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    Home Unlabelled Guild Wars 2 Commission piece I had done for my sylvari elementalist and a little fern pup

    Guild Wars 2 Commission piece I had done for my sylvari elementalist and a little fern pup

    September 28, 2020

    Guild Wars 2 Commission piece I had done for my sylvari elementalist and a little fern pup

    Commission piece I had done for my sylvari elementalist and a little fern pup

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 03:13 AM PDT

    TIL you can get the Awakened Recruits to /dance in Enemy of My Enemy

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:29 PM PDT

    Thank you all.

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 07:39 PM PDT

    I ask sorry for all the errors I will make since I am not a native english speaker. Just wanna say thank you, to all gw2 community. I am 21 years old and I joined this game in the far 2014 if I am right, in my life even if I am really young I suffered severe depressions for differents reasons. I played this game with long stops between all the years. But everytime I return here I found such a good community that is so kind toward a social anxious player like meto. I don't care about toxic people that will shit under this post, I just wanna say thank you to all of you players that even if don't know make my life better.

    submitted by /u/OutrageousVacation5
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    legendary backpacks deserve an overhaul

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 12:14 AM PDT

    there are just 3 of them and they deserve a dyeable option since all of them require dedication instead of a credit card. if technology is the excuse i wouldnt mind a new dyeable version of the backpacks instead of reworking the current one.

    submitted by /u/Xepton
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    [OC] Largos weaver, Chandra in water color.

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:57 AM PDT

    The Curious Case of Norn Identity Theft

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 08:32 PM PDT

    [ART] Commission I had done for Duana!

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:07 AM PDT

    After many weeks of saving gold I finally got my Griffon

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:07 AM PDT

    I found these guys role playing first time ever seeing it in GW2 very cool!

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 06:47 PM PDT

    Unlocking Griffon - Quick Guide

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 11:38 AM PDT

    I've got a lot of requests recently for a Griffon unlocking guide, so here it is, enjoy😉

    GUIDE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayQsJ5W7qT4

    submitted by /u/sankurix
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    The Commander And Scheming

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 10:05 PM PDT

    [MEME] After deciding to level an Asura for the first time, I was wondering what my first choice could possibly be with the college of Dynamics...

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:01 PM PDT

    [Art] "Put me down, bookah. Gently."

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 01:31 AM PDT

    GW2 PvP Podcast - Episode 12 (Feat. Floody)

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 01:22 AM PDT

    This week we were honoured to be joined by the recent September mAT winner, Ultrascuffed member and Engineer extraordinaire, Floody! He shares his insight on how a competitive team should prepare mentally before a tournament and during intense games along with some important personal tips that you may not have heard before...

    Available on Spotify here and Podbean here.
    It will be available on YouTube in the next few days!

    Want to get involved more in PvP? Join the Welcome to PvP Discord https://discord.gg/5QverXV

    Enjoy!

    submitted by /u/OddSneakers
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    I am STILL Waiting for them to make this shield obtainable for players.

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:38 PM PDT

    Got the new mirage infusion ��

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:17 AM PDT

    My gf and I just unlocked our first flying mounts so we had a photoshoot to celebrate!

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 08:17 PM PDT

    To my Quaggan brethren....

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:56 PM PDT

    100% Map completion

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 04:54 AM PDT

    What do I do after I complete the map, I'm f2p so I can't explore most of the other parts. I guess I could just play to play but I am stuck in this situation, any ideas that can help me?

    submitted by /u/NeoxaLol
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    Got the voice audio for the gw2 machinima, stay tuned for the release of the full episode!

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 10:53 AM PDT

    Painted my mesmer Jihll as part of a concept art course. Not perfect, but happy with my progress.

    Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:12 AM PDT

    The Weekly Map Recap, Week 26 - Southsun Cove

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 03:50 PM PDT

    Welcome to the Weekly Map Recap, a series where we look back at one map in the game each week. We'll look with a critical eye at how each map represents its theme, proves faithful to its lore, and implements its design. We'll see how effective its gameplay is, whether the art holds up, and the forecast for the map's long term retention. With 52 maps to date, it'll be quite the journey!

    Links to the previous entries in a reply at the bottom!

    Also, before we get to the recap, you should know that I'm currently conducting a survey on map preference. I'm currently still accepting responses - and I'll be publishing the results in a Weekly Map Recap Special article. Get in those responses while you still can!

    26 of 52 - Southsun Cove - Level 80

    Alright, so we're on to post-launch maps. Southsun Cove is a fascinating map that is essentially our only Living World Season 1 map (though its inception came before that). As our first post-80 map after launch, Southsun Cove would set expectations for what post-launch content would/should look like.

    Additionally, this map is a bit difficult to talk about because there are several key phases of its design/existence. It had an initial release in the 'Lost Shores' patch in November of 2012 (before Living World was even officially in 'seasons!'), and then an intermediate existence between that and the 'Secret of Southsun' arc in May of 2013. After that arc, it had its current content (save for Southsun Survival, which was introduced later but is separate from the map's content itself).

    Theme/Concept - 9/10

    Southsun Cove has always dealt with some heavy themes. Even from the first 'Lost Shores' event, where Lion's Arch was attacked, the themes of the story dealt heavily with colonialism, imperialism, and environmentalism.

    It's hard not to see parallels with real-world events in the attack on Lion's Arch and the subsequent invasion and long-term troubled occupation of Southsun. Within the game, the karka are blameless for their attack - fleeing from the Deep Sea Dragon like the quaggan or krait. We are also introduced to the fairly unambiguously evil Consortium - essentially an Inquest less focused on ending the world and more interested in profiting from it.

    In fact, the Lost Shores event and invasion of Southsun allows us to play pretty clearly as the bad guys: disturbing a natural environment, strip mining it, clearing its forests, and slaughtering all the inhabitants we come across - with the final goal of destroying the karka's social structure and ability to reproduce. It's an unusual release in that sense - especially given that in the following Living World Season 1 the Consortium are ultimately allowed to retain control of the island.

    In that later release, we are introduced to Canach. In his first appearance, he is essentially an eco-terrorist, attempting to destroy the Consortium presence on the island by agitating the karka. Although Canach is morally ambiguous here, I think we can agree that his aim - to throw the Consortium off the island - is morally justified. Private corporate ownership of an entire island must be seen as a moral gray area at best. Given the evidence that the Consortium is a caricature of a corrupt company, I think it evident that their long term ownership of any large private land base is a bad idea.

    So in summary, Southsun Cove has dealt with and continues to deal with a lot of big meaty themes. If you've only ever visited the island once or twice and missed the story, it would be easy for these themes to go unnoticed: the map today is essentially just generically a resort under threat from local wildlife. Current players may not realize that we struck the first blow, in a real sense - the attack on Lion's Arch was a flimsy excuse to extend the Consortium's control.

    Lore - 2/10

    This is one of the big points that longtime fans of the franchise hold against Southsun Cove. It has no relationship to any previous lore, even in a geographical sense. The island appeared essentially 'out of thin air' on the world map, bringing into question the extent to which we can expect the developers to rely on previous lore. This actually caused quite the debate when the map first made it into the game.

    We know today that the map itself was originally going to be largely underwater in early design conceptions - which would have fit in our understanding of the world map here. But looking at the map today, it breaks immersion in some key ways; for example, how was this large idyllic island not colonized by Krytans or quaggan/krait/others before the karka arrived? How was it something that we only heard of in Lost Shores despite the supposed passage of shipping traffic in the Sea of Sorrows?

    (A side note: this has always been a problem with the lore around pirates in Guild Wars 2. If there were so many ships in Kryta that extras could be used as architectural material for Lion's Arch and other areas, who on earth were they pirating? There can't have been enough shipping post-asura gate and post-rising of Orr to provide for all those pirates. Who are current pirates in Bloodtide Coast and other areas preying on? Most shipping seems to have moved to asura gate. What cities would even ship goods to each other by boat, other than Garenhoff, Rata Sum, and Lion's Arch?)

    But at any rate, Southsun Cove has created some interesting new lore about the Consortium and the karka themselves. I use lore here fairly loosely - neither of these things is super relevant to the story of the game. Perhaps the most engaging lore in Southsun has to do with the oblique references to the Deep Sea Dragon - which may become more relevant in the upcoming expansion, End of Dragons.

    Design - 5/10

    This is one of the few design sections we'll have where the design is really separate from the gameplay. We know that in general Arenanet teams prefer to work closely and collaboratively across disciplines: artists working with gameplay designers with programmers etc.

    In the case of this map it's hard to imagine how the environmental designers could have worked closely beyond a broad sense with the gameplay designers for the "permanent" events that live there today. It is likely that the gameplay designers were very focused on how to implement the crazy (brilliant?) idea of a one-time island invasion meta chain in a satisfying way. They likely didn't have the time to do more than sketch out what events might eventually be the 'permanent' ones.

    From the upper atmosphere, the design of the playable map area would look like a spiral, starting from the center north and curling around towards the east, brushing the south-east, before curling up towards the south-west and then the center-west. The path of the player generally curves upwards vertically, starting from the tidepools and climbing to the heights of the karka hive. This presents a very clear picture of the intended progression of the Lost Shores invasion meta event.

    In the second release, large sections of the map got new settlements or more elaborate settlements. Additionally, caves in the interior of the island got some new content - though not as much as might have been expected. Even in these new settlements though, there's not really that much to see and do since the Living World Season 1 events left.

    In the initial Lost Shores release, players arrived on the two ships in the north and north east, and then progressed to the hill in the northeast. They cleared the local forest, and built the settlement. Over the next couple hours, this was repeated several times as they progressed closer to the karka hive. There was a temporary wall of superheated air blocking players off from the hive, and past that players blasted open an entrance and then lured the Queen to them. After killing the Queen, the Consortium announced 'Mission Accomplished' from their aircraft carrier.

    Between the original release and the second, there were no events whatsoever on the island.

    During the second release, there was a series of events based around factions of settlers fighting each other, and then the introduction of the modern meta revolving around defending the settlements and attacking the Queen. For some reason, following the Living World episode, the settler conflict events were removed - reducing the permanent events on the map to 17 (including failure events).

    In a broad design sense, the environment itself is fantastic. There's a good use of verticality, caves, and rock formations to create distinct areas across the map. It is always easy to tell where you are on the island, yet each area also appears part of a larger whole.

    The interaction between the design and the event structures, on the other hand, continues to feel empty relative to the space.

    Gameplay - 4/10

    Okay, so again we'll need to look at this in phases.

    In Phase 1 (the Lost Shores release), this map had some very spotty - but ambitious! - gameplay. It is remembered today largely for the widespread lag and crashes associated with it. I personally was able to stay on the map until the Karka Queen herself, at which point I crashed and missed the loot. This was not an unusual experience.

    But all that said, the thrill of - in real time - colonizing the island was really neat! The execution was messy, but it was an exciting thing to be a part of and a real example of a 'Living World'.

    In Phase 2 (between releases), Southsun Cove was an empty and desolate place. It was a key component of early arguments against the Living World Season 1 model: some players used it as an example of how temporary events led to a long-term dearth of content.

    In Phase 3 (Secret and Last Stand), Southsun Cove was at its best: it had a (small) dungeon, it had crab toss, it had lots of interesting npcs visiting, a number of events.

    But then in Phase 4 (following Last Stand), much of that was taken away. Half the events were removed, as well as many of the npcs. The dungeon was expunged. Since then, it has remained a farming spot for karka shells and guild events - and little else. The defend events are actually satisfyingly challenging - but perhaps overtuned for solo players.

    It's worth noting that the jumping puzzles in Southsun Cove are a lot of fun. One is more difficult and is a great example of a tougher-but-fair puzzle. The other is quick, easy, and fun.

    Art - 9/10

    Here's where Southsun succeeds in spades. As a map that wasn't really connected to any other content - and which still hasn't really been used as a source of recycle assets in a major way - Southsun is like nothing else. It's gorgeous and unique. It really captures the feeling of a tropical island in a way that other 'tropical' areas (vanilla Maguuma) don't really replicate. It feels desolate, raw - the volcanic rocks as threatening as they are beautiful.

    Of special highlight are the natural smokestacks, tidepools, and karka hives - not to mention the dynamic weather (which was a first at the time).

    Long Term/Retention - 5/10

    Southsun Cove is perhaps doing better than it deserves. That sounds unfair, but this is a map that has less than 15 'real' events (not counting fail state events) and no real reward structures. There's no npc here which offers to trade for a map currency, or any real long-term system of any kind. What there are are a number of unique and valuable crafting materials - and a world boss that is often done at reset. Amusingly, the fact that we only come to this map to slaughter karka for their shells plays well into the imperialist narrative.

    Oh, and weirdly enough there isn't really any signpost in the game that points new players to Southsun. You sort of need to discover it by word of mouth. That makes it highly unusual, and potentially depresses the retention somewhat - though players aren't missing out on too much.

    Overall - 5.5/10

    Southsun Cove's quality really depends on when we're talking about it. At launch, it represented a fascinating attempt at what the Living World could be - paired with a karka nest's worth of bugs and limitations. From then until the later updates, it was essentially wasted space. Now it's found a middle ground, and provides a snapshot at early post-launch environmental design. Filled with assets that have never been replicated, untied to any major storyline, and with no clear guide that points new players there, Southsun Cove is the oddball of the post-launch map family. On a personal level, I love it for its oddness.

    ----------------------------------

    That's all, folks! What do you think of today's map? Any fond memories, or strong complaints? How well do you think this map stands up in comparison to all the others? Better get your scarves and goggles ready becaue next week we'll be headed to Dry Top.

    Don't forget that survey!

    submitted by /u/Jonah_Marriner
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    Dancing with Demons Meme Kill with 5 Necros

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 07:39 PM PDT

    Finally unlocked the skyscale and used the Venomous Greathorn skin. I am giddy.

    Posted: 27 Sep 2020 07:18 PM PDT
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