Welcome to Bookahneer’s Geekwatch! The place about miscellaneous interesting news and rants related to Guild Wars 2 – and on occasion, other games.
Today’s Geekwatch is all about Guild Wars 2. With the recent feature patch, ArenaNet introduced quite a lot of changes. I will not go into everything they have added here now or bore you with what I think about every single feature. Instead, I will just mention two features and one thing I like and one thing I dislike about them, as that’s what stood out the most for me in the last few days.
The first is the wardrobe. I still prefer the systems where you buy wardrobe slots and cosmetic outfit slots like Lotro and Rift have, but that’s another story, I guess. I think it’s great that you can wear your outfits in battle now and that you can dye them (as a whole, not individual pieces). Most of all, that you can dye them! Just look at my ranger in her pirate outfit and her moa pet. Aren’t they cute together? :p It’s also great that once bought, I can activate and deactivate the outfits as often as I like without having to pay anything again. The thing I do not like is that some items, like the reading glasses, did not receive that treatment. You can activate outfits for free, but if I want to wear the reading glasses, which I bought from the gem store for real money just like I did the pirate outfit, I have to pay real money again. Every time I change my character’s head armor, and if I want to keep the reading glasses, I have to use a transmutation charge. It annoys me that I have to pay twice now. Sure, for that, I can also wear them in battle, but at 
the same time, I can’t wear them at all anymore unless I pay with a transmutation charge. Before the change, I wore them when I wasn’t in combat and I used to alternate between having my mesmer or my warrior wear them. I just think it’s inconvenient that this isn’t possible anymore. Alternatively, I would love to have a white account-bound head item that all my characters can equip, without stats, that I can put the glasses skin on. Then I could still have the functionality I want for them, switch the glasses between my characters and use them in non-combat situations.
Another big thing is the megaservers. Oh yes, those dreaded things. No, I actually really love that change! Levelling up my thief, who is now level 32, it feels just like post-launch when the lower level regions were crowded. Almost dying in an event because it’s too hard? No, doesn’t work that way anymore, since there’s almost always somebody close who will join and do the event with you! The only downside was that until this morning, the EU servers saw quite a lot of flaming, and using very inappropriate words and insults when people dared to speak a language that isn’t English. The problem here is that despite people rolling on a French or German server, they get put onto a megaserver with the rest of the EU players. There was a certain lack of tolerance towards people using foreign languages. Actually, as sad as it is, that’s not that different from the flames I see in whatever MMO – including Guild Wars 2 – when playing on a EU English server and people use a language that isn’t English, but the amount of flaming increased a lot with the recent change.
With the latest hotfix, however, the default setting is that you only see map chat from people whose client language is the same as yours (with a few exceptions mentioned in the patch notes). You can disable that functionality (click on the wheel icon on the upper left of the chat window and remove the check) and then you’ll see the chat from the other two client languages as well. But if you do that, I think it’s safe to assume that you’re okay with people using different languages in your chat channels. I personally would have preferred to have separate map chats that you could join (simultaneously, of course, so that you don’t miss out on any language if you don’t want to) for the different official languages (and maybe a few more than that, because… why not?).
Then there is a something that I haven’t seen in any patch notes: The “Consumable” category in the Trading Post is finally working correctly! I have no idea when that one got fixed, but I do remember clicking “consumable” and then “food” to buy food for the Daily Feast and only getting beverages as a result. Today, I clicked on those categories again and I was positively surprised that they’re all working correctly now. Finally! :)
So yeah, apart from the reading glasses, I’m happy. But those I clearly do miss and I’m working on my ascended helmet for my warrior, so that she can get her glasses back on an item that I’m going to be wearing for a long time.
