Guild Wars 2 V2: GOTY 2017 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Arenanet
9,751 replies, posted
[img]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/560947083668566061/BCC9BD754AE04CA4FDCFA2FA91EC5F9E532E7FC2/[/img]
*In a serious voice* This is my story.
[QUOTE=somsbal;36900367]Thanks! What about the languages? Was it mostly English or was there lots of other languages being used?[/QUOTE]
It was an EU server, but the most common languages I could see were German, French and English.
[QUOTE=Theportalmaster;36900439]*In a serious voice* This is my story.[/QUOTE]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB_hAVZLKE8[/media]
[QUOTE=psychojake;36900872]Disregard hunger, acquire [b]SWAG[/b].
[IMG_THUMB]http://i.imgur.com/WKb4D.jpg[/IMG_THUMB][/QUOTE]
Who needs rations when you have swag
[URL]http://www.arena.net/blog/reserve-your-guild-wars-character-name-for-guild-wars-2-by-july-31[/URL]
Character name reservation is cleared the day after launch. You have to use your reserved name during the headstart, or on launch day.
I have a lot of pictures and video's to go through and not enough time! I think i'll post new pictures everyday to keep the thread alive.
[QUOTE=Bentham;36900884]Who needs rations when you have swag[/QUOTE]
Who needs GW2 when you have swag?
Me, I do, really badly.
[QUOTE=Newbienice99;36900939][URL]http://www.arena.net/blog/reserve-your-guild-wars-character-name-for-guild-wars-2-by-july-31[/URL]
Character name reservation is cleared the day after launch. You have to use your reserved name during the headstart, or on launch day.[/QUOTE]
would making a gw2 account just to reserve names work
[QUOTE=Newbienice99;36900939][URL]http://www.arena.net/blog/reserve-your-guild-wars-character-name-for-guild-wars-2-by-july-31[/URL]
Character name reservation is cleared the day after launch. You have to use your reserved name during the headstart, or on launch day.[/QUOTE]
Ouch, that does not sound too good for me. The main reason why I did not participate in past two Beta events is because the email address of my old guild wars account was rendered inaccessible back in '08 due to merging of local ISP's. I had no problem with it, due to fact I remember my password for sure, and no-one else knows it. When you link guild wars account to guild wars 2 account, the guild wars 2 account is named after the old guild wars account by default, and A-net is not capable of changing name of GW2 account as of last week, when I discussed it with them. Thus, I'm can not create gw2 account with my old account linked to it without naming it after the useless email. Then I couldn't confirm anything or change password, yadda-yadda.
Long story short, I'm fucked. Or not really, since my old names are either shitty or cryptic enough to be not taken by the time I get working gw2 account with my old one linked to it.
Hopefully.
On other note, now that I've actually played the game, it was what I expected it to be. Great mmorpg.
PvP was loadsa fun, I spent most of my time out in WvWvW.
Structured was fun too, especially when compared to other mmo's pvp. But not quite as fun as WvWvW.
Pve was great too, but immersion suffered due to cluttering and too high number of participants, especially near starting areas. Pve was easy as hell (played till 19 as thief, 12 engy, 9 guardian and ~6with others), apart from that [sp]fire elemental boss in northern part of Metrica, in the reactor (not much fun when the bastard one shots you and you are having 400ms lag spikes)[/sp].
All in all, it filled my expectations. Quite dynamic feeling, story driven mmorpg with great and fun gameplay. It didn't "feel" like "guild wars", it felt more generic and "casual". I'm not saying that as necessarily bad thing, gw2 can attract much broader audience than gw1, it's much easier to approach.
I'm really looking forward to this. I can safely say that guild wars 2 is the best mmo from this decade that I've played thus far. If the game is still up and running in couple years, maybe it will be best mmo ever.
I would totally bang an asura.
snip
[highlight](User was permabanned for this post ("gimmick" - daijitsu))[/highlight]
Do you guys know if the good wvw guild are gonna stick on gate of madness?
Anyone know when Guild Halls will be implemented? Looking forward to meeting up and hanging out with people, and planning events and such.
[QUOTE=AtomiCasd;36902006]Do you guys know if the good wvw guild are gonna stick on gate of madness?[/QUOTE]
No idea, really, but it's an entire alliance, so I am guessing that changing worlds is a bother for them, and they will stay.
[editline]23rd July 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Bentham;36902104]Anyone know when Guild Halls will be implemented? Looking forward to meeting up and hanging out with people, and planning events and such.[/QUOTE]
Sometime after release is all we know.
[QUOTE=Newbienice99;36900939][URL]http://www.arena.net/blog/reserve-your-guild-wars-character-name-for-guild-wars-2-by-july-31[/URL]
Character name reservation is cleared the day after launch. You have to use your reserved name during the headstart, or on launch day.[/QUOTE]
Damn I wanted to reserve a name but I don't have a GW1 account, I just used my brother's.
[QUOTE=Skyward;36902202]Damn I wanted to reserve a name but I don't have a GW1 account, I just used my brother's.[/QUOTE]
What you could do is make that character on your brother's GW1 account (if you still had access to it), and reserve it. Have him make the character on release in GW2. Several days later, delete the character from his account, and wait 24 hours - then the name will be available again, and no one will be trying to get it when it becomes available.
[QUOTE=Newbienice99;36902229]What you could do is make that character on your brother's GW1 account (if you still had access to it), and reserve it. Have him make the character on release in GW2. Several days later, delete the character from his account, and wait 24 hours - then the name will be available again, and no one will be trying to get it when it becomes available.[/QUOTE]
Sounds complicated, but I'll give it a shot when he gets home. Hell, the name's probably already been reserved anyways. v:v:v
I was just thinking, and I realized something.
You know how A LOT of the servers were full/near full capacity?
Only the people that have pre-purchased could play the BWE's (and people with beta keys), and there were tons of full servers.
So once the pre-orderers jump into the picture, and other people that will be buying the game after launch, there are gonna be some full ass servers.
Which is a good thing, for the popularity of the game, but a bad thing for us trying to be together on the same server.
-snip-
[QUOTE=That Ninja;36902345]I was just thinking, and I realized something.
You know how A LOT of the servers were full/near full capacity?
Only the people that have pre-purchased could play the BWE's (and people with beta keys), and there were tons of full servers.
So once the pre-orderers jump into the picture, and other people that will be buying the game after launch, there are gonna be some full ass servers.
Which is a good thing, for the popularity of the game, but a bad thing for us trying to be together on the same server.[/QUOTE]
just have to make sure that everyone jumps onto the server as soon as humanly possible. It's on a saturday so most of us should be available, I'd hope
[QUOTE=That Ninja;36902345]I was just thinking, and I realized something.
You know how A LOT of the servers were full/near full capacity?
Only the people that have pre-purchased could play the BWE's (and people with beta keys), and there were tons of full servers.
So once the pre-orderers jump into the picture, and other people that will be buying the game after launch, there are gonna be some full ass servers.
Which is a good thing, for the popularity of the game, but a bad thing for us trying to be together on the same server.[/QUOTE]
Let me refer you to the title of this thread, "[B]How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love [trust] Arenanet[/B]".
ANet knows this. I'm sure there is a lower capacity per server during the beta tests and they will increase after launch. Remember how the first day GoM was full to max then after awhile everything calmed down and people didn't have problems anymore.
Whatever it is, ANet is on top of it!
[QUOTE=Bullet100;36902396]Let me refer you to the title of this thread, "[B]How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love [trust] Arenanet[/B]".
ANet knows this. I'm sure there is a lower capacity per server during the beta tests and they will increase after launch. Remember how the first day GoM was full to max then after awhile everything calmed down and people didn't have problems anymore.
Whatever it is, ANet is on top of it![/QUOTE]
Yeah, I imagine there may be more servers available at launch, or they have a plan to deal with the obvious demand for the game. I'm not too worried. It may be a bit rough the first couple days, but Arena Net are definitely going to be on top of things.
I think (hope) that Arenanet lowered the caps during the beta so that communities would spread out more. By the end of the beta, every server was on high, instead of something like half on full and half on medium. If people stayed on the servers they joined, then every server would be populated pretty evenly for when non-prepurchasers show up.
I also hope that server transfers will be free for a week or so, but I don't know how realistic that is.
Either way, I think they know that what they have is not enough, and that the caps are either higher, or they have more servers ready.
[QUOTE=Bentham;36902516]Yeah, I imagine there may be more servers available at launch, or they have a plan to deal with the obvious demand for the game. I'm not too worried. It may be a bit rough the first couple days, but Arena Net are definitely going to be on top of things.[/QUOTE]
Won't [URL="http://www.arena.net/blog/the-worlds-of-the-final-beta-weekend-event"]this list [/URL] be the official server list at launch?
[editline]23rd July 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Newbienice99;36902523]I think (hope) that Arenanet lowered the caps during the beta so that communities would spread out more. By the end of the beta, every server was on high, instead of something like half on full and half on medium. If people stayed on the servers they joined, then every server would be populated pretty evenly for when non-prepurchasers show up.
I also hope that server transfers will be free for a week or so, but I don't know how realistic that is.
Either way, I think they know that what they have is not enough, and that the caps are either higher, or they have more servers ready.[/QUOTE]
I hope they put a discount on the Gems for the first few days to get the market started.
its going to be hard to tell really because a ton of keys were given away in contests so we will have to see how many of them purchase the full game. im sure there will be some que times on bigger servers. Im sure they will never go over 20 mins though.
Did anyone try out desolation server?
[QUOTE=Bullet100;36902865]Won't [URL="http://www.arena.net/blog/the-worlds-of-the-final-beta-weekend-event"]this list [/URL] be the official server list at launch?
I hope they put a discount on the Gems for the first few days to get the market started.[/QUOTE]
All it says officially is that that is the server list for BWE3, not launch. We can only guess.
If they were going to do that, it would have been during BWE3, so that people who purchased before the game was out were rewarded. If they did it at release, people who bought during BWE3 would be pissed.
[editline]23rd July 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=mickers;36902926]its going to be hard to tell really because a ton of keys were given away in contests so we will have to see how many of them purchase the full game. im sure there will be some que times on bigger servers. Im sure they will never go over 20 mins though.
Did anyone try out desolation server?[/QUOTE]
I'm not worried about queue times as much as I am worried that people might not be able to join a specific server because it is so full.
I've been thinking, I have a few friends that I would like to invite to the guild but they don't browse Facepunch. I'm wondering if you guys are bothered by this at all?
I'm thinking that we should create a Guild Rank for Facepunchers and another for Non-Facepunchers for friends of Facepunchers (if that makes sense at all).
Guild Leader
"Mighty/Sexy" Officer
Facepunch Member
Member
Who else was running on a beta-only key, not pre-order? My girlfriend says she had something crazy like 4,000 gems on her account (with the beta key we got earlier in the thread). I assume they wanted them to try out the gem store since they couldn't buy gems for an account that doesn't exist
Anyone know if we will be able to update and use our beta client for the release? Or will we have to download everything again?
Bullet had a few questions to ask, so I thought I'd post here for the rest of ya to learn from.
[QUOTE=Bullet100]Ok I can't stand this...
Your screenshots you took during this beta event astounded me. I always try to make artistic and beautiful screenshots but I can never seem to get them right! I'm interested in how you made yours look so good and how you line up the shots to make them so interesting. I remember you telling me in-game about how you open up the JPG's as RAW, but what exactly do you do to make them pop?[/quote]
Adjustments are made per-picture, but my process goes pretty straight down the line once you get into RAW, especially with CS6. The raw process in CS5 has a few more sliders, but they ultimately do the same things. The new flow just combines some into being positives/negatives on a single slider, instead of two sliders that both just go positive but contradict each other.
Since you ask about it below, let's open this picture. Here you see it straight from the game-
[t]http://i.imgur.com/Ab6IG.jpg[/t]
and here's some 100% size snips
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Psqdx.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/6Gp30.png[/img]
so, what we'll do is open it in RAW format, by going to "File > Open As...", and choosing the RAW format, which is the ridiculously long line of filetypes. Hard to miss. You then find your [u]jpg[/u] (only works on jpg, so you'll have to convert to a full quality jpg from other formats if you want this to work), and opening it up.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/aNVle.jpg[/img]
alrighty, I'm not going to explain what everything does, so I'm just going to sweep through what I did. One thing that I've been using in particular is the Clarity amount, though; it sharpens the image up a bit, but don't blast it all the way up (or any other slider). Side-note, turning it to negatives gives a soft and hazy look.
Your process should be simple- start from the top and work your way down, observing how each slider affects the image and finding a point you like. I prefer to play with black level first to get a deeper contrast to start with, though you can do whatever. White balance shouldn't be an issue at this point, leave it alone.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/wfMF1.jpg[/img]
this picture didn't appear to change much, but there's a bit more contrast, and the shadows are brought out so you can see better detail in the underside of the bridge, without it looking unnatural. Also, the clarity is up, which really boosts the look of the stone and detailed underside of the bridge-
0 clarity (no adjustment)
[t]http://i.imgur.com/zRmqS.jpg[/t]
+44 clarity (my setting)
[t]http://i.imgur.com/QCvui.jpg[/t]
[quote][URL="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10572953/arte/gw107.jpg"]This image[/URL] is so beautiful but I'm curious how you made the Depth of Field blur?[/quote]
This is actually a plugin I have for photoshop, which I got to help enhance pictures taken with less-than-favorable conditions like overbright sunlight where I can't shoot with an open aperture, but I want that creamy soft background anyways. I could spend a few hundred on neutral denisity filters to mount on my lenses and allow me to open up my settings with the actual shots, but the advantages of the software are better for the fact I can enhance things like photos out of cell phones or point-and-clicks, or screenshots.
The software is Alienskin Bokeh 2. Before we open the plugin (there's a 15 day trial if you want to poke at it), you'll need to make a selection mask; This is an area you'd like to remain in-focus nomatter what, like a cut-out in front of the soon-to-be-smoothed background. I simply used the polygonal lasso to make a selection of this area.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/TBZpf.jpg[/t]
(highlighted so you understand which part is 'inside' the selection-
[t]http://i.imgur.com/jq8Na.jpg[/t]
I highlighted more than just the character because it would look really unnatural if for some reason the bridge (as it gets closer) and that monument got more out of focus like the background to the left, since the focus gets blurrier the farther away something is from your focal point.
In the program, I made two falloffs:
-one 'planar' mask, which has a sharp center focus and gets blurrier until you reach the end (solid line and two dotted lines in the below shot)
-one 'half' planar with just one direction of going sharp to blurry, which was to help sharpen up the stone wall at the bottom, though I didn't like how it came out last time.
Here's a shot of the masks, where white is sharp focus and black is the heaviest level of the bokeh effect. Normally in the program it shows you the final blurred result but you've already seen that-
[t]http://i.imgur.com/lysfy.png[/t]
[quote]How did you get your camera angle like [URL="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10572953/arte/circle.jpg"]this image[/URL]?[/quote]
four shots, at 90 degree angles from each other, looking as straight down as I could, though there was obviously a bit of angle in there.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/xrsRd.png[/img]
Simply did a photomerge in photoshop (also found in the File > Automate menu)
when you merge images that came in at different angles (and it recognizes the parralax), it'll actually apply perspective changes and lay them together properly, but this means you're going to have some parts of the picture you can't include in the final composition without adding some more picture in between gaps
[t]http://i.imgur.com/wGX1W.jpg[/t]
[quote]Do you take hundreds of screenshots to get a few good ones? Kind of like [URL="http://i.imgur.com/goLIz.jpg"]our group shot[/URL] where we had certain perfect timing moments that only one shot would be perfect[/quote]
for the group shots, I was definitely snapping away to find the right bits to different pictures. Sometimes it's best to do that than rely on catching the perfect single picture, though it still requires timing and method to catch the right bits. "Spray and Pray" methodology can actually be done right, though usually it's seen as a terrible crutch.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/zaJ3u.png[/t]
The final edited group shot is made up of four different shots hand-painted together. Yes, I said painted, I actually did brushwork to blend and modify things.
[quote][Sorry for all the crazy questions but these have been bothering me all weekend]
I understand that your a professional photographer. I'm an amateur photographer myself but still have a lot to learn. So I understand the basics of compositions and how lighting alters the environment. I also know that this is a skill that takes experience and time to master, but I plan on taking a lot of pictures (you should see my current gaming screenshot folder). Anyways you don't have to spill your secrets to me or you don't have to answer at all. I'm really just showing my fascination towards your work.
Thanks[/QUOTE]
[u]always[/u] happy to answer questions and give tips. <3
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