As seen on twitter & FacebookArenanet did a short live stream around 1PM, see below:

I made some notes in the post below, crazy sounding stuff though!

Edit: I understand the UK date format might confuse some folks, July 12th = 12/07/12

PVE Endgame - Orr is almost entirely composed of huge dynamic event chains that split off into many chains with outcomes moving in different directions. There are no renown hearts there

• The Orr event chains are required to be completed and held for as long as possible because at the end of the chain is where access to the final dungeon is located. Players have to hold off the events as long as possible or they lose access to the dungeon.
• The first events in Orr are similar to storming the beach of normandy, huge numbers of players will have to take three landings on the beach initially. Sea path, Submarines, Air assault, troop movements etc.
• Corrupted god temples need to be retaken and held to gain buffs in Orr.
• Once you reach level 80, every time you fill your XP bar you gain a skill point but remain at max level (similar to GW1)

Skill points can be traded to an NPC at the mystic forge for items that when used in the Mystic Forge will create new unique weapons

There will be legendary weapons that require a ton of skill points, rare components, items found all over the world at Karma merchants etc. They Will require a large concerted effort from the player to obtain. The majority of the reagents for legendary weapons can't be bought from players. They are the exact same power-wise as max level weapons but will be some of the most insane looking items in the game. These will include:

• Bow that shoots rainbows
• Juggernaut hammer that looks like it has a ball of liquid metal inside that will make your armor look like its melting or dripping and will cause you to leave footprints behind
• Greatsword that looks like the night sky and one that looks like the day sky, if both are made they can be combined into one sword that will change appearance depending on what time of day it is.
• These items will be the ultimate prestige gear

The idea behind this is that no matter how you play, you'll always be getting XP and skill points and always contributing to getting these weapons for yourself.

One of the development goals for arenanet is for people to say "No other game is supported as well as Guild Wars 2" post release. They will have a huge live team working constantly on new content for the game.

Holiday events confirmed - Original holiday events were human events so GW2 will introduce holiday events that may have the perspective of the other races too

Might have missed some stuff but, this is awesome!

I'll wait for the archive, but End Game discussion both excites and scares me.

So I jotted down a few of the major points they talked about in regards to end game:

• They believe you should not be playing a whole different game once you hit max level than you did leveling up.
• Idea of increased group size (raiding) not appealing. Focusing on doing things you enjoyed doing while leveling up to 80, at level 80.
• (I hope I'm spelling this right) They talked about Orr, and how it is distinct. Orr focuses on events, and has no renown hearts at all. Stories focus on larger meta events that are focused around taking key locations.
• There are 8 story dungeons; over 25 different explorable dungeon paths through those dungeons, most intended for level 80.
• Players will continue getting skill points past level 80, same as you did while leveling. You can trade skill points at the mystic forge for specific items used in specialty recipes.
• Legendary weapons are in (I'm not sure if this is a new confirmation or not). Legendaries are player crafted, and require lots of components from different things around the game. A lot of the components are not items that can be purchased from players, meaning you have to go out and earn them yourself.
• Legendaries are not more powerful than top exotic weapons. They're more about being aesthetically striking. Bow that has a rainbow trail, great swords whose blades are made of the day or night sky were talked about. Those two greatswords can be combined to make a different greatsword that changes between day and night.
• Anything you do in the game to get experience is contributing to the end game to get skillpoints.
• Takes about 170 skillpoints to unlock all abilities for one character.

And that's pretty much where I stopped taking notes. Some really interesting stuff in there, though it was surprisingly short.

@Benny said:

They are the exact same power-wise as max level weapons but will be some of the most insane looking items in the game. These will include:

• Bow that shoots rainbows

LOL. That is amazing. I cannot wait for video.

@shinboy630: Pretty sure the bow they talked about is this http://imgur.com/a/4F1Wn#10 (warning potential spoilers)

Edit, can't link it properly but it's the 11th image. The one with the unicorn on it

@Benny: Oh wow, those weapons sound freaking amazing.

Oh man. I can't wait for the archive.

@selfconfessedcynic: no need, it's embedded in the OP :)

@Benny: Oh right, it's this one. I thought it was one of the 23 mins videos above it on twitch. Yay!

Good to hear about legendary items. One of the big concerns about the gem/gold system is that it means you can spend real money to buy most equipment. Legendary gear at least means there's a top tier that requires a lot of time investment and can't simply be purchased.

I always loved the Guild Wars holiday events too, hopefully the festival hats are making a return.

okay, aside from the fantastic notes you guys have put together, I think I have one thing to add (three words in fact);

EVENT....WEBS!?!?!?! WOAH

@selfconfessedcynic: Yeah, that got me super excited, it's exactly the sort of craziness I hoped they'd do.

Wait, so you will eventually unlock all of your skills?

Also, skill points eventually turning into a pseudo-currency with the mystic forge was something that I did not see coming. I'm also immensely pleased to hear about legendaries. Some people like myself really need something to be working toward, and I'm happy to hear that people can't buy their way to completion of a legendary.

@Benny said:

@shinboy630: Pretty sure the bow they talked about is this http://imgur.com/a/4F1Wn#10 (warning potential spoilers)

Edit, can't link it properly but it's the 11th image. The one with the unicorn on it

It better be a longbow so my Warrior can get it. I don't even like bows but I feel like that will be the first legendary weapon I work to acquire.

Honestly, the stuff about Orr kind of worries me. Sure it will be fine for a little while after launch, but down the road when not as many people are rushing to 80 and the population gets more spread out level wise, are there going to be enough players to complete these events? If not, you could potentially get locked out of the dungeon that you need to complete the game, which would be a total bummer.

Rainbow shooting Bow....ok there needs to be a short and longbow version of that my warrior will rock that so hard.

Really glad to hear about how the stats will not be different from heroic weapons like in GW1.

Soon, all willl be revealed, and we will see if Guild Wars 2 will stand the scrutiny of the masses.

Orr almost sounds like a giant dynamic open world raid dungeon.

Shortbow shooting rainbows? Dang - I might main a Charr Ranger just for that.

@shinboy630 said:

Honestly, the stuff about Orr kind of worries me. Sure it will be fine for a little while after launch, but down the road when not as many people are rushing to 80 and the population gets more spread out level wise, are there going to be enough players to complete these events? If not, you could potentially get locked out of the dungeon that you need to complete the game, which would be a total bummer.

I don't think we'd ever be locked out, but it'd definitely be harder if you don't have people continually making sure those temples are ours, etc.

We'll see either way.

@selfconfessedcynic said:

@shinboy630 said:

Honestly, the stuff about Orr kind of worries me. Sure it will be fine for a little while after launch, but down the road when not as many people are rushing to 80 and the population gets more spread out level wise, are there going to be enough players to complete these events? If not, you could potentially get locked out of the dungeon that you need to complete the game, which would be a total bummer.

I don't think we'd ever be locked out, but it'd definitely be harder if you don't have people continually making sure those temples are ours, etc.

We'll see either way.

Even if it is just more difficult, I'm not sure I'm to keen on the idea of something essential to completing the main story of the game being more difficult simply because there are not as many people around my level to attempt it with. If this was for some side mission or the way to unlock a dungeon that had the "best" or rarest loot but was not required for the story, then it would be ok. For story stuff, I'm not so sure, especially since most of the rest of the personal story is instanced and designed to avoid these kinds of issues.

@shinboy630: I would have to agree to some extent, but also I'm intrigued.

What if it WAS harder later on? I, for one, would be pretty happy with that. Imagine wvw-level group coordinated PvE running as a guild, or seeing if you could do it as a small team.

Either way, I'm still mulling over it but I'll definitely have something to say one way or another come lincolncast recording time this week.

@selfconfessedcynic: @shinboy630: I'm going to be the eternal, and perhaps unjustified, optimist here and say that someone, somewhere at ArenaNet has thought of this problem already. I mean, that seems like a pretty obvious and immediate concern that people can come to rather easily. Perhaps they just expect people to be nice and help each other out, which may or may not happen for those in guilds, but not everyone will be in a guild (I know, the idea seems crazy to me but I've learned that you people are out there). Hopefully ArenaNet isn't going to pull a Gary Whitta on those folks and just tell them to "use more skill." I'll just cross my fingers for those people that the events will scale down very well to the point where they can handle them.

That being said, content that requires a group to be done is a well traveled path for MMOs. It isn't a good path, but it also definitely isn't unfamiliar. Crafting any of the legendary weapons in WoW required entire raid groups of 40, and later 25, people to work on raids for several hours a night, several nights a week, for several weeks (or months) before they were done for one person. Some guilds, like my own, completed these several times over. Just ask a WoW vet about Sulfuras, Shadowmourne etc. Now these things aren't essential to play but WoW doesn't have anything similar to personal story for fair comparison. They used to have group quests that were more difficult, but again they were just more quests with nothing particularly special about them other than perhaps a better than average item reward at the end.

@selfconfessedcynic: But then you've eventually just locked everyone into the whole raiding guild scenario for the end game (which is kind of counter to their stated design philosophy).

The way I see it, either they believe there will always be enough activity to keep these end game events active or they expect at some point they'll have to change them. I wouldn't be shocked if eventually end game dungeon access is no longer tied to the events in the same way it will be during the early stages of the game's life (stuff like that changes all the time in MMOs).

@Subjugation said:

That being said, content that requires a group to be done is a well traveled path for MMOs. It isn't a good path, but it also definitely isn't unfamiliar. Crafting any of the legendary weapons in WoW required entire raid groups of 40, and later 25, people to work on raids for several hours a night, several nights a week, for several weeks (or months) before they were done for one person. Some guilds, like my own, completed these several times over. Just ask a WoW vet about Sulfuras, Shadowmourne etc. Now these things aren't essential to play but WoW doesn't have anything similar to personal story for fair comparison. They used to have group quests that were more difficult, but again they were just more quests with nothing particularly special about them other than perhaps a better than average item reward at the end.

Except in the first couple of minutes of the developer talk they outright state that they don't want players to have to play a "different game entirely" at level 80 than they experienced leading up. Which wouldn't be true at all if you were able to do every other dungeon with your 5 person guild up until level 80 and then suddenly needed a raiding guild just to access the last 5 man dungeon.

@selfconfessedcynic said:

@shinboy630 said:

Honestly, the stuff about Orr kind of worries me. Sure it will be fine for a little while after launch, but down the road when not as many people are rushing to 80 and the population gets more spread out level wise, are there going to be enough players to complete these events? If not, you could potentially get locked out of the dungeon that you need to complete the game, which would be a total bummer.

I don't think we'd ever be locked out, but it'd definitely be harder if you don't have people continually making sure those temples are ours, etc.

We'll see either way.

Even if it is just more difficult, I'm not sure I'm to keen on the idea of something essential to completing the main story of the game being more difficult simply because there are not as many people around my level to attempt it with. If this was for some side mission or the way to unlock a dungeon that had the "best" or rarest loot but was not required for the story, then it would be ok. For story stuff, I'm not so sure, especially since most of the rest of the personal story is instanced and designed to avoid these kinds of issues.

@Subjugation said:

Wait, so you will eventually unlock all of your skills?

Also, skill points eventually turning into a pseudo-currency with the mystic forge was something that I did not see coming. I'm also immensely pleased to hear about legendaries. Some people like myself really need something to be working toward, and I'm happy to hear that people can't buy their way to completion of a legendary.

If you do full-clears of all the zones' skill point challenges you will have all your skills long before you hit 80.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

@shinboy630 said:

@selfconfessedcynic said:

@shinboy630 said:

Honestly, the stuff about Orr kind of worries me. Sure it will be fine for a little while after launch, but down the road when not as many people are rushing to 80 and the population gets more spread out level wise, are there going to be enough players to complete these events? If not, you could potentially get locked out of the dungeon that you need to complete the game, which would be a total bummer.

I don't think we'd ever be locked out, but it'd definitely be harder if you don't have people continually making sure those temples are ours, etc.

We'll see either way.

Even if it is just more difficult, I'm not sure I'm to keen on the idea of something essential to completing the main story of the game being more difficult simply because there are not as many people around my level to attempt it with. If this was for some side mission or the way to unlock a dungeon that had the "best" or rarest loot but was not required for the story, then it would be ok. For story stuff, I'm not so sure, especially since most of the rest of the personal story is instanced and designed to avoid these kinds of issues.

That's one worry. The opposite end of the spectrum is what if the dungeon is constantly held? No one would be able to experience those awesome introductory events. The tuning here has to ride a very fine line. EDIT: Oh, man, I had no idea there was so much great sPvP footage on their Twitch channel.

It all comes down to how they scale it either way, and how fast that scaling works. Does an event become easier/harder over time or just based on the number of people there for example. Lets say you have been holding the main event chains last point two hours and have access to the final dungeon. Every 20minutes an event spawns with 100enemies rushing at your defenses. You defeat them and beat the event. Then 20minutes later another event spawns but this time there are 150enemies and a champion or 2. You hold that and the event escalates again, eventually making it impossible or atleast almost impossible to hold that point, pushing the chain back.

The question is how intricate that system is. Is it just based on numbers or is there more scaling there. If its just numbers that might limit your access to the dungeon just to peak hours and I dont know how I feel about that.

Edit: Oh fk yeah that sPVP stuff seems pretty great!

Also, I think the biggest takeaway from the whole talk is the notion of "Endgame" being playing the damn game. Which is both extremely simple and absolutely amazing at the same time.