We probably should have known ... that Gyla Delve wasn't an exception but the new normal. I now wish GW2 could have gone gracefully into Maintenance Mode during Icebrood Saga instead of becoming a Walking Dead Parody.

Path of Fire (€29.99) which included Living World Season 4 and Icebrood Saga (if you logged in once in a while) was the last full expansion we got. Now compare this to Secrets of the Obscure (€24.99).

Though I don't think that greed is the main reason why we are getting a lot less bang (content) for the buck today compared to back then. My impression is that the code base has become so fragile that every little change has a high chance of breaking a thousand other things, which makes development (and the cleanup afterwards) very, very expensive.

Are you trolling or are you actually not getting it? I was quoting myself to show that I was using the term “Icebrood Saga” before using its well-known abbreviation “IBS”.

Similar to Seitung which also would be much nicer, if it were less color saturated. Both are also significantly more resoucre hungry than previous/other maps. Did they use (AI) upscaled colorized textures form the previous game instead of creating new ones from scratch?

I sometimes wonder what happens internally at ArenaNet. How often do they switch the tools used to create maps? Does every developer (team) use their own favorite tool?

How else would you explain that some maps are so much more resource hungry than others, have oversaturated colors and other weird properties like the slider which should control environment effects like snow is inverted. It's a complete mess.

They are actually nerfing skills/traits depending on the elite specialization in use. What a terrible "solution". They already did more or less the same for Harbinger instead of just adding a cooldown (of 3 seconds).

Dhuumfire: Reduced burning duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds when the scourge elite specialization is equipped in PvE only.

And Scourge gets nerfed hard again (Harbinger only slightly). After it was nerfed to the ground in June, then brought back again, then buffed even more (with the expansion), ... and this current nerf will most likely be followed up by a significant buff again. This is getting silly.

Those changes range from 30% to over 60%. WTF!

It's PvE. It's not competitive. Let people have some fun. And when you really feel the need to adjust something, don't use a Sledgehammer.

It took me until now to realize that @that_shaman@mstdn.social didn't just copy the screenshot but applied some subtle changes. 🤣 👀

At least on my secondary account I don't have the back piece yet. The rewards aren't mind-boggling, but decent enough for me to let a twitch stream run in the background, even though I don't like twitch and this account linking business. But I'm a sucker for free stuff. 😏

We still need to

• ~~decide which hall we want~~
• ~~acquire 150 favor~~
• ~~determine where/how I deposit the 100g~~
• agree on a date & time for the event

But I'm ready, too. 🙋

Let's try some fediverse shenanigans ... @necropola@mastodon.sdf.org

Here's some data from previous expansions. Combined with the experience that patches generally hit the live servers in the early evening hours (UTC)) my guess is between 17:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC which is late morning / before noon at ArenaNet in Bellevue, WA (PDT = UTC-7).

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_End_of_Dragons

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Path_of_Fire

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns

Secrets of the Obscure – Skywatch Archipelago Map Flythrough

Luckily (for those who despise Twitter) ArenaNet posted the video on YouTube, too.

Secrets of the Obscure – Rift Hunting

... and this one (which they previously only published on Twitter), too.

We should consider ourselves lucky that anything but mobile games still exists, though I completely fail to understand why adults or rather people with access to credit cards play these mobile games.

Took me roughly 10 seconds on my Soulbeast with Longbow. I know, this does not help your cause, but I like that GW2 professions have still (after many balance patches) unique strengths and weaknesses and that GW2 is still (even after EoD jade bots) very alt-friendly.

I think that a Pistol-Pistol Payback Deadeye works equally good for this achievement, but I haven't tried it yet.