GW2 Secrets of the Obscure - Final Thoughts (Spoilers) 

The real reason they didnt want airships is because they have seen them blow up every time and do nothing. They just didnt have the heart to tell the commander.

Amnytas is the best argument we have yet for a 'disable mount skins'-toggle in graphics settings. With a little luck we can toss in 'disable infusions' and 'disable back items' too.

On the topic of the MC sounding tired, the female sylvari voice did it really well too. It was a really obvious tone shift, cuz she usually sounds very peppy and high-energy even when she's upset or mad. It felt like someone dimmed a bright lamp way down, it really felt meaningful.

My main's story ended with the Epilogue. He has a job at Xunlai as an assistant to Taimi and Yao. He's got a nice rooftop apartment in Kaineng with some illegally imported jungle plants that he shares with Canach and two cats, Tybalt and Demmi, who entertain the old retired Fern Hound. He spends the whole SotO adventure happy to see Zojja but wondering, why oh why, can't he be on the med team, or the logistics team, or the recon team, or any team that isn't the Vigil's Marching Orders all over. All that Whispers training for nothing! Maybe he'll be able to put it to use in his revenge plan against Mi-Rae....

The Supernatural point you had in the story part is kinda implied I think. If the Commander brings in a few thousand soldiers unprepared to fight back against emotion sucking demons it probably would have made things worse, right? At least that's how I understood it... I guess they should have done a better job at explaining it.

Loved the story .... however its annoying that ya have farm rifts multiple times in order to progress ( I just don't like to grind while doing story ).... also most ppl were confused about how to unlock wizard tower , they should mention the meta imo ..... overall loved it !

On the matter of the "fleet of airships" bit being dropped, if you read the journal you kinda get that covered. Your com device when Uenno adjusts it to work with the the Astral Ward's system she does it in a way that also cuts-off the Commander from anyone outside. (edit to add: I highly recommend reading the journal entries once you're done with the story. The Commander's thoughts there add so much context. It's in the journal that the Commander comments about being cut-off from outside contact) Spoilers below: In the epilogue where Zojja asks for the com to make a call to Taimi, it's fair to say she'd know how to re-enable the outbound contact to make that call.

6:15 Steve Staley is a GOAT. Seriously, his voice work doesn't get enough praise. I LOVE the male Asura Commander. Any time I play the story on a different character or see someone else playing the story, I'm like "Nah, Steve did it better." The freaking range on this character is so strong. And I love how he sound so much like a world-weary leader who has to put up with so much but still does his best to get the job done.

I really wish we got an alternate fractal of a fight with Zhaitan - lets see the undead dragon at his finest.

Weaponmastery: so.... you just equip that weapon.... but but but but... the specialization...? no no, you just grab that weapon with your hand b..b..but won't hurt? no won't hurt, you just put in your hand.... I HAVE THE POWER OF BROKEN CLASS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

They DO have a few NPCs talking around the Wizards Tower about how they can't hide things much longer, and might need to reach out soon, so you MIGHT get a new pact fleet coming in at some point.

For me the best narrative so far. No boring characters, all believable and very well written within the story, each having something that reminds a different spectrum of each commander's emotion, so to speak. Two things: 1 - Please protect R'tchikk at all costs. 2 - Rytlock being himself in the interview for the Cantha newspaper reporter made me laugh more than I should have. :) A great start for Soto for sure.

About that plot hole with declining help of a fleet: I like to think that Wizard's declining help to uphold a tradition is more about honoring Isgarren than actually caring about tradition itself. The point was to rescue the dude and as we learn about how he isn't some fairy tale hero, he could be pretty pissed about blowing a secret he upheld for possibly thousands of years just because he got 'napped that one time. I'm also pretty sure Commander themselves would actually ignore any protests and step up to get shit done their own way once the Wizard's way of doing things stopped working. I like how Commander behaves in this expac - they need to actively fit in their new role as just a subordinate and not a person in charge and are honestly trying to be polite towards people that Zojja cares about. So in the end I don't think this is a plot hole. It would be if Commander's military resources were actually needed and the story would still go on without it (which would probably end up with forcing Taimi back into story to have her create new Deus Ex Taimi device). Zojja's absense was also handled quite neatly (I actually wanted to read her journal entries). All in all, I liked the way story progressed and how it dealt with threads from previous arcs. BTW I'm hyped for next story part that deals with helping our new demon waifu friend fight Eparch. Wing 4 is my favorite raid wing especially because of aesthetics and Cerys' fight is right up my alley (it helps that cutscenes in Soto story are realy good - I was actually kinda touched when Dagda comforted Zojja). I'd love to get a whole expansion in that world but even a just an LW episode worth of content with it will be great. I can almost forgive anet for stealing my legendary rune functionality (well, significant part of it at least) with their new Relic system.

The new masteries are a huge QOL improvement, but those maps are completely doable without them.

* Amytas is almost a perfect map, it just needs a few more giant white marble walls * The wizards are sociopaths, experimenting on living beings, and need to be Nurenberg'd

My fear is that, ANet has always been good as setting up stories but falls on their face near the end due to rushing devlopment or other real world related reasons. HoT, EoD and IBS suffered from this. I THINK PoF worked out the best cause they clearly had a plan and followed it for a while with LW season 4. Also my major complaint is AGAIN, they have REALLY good post story side quests buried in the achivements. These have tons of text and many are fully voiced, deal with the characters you meet and expand the lore... BURIED IN THE ACHIVEMENTS. I can't imagine a lot of people even know they are there. They did a bit with mail and whispers, but those still don't show you where they are! Gah it's frustrating! lol Overall I'm happy with the story. The writers clearing used the look books to make things fit in well and the pacing was well enough. Rifts are meh, but I knew they would be so my expectations for them were low, new strikes are cool but they need to stop with the strike portals not giving you access to ALL strikes. Also a bit disappointed with the bugs this time round. Some of those good side quests have bugs that stop progression which is a shame. I was excited to see more dwarves I think then boom... Bug to stop progression. lol

I've enjoyed the expansion a lot. The fantasy theme with the tall white towers are an aesthetic that I always enjoy. Also, the Music! I love that the music changes, in the Archipelago, according to the area you're in; so, I've enjoyed the HoT, PoF, and EoD music themes in one map! I think of Anet's goal for the joy of movement (or freedom?), anyway, you get what I mean. It really shines in this map. It's a great place for using the Griffon and zooming around the maps, and once you learn the masteries, the Skyscale takes on a whole new aspect of movement. The story has kept my interest, adding new characters while not forgetting all of our old adventuring team. I'm looking forward to the next part! The events support the story in many cases. I didn't expect the darker elements, but I like it - adds some weight to the story.

Personally I have been having a great time with the new expansion. Weapon master training has made me enjoy alot of my favourite builds in a fun new way. Absolutely love the flying masteries! As a griffon enjoyer both maps are incredibly fun to explore! Haven't finished the story yet but it seems to be some of GW2 better narritives. Thanks for the content and take care everyone!

6:00 I'm glad to hear this. What I really missed about GW1 is how starting a new character in an expansion actually made you feel like you were doing a brand new story with no reference to beating a prior campaign. I can only take being called commander so many times.

I think the yoga part should have hordes of Kryptis fighting players, like their last stand while we...do.. yoga...

I don't mind the login reward being worse, but I do wish we had more dailies. In the old system i had to do 3 things out of 12. We had 4 of each wvw, pve and pvp dailies. So when i logged into gw2 to play i could in the moment decide what i wanted out of my play time that day, and even within a game mode skip one of the tasks. Sometimes the tasks are things I don't like doing (like you touched on with having to get so many of the available mastery points). The way it is now, I have to decide the day before what content i will feel like doing tomorrow, and then do 100% of the list they give me. This simply makes dailies less fun to do.

I found the story rather boring until the end - and i hated that it felt like 2/3 of the story were: "Go find rifts and close them" - yay floating around the map following the wind particals so fun.

As a vet who hasn’t had the time to play much in a while, this is the only SOTO review I care about

For me The only thing missing was... Lord Faran

I could be wrong about this but, pretty sure they confirmed that the expansion model is: SOTO, Patch 1, 2, 3, Next Expansion. Could be wrong on this but thought i would just mention. Good review as always Muk!

My 2 biggest issues with the story. (SPOILERS) First, Mabon. The dude dies too early. Aside from being a good friend to everyone and opening a door, he accomplishes virtually nothing in the story. Despite being in charge in Isgarrens absence, and being a Mursaat, I was seriously disappointed with his ending. Second, Cerus. The dude also dies too early. This disappointed me more than Mabon. Cerus is in the promo trailers for SotO and is already dead despite LITERALLY accomplishing nothing. He wasnt even the one that killed Mabon, he specifically names a different demon as being the one to make the finishing blow. Overall I think the direction of the story is fine. The problem is the pacing. We should have had more time with Mabon to really understand why he's so important to everyone, especially Zojja. We needed to see more demonly evil deeds by Cerus to justify killing him so unceremoniously, so soon.

Re: Rift scaling, the mobs that you have to clear before you can spawn the "boss" also scale pretty well, but the boss itself is fixed it seems.

Got my first ascended armor from the wizard's vault. Still working on my exotics.

Great video! Always nice to hear other people's opinions on the expansions. Personally I really enjoyed the expansion and I'm looking forward to seeing where the next updates go. It feels really refreshing to have a non-dragon storyline again and it makes me excited for the future of the game to know that they still had this cool of a story prepared to tell so quickly after EoD. One thing I have to add about the pricing is that there is a minimum they have to charge in order to cover their expenses. GW2 expansions are pretty cheap compared to other games (who are more than happy to charge you 60 bucks for them), so people have been spoiled by that. Just because they've priced their expansions cheaply in the past does not mean we can use that as a point of comparison and say "hey, this expansion has less content than that one, so it should be X amount cheaper". There is a floor for the price at release, they still have to pay everyone working for their studio after all. And I agree with you that all things considered, 25 bucks is a very fair price for this expansion.

After playing this game for 11 years (with breaks) for me its worst expac, nothing new only 2 maps (1 city 1 map) first map is just reskin of Old maps i saw them milion Times, no new content spec dungs raids i fell like this xpac is just reskin, mobs maps. Do time rifts x10 Times to progres the story... boring and easy event, im rly mad.

I hate the wizard vault. The coin% increase is now super expensive and only gives 1%. That's what I cared about the most with the daily login system. They say they want to respect the players time and sneakily disrespect it when it comes to the fact people can't always play. You lose out so much by not playing for hours daily.

What they did was shifting from free living world content to putting future content behind a paywall. The addon itself is incomplete so it is absolutely NOT worth its price right now - although after 6 months that might look different. Fact is - we wont get anymore free content which is kinda understandable - they need to make money somehow.

I dont know why people keep calling soto a expansion. Anet wont have resources or even team to finish Soto and pump living world chapters at same time. Soto is pretty much an payed living world...... Soto is pretty much ibs all over again.

Thank you for the comprehensive explanation! This helps a lot for planning out how I should farm the resources!! :)

Pass easy, maybe in 1 year or 2 im buy, for me is just wrong release this dogshit patch and nothing about balance spec, fix bugs, Alliance WvW and leg weapon and more.

This expansion is basically a year-long season pass, and they're leaning heavily into the garbage that other season passes use to make you feel like you have to keep logging on and grinding. It's antithetical to the decade of GW2 that came before it.

Spoiler I spent $25 having another character I got attached to die! ArenaNet! First Trahearne now this one?! Why...

I hate how they made login rewards almost nonexistant, as someone without SOTO without much time daily there's no point into logging into the game anymore, where before you still got nice daily login rewards to pile up

Think its strange that with The Wizard Vault that no one seems to talks about the weekly and its reward of - Laurel (10),  Celebration Booster, Tome of Knowledge &  Astral Acclaim (450) , like we had the log in monthly and it was super good but at least the weekly makes some differences... right?

Thoughts on "the plothole": I think your idea around 8:40 was what they were trying to do but they did it hamfisted. I mean we are talking about demons that feed on emotions and such. This is like a Mordremoth situation but every race could be affected. So the Magical MIB/SCP/Control crew here just wanted to sterilize and contain the situation. They even referenced the mines in Cantha we were at and how the demons were pretty much that breed. We saw what a mess that was in just the small area we had.

The lament about being the commander vs being a competent member of a team struck a chord with me because that's exactly what I feel like when I'm playing. I don't feel like a commander, though throughout the story, I'm referred to as such. For example, Traherne was a commander...he was commanding fleet movements, strategy, etc. Rytlock could be a more competent commander than I would be. I'm fine with being the chosen one, but as to my playing a role of such...it never really gels for me that I'm leading anything, really. I'm a facilitator of narrative for my own story, and I'm along for the ride. At least 'wayfarer' makes more sense to what I'm doing now. :D

I feel like rifts should have led to a meta event where there are hordes of enemies pouring out. And completing that would net some sweet rewards. The whole thing could be like the Dragonstorm event in Eye of the North (or is it Dragonstrike? Can't remember the name), but with the whole demon theme of the expansion

Rifts scaling, seems the trash mob part does scale up (T3 rifts trash phase is SO long...), but the bosses die instantly.

the rifts mechanics feels very basic, hope they plan to expand it in the future

Maboon was the OG for this xpac- especialy if you did the key meta with lyr. Piti we changed him for Isgaren... edit. Also Peitha was perfectly played by the voice actres>>>> props to her

I absolutely aggree on basically everything, but ESPECIALLY the relics. Not only are the relics lacking CRUCIAL information (just as you said), after testing some of them, some of the effects felt like... EXTREMELY underwhelming. In my case, this was "Relic of the Krait" (After using an elite skill, emit a wave of corruption that inflicts damaging conditions). I was BLOWN AWAY when i noticed, that it inflicts 1 (!) stack of bleeding, torment, poison on a 8 second duration. with the relic having a cooldown of 30 seconds. WHY DON`T YOU TELL ME WHAT IT DOES BEFORE TESTING IT? On the mastery-points: ABSOLUTELY. Another issue with the mastery points is, that a LOT of them are tied to event-chains or standalone events. The issue especially currently is, that MULTIPLE of the required events are currently bugged. And certain events (which ironically, i´ve been waiting for while writing the comment and watching the video) are based on the time of day, and CANNOT be done if it´s not currently that time (in this case: nighttime).

on the airship part: it was not tradition. They said it was the tradition isagaren set up. basically they are telling you that our leader wanted secrecy and although he was not available they followed his rules

I haven't finished the story yet but I just have to say, the bugs and issues with the new systems really badly hurt my enjoyment of the expansion. I'm in part 7 and I honestly don't care because I've had so many issues. Relics barely even say what they do, most are awful, my first experience with the new dailies was that bugged dungeon in Echovald that I couldn't complete with like 40 others standing and LFG popping off. In the first new map the Professor escort event bugged twice and couldn't be finished, the kestrel escort event that people need for an achievement bugged 3 times with players in the map frustrated trying multiple times to do it. Rifts bugged out while I played with friends, some existed but couldn't be interacted with. Everything else aside, to me, that's not ok and now I'm at a point where I am not invested in the story or care what happens because I spent most of it frustrated, sent out to do buggy activities to get to the next story part over and over. And just clunkiness, I have to replay part 5 for the achievement doing the meta without getting essence because who would even think that was a thing? The chests placed everywhere in the tower, needing late masteries to open chests way after you're done caring to explore, relics again, the daily system forcing you to pick a day before and get locked in, needing to talk to that guy to unlock weapon mastery, etc, a lot seems like they didn't actually think it through. I feel like the expansion was not ready to launch, it's already shorter, no elite specs, no new weapons yet, no legendaries yet, so I just find it wild that it's got so many issues with bugs and poorly thought out systems/balancing when making smaller expansions should mean the quality is higher than usual. I just got to Amnytas and already had 2 bugged rifts, an event bug where those magic barriers that confuse you and knock you back, disappeared visually and it's telling me to go in but I still get confused and knocked back. I just got to the map, this was just flying around trying to do map completion. It's deflating to see. If any of you had a good experience, I'm happy for you, but it doesn't negate that this was mine and many others are dealing with bugs.

3 hours of story is hardly a decent expansion. I'm more than happy on GW2 with 40 hours of story per expansion and several hours of new updates throughout said expansion. I quit GW2 after how awful and short they made their story progression and how dogwater the actual content really is.

Mount while in combat, 180 sec cool down, ffs why?, when i saw them talking about making this "change", i thought NICE, now i can farm nodes, get attacked, mount and fly to next node, but NO, locked behind a mastery(i can "live" with that) but 180 sec, come on now, do better

How was it? I'll tell you right now. The feeling on content splapped together from acraps all over the game. Got game crash 4 times during the first story (in the last conversation window) and there's not a single checkpoint in the part, so i had to replay it whole again (from the point being woke up by Zojna). Stupid decisions and outcomes as always (everyone survives by being pummeled to the ground but the "one" has to die just because). The only point i actually felt being drawn to story (it began to be somewhat interesting) was when it suddenly ended... So from money point of view - i feel like 12euro should be ok price for this one, not double. For that kinda money it's short and boring most of the time.

I'm really hoping that releasing a half-finished (or less) paid expansion doesn't become the norm... Getting really tired of the game industries comfort and even reliance on releasing really unfinished products, then finishing it tons of time later... It leaves room to cut that thing short, or cut it off abruptly... For example, "Finishing the other half of the Delve EoD map" with just some tiny turtle speed run tube, then sending Aurene to the gas station for milk (just like my dad) just so they could release yet another unfinished part of the game for money.

41:50 that's my big issue with gw2 in general. It already happen with action camera, sometimes, especially with norns and charrs, you can't see where to attack because the camera, even if you customize camera position from shoulders in options, it still hard to tag things if you are too close from your character. At this point, I think that is more an engine problem than a choice. Come on, Anet, let's do a rework in camera placement.

I have to say, I didn't do the masteries until I unlocked the skyscale trek... even then, didn't do a lot with the masteries until after the story was done. I was able to get around easily with the skyscale. Guess it's because I love the skyscale and it's my primary mount. Anet has always been lacking in giving any type of explanations of how things work. Yea you can skip a few steps but, no matter what, you still need gift of battle, (WvW). To me the most irritating thing is, all they've done is added yet another map currency to the game...

I actually quite like the expansion as a whole.. My main feedback would be to... Just improve the rewards really. Rift is only there for essence which to be fair.. That's what it's there for but a part from that it only gives a karma bottle and map currency? really? No chest of loot? And like you said.. The Arcane chests feel very unrewarding. Motivations however is a good way to make money if you're not gunning for the armour.

As much as mobility is needed in these maps, I'm confused on why the made skyscale fireballs the first thing to unlock, then wall launch as second. For people who just got into GW2 and don't have the Path of fire or Living world mounts, constanly fighting the map to get to an event when old time players are zooming past you has got to be a disatifying element. Ending up JUST short of the height you'd need then having to find another way to get to where you are going. How many new players got to events to late to participate?

The weapons master thing is weird to me because I couldn’t find who y’all were talking about but when I talked to Frode he gave me the unlock…. So I didn’t understand why the game told me to find the Weaponsmaster and not just “go talk to Frode”….?

Weapon Mastery should have been 'into the mind of Lord Faren' playing thru his power fantasies, something involving Faren. Would've been amazingly entertaining and perfectly relevant.

I seriously hate Wizard's Vault. The gold value is not worth the effort. I did dailies every day as a warm up. The 2 gold daily was great. Now they've up'd the effort to be not something I even want to do. I haven't logged in in days because of the many irritants not being worth the low profit.

I can live with a headcanon of your idea that the more who know about them and fear them the more powerful they become :) Maybe it is already the truth but since you're not the chosen one, they just don't think it's important to tell you, or something. But with all the rifts opening all over Tyria I'm sure this secrecy will be hard or impossible to maintain.

You can now purchase the Gifts of blood for example from a vender, so you don't need crafting disciplines.

I think there is just too much "stuff" and now a lot of "stuff" I worked SUPER hard for is...simply gone. Dailies are no longer something I come to do to relax, I am just like (shrug)...too much work to keep up with it all...

the fact you mentioned super natural at this whole kryptis and compared it was god tier and 100% great. love it

Adventures in HoT used to be locked based on outpost progress.

At 8:30 your complaint about it needing to stay secret is explained in a few of the optional books the Kryptis quite literally do get stronger the more that people know of them, there is a couple of almost SCP like books that talk about people just being told about the Kryptis and that alone is enough for them to get possessed. It is entirely fair that you missed this tho, so much great lore hidden in books.

Time-of-day lock out Adventures alrdy happened in HoT, specifically Verdant Brink ones.

Tulpa aren't unique to Supernatural, but that's a good idea. Or the modern day equivalent would be Infohazards. To make it cannon consistent, we can say the more people who know WHY that makes the Kryptis more powerful, the more powerful they become. That's why they refuse to explain themselves to the commander.

It is a bag of laurels. You’re reaching into the bag and pulling out one laurel each time. 😊😊😊😊😊😊

even more so, if they invited an airfleet, imagine captains getting corrupted because they are unprepared to deal with the kryptis. , in hindsight wizards not wanting interference may be a good thing

The only Masteries I am short on are part of the Icebrood Saga. I'm not super into Drizzlewood Coast and the game outright requires you to grind it for months to get them. Plus, for some like 'kill all 13 of x enemy' the Drizzlewood veterans know exactly where to go and decimate them immediately after they spawn with no regard for anyone who doesn't already have credit. I've never found a commander willing to help me get that one...there was a commander who -considered- it, but the players were on autopilot and they immediately caved.

Weapon master training unlock felt really weird I expected at least a collection, or only after finishing the story. I also kinda expected weaponmaster training to use hero points somehow. I thought it was a good excuse to reuse that system, but then you'd have to plan for hero points on the maps. I wonder if they cut that because of the shorter dev time?

I wouldn't farm any rifts for the upcoming leggies atm since not all of the systems are implemented yet. I guarantee the latest tier of rifts and maybe masteries will catapult the amount of currency gained from them substantially.

Guess i dodged a bullet by focusing the flight mastery before anything else for mobility purposes.

Does “limit player models” not work with mounts/sky scales? That’s weird.

There is an adventure in HOT thats only open during night tyrian time. Is it similar to that?

I echo a lot of the talking points you had on the expansion. For me the maps are somewhat of a letdown. While the lore behind them is nice and, and Amnytas does look quite nice, getting around them in general is absolutely annoying. The first map especially. I do still they are kinda lazy, I am pretty sure they just took a small chunk of kaineng, rotated a building or 2, and then put it there, for example, but the lore behind them is great and I do love that. The biggest issue is the movement especially when you do rifts or just do the metas - it simply takes quite a bit to go from X to Y, especially in rifts when they throw you from one corner to the other. Even with the masteries it still takes time, and I feel the waypoints are very sporadically placed. Besides that, the updrafts as well feel extreemely weirdly placed, especially in Amnytas. During the meta in Amnytas, if you wanna go for the lower lower tentacles you barely have any updrafts to get back or portals or leylines, it makes it annoying. Not only that, the lower tower's collision is sooooo bad. It works normally one meta then you simply fly through it in another, I feel like the collision messes up when using the skyscale, which is very annoying if you wanna do the wall latch. Also, while Skywatch feels extremely full, Amnytas feels very empty. I do not know if it is just me but outside of the metas each bastion feels dead and you can barely see some npcs and enemies sometimes. Could be bugs or due to performance but the southwestern part always feels empty to me. The main map metas are fine, and I really like how in Amnytas you are really encouraged to use the skyscale and fight and fly - that's awesome. HOWEVER, it has one big issue - the participation is extremely bad. I literally did the meta yesterday and went absolutely everywhere as much as possible, getting gold and silver medals constantly. And I got 70% participation - I only missed ONE of the outer circle bosses. And then today, I logged in literally when the last 2 steps were, and i got 40% participation...why? Besides, a lot of people complained they did not get the hero choice because of the participation, so I do not know if it is a bug or really affecting it. Weapon training - honestly did not test it much so I cannot comment there. The log-in rewards and the wizard's vault are decent enough, some of them should not be there, like the crafting bags or the essence of luck - just remove them. Or the obsidian. The higher more expensive rewards are good, the legendary kit or the skins. Heck, even the 90 basically free gold is nice (also why is there 1 bag of gold worth 30 Astral acclaim, why just one?). I am interested in doing some of the collections for Dagda and Zojja and the rest, partly due to lore and partly cause I know they might be needed for the leggy armor. The strikes are nice and the first one is much easier than I expected, though that's good. And then comes the part I absolutely despise - Windshark put it best, SoTo feels like a glorified battlepass. Leggy armor - can't do it full rn. Legacy rewards - cannot do it now. New weapons - none at the moment. THE STORY isn't even properly finished and the last act feels extremely rushed. I absolutely despise the fact that so much content is "coming". Outside of the grind for the skyscale grind and the rift grind, there's NOTHING to keep players busy for the 6 months or so it will take for the new content. I really hope they release some part of the update soon, like the new weapons, before the end of the year, otherwise it will feel very dry. The price point, when considering these factors, is not really justified - now, I am thinking in my currency, 25$ is not really that much for many countries, I can understand that. But 25$ can get me eating for 2 weeks here, admittedly not luxurious, but it can. I do not know how familiar you are with ESO, but this is what they do each year - announce a big expansion, then release a paid update with 1-2 dungeon DLCs that act as prologue, then release a very small prologue quest for free, then the expansion (which is paid), then ANOTHER dlc for the expansion which contains 1 or more dungeons, again, paid. ALL of these tie to the main story or side characters in the main story of the expansions. The difference with GW2 is that you don't pay for all these extra updates, at least I hope not. But this is what ESO is doing, and this update and expansion feels eeerily close to that business model. Overall, I do not know how to feel about the update..weirdly enough I have completed the story and a bit of the events and mostly did the dailies and rift hunting. I do not think i wasted my time, because I love the lore behind it and the possibilities they can pursue..but it feels lackluster. EOD felt like a complete package, especially story wise, and I still think the epic feeling of the Dragon's End meta is unmatched. SoTo did not do that to me yet...hope it does... Peitha best girl though, 11/10, I wanna feel like a lil, powerless man near tall strong women more often! Great assets there too, 12/10!

I want a wizard tower guild hall.

Fps killer maps! If fps is dead...any content on it is not playable so pointless. Anet need sort optimisation ffs

im sorry this dlc was crap, harry potter in gw2 and enemies over used again we need new enemy models ...

Didn't watch this right away because I was a little late to get going and didn't want spoilers. Watched a few videos from ppl trying to get around on their skyscales without the masteries: please note that when you fly through those xp 'bubbles' you get a boost that allows you to fly higher, even before you get the masteries. I noticed the bubbles respawned quite quickly, obviously to assist people, although so many videos I watched, the player studiously avoided them every time LOL. On the first fly through there is even currency you get (not sure what that will be for, guessing its for the new legendary armor?). I didn't go out of my way to 'grind' xp for the masteries, all the metas are completely doable without them. One thing that I would not have liked to start with is no wall jump but other than that, everything was fine.

eye of cerus is what i want from relics, its so fun in pvp

It is an anti-botting measure to randomize loot chest location on 3 axis.

I've always appreciated your thoughts on the game. You always seem fair and unbiased. Also..."Unga Bunga!" LMAO

If you power through your weeklies during the weekend to gain the weekly bonus, that's 40 * 6 + 450 = 690 (nice) acclaim a week from that alone. If you also login every day, that's 7 * 5 = 35 acclaim extra. Just that alone nets you 725 acclaim a week, which would be 24 gold pieces a week from astral acclaim only, which would be 24 * 4 = 96 gold per old daily login reward cycle (28 days). If you add to that doing 1 of the daily missions a day, that's another 10 * 7 = 70 acclaim, for an extra 10 gold per cycle (~106 g) If you add another daily mission a day, that's another 70 acclaim, for an extra 9 gold per cycle (~115 g) If you add the last daily mission a day (and thus claim the daily bonus), that's 10 + 30 = 40 acclaim a day extra, or 40 * 7 = 280 extra acclaim a week, for an extra 37 gold per cycle (~152 g) If you only do the dailies and not the weeklies, then you'd get either: - 35 aa/w (~1 g/week | ~4 g/cycle) for only login in; - 105 aa/w (~3 g/w | 14 g/c) for login + 1 daily; - 175 aa/w (~5 g/w | ~23 g/c) for login+2d; or - 455 aa/w (~15 g/w | ~60 g/c) for login+3d. If you only do the weeklies and not the dailies besides the login reward (which you always get for free), then you'd get either: - 75 aa/w (~2g/w | 10g/c) for login+1w; - 115 aa/w (~3g/w | ~15g/c) for login+2w; - 155 aa/w (~5g/w | ~20g/c) for login+3w; - 195 aa/w (~6g/w | 26g/c) for login+4w; - 235 aa/w (~7g/w | ~31g/c) for login+5w; - 725 aa/w (~24g/w | ~96g/c) for login+6w; - 765 aa/w (~25g/w | 100g/c) for login+7w; or - 805 aa/w (~26g/w | ~107g/c) for login+8w. I won't list all variations, but here are a few combinations of both: - login+1d+6w (the Casual Player Plan): 795 aa/w (~26g/w | 106g/c). Alternatively, if you login+3d for 2 days you gain +100 aa/w for a total of 895 aa/w (~29g/w | ~119g/c). This would mean login in, doing a single daily and weekly mission for 5 days of the week, then do all dailies each day of the week-end while finishing the 6th weekly. In my opinion, it's the perfect plan for busy players who can't play much during work days. In theory, this is more efficient than login+8w since the 2 days of login+3d nets you an extra 2g/w or 8g/c on top of the gold gained from astral acclaim only. It also puts you really close to 1,000 aa/w, which means the equivalent of a legendary kit or one of these mount skins in less than 2 weeks even if you have a busy work week. - login+3d+6w (the Bonus Seeker Plan): 1,145aa/w (~38g/w | ~152g/c). This means completing enough dailies and weeklies to reach the bonus for both. Unless you can do these fast, this plan is reserved for players with the time to complete the bonus requirements. This is a fast way to get a legendary kit within a week, so if you have some free time, go for it! - login+3d+8w (the Completionist Plan): 1,225 aa/w (~40g/w | ~163g/c). This means, well, completing everything every day every week. This is just shy of the astral acclaim limit allowed at a time per account. This is the most you can acquire per week so far. Keep in mind that only the daily bonus will net you an extra gold piece just for completing it, so that's an extra 7g/w or 28g/c for any login+3d plans only. This means the following totals: - Casual Player Plan: ~36g/w | ~147g/c - Bonus Seeker Plan: ~45g/w | ~180g/c - Completionist Plan: ~47g/w | ~191g/c In other words, the Casual Player Plan will lose about -9g/w | -33g/c compared to a Bonus Seeker player, while a Completionist player will gain about +2g/w | +11g/c instead.

A big thing about the leggy starter kit is that you don't choose whether you get might or magic from it. Save your materials until after you have opened it.

36:22 wow that's lame... as a 20 year mmorpg player I'm absolutely toxic against several un-fun addiction systems in games; When I play gw2 and I open my inventory and have to process loot it already feels bad because it feels like work: it's time consuming with slow salvaging and getting mainly loads of low value junk materials, trade post selling is slow AF, and even limited, and now I have to manually claim all the dailies? seriously f that I'm not gonna spend any time on that, but at the same time that pisses me off because I do like the gold find increase on my accounts and Ima miss out on that now too. Also the opening chests with the same dumb baby puzzle they have re-used 100 times feels so bad man.. that's 100% artificial game play, keeping ppl play longer to make the game feel full. Basically stealing your real life time to boost player numbers and the value of the game. How many people IRL literally like to go to the baby section of a toy store and do those games? or how many people play a golden retriever IRL and fetch shit without any additional depth.... Anyway I will prob. play this at some point but for sure walk straight by all this crap. ;-)

0:01 Muk, maybe have a look again and make a conscious decision if you wanna keep that in

Meanwhile, Logan Thackery's Spidey-sense is going mad and he doesn't know why.

I have a permanent orange arrow on the map of the Habitation Zone from the glitched Kestrel escort. And fighting the rifts doesn't register on the progress bar - Which has left me stuck in "Chapter 4" for 2 days. I've been literally unable to progress. Outside of that, I'm pretty disappointed that Anet has decided to go so linear. Skywatch Archipelago has become like Pre-Searing in GW1 - With no available exit. For me, a major reason I to play GW is because they _didn't_ force the story down your throat, yet this is what they're doing here. I'm not far from just saying to hell with it....

The best part of Soto? The Asuran Heroic Emote animation 😅

Here i'm Mukluk doing the comment.... "There is a FILTER....." i honestly didn't know you can filter for those even after these few years playing gw2 🤣

... laser beaming people under sickem? Oh my god, this is brilliant. UPD: Clovers are quite bad option. If we take bags of gold coins (discounted ones), we will end up with raw 25g per month for login in. 2 clovers do not cost that much, that is certain. While we lose cool chest at the end of the month, we also do not have to deal with 1 essence of luck or 20 silver piece of exotic gear and other stuff like that.

Thanks for the video, Mukluk. Do you think that the SOTO expansion is best enjoyed with higher-tiered gear? I'm in exotics for all of my toons and the ones I've tried so far in this expansion feel like they get hammered. The kryptis are no joke as far as damage goes...and I've had a hard time keeping pace with people in meta events due to down-states / deaths. Also, I would like to figure out a faster way to level masteries. It's been a slog for every x-pac.

THERE IS A FILTER FOR MASTERY POINTS ?!?!?!?!!??!?!!?

There's a book in the skywatch meta side of the Tower that suggests some entity in Tyria exactly like the one you're describing in your story review. It says that even knowing about it makes you vulnerable to its presence and corruption. Might not be the Kryptis, but they are doing that with something.

@43:41 Yeah.. Try Timed flying Race with target shooting with 9 FPS. At all your review voiced some of my concerns! Like very very extremely poor performance for anyone who doesn't have 5000 $ PC. Although you worded it differently. - Wizards Vault preview is ttttiny, the letter under the items on my huge full HD monitor are tttiiiinyyyyy Why is it so tiny? Why there is no audio or visual confirmation when something is clicked? If I made this in a web page interface in 1998 I'd have my both arms ripped off slowly for such.

"someone's gonna make a comment saying There's a filter?!" THAT'S ME HI! THAT'S MY COMMENT!

im an old casual gw2 player, not liking the wizard vault, it kinda discourages me from login in even for just a few minutes, and kinda pushes me away from even opening the client

the fact that anet made the commander point out the "airships" was quite amazing, i would never even have thought that myself, but maybe that was a foreshadowing in the living world for soto.. i still wanna ride those in ebg when bombing

Taking a page from Supernatural for the story and bringing back Felicia Day at the same time woulda been a wild combo