see that by sticking around and not deleting their characters they get cool(?) stuff, then they're more likely to, ahem, stick around and not delete their character.

But how much more valuable would the rewards be if they were a) more in line with what more people want, and b) something that couldn't simply be purchased by other players.

And why ask what we think and then largely ignore it?

Please read my original post. I simply stated that I'm disappointed, stated why, and wondered why Anet made the decision they did. It's unfortunate that you feel so compelled to judge my "understanding as ... sad" simply because you seem to believe I don't have the right to be disappointed.

Is that your contention? That I have no right to be disappointed? Or that I have no right to express that disappointment?

If you do, I just might have to make a judgement of my own.

-Forjo

Once you buy the game, you are not continually paying for anything. Like I said before, you are paying for access to the campaign that you buy and what comes with the game as it was when it was released. You are not paying continually for maintenence or cool, new features. You're paying for access to the game. That's it. The ability to access their servers (not even the right to), and if you're buying CE you're buying the ability to access their servers and what comes in the CE box (pins, maps, books, etc.). You got what was actually promised when you bought the game and even then, Anet can take it away whenever they choose for whatever reason they choose to.

The word entitlement is not mutually exclusive with government. Entitlement still applies.

I agree with you in that Anet would not have been so successful if they had not chosen to continue development and enchancement. However, that in no way means you're entitled to what they give you after you buy it! The reason behind why they do it really has no business being in your argument because it is a moot point. The fact is that they do it, it is not something that you were promised, they don't have to do it, you are not entitled.


You're free to feel disappointed, I honestly don't care. You don't have to enjoy what you're being given. The attitude of "screw you, Anet" and the like, however, is not okay BECAUSE IT'S A GIFT.

I take issue with the nasty attitudes from entitlement and I take issue with your argument because it is a gift, no matter how you want to try and spin it to look differently.

WRONG, if the person that received it paid for it, then it's not a gift. Did you walk up to a dev, hand them $5 and ask them to make you a minipet? Nope. You didn't pay for it, they give it to you. It's a gift!!!

aw crap! not more miniatures was looking forward to the 2nd birthday now i dont really care



im now taking offer on my useless minipet, highest offer gets whatever it is!

What... what happened to this thread!?

I check on it now, and good lord! All it is, is a couple of people arguing at each other. If boardwalk is what I think it is, then that'll make me quite happy - no more grinding areas to get the last of canthan GMC - yay! As for presents... well, I deleted my characters before I knew what a present was - and even though my account will be turning 24 months old, the oldest character I have is barely even 2 months old.

So, I'm not exactly pleased with the birthday presents being based on characters.

What are Charcoal prices at right now? >.>

As for the new sets of Mini's, I'm copasetic with it all. I'mma keep whatever I get (like I always do), but - truth be told - I was hoping for Disguises. ^_^"

C'est la vie, non? Arigatou ANet. ^_^

Unless there is something particularly special about this new line of miniatures, I think I would prefer there to have been no second birthday gift, as ArenaNet seems to have ignored many of the exelent suggestions for something new...

I got two more months until my oldest character Grim will be 2 years old!! Can't wait for the new mini pet.

Well if you guys Reeeeally want to get technical.

It's not a gift.
In a nut shell it is many pixels put together to visually please you after paying for a large chunk of digital data and waiting a year.

The fact that we purchase the game gives us access to their service.(servers, updates, etc.) We pay for that through purchases of the game and anything else they sell to us.

They decide to "reward" players for having a character 1 year old. Cool.
They decide to "reward" players for keeping that character for another year. Awesome.
The way they do it is flawed in a sense. Since anyone with pixelated "ingame money" can purchase these items making the "reward" more of a novelty item anyone can have.

The fact that Anet owns every and all items, character, things in game makes me wonder how this is a gift.

We paid for the games. They own everything about them. The game is digital. There is absolutely nothing tangible about it.

It is in all senses of the word a service. Considering they own everything. You just purchase the "right" to "play" this digital chunk of data which visually/emotionally/physically pleases you.

On the opposite end. It's not a gift if it's not yours.

Although then someone will come in here and try and justify the fact that we own the time spent on playing... Bullshit
The fact that you try to convince someone that you can own time makes you, and anyone who believes you, a (excuse my straight-forwardness) flying moron.
Anet owns everything about this game. Even the fact that it's installed on your computer.

Now whether or not Anet feels obligated to do something is their business. We payed for what ever they want to let us "play" with.

So I guess I'm still very neutral on this.

The game is not ours. We purchase the right to install it on our systems and play it. We pay for the right to be visually/emotionally/physically pleased. If that's not a service I dunno what is. We don't really know what we're getting but we are 100% paying for it. What ever it may be.

Why do I play?
Meet people and waste time.

To anyone arguing... Think a little bit. Stop being arrogant/prideful and think before you type. Have common sense(Hardly any left in this world I know). Use logic(Gasp wtf is that?! omg!!!!).

Your arguing on the internet. A world of non-tangible things digitally processed. Arguing about Digital data that you don't own.

What a fun world we live in.

With that I leave you.

~Rolune

I'm assuming most of their resources are going towards GW:EN and GW2 atm. I wouldn't be complaining about new minipets... I'd rather they work on the new content.

At least it's not another hat...

You fail. Stop complaining. Every other game in the world wouldn't care if you had been there for 2 years, but Anet give out free minipets. If you don't like it, quit.

Also, <3 Inde ^-^