Update - Thursday, July 7, 2011

The weirdest thing about most of the complaints is that people seem to be comparing the whole of WiK to the first third of the new content. I don't know about you but I found the addition of a new 30 second dialogue every 2 weeks a lot more boring than what they gave us today. And this part of the content is pretty much the equivalent of the dialogues you had to see to start WiK - a way to set the stage for the events that are about to enfold in the months to come.

While it was rather repetitive, I mostly liked it. Noticing that the Dragon's Throat quest is tiny bit different depending on how you play it was nice for example. I don't think there's so much they can do with this game anyway, it's too old. The rewards aren't that great but it's just the first part (and I don't really play for the rewards anyways).

If you were paying attention to the dialogue in Rhea's Crater, Zei Ri suggests that the Jade Sea is already beginning to return to water, just that it's happening deep beneath the surface (a plot device to explain it's changing without having to alter any of the environments). Don't hold your breath to see the Jade Sea actually return to water in GW1.

I think WiK was completely underwhelming by comparison to just the first third of this one. There was little to no character or plot development in the WiK, just a small advance from a camp to Lion's Arch (and a completely anti-climatic taking of Lion's Arch). Most of WiK was a series of boring political dialogues which didn't really advance the story at all, they just created excuses for people to be in different places. Winds of Change is doing a better job of expressing the situation of the people and the reasons for why the Ministry is doing what it's doing and how the people would embrace or fear it. It's a much better story than what we got with WiK.

Honestly, how is kill x afflicted any different from kill this mursaat, now that mursaat, now kill this boss for my bounty etc. When WoC wasn't advancing the plot (mostly during the cleansing arch of part one) it was advancing the character development of Zei Ri (who fleshes out the Ministry and the situation of the Canthan people). We had very little in the way of character/lore development in WiK but WoC is telling a much tighter story and imo doing a pretty good job of it so far.

I'd be happier if I could get Paper Fans as Foci as well. I like my Golden Pheonix Caster sword, but the idea of being able to Dual-Wield Paper Fans would be awesome! (I'd need to find a Paper Fan foci first, hence the annoyance)

The game is based on killing foes and other players. Content comes with more and suddenly it becomes awful. I don't get it.

Complain that monster bars are bad. Content comes with a handful of PvX inspired bars. Still complaints.

Hmmm so after you finish the quests haiju lagoon and chos explorable are filled with lvl 24 scavengers instead of the usual mobs. Which is kind of funny because i had never done the miller's quest "sentimental treasures." The chest spawned but the enemies around it did not. I hope they took this into account in later areas and did not make the new mobs replace some boss that someone might have to cap from.

nvm looks like they thought of this and replaced afflicted bosses with am fah bosses with the same elites - at least this is the case in pongmai valley.

After reading all of these comments I am sticking to my guns and playing all of this after it is all released. Not that I can play any GW for a few weeks anyways, but I want to play it all at once as opposed to in chunks.

Wait, scavengers appear in Haiju Lagoon? Say I'm helping out a friend with a quest.. Will he be fighting those high level enemies too!? :S

WiK was much better apart from the tedious dialogues and repetitive zoning. I completed WiK on 2 wars, 2 mesmers, 1 monk, 2 sins, 1 ranger, 1 ele, 1 necro and 1 rit. Never completed HotN, was so boring which this seems to follow.

I like the make up of the WiK missions, it feels so different from what I have and they will need to make WoC so much better to even come close to WiK. I hope they are up to the challenge of it.

Seems it took them a long time to come up with this 'content' which kind of makes me think they should have had much more quality to it.

Eh, no. The Afflicted have good builds. Raising their "party size" from ~4 to ~8 goes a long way to legitimately increasing the difficulty of the encounter without having to resort to pumping health and levels, because they have builds that work well in a party. The heals and support skills are spread out amongst all of the casters, everyone can do damage, half of them help the remaining afflicted when they die now because of the new soul explosions...in short, these are mobs done perfectly. Buffing their builds for HM is simply unnecessary, and buffing their stats is the same darn thing they do in every other area; increasing the number of foes lets the NM quests retain a little challenge while letting HM become a frantic struggle for survival (in the parts where you're swarmed).

@Silverblad3: I have a similar opinion, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Maybe it's because the main storyline consisted of so few quests (which were mostly go-here-kill-X, with a special trick sometimes thrown in). Maybe it was the abundance of side missions (bounties, the courier, random encounters), or simply that it was the first new content we'd had in a LONG time, with enemies that were actually fair and difficult. Maybe it was just the setting. Either way, these quests aren't that much different than the WiK, and yet it feels...less fun. I don't know. It could simply be that we're comparing the introductory quests to all of WiK, and the "cool" WoC content is coming later. I sure hope so. That really will determine how many characters I'm going to slog through these pseudo-vanquishes.

I do think that people really shouldn't be comparing the rewards of WoC to those of WiK yet. We didn't get access to oppressor weapons or even have any way of using our medals until the very end. For what it's worth, I do prefer these "vanquishes" to the extended dialogs that started the WiK.

Limited edition to get people to buy it now. Probably will have special sales to allow people to buy it later.

So far liking the giant afflicted.

I think so - I took my 2nd account with me into chos and the lvl 24 scavengers still showed up even though my 2nd account hasn't done any of the WoC quests yet.

My only gripe about this whole thing is that they used the platinum skin for the bow instead of naga. platinum is sooo ugly.

That's pretty annoying, especially considering these are enemies with higher than normal difficulties.

They should have made them level 16 or something.

For anyone that didnt notice there are some lore encounters after you finish the quests http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Winds...nge_encounters

They also kind of made Signet Shields worthless. They've been spamming that skin too much.. For the next update, I hope they use a different skin. Like the serrated shield!

Was your second account the party leader? That might reverse it, but it's purely a guess.

As for the quests, I loved em. Mobs actual have useful builds and makes for a more enjoyable time in my opinion. Guess you can't please everyone though. Only part I didn't like was cho's, mainly because 4 man areas with high lvl mobs is a bit tedious.

While I do complain a lot about anets abandoning of GWs and making stupid mistakes this time around I actually like the grind and quests. People keep complaining about killing ten rats but its fun to kill rats and other things when its causing you to progress through gear and levels.

Checklist:

- No, or very limited, solo missions/quests. Check
- The absence of Lv36+ enemies that can cast three different variations of Healing Light, Discord & Energy Surge in under four seconds. Check
- Relaxing, yet challenging. The idea that I can take my time and not have to worry about two spawn groups from behind me every four steps moved. Unsure
- Builds on enemies that use elite skills rarely or somewhat never seen on foes. Examples are: Equinox, Healer's Covenant, Power Leech, Wanderlust and Beguiling Haze. No Check
- Some reward, even if it's a mini Pet Rock. Check
- Same as above, but Kurzick/Luxon faction is earned. No Check
- Possible green drops from bosses. Unsure
- The use of pop culture references is moderate. Everything doesn't have to be based on the last 12 months of stuff happening out there in the real world. Check

Let me know if anything is correct, wrong or can be made certain.

update added quests after light my fire

shield of the dead skin would be nice

hahaha new courier quest is fun =)

Just got a new update...I have a suspicion that the weapons on the Scavengers have ben fixed.

eeew..One's a solo quest. Quick someone do it and tell us all how bad it is!

Its like the dwarven boxing, very fun

I've seen Plague Signet, Weapon of Quickening and Temple Strike - not too common elites.
But I'd rather not see enemies carrying useless elites if they're supposed to be challenging.

Okay..so the new solo quest wasnt soo bad..A few gold drops for me. This is the kind of quirky thing that should have been in yesterday's update. Variety= fun.

I'm sure it was meant to be there, think it was bugged.

But yea i agree was good quest ... and it wasnt about cleansing wooot!

But that still only brings the total to 20 (40 with HM) right? 17 of the story, and 3 of these side quests. There are 21 (42) quests I thought. Wonder where the last one is.

Alright, the solo quest was great. It was something different from the other WoC quest, but something familiar and fun. It had humor in it and I loved the Falcon Punching. Gives me some hope that the rest of this WoC stuff might not be so bad. maybe we had to just get some of the boring stuff out of the way upfront.

NPC in Kappa quest has dual Shinobi Blade daggers = do want.

The new solo quest gives Imperial Commendations instead of Ministerial Commendations. I don't know if this is intended or a bug but it's a smidgen underwhelming.

The one complaint I have about needing to invest in builds is that for NORMAL MODE it seems out of line, I mean you're only supposed to be required to have beaten Factions to do this, but I can't see a group of people with only factions skills doing this. When you need to run metagame builds to beat normal mode, that's not right. For hard mode it's appropriate, but not normal.

As far as other things go in WoC, with some hind sight.. I think the first 12 quests (killing afflicted) were largely uninteresting though the ones where you got literally swarmed were exciting but at the same time a bit frustrating because there was way too many coming from all angles to handle. Usually for those I wiped once after getting swarmed, then when they were all nice and balled up I came back and killed them a lot easier. I'm admittingly not good at micromanaging heroes while controlling my own character so it gets frustrating when your heroes scramble in all different directions because they're being swarmed yet they won't run out of aoe (they stand there and die unless you tell them to move).

For minister Cho's estate, I have a few tips for you who found it difficult. First off, summoning stones summoning stones summoning stones. They are worth it in limited party content. Secondly, you need to approach the peasants from the right directions to avoid them getting into combat. Now the menagerie captive is surrounded on all sides so it doesn't matter, luckily that's all just animals that attack with melee so she's okay. The second one, make sure you approach from the west, lots of afflicted to fight along the way, but you'll kill the groups she might run into before triggering her, and she ends up being completely safe. Same thing for the third one on the island, watch your approach. Don't approach from the west, swing around south and approach from the south east, you will kill off the afflicted groups she would normally aggro before triggering her, leaving her completely safe.

After purging all the afflicted, the quests start getting a little more interesting. The arcs with the Am Fah and Jade Brotherhood have actual stories being developed and most of them are not centered on wiping out everything but on persueing one boss, obviously you kill trash along the way, but in the last quest your character actually says to try avoid killing people when you can, and as you come across the bosses normally in Dragon's Throat, they have conversations that make you realize they're largely normal people. Thugs to be sure, but honest thugs, with families and friends. It puts what the ministry of purity is doing in new light (and frankly you begin looking at them like they're Nazis).

Why would it be a bug that the Imperial guard gives out Imperial Commendations instead of the Ministerial Commendations the Ministry quest giver is handing out?

All of the new WoC quests have given me Ministerial Commendations including the other quests from Lei Jeng. That's why it feels odd to me that this quest offers Imperial Commendations.

Well if you recall the text in the latest sewer quest the ministry man mocks the Lei Jeng for not being part of the ministry hence his armor. So lore-wise it may not be a good idea to give these out.

This is incorrect. All the ones from the Ministry guy reward Ministry Commendations, and all three quests from the Imperial guy reward Imperial Commendations. Looks intentional to me.

I honestly disagree, I like the lower level cap, I hate grinding levels. I like getting a set of armor, or weapon, and growing attached to it, as it's my weapon, my armor, instead of junking it every time I turn around because I outleveled it and outgrew it. Only at cap does content start getting interesting to me.

That's right, doh. I got mixed up with Xan Hei in Xaquang.

/ignore me.

Anyone know if the Falken quest is repeateable, akin to kilroy's mission?

Debating on whether to turn it in or not.