What did you like or dislike about WoC(Part 3)

Likes:
- Panda
- New quests
- Some of the new greens/golds are really nice

Dislikes:
- Part 1 kept me from doing this on more then one character, and it kept me from doing Hm. (Geez, way too boring to do it again!)
- Some of the new greens/golds are just dull
- The dialogue between Cynn and Mehnlo during Raid on Shing Jea Monastary was only viewable in Hm. I don't see any reason why players who just don't want to bother with hm can't see this! (Thank god for wiki, otherwise I would've missed this
- Zei Ri only attainable by doing the HM quests, it's fair that people who do HM will get a better reward.
I just don't understand why he would join the player, after the small cutscene we don''t see anything from him. Then sudden;y he joins our party

The thing is, nowdays NM and HM are DIFFERENT parts of the game, even if it does take place at the same place in the same time. Most HM quest does have additions/differences from NM not just being harder mobs. So technically people who havent done HM havent finished that part of the game

Likes:

It is fun content to play. Yay.

Dislikes:

HM-only hero: What the hell? Who thought it is good idea to make player play thourgh content twice? It is not as if they need people busy in order to keep them subscribed. HM was supposed to be about extra rewards, not about unique rewards unobtainable by other means. And players needing to read forums to realize this new hero even exists is ... sigh.

I was mostly interested in possiblity of racking up some extra faction points. That was not delivered.

Pop culture stuff. If you go overboard with it, it is no longer funny or entertaining. It just makes it look like creation of meme addicted teenager.

Overall, I thought it was pretty decent. The first part was a little repetitive/mediocre with all the VQ afflicted stuff, but the rest was awesome. I also like how they've put a worthwhile reward in for doing HM. Definitely will make me go and do this stuff in HM now.

Likes:
-free content to play for several hours
-panda
-new minis, cool new scythe and wand
-fun boss fight
-new rit hero
-new lore
Dislikes:
-Imperial weapons not in hom
-new heroes not in hom
-imperial commendations not redeemable for nothing new
-ppl whinning about rit hero

I don't see the big deal with having an extra Rit hero only available in HM. The heroes the game already offer outside of WoC are enough for the player to breeze through, and even break the game. There was no content so far designed with the extreme need for three rits or two rits/ three mesmers. And once the melee AI update and the final ele update are out there, Miku and half the other guys are going to increase in value; how many rits and mesmers will we need in the party then?

I also don't understand the complaint about having to replay with 7 characters the HM content. I mean, if you're doing it with 7 characters, and you're willing to be a perfectionist with them all, then you should already know that it was you who opted to be crazy. Not that I have a problem with it, really, but to perfectionists that only play through WoC with 1 or 2 "main characters", a new hero at the end of HM is perfect, IMO. And for casuals... well, you're already overloaded with OP heroes, you're not going to notice a difference really.

The only people who really need a third rit hero to further break the game are those who are willing to do everything in HM in the first place.

Likes:

SPOILER ALERT! (I think)

1. Free content.
2. I REALLY liked the funny dialogue during that solo quest where you're in disguise. I haven't played too much in a while, so I was laughing in real life when the different goons were venting their incredulous gripes at the main character's (me) infamy (from their perspective). I liked running away from them as well. It was like I was trolling them.
3. The new skins are fun! I only have the two swords skin though so far (the daggers). I'll keep farming through my other characters' storylines until I get the parrying dagger (shield), and bo stick (scythe).

Dislikes:

1. Part III of WoC seemed a little too short. Maybe it's just because the difficulty changed somehow? All I know is that it didn't take me too long to finish it, and I normally take my time through these sorts of things. Maybe there's more to the story that I haven't finished yet.

2. There's some real trash in some of those lockboxes.

General Remarks:

1. I thought the difficulty was just about right, but I still wish there was a little more content to extend the length of required time to go through. I'm the furthest thing from being elite, but I still leeroyed my way through all of the content in NM with heroes. For HM, I'm having to tweak my builds a little and be a little more mindful of positioning in order to progress through the storyline, so I think the balance of difficulty is well done.

2. I don't mind working through HM to get the new ritualist hero. Rewards should be scale according to difficulty, so if HM is actually hard, there should be a meaningful reward at the end. A new hero is a great reward (for the sake of collecting them), even though I noticed that I don't even use a single ritualist hero anyway.

3. I have some mixed feelings about the final fight. For the most part, I was standing aside watching things unfold and reading the text. It was neat to see multiple Reiko's, but she was never a threat. I felt like a boss character, and Reiko couldn't get past my goons in order to get to the boss fight (me).

I liked the panda and all but I really do think WoC ruined GW in my point of view. Many people will still have a hard time completeling the quests, on top of the HM ones. As well as crappy rewards, which show no real "reward" in doing. What a great way to ring in GW2 with a bitter taste in some peoples mouth.

No bitter taste in MY mouth. And I do not think that WoC NM is a pain in the arse. Au contraire - it's pretty much a breeze, so I don't know who those people having a "hard time completing the quests" might be (by the way - am not even close to an elitist). And I actually enjoyed WoC so much that I even decided to try it HM. Don't care about the rit hero after finishing WoC HM, I JUST ENJOY WoC & still feel like a child when opening the lockboxes.

Likes:

• Zei Ri was an incredible supporting character. From part 1 to part 3 he was more of a hero than the guys we teamed up with in Nightfall and EotN. I really liked him and I felt like he carried a lot of the story that might not have been told otherwise. I'm glad he's a hero now.
  
• The fight with Reiko. She was a good villain; she didn't seem too cartoonish, she had motivations, he history fit in well with the other characters in the story (Miku and Ashu) and didn't feel forced and she served her purpose well. The fight was incredible. The clones were a genuine surprise - I had no idea what was happening at first and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I loved the clones of her as well as the clones of my party members. That was a very memorable and enjoyable boss fight - it stands out to me more than any other boss fight in the game. This felt like the climax to an addition chapter in Tyria's story, the Battle for Lion's Arch was fun but when it ended I honestly though, is that it? This is how a game story needs to end.
  
• The return of the panda pet. We all wanted one in Factions. We were all disappointed with it's removal from the game. It's a much nicer reward (and very fitting of the campaign it comes from) than what we are used to, even though 99% of the people who finish WoC will never get one.
  
• The story. I loved how they explored the different Factions and their motivations for being involved. Honestly I felt like WoC was more true to the name of the campaign than the original plot line was. It was nice to see fleshed out bad guys, people who had reasons for doing what they were doing and fighting for something. I liked the acknowledgement that the player character isn't really that different from the people he kills, especially when the enemy isn't afflicted but rather Canthan citizens. Again, Reiko was a good villain and the additional characters like Eri and Zei Ri really helped drive home the black, white and grey themes in the story.
  
• Imperial weapons and green items. They look nice. The green items are also cool especially the unorthodox ones such as the dagger shield, sword wand and staff scythe. It's still annoying sometimes when you see a nice green but it's not really usable due to crappy stats.
  
• The characters. Similair to WiK, a lot of them are a lot more memorable than the average GW character. I particularly liked Apprentice Zhi and Eri. I felt the writing for the support cast was a lot stronger than most of GW.

Dislikes:

• I strongly dislike the decision to lock certain content down for HM only players. This actually pisses me off. Nothing else in GW has ever done this (aside from titles) so to deprive players from seeing a cut scene or an extra part of the story simply because they don't care for playing the stuff a second time in HM makes me angry and disappointed. I strongly believe this was the wrong call. I've always believed HM should remain optional, I believe they've crossed the line by putting story elements and a hero reward as specific HM rewards.
  
• The inability to repeat the story again on the same toon (HM doesn't count). I can go through Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and EotN as many times as I like. Sure I'm missing out on primary quests but the core content (missions) is still there. It seems a shame to me to put so much work into something and not allow us to do it more than once (or twice for HM players). The added avenue for rewards would also be nice.
  
• No bounties (provided the rest of the content couldn't be repeated). I think they are lame and I don't do the WiK ones any more, but given there are no other ways to acquire more rewards, it seems a shame to not give us a bounty or some other way to get the rewards and stretch the content, particularly seeing as it took so damn long to release all the content.
  
• Random chance reward grind for desirable items such as the panda. This is always a terrible decision and I wish ArenaNet would stop doing it. I don't want to run the same dungeon 50 times to get a dryad bow, I don't want to open 100 boxes looking for a chance at a panda pet - random chance with low drop rates is not only grind, but it's incredibly frustrating grind. I don't consider grinding equivalent to earning something so it disappoints me Stumme wants us to grind if we want a panda pet. As it is, the pet isn't prestigious, it's just for the rich and the very lucky - that has nothing to do with skill or earning it. Rewarding the rich and the lucky? That's lame.
  
• The ending. The story was strong right up until the ending. I feel like I need more closure on some of the factions involved, what about the tengu? How does the ministry stand today? Why didn't the emperor get involved more? Why wasn't the Dragonguard better utilised? I'm OK with letting Ashu live, but that didn't really give much closure to the story. I suppose in the end Miku ended up being a weak heroine in the bigger picture. She seemed to be far more relevant to the game during HotN than she did in WoC.

Likes :
- new strongboxes that " always" provide a cool item unlike zaishen chest or other things
- Quests that were more original that those afflicted farm quests
- New green weapons
- a possibility to explore shing jea arena

Dislike :
- quite disappointed at end fight taking place in shing jea arena( ...)
- new imperial weapons aren't so cool( besides, anyone will use his items for lockboxes..)
- you still need to do those HM quests to get to this content( i enjoyed a lot Tracking the corruption HM and Haiju Lagoon).. this substitutes for real content..
- still no PvP arena linked to WiK/WoC or anything..

Im enjoying the 3rd part of WoC. Nice improvement from the first 2 parts.

NM is fun. HM mmmmhmm has issues, but its doable.

I think the main problem with the HM WoC stuff is the ballance between challenge and frustraition, where one can get uber frustraited repeat-failing a quest in HM that they had no problem with in NM on the one hand but then the on other hand a simple exploit (minnion pulling NPCs in clensing haiju lagoon, trading blows etc) makes the HM version so easy its almost lame. Simply put, I think people want content to be more challenging, without the frustraition or having to resort to lame methods. "Fus Ro"

I'm very much liking the new Imperial Lockbox thingies, although I don't see alot of people in future spending hours going to hunt MoP groups in the Undercity for commendations. I think there needs to be some kind of daily WoC bounty quest to accomodate for those who dont have 10+ WoC ready characters, let alone the time to go through the whole thing 10+ more times.

Heh. I see Zei Ri is getting a lot of hate for various reason aswell. Maybe should have killed him along with Xan Hei.

I find the hardest part about HM is getting some to play with. When each chapter came out there was a window of grouping and now it's gone. Even in my entire alliance I know of only one other person playing WoC.

I feel like I am being punished for getting here late and playing with lots of different characters (25). I gave up on the idea of playing with another toon.This has even effected the way I plan to play GW2, I originally planned to buy extra slot for lots of characters.

Now I will buy just the game. Start one character if I don't like it, it become a mule because I will keep for the fact that it will be the first. Then I will try others until I get the one profession I like. Play that one profession and no others. The other slots will be mules again. Because I'm not going to get locked out of content for being late again.

The only thing i disliked was the end.


Not eaven hard.

SO F_____ CONFUSING !

.....Confusing.

There are plenty of people doing WoC - I know this, because I see people streaming to the NPCs in question - but everyone pretty much is doing it solo. Maybe it's because it's been broken up so much that the community is spread out. Maybe it's because it's more difficult than WiK, so people feel like they need their stronger hero teams instead of trusting random PUG groups. Maybe it's because WiK came after years of no new content, plus a big ARG promo, so people were more excited for it and hence more excited to play with people. All of these are contributing factors; I know, because I PUGed almost all of WiK, and I've done effectively none for WoC so far for these precise reasons.

GW2 won't have heroes. Dungeon content (should) require a full team of 5 to complete. Hopefully that means that people will actually group up and play with each other. Either way, don't judge a new game by an old community; people partied up for damn near everything when GW1 was new, too.

Like: The overall quest line is good, no clear good/evil. The NM quests are fun to enjoy, some of the rewards are cool.

Dislike: You need to finish HM to unlock a hero, and you just got a sin hero in NM.

I've got to agree with everyone else. Clearly we all expected the sin hero, but sneaking in the rit hero as a reward for HM was cruel.

I liked part 3 a whole lot more than parts 1 and 2, but I'm still annoyed that to get my new rit hero I have to go through HM. And I'm VERY annoyed that quests like Tracking the Corruption in HM are nearly impossible. I can find buttloads of guides for casters, that go /Mo and bond all their heros, but what about my warrior?

WiK was great, I have it started on most of my characters and finished it on like five. WoC will probably get done on just this one character, NM and hopefully someday HM. And then I don't think I'll look at it again.

Updated dislike, rebalance the 4 man areas in HM, lazy live team.

Enjoyed:

New quests and story development.
New skillbars for mobs.
New GW engine features (toggle mobs in Vanq zones; using environmental items as skills).
Story progression was more grey than direct black/white.
Adding Miku as a new hero (even though assassin heroes are sub-optimal, use them just for fun).
Chance to add another Rit hero.
Devs did a few short interviews to give background for WoC (better than a viral campagin IMO).
Kind of happy that nothing is added to Hall of Monuments from WoC (there's a ton of items available for the Hall now).


Did not Enjoy:

Frustration from some of the HM versions of WoC quests.
Panda pet.
Another skinner box for a reward (prefer a token reward system).
No other way to get Rit hero (the panda pet is available from the zoo keeper).
More minis (was under the impression that Tonics were the new reward to replace minis).


Other:

Confused a bit by the ending, how is Ashu going to lead the Ministry?
How is Ashu talking with such a mature attitude? (thought he would be slightly confused by events)

I'm enjoying WoC actually

Likes:
-Panda
-Lockboxes have good rewards.
-New Minis
-new heroes

Dislikes:
-Seems like the weapons from WoC have useless mods. Although i haven't really checked them all out.
-no way to farm more Commendations like how you can farm war supplies for WiK. I think this is what they need to add.

Overall, i don't see how this has "ruined" guild wars like i saw a few posts up.

i really like WoC.

I dislike the differences in HM quest difficulty. One quest is easily rollable, the next could take a few hours to figure out positioning and builds.

Then there are the four man areas. insane.

Like:

- Part 3 and 2
- the rewards
- using the bombs in raid of shing jea
- memories of purity for reverting the spawns
- transporting full 8-man party into Shing Jea areas by talking to NPC again instead of mapping to Seitung and players forced to change party size. ANet should really do this more for the rest of the quests.

Dislike:

- Part 1 is extremely boring
- 4-man quests, especially having to protect NPC like "Warning the Angchu". It is painful to protect an NPC with a small team so that quest fails too easily.
- the existence of a HM to these quests. HM to me is just lazy programming. Yes it is harder and the rewards are greater but it is also possible to create a set of whole new quests, if you really want to double the number of quests. Yes, yes, we know you have a resource problem but you should know how players feel about playing repeated content. WiK is better in this respect giving access to all their rewards after playing through the LONG storyline ONCE.

By the way, I really don't care about the Rit hero. I already have my "dream" team having bought mercs long before this update. This also means there are fewer compelling reasons for me to try HM, so it may be awhile before I try it.

Like:
Lore (lots of text, make sure you read it all!)
Mini's
Weapons
Heroes
Quests
NM/HM difference
Raids
End Battle and battleground
Free
Panda
Mhenlo/Cynn
Bombs
Other roles of weapons (dagger as shield etc)

Dislikes:
Nothing to put in your HoM (yet)
No repeatable courier-like quest to get some more stuff

Absolutely disliked the second play through in HM just to get Rit hero. Would rather do 2-3 near-impossible *unique quests than the grind that was required.

I have 3 'mains'. By my 5th run through WoC I wanted to uninstall Guild Wars again.

The only thing I really disliked about Winds of Change were the mods on the end weapons (which you get from Imperial Guard Lockboxes and the Imperial Dragon's Tear). Although I wasn't keen on the difficulty of some of the HM quests, I expected those to be a lot harder anyway, so that was not as big a problem for me.

Aside from that, I thoroughly enjoyed the quests themselves.

Like:

Anything new is wellcome.

Dislikes:

KAPPA ATTACK!

I agree. To unlock that hero involves several hours of time.

We can't do part 3 without having done parts 1&2 first which is a real slog.

Omg, I thought I was the only one that found HM version of this quest harder than the whole entire woc content :-D

Well christ, no wonder....you do anything that many times in a row and it'll be boring as hell.

Likes

Its free stuff to do.

Okay rewards. (Inscribable Platinum staves, few greens, semi decent imperial weapons.) Better than experience scrolls, that's for sure!

Zei Ri is sexy.

There are no new tacky tonics.




Dislikes

- Miku is an assassin. Never going to use her. Worthless.

- Story was dreadfully boring. It was pretty easy to see where the story was heading in parts one and two. Part three felt anti-climatic. Reiko basically just disappears. Its really lame.

- The final battle with Reiko is a joke in nm/hm. It should have been challenging. I actually afked it both times.

- Having to complete HM for Zei Ri. It would have been fine if I hadn't needed to slog through parts one and two again. So boring, so draining.

- Lack of repeatable daily quests. I have no desire to drag through WoC again. Ever.

- Any and all quests that revolve around protecting an npc. Warning the Angchu and Minister Cho's Estate were very easy to fail. (Yes, I'm aware Cho's was updated and is much better now.) Npcs could easily get mobbed by all of the ministry guys/afflicted in the area.

- Having to play in areas with four man teams.

- Being bombarded with text and then immediately being jumped by foes while trying to read the text. Give me some time to read it!

- Greens with horrible mods. Add some 20/20 wands and offhands. Add weapons with desirable mods and I might feel like playing through the content again.

- Changes to default spawns of areas before the content was released in its completion.

I played through it twice on normal mode, once on hard mode.

Likes:
- New content (and for free), thanks team.
- I loved our character's dialog throughout the quests. After years of fighting I am going to sound a little jaded sometimes, or understand some things normal people don't. I also enjoyed our interaction with Miku this time. She was sorta lame when she was on those Keiran missions.
- Lore! I read everything (but I am sorta a freak). I especially enjoyed the Mhenlo/Cynn progression.
- Raid on Shing Jea Monastery was pretty fun.

Dislikes:
- Ashu. I'm just not feeling this kid. His lore and dialog isn't great. I really don't understand why their family is so important and why he treats Miku as he does at the end. His dialog in the last mission is terrible. I am just hoping it's supposed to be a connection to GW2 that we just don't see yet.
- Part 1 of WoC is boring as hell. How many zones do we have to clear before we understand we are cleaning out the last of the afflicted? I mean our characters have already killed loads of them the first time through Factions.
- Hard mode difficulty is all over the place. A few quests in the middle of the line are very, very, hard, while later parts are super easy. Plus, having to play a 4-person party just makes me grumpy.
- A lot of loose ends still for lore. It doesn't sound like we are really going to get that Elona content and there is so much that isn't going to be added and explained. I'll buy more costumes if it means I can get the loose ends tied up.

The only real complaint I have about it, and this applies to all their new heroes, is that they're slipping back into rewarding people who maintain their focus on one character. I fully support the idea of a second hero reward from hard mode but the idea of doing all that again on more than one character in order to access them? No.

Unlocking them for the account, or even a new quest you can only start if your account has completed that hero's "story", to allow access to them on other characters would go a long way to making these new heroes mean something.

I liked a lot but did not care too much for the first part. In fact I don't think I will be playing it again on my other chars or even in HM.
I have done WiK with many of my chars because of the fun and to be honest the weapons. The WOC weapons don't do it for me so no more woc for me.

Indeed.. I just finished HM on one character and wow...In fact, i didn't find mobs themselves to be really hard, but only that one bug when you lured a second group by accident and then you can't lure any mob, they're bugged and will come over and over.... Pretty annoying in quests without any resurection point and where you can easily waste an hour for nothing...

Actually, the end content( end of part 2 and part 3) are really cool, but first parts ( especially killing all afflicted, am fah's , etc..) are too boring ..

Likes:

-/-

Dislikes:

The rest.

New blog post from John Stumme, for those who are interested.

http://www.arena.net/blog/winds-of-change-wrap-up

I hate how much harder it got - I mean Factions was easy peasy lemon squeezy, how ever it seems they amped the "hardness" up on WOC...

"This way, players who just wanted to see the story and get to the sweet rewards could, and those who still wanted a challenge could find the difficulty they crave in Hard Mode."

I don't think that is really true with WoC. For WiK, I know some players who did BLA in HM just for the challenge, even though they would get the same reward as in NM.

As many others have said, ANet should have made HM optional for those who want a rit hero.

Of course they did. It's endgame content, it's supposed to be on par with EotN's difficulty, not Factions'.

I thought it was interesting to read:
It's good to hear that ArenaNet has realized that story and gameplay really should be separated. It's fine to have challenging gameplay but the story should not be buried by it. Deliberately putting up obstacles that keep players from experiencing a background story you want them to see is defeating the point of putting out the story in the first place.

Kudos to the community for letting ArenaNet know this.