In Memory of Wintersday Past

You seem to forget.. mini = character birthday and mini = quest reward

(purchase of minis aside here) I disagree. The black moa chick is a perfect example of a minitaure that requires accomplishments; you have to have gotten to certain areas in all campaigns, gotten to final assault and defeated Zho in the norn tournament to get a moa. The ghostly hero, you have to have won the hall of heroes with your team and gotten him from a chest. Gaile herself has said that players' enjoyment of miniatures takes priority over their marketability.

Minis are accomplishment....even minis that you got by way of extreme luck are still a symbol for how lucky you are, just like the "lucky" title itself. And staying around for long enough to get B-day presents is quite an accomplishment.

Did someone call 9-Wah-Wah? Because I hear the sirens on the Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahmbulance starting up.

If you dislike the current direction of the game so much, please for the love of all that is human, go play another game or play some hockey or something. ANet has more player interaction than any other major game out there, and I really appreciate that attention to the player. We get updates weekly, they put on these cool events for us, they add new stuff to surprise us (shock, you couldn't grind for the bear because it was relatively rare and no one found out about it until the last day? And even then all the QQers claimed it was fake puh-lease).

Losing friends in RL because of GW? What are you, like, 10? Thats pathetic. Wait until you grow up, life will really suck and you will realize the RL friends you have will not be friends anymore for much more serious reasons.

Man, I have to start questioning why I even bother here. I guess I am trying to represent the silent majority of STFU!

I guess they misdialled and rang Trolls-R-us, hence your presence.

edit: futhermore, it seems as though you havent read people's posts. We were saying how much more fun and creative it would have been to have had a wintersday questline or somesuch give the mini bear, something as creative and complex as the black moa chick.

Yeah that phone rings quite often unfortunately, and since our motto is "If you Waaaah, we Troll", we kinda have to react to those messed up calls.

I see what (some of) you are trying to say, but (most of) it is so smathered, sandwiched, and battered with crying, claims of ignorance, and shouts of loss of creativity, that the entire usefullness of such statements goes so utterly lost that I can't help but "fight" back. It seems reasonable execution of ideas has gone lost to dramatic representation of emotion.

I will repreat my not-so-trollish mantra (which I could be a lot worse of a Troll if I wanted to be, I could just state the stupid Wahmbulance thing and make it a post, but I do have some sort of intelligence); If you are having a hard time in game, take a break, play something else, and be happy.

You CAN let it go, it IS possible, you ARE special!

This was never the case for the past few years anyway since all groups are formed in the international districts.

To the OP: Well written and it expresses a lot of my thoughts. I've drastically cut back my playing time and would probably play even less if it wasn't for a great guild and alliance, and doing things with those people.

The black moa chick was one of the best things recently added to the game. I sure would like to see more 'treasure hunt' things like that. It actually gave me incentive to do all the SF quests.

To the trolls ....... no comment needed.

Yeah, that's called Next-Gen.

Next-Gen is defined by:

- good graphics (but the engine itself may be really buggy, like Source, particularly the version used in Dark Messiah that prevented most users from actually getting past the first loading screen)
- very weak storyline
- rushed out
- untested (if a game is done right then there should be no need for patches, at least not major patches)
- incomplete (I hate buying an unfinished product just because a developer does the job for the money, not for pride in creating a work of art)
- steep system requirements or requires a console
- if in a series, often violates the series in unspeakable ways (examples are Oblivion of the Elder Scrolls series and Thief: Deadly Shadows of the Thief series)

And so on. As one might guess, I hate the whole concept of next-gen because the games advertised next-gen are generally trash in comparison to old-school games.

Please, ArenaNet, turn things around. Give Guild Wars 2 a focus on story, gameplay, and community. Stop the focus on elitism and grind.

Well written first post, only 2 spelling mistakes so far

I really thought the purpose was to complain about mini polar bear, but I was wrong.

PR said the polar bear was a rumour untill the last day of wintersday.

I for one would have been farming for it everyday had I known about it from the start.

However, leaving it as unconfirmed untill the last day, especially with a sux ballz drop rate was completely ridiculous. I could have farmed the mission for all 12 of the wintersday days and not gotten one, but I would have been rewarded enough with CCS. But they have to keep it such a secret that no one knew about it untill yesterda, and now we have 1 day to try and get one.

Sorry, but this is a joke. And I'm not complaining about the pet being hard to get at all. I never got a greased lightning, but at least I were able to try knowing that people on the ladder for roller beatle racing would recieve something. This time around, they put an uber rare mini into the game, tell absolutely no one untill the final day, and expect everyone to be happy about that decision!

Oh, and the hats suck terribly too. I'm just running around with a yule cap instead of this years hats. First they ask the community to design hats for them because they are too lazy to pay someone to do it, and when they get a brilliant design they completely butcher it.

Are the people currently working at A-net the same ones that they had when the game started? It seems like they've got a pack of monkeys working for them now that get dumber and dumber everyday, and they dont do anything about it.

all of the people that were working on the game when it started are now working on GW2....new highers and fillers are working/maintaining GW1.

As to the mini polar bear...i would imagine anet will put it into the chest of wintersday past...after this event is over...or in the zashien chest/hoh chest.

I myself have stopped playing as much as i used to do....and the main reason is lack of community...and lack of an economy....why run around killing things for drops that you can only sell to merchants....because the economy is full of perfect items....

Some reverets/changes that are needed imo

Heros Limited to 1 per real person
Expert Salvage Kit....change it back to how it was random mod salvage
Inscriptions...get rid of them on gold items...blue purple fine leave em..just don't make the perfect 15^50 ect... leave them 1 or 2 off perfect
Missions make them require atleast 1 other RL person to play with


Just to let you know...i play almost exclusively with H/H but i had much more fun playing GW before I could successfully beat most areas with henchman..

Firstly, gaile has said only the winterday chest drops the polar bear.

Secondly, those Ideas are dumb. Increase heroes to 7, not reduce to 1 lol. The economy is fine. Since when should weapons have to cost 100k + xxx ectos? FFS they are just weapons!

Well written, this expresses lots of my opinions and thoughts too

I'm beginning to suspect the same thing.

I got the strong feeling that the Wintersday hats were designed by a new inexperienced hire or intern so intent on showing their stuff that they missed out on some very basic and important elements of design. In my opinion, they were modelled, not designed.

And I could be very wrong, but I feel like whoever coded the drop rate for the mini polar bears forgot to factor in the length of Wintersday festivities (probably through inexperience) inadvertently making it the rarest minipet in existence.

I think it's great to give new hires and interns opportunities to learn through hands on experience, and I think 'mentor' supervision is a very valuable teaching tool as well.

The polar bear will likely end up in the wintersday past chest, once this wintersday has actually passed...

Your other suggestions would probably make me quit playing. I really dont play GW to talk to people, I would rather do mish's with just me and my heroes (although i do like PvP for "team" play)....they need to get rid of henchies and let you just have heroes instead....and your ideas about weapons and salvage pretty much would kill the already weak amount of actual valuable treasure i can get to rite now. If anything they need more weapon skins (the thing that really drives weapon value currently) and they need to change some of the other mods so that people actually care about anything besides 15^50's and 20/20 sundering on thier weapons. (ooo poison mod, that extends the time on the poison effect my opponent removed after 3 seconds....really some wep mods are just total crap) Also, would be nice if heros and henchies didnt take your treasure AND make you pay for thier upgrades...one or the other please.

yes the OP has much of what I had been thinking as well.

If you look at past events, say the first wintersday the quests were things you could do with a group, you had things you had to jump to different cities to collect (I remember running my first mesmer thru the ascension missions JUST to get to dorks for king jalis, I also remember the gunk guy and all the "lfg gunk" from toa)...
the 2nd wintersday added some nice quests---some of which you could also do with a group. (and the 2 uw ones you could not....that made me unhappy last year)
this wintersday added only 2 new quests which were both solo..... major disappointment (esp if you didnt have eton). So not much new here and the content was not for groups.

Hats....first year since it was pretty much a new idea they were great! (and I still have mine---never trashed it!). Second year, well with sooo many people unhappy they had missed the first year they did a redressing of them--BUT also gave us 2 new ones as well (and my monk just loves his freezie crown to death)....this year...only 2 hats, one of which they only had to make from a design already in place.....
so once again not much thought into it (yeah the wreath took some time to develop, but they only had to make 1 new design not 4 like they did last year).

They did bring back most of the previous years stuff which is good since there are still a ton of newer people who never got to do them---and the grenches were fixed a bit (I like watching them explode themselves in LA )..so they did fix part of it, but not for kamadan. And they fixed the gift drop (for the most part---I have a screenie from one of kamdans district with a bunch of gifts on the ledge again this year)....and the lag fest, while partial not anets fault just didnt add any fun to this years event-just frustration.

so my wintersday report card for anet

bringing back previous quests/collectors/presents : A
New quests: .................................................. C
hats: .................................................. ......... C
new content?:......................................... ....... D

(I wont EVEN get into the frustration of the ubersuperuberrarerthansnowinhell mini pet)

so overall this wintersday gets a C--

Very well writen post. I would have to agree with the EOTN unfinished and way to buggy, I have not been to EoTN since I hit 1 bug after the other about 3 weeks ago, I'm talkin bugs that make you /resign and start again.

As for the community Meh never really cared for the kids in town I have local and trade turned of nearly 95% of the time when Im on GW due to the complete lack of intelligence of people, Have you guys just stood in a dist and read some of the shit people talk about. (IT is really bad in international Heros ascent dists.) My community is guildies and alliance members but even most of the alliance members are retarded as well so I have that turned of most of the time.

And for Anet simply holding info or releasing small bits of info just to get speculated on then shot down. Meh this happens all we can do is brush it of and continue to play.

The hats are just for show like every hat I get show to trader and delete never to be used again.

I do think Anet has forgot or lost the records for how many people play GW so they just put in the .0000000001% chance to drop and call it a day.

Did i say that things should cost 100k +xxx.... NO

Look at the current economy...it takes forever to sell any item...UNLESS it is one of the ultra rare items that people pay 100k +XXX for...

The supply of items far exceeds the demands of any normal item. If you look at the cost of "pefect" weapons from the weaponsmith you will see that Anet figured they should cost around 5k... tell me when is the last time you sold a NON rare item for 5k? I know i have stood around in any of the major trading hubs and advertised req 8,9,10 weapons/items for less than 2k each...and have sold very few...as too the salvage .... i think it adds a bit of randomness to the game that is lacking....it was a great feeling when you salvaged an item before and got the 30hp mod that you was desperately wanting instead of the barbed hilt or whatever.

The basic concept in GW is to play together to kill things and sell what they have drop..to others or to NPCs... or to PVP.... PVP is dying...as is PVE...get used to the fact, the writing is on the wall....

as to limiting heros to 1 per RL person...it will bring back the community interaction... if you want 7 heros...go buy a standalone RPG...and get out of the online game playing...

In my opinion a.net should of told us at the beginning of the event that a mini polar bear is able to drop from the chest. They say they wanted us to just "find it" like the mini ghostly. Well unlike the mini ghostly the polar bear was only available for what 12 days? Mini ghostly can be gotten 365 days a year. That was a big flub on their part. "we want you to just be able to find it" So not tell us that we only have 12 days or so to get a rare mini.

In all honesty if they told us at the beginning, noone would be upset.