11th Anniversary...??? [Merged]

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

Just do /age. You can see how many months you've had your character.

For the record, no one has ever cared that I have multiple day-one characters, and only a few have commented on my GWAMM title that I wear on every character for the past 11 years. Really, it's no big deal.

A little disappointing but not surprising that there is no big gift, maybe at 15 or 20 years they will do another big one. In the mean time I will just collect the weapon skins and a pile of Proof of Legend tokens that I can't spend because I bought everything already.

[Jianyu.7065]

I deleted my original character, so my oldest one now is like 3 or 4 months younger than the game. Congrats to you though.

[Danikat.8537]

3 minutes ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

Just do /age. You can see how many months you've had your character.

For the record, no one has ever cared that I have multiple day-one characters, and only a few have commented on my GWAMM title that I wear on every character for the past 11 years. Really, it's no big deal.

A little disappointing but not surprising that there is no big gift, maybe at 15 or 20 years they will do another big one. In the mean time I will just collect the weapon skins and a pile of Proof of Legend tokens that I can't spend because I bought everything already.

Same here. The only time I remember anyone asking about my characters age was the first day the birthday rock was given out, a bunch of us were in LA posing with them and some people asked how we got them. There were also some comments on how our characters were dressed. The one I remember is "So, that's what a 7 year old character looks like?" "You'd think it would be better" "Hey! It costs a lot to look this bad!" (The group was actually pretty varied: https://i.imgur.com/PFEC5fb.jpg)

But other than that I can't remember anyone caring when I used any of the birthday things, or the titles or the celebration hat or anything like that. I use them when I think they fit the character and their theme and I like having more options available, but I don't mind where those options come from. (Most of the time I can't even remember where I got something from.)

[Obfuscate.6430]

It's like birthdays in real life, celebrated less the older you get! 
I was a little surprised by the lack of anything new but I also don't know what more they could add  outside of a new title. 
 

[Redfeather.6401]

1 hour ago, Obfuscate.6430 said:

It's like birthdays in real life, celebrated less the older you get! 
I was a little surprised by the lack of anything new but I also don't know what more they could add  outside of a new title. 
 

 

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Obfuscate.6430 said:

It's like birthdays in real life, celebrated less the older you get! 
I was a little surprised by the lack of anything new but I also don't know what more they could add  outside of a new title. 
 

Permanent utility feast with + to al stats sound like something they could add to compliment the birthday cake.

[Majic.4801]

If they gave us the title "Sad But True" on our characters' 11th birthdays I would be displaying it on all of them and would never change it for the rest of their lives.

[Ganogati.8963]

lol these birthday topics have made me realize that I think I deleted my first character. My game shows an age of "Across all characters" "over the past 4,016 days" but I can't find any character in my list that is that old. The char I thought was my first is only showing an age of 4,014 days. Im certain I was playing on the first day of early access, but for the life of me I cant remember on whom.

[idpersona.3810]

6 minutes ago, Ganogati.8963 said:

lol these birthday topics have made me realize that I think I deleted my first character. My game shows an age of "Across all characters" "over the past 4,016 days" but I can't find any character in my list that is that old. The char I thought was my first is only showing an age of 4,014 days. Im certain I was playing on the first day of early access, but for the life of me I cant remember on whom.

Once API is reinstated, you could always check gw2efficiency to see the ages on all of you characters.

[Danikat.8537]

1 hour ago, Ganogati.8963 said:

lol these birthday topics have made me realize that I think I deleted my first character. My game shows an age of "Across all characters" "over the past 4,016 days" but I can't find any character in my list that is that old. The char I thought was my first is only showing an age of 4,014 days. Im certain I was playing on the first day of early access, but for the life of me I cant remember on whom.

Is it possible you deleted and restarted your character for some reason? There was no way to change their appearence back then so even if you wanted to make a small change you had to restart them.

That's how my first 4 ended up spread over a couple of days. I made them all on day 1 (but a few hours apart) then deleted 2 and remade them the next day because I wanted to make changes. My charr was the oldest though, because he's the only one whose name isn't carried over from GW1 so I wanted to make sure I was able to get it.

[Zephire.8049]

The new birthday gift is kind of insulting. You can compare it to the 10th anniversary one on the wiki and it's identical for everything except instead of a title, you get 5 Proof of Legends.

No title, generic "Birthday Gift" item. It's not like they had a year to figure out a title at the very least, or they didn't have a template for these rewards plus a title.

[Ganogati.8963]

Part of the problem is that the bar is really high for them on Birthday presents. In Guild Wars 1, they came with increasingly rare mini-pets. Doesn't sound like much, but those things sold/sell for stupid amounts of money. My GW1 characters have been around since it launched, and I filled every character slot, so each year since they released the Hall of Monuments that I've logged in, I've been able to get massive catch-up head starts by just opening some presents and hopping to a city to sell.

That is really hard to compare to in this game. There really just isn't much of an equivalency.

[Danikat.8537]

20 minutes ago, Ganogati.8963 said:

Part of the problem is that the bar is really high for them on Birthday presents. In Guild Wars 1, they came with increasingly rare mini-pets. Doesn't sound like much, but those things sold/sell for stupid amounts of money. My GW1 characters have been around since it launched, and I filled every character slot, so each year since they released the Hall of Monuments that I've logged in, I've been able to get massive catch-up head starts by just opening some presents and hopping to a city to sell.

That is really hard to compare to in this game. There really just isn't much of an equivalency.

They probably could do the same thing. There's several mini pets on the TP which sell for over 100g, and historically there have been a lot more. If they made a series of mini pets which only come from birthday gifts they'd probably be worth a fair bit, at least in the first few months.

My guess is they wanted to make it fair for everyone, so they went with account bound guarenteed items instead of random ones, but that limits the options a bit. I can't actually remember any of the birthday gift items being well recieved when they first came out. I know some people liked the novelty of the cake gun (including me) but there were more people complaining that it's not even as good as other food and so worthless.

I wonder if it's some combination of that and the fact that it would suck for people who do like an item to be told they have to wait 11 years to get it which persuaded them to stop doing unique items. They were running out of types of items to give (especially if they want to avoid things which require certain expansions), veteran players never seemed to like it anyway and new players would be disappointed they can't get it. It's not worth spending time on something that's just going to disappoint everyone.

I suppose they could stop pretending most players are interested in what the item is and just directly give them gold, but then I suspect there would be complaints about the impact on the economy.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Danikat.8537

[Zephire.8049]

2 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I know some people liked the novelty of the cake gun (including me) but there were more people complaining that it's not even as good as other food and so worthless.

A big issue with the cake was initially how it would remove your food buff and then couldn't be reapplied while you had the malnourished buff (debuff?). After they fixed that, it's a fine open-world/world boss/chill content feast where you don't need to max stats out. The rock was also an issue (and still is, imo) in that it breaks charr models. Cool concept, bad/rushed execution.

The amulet and its infusion were nice, though. It got out-shone by the "free" legendary amulet from the Return To achievements, but the infusion is still nice either for its 20% karma, visual, or both.

Not getting a title, at least, that sucks. There's no monetary value to it and honestly it's not that impressive, but it was still nice to get.

[Tasida.4085]

This birthday is a bit of a let down.....I'd have settled for another title...ah well

 

[Stalvros.9217]

Not trying to sound like an entitled player but......

...... I wish anet could've given us more 😞

- unique skins of our choice

- titles

- permanent shared utility that we can share amongst friends
(just like the birthday cake)

[Cynder.2509]

Yeah, it's very disappointing. 
The fact that you don't get a title is insane 

[Omega.6801]

19 minutes ago, Cynder.2509 said:

Yeah, it's very disappointing. 
The fact that you don't get a title is insane 

this^^
the rest is fine. I don't like the downgrade to dyes and i would really apreciate another permanent thingy like the cake though.

[methozbbf.1928]

So no anniversary this year, no discounts etc? Shame...

[HotDelirium.7984]

On 8/24/2023 at 11:45 AM, Linken.6345 said:

Permanent utility feast with + to al stats sound like something they could add to compliment the birthday cake.

If they want to not give any more new things they need to give more ways to give more currency for those all stat group feasts. I'm cool if that's the finale with bday gifts but they need to make it bigger.

[gousgou.5438]

On 8/25/2023 at 12:46 AM, Zephire.8049 said:

The new birthday gift is kind of insulting. You can compare it to the 10th anniversary one on the wiki and it's identical for everything except instead of a title, you get 5 Proof of Legends.

No title, generic "Birthday Gift" item. It's not like they had a year to figure out a title at the very least, or they didn't have a template for these rewards plus a title.

It might be that any birthdays over 10 years old will be the same box (not titles).

Also note that birthdays used to give 1 achievement point, but the 11th birthday gives 0. 

[Dean Calaway.9718]

I was extremely disappointed, I we'd get an utility like the birthday cakes, and even that would have been low effort, can't shake the feeling that's becoming a theme...
If you think about, look at all the expansions we've had, how would you rate them highest to lowest?
I'd personally rate them HoT > PoF > EoD > SotO.
Each expansion is consistently getting lower and lower effort and now even the birthday gifts boil down to "here's a generic one and that's all you'll get for the next years too."

I have the increased feeling I am in an abusive relation with this MMO that keeps withdraw and giving me less while it asks for more money.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

On 8/24/2023 at 11:02 PM, Ganogati.8963 said:

Part of the problem is that the bar is really high for them on Birthday presents. (...)

There's plenty they can do with next to no effort, right off the to of my head and a very low effort one would be an Utility Item Feast to compliment the Birthday Cakes from the 10th.
Another easy one would be another chair, this time just using the "normal" sitting position...
They could also be feeling generous and give us something like a pipe to smoke, straight out of LotR for those standing around idle times.
Or, as you've mentioned, just a mini pet that could be account bound.
In a game that is all about collecting things to show off, any of these can be put together in a day or two and would show high appreciation for their longer time players.

I was expecting very little, and I was still disappointed.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

On 8/21/2023 at 4:14 PM, prototypedragon.1406 said:

I wouldn't mind having a vet specific item that gives recognition of being a veteran of the game (...) something for those that have put time in (...)

If you're talking about rewards for hours played, that's how you get people online 24/7 running against a wall.
The birthday gifts in GW2 were always about "hey, I was there on day one and here's something cool to show off."
I can understand how people that weren't around or deleted their early characters might be upset about missing out, but we don't always get what we want, and for the 11th, nobody got anything at all really...

[Tiamat.8254]

You don't get a title for every anniversary. The 10th was a milestone. 11th is just another year.