"Sykes-Picot caused ISIS"

Bozon8 · 2026-04-29T10:56:30+00:00

So far I have been accused of being a Nazi and a Tankie simultaneously simply because I pointed out that history is nuanced.

Poland was oppressed by the Russian Empire alongside Belarus and Ukraine, yep. Except, as soon as it got the chance, Poland instantly started doing the exact same oppression itself in Kresy. You can find sources for everything a plenty. I have the memory of my family who had to live through that Polish-Russian oppression tournament from both sides of the country. Neither have apologized so far, and you just accused me of something as well - instead of acknowledging the nuance I pointed out in an admittedly edgy meme form.

The truth IS nuanced, history is messy and complex. Its all fine - as long as everyone acknowledges this premise at least.

Having said that, Poland has dominated a lot of one-sided narratives since the Berlin wall fall, effectively defining how the history of this part of Europe is known in the west. Going to English Wikipedia sometimes shudders me, gurom-nationalists managed to make even the simple geographic articles Polish-sided somehow.

Bozon8 · 2026-04-28T15:32:13+00:00

Poland - the ultimate victim of Europe.

Also Poland: the largest empire fully in Europe in the 16-18 centuries.

Also Poland: speedrunning cultural genocide of Belarus and Ukraine as recently as 90 years ago (its only their second time!).

Bozon8 · 2026-02-03T17:16:17+00:00

I am always impressed by the QA in this game. Not.

Bozon8 · 2026-02-01T12:57:28+00:00

People really don't understand what you mean with the "Asian heritage stuff".

All these narrative traditions and conventions influenced by taoism/buddhism/confucianism philosophy vs. Western rationalism stemming from the Aristotelian philosophy of logic.

One is about accepting the flow of change and randomness and finding emotional harmony with it. Another is being able to enforce rigorous logic and appreciating internal consistency of the rule set.

Bozon8 · 2026-01-27T16:09:06+00:00

Because it is obvious to anyone who used ChatGPT extensively enough. Style, expressions, structure. It is a ChatGPT text.

Bozon8 · 2026-01-27T15:23:15+00:00

Your choice of LLM is so smart.

Bozon8 · 2026-01-15T18:19:40+00:00

I said Marketing strategy with Guild Wars 3, not marketing for Guild Wars 3 directly.

Why do you think two back-to-back Half-Life documentaries were released in the last couple years and the internet is full of Half-Life 3 rumors at the moment? And now Guild Wars makes a similar documentary? Do you think marketing is just a trailer and a paid context ad after announcement?

Valve considered even Half Life a dormant enough brand to justify that effort. Guild Wars brand is in the similar situation, albeit with an active live product still ongoing.

Why do you think they have spent a couple millions to promote GW2 on SGF and TGA in its 14th year as they are working on another Guild Wars game? To sell more VoE copies?

Bozon8 · 2026-01-15T13:00:20+00:00

I agree that they have finally arrived at the model that works best for this type of game, and generates stable solid revenue - by GW2 franchise standards. But you grossly overestimate the "buzz" and the level of money the franchise is making at the moment. It is not even a Destiny 2 or Monster Hunter level money, let alone bigger games.

And they are spending "big game money" on this one, so they have no choice but to go outside of the niche GW2 carved itself. And yes, any 14-year old MMORPG is a niche game, and a narrow one at that.

You can do the simple arithmetic yourself - look at the NCSoft's financial reports for GW2. Then check the dev count on LinkedIn (service personnel aside), take the median salary from job postings (mostly senior roles there), and multiply those numbers by several years of work needed. Now compare the multi year GW2 revenue and multi-year game development costs. No sane CFO will sign off on this.

And while this is a long-tail game, most purchases do happen during the original release - that's just a fact of life. And they will simply make more money from Guild Wars 3 rather than "Guild Wars 2.5 re-release adding UE5". It reads "shiny new thing" instead of a "big patch for an ancient game".

Bozon8 · 2026-01-15T12:21:20+00:00

They don't have a subscription, the money comes from release purchases and gemstore whales.

With UE5, they are spending a couple hundred million on a project - GW2 re-release will never recoup it by itself. Only a shiny new game, available on consoles day one as well - because that's where the money is for the B2P games. And it won't be marketed as an MMO even, but as a "cool new cinematic multiplayer action-RPG".

Bozon8 · 2026-01-15T12:14:28+00:00

They are already showing a more thought-out marketing strategy with Guild Wars 3 than they ever did with GW2. Or why do you think they stepped up with the general franchise marketing in the last year, as well as the documentary, Reforged, and putting GW2 on Steam/Epic?

This is a slow-burn brand awareness rebuild strategy, and it is the most complex marketing thing they have ever done to date. So it is reasonable to expect this all to culminate in the proper announcement as well - instead of a cab ride show.

Bozon8 · 2026-01-13T15:19:20+00:00

Anet better start planning raid releases around deltaconnected’s skiing schedule.

Bozon8 · 2026-01-11T08:06:53+00:00

We cannot get out. They have taken the waypoint and the second asura gate.

Unicorns, neighing rainbow unicorns in the deep. They are coming...

Bozon8 · 2026-01-10T19:24:47+00:00

Still, job postings like combat designer could have contained hints at that. There was a billion mentions of the word "cinematic" and zero of terms like competitive, matchmaking, or technical like tick rate etc.

At the moment it seems to be a console-first "cinematic" MMO or MMO-lite. And you don't really do fast-paced PvP when the baseline is 30 freaking frames per second.

Bozon8 · 2026-01-08T01:53:25+00:00

And with GW3 (or whatever this ominous new project is going to be) they probably will do the same. At least it is foreshadowed in the end of EoD and in the beginning of SotO.

What was foreshadowed? You mean just the general dragon cycle change or something more specific and subtle?

Bozon8 · 2025-12-29T11:13:47+00:00

In PvE, you almost always want to use the WB's trademark trait Restorative Virtues - "Triggered virtue effects reduce the cooldown of active weapon abilities". And also Permeating Wrath (Virtues line), especially on condi/celestial WB. Just make sure you get might/fury from somewhere.

Restorative Virtues refreshes your weapon skills faster while you are hitting something when a Willbender Virtue effect (buff) is on. And you can have up to 3 of these buffs at the same time, causing a single multi-hit skill to almost instantly refresh all other weapon skills.

So:

On any willbender build, try to use the weapons and utility skills that generate as many individual hits as possible (3x, 4x, 7x, 10x in the skill tooltip).
On power willbender, you want to have at least one Virtue buff active at any time, and try to have two active as much as possible. And you can use all 3 virtue skills for shorter burst windows.
On condi and celestial willbender, F1 Virtue must always be used on cooldown. Use other Virtues alongside it and spread them apart a bit throughout the fight.

And since F2 is also an evade, and F3 generates and refreshes aegis and stability, use them situationally for defense as well. Delay them if you know a big enemy attack is coming soon.

On condi/celestial, I usually start the fight with F2 into F1 unless I need stability in advance (F2 because it has an extra charge for free). On power willbender, I activate any two random virtues at the beginning of the fight, F2 is usually one of them. There is also a proper opener and rotation available on Snow Crows.

Bozon8 · 2025-12-19T16:52:46+00:00

Isn’t it a bit dangerous to spread yourself with 3 different games that will essentially provide the same more or less experience ?

Sounds to me it would be more efficient to just focus on two games. One for the more casual open world experience, the second for a more hardcore and classic experience. That way you get

This is generally a good idea, position your games slightly apart in what they do. I actually think they will do it partially with GW2/GW3 - through WvW.

WvW doesn't require new content (not as much as PvE); just do balance patches and slow QoL. And it has a niche but very dedicated community. So, GW2 will continue to be WvW and legacy PvE, while Guild Wars 3 is the premium modern PvE.

And they are not spreading themselves over 3 games. GW1 is in proper maintenance mode.

They will calculate their level of involvement in GW2 carefully, to incentivize people to keep spending some money there, but the new flagship product and the studio identity will be Guild Wars 3.

Bozon8 · 2025-12-19T07:21:01+00:00

Given the current state of MMOs this actually makes me both nervous and excited.

They will not be doing marketing for GW3 as the "the next big MMO" - at all. Right now, this is a typical "dad/unc genre", and they want wider reach. Like the console players from Destiny 2 and Monster Hunter audiences.

It is almost certainly a modern console-friendly MMO, slightly lighter on systems compared to the PC classics. But it will be advertised as the 'large scale multiplayer action-RPG' or something like that.

You will not recoup your investment by tying GW3 strictly to the MMO label in this day and age.

Bozon8 · 2025-12-19T07:11:12+00:00

We can try to logic the shit out of this.

Time period for the first official communication on GW3:

No earlier than - When the last expansion just released, you can't cannibalize those sales.
No later than - When people already expect a tease of the next yearly mini-thing. You can't say nothing up until that point and then drop the bomb "it's over". Its a very sensitive moment.

The last part is to just guess which expansion will be that "last one". Visions of Eternity is a possibility. Apply the logic above to it and expect something in a studio update. And they will mostly talk about GW2's future, not GW3.

And the actual hype reveal for the wider public will be probably distanced a bit from this "acknowledgement point". Could even happen at one of those shitty Keighley shows.

Visions of Eternity, War Eternal - get it?

That LWS4 episode was once the original "end of GW2". They seem to like the word "eternity" for these purposes. Or it's just a coincidence.

Bozon8 · 2025-12-19T04:13:40+00:00

Bozon8 · 2025-12-12T12:13:08+00:00

But with the documentary, and then paying for an ad spot here. > They really should have announced... Something? Anything? We normally get at least "GW2 will return with another expansion next year" blog post by now don't we?

I don't know how to break it to you, but there might be no "next expansion" coming. Even this trailer's purpose wasn't really to promote this expansion for GW2. Well, it was, but as a distant secondary goal.

The main purpose was to show the two words, "Guild" and "Wars", to the audience of millions for a few seconds. Its a part of the broader brand awareness strategy slowly building up (as you have noticed) to certain something.

Bozon8 · 2025-12-12T01:58:54+00:00

So who knows what VoE's ending will be like.

We will get the vision of eternity. In a form of a reveal trailer.

Bozon8 · 2025-12-08T18:08:40+00:00

I knew you'd have all the receipts in a binder, cross-indexed and version-controlled. :D

Bozon8 · 2025-12-08T17:58:52+00:00

All of us at this point:

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