Dragon Festival - Afk title festival, What about the rest of us?

I only decided to get to r2 for both lucky and lucky just to put the monument in my HOM. No way am I gonna take the time to afk there for however many days to max the title. But for those of you who are, and have, good luck and gz.

I did manage to get in quite a few party/drunkard points while standing on the rings, so that was a bit of a nice bonus.

I maxed unlucky chest running in NM. Before I maxed treasure hunter.

I also got over half of the lucky title, so I decided earlier this year, might as well work on lucky too... so here I am afk. I do wish it was faster though... I can get lucky points faster on those double lucky/unlucky points for lockpick usage weekends. It's annoyingly arbitrary to have to wait so long to get points when you're not even doing anything.

About the lag though, I've been doing zaishen quests on my other account, and I'm not noticing any extra lag. In fact, I've been having pretty much no lag, in contrast to a few weeks or so ago when I kept disconnecting and the game was virtually unplayable. Go figure.

Personally the lag has been better this year then past years, however I've still been lagging a bit. Then again, I've been in rollerbeetle, aka rubberband central, all weekend so lag is gonna happen no matter what. However it has been better then recent events and years in my eyes.

It's funny that many people are still standing on the center circle of Nine Rings.

It's called "Too Bad" for the rest of us who don't give a thing about lucky/unlucky.

You kidding? Gives you a way to play GW while asleep.

How is literally not playing GW equivalent to playing GW?

I'm... not really going to argue with people who don't get sarcasm. Beneficial things are happening to my GW account (ie titles), which means that in some capacity work is being done and the game is being "played" on some level or another.

I sleep with one eye open and one hand on WASD anyway, and have completed most areas solo while unconscious.

I find it much much easier to actually be a program, there's no need to sleep at all and I'm playing 24/7, it's actually called "living" for us programs.

Funnily, this afk-ing is a ridiculous situation: we're using unnecessary bandwidth to see blobs of people on circles while players are away, huge waste of bandwidth, Anet should have a 2D mode where all you see is a simple graphic and go afk, no impact on other players, and it's not like you want to see the 9rings anyway!

Always the complaining about lag, lol.

You mean the players that aren't bothered about maxing unlucky?

I seriously don't know why anybody would care about maxing out Unlucky title. It doesn't provide any in-game benefit and all it shows is that you threw your money away.

I stand on center to boost my Lucky title and minimize the chance of a massive losing streak. I'm trying to get a good Treasure Hunter title, and I need to minimize breaking lockpicks. If you look at the Treasure Hunter title, by the time you max it out, a maxed Unlucky title is effectively included as part of the package.

=====

As for the AFK title grind, it's probably ArenaNet's best way to effectively drain billions of gold out of the economy. For other games, it would be incredibly dumb and players would call it a waste of time. But for GW, it's an effective tool to basically force a bunch of players to get rid of accumulated gold. I guess this is one of the few ways that ArenaNet can force a deflation of some sorts.

I'm personally amazed that Guild Wars hasn't just broken down and provided a trader that will make the process more direct where I could just pay 1 gold for each Lucky/Unlucky point that I want to buy. It sure would be easier and I could just get rid of my money directly rather than the illusion that I'm "gambling" from Nine Rings.

The variation from standing on a corner is actually incredibly minimal after several days of AFK.

Sadly, you're probably right. It's still pretty evil.

Why is there so much rant over AFK title farmers? Events for 9 rings occur only 3 times a year. Give us a break^^.

I mean the players don't know lucky/unlucky titles mechanism.
The same amount of lucky points and more unlucky points on corners.

You can't fault people for picking up the carrot Anet is dangling. It's just an incredibly stupid one.

Find some alternative method of lucky farming that doesn't require you to be logged on. If you want to preserve the slot machine thing, let us deposit 500 plat and allow the game play "for you" while offline. Actually it could just be implemented as a simple formula with the time since you deposited money as a factor, rewarding an equal number of lucky/unlucky points and resulting remaining cash. Anet can then reduce the server count that is only needed for ridiculous events like these, everyone that ponies the money can get the title without leaving their comps on and logged, and people stop whining about lag. Everyone wins.

Ok, I'v seen a few people talking about doing lucky/unlucky for the GWAMM title. This is wrong. Lucky and Unlucky is not for the GWAMM title. Its a prestige title showing that you were capable to getting one of, if not the hardest, title in the game. The time required to get it makes it super hard and most people won't ever achieve it.

But you never, ever go for those titles to max Gwamm. No need when you have like 31 other titles you can get easily.

1. wisdom
2. treasure hunter
3. sunspear
4. lightbringer
5. asura
6. ebon
7. deldrimor
8. norn
9. master of the north
10. protector of tyria
11. protector of cantha
12. protector of elona
13. guardian of tyria
14. guardian of cantha
15. guardian of elona
16. tyrian catographer
17. canthan catographer
18. elonian catographer
19. tyrian skill hunter
20. canthan skill hunter
21. elonian skill hunter
22. tyrian vanquisher
23. canthan vanquisher
24. elonian vanquisher
25. legendary guardian
26. legendary catographer
27. legendary skill hunter
28. legendary vanquisher
29. savior of the kurzicks
30. savior of the luxons.

You could complete all of these titles 10 times over before maxing lucky/unlucky. The purpose of getting lucky/unlucky, sweet tooth and all the other "optional" titles is for prestige among title grinders. Plus its something to do. So if you are going for lucky/unlucky to get GWAMM, stop. Do the other titles I listed instead.

As for the festival causing more lag? Yeah it does add a bit, but its a small price to pay for rare events that bring people back for those few days. Also the AFK rings are only one of the games you can play. Beetle racing and dragon arena are the fun games. AFK rings is just good for title grinding while afk. You can work towards a title while chatting, or selling items or playing games on your xbox or playstation.

Not true. You can max unlucky by using lockpicks to get treasure hunter, in normal mode. That's what I did. Unlucky actually maxed faster. And I got over half of lucky at the same time. So, I certainly wouldn't have to do all the other titles ten times over to max it... in fact I wouldn't even have to do treasure hunter twice over, especially given the increased lockpick retention rate I have now.

But if you're not bothered about getting unlucky points, why spend the extra gold on wasted (lost) tickets that comes from standing on a corner square?

I'm not personally having a go at you, I'm just saying that the players in the centre ring may actually have a reason for standing there and it has nothing to do with not understanding how the game works. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I beg to differ, Lucky is a great title to help achieve GWAMM, because it takes no effort at all. It was my 30th and all it took was leaving my computer on.

When I hit max Lucky, I was at 34% maxing Treasure Hunter with no intention of ever maxing it, 62% of maxing Wisdom with no intention of ever maxing it, 17% of maxing Kurzick with no intention of ever maxing it and only 4% of maxing Luxon with no intention of ever maxing it, no Survivor and no Legendary Defender.

Lucky is the grind-free alternative.

You're nuts. Maxing Treasure Hunter, Wisdom, Kurzick and Luxon 10 times over before maxing Luck? Nonsense. Standing in the rings whenever they appeared and I was able to, and opening chests with lockpicks in the course of normal play saw me maxing Luck at the last Canthan New Year.

Pssh. I did all the quests on all my characters, like Hawk. got about 15 stacks of tokens to sell at 9k a pop (minus one lost to a scammer while my GF distracted me on the phone. Whoever you are, I hope you die of the plague), then AFK the last day on 6 accounts, open my ill-gotten gifts, merch all the bean cakes and wine, and convert the tokens to 180 cupcakes. Bwaahahaha!

I was connected for 3 straight days during the festival. I ran 10 toons thru the festival quests between Thursday and Friday, stood on rings each night, and then ran Celestial Charges at nearly ever Emperor visit between 8am CDT to midnight.

I had ZERO issues with lag.

My pings were sub-200 all the time, even in busy Shing Jea districts. My secret? Simple

I have a fast, relatively modern computer with decent graphics (Intel E8400 CPU, ATI 4850 GFX, 4 Gig ram, Vista). And I have a very solid DSL connection (1.5M down, 700K up)

For comparison, I also played for a few hours using my wife's account on a much older machine (AMD 2600XP, GeForce 6600 GFX, 1 Gig Ram, XP) side-by-side on the same network. It was showing really bad pings, > 500ms at times, and in some districts it started looking like a slide show. This wasn't ANets fault. It's the fault of the computer I was using. On better days, this machine is <200 ms and runs like a champ too. But in really full districts this thing can't keep up.

If you're seeing what you think is lag, my hunch is that the problem is likely on your end, either with your ISP, or possibly with your machine. Very few people can do these kinds of side-by-side tests to find where the bottleneck is, but from my experience above, GW is not laggy if you have a good machine on a fast connect...even on busy weekends like Dragon Fest.