Getting the Hall of Monuments ready for GW2.

The Hall is a very nice idea, but it needs work. With the approach of GW2, perhaps it is time to reflect on ways the Hall could be improved, so that it is a brilliant contribution that bridges the two games and serves as a fitting reminder of all the good times we've had.

Monument of Honor

Add a bookshelf.

The books are a great synopsis of the stories of Guild Wars, and would make a mighty fine piece of nostalgia to page through in the future. Include, on either side of the monument's front, a small section of shelves that house the books from each continent, from the bonus mission pack, from the golem hunt, etc, all the little pieces of lore collected through our explorations and adventures. That way, years from now, we can flip through them while sitting in the hall as a reminder of that amusing mission or that dangerous dungeon, memories of places we've been, things we've done, and monsters we've slain to get their shiny stuff.

Monument of Fellowship

Include an option to display friends.

A huge portion of the Guild Wars experience comes from the interaction with other people, with guilds, with friends and companions who have fought at your side against countless foes. To commemorate this, I suggest the Monument of Fellowship also include a friend option, the ability to construct a smaller statue that represents someone special to you. If you have a visitor in your Hall, you can make a request at the Monument and, with their permission, enshrine them just like the Resilience statues (and borrowing its script to make it easy) at your place of Fellowship.

From then on, whenever you visit the monument in the future, it will commemorate your friend and ally and stand as a testament to the trials you endured together.

Monument of Resilience

Currently, the account based display is bugged (or if this was its intention, sadly lacking). If you enter the armor of one character on your account, then switch to a second, you do not get to see the 1st character displayed upon the monument. Instead, the 2nd character is displayed in their profession's equivalent. So if you like Elite Kurzick Monk armor and save it, and walk into the Hall as a Ranger, you see Elite Kurzick Ranger armor, not the one you selected. Rather than display your five favorite characters, you can only see one character in five sets of armor, some of which they may not even own (and might look hideous wearing).

Suggestion: Have the monument save both the armor and the character who presented it. That way, you can have up to five characters on your account displayed upon the monument, a fitting tribute to those who enjoy playing multiple professions.


Monument of Valor

A great idea sadly lacking in options. It could seriously use a few more additions to round it out, while still keeping the theme of grouped weapons. In particular, add...

-The Oppressor weapons
-The Deldrimor set
-The Bonus Mission Pack weaponry
-Commemorative, specific greens. Urgoz's Longbow, Kanaxai's Axe, Dhuum's Scythe, the Rose Focus, the Traveller's Staff, Shiro's Blades, one green for each weapon type that is an iconic item from the story of guild wars.
-Any good collection of similar weaponry, like end-game Factions or Nightfall gear.

Etc. Find a good list of weaponry and add them in to allow a wider range of options, because at the moment the monument doesn't provide sufficient variety to let people pick and choose what they actually like.

Monument of Devotion

Add a Hat Rack for festival hats to display our five favorite pieces of headwear. Because everyone loves hats.

Just no.

People who buy GW2 should be happy to get ANY benefits from GW1.

People who will only play GW1, such as myself, would rather the Live Team focus on more pressing issues directly affecting GW1.

Probably a no to Monument of Fellowship. I think there was another discussion at one time about this. Something along the lines of we don't need to be rewarded for being nice to people and making friends. That should be a reward on it's own.

I do like the idea of the Monument of Resilience. Would like to see the character that I turned in the armor on, actually be the one standing there. Would be like a display of champions, instead of like a wardrobe for whoever is in the Hall at the time.

Monument of Valor: BMP weapons? Sorry, no go on those. I could see Oppressor's and Deldrimor, but not the BMP. Those are bought with real money at the Guild Wars Store, not earned in game through accomplishments.

so /notsigned except for Resilience.

wow....that's about all i can say.... Just cause you play PvP which i can tell cause your lack of enthusiasum for Hall doesn't mean that he has all bad ideas... if you leave feedback leave constructive feedback don't just be a basher....

anyway I like the hat rack idea and I could definitly see the oppressor weapons being added because that links the GW1 play to the GW2 play but not others...
I like the armor the was it is!

I just hope to soon know what all my work will do for me.... I am hoping for an aura around my characters hands because well you know my GW2 character will be a son/daughter of a GOD!!!

Hate to break it to you, but the HoM is not intended to be a record of all the stuff you've done in GW1. It's simply a wealth and achievement transfer mechanic, designed to make people who've sunk a lot of time building up their in-game gold stashes feel a bit better about starting over in a new game. Your friends, the memories you have in game, all that stuff, ANet can't give you some reward in GW2 to commemorate that and somehow make it special and worthwhile (what, if you have a full friendslist you get a shiny hat?).

Stuff that goes into the HoM is supposed to be rewarded in GW2. Expecting rewards for every little thing (books, really?) is too much.

Actually, I wouldn't care if anything transferred over to GW2. I'd rather have HOM set up to reflect my GW1 accomplishments just to be there for my GW1 characters. I like the above ideas except I'd like to see the Monument of Valor let you display any weapons customized to your character. I'd rather display MY weapons that are special to me. All this running around HOM grinding so you'll get something in GW2 that we already know won't impart any special benefit (which I'm fine with) seems like a waste. Anyway, just my 2 cents....

They could work on such things after GW2 is launched so it needn't affect any work on gw1 and lets face it if gw2 is great very little will happen to gw1 afterwards, and few will be there to complain about it.

I know some players say they will stick with gw1 and so on but lets be honest here, we are gamers and a new "good" game will always draw us away from an old favourite.

There are not enough hours in the day or days in the year for me to play both and knowing how I played gw1 7 days a week and sometimes 8+ hours a day that could easily happen in gw2 "hope so anyway"

So yes any little improvements that benefit players of either game are good and I hope they make them for those who want them.

Such benefits that pass on are likely to be cosmetic anyway something like the aura for those who bought the collectors edition of prophesies.

There is a bookshelf. ID 10,000 items and you can have one too. I like your idea of new weapons for the weapon rack, but where does it stop? i just want to know what my GWAMM is getting for all the hard work. I will truly be bummed if I get nothing for my treasure hunter statue and wisdom statue and Gladiator Statue. Those took a LONG time.

No, its just an achievement mechanic. Wealth belongs and stays in GW1.

I basically agree with this, but, in detail, what I think about sugegstions is:

Honor: signed
Fellowship: I think it would be nice, since now, apart from pet, you can only put something bought with money, which doesn't mean you ever cared about those heroes. Still I don't know if it's doeble
Resilience: it would have sense. But, despite not being the HoM function, I like it the way it is since it's the only way to know how some armors would fit my characters I could buy it for. And since we don't have (and I think we'll never have) an armor preview mechanic...
Valor: what Scorpionwitch said
Devotion: why not, it's a nice way for the "I was there!" instead of "I have a lot of platinum" since you can't buy them

That said, since it looks like in the HoM can only go things you can simply buy with money, and so it's a display of wealth rather than personal history/accomplishments I don't think any of these would ever be improved.
Really, I whish for the game2 they would just count the HoM as a moseum hall or something that goes in the background or something like that instead of giving cool things and making people grind money for that (as it's happening).

Resilience and maybe Honor are the only ones that I really would care to see happen. The Valor change seems to be suggested every time there's a new weapon put into the game, and it has always been a bad idea, except for maybe when they gave in for the Tormented set. Devotion I wouldn't care for at all, and neither would I for Fellowship. For Fellowship, I would almost think a better idea would be to instead allow the option of displaying the cape of one's guild, but all of the people who buy and sell trims make me want to ditch that idea as well.

Above all, the HoM should act as a bridge between the two games. The books could pass on some less visible stories of Tyria (though the Durmand Priory is probably a better library than that ever could be), but that's the only thing I see that matters. We will supposedly have a way of transferring guilds through to GW2, and I suppose friends might even be possible as well. Resilience would just be a bug fix that would have zero effect on what it gets us in GW2, so it's a slight waste of time. The hat rack is absolutely unnecessary unless we can transfer things like festival hats, which I wouldn't support, and adding more weapons to Valor isn't going to be an idea that gains ground with me until we know what kind of rewards we get from the current two sets.

Agree 100%. We should be able to display whatever weapons that we find unique or special to us.

I'm not a PvP player, but I completely agree with Shoyon
There are more important things than beeing able to add more stuff to the HoM

He's not really wanting these added for achievements. If you guys read hes really wanting to be playing Guild Wars 2 and then when he goes into his/her hall on their descendant they want to be looking around at not just achievements but memories. I like all of the ideas but on the weapons I dont think Greens should be allowed. Tormented,Destroyer,Oppressor, & maybe certain Customized Golds.
My favorite out of their suggestions would have to be the Bookshelf. It could just be thrown beside Ogden or Vekk. That would make people more entitled to play. Yes the bookshelf would tie with Eternal Hero, but i think it this would be nice. Even though its not going to be a huge difference in GW2 it will add a little more fun to working on those pesky halls.

I thought GW2 was not going to have any GW1 stuff in it.....including characters. At least that is what I've caught in in-game chatter. Am I being misled?

-.-

The bonus for HoM is going to be small, minor, an almost nothing thing. It will be no more than something along the lines of a mini-pet, a title, a hat, or at most something like the /bonus weaponry. It will not be something really nice. It won't be that because everyone that doesn't have a HoM (heaven forbid they didn't even play GW1) will feel left out, even though this is a brand new game. Having the HoM reward be really nice is marketing GW2 to only the current GW1 population, which is just dumb.

I'm anxiously awaiting the announcement of what the HoM will do. Afterwards there will be a flood of threads and posts of people complaining that all of their work was for nothing and that they feel betrayed by Anet, or some other garbage. It will be beautiful.

If the live team ever finds themselves with nothing to do they can attempt this but I think there's already ideas on the waiting list.

I think the HoM will gives look based rewards in spirit of gw1 look based direction, I really can't see them rewarding the HA title with anything but an emote. Players that aren't getting the rewards shouldn't make suggestions on what the rewards should be.

I am afraid that the HoM was really only a bone thrown to the potential customers buying EoTN. There has been only mention that it will be in GW2. I hope I am wrong on this, but I think the reason that they have not mentioned it yet is because it's not gonna be very rewarding.

Nice idea, but if they where going to do any of this, it would most likely push GW2 back a few months or more, but none of it will happen, why because its too much work.

Anet already said that that what players get from HOM will be released closer to the game date. Sit and wait.

Also there is no point in adding in weapon skins to HOM, there are just to many, not to mention Eric said and i quote " You will probably see many old favorite weapons make a return in Guild Wars 2." Souce:http://www.arena.net/blog/eric-flann...nger-questions

We already know from what Anet has said that when you come out of the HOM you will look badass. Also most people figure that anything that comes from the HOM will be customized, as it will not give any advantage to players at all.

I would hope for some content from the HOM to cross over to my GW2 account.

Weapons or armour, possibly of dwarven manufacture and now very rare since they vanished.
A title or maybe several.

All my booze now well aged and worth a mint.

Maybe my ancestor set up a breeding program in his zoo so some animal types that died out can be reintroduced.

It will be akin to the festival masks something we have because we played gw1 but nothing that gives a game advantage.

No it is not going to be very rewarding.

If it is very rewarding then they just ostracized all potential customers that don't already own GW1. It should be obvious that this is a poor marketing strategy.

Awww, feeling left out?

Sadly, fact is that everything in GW these days, leads up to GW2. Hell, the entire EotN expansion was made as a crossover to GW2 0.0

Besides: Even if the updates are mainly GW2 related, don't you get the content in GW? For example: War in Kryta. The new quests, weapons, miniatures, enemies and so on are all made as a crossover to GW2, however isn't the update for GW? Why are you complaining? You get new content, while people who wanna go to GW2 gets added to the excitement. Everybody wins! 0.0

I personally think that these ideas are great, especially the weapon adds and bookshelves. Bookshelves would make it more personal, while new weapons would make it more lorerelated and such.

You're comparing legitimate content with features that are mainly cosmetic. While even people who weren't interested in PvE can experience EotN and WiK at their leisure, the Hall of Monuments is not the same - it caters primarily to the PvE sector, so we're now looking at a cosmetic feature that not everyone can benefit from.

While I intend to finish my HoM and play GW2, I believe the team should be spending their time on real content or updates before looking into cosmetics, especially those whose purpose is already served by an existing feature.

Edit: I'm honestly hoping that the HoM doesn't do anything but look shiny in GW2. There's too much potential for drama otherwise, and I'd hate for the sequel to suffer b/c the first threw a few bones to keep people in.

Its not a poor marketing strategy its become a standard marketing strategy.

Usually it comes down to buy this special edition and get something extra.
Often its simply some equipment that is unique to that edition of the game.
Its seldom much better than starting equipment generally available to players.

Giving a small reward to gw1 players some of whom have influenced the development of GW isn't that big a deal, its simply taking it to the next level.
If it works as a marketing strategy we will see more of it if not they will abandon the idea in future games.

I like your edit, because I feel the same way about that.

But otherwise, I think your argument that it's purely cosmetic is lacking. The cosmetics are also a viable part of the content, for example titles, that keeps many players interessted in doing certain things like skill hunting. Then there's Minipets, rare weapons and so on that serves its purpose only as a cosmetic feature as well, even though it has no actual impact on story or character development, yet keep the market fresh and certain areas replayable (Notice how next to noone plays Urgoz, while everyone plays UW. Reason number 1: Cosmetics)

And when you say it's catered to PvE primarily, meaning not everyone can benefit. Now I don't play a lot of PvP, but how exactly do PvP'ers benefit from WiK?

Besides even if I was to agree with you I would still like some HoM changes. You could always make them so they are quest-related or something, making it what you call "legitimate content".

You buy weapons, minis, armors, and titles: boom, your wealth has been transferred from GW1 to GW2. What I mean is, you can flaunt your GW1 wealth in GW2 through these things. Stored armors are not achievements, they're displays of wealth.

Although since wealth don't just happen, it is an achievement by itself... Of course you can argue that the bastards who get a perfect Eternal Blade or a green bday mini are just lucky, but even with that there's: Getting to the area (and winning), and being able to trade it off, and with the mini there's having the character for the required amount of years. Hell, some people call luck itself an achievement, although I personally find luck to be the black sheep of capitalism, seeing as it's the main point of envy

I should have clarified that my chief issue with the OP's idea is more that it's additional cosmetics to serve a purpose which HoM already serves. Things like new rare weapon skins can be neat, but I'd rather not have development time lost to HoM stuff - that place doesn't need to be made more important, and I really worry about what we could screw up in GW2 if we start begging for handouts in there.

With WiK, it's a chain of events that you can choose to do whenever. While many things for HoM require lots of time in grinding/farming (titles & armor sets, though the second can arguably be funded from PvP), I lump WiK with EotN or an expansion pack because it's grab-and-go.

Quest-related HoM stuff I'd be fine with community-wise. While such quests could take large time investments, they would likely be doable from square one in a day or two if someone wanted them, so anyone motivated could have access.

To clarify two things...

1) There is absolutely no rush on this suggestion. Priority should go to things that are actually important for the game, and this is merely a "in the unlikely circumstances that you find yourself not busy, you might want to consider this before GW2 comes out."

2) I don't give a damn about physical items from the Hall showing up in GW2. The weapons don't need to be removable from their stands, the miniatures don't need to get up and walk into our Xunlai accounts, any of it. I just want the Hall to not look pathetic when I finally see it in the next game (the garbage dump that is the Valor monument in particular). I'd much rather it be a place of tranquil nostalgia, a way of looking back at a game we've all enjoyed, then a generic set of unlocked items that merely serve to engorge the e-peen.

BINGO! The HoM got the problem that it's not personal. I'm still extremely pissed over the valor thingy, seeing as it doesn't show what kinda weaponry your ancestors used.

lol. just no. GW2 should have VERY little to do with Gw1. I would rather Anet focus on getting GW2 done with!

Except the lore and what's actually inside of the HoM All I want it to be, is a gallery, reflecting the same statues, minis and such from GW1... which is reason number 1 why I want a better weaponry... seriously don't you agree that comming in and seeing only destroyer weapons, which your character never used, but just got for that thing, is unpersonal? I personally would like to show my sins Shiro's Daggers, my warriors IDS and Exalted Aegis, my rangers Ironwing Flatbow, my casters different staves, wands and foci... Not some ridiculous melted piece o' rock >.<

I think ANet thought "Hey we might be able to boost GW1 sales with releasing information on GW2 and saying 'playing GW1 you get more haxx in GW2.'" They should of thought their marketing through made another expansion before marketing GW2 because users like content.
Don't give me the bullshit that WoW only gets content because people pay for it half their content is bullshi anyways.

On topic: Dont worry you have plenty of time to finish your hall. Well at least till 2012. LOL.

Anet is going to have people working on guild wars 1. This is a suggestion of what they could work on. All the people saying no don't do anything finish guild wars 2 are starting to annoy me, do you really think they would pull resources away from guild wars 2 to implement something like this? No they would have the people already working on guild wars do it.

And obviously I know its not gonna happen but some of the ideas are good.

Nice ideas, but I can't imagine they'll ever happen - if such things ever rose to the top of the priority list... I think the live team would actually be disbanded and moved to GW2 development!

I mean, who would really appreciate such changes anyway? Personally, it's extremely rare I visit my own HoM, and I've never visited anyone else's HoM. My only interest in HoM is to see what shiney-but-inconsequential baubles appear in GW2 for it.

If they changed something I'd maybe go take a look... but GW2 could be out before the next visit.

Actually I think all of these are awesome ideas, but I don't see adding weapons bought with real world money instead of earning them.
I do believe we should be able to display anything we earned ingame so that we can show some kind of achievements other than what's presently available.
But playing all the special missions and books etc. I believe they should be displayed because some of those missions and quests are pretty hard.
So I say yes to all except the bought weapons.

Not really interested in more additional objects-achievements for HoM. Although I have thought 'well if you can put one common pet, why not your pick of ONE common customized weapon or favorite green.' BUT Like others said, I wouldn't want time devoted to additional HoM that would slow the developement and release of the game itself.

For the 'bookshelf' thing... it made me think about the home instance we will have in GW2 and that might be a neat thing to have in your home.. as you achieve chapters in GW2 a book fills the bookcase. Click to "read" achievements" kind of thing. but maybe they have that already maybe not. I wont be heart broken. But HoM info probably will be released soon enough.

From all the latest information released. I'd say anet is doing a pretty darn good job. and I can wait to toss some water on some plants and have a water fight or two.

Just a quickie question. Having played for many years I have lots of heroes, pets and titles etc etc, but I've only decided to start adding to hall of monuments in preparation for GW2.

Many of the monuments are now full, but I have one question.

Will GW2 reward you for having more elite things displayed, or will it reward you the same regardless, as long as you have a full monument?

For example, if you had Vekk and Ogden displayed, would your rewards be worse than a player showing...say...Razah - because he's harder to obtain?

And would the rewards be the same for the title statue/monument, as long as it's full? Or would you be better off displaying harder to earn titles for better rewards?

We don't know yet. Waiting for proclaims soon.

Ok thanks. From wiki:

That means you can add more than the required amount (example 5 companions displayed only, but you've added 10) - and choose which ones are displayed.

To me, that just sounds more cosmetic, letting you choose who to display. But, I guess we won't know until they actually say, which could be some time!