Randin.5701

If we want to talk potential expansion settings, I'd like to see Dominion of Winds (maybe with some additional locations in the ocean if the Dominion isn't big enough by itself) with playable tengu. If a new playable race isn't in the cards, then how about expansions focused on one of the current playable races? HoT had a sylvari focus, and PoF and EoD (from what I've played so far of EoD) have a human focus, so let's do one focused on one of the other races. Both asura and norn lend themselves to similar stories: with their respective dragons dead, both races are starting to recolonize their ancestral homelands. The settlers stumble across some new big threat, and the Commander needs to ride to the rescue. Asura give us an expansion in the Depths, while the norn would give us more of the Far Shiverpeaks. Charr don't really have a 'resettling lost lands' angle, but you could still have some new threat emerging from the east, and the Commander needing to travel deeper into charr lands to deal with it. Ascalon is Iron Legion territory, and Grothmar Valley gave us a taste of the Blood Legion's lands, so maybe do an expansion set in the Ash Legion's territory.

More so than any particular locations, I just want them to address one of my pet peeves: have the LW zones connect to the wider world. It kinda bugs me just how many zones can only be traveled to via fast travel, especially when the zone is actually adjacent to another zone, just without an actual zone line connecting them. So yeah, connect the LW zones to existing zones.

Really, if they just changed all the meta-tied ones to reward the first time you complete the meta, rather than requiring you to complete it 10 times, I'd be happy. We really don't need to tie quite that much hoop-jumping to something like mastery points.

Not quite. All the regular achievements tied to story instances in Season 2 can't be completed on a character's first trip through those instances; the achievements only unlock on playing through a given instance with that character the second time.

If we get more expansions, housing becomes increasingly inevitable. There's only so many big back-of-the-box features still floating around that they could conceivably do in GW2. Granted, I wouldn't have called fishing as an expansion-selling feature, so maybe that pool is deeper than I think.

It'll run its course when/if playable tengu show up. 'Course, then the 'Playable Largos' threads will begin, so there you go.

This is honestly the big thing that holds me back from using minions, silly as it may sound. Has me hoping that the next expansion will give us a Mechanist-style pet elite spec--maybe controlling some sort of bone construct or a wraith or something like that--just so we get a pet that doesn't look so goofy. I'd also accept them revisiting the flesh golem and making it look more like the GW1 one.

I'd wondered if they were going to do something along those lines; really nice touch. With the Zhaitan-themed staff, I may finally have a legendary that I like for my necro.

If there's a squad running the meta and doing the caches, join it, then use a Teleport to Friend on the commander whenever they reach a cache location. That's what I ultimately found to work best.

Honestly? I just want Necro to get a pet spec. Ideally, a pet that doesn't look weirdly cute or outright doofy; make a nice change from the existing minions.

Eh, looking at the map, you could pretty easily get four zones out of the unused part of the Sea of Sorrows area. Granted, one of those zones would be a new city, so you'd probably want at least one more adventure zone in there, but you could conceivably get away with having one zone that isn't contiguous with the rest of the expansion.

The fact that they've been playing around with making a player character-style tengu model at all definitely does raise the odds that we will see playable tengu at some point (expansion 4 set in the Dominion of Winds, maybe?), although I'll admit that even that doesn't make it a certainty. Could be they were experimenting with the possibility of playable tengu, but decided that it just wasn't going to be doable at all and scrapped it; or hell, this could've been something that one of the artists was doing on a lark just to see if it could be done, rather than being an actual intended feature. Still, it's a good reason to keep hope alive.

So to help with that part, it's not actually freezing Task Manager, but rather it's treating clicking anywhere on the screen as clicking back into the GW2 window. If you alt-tab GW2 or open the Task Manager, stick to only using the keyboard rather than the mouse, and things will work fine.

If they were to go that route, I'd particularly want them to do something with the unused/underused biography choice each race has (human god, sylvari cycle, charr sparring partner, etc.).

Hoping against hope? Dominion of Winds expac with playable tengu. Less 'out there' possibilities? HoT had a bit of a sylvari focus, while PoF had more of a human focus--we'll see what EoD ends up being like--so we ought to see some expansions focused on the other races. With the dragons gone, we could have underground or Far Shiverpeaks expansions with the asura and norn recolonizing their ancestral homelands, or have some new threat out of the east that takes us into the charr Blood or Ash Legion lands.

If you have a skyscale, there is actually a way to skip the jumping puzzle. If you check around on Youtube, you should be able to find a video explaining it. Makes the process less infuriating.

Just started playing an Asura alt, and I've come to the conclusion that I really want that turban/headwrap thing that a bunch of the Asura NPCs have. Maybe not as a gemstore thing, since the model already exists, but it would be nice to see it show up somewhere.

The weapon doesn't really matter to me too much, I'm more curious about how the elite spec will change the class mechanic. Nothing in the artwork to suggest the pet-focused spec I would've liked to see, so that's a shame. The artwork looked like he had a flask in his hand or and his belt, and that he was standing in a poison cloud, so I'm guessing it's going to be some sort of alchemist or plague doctor themed spec. However, something like that feels like it would fit in the realm of 'fling around a lot of condi AoE' mechanics, isn't exactly new to the necro, so I don't know

Unlike with later LW seasons, the LW2 zones don't actually require you own LW2 to enter them, which is why they're just folded into Central Tyria for LFG purposes.

It's just always been part of the lore that Norn can take the forms of the Spirits of the Wild. If you have a Norn character, take a look at your elite skills and you'll see you have werewolf/bear/leopard/raven abilities.

A new race is a long shot, but if we do get one in EoD, it'll be the Tengu. Narrative ties to Cantha along with the whole 'planned to be playable in early development of the game' thing makes them too likely of a candidate.

They did clearly announce earlier than would've typically been expected, but honestly, if they hadn't announced the expansion early, it would've been a PR nightmare for them. The end of Icebrood had people angry enough as it is; if it hadn't been clear that it was because they had pulled most of the Living World team to work on an expansion, people would've really lost their **** over it.

Just did a quick count, assuming they treat Icebrood: Champions as a single episode, it should be wrapping up in mid-November. If they break Champions into the bits that it originally launched in, then it'll be done early December. Either way, enough to get the expansion out this year if they don't put a large gap between finishing the Living World revisit and launching EoD.

The Living World revisit is supposed to be part of the build up to the expansion. Based on the rate at which that's happening, the expansion is likely dropping November-ish.

Christ, I hope not. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel as it was getting enough mastery points to polish off the Central Tyrian masteries; things will be getting decidedly annoying if I need to find more.