[If you are given a chance to reimplement the "personality" system, how would you do it?]

I never realised it was removed. I've been making dialogue choices based off this for years! 😖

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

7 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Do you realize the huge amount of armor colors this game has?

So if someone copies your look 99% but if they miss that shade by a smidge we're all good?

What are people losing here? You're acting like someone can just run up to you and rip your armour straight off your back.

I've seen someone run up to my character in DR, line up, and take a couple of mins to copy my look and then run off. It was amusing, but I'll probably never see that person again. What did I lose?

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

1 minute ago, QueenKeriti.5176 said:

HIPAA/PIPEDA violations in GW2? Time to get out the big lawyer money!

Like I said in the other thread, I don't mind if someone copies me, even on looks I've spent significant time on (especially with items/dyes that they will have a hell of a difficult time getting 😂), but I understand other people not liking an easy way for someone to do a one-to-one rip of their drip, and an opt-out button for them could be an option. I have no idea how long it'd take Anet to implement such an option, but, yeah.

Ok, but for those of us into the fashion game, who recognize the armour pieces and for those with eyes who can see colours, how are they currently stopped from just looking at your outfit and copying it, if they were so inclined?

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

1 hour ago, Kilty.4906 said:

Now would be a great time to introduce an option to swap between wardrobe looks and outfits. Currently, if you choose an outfit, it's selected for all the equipment tabs but sometimes you want an outfit for a determined gear and a wardrobe look for another.

Also, the selection to hide/view armor pieces, like gloves, headpieces, backpacks, etc, is across all equipment tabs, and you can't have different settings for different gears.

I'd also like to add that it would be great if the colours of the item were attached to the item rather than the slot. I like to use a couple of outfits for role-playing occasionally and having the dye channels be shared by all outfits creates a lot of extra work, having to swap dyes back and forth every time,.

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

1 hour ago, Kilty.4906 said:

Now would be a great time to introduce an option to swap between wardrobe looks and outfits. Currently, if you choose an outfit, it's selected for all the equipment tabs but sometimes you want an outfit for a determined gear and a wardrobe look for another.

Also, the selection to hide/view armor pieces, like gloves, headpieces, backpacks, etc, is across all equipment tabs, and you can't have different settings for different gears.

I'd also like to add that it would be great if the colours of the item were attached to the item rather than the slot. I like to use a couple of outfits for role-playing occasionally and having the dye channels be shared by all outfits creates a lot of extra work, having to swap dyes back and forth every time,.

[Next-Level Fashion Wars: Cosmetic Inspect Coming to Guild Wars 2 April 16!]

This is a total privacy violation! Unless we consent, our character should show up as the default PvP character model named "Player." How dare you look at my armour?! And anyone who read my name should be banned immediately!

And don't get me started on boons and conditions! My conditions are a private matter that are to be kept only between me and my healer!!!

[At 8000 hours in, I think It's time for feedback!]

On 3/27/2024 at 9:29 AM, Sobx.1758 said:

 

 

Not a fan of an idea like this, I doubt it would really make lfg that much more active, aside of people grinding out a single raid encounter on a timer for some optimized gph.

And here I agree. I'd rather wait longer for an expansion and get it as a whole than get it cut into pieces and then partially delivered every few months like they do it with soto. By the time we got the latest update, I already wasn't even interested in it.

I see this problem a lot in the GW2 community. People want to binge all of the new content in the first two weeks to a month and then spend the next year til the next LWS/Expansion complaining how there is nothing to do and the game is dead.

Just take your time with stuff and enjoy it. I think Anet gave it a good try, but by dividing the content people were going to binge in 2-4 weeks into quarters and then releasing it every three months still lead to the same problem.

Maybe they can try a monthly release schedule with the next expansion or something. But you can't really please everyone, so I think ya'll will still complain.

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

3 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Keeping up with online games generally.

The very fact that GW2 is still a very traditionally structured keyboard-and-mouse MMO is why it will not reliably sustain revenue, and certainly never top charts, in the current paradigm. The only two MMOs with any degree of widespread commercial success are WoW and FFXIV. WoW has survived largely due to being the oldest and most established experience, as well as being backed by what used to be gaming's largest megacorp. And FFXIV has survived because it is just a massive panderfest to franchise fans. Both of these are doing well in spite of their oldschool MMO structures, not because of them.

In a world where God of War is now Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XVI is now Devil May Cry, and Zelda is now an open world survivalist physics simulator, all franchises have been feeling the pressure to move further toward action combat as their main draw.

Not to mention, the online gamer sphere is massively dominated by action combat and FPS's, largely PvP and solo story experiences: Overwatch, Destiny, Fortnite, DotA, Smite. These games hit a better balance of development resources versus replayability, and allow players much more control over their experiences than open world and instanced team coordination.

Sure, GW2 might always have niche nostalgic appeal, but that won't sustain ANet as a developer. If it wants to actually compete in the market, it like every other developer will need to move away from traditional MMO structures and into solo/PvP action content. That is what jives with mass casual gamer markets these days.

This isn't even a graphics issue, although I think that comparison is disingenuous when GW2 looks like a PS2-era title. It's that the entire MMO genre is too slow and clunky and grindy for the current generation, in the same way that traditional turn-based RPGs are just too archaically slow to have much appeal outside of nostalgia.

Maybe MMO as a genre is out of favor. Tera tried the whole action RPG. And it had everything. Amazing over-the-top combat, incredible visuals, and all of the pandering you'd want. But it still died. Which is a shame, because the combat really was unlike any other MMO I've played. GW2 is perhaps the closest, especially if you play Vindicator.

[New expansion ideas]

On 3/26/2024 at 1:58 PM, mandala.8507 said:

"What's beyond Soo-Won" is too big an idea to jump into, imo.

God stuff could be interesting, but again, hard to pull off in these mini-expansions. They'd have to pick just 1 and drastically narrow the scope on them somehow. It can be about one god, but it can't be about THE gods, if that makes sense. Still, idk if I'm all that interested in a human god arc again already.

Abaddon falls into both the "overdone" and "too big of an idea" buckets, imo. It would have to be about a part of Abaddon we haven't covered yet. They can't rehash his whole thing again. It'd be too much to tackle, and I guarantee no matter how good it was, the GW1 geeks would be sharpening their pitchforks over it.

We just put poor Aurene down for her nap, it'd be rude to wake her up so soon.

Djinn stuff is actually too narrow, imo. There's nowhere to go with that story. It could be a sidepiece of a more involved narrative, but I don't think the Mythwright Cauldron itself is that compelling for an entire expansion narrative. And we had the raid about it already. Idk, doesn't seem deep enough to me.

And for the elevator pitch, I think Arenanet is scared of their Void lore. Imo, it was great and derived from a lot of wonderful lore seeds over the years for the franchise, but it confused a lot of the casual story gamers and even some of the people who think they aren't casual story gamers, so...I don't think Void is on their radar for now. I do hope it comes back though, at some point.

...

As far as directions that I myself think Arenanet might take for the next expansion, we have 3 major threads to follow out of SotO:

1. Waiting Sorrow, the Kodan, and the Norn Spirits: This one is probably my favorite because it gives connectivity between the mini expansions and I'm a sucker for snow, mystical nature magic, and celestial voodoo stuff.

2. Isles of Janthir and Mursaat origins: This one is very exciting in theory, but Mursaat are so hyped up at this point by all the lore nerds that I feel it's better to leave them up to everyone's imagination. I personally would love to know more, but I know for a fact this narrative would be drama for the community. Too much drama.

3. Mesmer Collective: This one is less concretely established by Soto than the other two, but I think it's a direction people in narrative at Arenanet are passionate about and have been doing a lot of work to lay foundation for. I could see this expansion being successful at any level of scope or narrative complexity, so I'm secretly rooting for this one even though it's not my favorite of the 3.

A very small 4th thread they could follow is the "people noticed when you died, Commander" thing and tie that into another god arc or a more involved Nayos-style venture outside of Tyria, but there's so little foundation for this direction that I don't consider it as a proper follow-up to SotO.

But anyway...

I don't think it's unlikely someone at Arenanet sees your list. I'm pretty sure they lurk here sometimes.

 

I know a few of ye olde lore buffs have brought this idea up a few times over the years and I want to see it too:

The fallout post-Balth with the gods. Honestly, I hate how they did my boy dirty, but it is what it is.

The idea is of Lyssa returning to see what happened with Balthazar and then us dealing with her. Part of the story should visit the Fissure of Woe and also finally seeing if Menzies is dead or not. The story can go in either direction really of either us facing Lyssa's wrath or having her lament the passing of her beloved, and then having us help her wrap up whatever is going on in the Fissure.

We did see with Kormir's domain that dark forces have taken up residence there. It is probably the same in all of the gods' realms, so it would be interesting to visit at least some of them and begin clearing out those forces and maybe getting some proper closure.

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

5 minutes ago, PyaKura.4895 said:

1. Oh I agree that there will always be a few qualified people to work on what could be considered antiquated tech (thank god!), but the fact is that you're not drawing in new blood by sticking with it. I also haven't mentioned killing anything off since we still don't know anything about it, really. It boils down to GW3 potentially being a new product/service, and every business comes up with a new product/service every once in a while, without shutting down what's been working up til now unless deemed necessary.
2. The tech and the industry know-how evolve constantly, and I'm not just talking about the MMO genre. But to answer your question about what everyone wants, how about some decent framerate to start with? I love GW2 for what it is but I don't see a world where Anet is able to fix the framerate shitting the bed as soon as more than 30 characters are on screen no matter how beefy your specs.
3. Again I don't think GW2 is dying (as far as I can tell) so I don't know why you'd make that point. That being said, there are always new efficient ways to develop games, with technology that's unfortunately not always compatible with your current development process. Keeping up with the industry is vital, especially in one as fast-moving as video game development. I mean no offence, but pretending otherwise is pretty delusional to me.
4. Consider the following:

• Long-time veterans that have long since reached endgame and accomplished most of their goals have been asking for more content
• A lot of new players never make it to the endgame because the new player experience is antiquated and objectively not very interesting when that's (arguably) the most important part of a game to hook new players in

While admittedly Anet has made progress on both fronts, it still isn't enough and there comes a point where it's not just about not being able to please everyone, but spreading your resources too thin on a game that demands an ever increasing amount of care to succeed. At some point, it's just easier to start with a new blank slate on which you have a higher degree of control rather than trying to make something work and eventually fail.

1. Making a GW3 would naturally cannibalize your GW2 playerbase because people will want to move the the newest, most currently supported game. Unless Anet wants to be the first company in history to continue making expansion/living world content for Guild Wars 2 while simultaneously growing Guild Wars 3 alongside it. If that is the case, then that's awesome! I would be super into that! People aren't worried that GW3 means that GW2 servers will shut down. They are worried that it means end of content for GW2. And if that is the case, the majority of the community will just move to GW3, thereby effectively killing the game.

2. I don't know that them making a new game will fix this issue. Having a large multi-agent game, even in single player, is a huge hit to the CPU. If they can't optimize their engine to run on even more cores than it does now, then I can see that being one of the reasons to switch over to a new one. But I haven't seen that being a huge detractor for the playerbase. More an annoyance.

3. My point is that Guils Wars is not dying. And thereofore I don't see why Anet would want to be looking to replace it already.

4. I think both of your points can be addressed within Guild Wars 2. I have seen lots of updates lately that have been slowly addressing new player experience. I personally have started two new characters this year and have found the leveling and questing experience to be significantly different and better than what I remember from years ago. Did you see the new glowy arrows pointing to items of interest or monsters that you need to kill for events? I only just noticed them within the last month. But boy does it make it more clear on what you are supposed to be doing. And the new event markers on the minimap that guide you toward the areas where active events are happening! Very cool! Plust the exploration markers that show up on the edges of the minimap to let you know where the nearest point of interest, waypoint, or vista is that you had not yet discovered. I love it!

As for veterans, I can't speak for everyone, but as someone who has been playing the game since Beta, and in fact since GW1 was out, I have been very happy with the new stuff introduced with SotO. Love the Wizard's Vault. LOVE the new weapon proficiencies. Love the new maps, and the leggy armour for us filthy casuals to grind for.

What is the reasoning for "starting with a new slate"? You do that when your current path is not working. Is Guild Wars 2 not working? 

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

3 minutes ago, PyaKura.4895 said:

There could be any number of reasons GW3 is being considered/made. A few off the top of my head:

• It is very risky for a studio to financially depend on a single title. While yes WoW has been around for a while, Blizzard has a multitude of other games to keep them afloat. Square Enix, same thing. Admittedly, I don't know enough about Jagex or CCP to take a guess at their financial status.
• Studios are made of people - very few people are willing to work on the same title for more than a decade.
• The tech is becoming older and older, meaning there will naturally be less and less qualified devs to work on it. As a dev, if you don't keep growing your skills because you keep working on obsolete tech, you might be killing off your career.
• In the same vein, tech in the industry is a continuous march forward, and like it or not, as a business you gotta keep up with the new industry standards if you even want to stay afloat.
• Just as focusing too much on user acquisition can be bad business practice, so is catering too much to an existing userbase made up of long time veterans as it inhibits growth and alienate new players.
• It's better to start working on the next big thing when you have money flowing in, rather than when your game's population dwindles too much that it cannot fund your next project anymore.

There are countless reasons why GW3 would be a thing, even if GW2 is still very much alive and kicking.

I don't think any of those points make business sense.

- On the point of it being risky to depend on a single title. I completely agree. In fact, I wish that Anet would make more games in the Guild Wars universe. I still want to see a Pact-based strategy game where we go through the various campaigns against the Elder Dragons and Balthazar and get to command all of these armies the Commander is leading that we only get to see small pieces off during the storyline. Can you imagine just the Orr campaign? It would be EPIC!!! But as for Guild Wars 3, instead of being a secondary product, it would actually be competing directly with Guild Wars 2. So making a GW3 that might flop would actually tank the whole company by killing off GW2 and deliver nothing.

- On the topc of not wanting to work on the same title for more than a decade. Ok.  So? There are thousands of companies that have been making the same exact product for decades. My first job was wokring on supporting a machine that was designed and built in the 90s and is still running more or less the same today. That's the business world. Even entertainment works the same way. There are several TV shows that have ran for 10+ years. People still love them. People who don't want to work on them don't have to. Just don't accidentally get a job there. Makes zero commercial sense to kill something that is working just because "well, it's been around a while!"

- On the point of tech being around too long. Ok, what is the current hot thing in MMOs that everyone wants, but Guild Wars 2 cannot do?

- The "tech moves on and so should you" is a non-point. Chasing industry trends is silly. Lots of tried and true companies around that have established markets. Guild Wars 2 is not currently dying becuase it's not taking advantage of some fancy new tech. 

- I don't even know what point you are trying to make with that one. "Don't try to grow your user base too much or cater too much to your dedicated fans!" ? What?!

- The last one makes sense. But again, make a different game. Don't replace GW2 with a GW3 because "well, we have the money to do it now, so we might as well, before we run out!"

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

5 minutes ago, Invoker.5462 said:

Guild wars isn't really anchored to anything specific like other MMORPGS. "GUILD WARS" has a much deserved reputation and it would be foolish not to build upon the legacy set by it. GW3 may be nothing like GW2. With AI boosted development we might be talking interplanetary travel, vehicular transportation, building, a more dynamic landscape of enemies with agendas. Hell, we might see entire towns at stake instead of tiny settlements. The future of tech may make possible a more believable world where things don't seem as scripted.

Nobody really knows yet.

Those all would be cool. But that's starting to sound like Star Citizen - level of mumbo jumbo. In which case, can't wait for Guild Wars 3: In Space! In 2044!

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

3 minutes ago, PyaKura.4895 said:

Oh don't get me wrong I definitely understand where people are coming from. I myself am very enamored with the fictional world, lore, and characters of GW2 (and FFXIV since I've mentioned it as an example earlier) and would hate to see those go. That being said as long as it's the same IP, chances are the lore and world will remain.

What I'm saying is if you're spending that much time (and money!) into a game, then you should be ready to see it come to an end eventually (as with all things in life), whether by you quitting, or the game shutting down. I just think the overly emotional responses I've seen in here are just... weird, you know?

But the game dying and being shut down is one thing. All I've seen from GW2 is it thriving. Making a GW3 just to make a GW3 would be intentionally choosing to kill a perfectly good game. Has Anet reached the end of what they can do with the current game engine? If they are struggling to add some super cool features to the game in its current state, then I get it. I don't see a "well the game has been out for 12 years, we might as well just close it down" is not a thing MMOs do. Look at RuneScape. Look at WoW. Look at EVE. All just chugging along after 20 years with no end in sight.

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

1 minute ago, Invoker.5462 said:

Using history as an example, we see GW2 miracuously still ahead of every other MMORPG from a technical perspective,  after roughly 15 years after its launch. That's really crazy to think about.

Where you compare ANET to other devs is my biggest challenge. I don't think Anet can be compared in that way - Therfore, i strongly doubt they'd release anything with less capabilities but instead, is likely to be another groundbreaking evolution to MMORPG's and gaming in general. 

The reason i state a longer development cycle is that, while the future is coming at us faster than ever.. There's still an enourmous amount of wisdom/skill/time required to bring things up not just to par- but to set a new standard entirely. Blizzard failed to do this with TITAN after many years of theoretical development - despite endless funding. 

ANET may also be looking to train up a new generation of developers/artists as its current talent pool is aging. That's a lot easier with a new project to work on. 

All in all, i seriously doubt there will be any concrete progress made until we see the next generation of graphical processing capability paired with a more developed AI. But from ANET's perspective, the only way to figure out where they stand in the future is to do so on a new project - which is why i doubt we will see anything for another decade.

 

Then why not just make a different MMO. New talent can tell new stories. If they want to run a new game with new tech, then it can be a whole other game. There is no reason to recycle Guild Wars for it.

EoD and SotO brought some awesome visuals to the game. The difference between running around in Divinity's Reach and the Wizard's Tower are staggering. If anything, new devs/artists have their work cut for them if they can just update core Tyria to the same level of visual fidelity as any post LWS2 stuff.

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

2 minutes ago, PyaKura.4895 said:

Anet potentially cooking up GW3 does not mean GW2 cannot run in parallel. It could be a whole other genre for all we know. But reading through the first 4~5 pages of this thread, even if GW2 does have to shut down, there's no way some people seriously think GW2 has to go on forever until the day they die, right? Because if so, you really ought to take a good look at what you deem important in life. Like yeah sure it would suck and you might feel all the effort you put in will be lost, but isn't that essentially what happens in literally any RPG? Even if we set aside video games and MMOs, I'd go as far as to say that any time you spend in entertainment is, put simply, time lost and wasted.

I've got around 5k hours in GW2, currently working on my a set of Obsidian Armor, I've already gotten a bunch of other legendaries, I'm just cruising and having fun and taking my time with the game. The prospect of getting GW3 still sounds very exciting to me, no matter which form the game might take, and if it's good and has long term goals then I'll play it over GW2, simple as that.

I've also spent upwards of 12k hours in FFXIV - my main game, and if Square Enix ever announces a sequel to it, you can bet I'll be excited about it and stick with it if it's good, even if it means leaving behind my character and all the progress I've made on it.

At the end of the day it's no big deal, a game's just a game you have fun with, and if anything if you've spent thousands of hours into it then you should probably consider it a good run and move with no regrets when the time comes.

MMOs are living games. There is a reason why a bunch of old MMOs still have private servers, or are bought out by some (sadly usually predatory) company to keep it running. People love the world of it and want to keep playing. I think Anet could in theory run a GW2 and GW3 concurrently, but their past track record suggests otherwise. They promised a bunch of content to be added to GW1 to better tie it in to GW2, and then almost immediately dropped all of that.

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

7 minutes ago, Invoker.5462 said:

The launch of GW2 was the most exciting time in MMORPG history. For those who forgot - in a landscape of WoWclones, GW2 revolutionized the space.

I remember first hearing about it back in 2009, 2 years after its announced date and 3 years before releasing. Got the collectors edition and had the experience of a lifetime.

It's likely we've seen a shift from infinite gw2 focus to a gw3 due to AI. the next gen of games built off the back of AI will be revolutionary. And ANET has always been on the forefront of MMORPG tech - so this is an organic shift.

With that being said, the majority of the team will likely still be with GW2 for years as the blueprint for GW3 is written. I'd go as far to say they're still in an experimental phase, testing radical ideas and possibilities which AI might facilitate in the future - but no time soon. But ANET recognizes the need to be ready, and so the greenlight likely ONLY implies that it's heaviest hitting devs (who aren't really challenged by GW2/are out of work there) are finally given the opportunity to stretch their intellect in a theoretical space of development.

All while the areas of the team truly responsible for the past few years content releases in GW2 stays in place till at least 2030.

Make no mistake, newer MMORPGS, even with potentially boosted AI production, will take many many years to develop if they are to truly threaten the landscape of the highly developed genre. 

Think new world pace. I'd imagine a release date sometime between 2035 and 2040. By then ill be over the hill hehe

Anet gave a very clear and reasonable explanation for why they made a GW2. They wanted to add a bunch of features that the game engine was not able to handle. Specifically, they wanted to have events and quests that reacted to player input and participation. And the game engine for GW1, especially with the instanced nature of the game made it not possible.

But what is the reasoning for moving on from GW2 to GW3? People are talking about how cool it would be to transfer the game UE5 for the visuals. But that's not a good enough reason to kill off a successful MMO. Look at the division that same decision made in RuneScape. It unnecessarily divided the community, to the point that Jagex ended up re-introducing OSRS, which is currently more popular than RS3.

[Forgotten Lore &/or Unused Threads]

On 2/22/2024 at 5:38 AM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

The theory that it's the keystone never made sense. It looks nothing like a Bloodstone, and more closely resembles the Druid markings in GW1 Maguuma. Though I recall there being an old and now lost dev comment that it did have backstory that never got revealed...

As to the question... there's a lot of loose plothooks, some can be good background padding for an expansion, others can be the basis of a main expansion plot for sure.

Things include (grouping related stuff together) in no particular order:

1. What's going on at Raisu Palace with the Purists and Risen? The plothook that was heavily hinted at as being next in EoD just to be completely forgotten.

This part bothered me so much! Anywhere you turn in New Kaineng or Seitung Province there is somebody talking about Raisu Palace. I was totally expecting a Strike Mission to take place there. Got to the end of the campaign and nothing!

The map in GW1 for Raisu Palace was so big, with lots of verticality. I would think if the map was reported as is, it would already be a great start for the mission area. But now with the dragonvoid cleared up, I am not sure that there is much of a story with reasoning left for exploring the Risen/Unchained and what is driving them. Maybe Anet wants to make a GW3 just to get away from all of these plotholes they set up for us and then dropped!

[Thoughts about GW3 [Merged]]

2 minutes ago, SloRules.3560 said:

But why do you grind? Don't you have fun while playing this game?

There are many things in this game that we did grind for without having fun doing it just so that we can enjoy the payout for years to come.

Did anyone enjoy grinding out the skyscale? All of those searches in Dragonfall made me hate the map so much.

[Relic of Speed doesn't work on Firebrand]

Does the relic show up as an effect in your status bar?

I jut put the relic on my WvW ranger and I can't seem to trigger the relic at all. I tried using Moa Stance and Quickening Screech, but it does not show up in my status bar that the relic is triggering. I also don't notice any speed increase at all in or out of combat. Maybe I just don't understand how the relic works.

[New dailies/weeklies [Merged]]

1 minute ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I think that means an enhancement effect on you.

Oh. What a strange quest.

[New dailies/weeklies [Merged]]

One of my PvE dailies today is "Defeat 10 Enemie with and Enhancement Effect". What does that mean? The description says that you can get enhancements from utilities consumables.

Do any monsters have Enhancement Effects?

 

[[SoO lore] Scepter of Orr location finally solved.]

5 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Was interesting to hear about that. Also about Livia - when I saw Mabon I first thought about hear and how she'd react to see other Mursaat still alive. Never would have guessed that she is part of the Wizard's as well.

Other interesting details in the lore scrolls/books. Mabon market in Caledon Forest is named after Mabon. And Isgarren probably is not human? (Have not played the whole story - I hope we get to see him during the stuff released so far. But one journal from Dagda mentioned how they got strange looks from the others and Isgarren made himself look like a Djinn or something like that. Mabon hiding his wings. If Isgarren were human he would not have had to change his appearance.)

Haver you played any of the new story? 

SPOILER!!
Isgarren is referred to as soon as you get to the new map as :"our Seer friend" and mentioned multiuple other times to be one of the oldest beings on Tyria and using Seer magic to build all the architecture.
END SPOILER !!

[is the pop up that tells you to switch maps broken?]

This popup is even funnier in Divinity's Reach. It will ALWAYS pop up after some time whent he map is absolutely hopping and instead take you to a completely new/empty map. I once tested it with a friend where we decided to stay on the map anyway. Everyone switched to the new map and the two of us just stood by the statue. When the count down reached about 15 mins left, suddenly all of the people that had left 45 mins ago started popping back in, as they got the popup AGAIN on the new map they switched to.

So basically, at least in DR, the maps just hop back and forth forever. 

[[Updated] Madrinas Coffee In-game Item - New Emote added]

25 minutes ago, Kroto.9614 said:

About 8hrs. They seem active around this time, so best send them an email now.

They have pretty good customer service, one of my codes for my friend didn't work, so a replacement was sent within 5 minutes. Hopefully it will work now.

I found it quite nice, had to put in a bit extra milky coffee as I love me coffee! 😂

They already wrote back and I got the code. Woohoo! Now my character can sip away all weekend!

[[Updated] Madrinas Coffee In-game Item - New Emote added]

1 hour ago, Kroto.9614 said:

Update: Had to ask Madrinas to get my emote codes. Thankfully their customer service is really good, so got them no problem.

What was the response time? I just got my package, opened it up excitedly, only to find there are no codes inside. Was looking forward to this all week.

The upside is that the coffee is pretty good. I am not a coffee drinker, so I don't mind that it's instant. The caffeine content was a surprise though, 185mg/serving! Gonna be buzzing all day.