Holiday Seasons & Events

Some of my fondest memories of my time with Guild Wars 1 are the holiday events that took place on most major (and some minor / more obscure) holidays around the year. No big surprise, but apparently those will be back again in Guild Wars 2.

In a recent blog post, Colin Johanson of Arenanet commented on Live Game Development and introduced the individual development teams that are working on different aspects of the game. One of those teams is the "Holiday & Events Team":

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Holidays & Events—Our Holidays & Events team will be creating a variety of special holidays in Guild Wars 2, building on the long tradition of amazing holidays in Guild Wars. You can likely guess which holiday you will see from this team first, and I recommend that everyone check our website next week for more information about this exciting first event.

On top of holidays, this team will also be creating in-game one-time events that occur and can change the world or drive narratives that come to a finite conclusion across the world.

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Halloween is just around the corner! Prepare for the return of the Mad King!

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Looking forward to this, the GW1 holiday events were always nice and I did enjoy the minigames.

Roller beetle and the snowball fights were both fantastic :3

I seriously cannot wait to see what they do with the Mad King. :) Particularly looking forward to seeing one or more cities getting a thematic makeover.

As long as they don't go for WoW's pumpkinfest approach to decoration. Seriously, it's like Blizzard had some sort of fetish about round orange objects.

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Originally Posted by Feldspar

... some sort of fetish about round orange objects.

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Eyes Feldspar's avatar...

Counting the days... also looking forward to meet the Mad King. ;)

Edit: Redacted because of excessive rudeness.

I'm sure that during the Halloween event the overflow servers will have overflow overflow servers to accommodate everyone in Lion's arch. Looking forward to it. It seems they put in quite alot of effort for their very first holiday event.

Cheeses... that's an awful lot of gathering that needs to be done in a week to get the monthly.

Had fun in costume brawl.

Not particularly tempted by any of the skins and wotnot.

Definitely not buying any BL Keys - people are talking about opening nearly a hundred chests and getting nothing interesting in return.

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Originally Posted by frightlever

Cheeses... that's an awful lot of gathering that needs to be done in a week to get the monthly.

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I guess that's a joke, yes? You only need to consume 10 candy corn for the monthly achievement. Or did I miss something?

Had a quick look into Lion's Arch this morning, it all looks pretty fun. There is a scavenger hunt (which already seems to be partially bugged on our server but should still be possible to complete), the costume brawl (nice to see that it has been changed into a public event happening in LA), candy corn nodes which can be mined (Trick or Treat bags as rare drops from these nodes, copper picks work on these nodes, as do master quality picks - apparently, these have finally been fixed!) and other things happening around the world, like mysterious doors appearing from thin air every now and then. I already managed to reach one before it disappeared... ;)

Although most of the armor and weapon skins from the Black Lion Chests don't really tickly my fancy, I am curious what kind of crafting recipes there are. Apparently candy corn is an ingredient for all professions.

Not seen all the crafting stuff yet, the easy crafted things are for mad kings runes (which don't seem that great) and the permanent versions of the shortbow/shield/staff available from the candy corn vendors. These weapons are halfway towards legendaries in crafting material cost.

Don't know if the black lion skins can be crafted but I'd imagine not.

Only one that looks great to me is the 2handed chainsword but I imagine that will be in high demand.

150 candy corn to be consumed for the monthly was what I heard. I'm currently on about thirty eaten and had hoped it was going to be 50 for the monthly. As with all things GW2, I won't believe it until I see it myself. To be fair, it's not a huge imposition, but there's only about a week to go until the end of the month.

Oh. Sorta funny what happens when you chug too many candy corn...

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Originally Posted by frightlever

150 candy corn to be consumed for the monthly was what I heard. I'm currently on about thirty eaten and had hoped it was going to be 50 for the monthly. As with all things GW2, I won't believe it until I see it myself. To be fair, it's not a huge imposition, but there's only about a week to go until the end of the month.

Oh. Sorta funny what happens when you chug too many candy corn...

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Ah yes, silly me. I had only seen the first level of the achievement track, which is 10 candy corn consumed. 150 seems a bit more, however I got ~40 in maybe 30 minutes of unfocussed gathering by just running through the world. There are also Rich Candy Corn Nodes (Veins? ;) ), so it's not that bad. One of those can be found in Cursed Shore, near Pursuit Pass (the entrance to the area from the North / Malchor's Leap).

Yes, it's 150. You can just buy them on the trading post.

For your info, if you are playing the Black Lion Chest lottery - and losing - the devs have recommend you hold onto the other boring items you get from them, as they will be adding methods to turn them into halloween items (presumably through the Mystic Forge)....

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Originally Posted by Malawi Frontier Guard

Yes, it's 150. You can just buy them on the trading post.

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You don't even have to do that. I found it pretty easy to get to 150 (and more) by just "mining" candy corn (look for rich nodes!). At the moment, we also have a guild gathering booster activated which should last until tomorrow evening and increases the chance of getting Trick or Treat bags (and other rare materials from nodes) by 10%. Master quality mining picks work too.

Well I managed to get halfway through the scavenger hunt last night before my router crapped out on me, and I had to spend 2 hours fixing that. This week has not been good to me, so far.

Loving the spooky redesign for LA though. And the scavenger hunt reminds me so much of hidden treasure caches in the EotN dungeons. I'm really loving the clues, although the crowds of other players gathering around the objectives does kind of give the solutions away once you get close.

Beating the clocktower puzzle cost me nearly all of my sanity this morning. Edit: Despite it's issues, I liked it very much. My muscle memory hasn't been challenged that much since VVVVVV.
The pumpkin game is kind of nice and funny, although there is no way to come back from a disadvantage. It's also a bit random, but fun.
The other game is rubbish, because usually one villager survives, and you don't get anything for losing...meaning 29/30 players don't get anything. It's also extremely, and I mean extremely, random.
Loving the event, still have to do the second part of the scavenger hunt.

Ok, missed the one time thing, don't really care too much about that, will check youtube later. The neat thing now is that I get the guild member bug, so grouping up for this dungeon thing is next to impossible.

We've managed to get three of us in a single dungeon. It's a case that we need to be in proper lions arch for it to work (same bug as with release).

We've managed to keep a few people together, but if anyone wants company I'm iosefward.6978.