"The Midnight King" Is Now Live!

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

"The Midnight King" is Live!

Our third major update for Secrets of the Obscure is live in Guild Wars 2 now! Check out the release notes for everything in today's game update, including the new story chapters, a new fractal and convergence boss, Tier 2 of Obsidian legendary armor, updates to WvW, QOL improvements, the Wizard's Vault update, and more!

 

[Mic.1897]

Charr is the ultimate playable race

[StraightPath.3972]

I just wanted to point out that if six new relics are to be dropped, it would be great if they were featured in patch notes (names and effects at least).

[ShroomOneUp.6913]

and no mention of reducing the obnoxious UI tutorials and comms devices messages blocking views...-.-

edit: they actually removed the annoying comms device speech bubble, but no option to turn off Ui tutorials....

Edited May 22 by ShroomOneUp.6913

[Ashantara.8731]

@Rubi Bayer.8493 So those who have already crafted whole sets of the Obsidian Legendary Armor will not receive the 300 Astral Acclaim from the new Wizard's Vault Special Objectives in retrospect?

[Randulf.7614]

Happy content and waffles day!

[Randulf.7614]

40 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

@Rubi Bayer.8493 So those who have already crafted whole sets of the Obsidian Legendary Armor will not receive the 300 Astral Acclaim from the new Wizard's Vault Special Objectives in retrospect?

I wouldn't have thought so since it offers it for Tier 2 or Tier 1. Wouldn't be much point in offering it for t2 if it backdated 

[Luthan.5236]

I don't think they'll change this to retrospectively award the 300 AA for people that did at least one obsidian armor already. (That one had an achievement in the previous season already I think.) And making it to check for only people that did the full set (so they would not have to do a T2 piece) ... unlikely.  That is just how they want to get people that did the T1 to actually start - at least with one piece - with the T2. 😄

But ... other than that: Super nice changes. Did not expect a lot of older stuff that has been an issue since day 1 ... to get fixes sneaked into that patch when the last news only prominently mentioned the convenience upgrades (crosshair, commander tag).

Mainly the POI stuff in Amnytas (outside of locked areas only available during events where one needed a few players to even start it) and the Frorro (or whatever his name is) event with the weird pathing of the pets. (Where I even posted in the bug thread - I hope my posts were helpful in fixing the issue.) 😉

Will probably be a long night later ... not really started yet. Just read the notes and made my plan on how to start and work through the new stuff.

Edited May 21 by Luthan.5236

[Ashantara.8731]

35 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

I wouldn't have thought so since it offers it for Tier 2 or Tier 1. Wouldn't be much point in offering it for t2 if it backdated 

Wait, did we have another such achievement already during the last three months?

In any case, it doesn't make sense not to backdate for those who crafted more than one piece prior to today's update. Why should someone with only two pieces of Obsidian Armor, who crafted one piece prior and one now, be rewarded with 600 AA, while someone who crafted 18 pieces prior gets only 300 AA?

[Randulf.7614]

23 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Wait, did we have another such achievement already during the last three months?

In any case, it doesn't make sense not to backdate for those who crafted more than one piece prior to today's update. Why should someone with only two pieces of Obsidian Armor, who crafted one piece prior and one now, be rewarded with 600 AA, while someone who crafted 18 pieces prior gets only 300 AA?

Yes, craft 1 piece of obsidian was in the last round of specials (I just managed it in time last week)

This a new reward for crafting one piece.  For those who haven't it's for 1 piece of T1. For those have T1, it's an incentive to get a piece of T2. Based on that, back dating doesn't make sense. If it was back dated, then T2 wouldn't even be mentioned since you'd automatically get the reward for a historic piece of T1. Essenitally it's a reward for crafting the suffused, but I guess they conisdered that a bit unfair and added the option to craft obsidian for those behind

The amount you craft is irrelevant because it's not a reward for that. It's an incentive to craft a piece of T1 or a piece of T2 if you already have T1. The complaiunt would be valid if they made a separate reward for a complete set now when people did it before the update

Edited May 21 by Randulf.7614

[FoureyesZero.1524]

In the future please dont release rushed half baked content like this.

If this is how the game will be going be going forward its time to rethink your content plans and most likely ditch yearly expansion and quarterly updates.

You can feel the desperation of the dev team that needed way more time while playing the story missions and the fractal.

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

heavily dissapointed and I just started the new story...

After the feedback from last patch, I was hoping this one would be better...

I had to chat... and now do events...

First impression? Bad, really really bad.

[Luthan.5236]

Squad tooltip message: Tried this with my 1-man squad in an instanced map. 250 char limit and if you use more than 96 it is not shown at all. This could need some tweaks. Show the first 96 chars maybe - and cut off the other stuff? (With giving a warning in the edit box.)

Also: Tons of linebreaks (while within the 96 limit) can still make a big tooltip. I bet a lot of people already have tested this ... wondering when we get to see squads in the map trying to create the biggest tooltip. 😄 My main candidate for things to appear in an early hotfix (within the next 24 hours).

https://i.ibb.co/YRy03NT/loooooong.png

Edited May 21 by Luthan.5236

[SpyderArachnid.5619]

3 minutes ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

heavily dissapointed and I just started the new story...

After the feedback from last patch, I was hoping this one would be better...

I had to chat... and now do events...

First impression? Bad, really really bad.

Pretty much my feeling throughout this whole expansion for the story.

It's just grind. Go talk to these guys, now go grind rifts/events. Go talk to those guys, now go grind rifts/events. Did you talk to this guy yet? Now go grind events. Finished grinding those events? Go grind some more events.

By far, this has been the worst, story wise, expansion. It's just endless event grinding with barely any actual story. If you removed all the grind, it would be about 10 minutes long of actual story content. It's like they just ran out of ideas, and instead of being creative and trying to come up with something, they just added grind to artificially drag it out. I'm seriously worried about the future of this game with how things are going now. I really hope the next expansion is nothing like this one.

[Assassine.1958]

No words at all ... just bad ... really bad 💢

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

That was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Barely more than an hour of "story", much of which was filling yet another bar with old map content. A final boss fight for which "underwhelming" would be the polite version.

If this is the best that the new ANET can manage, they won't be getting any more of my money for these "expansions".

[Eleazar.9036]

Underwhelming story and extension as a whole. Lack of content, new fractals aren't fractals. The whole point was to have some filer story to give legy Armor for Openworld. It was not worth the money.

I wouldn't even call "that" an extension if I'm honest.

Edited May 21 by Eleazar.9036

[Noidea Incognito.9607]

@Mic.1897

Words of Wisdom.

The Imperial Charr Council approves o7

[Randulf.7614]

I enjoyed the adventures. 

I enjoyed the meta (until it broke)

I liked the improved linking of the metas

I liked the minis collection

I like some of the QoL - but annoyed the tutorial/tooltip spam is still there from September despite overwhelming feedback. This should have been fixed ages ago, yet it wasn't even looked at it

I enjoyed the final instance from a gameplay point of view, even though we suddenly were in the tower out of nowhere. I guess it was meant to follow the meta, but with that broken, it was all somewhat jarring and rushed. The rest of the story today could not have existed for all the difference it made to anything.

It was however all rather too short and anticlimatic. And convenient. Feels like another storyline rushed to get to the end so we can get onto the next shiny. Like Joko. Like IBS. Like the Dragon Cycle. Sometimes I feel like the devs are bored with their own game. I'm sure it's not true, but that's the impression showing through.

I didn't hate it, just disappointed in the wasted potential. I hate seeing stories and settings misused - we don't get that second chance

 

[Luthan.5236]

Liked the new adventures in Nayos so far - thought it was easy to get gold ... until I tried the target practice. 😄 (40 or 50 for the master ... needs some training to know the route ahead.)
Storywise I just finished the chapter 18. Does anyone know how to get Eparch Evader and the "Your Midnight King says" achievements? Didn't know what counts for the first achievement - and the emote one I tried kneel and that did not work. (Other stuff fine so far. All story chapter achievements finished up to that point.)

Also curious about the last mastery step - what currency exchange does the vendor offer? (It seems I got a lot of the Nayus currency much faster than other map currency.) Arcane chest opening - how does it get easier? (Patch notes already mentioned making it easier indepentely of that mastery step.)

Then there was a mail at the first story step. (I guess just hinting at that adventure close by - with the essences to collect.) And the new meta - have not tried yet. Is it tied to the mid (with the dragon) meta? Odd though that even if that one fails it says that the citadel is vulnerable. (One would expect those two chains to be tied with the easter 1st one maybe staying independent - would be a bit tooo long otherwise.)

Regarding the story: Chapter 18 felt really a bit fast compared to other finale stuff. Not sure if I should like or dislike it. Gameplay-wise it was fun to be able to finish that quickly. Bet Eparch felt pretty weak ... when you can just take it slowly even making mistakes - not the best build ... and easily mange to kill him in time for the additional achievement with time to spare. 😄 (For the one to keep Peitha above 90 percent health in the other instance it felt good that she barely lost any - easy at the first try.)

[Bloodstealer.5978]

No words I can really add to this post that reflect anything more positive than what's already been put down... just a rushed through, rehash of stuff with very little creativity unless of course you consider herding large numbers of players into a small area then filling it with endless aoe.. just a graphical nightmare and no fun which when you consider the poor return for the time and effort once more... nah this just isn't the ANET story or graphical quality I have been fed all these years, this is just a rushed out, thoughtless mess put out to open up more endless grind for the next shiny ... how many rifts we gunna have to grind now, how many meta runs to zombie through.... after you do the 15minutes story update of course.

Cant wait for the WvW mess that's on the horizon if this is anything to go by.

Edited May 21 by Bloodstealer.5978

[DarkLancer.1902]

Now that all chapters of SotO have been released, I feel comfortable giving a review. And in a word, that review is: TERRIBLE. The entire creative team was obviously working with a constant deadline panic, there are obvious places where large sections of the story were cut out because they wouldn't be ready in time for release, and what did make it into the final release felt rushed and half-finished at best. Dialogue scripting was clearly still in rough-draft form, and the voice acting sounds as if the actors had lost hope. Large portions of the quest line were nothing more than 'go farm events', a serious failure of creativity -- or it WOULD be if there had been TIME for creativity to be expressed. In particular, "The Midnight King" feels as if the entire creative team responsible for making it lost hope, and simply did the bare minimum amount of work possible to have SOMETHING playable on release day, before giving up and throwing in the towel.
 

SotO had a good concept idea behind it. Such a pity that it completely failed to elaborate on that concept and its associated lore. The idea of freeing up the elite weapons to be used with any specialization in the 3rd slot was a good idea that honestly should have come sooner.

2/10 overall. I expected better from Arena.net, especially after End of Dragons. I DEMAND better, if I'm going to spend more money on this game.

[Teknomancer.4895]

@Randulf.7614 that complicated mess right there is part of why I'm not bothering with any of the SotO armor. Not only is it built upon extra-boring grind on maps that I don't particularly like, but there are actually three whole tiers of that very same grind? I'll pass, thanks. 😉

[HotDelirium.7984]

Started out very strong but for some reason after Amnytas it seemed like we had almost no more budget left for the remainder in terms of scope, resources or compelling story. I'm not sure WHAT happened but I do hope ya'll take this time to talk internally about what went wrong. QOL and skins for days is near irrelevant if we don't have fun moments in order to exercise those things. When the expansion is about the Wizard's tower and the most unlikable person IS Isgarren you've got a problem....if you don't care that the model is constantly stabbing himself in the shoulder with his staff then I guess that speaks volumes about attention to detail...

I didn't hate it but I know you can do better.

[Grisu.9427]

This entire add-on was by far the worst of all the expansions now that I have the final behind me.
And even as a loyal Guild Wars 2 player, I can't say anything other than it was really bad.
And if the next add-on has the same quality as SoTo then I don't see a bright future for Guild Wars 2.