The Long Lost Events of Queensdale

While running around Queensdale after completing the Bad Neighborhood daily, this topic started rattling around in my mind again.Back in the days before gliding, mounts, wardrobes, and megaservers (A long time, I know.), Queensdale had quite a few more events than it does now.You could stop bunnies from devouring watermelons (And unlock a merchant!), chase a mourning bull around the farmlands until finally returning it home, defend a farmhand from the apple orchard as he took his cocooned friend to safety, and more! These events are ones that showed me how dynamic and alive the game was in the beginning, and I took part in them whenever I saw them up, but alas, sometime after the original Feature Packs came out, these events suddenly stopped showing up. If you look to the wiki pages for them, all these events are listed as having unknown triggers, being population sensitive, or breaking after server resets.This is where I look to ask the Devs, is there any insight into these events, and possibly a way to fix them? I'd love to play these again, and would hope for new players to get to experience them as well.For anyone who is interested, the wiki pages for these missing events:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shoo_rabbits_back_into_their_penhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drive_the_rogue_bull_back_home,_and_fix_any_mayhem_on_the_wayhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_roadblock_the_bandits_have_constructed_to_stop_Shaemoor_traffichttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stop_the_bandit_thief_from_stealing_the_pumphouse_blueprintshttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_Farmhand_Nevin_as_he_transports_his_cocooned_friend_to_safetyhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_Mepi_from_banditsIf there are any other missing events, I'd love to hear about them!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_roadblock_the_bandits_have_constructed_to_stop_Shaemoor_traffic I've run into that one several times while doing the weekly key farm. Including last week.

@"Khisanth.2948" said:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_roadblock_the_bandits_have_constructed_to_stop_Shaemoor_traffic I've run into that one several times while doing the weekly key farm. Including last week.

Aha! Good to know! I wasn't entirely sure about that one since I have seen it more recently than the rest.

I've definitely seen the bandit roadblock thing, almost every single time I do a key farm.

I think I might have seen the Mepi thing while doing a keyfarm as well, but not 100% sure on this one.

I normally do keyfarms on sunday, the last day before the weekly keyfarm reset.

Some starter zone events were removed with the advent of the NPE because bundles were relegated to a higher character level.Others only appear when there is a high enough population in the area, so you can find them very occasionally.

Good luck.

@"Musaroxy.2874" said:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shoo_rabbits_back_into_their_penhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drive_the_rogue_bull_back_home,_and_fix_any_mayhem_on_the_wayhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_roadblock_the_bandits_have_constructed_to_stop_Shaemoor_traffichttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stop_the_bandit_thief_from_stealing_the_pumphouse_blueprintshttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_Farmhand_Nevin_as_he_transports_his_cocooned_friend_to_safetyhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_Mepi_from_bandits

Farmhand Nevin does still occasionally have problems with his cocooned friend. (I saw that one recently.)

Same for the bandit roadblock.

And I think I've seen the rogue bull as well.

But I haven't seen the rabbits one, nor the pumphouse blueprint one, in ages and ages. I have a niggling recollection of seeing Mepi and the bandits semi-recently (notable: since the NPE).

I've seen the Defend Mepi one recently, but I think it might be one of the events which only starts when there's lots of players in the area.

The only one on that list I don't remember seeing in the last year or so is the Rogue Bull, and there's a note on the Wiki page that it frequently stalls just after reset and isn't available again until the next reset.

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Some starter zone events were removed with the advent of the NPE because bundles were relegated to a higher character level.Others only appear when there is a high enough population in the area, so you can find them very occasionally.

Good luck.

I can't find where I read it but I'm sure I remember someone from Anet saying bundles were the number one cause of unnecessary support tickets from new players. Someone would pick up a bundle without really knowing what they were doing, then suddenly all their skills are gone and apparently they couldn't figure out how to get them back, panicked and contacted Support. Some people would actually assume the character was broken by a bug and delete them to start over...just to run into the same problem when they got to that point again.

I don't understand how that could be so common because every bundle gives you a skill which drops it and gets your normal skills back. (It does bother me that it's inconsistent: some use the weapon swap key, with an arrow pointing down, and some use skill 5 or 0 with a blue icon.) But I guess where my first reaction is "I don't know what happened...what are these new buttons? I'll push them and see what happens" (or read the descriptions) some people's first reaction is that they shouldn't touch the strange new buttons because they don't know what they do, and then of course they're stuck.

Theres the hostile elementals in village outside the floating castle in kessex. That no longer gets triggered or exists

@Randulf.7614 said:Theres the hostile elementals in village outside the floating castle in kessex. That no longer gets triggered or exists

I don't know what event you're referring to. All the (Queensdale) events linked in the original post do still exist and are documented in the wiki as such, with some being bugged to often stop working until the next server reset and others just being rare due to being only triggered by a high player population, but looking through the wiki I can't find any reference to hostile elemental events in Wizard's Fief in Kessex Hills, ever. The closest thing would be the hero point there that turns one fire elemental hostile as the hero challenge.

@Manpag.6421 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:Theres the hostile elementals in village outside the floating castle in kessex. That no longer gets triggered or exists

Its been over 5 years since it was last seen. There was some discussion on the forums a while back aboutit, but it def existed and it wasnt the karka one which was oct 2012

I think three things changed. First, the starter zones are usually not well populated, just keyfarmers or free players are there. Lvl80 players are rare except in a zone with a daily. Secondly, the events here are weak. The high level players finish it no time or dominate it with speed and/or power. Thirdly you are much faster now then you would back in the days. When I roam back to Queensdale on foot for a bit of relax, the old world was there, and when I rushed trough it on mount for daily it seemed empty and lifeless.TL;DR: you have to find a much shorter experience in a fraction of time as in the old days because of the change of power and speed in an underpopulated map.

@Danikat.8537 said:I've seen the Defend Mepi one recently, but I think it might be one of the events which only starts when there's lots of players in the area.

The only one on that list I don't remember seeing in the last year or so is the Rogue Bull, and there's a note on the Wiki page that it frequently stalls just after reset and isn't available again until the next reset.

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Some starter zone events were removed with the advent of the NPE because bundles were relegated to a higher character level.Others only appear when there is a high enough population in the area, so you can find them very occasionally.

Good luck.

Heh, yeah I worked in game QA for years and even now I still work as a software QA engineer. I would never even consider calling CS without first clicking everything visible, or going back to reproduce what I did. But of course I always actively test the boundaries of any new area, mechanic, etc. so to me it is always kind of fun to find a bug. I would have never even considered deleting a character over such a thing. But to someone that doesn't have my background it makes more sense. Something you did seemed to cause a problem, and you don't want to try to fix it yourself and make it worse, so call support. It shows you how difficult it is to design a game to be accessible to everyone but still be appealing to many.

A ton of things changed from some enemies or events to quests themselves, flagrant with "Help Diah tend her farm" some times ago you could use water buckets to extinguish fires and recover the farms, now you just have to press F near farm, that's sad, really sad.

I can relate with you on this.. over the years the vanilla content has felt like it's fallen behind the newer stuff by a significant level of quality.In some cases some of the old maps feel very empty and occasionally very dull to explore too.

What really bugs me about it though is that Anet sometimes seem like they don't much care for the older content of the game and would rather focus all of their PvE focused attention on making new content.. the still absense of a replayable form of lw1 is still one of my biggest complaints with Gw2.I like new content sure.. but I also don't want to be bored playing older content either because it's so lacking by comparrison.. sometimes just broken with events and content either bugged out or completely missing.I think the Gw2 experience is diminished quite a bit by the original game's content standad being so much lower than the content added by the expansions.Orr at the very least should feel like a warzone between the living and the dead.. and it just doesn't.I think the core game could really use some updating.. rework a bunch of events and make the world feel far more alive than it currently does.

@"hugo.4705" said:A ton of things changed from some enemies or events to quests themselves, flagrant with "Help Diah tend her farm" some times ago you could use water buckets to extinguish fires and recover the farms, now you just have to press F near farm, that's sad, really sad.

What happens if the bandit raid event left some bales burning? Can you still get heart progress by extinguishing fires then? (Yes, that event does still happen.)

@"hugo.4705" said:A ton of things changed from some enemies or events to quests themselves, flagrant with "Help Diah tend her farm" some times ago you could use water buckets to extinguish fires and recover the farms, now you just have to press F near farm, that's sad, really sad.

They got rid of a ton of things from Plains of Ashford too, Almost all the hearts and events in that area got neutered, but they never updated the text to the changes so it still says the old way to obtain progress -_- . I wonder how bad snowden drifts was changed, i never made a norn or an asura, but the Charr, Sylvari and Human starter areas had a ton of things removed.

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@"hugo.4705" said:A ton of things changed from some enemies or events to quests themselves, flagrant with "Help Diah tend her farm" some times ago you could use water buckets to extinguish fires and recover the farms, now you just have to press F near farm, that's sad, really sad.

You can still extinguish the bales both during and after the event - you just don't need to pick up a bucket of water first. And yes it does count towards the heart.

I have mixed feelings on that change. Mostly I think the removal of bundles from low level maps is disappointing but this one made it much easier to complete the event successfully. It used to be that either you had to kill all the bandits before they got to the bales or you needed a player dedicating themselves to running around with a bucket hoping someone else messed up and they got to extinguish a bale, because there wasn't time for one person to kill the bandits, get a bucket and get back before the hay burned away. That level of coordination is fine later on (and nothing compared to what some events require) but for the first heart and first event a lot of players encounter I thought it was a bit much.

Although I suspect it's one of those things where if we hadn't had it we'd never miss it. Elder Scrolls Online has lots of quests where you have to put out fires and either you just walk up to them and push the function key, or you pick up a bucket of water which immediately disappears and doesn't change your skills, then press the function key next to the fire to make the bucket reappear, splash the fire and vanish again. I've never seen anyone complain about that, and the only people I've seen complain about the lack of buckets in GW2 are people who remember the old version.

One thing I wish GW2, ESO and a lot of other games would do is let you use your skills instead of special items. My elementalist shouldn't need to find a bucket of water to extinguish a fire - she can summon a jet of water with her bare hands. Likewise if I'm holding a friggin torch already, or playing an ele or guardian) I shouldn't need to go and pick up a torch from a bonfire to burn something. (That one occasionally gets a pass if it's a magical torch - then I can assume my magical torch has the wrong type of enchantment.)

Bales were in fire without needing bandits to set them on before. It was part of the heart and when the bales are extinguished after some times, they return in fire state without any reasons. When I experienced the heart the first time, I don't remember any bandits coming. Bandits have been added after. The same can be told about metrica province and the golem chess which are now only available in HoT. Or the Inquest ampule thingy, was a time where you can also collect moss for the scientist, have been removed. Another great one: "Assist Researcher Kaii with Incomp's scrap heap", a long time ago, you were transformed into the golem, now we have a golem that spawn near us and follow us.

The information about bundles explains a LOT for me on some different parts of the game, and I can see some places where it really negatively impacts playing. In Caledon Forest, there's the event at the Fern Hound Kennel where you have to fend off spiders and pour repellent on Fern Hounds that get poisoned. But unless you can kill all the spiders at an insane speed, or you were around before the NPE, you're guaranteed to fail the event, because you have to go find an NPC who will give you the repellent. It'd be nice to get a bundle tutorial or tool-tip for new players, so we can just get proper experiences back. It's also disappointing that the heart in the area no longer turns you into a Fern Hound, it's incredibly slow to complete now, because you can't do half of the things you were able to before. The NPC even still offers the dialog option to change into a Fern Hound, but does nothing.I'm glad to hear that some of these events are still being spotted after the NPE though, that gives me hope that I'll be able to encounter them again, event without a fix for them.

@Dante.1763 said:

@"hugo.4705" said:A ton of things changed from some enemies or events to quests themselves, flagrant with "Help Diah tend her farm" some times ago you could use water buckets to extinguish fires and recover the farms, now you just have to press F near farm, that's sad, really sad.

I miss the old Black Lion Traders. For a while; the assistant was still talking as if his boss was still there. Felt a bit sad as it was like boss had died and assistant just 'forgot' for a moment.

@"Tyger.1637" said:I miss the old Black Lion Traders. For a while; the assistant was still talking as if his boss was still there. Felt a bit sad as it was like boss had died and assistant just 'forgot' for a moment.Man, those things were the best. Not only for convenience, but also for the atmosphere. Places like the Trainer's Terrace feel completely empty without the Trading Post and Profession Mentors.If they added Profession Mentors back in as perhaps normal NPCs who you could just talk to and get profession lore from, it'd make the area's they were in seem more alive.It'd make NPCs like that assistant have their dialog fit their situation again too.

@"Musaroxy.2874" said:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shoo_rabbits_back_into_their_pendefinitely still there, is a required event to craft the legendary weapon Nevermore, I got my Nevermore donehttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drive_the_rogue_bull_back_home,_and_fix_any_mayhem_on_the_waywiki foot note noted this event is often bugged, not surprised, there are plenty of open world event gets bugged, and super annoying if was part of legendary collection.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_roadblock_the_bandits_have_constructed_to_stop_Shaemoor_trafficI too have seen it occasionally during my weekly key farm runhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stop_the_bandit_thief_from_stealing_the_pumphouse_blueprintsI think I've only seen it few times in my 3 years of GW2, wiki's foot note did say it's rarely spawnedhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_Farmhand_Nevin_as_he_transports_his_cocooned_friend_to_safetyWiki foot note says base on player populationhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_Mepi_from_banditswiki foot note noted this event is often bugged, but I've definitely seen it on

A lot of open world events have a very long internal cooldown, while the event would only last few minutes at max, so unless you camp there 24/7, you may not see it; and most people dont stay in a single area for long unless need an item for a collection.

The perception is compounded more by the fact that open world events bug out often, or stuck with old school mechanism

@"hugo.4705" said:Bales were in fire without needing bandits to set them on before. It was part of the heart and when the bales are extinguished after some times, they return in fire state without any reasons. When I experienced the heart the first time, I don't remember any bandits coming. Bandits have been added after. The same can be told about metrica province and the golem chess which are now only available in HoT. Or the Inquest ampule thingy, was a time where you can also collect moss for the scientist, have been removed. Another great one: "Assist Researcher Kaii with Incomp's scrap heap", a long time ago, you were transformed into the golem, now we have a golem that spawn near us and follow us.

They bandits definitely weren't added after - I did that event during the betas, it was probably the first event I ever did. But like @crepuscular.9047 said a lot of these events only last a few minutes and then go on a relatively long cool down so it's entirely possible to run up to the farm, complete the heart, sort your inventory and head off again without ever seeing it. I don't remember the bales catching on fire without the bandits, but that sounds like a bug to me because it'd be very weird for hay to just catch on fire for no reason. (It is possible in real life, but very unlikely.)

You're right about the golem chess though, and I kind of wish they'd removed the boards for it too because it's disappointing every time that I can't play it (especially because it makes the heart take longer). They changed the tool boxes too - instead of picking up a tool to fix the golems in the lab now you just press F at the tool box to get a random animation of it waving around and then fix the golem without any tools.

Maybe the bandits were there after all, but 100% sure about water buckets near the well for the plants, no we can only tend them. Agreed, they changed a ton of quests and so on but not in a good way.By the way, does the asuran lab in the south of mount maelstrom already have inquest golem to open destroyers holes? Never saw them before.

As I recall. many of the Queensdale and other starter zone events were lost/changed (a few were also added) when they did the waste of time redesign for the Far East GW2 launch.