That said I -do- still see a lot of people out there doing regular content. The farmer community has been lulled away, leaving the game to the rest of us. I both like this because it means I can choose to not encounter them ingame, and dislike it because the results of feeding them so well shows up in the trading post.
- and because a lot of people who might otherwise not behave like bots but who are mildly attracted to farming end up focusing on it.

I still find it easy to find groups, dungeons, and meet people in the open world. But I have also had dungeon runs delayed because one person was ‘waiting on Jormag’ and talked others into joining that…

The meta events are dull. No wait, they are D-U-L-L !
- As you note they can’t possibly scale up to meet the zerg that shows up, and due to the size of the zerg mechanics meant to make it interesting don’t even get a chance to trigger meaningully. You might be feared to the left for a few seconds – but it ends up feeling more like line dancing than an effect. A sort of “everybody now runs left, then right, then touches the dragon, now left again, now spin around and say hokie pokie!”
- If this keeps up, they will need to start selling cowboy hats and boots in the gemstore…

For people who like following a carrot in front of their noses – the game is narrowing down to these isolated spots.

Regardless of whether or not ArenaNet tolerates farmers – the game was not designed with them in mind. This is self evident in the drop rates – they are low, to support the ability to basically waypoint around and repair. Original design seems to have presumed players that would explore and play the game for its content and not its rewards – not even having exotics for perhaps many months.

It was designed for MMO players as they were around 2005-2007, and people who were not MMO players. These are player sets who were willing to play games, even MMOs – that simply had no loot system at all (City of Heroes pre issue 9 I believe as an example).

Farmers came in and early on used exploits to get around this mentality. After mass-bans the remainder switched not to just playing for the play, but trying to find legitimate ways to achieve the same ends the exploits had.
- shaped in large part by a ‘vertical progression culture’ in “that other major MMO.”

ArenaNet has continually stumbled in trying to figure out how to respond. Unsure of whether to embrace or hinder this segment of their playerbase that is not the market they had intended to obtain.
- and they seem to go back and forth on this. That itself isn’t really a surprise as in GW1 they went back and forth on farmers. Making it easy one patch, then nerfing out a farm build the next.

Players who say ArenaNet is anti-farmer and players who say ArenaNet embraces farming would seem to both be right… depending on what day of the week you ask the question.

And because they waver, their solutions seems to always help and hurt both sides of the equation at the same time.

All of that said, the current nature of the meta events is something I feel will negatively impact the size of the game’s community over time. They are super repetitive – and that will lead to a growing sense of boredom among those lured into them. People who once they get the fruits of their farming will realize that they have gotten nowhere – as the game is not vertical progression – and so leave in frustration.

That’s not accurate. If you’re spending 90% of your time standing around you most certainly are not getting rares/ectos/money efficiently. I actively play the game, and then when a meta event starts up I pop over get my rare and go back to doing what I want to do. Rinse and repeat.

If you’re not doing what you want to do and only standing around waiting for the metas then there is no one to blame but yourself.

Real world scenario:

Person A works at his dream job 9-5 Monday through Friday & on his way home from work on Wednesdays and Saturdays he buys a Powerball Lotto ticket.

Person B sits around on his butt at home 9-5 Monday through Friday & makes a special trip on Wednesdays and Saturdays to buy a Powerball Lotto ticket with the same numbers as Person A.

Who is earning money most efficiently? Person A.

I do agree that the APIs & timers have actually reduced the organic feel of the game, and sadly there are a number of people that do exactly what you say idle around 90% of the time and spend the rest of the time only jumping from Meta to Meta. And that makes it more difficult to do group content. The abysmal reward structure & drop rates everywhere else aren’t enough incentive for them to do anything else as those types of players are motivated solely by rewards and frankly there really aren’t any worth writing home about elsewhere. But for those of us that enjoy the content & world then we have something to do besides jumping from meta to meta. And we’re actually getting something extra for playing as the game was designed while the others are standing around earning nothing and then we get our nice reward by popping in for the meta chest before we go back to enjoying ourselves in the world.

Once there was talk of the adding of events and providing more outcomes for event chains. Early on, they did quietly add in more events into the game. It feels like this organic element of the open world was put on hold while they tried to add new types of content to fill demand. The game has a lot of systems at this point, and I’d rather they fill out those systems rather than add more systems.

Also, and I am not sure if this is brought up much, but some of the dungeon boss overhauls were put on hold to do more of the Living Story content.

The stored password is in your Guild Wars 2 documents folder. Look for a “Local.dat” file.

Actually, I made a post about this on the official forums a while back. Here it is, slightly modified to fit your scenario:

1. Go to your “Documents\Guild Wars 2” folder and rename the Local.dat file “Local_NA.dat”. So now you have no Local.dat file, but we have a Local_NA.dat file.
2. Launch Gw2.exe. It will create a new Local.dat file, but all of your login information will be blank this time. Log in using the EU username and password. Exit the game.
3. Back in “Documents\Guild Wars 2,” rename the new Local.dat file with another name, like Local_EU.dat.
4. In this same folder (Documents\Guild Wars 2), right-click and create a new text document. Name it something like “Gw2_NA.txt” and open it.
5. Enter the following 2 lines of text:

COPY “Local_NA.dat” “Local.dat”
Start “” “C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe”

6. Save the file and close it.
7. Rename the file “Gw2_NA.bat” and click “yes” when the confirmation box appears.
8. Repeat steps 4-7, but instead of “Gw2_NA,” type “Gw2_EU.”
9. OPTIONAL: Create a shortcut on your desktop for each of these .bat files. I would recommend renaming them to something intuitive. You can also give it a cool icon if, in the Shortcut Properties, you click “Change Icon” and “Browse” to the Gw2.exe file.
10. You’re done! To launch the game client with whichever credentials you choose, double-click the appropriate shortcut.

Since the login information is stored in the Local.dat file, all you have to do is run this script. It’s not a keylogger, it’s not against the EULA, and it’s not going to get your account stolen or banned.

Specifically, this script does two things:

1. It replaces the existing Local.dat file with the Local.dat file that contains the saved login information, or creates it if no “Local.dat” exists. This is the step (and line) that does the work.
2. It launches Gw2.exe. This step just saves you the trouble of clicking the launcher.

So, there you go! Follow those 10 steps, and you can quickly and easily alternate between two Guild Wars 2 accounts.

NOTE: If you’re using a 32-bit version of Windows, change “Program Files (x86)” to “Program Files” in Step 5. You know, at least until you upgrade to a 64-bit OS.

Just got 80 number 3, have stacks of alts in the 40s through 60s. Love running dungeons.

But I don’t and can’t stand farming. I’ve been to Southsun many times now and it is just sad that it has so quickly become nothing more than a single zerg running between two events – back and forth – all day long. All around them are spots you can’t even waypoint into as a mob will have been sitting there making it contested for the last 24 hours if not longer… people just run back and forth, back and forth.

CoF… I mostly steer clear of that as well. I went through explorable once on one character for achievements, and story once on each character of high enough level. Otherwise… the sorts of people that go there, are the sorts I am best avoiding.

At least the zergs / farmers are mostly gone from the open world. I see one now and again, but more often what at first appears to be a zerg is simply a large group gathered not to farm, but to complete a specific event chain – and then it fragments back into people’s individual play or small groups. And they actually -do- the event, rather than glitch it to keep farming ‘that grub over there to the left’.

Orr, Fields, and other places have gotten more fun for me as the zergs have moved on. The people left in the zones, I can talk to or listen to, join for short events, break away, and so on – without hassle, and without getting lag stomped when some massive train of 80 people rolls on by.

Casual Hardcore – yeah, that does seem to be me.

I do see what appears to be not so much feeding the farmers or nerfing the farmers – but herding them. Southsun, much as it annoys me, has herded the farmers ‘away’ from “my game”. CoF, much as I can’t stand it – makes the other dungeons remain pleasant. I can PUG almost any dungeon and get nice people, because the ‘You must run the farm build and play my way’ folks have been herded off to the ‘sacrifice dungeon’. That said, I love fractals, but my guild and I make an intentional choice to stay sub-20 in our fractals to avoid the higher bracket that farmers have settled in…

I’d prefer the farmers gone from the game. But I guess they help pay the bills – so I’m glad they’ve kind of been duped into sticking to certain corners.

I agree they need more 15-40 zones. In this range I often go back to the lower level stuff and complete random things, as well as save much of my earlier personal story to knock out, do AC Story at 30, and run back and forth between every zone available to me trying to find anything I’ve not yet seen.

I also agree that if this game was a ‘progress into endgame raids’ game, I might not have stuck around. I’ve got that in WoW, and my account collects dust for me and charges me for the privilege because I’ve lost interest in raiding, but am not yet willing to leave something I stuck with since 2006… (and when I go there, many of the empty zones make me wonder how many others pay for an unused sub there).

I’m not like you on rewards. I have nearly no need for them. Played City of Heroes for years without them. If the content is good, I don’t need the shiny. But it seems a common concern for many.

The problem with that approach is if they make the rates too low then the content becomes too unrewarding and players get fed up and then do exactly what they’re trying to avoid, they move on.

I love this game. I discovered GW1 just after launch. I pre-ordered GW2 Collector’s Edition the first day it was available. When my kids get older I will most likely buy them accounts. I will probably buy GW3 if that comes into being. I’ve put a few hundred dollars into the gem store. I will grind content to a certain extent for the reward, but even I, through my rose-tinted ArenaNet branded glasses, at times find myself getting fed up with the rewards & drop-rates in this game when I go for hours getting nothing but vendor trash. And that makes me sad.

I just hope that they find a solution. I don’t want to see people leave because they’ve gotten everything and moved on, but at the same time I don’t want to see people leave in disgust either. I want this game to succeed and grow so I can spend more time in this lovely world.