Now that Halloween is near upon us, ArenaNet has pulled out all the tricks and treats for players in Guild Wars 2. We've got a nifty preview and a few thoughts to share about the Mad King. See what you think and then leave your ideas in the comments.

The first thing a player would always notice in the original game would be the decorations.  It was always fun to see ghosts and candy corn monsters running around town, causing all sorts of mischief.  Pumpkins, candles, cauldrons and other decorations would litter a town, giving you the Halloween feel.  Guild Wars 2 does the same thing, but really sells it.  Candles float, Quagans run around in costumes, bats hand upside down watching as you walk beneath them.  The best part is the change to the mystic forge, switching it to look like a giant cauldron. The effect is just what the event needs to tie the visuals together. 

Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: A Treat, or a Trick?

What surprises await us as Halloween draws closer and closer?

I saw a sword halloween skin on trading post for 5 gold, then for 7g. Far from high. maybe it's more now but it seems like as always greatswords are the most expensive.

I believe some people blew this chest problem out of proportions. ANet should have said that the drop rate is very small and that is all. It's just a skin afterall.

There's so much to do and achieve with the event.  Why is there such a focus on one small aspect that is hard to get through one method.  You can buy the skins as they're not bound unlike most of my experiences in RIFT and LotRO where much of the coolest stuff was  Bound on Pickup/Acquire.

This isn't much different from GW1, by the way, where you had a hard time getting rare stuff without buying it from other plyers, but everyone had the opportunity for some freebie (usually a hat skin), and there was lots of fun stuff to do and acquire throughout the event.

There is also a free hat skin you can get from the BLTC.

Yeah but it sucks for late starters on this event as a lot of the personal trick-or-treat bags have been disabled, because... I read somewhere else, of an Lion's Arch overflow queue exploit that people were using to amass bags.

Greedy players... ruining it for the honest guys :-/

Originally posted by Benbrada

Yeah but it sucks for late starters on this event as a lot of the personal trick-or-treat bags have been disabled, because... I read somewhere else, of an Lion's Arch overflow queue exploit that people were using to amass bags.

Greedy players... ruining it for the honest guys :-/

Really?...and to think that I trash all the halloween stuff in my packs because they take up bag space.  I personally think holiday events are a waste of time and resources.

Originally posted by Badaboom

 

Really?...and to think that I trash all the halloween stuff in my packs because they take up bag space.  I personally think holiday events are a waste of time and resources.

party pooper:P :)

Originally posted by Benbrada

Yeah but it sucks for late starters on this event as a lot of the personal trick-or-treat bags have been disabled, because... I read somewhere else, of an Lion's Arch overflow queue exploit that people were using to amass bags.

Greedy players... ruining it for the honest guys :-/

It's still pretty easy to get the ToT bags. Between running around doing doors in Shaemoor, mining candy corn and looting mobs I got my 100 bag achievement in just 2 nights of a few hours of play.

Edit: I'm still not positive how they expect us to get the pumpkin carving without some questionable methods...

The option they implemented to "Fix it" is barely even a band aid on a gaping wound, if you ask me.

Not every booster obtained from the BLC can be used in the Mad King Chest recipee, and the dozen or so useless black lion gathering tools sitting around in my bank still have no use for me. The chest itself also has (what it appears to be) at most the same drop rate as the BLC does, along with the obnoxious amount of candy corn pieces it tosses at you as well as halloween tonics.

People want to defend this as a "rare thing should stay rare", but that's wrong. These skins aren't rare to be rare, they are rare to encourage constant buying of keys/gems. It's not a status symbol, it's a luck of the draw, and the sad thing is only one of the skins seem to have any actual work done to it. The scythe? The Dagger? The 1-handed sword? Nowhere even close to the amount of detail the greatsword skin recieved.

What they should of done was either:

A) Put the skins themselves up to be bought in the item shop, as a character-bound item instead of tradeable.

or

B) Token system. Opening Mad King Chest (or the recipee to create it) gives you a token, and those tokens can then be redeemed for the skins.

I was also disappointed by the devil horns hat item. Why is it so tiny...?! The Demon Horns from GW1 were badass, why not update that model and bring it into GW2, including its sweet smoke/fire effect?

Originally posted by HeroEvermore
Not worth it at all. One of the biggest ripoffs ive ever seen, Can buy the skins outright in game for 1g for shoulders or 30g tops for the wep skins. Will cost you 100$ USD to get a weapon skin from a chest at least. This is why I avoid f2p games. GW2 is just that.

Wait.. so it is a rip off b/c you can buy it for 1-30g in game or 100$... yup makes sense oO

Originally posted by QSatu

Originally posted by HeroEvermore
Not worth it at all. One of the biggest ripoffs ive ever seen, Can buy the skins outright in game for 1g for shoulders or 30g tops for the wep skins. Will cost you 100$ USD to get a weapon skin from a chest at least. This is why I avoid f2p games. GW2 is just that.

Wait.. so it is a rip off b/c you can buy it for 1-30g in game or 100$... yup makes sense oO

Considering the price of gold at the moment, 30g is probably around $40 or so (would have to doublecheck on that).

Considering how much of a bloody pain in the ass it is to make that much money when you aren't lvl 80, yes. Yes it is a rip off.

edit:

Plus, the 30g item is pretty much exclusively the greatsaw greatsword. As I said, the other halloween skin weapons (and shoulders as well) are laughable in comparison. No real detail, no real flair, it all looks pretty damn basic, while the greatsword skin seems to have gotten pretty much all the attention during the event development.

Originally posted by Cursedsei

 

Considering the price of gold at the moment, 30g is probably around $40 or so (would have to doublecheck on that).

Considering how much of a bloody pain in the ass it is to make that much money when you aren't lvl 80, yes. Yes it is a rip off.

 

edit:

Plus, the 30g item is pretty much exclusively the greatsaw greatsword. As I said, the other halloween skin weapons (and shoulders as well) are laughable in comparison. No real detail, no real flair, it all looks pretty damn basic, while the greatsword skin seems to have gotten pretty much all the attention during the event development.

i'd wait till the end of the event.. by then a LOT more people will have opened mad king chest or BLCs so there should be a lot more of those skins on the TP bringing the price down a good bit.. just yesterday that same skin was 44 gold

Player beware, if you do get a weapon from this event, they time out on you an may leave you defenseless in the middle of combat. The one I got had a 3 hour time out on it and as combat is what you do most in this game, there is a good chance the all will do thist!!!

The main problem I had was not that it failed but that the message I got was that I was overloaded, not sure why I got this message, it was very confusing because all I had to do was select another weapon!

Originally posted by Badaboom

  I personally think holiday events are a waste of time and resources.

I totally agree. If I want to celebrate a holiday I go out and celebrate it. Logging into a game to celebrate it seems a bit sad to me.

I'm not saying having events is a bad thing..extra content is extra content. Having reall life events in games though is strange to me, always has been.

I enjoyed Guild Wars 1, but GW2 has become an expensive hobby that I need to curtail. The Halloween theme is terrific, but even there, very hard to accomplish most of the special events.

I'm level 80 but not making the piles of gold others seem to be, and I'm already sick of grinding the same events over and over. I will wait a few months until the game and costs quiet down, before playing much more. There are other games and expansions to try.

Originally posted by Badaboom

Originally posted by Benbrada

Yeah but it sucks for late starters on this event as a lot of the personal trick-or-treat bags have been disabled, because... I read somewhere else, of an Lion's Arch overflow queue exploit that people were using to amass bags.

Greedy players... ruining it for the honest guys :-/

Really?...and to think that I trash all the halloween stuff in my packs because they take up bag space.  I personally think holiday events are a waste of time and resources.

I know. MMOs are serious business and there is no place for fun and games in an MMO. :-|

Writer doesn't mention costume brawl and the other content or what still will be added the coming days, but keeps going on and on about the black lions chests.

The black lions chests have been in the game from the start. I never liked that you obtained a crazy amount of chests, while the keys were so much more rare. It is of course an obvious way of Anet telling you to buy more keys, Which I simply won't do. But nothing has changed really. So I find it hypocrite that people who didn't find this a problem at release,  get all bent over it now, just because the chests now contain something they want.

The weapon skins are just one of many rewards from the chests. So if you are not interested in those other rewards besides those skins, but are still willing to pay a lot of (relatively speaking) money for some halloween skin, then you are just gambling. There is no guarantee and even the writer acts too childish to realise that after his bad luck.

I found the event to be a disappointment. I didn't buy any keys. Used 10 I had in the bank and got 2 more from those 10. Never really expected anything and I wasn't disppointed....by that. Generally though I thought the whole affair smacked of a money grab when they should have been making a 'gimme, gimme' to all the players even if the gimmes were junk. And I a not talking about the horrendous candy corn mining nodes. Make pumpkin treats drop more frequently and give candy corn as well as a fluff short term (maybe 30 min) mask/costume or something. Wouldn't even have to have a huge drop rate on the mask, 1 in 10 or 1 in 20. Character bound. sefl-descrunt timer after 12 hours or some such.

I am not going to puff myself up and say I could run everything better, I can't and I know it. That said, most of the command decisions that have been met with a substantial public outcry all point to bad middle management or bad team management. I get more and more disappointed when I see this happening, particularly from an establish company with a big budget.

I've been busy with other games so I haven't even patched GW2 with the Halloween content - looks like I'll b skipping the whole event, no interest in anything it offers.

For me these events totally ruin the feel of the world.

They have nothing whatsoever to do with Tyria but everything with our (american) world.

Everywhere stupid doors and harvestnodes that stick out as festering boils.

I suppose there are some strategically placed around Zhaitan himself? - jk

Mind you - I dislike them just as much in other games unless they belong in that world.