Watch the Trailer for Chapter 4: Judgment

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

usually trailers really hype me up (especially A crack in the ice and Head of the snake). But this time it is just a meh feeling. Remember the announcement trailer for Icebrood saga? With corrupted charr storming towards the norn during a snow storm? How epic that looked?

Well, now it is as much as official: we will never get that. And that sucks. Really hard.

[hugo.4705]

@"Ashantara.8731" said:Isn't all of the northern snow and frost areas referred to as "Shiverpeaks"?

I'm just nitpicking, but the eotn area and above is far shiverpeaks and all the areas under frostgorge sound are shiverpeaks. So, yes if you want, shiverpeaks ^^

[Inssengrimm.7924]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:usually trailers really hype me up (especially A crack in the ice and Head of the snake). But this time it is just a meh feeling. Remember the announcement trailer for Icebrood saga? With corrupted charr storming towards the norn during a snow storm? How epic that looked?

Well, now it is as much as official: we will never get that. And that sucks. Really hard.

Remember the claims of "Sagas" being bigger and better than living story.

Man, i miss LS.And we now know we ain't getting nothing as epic as Dragonfall again. Man, that was a perfect exposition on how to do THEMING in your game.

[Bast.7253]

Are people still questioning where it is? It's outside Eye of the North. You can even see the entrance to the Eye in one of the screenshots. lol

[radda.8920]

@Bast.7253 said:Are people still questioning where it is? It's outside Eye of the North. You can even see the entrance to the Eye in one of the screenshots. lol

I have the impression of seeing a guild hall ( Gilded Hollow) and a new decoration to add init doesn't look like the eye of the north in this screen

[Sugar Min.5834]

@Pyriin.3291 said:I dont think there is anything for me in this finale. wake me up when te expansion comes out, maybe there will be decent content with it

This ^No new map, ugly cape paired with ugly eye infusions. Booo.

[Bast.7253]

@radda.8920 said:

@"Bast.7253" said:Are people still questioning where it is? It's outside Eye of the North. You can even see the entrance to the Eye in one of the screenshots. lol

I have the impression of seeing a guild hall ( Gilded Hollow) and a new decoration to add init doesn't look like the eye of the north in this screen

Oh, good call! I don't know how I didn't see the roots or the guild hall crystal there.

Still think it's going to be set around the Eye though. Or maybe some instanced area west of it. It's so hard to tell because the trailer was so short and showed so little. I mean, Primordus and Jormag looked like they were barely even that far apart... and apparently using their "commanders" as Pokemon fighting each other?

[Sylvi.8372]

Agreed on hugo.4705’s points in the quote below. Plus, even if this is a redesign of a Central Tyria map in a zerg-level instance, Jormag’s Ice and Primordus’ lava would be enough to reshape the entire map into something new.

When we do big meta events in most maps, we all just leave that map after anyway, causing the map to close. (And as we’ve seen with DRM timers, there’s plenty of time after the event to explore the new map on mounts.)

I also agree with @“Blaeys.3102” that this solves the “no longer available” problem that Season 1 encountered. Plus the old maps are locked in time, so an instance would be one way to reuse assets while still coming up with something very new.

Finally, guys, it’s a freakin’ pandemic. We can’t expect LW4 level releases when the whole world is in chaos and the workers aren’t sure if their families will be okay. Could you? I’m just happy they release decent content at all.

@hugo.4705 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:Primordus' new model is finally decent and makes him look more like a dragon than that ugly clump of lava we saw at the end of Season 3.

@hugo.4705 said:Means nothing!!

Yes, it does. This is just another Shiverpeaks map reworked for this episode. There won't be a new map. (Reasons were already explained.)

@Astralporing.1957 said:Pretty weird to have a release during the time Forums are down.

Well, there are only 2 days overlapping, and any severe bugs can be posted on Twitter. We'll see how that works out.

@"radda.8920" said:I expect nothing more from this saga and I still manage to be negatively surprised.

I have no idea what you're talking about....

Zzzzz

:disappointed:

Another reworked shiverpeaks map? There is a giant frozen lake in the trailer... It is around eye of the north surely, this isn't frostgorge sound nor drizzlewood.As the release website point to, too, yes, surely it is a strike or DRM, but since it is an unknown place, it is a new map. Well precise for you there, that map to me means new place, even if contained in an instance. Notices that permit all the persons above that said there is no new map, none clearly answered me where is happening chapter 4.So, if nobody can tell me precisely, at the exact poi or area of map where is happening the event, it is new to me.

COME ON. How can anyone tell me this isn't a new place, you already saw this kind of landcape? In 9 years, haven't seen it. Even if in a DRM, you can't tell it isn't new.

I can even locate that new map! Well instance if you prefer for the sake of the word:

Just at the left of EOTN. This little water branch infiltrating in the mountains is what my picture above is. On the lake, Jormag, and coming out of the mountains, just near of EOTN primordius.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Things of note:

There won't be an announcement of a legendary for the season for at least a couple weeks if it even exists.

The new "map" is an instance just for a World Boss that is open for anyone to enter or a squad to set up and do themselves.

The cape, great sword, and four eye infusions will all cost an arm and a leg each.

[Bast.7253]

@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:Things of note:

There won't be an announcement of a legendary for the season for at least a couple weeks if it even exists.

The new "map" is an instance just for a World Boss that is open for anyone to enter or a squad to set up and do themselves.

The cape, great sword, and four eye infusions will all cost an arm and a leg each.

To be honest, the textures on the cape look a little off to me anyway. I mean their cape game has been pretty stellar (in the gemstore of course) so I'm surprised this doesn't give me the same quality vibes. Maybe it's just me. I honestly think just doing a straight up back-piece themed after each dragon would have been better though. I'm not really sure the whole scales/pebbles thing on a flat piece of cloth really works all that well. It honestly looks like something out of World of Warcraft from 2005. >_>

No offense to the designers, just... not something I see myself working towards or finding a match for with any other pieces of armor/outfits/themes. Maybe the beastslayer or whatever set from Path of Fire or something...

The infusions, no doubt. I mean, I guess it's cool that they could potentially stack with other infusions and armor.. but if it's that expensive I can just use Glint's Gaze mask, the bloodstone glowing helmet, or any of the other various eye glowing helmets we have in game. I'm not really sure why they specifically went with these rewards for the finale non-the-less, but I'm guessing they just wanted to push out something as quick as possible as a carrot on a stick for the few dedicated that actually feel like grinding in their new reward system to get it.

The greatsword I don't recall seeing a picture for but I'd have to imagine it's the sword that Ryland uses. And I mean, that could be cool I guess. But it's probably a rare drop from the world boss or something. I wonder if that's indicative of Jormag/Ryland losing the fight and Primordus prevailing?

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

@Bast.7253 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:The greatsword I don't recall seeing a picture for but I'd have to imagine it's the sword that Ryland uses. And I mean, that could be cool I guess. But it's probably a rare drop from the world boss or something. I wonder if that's indicative of Jormag/Ryland losing the fight and Primordus prevailing?

The promotion images shows a close up of the red version of the Tengu greatsword. It isn't promising.

[Bast.7253]

@Chrysline.2317 said:Agreed on hugo.4705’s points in the quote below. Plus, even if this is a redesign of a Central Tyria map in a zerg-level instance, Jormag’s Ice and Primordus’ lava would be enough to reshape the entire map into something new.

When we do big meta events in most maps, we all just leave that map after anyway, causing the map to close. (And as we’ve seen with DRM timers, there’s plenty of time after the event to explore the new map on mounts.)

I also agree with @“Blaeys.3102” that this solves the “no longer available” problem that Season 1 encountered. Plus the old maps are locked in time, so an instance would be one way to reuse assets while still coming up with something very new.

Finally, guys, it’s a freakin’ pandemic. We can’t expect LW4 level releases when the whole world is in chaos and the workers aren’t sure if their families will be okay. Could you? I’m just happy they release decent content at all.

@hugo.4705 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:Primordus' new model is finally decent and makes him look more like a dragon than that ugly clump of lava we saw at the end of Season 3.

@hugo.4705 said:Means nothing!!

Yes, it does. This is just another Shiverpeaks map reworked for this episode. There won't be a new map. (Reasons were already explained.)

@Astralporing.1957 said:Pretty weird to have a release during the time Forums are down.

Well, there are only 2 days overlapping, and any severe bugs can be posted on Twitter. We'll see how that works out.

@"radda.8920" said:I expect nothing more from this saga and I still manage to be negatively surprised.

I have no idea what you're talking about....

Zzzzz

:disappointed:

Another reworked shiverpeaks map? There is a giant frozen lake in the trailer... It is around eye of the north surely, this isn't frostgorge sound nor drizzlewood.As the release website point to, too, yes, surely it is a strike or DRM, but since it is an unknown place, it is a new map. Well precise for you there, that map to me means new place, even if contained in an instance. Notices that permit all the persons above that said there is no new map, none clearly answered me where is happening chapter 4.So, if nobody can tell me precisely, at the exact poi or area of map where is happening the event, it is new to me.

COME ON. How can anyone tell me this isn't a new place, you already saw this kind of landcape? In 9 years, haven't seen it. Even if in a DRM, you can't tell it isn't new.

I can even locate that new map! Well instance if you prefer for the sake of the word:

Just at the left of EOTN. This little water branch infiltrating in the mountains is what my picture above is. On the lake, Jormag, and coming out of the mountains, just near of EOTN primordius.

I'm not sure we can still use the pandemic at this point. I mean, I'm sure it can make things more difficult but I think the biggest cause is the fact that they're working on the expansion. And if the pandemic was the issue for story releases that doesn't bode well for the expansion, does it?

But anyway, as the map - that makes sense. The western area. I really wish they had shown more of it but it seems they're either leaving a lot of room to surprise people or there just isn't much to show outside of a strike-style boss encounter. We're fighting dragons so I imagine there will be some extensive toenail clipping and chin bashing without any particularly advanced mechanics.

[Bast.7253]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@Bast.7253 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:The greatsword I don't recall seeing a picture for but I'd have to imagine it's the sword that Ryland uses. And I mean, that could be cool I guess. But it's probably a rare drop from the world boss or something. I wonder if that's indicative of Jormag/Ryland losing the fight and Primordus prevailing?

The promotion images shows a close up of the red version of the Tengu greatsword. It isn't promising.

That's already obtainable from the tengu faction vendor. All of those tengu weapons had a red variation of the previously released Drizzlewood blue set.

The post mentioned "icy" or "frosty" greatsword so I'm assuming it's probably Ryland's power saw looking steam greatsword with some icy particle effects.

[Substance E.4852]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:The cape, great sword, and four eye infusions will all cost an arm and a leg each.

Greatsword is almost certainly Ryland's iced up saw blade sword and probably about as hard to get as the original recipe one

Cape is harder to gauge but I highly doubt it will be worse than the Runic cape was unless Anet does something mindbogglingly dumb and makes it a rare drop from the meta like Drakkar's Hoard

Eye infusions will likely require either long amounts of meta farming in related achievements or cosmically enormous amounts of DRM widgets, possibly both

Plausible they will require respective T3 dragons slayer weapon sets to be completed but hopefully not

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Plausible they will require respective T3 dragons slayer weapon sets to be completed but hopefully not

I would not be surprised if they required a minimum of 4 of each of the Icy and Fiery weapons unlocked to get the infusion eyes. I might even be underestimating it considering Icebrood Saga.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

@Bast.7253 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@Bast.7253 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:The greatsword I don't recall seeing a picture for but I'd have to imagine it's the sword that Ryland uses. And I mean, that could be cool I guess. But it's probably a rare drop from the world boss or something. I wonder if that's indicative of Jormag/Ryland losing the fight and Primordus prevailing?

The promotion images shows a close up of the red version of the Tengu greatsword. It isn't promising.

That's already obtainable from the tengu faction vendor. All of those tengu weapons had a red variation of the previously released Drizzlewood blue set.

It's possible, but I wouldn't leave it past Anet to get super lazy with it considering Icebrood Saga's history of catastrophic reward failures. We're working on half a dozen now.

[hugo.4705]

There is one big thing I'm wondering about after re watching the trailer. Will we be able to choose our camp?

I mean, I let Taimi in her craziness of I must kill primordius, but me, I want to join Braham, bash ryland, kick Jormag in the face and get a lava stone eye on the path.

What worry me is there is no "kill jormag!" Shout. Like jormag successfully brainwashed taimi, but now the commander and aurene, aberrant.

[Pifil.5193]

@Bast.7253 said:

@radda.8920 said:

@Bast.7253 said:Are people still questioning where it is? It's outside Eye of the North. You can even see the entrance to the Eye in one of the screenshots. lol

I have the impression of seeing a guild hall ( Gilded Hollow) and a new decoration to add init doesn't look like the eye of the north in this screen

Oh, good call! I don't know how I didn't see the roots or the guild hall crystal there.

Still think it's going to be set around the Eye though. Or maybe some instanced area west of it. It's so hard to tell because the trailer was so short and showed so little. I mean, Primordus and Jormag looked like they were barely even that far apart... and apparently using their "commanders" as Pokemon fighting each other?

This is brilliant."Ryland, use Sulk!""Bramham, counter with Abandonment Issues!"

A wild Commander joins the battle!

Yeah the world boss seems to be a big, messy, fight. It's hard to tell but it looks like there's two instances, a story instance with Braham, Ryland, Primordus and Jormag together and a larger world boss instance for the battle outside? Could be similar to the way Dragonfall worked? So the actual story finale can be played at any time.

I'm sad that it doesn't seem to be a new map open world map.

[Pifil.5193]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Plausible they will require respective T3 dragons slayer weapon sets to be completed but hopefully not

I would not be surprised if they required a minimum of 4 of each of the Icy and Fiery weapons unlocked to get the infusion eyes. I might even be underestimating it considering Icebrood Saga

Not knowing what's required for the "big reward" for the Season means that I haven't crafted any of these weapons yet. There are so many big gold sinks it's impossible to know what will be required for it.

The four eye infusions may be the "big reward" for the saga. It's not exciting to me but I'm sure some will love them, especially as they can be mixed and matched.

Could the Cape be the Legendary, I wonder? There's no open world Legendary back piece yet. I doubt it though, I get the feeling it's the meta reward for the finale, an exotic or ascended back piece.

The sword, eh. Not exciting but I'll throw it on the ol' sword pile if it's not ridiculously difficult or expensive to get.

It's hard to see this finale besting the end of LS4 in any way. I certainly can't see anything at the level of the Skyscale coming.

[Teratus.2859]

@Fire Attunement.9835 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Pretty weird to have a release during the time Forums are down. Are they expecting so much dissappointed voices they decided to "lock the comments" just in case? Are they also expecting to have no bugs whatsoever?

That's a valid question that I can address a bit. You're right that the timing is not great and we spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out a way around it. In the end, several factors got us to this situation: Moving from the current software provider to the new one needed to be done in this particular time frame, things need to be read-only because we're moving all of your posts and discussions over to the new software, and we need until the 29th to make sure everything moved over correctly and get everything set up in all four languages.

We do want the conversation though! The new forums will be up and running just two days after the release, so it's not super long to wait.

Considering how active the community is on Reddit I doubt criticisms will go unheard if the forums are silent for a few days :PIt'll only really quiet those of us who only use the Gw2 forums.. and for a couple days at most so no biggie.

What i'd like to know is will this new Forum software offer improvements new options over the current one?Like a Dark Mode to name one example :)

I know those are pretty popular with a lot of people, myself included.

[Teratus.2859]

@hugo.4705 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Not a new a open world map it seems, I expected as much.I'm guessing that this is one big instance outside of the Eye somewhere.. the location of the big battle does look new at least.. not any existing location I can pick out anyway.

Finally someone that get it, yes, not open world map, but as a instance map near the eye.

Yea, I have two theories on how this last mission will be done.It'll either be done like a giant DRM only in a new location we've not been to before.Or!!It'll be done like Forging Steel was.. like a giant battleground mission in a new location with progressing event elements (start with Fighting Destroyers, then fighting the Frost Legion) with the possibility of taking us into a solo story instance afterwards where we deal specifically with Ryland and Braham and see the end result of of this Dragon fight.

Judging from the trailer it does seem like there are multiple players doing those destroy the lava rock events so it does seem like this mission will have the Private/Public options that both DRM's and Forging Steel have.But the clash of the Dragons and their Champions, that feels more story focused than we can expect from a DRM so I will assume that's going to be in more of a solo instanced form like Darkrime Delves was after Forging Steel.

I'm leaning a bit more towards this being more like Forging Steel than a DRM but I guess we'll see.I am confident though that this will be held in a new instanced location, very likely near the Eye.

To change topic, yes, I hope too that Primordius don't get nuked, not enough development.And for rewards, dunno if the fire eye infusion is available as two fire eyes. At least one new gh deco coming.

I really hope to see stone summit in chapter 4 and not just destroyers.

Yeah I hope Primordus does the nuking lolAnd I would also like to see the Stone Summit Again too, specially getting into a scrap with the other Stone dwarves.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@Substance E.4852 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Could the Cape be the Legendary, I wonder? There's no open world Legendary back piece yet. I doubt it though, I get the feeling it's the meta reward for the finale, an exotic or ascended back piece.

It's hard to see this finale besting the end of LS4 in any way. I certainly can't see anything at the level of the Skyscale coming.

The cape won't be legendary, because Fractals counts as Open World. Not unless they also let us make legendary armor without needing Raids and give Raids access to its own legendary back.

It is going to be difficult to top LS4 finale. All of Champion's trailers and the episode itself have been stretched so far out that I don't feel any hype. I haven't felt the hype since Shadow in the Ice's trailer.

[hugo.4705]

Someone above said the world boss instance could host 50 players, it is a lot. Considering raids or steel warband are 10 players. 50 players is generally what is needed to take down a world boss, dunno, maybe less is needed. I think I saw megadestroyer once being held by 30 players.

The whole thing is called the icebrood saga so kinda understand that everything got into jormag forces, bringing svanirs, ice constructs, corrupted norn, icebroods, frost legions, ice giant, elementals and so on...

But would have been could to have the same on primordius side, come on, it is a great final, they could bring stone summit, destroyer wyverns... I mean come on, can't the magma golems elementals from balthazar shrine in siren landing be reused as new primordius forces? It is very lame, 2021, and it is just regular destroyers. The worst is that I don't even ask anet to create new models, they are here, ready to be reused. No lava slugs elementals? Obsidian destroyers? You know, why not even destroyer wurms coming out of the ground? There are somes shown in ember bay!

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@hugo.4705 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Not a new a open world map it seems, I expected as much.I'm guessing that this is one big instance outside of the Eye somewhere.. the location of the big battle does look new at least.. not any existing location I can pick out anyway.

Finally someone that get it, yes, not open world map, but as a instance map near the eye.

To change topic, yes, I hope too that Primordius don't get nuked, not enough development.And for rewards, dunno if the fire eye infusion is available as two fire eyes. At least one new gh deco coming.

I really hope to see stone summit in chapter 4 and not just destroyers.

At 0:50 in the trailer, you can see a character with two Ice/Frost Dragon Eye Infusions, so I would expect one could utilize two Fire Dragon Eye Infusions, as well.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Chrysline.2317 said:Agreed on hugo.4705’s points in the quote below. Plus, even if this is a redesign of a Central Tyria map in a zerg-level instance, Jormag’s Ice and Primordus’ lava would be enough to reshape the entire map into something new.

Well, that's a different story. No one said it wouldn't be a brand new instance. I, for instance, said it would be a rework of an existing map. Two different pairs of shoes.

Finally, guys, it’s a freakin’ pandemic. We can’t expect LW4 level releases when the whole world is in chaos and the workers aren’t sure if their families will be okay.

If anyone is profitting from people being trapped at home, it's the gaming industry. Just sayin'.