Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 11

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Waypoint pages should have the codes for them as well

I would like to request that Waypoint pages have the code for them put on the pages as well, so its easier to copy and paste them into ingame chat.--Knighthonor (talk) 03:59, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

We discussed creating articles for waypoints before but we kind of agreed that waypoints simply don’t have enough information about them that justifies a separate article. Very often, the waypoints are bound to landmarks or areas which are already documented (and which actually can contain interesting information, or at least some trivia), so if anything, the waypoints would be documented there. But I do agree that we maybe should show the chat links for them more often.

Until then, you can check this page (its subpages) for all waypoint links, sorted by zone. poke | talk 06:58, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I think that pretty much covers it, Poke. Linking to that page should be enough, maybe linking to the zones directly depending on the map. – Valento ^msg 11:17, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I still think pages for waypoints are a good idea. It would give canonical status to all those landmarks. —Dr Ishmael 13:07, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I know that a handful of them would have a Trivia section! – Valento ^msg 13:28, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Can you give an example for that? Apart from the few that were deactivated by Mordremoth, or the ones that were involved with the ley line stuff (which shouldn’t be covered on a waypoint’s article but on some more general article), I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t fit better on the area or landmark page. poke | talk 21:56, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

New Playable Race Icons

I created new playable race icons using the symbols on the banners on The World Summit in the The Dragon's Reach: Part 2 episode. - Raikiri 20:00, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

And this is a proposal to use them on the wiki somewhere, possibly replacing the current tango racial icons, or something else entirely?

For reference the current icons are:

20s:

48s:

I don't know if AlfaR just made these up entirely or if they were based on a source? If they are ultimately intended as replacements, they'd have to look good when in a 20x20px format.

Also, do you have them slightly bigger so i can see without zooming on the tiny image? :D -Chieftain Alex 23:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

i made them for replace the current ones. i created them in 20x20px and they are the same size in the images. I didn't knew about the 48px icons but they are only used by users- Raikiri 00:20, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

You could present us with these icons using the same stablished style (tango). – Valento ^msg 00:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

how do i do that? - Raikiri 00:44, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

"Tango" refers to the w:Tango Desktop Project, it's a style guide for computer icons.

For context, our current racial icons were based on the city icons that appeared on the in-game map during early beta releases. Personally, I don't see any reason to change something the community has become accustomed to. Even the the GW2 reddit offers them for user flair. —Dr Ishmael 01:18, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

ok. if you want the old, keep using them. i just wanted to do something more faithful to the game. - Raikiri 12:19, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the proposed norn and asura icons are too similar in shape. Since both sets of icons are based on in-game lore, I would prefer that we stick with the current icons that are visually distinct. --Cali (talk) 08:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

i can change them if you want - Raikiri 12:19, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I definitely appreciate your willingness to be flexible in this matter, but if you end up changing them to be more distinct, won't that make them less "faithful to the game" which is your stated intention in an above comment? Don't get me wrong, I applaud your efforts so far, I just think the original icons have enough of a connection to the game to not need an update. --Cali (talk) 12:51, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

we're talking about icons, they can not be same as the original. it's impossible to make them the same. they need to be adapted to the new size - Raikiri 15:27, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

*scratches head* I think we crossed wires a bit here. When I said "original", I was still talking about the current icons that Chieftain Alex posted above. I've only ever been talking about icons. It seems that you thought I was talking about something else? --Cali (talk) 16:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

i was referring the banners ingame - Raikiri 18:16, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Copying some comments that were posted on my talk page:

Funny thing: I had just finished the last achievement for that episode during The World Summit and noticed those banners' icons were different than what we're used to and was thinking about suggesting a change since the old sylvari icon is used for the Maguuma centaurs now. Konig 03:29, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

We definitely shouldn't resist change just because. If people like new icons, we could totally upgrade! I'm sure GW2 reddit would be on board with whatever :p -Auron 07:59, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I've always preferred accuracy rather than "being used" to something, especially when the new design also looks great (after properly tango-fied, this is). – Valento ^msg 10:58, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

—Dr Ishmael 14:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I've always preferred accuracy rather than "being used" to something, especially when the new design also looks great (after properly tango-fied, this is). – Valento ^msg 10:58, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I totally agree with him, that's why i made them - Raikiri 15:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Is this instance the only place in the game that these emblems are used? I definitely agree with Auron that resisting change without a reason is bad, but we should also have a good reason for accepting the change - and if they're only used in one place right now, I don't know if that's enough to make them canonical/official. —Dr Ishmael 15:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Ish on that, we could wait for next release (and PAX reveals). I wonder if we could get input from the devs if these are indeed official flags for each race? – Valento ^msg 16:15, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm perfectly fine with the new designs based from the flags and it doesn't really matter if they are in one place; the one place is a Living World instance and I don't see being canonical/official matters all that much. Basing the design to more closely match in-game equivalent assets is valuable enough to be bold about it.--Relyk ~ talk < 16:53, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I don’t mind updating our icons either, but I would personally feel the need for them to visually match our style. And that means to have them be proper tango icons, especially since they are often used along with our profession icons. The way they are now, they are definitely too sharp, without a proper outline and highlight. And we would need them in other sizes too. poke | talk 18:40, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

My only worry is, like Cali said, is that the norn and asura icons might be too similar. Our current icons are all distinct in their own unique way, while the two mentioned have the exact same shape. This might be circumvented with appropriate color choice, but for now it's the only small issue I have with this idea. The current icons weren't even based off of anything in-game, so it's not like we're losing anything by replacing them. --Ventriloquist 19:04, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes they were, see my comment above from 01:18, 22 January. It's just not in-game anymore, which is lamentable because those emblems were awesome. —Dr Ishmael 21:34, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I meant more along the lines of the game's release; the majority of players that never experienced the early beta(s) wouldn't recognize the icons. --Ventriloquist 21:37, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The Norn and asura icons that you (Raikiri) dont match the banners very well I think they could be Improved to match better. - Zesbeer 02:54, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

it's impossible to match the banners in small size. The banner emblems are too elaborated. they need to be adapted and simplified to be perceptível in small size. - Raikiri 00:33, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The norn version is difficult to show the details of the banner when it's small. Maybe a few loops could be removed/changed to reduce the clutter. —Mora 02:08, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

The big icons are great, but the small ones look kind of blurred to my eyes. Maybe eliminating some details on each? I'm not sure how far you can go until it becomes unrecognizable though. – Valento ^msg 02:15, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd suggest simplifying all of them. The thing I like most about the current icons is how clean they look. Even at the large size, these new ones are extremely "busy" which can make them less recognizable. The human one is okay, but it still has too much "blur" along the wings, as opposed to the crispness of the skyline on the current one. —Dr Ishmael 02:14, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Another thing that's ticking is how gradients are smooth across the icon. The current ones aren't as smooth, but they do look cleaner the way they are. Maybe there's also a slight excess of gradient/shadow? – Valento ^msg 02:21, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I still prefer the original icons that were based on early beta content, but other people appear to be indifferent to them being updated or actively in favor. The wiki is supposed to represent how things *are* as opposed to how things *were*, so my preference is not really in compliance with the wiki's purpose. I just wish that if they do get changed, that it wasn't based on a single instance of the living story. If the proposed icons were visible in the open world or if they become more prominent in the expansion, I'd be more comfortable with the current icons being replaced. I just really, really like the current ones. However, to be constructive, I will point out that the 20px version of the current icons have a nice distinct outline; adding that to the new icons would probably make them seem less blurred. --Cali (talk) 04:36, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I definitely agree about the lack of prominence for the new emblems. Given the uniformity of the banners' shape and style, I'm inclined to assume that the Pale Tree design them all, rather than anyone from the individual races.

Another thing, and I think this is really why I don't think we should change them: our current icons are very clear symbols that represent the races.

• The asura, human, and sylvari icons depict their main cities - understandable since these were based on the original icons for the cities themselves, but also clearly symbolic since these races are very much defined by those places.
• The charr one is a pair of gears, representing the industrial focus of the current charr civilization.
• The norn one is a bear, and the Spirit of Bear is probably the most-revered of all the norn spirits.

On the other hand, these new ones (except for the asura one, which didn't change much) are much more abstract. The human one is a pair of wings, the norn one is a celtic knot, the sylvari get a generic plant, and the charr have a clawed hand. They don't immediately evoke the same clear symbolism that the old icons do. Sylvari and charr, perhaps, because they're the only plant-based and claw-handed races, respectively, in the game right now. But the human and norn ones are just... generic. The norn don't even have an especially celtic feel to them - they're obviously more scandinavian than celtic, so having a celtic knot for their icon is somewhat incongruous. —Dr Ishmael 13:47, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Updated a few of them. I'll try to figure out how to reduce the blur later. —Mora 06:44, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Norn and asura look better, but I still got a thing about sylvari one's shadow, and charr's gradient along the hand. >.< – Valento ^msg 11:41, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

The racial banners also appeared in the last POI about Guild Halls and in the "Welcome to Guild Halls" trailer video. The Charr emblem is different now? Instead of , maybe it was changed to . The trailer shows 6 banners, but it's only possible so see 4 emblems, the hidden one can be , Exalted or the pact emblem, and maybe is an emblem for another thing. All the others remain the same as the ones in The World Summit in the The Dragon's Reach: Part 2 episode. - Raikiri 11:35, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up! Yay, if only they answered my threads... I'll submit a ticket asking if these are official. – Valento ^msg 11:46, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm late to the party, but I don't like Mora's take on the norn one. It looks more like the Rune of Lyssa than the norn emblem. As for the new banners - that sixth one might be for Lion's Arch - banners for the six cities, and all that. Konig 19:54, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

In the Guild Chat, episode 5: Guild Week part 3 youtube video, the emblems appear in this order - Raikiri 10:52, 04 October 2015 (UTC)

The is Summit icon (source). Do you still need more reasons to change? Now we really have to change the charr icon - Raikiri 17:33, 06 November 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Revenants

Since Heart of Thorns was announced yesterday there's been a flurry of activity to add everything Colin told us to the wiki. It's good that we have it written down somewhere, but the problem is none of these things exist yet (and given ArenaNet's track record, may never exist). In particular I've noticed a number of instances where people have changed articles that document the game as it is right now to include the upcoming Revenant profession, and I've had to revert or modify them (examples here, here, and particularly here). I think we need to outline some consistent practices regarding documenting "content that probably will exist but doesn't yet." My opinion: keep it out of any mainspace articles, excepting articles created solely for that upcoming content (eg Revenant, Druid) until release. Thoughts? - Felix Omni 19:37, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree that upcoming information should be kept off of mainspace articles until the expansion is released, especially on articles regarding content from the launch (Rytlock's profession, for example). Perhaps a wiki notice regarding premature edits could be helpful? --Ventriloquist 19:43, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I thought that we had a policy along the lines of w:Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a crystal ball somewhere, but perhaps that was another wiki altogether.

Anyway I'm sure we can put together some text. -Chieftain Alex 20:07, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I don’t mind other articles mentioning the new stuff, if it’s non-speculative and clearly mentions that it’s upcoming content. E.g. instead of changing Rytlock’s infobox, add a note that he will change his profession to Revenant with HoT. Similarly on profession, make it clear that the revenant profession is not existing yet but will come later. And everything that’s pure speculation (e.g. whether Rytlock was a warrior before or always a revenant) should be left out completely. poke | talk 22:14, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Found what I was thinking of, GW2W:PP#Verification. "If existing content will be changed [...] changes are made after the game update." -Chieftain Alex 23:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

That's more referring to specific game data - it even lists "skills and traits" as the main examples. The concern was that readers looking for info on current game mechanics wouldn't want to see how the skill/trait will function in the future, so I don't feel like it applies as much to generalized overviews, like our Profession article. I don't see anything wrong with adding information about the Revenant there. This feature has been announced without any prevarication from Anet (unlike prior "announcements" that were merely mentions of things they were working on, not announcing them for release), and I find it highly unlikely that it would never be released. —Dr Ishmael 02:14, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Historical notes under trivia

Are we going to document all changes to a specific element of the game under Trivia section? Or just addition? I added a Trivia section for Might article to document when the power given by each stack was reduced from 35 to 30. I've been thinking about skills specifically... it would be a mess to document all changes under trivia because these change so often. Some time ago I was planning to document all changes made to elementalists here, maybe keeping such info and putting it in its respective profession article would be useful for history purposes. Thoughts on any of this? – Valento ^msg 18:24, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I've seen other wiki simply have a History section. Unless it's a page like a skill that is changed often, the trivia section seems sufficient and another section is unnecessarily verbose. The major point is that these changes are tracked by the wiki already through the game updates and page history. Curious/Determined people can navigate through the game updates and page history for changes. In addition, patch note search provides a tool for navigating our patch notes (I think). By convention, historical changes don't add any value to the page at the current state of the game. Other options like the patch note search are more viable than maintaining historical changes on the page itself.--Relyk ~ talk < 18:53, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I see, that search is surely helpful. I'm just curious because some articles have patch changes documented under trivia, and others don't, are we leaving this as is or follow a common practice? – Valento ^msg 19:19, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

It depends on how notable the change is - i.e. does it fundamentally affect game mechanics, or is it just a tweak to a skill's damage scaling? If it's not notable, don't waste wikitext on it. —Dr Ishmael 19:51, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Very specific then. I'll refer to this discussion if I run into some unusual situation. Thanks. – Valento ^msg 20:06, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Revenant icon

I'm sure that ArenaNet will release bigger icons closer to release (rather than some pixellated p.o.s. in the corner of some skill icon in a video...), but perhaps we should think about getting an icon made up. (y'know in case our icon design heroes of yester-year don't turn up..)

For reference, the skill icon I'm talking about is .

As we all know my eyesight is poor, but, in terms of shapes, I'm seeing a large off-white diamond at the top, with a smaller diamond cutout inside it. The large diamond has a thicker frame at the top. It is overlaid by an elongated kite. With a small circle at the top of the embedded kite. Or is that an eye in the middle? File:User Chieftain Alex Rev icon attempt 01.png. Meh not used inkscape before... guess thicker borders + remove the inner lighter border for low res icons? -Chieftain Alex 19:58, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

That's not a skill icon, that's a character thumbnail from the character select screen... -_- —Dr Ishmael 20:48, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Like I should know better :P -Chieftain Alex 20:51, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Squinting like a maniac, is there a thin line covering the middle of the eye? Perhaps even going through the hole in the "kite"? Ventriloquist 21:13, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

My gut tells me it's a stylized eye (like the ritualist icon) with something like a drop of blood falling from it (probably not a teardrop, they're usually depicted coming from the corners of the eye) or a ritual scar of some sort. Or maybe it's a stylized and and rotated depiction of a needle being poked into the eye - i.e. why the revenant is blind? —Dr Ishmael 23:41, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Dude with a blindfold probably sounds about right. -Chieftain Alex 23:46, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Or possibly a w:Caduceus (shaman ~ herald) -Chieftain Alex 23:54, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I somehow agree with Ishmael. People make fun of all this Illuminati thing, but for me it looks like an eye emiting a flash of light. You see it going downwards, but if you consider 3D perception it's a flash of light going straight forward from the eye, as if the profession has been infused with knowledge/magic previously unknown. – Valento ^msg 11:06, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Guys, we're missing something. I've seen some speculations during the morning that this icon might actually be druid's! – Valento ^msg 13:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I doubt specializations will have icons, or if they do, they aren't going to override the base profession icon. Also, the fact that this icon is extremely similar to the mark on Rytlock's blindfold almost guarantees that it's the revenant's icon. —Dr Ishmael 14:18, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

The supposed revenant is also wearing unique headgear. --Ventriloquist 22:28, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I had thought of including that in my argument, but then I realized that no armor is profession-specific, and headgear skins are even less so. —Dr Ishmael 22:34, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

"no armor is profession-specific" Well... --Ventriloquist 22:49, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Dude... —Dr Ishmael 03:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I dunno how you guys are seeing an eye. I see a stick figure dude in a Japanese styled straw hat. Konig 04:40, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) No current heavy headgear even resembles the circlet-y look of the level one character, but here's to hoping that it's a biography choice. --Ventriloquist 13:47, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I forgot to say that I've chucked my work in progress into my sandbox. I'll update it when we get a better icon picture from ANet. -Chieftain Alex 18:54, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Yep, saw that. It looks really slim compared to the other icons, I really hope it's not the final version ANet decides on. Ventriloquist 20:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

skill 7 looks like the revenant symbol again. Will tweak icon when I get home later. -Chieftain Alex 08:21, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Further icon previews from ANet

See File:User Valento Profession Selection Screen - Revenant.jpg.

Current revision of my cactus-wielding-a-boomerang-above-his-head @ File:User Chieftain Alex Rev icon attempt 04.svg (thanks Ventriloquist :P). I probably need help choosing background, border + gradient colours. --Chieftain Alex 21:41, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

it looks like the Icon from the demo to me. But as always anet can change there minds. so we just need to keep that in mind. - Zesbeer 03:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

July icons

Alright I've had another go and put the results in User:Chieftain Alex/tango icons. I still want your feedback with regards to colours/shapes/line width/legibility, but I've updated the mainspace revenant icons in advance. -Chieftain Alex 17:57, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, I prefer the cowboy cactus form because it's much closer to the original. The vertical bars in your current version have no counterpart at all in the original icon.

Probably this version looks the best in terms of following the original's lines, except the central triangle should probably be a little larger and less equilateral (pretty sure the original's base is longer than the two sides). —Dr Ishmael 18:40, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Ish. It's much more accurate. – Valento ^msg 19:04, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

(If you drag the svg icons over the top of the creation screen png, you will find that the "cactus" was traced over the creation screen png)

I don't think the tango has to be identical to the original, being slightly simplified is rather the point of the tango version no? I agree that the verticals aren't in the original icon + look shonky, however if the two shapes aren't joined then it is harder to recognise as one shape. The "arms" are, imo, a minor part of the drawing akin to the streamers behind the mesmer mask, and are hard to include in the tango without it looking terrible at smaller sizes. :/ You can't really tell the difference between the single set of arms and the double set of arms when you shrink the icon.

Example: A: (small enough the verticals actually look closest to the char select version imo), B: , C:

-Chieftain Alex 20:42, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

If I were to pick one of your options it would be D. Looks better than the others while still displaying the "arms" in smaller sizes. – Valento ^msg 21:03, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

The tip at the bottom could be thinner, though. – Valento ^msg 21:05, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict x2) Good, maybe I'm getting closer. I'll see if I can make it thinner without making it look weedy. -Chieftain Alex 21:10, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

As you noted on your sandbox about the thief/ranger icons, the 20px versions can be simplified from the larger versions. In fact, I think that's one of the tenets of the tango design methodology - craft each icon as necessary for its size and purpose. The larger versions, though, shouldn't differ from the game icon by much. (I think our icons' shapes are actually based more on the flat hero panel icons than the painterly character creation icons - the mesmer icon there is a face-on mask rather than a mask 3/4 rotated mask.) —Dr Ishmael 21:19, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

As much as I love cactus cowboys, I prefer version E as it seems the most stylized one, despite not accurately representing the in-game version. A and B seem a bit too bulky, which looks a bit odd considering the revenant icon is the slimmest one out there. —Ventriloquist 22:09, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

This is the icon that is used in-game on the hero panel. I think the fact that Anet kept the detail in the center indicates that they consider it to be fairly important to the overall design, and I strongly believe that we should keep it in our icons, as well. —Dr Ishmael 22:40, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Need to bring this back up because the current icon really doesn't "fit in" very well with the other profession icons. Just look at template:trait lists nav - it really stands out as being much more "solid" than the rest. —Dr Ishmael 18:25, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The others tend to look a bit more ephemeral as they have a light gradient traveling across them. Anet's icon also uses a gradient which is blooming from the top. G R E E N E R 18:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

We should just scrap the whole mess of tango icons and use in-game icons for everything, imho. —Dr Ishmael 18:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

fine, I'll trade tangos for ingame icons, but only if we can get a skin namespace. -Chieftain Alex 21:41, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Special version of template:future feature for HoT pages?

In the run up to release, it might be worth having a Heart of Thorns styled version of Template:future feature for HoT-related articles. In addition to marking the article content as subject to change, it would serve as a banner to make it clear that the content referred to in the article will be available as part of HoT. -- Nineaxis (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

We'll definitely need to find a way to separate the original GW2 content from the expansion, yes. --Ventriloquist 22:54, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

couldn't we just copy pasta the future feature template and replace the icon with the HoT logo? and add a line about how its content for HoT?- Zesbeer 01:02, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Something like this possibly? User:Nineaxis/Sandbox/HoT_future_content -- Nineaxis (talk) 03:40, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually it's not really needed, but somehow highlights the expansion as something more important. I agree with Zesbeer about tweaking our current future content template, and while we're at it we should add something like "Please, do not post non-trustworthy information, or information with no sources" to the box... my wording is horrible today! heheh – Valento ^msg 04:12, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree, a HoT-specific template is needed. Ideally, we could name it simply "Template:Heart of Thorns" and apply it to every page specific to HoT. For now, the wording would be in the future tense: "This page is about a feature that will be introduced with the Heart of Thorns expansion, which is still in development. Details may change before release." After release, we keep the template, and just change the wording to be present/past tense: "This page is about a feature that was introduced with the Heart of Thorns expansion."

However, I don't think that extra warning is necessary, Valento, since it applies to every edit to the wiki. :) —Dr Ishmael 04:29, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Didn't Anet already confirmed there will be no new story or content updates prior to HoT? So we should only be getting festivals and maybe a feature batch update prior to. Do we really need a separate future feature tag when 99% of what's a future feature is now HoT? Konig 04:42, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

For people who may not be following things closely but happen to browse the wiki, it makes it clear that the article is about content that will be available with HoT. The alternative to that is an easy to skim over sentence near the start of the article. And even after the release of HoT, it would be helpful to quickly distinguish content not available with the base game (per ishmael's idea).

Basically makes things easier to understand for people who aren't religiously keeping track of all the game's current and future content. -- Nineaxis (talk) 04:54, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I feel that's unnecessary overcomplication. Did we have to separate articles between campaign on GWW? If any such notification articles got, it was a mere line in the infobox. That's all that's needed, if anything. Konig 05:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I still think we don't need a separate template... we could use something like {{Future content|refer=[[Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns|Heart of Thorns expansion]]|released=yes}}, but then the template name wouldn't fit... "future content already released" (weird). – Valento ^msg 10:59, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

And that's exactly why it should be a separate template.

@Konig: Just because we didn't do anything like this on GuildWiki/GWW doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't do it here. —Dr Ishmael 13:23, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

About naming, "Heart of Thorns" doesn't look right for me. What if we add "expansion" or something? Like {{Template:Heart of Thorns expansion}}. – Valento ^msg 16:20, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ish: I was merely stating I'm in the camp of "we shouldn't, even if we can". Konig 19:20, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree that pages related to the expansion probably deserve a separate banner template. I've cobbled together {{Heart of Thorns content}} — just stick it at the top of any relevant HoT article. -Chieftain Alex 19:50, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Derp. Sorry Nineaxis, I kind of skipped most of the wall of text here + managed to miss your template mock up. Modified to use your image + left color. -Chieftain Alex 20:01, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Hostile NPC pages

Some time ago I thought we'd fill description parameter for bosses, so it would look like in-game, but I take it's formatted differently now? Same goes for "skills"/"abilities", can we have a standard formatting for them? (or maybe there is and I'm unaware). Skill names can be obtained by checking Combat log. – Valento ^msg 18:32, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

And while we're at it, we shouldn't have a "Location" section once that's stated in the infobox itself. – Valento ^msg 18:37, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

AFAIK, that's how it always was. I don't ever recall using that description parameter on anything - let alone just "for bosses" (since *every* NPC, hostile and friendly can have that). And the location was discussed before, I think the outcome was "gives people an alternate way of looking up that information." Konig 19:09, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

The "abilities-in-description" formatting first appeared on several NPC pages related to the Edge of The Mists, back when it was still being tested. However, most of the formatting was left that way, without it being commented on. The location formatting, as Konig mentioned, was also discussed, but it was eventually left alone. NPCs' abilities and skills fall under the "Combat abilities" section of the page, which refers to both their in-game descriptions, and the skills they use (as well as stolen skills). "Abilities refers to the in-game description, whilst "Skills" are the NPC's skills, which, like you mentioned, are found in the combat log. It's been this way since I joined the wiki, and it does seem impractical and ambiguous to have "Combat abilites" and "Abilities", but no one really took it upon themselves to suggest a change, so it stuck. Ventriloquist 21:08, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Also, in regards to using the description parameter, most famous NPCs - such as Caithe, Scarlet Briar, Trahearne, etc. - have the {{quotation}} in use to quote a line that accurately describes either their role in the game or their plot, which would mean that using the description parameter on top of this results in two quotation templates being in used. And that looks rather ugly.

Furthermore, you have NPCs like Scarlet Briar who's description changes based on appearance, and even generic NPCs with shared names can have changed descriptions based on level. How will you chose which one gets placed up top? Where will you document the others? It's best to have them down in the combat abilities section, IMHO. It's simpler in the grand scale of things. Konig 23:00, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Jumping in to comment on locations, my stance has always been that too many NPCs appear in too many locations that cramming that huge list into the infobox is a horrible way to document it. If the NPC appears in one location, yes, it should be in the infobox because this can be useful to our semantic templates, but multiple locations tend to confuse them (see Template talk:Vendor table for one example). All NPCs should have a "Locations" section to describe this apart from the infobox. —Dr Ishmael 23:23, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Trying to find an admin from the GW1 wiki?

First off, I apologize if this is in the wrong place, but since most of the other pages seem more geared towards actual content of GW2 wiki, this seemed like the best place? Anyways, I am trying to find an admin or other-really-powerful user from the GW1 to help me out. I recently came across my old userpage which had information I was attempting to just delete and move on, but I got my account locked (?) after one edit. I get why (I was deleting the whole page after all), but unfortunately I can't seem to actually contact anyone (if there is anyone left?) via the actual GW1 wiki pages because you need to.. y'know, be logged in to edit, since its in lockdown. :) This seemed like the best place for me to go next, and hopefully it is? Thank you very much for your time. -- Nalee6 (talk) 05:20, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey Naleeb, I'm an administrator of the original GuildWiki. I'll unban your account, and I can delete all your user pages if you want. UPDATE: Upon inspection, it doesn't look like your account or IP address was blocked, it just wasn't allowed to perform the actions you tried. That being said, it would still be easier for me to delete your user pages altogether, so just say the word and I'll be glad to do that. - Felix Omni 06:09, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

GW2Shinies.com Request

Hey Guys,

I just want to let you all know that my trading post project was not at all possible to put together without your continued feedback and testing. Having said that, there is still plenty of work cut out for me, though I do have basic functionality already in place.

For those of you unfamiliar with the website, it is GW2Shinies.com. Please check it out and perhaps offer some feedback on improvements/adjustments. I am making changes to it every day until I get it to where it needs to be.

I started this project about a month and a half ago with the original intentions of challenging myself as a programmer. Then the community started offering ideas on new tools that could work off of the GW2Shinies database such as Shiny Salvage.

I humbly ask the GW2 community: What steps would I need to take to earn the right for placement as a trading post external link resource on the stat boxes of item pages for the wiki?

I can offer a cleaner interface, with 5 minute data updating and a set of unique tools that will continue to be evolved in a manner that will suit the needs of the community. But I need your continued support as a community to make that happen.

Sincerely, RebornGeek

This is what List of fansites is for, not the infobox. We have the external links mostly for Trading Post prices, which is superfluous now that the wiki grabs the prices itself. The infoboxes should probably removed the link as people are capable of finding those resources themselves.--Relyk ~ talk < 22:09, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I don’t really agree that we should remove the trading sites from the infoboxes just because we are able to display the current price. The history is incredibly useful for people wanting to trade the item and I don’t see a harm keeping those links there; it’s not like the infoboxes are too long to comprehend.

And in the same way I think we should be open to new suggestions for those links, and eventually reevaluate if the links we have are still the best choice. poke | talk 16:29, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

The history is why we should keep the link. But we only need to link to one site for that and favoring one site over another is kind of meh. We could have a section on the fansites page for sites that track price history and link there.--Relyk ~ talk < 21:39, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm fine with either approach, as long as we can come to a decision that will offer me the same opportunities to present my resources to the public.--Reborngeek (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Increasing the variety of external resources we promote is definitely a good thing: GW2Spidy might go belly-up tomorrow, then where would the TP flippers go? The only problem I see with adding more external links is the extra space they add to the infobox What if we put them into a collapsible table? Or even moved them into a pop-up box attached to an "external link" icon within the infobox? I've actually considered doing the pop-up thing for the various item tables we have (e.g. Iron Axe, Iron Axe (loot), etc.), and I'll definitely do that if we add GW2Shinies to our "approved list" of item DBs. —Dr Ishmael 21:40, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Side-note: keep me in the loop on those changes, if they so happen. It's something I'm interested in promoting on the Guild Wars 2 social media! Thanks :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:42, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) so, you emailed me in the hope that I would do something... unfortunately I don't do complex stuff with the TP other than sell junk so I don't have any interest in any of the sites linked from the infobox.

I would say however that your price history seems much slower to generate than either GW2TP or GW2Spidy (slower server I guess, whatever).

Judging it in terms of individual items only (this is the page that is being linked from the infobox with the ID) there is bugger all difference between any of the sites. -Chieftain Alex 18:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure it wasn't just an initial load of the trading history graph templates? The fetch times seem fairly quick to me with the historical data. --Reborngeek (talk) 02:08, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Upcoming Personal Story changes

In about 7+ weeks, we are expected to be seeing a much-needed update to the Personal Story. Revisions to the order changing that the September Feature Patch saw, and more. However, a lot of players do not know either about the upcoming changes, or that the order was messed with and is currently poor. In an effort to help expand knowledge of this, I'd like to promote a temporary template to be used on personal story steps of A Light in the Darkness and onward. It's a simple design as I just copy/pasted {{future content}}. I have made it at User:Konig Des Todes/PS. So that you don't have to click the link:

In a few weeks, Personal story steps from A Light in the Darkness and onward will be seeing changes. For more information, please see Bobby Stein's forum post on the matter. If you wish to play through the personal story as originally sequenced, it is recommended not to proceed in the personal storyline beyond A Light in the Darkness. For other stopping points and how they'll affect your personal story experience, please read this list.

That is what it currently looks like. I would suggest placing it at the top of such articles, as well as the Personal story article itself and any other articles one may find relevant. The template would, naturally, be removed once the update comes around. Thoughts? Konig 22:02, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Seems a good idea to me. The template could be named something along the lines of "Template:Future personal story changes". Imo "recommended to not proceed" is a bit strong - perhaps a slight reword to "If you wish to play through the entire personal story as originally sequenced, it is recommended not to proceed in the personal storyline beyond A Light in the Darkness." Additionally it might help to note the relevant section in Bobby's post is "What This Means for You" with regard to other stopping points. -Chieftain Alex 22:33, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Fair points. Reworded. Instead of referring to Stein's post with the additional stopping points, I'm referring to a currently non-existent section on the personal story article that I'll write up, as it was mentioned elsewhere that LA, Concordia, and other places will have their original maps in the personal story (thus making the confirmed alterations as early as Setting the Stage). I'll wait for other comments (or tomorrow evening) before going with this. Konig 23:26, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I dont see any problems with this has anyone gone threw the old pages to make sure they are as complete as they can be?- Zesbeer 01:45, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Been going through all PS. AFAIK, it's primarily The Source of Orr that's lacking aside from Greatest Fear. They'd all have to be gone through again after the change though, so I have a number of characters lined up at Claw Island. Konig 12:07, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Having a notice is fine, but I'd rather the notice simply inform players of the circumstances rather than sound like telling (recommending) players what they should do. We didn't add a notice about the personal story being changed in the first place after all.--Relyk ~ talk < 20:35, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

We didn't know about the personal story being changed in the first place, and after it was changed there was no indication that it would be restored. If it feels too commanding to you then feel free to reword it, but it literally says three things: a change is coming; for more information on said change read here; if you want Situation A, then it is recommended you do Action A to obtain Situation A. It is not commanding anything out of anyone except those wanting a certain something. And trust me when I say that there are a LOT of people holding back on doing any of the personal story because of the NPE changes. Konig 20:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I feel like linking to Bobby's post is sufficient. There's no need to summarize or recommend anything in the notice - just let people read the posts and make up their own minds on what to do. —Dr Ishmael 20:49, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I support the notice as it currently is. The developers have also recommended (several times) not to proceed beyond A Light in the Darkness if you want to play through as it's supposed to be. IMO, the way the notice is atm, it summarizes the thread perfectly. This way, people don't have to waste their time checking the thread for whether or not they should proceed. Titus 23:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Ish, the issue and reason why I added that last piece was because his post doesn't mention everything - primarily the whole "using old maps now" fact, which adds more layers to the various stopping points. I wanted to create a list of stopping points that includes all information we have, as such questions were asked on forums and reddit, and did so on the personal story article. Konig 02:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

That feels like it's going well beyond anything we should be providing in a notice box. The onus should be on Anet to provide a blog post about this whole thing. —Dr Ishmael 03:43, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

story infobox merge

{{story infobox}} is a rewrite to merge {{personal story infobox}} and {{living world infobox}}. The two templates can be overloaded versions of this template until we have a bot go around and change the template names. I don't think anything should break. Don't know if I'm missing anything else before I make the change.--Relyk ~ talk < 05:56, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

• Firstly I agree with the idea of cleaning up that infobox - the previous code was and is hideous.
• Combining the next parameters + removal of the next_bg in favor of icons is a good idea too.
• I'm not keen on combining the living world into this infobox, it was split because the common code bore little resemblance between them.
• Since we would probably rename the infobox at the same time as changing the parameters don't worry about overloading and stuff, we can just change invocations of {{personal story infobox}} to whatever template we end up using.
• I've thought about how I can combine the next/prev parameters with a bot and it should be a piece of cake. -Chieftain Alex 17:39, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

The Living World infobox serves the same purpose, especially now that the Living World has instances similar to the Personal Story. Only Season 1 instances should, technically, be treated differently if at all. However, I don't think there's enough of a difference to merit the continued split. Season 2 definitely shouldn't, since it has a very clear chapter (episode) and order; Season 1 is not-so-clear so it's meritable. Konig 00:23, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

In the mean time I've converted the personal story articles to use {{personal story infobox}} (we renamed the main personal story article from "personal storyline" ages ago).

{{personal story infobox}}/{{story infobox}} are similar enough (e.g. parameter names) that we can switch to "story infobox" if we decide to ditch the living world split. -Chieftain Alex 10:33, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

1) Living story pages have level ranges. {{living world infobox}} doesn't do semantics, but {{story infobox}} does so it displays the error triangle.
2) Property:Has level requirement says "This number property stores a level requirement for any type of equipment". --BryghtShadow (talk) 11:50, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Living World pages shouldn't have level ranges, they are all level 80 with upscaling iirc. The 2-80 notation would be changed and maybe note when upscaling takes place. Has level requirement is generic property at this point.--Relyk ~ talk < 15:07, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh, ok :) --BryghtShadow (talk) 15:35, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

You can now link TRAITS!

Whoa! Vengeful Return = [&CGUFAAA=]

Did anyone know this? o.o – Valento ^msg 02:45, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

That's definitely new, as I tried that only a few days ago when updating the Warrior traits. G R E E N E R 03:51, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

We knew it was possible to build chat links for them, but actually ctrl/shift+clicking them from the game is new. And awesome. —Dr Ishmael 03:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Ok I've added the id parameter to the trait infobox. Anyone know if we have the trait IDs available in a list on the wiki? -Chieftain Alex 08:53, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Someone had a list in their userspace, but I'd be willing to bet that they all changed with the big update. —Dr Ishmael 12:31, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Malgalad had skills not traits, perhaps someone else had them too though. -Chieftain Alex 13:10, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Whoa someone is already filling up traits. That was quick. \o – Valento ^msg 13:31, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Exceedingly quick! Thanks for running through all those; it's a lot of Shift+clicks and Alt+tabs!

So is the process now to wait for the API to be built on Anet's side? I'd love to see some of the inner details of these traits. 96.48.117.14 19:28, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Switch default skin to vector

Per the title, it has been suggested that changing the default wiki skin (from monobook to vector) might make the wiki "appear" easier to edit and thus be less scary to infrequent/new editors. If we switched the default skin to vector rather than monobook users would still be able to use monobook via their preferences if they wanted to.

Previous discussions:

• Talk:Main Page/editcopy/Archive 8#Changing default skin to vector (April 2012).
• User talk:Stephane Lo Presti/January-December 2013#Changing default skin (March 2013)
• User talk:Stephane Lo Presti#About the idea (July 2015)

I know this idea mortally offends Tanetris and other monobook die-hards, but the majority of users don't edit articles + those are the people we need to address. -Chieftain Alex 18:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, the only idea that mortally offends me would be dropping support for Monobook. Assuming that's not on the table, my feelings toward switching the default to Vector is more of a "meh". I remain utterly unconvinced that it's going to encourage anons to edit (how tucking the edit button away from where the eye would naturally go for navigation is supposed to encourage editing is beyond me) or make it easier on them somehow, but if there's some actual evidence that anons would prefer it, it's certainly not that huge of a burden on me to change my preferences and make sure to keep myself logged in. We've been supporting two skins for long enough now that I'm not particularly worried about anyone getting crazy ideas to drop Monobook support (and if they do, that is a separate fight). Maybe start a reddit thread with comparison shots or something, see what they have to say about it. - Tanetris (talk) 12:07, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

The main draw for Vector now (vs Vector back then) is that it makes our new Feedback tab more visible, so it's plausible that the switch could have a benefit for anonymous users who don't intend to be become contributors in the traditional sense. - Felix Omni 15:16, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Most of the discussion is dominated by veteran users like Pling, Ishmael, Poke, and Alfa-R. For example, Tanetris voicing his dislike at the start of every discussion. I'd like to actually poll a larger group like Stephane suggested. We need evidence from anonymous users that vector doesn't improve the wiki. Consensus from previous discussions rely on the opinions of a few veteran users. I'm not saying that's bad, but those opinions hold a lot of sway and those users have used monobook for a long time (as I have). We might be missing the bigger picture.--Relyk ~ talk < 17:29, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I've dug through some of the wikipedia discussions about them moving to vector, and the data on the effects simply isn't there. Most of the discussions that I found were focused on the impact on users, not on contributors. We could always reach out and see if they noticed any uptick in edits or number of new contributors after the change. (edit) or look here.

A more cynical side of me sees vector on wikipedia as running contrary to our intentions. They may have been wanting to nudge people towards the discussion pages rather than the edit pages, while we're lacking in both regards. Obviously subjective, here. G R E E N E R 21:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Skill Coefficients and Ingame Tooltip Damage

Hello everyone,

I hope I am not breaking stuff/doing things wrong. I was referred here by a user on the forums: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Wiki-Damage-of-skills-changed-during-Patch/ My question is the following: Since the base power changed from 912 to 1000, did the Tooltip damage take account for this? That said can the Tooltip damage be calculated this way?:

Tooltip damage = Average Weapon Strength * Power * Skill Coefficient / Armor based value Average Weapon Strength: 1150 Armor Based Value: 2600 Power: 1000

I think many Engineer skills still use the old damage ratio's and skill coefficients. I calculated some, and no matter if I use 912 or 1000 it still looks some are off. If someone can confirm if 912 or 1000 should be used as a base power I can help updating some of the skills on the wiki!

1000 should be the new base power. It should always match the base attributes at level 80. Also you should probably read this guide for documenting skill facts. —Dr Ishmael 19:40, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

My 2c on this topic is that we should make documenting the coefficient for every skill a priority (and find out the weapon damage for bundles/kits), and if we have a coefficient, automatically calculate tooltip damage using the given variables. The damage part will be out of date each time anet decides to change base power and skill coefficient changes are usually noted when they happen. Tyndel (talk) 22:07, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Elite spec skills in the core skill lists

Alright, I don't want to spam the wiki's various talk pages with what may seem like cries for attention to some, but I think this needs to be discussed and implemented sooner rather than later. This topic already came up on two talk pages, but any semblance of discussion quickly died out due to it being connected to another suggestion and due to what I presume was just a general lack of interest. So, here goes one more try to hopefully help the wiki to be a more user-friendly site in terms of documentation of elite specs:

Their skills should be featured on the lists of skills for each profession, such as List of mesmer skills. The easy and obvious implementation would be to just add an Elite specialization skills section to the bottom of those pages, add a subsection for each elite spec (we need to consider the future where more elite specs will be released) and then just copy the respective sections from the elite spec pages there.

My point is that I don't like that solution. As time will go by, that page will repeat the sections and table headers for Profession mechanic, Weapon skills, Slot skills: Healing, Utility and Elite; again and again for each spec, diluting the information throughout the entire page among countless headers, while many of the tables will actually only feature just one or two lines worth of skills. If you'd like to know about all the weapon skills your character can have access to, you'll have to scan and parse the entire page and look for the appropriate tables; the same for healing skills, profession mechanics etc. Now, before you tell me about pages like Healing skill, sure, those would probably list all skills of the given position, but I'm fairly sure that the complete lists are still much more popular places to search for skills you could use, and no such page would exist for the weapon skills and mechanics anyway.

So, my suggested alternative would be something like this: weave the skills throughout the entire page and put them into the appropriate sections. In fact, while writing this, I noticed that someone has already started with something like that on List of revenant skills. We might either add a new column to the tables for a specialization (this would keep the sortability of slot skill tables), or add a small header into the tables to separate core and elite spec skills (this is easier to read and understand, but prevents sorting). I would personally prefer the second approach, but that depends on how useful you think sorting by recharge time is.

And, please, do try to be constructive with your criticism. "I don't like it, we'll do it my way" won't help anybody... 21:28, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Profession mechanic: I think for most professions it would be more useful to have a subsection where we can describe how the elite spec changes up the mechanics. There are some professions (e.g. necromancer) where I wouldn't want to cram everything into a single table anyway.

Weapon skills: note it in the subheader. There's already going to be a subheader anyway, so use the existing space.

Slot skills: I really, really, really don't want to add yet another column to those tables, especially one that will be empty on 75% of the rows. The subheader is definitely the better option, although I'm not 100% sold on it, either.

As for sortability of slot skill tables, I'm pretty sure every discussion of that has ended up with, "No one here seems to find it useful, but... meh, I'm sure someone uses it, so we'll keep it around." I say we take this chance to kill it off. —Dr Ishmael 21:43, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, naturally, if the elite profession mechanic brings significant changes, namely dragonhunter's virtues, tempest's overloads and reaper's shroud, we don't need to cramp everything in the same table. The point is if we're fine with putting the spec subsection under the Mechanic section rather than below everything else.

However, one more thing comes to mind: the newly revealed berserker's primal burst skills. So far, List of warrior skills puts the burst skills to the appropriate weapons, but if we'd like to add the primal burst, we either need to put them directly below the regular burst skills and clearly distinguish them (no idea how, though), or extract all of them to the Mechanic section and list them similarly to Burst. (In fact, engineer will potentially be quite annoying to deal with as well, but it's pointless thinking about it for now.) 22:46, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, it would be best to customize this to each profession, which is pretty much what we already do anyway (the prof.mech. sections are much less uniform than the weapon/slot sections), just to a slightly greater extent. For instance, here is my idea of what it would look like for guardian/dragonhunter. On the other hand, for elite specs that simply add a skill to the mechanics (e.g. chronomancer, herald), adding it to the same table with a subheader would suffice.

For warrior, I'd be fine with merging the primal bursts into the weapon skill lists, although we may need some new icons to indicate all the different relationships better (File:Chain Arrow Toolbelt.png is being worked too hard as it is). —Dr Ishmael 00:24, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I went ahead and filled in the rest of the elite spec skills that we know, and except for the ever longer table of contents, which I moved to the right so that at least high resolutions can display the tables at the top of the page, it seems to look fine to me.

I'm still a bit worried that no icon we choose will tell you at a glance that it's a berserker-only skill, when every single other skill for the other 5 elite specs is always under some sort of a header that makes it quite clear, though. We could add either the Berserk skill or Berserker spec icon before the toolbelt arrow, but, again, I'm not so sure about it...

Actually, while writing this, one more thing crossed my mind: what if we added the spec icons before each elite spec name in the headers throughout these lists (like this:  Tempest) to further demonstrate that they're elite spec skills, similar to what we do with attunements and legends? 12:04, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Honestly... I liked the other pages better to further distinguish elite specs from core specs, as they are very unique in terms of gameplay; they way you're doing is simply spreading information around, it doesn't feel right. However, if this is something you really want to change, you should do something to highlight elite spec information better. In-game specs panel displays a golden frame around the third spec slot (from top to bottom), and that is the only slot that you can choose an elite spec. I think there should be something similar in traits and skills lists, the way it is now it's easy to get visually lost in core profession skills and bypass some skills which are very unique to a single elite spec. – Valento ^msg 12:05, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

This information has always been "spread around". Weapon skills are listed on the weapon page and on the profession skill list. Utility skills are listed on the skill type page and the profession skill list. We're not doing anything different by listing elite spec weapon skills on the weapon page and on the profession skill list and on the elite spec page.

As for "getting lost", I doubt that would happen. The slot skills are set off by a subheader. The profession mechanics are also set off very clearly. Putting a golden border around them isn't going to make much difference. —Dr Ishmael 12:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh well, at least we're keeping skills and traits in the elite spec pages. – Valento ^msg 14:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, what about something like this for simple distinction of elite spec skills? 14:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Doesn't stand out enough, maybe if it were brighter? But is it really necessary? We're hypothesizing that readers will be confused in the first place, which I don't find to be very likely, so it seems like we're solving a problem that may never exist.

@Valento: I deleted your redirects because they're redundant, and it's very unlikely that anyone would ever search for those phrases. If someone wants tempest skills, they'll just go to the tempest page. —Dr Ishmael 15:54, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

It isn't so much a way to prevent confusion, in fact it doesn't really help with that at all; it's more of a subtle clue to help distinguish the elite spec skills visually at a glance. And even when you don't know that it means it's an elite spec skill, it should still alert the reader that those skills are in some way special. It definitely isn't necessary, but it might potentially be nice to add. 16:13, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Edit: Actually, while the yellow line would basically be just visual fluff for the most part, it would help the most with the primal burst skills, should we decide to keep them in the weapon skill tables below the regular burst skills. 23:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

@Ish, you [[List of chronomancer skills|forgot]] [[List of dragonhunter skills|two]]. – Valento ^msg 17:23, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The most trivial of the trivia: "A GW1 skill has the same name as this skill."

It's been brought up a few times in various places, but is it necessary or useful any longer to note skills(/traits/effects/etc.) that share their name with something in GW1? In most cases, the name is the only thing that's shared; the functionality is often completely different.

• One example is the new berserker skill Wild Blow - this incarnation launches your foe, knocks back other foes they hit on the way, and you gain adrenaline. In GW1, the eponymous skill was unblockable, drained all your adrenaline, and removed your foe's active stance. They do both have a guaranteed crit chance, but that seems insignificant when everything else about the skills are different.
• A contrary example is Fireball/gww:Fireball. Both of them fire a projectile that explodes on impact to damage multiple foes.
• Finally, Doom/gww:Doom have nothing at all in common - they're not even for the same profession.

The only case where the skills are actually related is Fireball - our necro's Doom is clearly unrelated to the ritualist's version, and even Wild Blow only shares one feature (out of several) with its counterpart. But is it even worth noting this on Fireball? I seem to remember the general sentiment from past discussions is that it's not. So does anyone have an objection to getting rid of Template:Guild Wars skill and similar notations?

(This only applies to skills, traits, and effects. Lore and locations usually have very obvious connections. Items, especially weapons and armor, often have a strong relationship through having a similar appearance.)

—Dr Ishmael 22:04, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I believe this wiki's mandate is to provide useful information. I could state in the trivia of every map what colours their skies are at various points of the day-night cycle, but that would hardly be useful. Telling a user that a skill shares the same name as a GW1 skill does not meet my threshold of usefulness. (And yes, I know that the trivia section is designed to scrape the bottom of the barrel).

If the skill is a very obvious incarnation of a previous skill, then we can make a note of it, but no more. G R E E N E R 22:47, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm somewhat inclined to leaving it be, but I wouldn't really be heartbroken to see it go if that would be the wish of others.

Other than little factoids about history, references in naming are exactly what the trivia section is for, like gw1:Ride the Lightning. It has never exactly been useful, but it might be of interest to someone. References in names to the predecessor are a natural extension of this practice; the main issue I can see with it is how common they are, so the trivia sections all over the wiki drown in them. Fireball isn't the best of examples, since you basically can't find a more generic fantasy name for a magical spell, but there are significantly more interesting skills and traits that are without the slightest doubt direct references to GW1, and some of them even behave very similarly.

Then again, I have no idea how many people still care. 22:48, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

No, keep them, there's certainly someone who finds them useful. — snograt 23:02, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Damn you Snog. (Love you Snog :P )

@Noxx: Yes, those are arguably better than what I came up with, I didn't spend a lot of time searching for examples. But is it interesting and useful for readers to know about the GW1 skill? I still say no.

Also, cultural references (whether pop or classical) are a separate case: they serve an educational purpose by explaining the origin of a name. (This is especially useful since the typical gamer is young and thus may not have the breadth of cultural experience needed to know the reference on their own, e.g. Ride the Lightning was released before the average GW2 player was born.) Saying "GW1 also had a skill with this name" doesn't explain anything. —Dr Ishmael 00:36, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps we just need to be clearer in what we're trying to convey in these notes:

• Saying that a skill shares the same name as a GW1 skill is useless. Does it help any of you to know that I share the same name as an NFL linebacker?
• Saying that a skill was developed from a GW1 skill has some use. It shows the thought processes behind the (initial) design of the GW2 skill, and why it might exist (i.e. showing they weren't created in a bubble).

Rewording some of these may make more sense. Tossing the templates that give no reason for its own existence would be better. G R E E N E R 01:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm afraid they'd still end up being formulaic and uninteresting. —Dr Ishmael 01:36, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm down for scrapping both of the templates. I feel directing users to a skill of the same name for the previous games gives very little knowledge or information towards this game. What I am for is pop culture bits in a trivia section. Like the good doctor said, not everyone is versed in every aspect of life. For instance, Ride the Lightning's trivia about Metallica is interesting, but the fact that there was a skill in GW1 is far from it. Venom20 03:52, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

We can move all the matched skill trivia to a single page and then remove the trivia sections.--Relyk ~ talk < 04:36, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The moment we'll try to differentiate between skills which are clearly derived from their GW1's counterparts and skills that just took their name, we'll run into a horrible mess. First, other contributors who wouldn't know about this discussion would see that the notes are at some skills, find it inconsistent and try to add them back in to the other ones. Second, how do we determine that the skill effect is close enough? Some skills, like Windborne Speed, are basically the same skills; some, like Doom, have nothing in common; but then we have a spectrum of middle ground where skills were inspired by their GW1's version but not necessarily developed from them and everyone will have a different opinion. For instance look at Wild Blow, to me it seems it's definitely adaptation of the same skill: it's a crit, removal of stances and knocking back is thematically related, and from the livestream we know it even used to be unblockable; it is developed from the GW1 skill, but at the same time you might look at it like Ish and say they aren't related anymore. Removing of that note on just some skills will only lead to edit wars.

Now, if we were to remove those notes from all those pages, I'll side with Relyk and dump all of them into a page similar to List of Guild Wars 1 skins; the question is where to link to that page from, since orphaned pages with long descriptive names are essentially useless. 08:49, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Additional formatting for dialogue sections

Hi. I've been playing with some additional css+js for dialogue sections which I personally think makes reading longer dialogues easier. I have approximately zero intention of implementing this as a global style thing but I thought I'd share it anyway.

JS:

/*
 * Formatting for dialogue sections on mainspace articles
 */
(function addClassToDialogueSections(window, document) {
    if (wgNamespaceNumber == 0) {
        // Select suitable H2 elements and class them as dialogue
        $('h2').each(function (i, e) {
            var h2Content = this.innerHTML.match(/(dialogue)/i);
            if (h2Content) {
                $(this).nextUntil(this.tagName).wrapAll('<div class="dialogue"></div>');
            }
        });
    }
}) (window, document);

CSS:

/* Dialogue indent guides */
div.dialogue dl dd {
  padding-left: 15px;
  background: rgba(222, 192, 180, 0.15);
  border-left: 2px solid rgba(110, 98, 74, 0.4);
  margin-left: 11px;
}
div.dialogue dl dl {
  margin-top: 3px;
  margin-bottom: 3px;
}

Appearance on Against the Corruption#Dialogues. Basically the JS means that I can target the elements in the dialogue section of the page more accurately, and apply margins which I wouldn't want elsewhere. -Chieftain Alex 15:08, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Rethinking this, dialogues just look trash without this formatting... -Chieftain Alex 10:49, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I really like the left-borders to demarcate the indentation levels. I'm not a fan of the background shading, particularly in red. —Dr Ishmael 15:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

My only concern is if this would make formatting dialogue too difficult for the average wiki'er. Konig 17:26, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

It's just CSS/JS applied to the existing wiki formatting - nothing changes for how you or other users would write dialogue sections. —Dr Ishmael 17:54, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd be amenable to any colour of highlighting; I was aiming for brown but perhaps a more neutral light gray might work better. -86.131.74.34 23:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Go reddit-style with alternating dark and light grey?--Relyk ~ talk < 02:32, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

The css they use for that is hilarious, but gray is probably fine.

If I get a lot of bad feedback about the dialogue highlighting then I'll reconsider, but for now I've added it to the common js + css. I've also updated Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Personal story formatting to use what I would consider the current formatting meta. -Chieftain Alex 14:50, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

There's an issue I see with this, now that you updated it. Explosive Intellect#Dialogue. Highlights the non-text dialogue too, which makes it look bad, especially when we have dialogue changes based on story options that's thus far been denoted with extra indentation. Konig 18:43, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Edit: Also looks bad when we have multiple NPC dialogue boxes one after the other, as also seen in Explosive Intellect but many other (most, if not all) story instance articles as well. Konig 18:44, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Edit2: The more I see it, the less of a fan I am of this shading. The indentation line on the left is good. The issue I have with the shading is the constant boxes being formed from it on event and story instance articles, where dialogue is separated by stages so frequently. Perhaps a solution is to remove the shading (maybe line as well) for the first level of indentation? Konig 21:20, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Non-text dialogue in the dialogue section is probably a question of addressing the underlying wikicode formatting on GW2W:PS.

Removing the border for the first stage of indent has been done with div.dialogue > dl { border-left: none; }.

I've turned off the background highlighting until I can coerce convince anyone else that it looks ok. -Chieftain Alex 08:35, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Elite specialization icons

{{#arraymap: Dragonhunter, Herald, Berserker, Scrapper, Druid, Daredevil, Tempest, Chronomancer, Reaper |,|@@@|[[File:User Mora @@@ 20px.png]]|\n}}<br> Do we want to use elite specialization icons (gallery) to indicate where skills/traits belong? Example for Frost Aura:

•   Frost Aura
•   "Flash-Freeze!"
•   "Rebound!"

I've made 20px and 200px versions for each here. —Mora 04:47, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd say yes, as it'd make it easier - especially when more elite specializations are added (whenever that may be) - to distinguish 'source' of skills. Konig 08:57, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Definitely, especially since they're color-coded and you can mouse over them if you don't know what spec they're referring to. 09:14, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Love these. Love icons, and yours are awesome as always. The mesmer one, there's a gradient around the circle going inwards and it doesn't seem to fit for some reason. Other than that, all are OK to my eyes (the reaper, dragonhunter, daredevil ones are superb). – Valento ^msg 14:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Icons look good, aside from what Valento said, that mesmer gradient just makes it look blurry. Anyway to redo the chrono icon with a different gradient, or some how make it a bit sharper? Venom20 22:12, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I can still edit all of them with any feedback that people think will help improve them. I've uploaded a new Chrono20px with the colors swapped a bit; that one's difficult to have it still appear as a clock while being so small. —Mora 00:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I've remade some of the 20px versions (Photoshop changed the original colors, I mainly changed the shapes):

- simplified the flames

- removed the wing from the other side, opened the wing a bit more and increased the foot color luminosity

- opened the hole a bit

- opened the moon a bit more and softened the moon's tips

- cleaned a lot of visual noise by fusing all the parts of the icon, removed some parts and reduced the sharpness of the tips

- reduced the complexity of the cut on the hood

- Raikiri 23:54, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

I really like those, they're even clearer in small sizes (maybe except for the daredevil who looks a bit squashed now that Mora altered his one as well). Anyway, both of you, great job!

Now, considering that HoT is released in just a few days, I went ahead and created the templates ({{dragonhunter}}, {{herald}}, {{berserker}}, {{scrapper}}, {{druid}}, {{daredevil}}, {{tempest}}, {{chronomancer}}, {{reaper}}) so that we can start using them before the launch comes. However, I didn't want to move the icons from your personal userspaces without permission or reupload them myself so for the time being I linked them directly to your icons. This is (hopefully) only temporary. In fact, if you move your icons to the appropriate names or allow us to do it, we can change it before HoT comes. (Please don't kill me.)

Anyway, let's finally start using them where they belong! 13:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I have a small request: Herald's color doesn't match Revenant's... could you change it a bit? :) – Valento ^msg 13:49, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

The colors were pulled directly from the Rev200px version; the Rev20px version has a strange gradient in the borders, but I tried adding something similar to it (not sure if it actually even helped). But herald is using Raikiri's in the template, so that version will need the color updated if that one is preferred instead.

Handful of HoT Notes — it looks like the icons for Scrapper, Tempest, Engineer and Elementalist could change. If anyone finds a preview of what they're going to be, please post a link so we can prepare them before release. These current versions should work temporarily because wiki has text links and colors, but they should match the in-game versions as soon as possible and I'd prefer to play the game instead of making new icons this weekend, lol. —Mora 23:48, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

What about I get them to you? Let me know your preference about format and if you need specific information :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:50, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I created them using the icons from this gallery, so anything similar to that would be great; the larger icons are helpful because I can just adjust the size. —Mora 00:07, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Mora, don't take my choice in the templates as something which must be followed, feel free to update them with yours as you see fit (such as the herald) :). When Raikiri posted his versions I personally preferred them a bit, but you have also changed yours since then which I only realized afterwards. For what it's worth, I still slightly prefer Raikiri's dragonhunter and reaper by simplifying some of the narrow edges which end up forming a larger dark area (maybe the tips on the tempest's icon could also be simplified a bit?), but again, I'm not an authority for this. 08:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent)

"In fact, if you move your icons to the appropriate names or allow us to do it, we can change it before HoT comes. - Noxx 13:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)"

which ones are the final then? you have permition to move my icons to the new name. We have less than two days to decide - Raikiri 21:34, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I will probably move whatever is the default icon for each profession icon template when HoT comes out if not done already. We aren't on a time limit though, no one will notice if the file names change.--Relyk ~ talk < 07:15, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't want to sound ungrateful by saying or even implying that either of your icons are in any way bad, and I don't want you to think I want to authoritatively decide, but if I had to choose now, I'd go for Raikiri's dragonhunter, druid and reaper, and Mora's icons for the rest. 12:51, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I've emailed a few of the wiki admins the files for specialization icons and hopefully you'll get them soon! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 18:58, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

- Felix Omni 20:02, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

A proposal for wiki item pages

Hey guys,

After half a year has passed since my original request, trading histories have been expanded upon, lingering bugs have been squashed and scripts have been further optimized. My trading post project, GW2Shinies.com, is now among one of the few that are consistently updated with new features, offerings and improvements. Many of these improvements and ideas were gathered from the community to make the GW2Shinies project more helpful, especially for newer players. Every item in the game that is on the trading post gets updated consistently every 5 minutes and I can't recall there ever being a span of time longer than 5 minutes that the servers were inaccessible to players (crashes or otherwise that are almost nonexistent in frequency).

For these reasons, I am presenting this request once more to add GW2Shinies.com as an external link resource on the info boxes of wiki item pages. I feel that it is unfair to the users to promote rarely updated trading post projects when there is a new project like mine that can offer the users a consistently updated experience and an ever-present customer service. I love this game and I'm not going anywhere. My projects will remain until Guild Wars 2 is no more.

I want to thank you once more for your time and care in this matter.

Sincerely, RebornGeek

--Reborngeek (talk) 14:52, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I decided to test a rather random item (i.e. I couldn't think of a reasonable stress-test) using Valkyrie Elder Inscription. All three sites performed as I would expect.

• Spidy claimed it was giving me 2 hour old info, which may be expected for such an obscure item. Personally like the added touch of profit with related recipes. I'm not a TP savant, so I don't know the true usefulness of the buy/sell volume bars.
• TP is clean and simple in my opinion. Brownie points for a link back to the wiki article. Puts the volume information on a separate graph.
• Shinies is also clean and simple. Again, I don't know the true usefulness of the volume bars.

I guess the real questions are should we be adding another line to the infobox, and should we be vetting these three sites.

• Adding another line is easy. I've been adding level 0 requirements for some time an no one has stopped me. Tacit approval?
• If these sites have survived, then I argue that they must have some flow of customers (i.e. the players). If this wiki is built by the players, for the players, then aren't the players already vetting the quality of these sites?

Just my thoughts. G R E E N E R 17:46, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we have metrics for including one website or another, but from the looks in reddit and overall dedication the author has displayed I see no reason for not including his/her website aswell. – Valento ^msg 18:09, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

For reference, here is the previous discussion on the topic.

Greener confirmed GW2Shinies isn't in any way inferior to the current two sites we have featured in the infoboxes, which I think is the most important part of the argument. Therefore, if the performance is objectively on the level of the existing sites, that's enough to consider including it in our wiki.

"...then aren't the players already vetting the quality of these sites?" - I agree. The reception of the entire Shinies website is pretty warm, especially on Reddit where players are rather... vocal about something they like or dislike. I don't think we have to worry about player loyalty when it comes to sites such as this one; in my reddit search I haven't found any critical complaints that haven't been addressed, so I think it's safe to say that readers and users wouldn't mind the inclusion of the website.

I'm not a TP guy, so I can't vouch for the usefulness of all of the mechanics, but I do believe the simplicity of the functions is up to our standards. TP and Shinies both have links to the relevant wiki page, which is a neat feature Spidy, for example, does not have.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a new website (or anything, really) shouldn't be a controversial subject, seeing as how the wiki is constantly evolving. I can't weigh in on whether it'd be better to replace an existing site with Shinies, or add a new line, but I like the idea of featuring new, useful websites that can only benefit the readers. —Ventriloquist 19:24, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. — snograt 19:30, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm curtailing to just Shinies. Three is overkill for users if it's for TP tracking. If we want more than that, I'd rather provide a section on the fansite page that links to various resources related to items. Or a simply form that generates all the links :P--Relyk ~ talk < 21:33, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Forms don't produce one click links so are a non-runner. We could wrap the id that we use to generate the link in an element with some kind of data attribute label + that way users could (theoretically at least) add links to their favourite tp database sites using their common.js, possibly no benefit. -Chieftain Alex 08:26, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

That requires users to create an account, learn what common.js is, and then find the code to copy/paste into it. To me, that's also a non-runner.

What about my idea (at the previous discussion that Ventriloquist linked) of encapsulating the external links in a pop-up box? It does change things from one-click to two-click (unless... we could make it pop on hover?), but as long as it doesn't involve going to a completely separate page, two-click seems reasonable. —Dr Ishmael 13:24, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah my "idea" sounded shitty when i wrote it too. If you can make the link box look ok I'm up for it. -Chieftain Alex 16:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I would be more in favor of a site that uses the wiki as a resource, so we get some of the traffic back, and hopeful bring in more editors/contributors.- Zesbeer 06:07, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Shinies and gw2tp both have wiki links, pretty solid start. -Auron 12:51, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I could not be more greatful for how many responses this request has had this time around and I want to personally thank you all for taking an interest in my request. Having said that, I agree with Auron in that referring users back to the wiki on item pages (or anything else for that matter regarding the wiki) is important; Which is why I am willing to develop anything else for my website that will further benefit the wiki on any front. I'm sure you guys could use all of the dependable help you could get. --Reborngeek (talk) 16:12, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Content status

Should the Heart of Thorns notice box be moved into a line in each infobox after release, instead? It could be handled similar to campaigns on GW1W (Nevermore noted like gww:Zodiac Sword, Verdant Brink noted like gww:Domain of Anguish). I'm not sure if common items that appear in the core game or both would need to have a special note; defaulting to Core could note that the content appears anywhere/everywhere across all games (Mithril Ingot noted like gww:Bolt of Cloth) or include each game individually for content that appears in multiple games (like gww:Celestial Axe or gww:Mhenlo) but not all games for possible future expansions. —Mora 15:15, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

The current setup definitely feels too intrusive, but I'm afraid a single line in the infobox won't be noticed quite so easily. We already have users adding notes to collection items, which often gets reverted since it's right there in the infobox. ...Then again, if it worked for GWW, I don't see why it wouldn't work here. —Ventriloquist 15:31, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I've been envisioning something like this. All we'd have to do is replace the content of the template. Moving it into the infobox would require more complicated changes. —Dr Ishmael 17:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I really like that, it's subtle but noticeable. We'll just have to do something with its position when combined with the wiki-wide notice messages. 17:27, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure Alex can hack it with some CSS. I just copied what we had in Template:ArenaNet article. —Dr Ishmael 18:26, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Like it as well. Noticeable, but not pushy. —Ventriloquist 19:07, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I thought the notice was temporary, hence sticking it in {{infobox status}} to remove it in one line. Do we need to indicate it explicity? Content like items would still be accessible by players as long as they are trade-able. The rest of the content like NPCS, objects, and locations would quickly indicate they are restricted to Heart of Thorns by the location. Main issue are achievements, currencies, and mechanics pages like specializations and masteries.--Relyk ~ talk < 21:54, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

NPCs, objects and locations would indeed quickly indicate they are restricted to Heart of Thorns by the location as long as you know that those locations are restricted to HoT in the first place. The wiki should never do something "because it's common knowledge", look at it from the point of view of a player who doesn't know that Verdant Brink is a HoT-exclusive zone, the point of the wiki is to give him that information and not to hide it. It's definitely better to state that explicitly. 22:32, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Sure but a notice in the top-right is just a temporary solution. It's disassociated from the rest of the content when the restriction is based primarily on the location. It'll also be redundant as the article will likely mention if the content is a part of the expansion.

One option would be to include a symbol in the infobox indicating regional content similar to how we handle icons. Another would be to include a symbol next to the location indicating the region it's in; we can handle that with {{infobox location}} to generate it automatically simialr to the approach with map objectives. You can also have an entry on every infobox to define the region explicitly like with gw1. We can have a separate template added at the bottom of articles to associate the content with HoT, Core, or both.--Relyk ~ talk < 01:26, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

An issue with Ish's example is that it overlaps with any wiki notices. Like the oft-returning "Notice something wrong, missing, or unsatisfactory? [...]" that never seems to go away despite how many times I click dismiss. Personally, I prefer something like what the GWW had and figured that's what we'd be doing. The only issue I see is: what do we call stuff for the original game, and do we bother using the same method to denote Season 2 instances since that's also behind a paywall? Konig 11:13, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) @Relyk: Yeah, we could do that, we could drown that information somewhere in the article's text, put it as another line in all the infoboxes for people to overlook or to unnecessarily lengthen the majority of them with "Game | Core" or, even better, place it at the very bottom of the pages. Perhaps we could switch between all of those depending on the type of the article; let the user play a minigame of "where might I find this piece of information, or is it really not there". Or we might use a unified way to display this, which works the same across all article types, which is not obstructive and yet is at the top where it's easy to find and notice.

The one thing I'd consider for this, however, is that in the future where some articles will be related to multiple but not all expansions, we'll want to be able to list all of them, something like <2 icons> The content described on this page is only available in the Heart of Thorns and Shards of War expansions.

@Konig: Ish already said this was just a quick demonstration and the CSS would be changed to display it better. And actually I'd say that the Season 2 instances could use the same system. 11:36, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) @Noxx; I've now fixed the monobook issue (I added "position:relative" to #bodyContent + fiddled with the margins). fixed-top-icons now look the same in vector + monobook.

I've copied ishmael's suggestion (with modified top margins) into Template:Heart of Thorns content, but please revise as you guys wish. -Chieftain Alex 08:50, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Possible design shift for Heart of Thorns?

Hey everyone, the Heart of Thorns release is coming up and I would like it if we could alter some of our design elements to reflect that. In particular I would like to see our red painterly nav background turn into a green painterly nav background, and we could update our GW2 wiki logo to use the HoT logo above "Official [[Wiki]]" instead of the classic 2-dragon. Additionally we could consider replacing the Destiny's Edge art in our Main Page background, or perhaps keeping it but shifting the red accents to green (no idea if that's doable or not, but ArenaNet might be willing to provide an updated version if we requested it). I am by no means a graphic designer so I can't really mock up what I want to see, but I hope my explanation is sufficient to paint that picture. What do y'all think? - Felix Omni 19:52, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Great idea. Let us know if anyone needs assets from us or anything else :) Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:55, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I support this idea. But like yourself, I also can't really help with implementing it. —Dr Ishmael 20:18, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

A similar change was made for Wintersday of 2014, with help from the french wiki, and it looked great. Might be worth investigating if they're going to implement a change for the expansion or not, if we're looking for shared design. A new thematic appearance for the wiki would be fantastic, though. —Ventriloquist 22:19, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I talked to our graphic designer and he said that if we were able to share a "wireframe" (a clear picture of how the GW2 backgrounds are setup, cut by bits that are files linked in the CSS), he may have the time to find relevant HoT assets for it. Collaboration with other wikis would be ideal, I'll email the main editors from non-English wikis to point them to this discussion :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:40, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, that sounds lovely. I'm sure Alex knows which files you're referring to, as he is the one that changed the original CSS. Creating a consistent appearance across the wikis would definitely be ideal. —Ventriloquist 22:42, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Side note (I just want to mention it for your information): we cannot have a consistent background because the look of each wiki is determined by its community of editors. I've tried talking to representative of all wikis and apart from the German one, people are happy sharing the same theme. We don't want to force it, although we think that it would improve how official the wikis look (including not breaking navigation when you use inter-wiki links). --Stephane Lo Presti talk 22:47, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Whether the other language wikis wish to change their themes or not, something HOT related sounds like a good idea. -86.131.79.9 23:54, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

@Felix: Shifting reds to greens is "doable" but looks pretty odd imo. Lazy example: Main Page/editcopy. A few more thorns in the header would be cool.

@Stephane: The files that we use on the main page and in the site theme are:

• 

  Main page left
  600 × 800 px
  (left on main page)

• 

  Main page right
  600 × 800 px
  (right on main page)

• 

  Wiki skin header
  1,203 × 249 px
  (top left of every page)

• 

  Wiki skin footer
  2,000 × 220 px
  (bottom left of every page)

• 

  Wiki logo
  155 × 155 px
  (top left of every page)

CSS we use to get the skin images to appear:

/* Footer gradient. (vector + monobook have different css) */
html {
  background-image: url("//wiki.guildwars2.com/images/3/3c/Skin_footer.png"), url("//wiki.guildwars2.com/images/8/8b/Skin_page_bg_gradient.jpg");
}
#footer {
  background-image: url("//wiki.guildwars2.com/images/3/3c/Skin_footer.png");
}
/* Top red painterly header */
div#mw-page-base, div#column-content {
  background-image: url("//wiki.guildwars2.com/images/0/00/Skin_header.png");
}
/* Wiki logo image */
#p-logo a {
  background-image: url("//wiki.guildwars2.com/images/c/c9/Logo.png") !important;
}

• In terms of priority for which files are the most important to change, number one would be the skin header, and new main page images would be great too. The wiki logo + footer are lower priority.
• The two main page backgrounds aren't used in the css, they're setup directly on the main page. We could probably use any image that is portrait orientation with a transparency behind it.
• The logo is a pain in the butt to edit - we can however adjust the red shadow tint ourselves easily enough to match any header.

-Chieftain Alex 12:33, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Hmm Destiny's edge in green on separate layers would work I suppose. -Chieftain Alex 12:41, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

What about something like this? Unless Eir changes her hair in-game, I'm not personally in favour of changing the images on the main page. There's enough room for a suitable HoT update with the HoT logo and a thorny wiki skin header file (and footer file?) without presenting a character differently than they appear in-game. Khenmu 14:10, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Someone in IRC suggested using pictures of Rytlock and Caithe on the main page for HoT since they're arguably more integral to the new story than the other three. Does anyone know what was the source of the art we're using right now and whether we can get Rytlock and Caithe separately? - Felix Omni 15:16, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

If memory serves me right, there wasn't a singular source. Just a lot of finding them separately. All five DE members have individual versions, but this wiki seems to only have Logan, Eir+Zojja, and Caithe images. Here's Caithe: File:Caithe-Final.jpg and [[:File:Red-black-white Caithe.jpg]]. Searching for these reminded me of how chaotic the concept art category is... Konig 19:49, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Kekai Kotaki did an equivalent Rytlock image :/ this blog certainly has the others (.jpg sadly). -Chieftain Alex 21:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

edit: nevermind, if it is on a t-shirt then its probably out there somewhere. -Chieftain Alex 21:58, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Here's a larger one, in .jpg, since you're a fan of them. —Ventriloquist 22:02, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello. We definitely would like to have a HoT theme on the french wiki and I was thinking to make one if I find the time. However, I'm not planning to release it on friday! (1) Because I would like to wait for the release of HoT content and textures and (2) on friday we will release our Halloween skin which is an improved version from our 2014 skin. We will have a new footer plus 2 new randomly loaded headers. Quick and awesome spooky preview with last year header and the new footer -->(boo!)!<!--. I'm off topic but if you are interested, feel free to contact me! --IruleManik (talk) 22:11, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Ok thanks for digging up Caithe + Rytlock, I've "greened" them + stuck them onto the edit copy. Higher res versions with the original transparencies would be better though. -Chieftain Alex 00:44, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you de-neon them a wee bit? - Felix Omni 05:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

rytlock too? -86.131.79.9 08:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Progress

(Reset indent)

Okay header + footer have thorns in them now. I've turned down the colour and size on Caithe, Rytlock looks okay to me tbh. -Chieftain Alex 10:42, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

If I may suggest, I think Logan should be replaced by a Revenant Rytlock. Caithe still suits the occasion, but Logan is a bit out of flavor. 2¢ – Valento ^msg 12:58, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

looking at the current revision of Main Page/editcopy? (rytlock + caithe, no logan) -Chieftain Alex 14:01, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I like the current version. The footer image is awesome. Thanks for all your hard work. :) Khenmu 14:05, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see that, Alex. Noice! – Valento ^msg 19:48, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

That looks great, Alex. I'd be totally happy going live with this right now. :) Actually can you greenify this too? - Felix Omni 22:38, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Agreed, the dark green color and thorns look fantastic. It really captures the Heart of Thorns feel. —Ventriloquist 22:45, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Right, I'll fix these up to appear some time tomorrow (when it is less than 24 hours until HoT!). I'll upload over the top of the logo but otherwise I'll move the files to:

• File:Main page background left (Heart of Thorns).png
• File:Main page background right (Heart of Thorns).png
• File:Main page GW2 (Heart of Thorns).png
• File:Skin footer (Heart of Thorns).png
• File:Skin header (Heart of Thorns).png

and adjust the css to the new images. -Chieftain Alex 23:57, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Appearance in vector & monobook in case anyone has trouble seeing past the edit copy notice. -Chieftain Alex 00:19, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

That looks awesome! I have some feedback from a designer that the HoT green is yellow-er than the greens you're using, but I'm more than happy with this. - Felix Omni 01:54, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Well if the designer wants to provide anything to help that vaguely resembles the original media asset kit, particularly a colour swatch with "HoT green", we could use that to change the colours. -Chieftain Alex 08:35, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Edit copy option B. Better I think? -Chieftain Alex 10:18, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I love it! Much more accurate and fits nicely. Great job! – Valento ^msg 10:39, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Looks great! (Do you sleep at all? :P) Khenmu 13:02, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

(Reset indent) And we're live. -Chieftain Alex 14:54, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Btw is this permanent, or will we eventually go back to the red theme? (christmas..) -Chieftain Alex 13:19, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

3ever5me - Felix Omni 17:27, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Logo

So I took a stab at a wiki logo using the HoT logo in place of the ol 2gon. Image:User Tanetris HoT logo.png (and for people who just see a block of white on white there, here's a preview of it with the relevant part of the header as a background Image:User Tanetris HoT logo pvw.png). Thoughts? Criticisms? Suggestions? Alternates? Plain refusals? - Tanetris (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I like the changes with the dragon and the thorny arch, but the number 2 seems a tad bit plain. Could we add some imperfections or a break somewhere so it matches the Guild Wars text a bit more? -Auron 07:25, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

It looks like the same 2 they use in the official version, so it seems right to me. The size of the image vs. the text is off from the official one, but that helps the dragon be readable as a dragon at that size. purple llama 07:34, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I would have imagined there was more curve to the bottom of the official 2, but apparently that's in my mind's eye only. I like the direction.

I'm assuming there will be some green to either side of the logo so that the text won't abut the edge of my screen? <-- only criticism I could think of. G R E E N E R 11:31, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Looks good, the "Guild Wars 2" could be pushed a bit more down to give some room to the dragon's neck, but other than that I like it. —Ventriloquist 14:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Though I originally suggested changing the logo as well I've come to think that keeping the 2-dragon is more appropriate because it's still the official Guild Wars 2 logo, and we're the Guild Wars 2 Wiki, not the Heart of Thorns Wiki. - Felix Omni 17:25, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@Greener and Vent: Something a bit more like Image:User_Tanetris_HoT_logo_pvw2.png? The 'guildwars2' is just slightly shrunk and a bit scooched (technical term) as well as 'official' scooched to maintain even spacing. I'm not sure I like that it starts making the dragon feel more separated out, but either way. The shrinking to allow for some more side-green also lets me sneak in the little TM symbol after the 2, unreadable as it may be. - Tanetris (talk) 22:28, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Ooh, I think that looks much better. "...making the dragon feel more separated out" You still have the lines going through (or underneath, I suppose) the logo, so it doesn't feel all that separated to me. —Ventriloquist 22:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

How about making the text more distinct from the HoT-dragon by fading more of the dragon out immediately above the text? (hard to describe, but the gradient from transparent to opaque could start fading above the top of the text and finish about 20px above the top of the text.) -Chieftain Alex 23:41, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I tried this concept a few different ways just to see how it looked out of curiosity, and I hated it so much I won't even show you a preview. Are you possibly misinterpretting the quoted text that we're trying to make it separated out? Because if you will read the quote in context, I'm calling that a bad thing. The amount of it from scooching the words isn't SO bad, but I certainly don't think we want more of it. The 'guildwars2' and the dragon are supposed to be one unit that is a logo representing Guild Wars 2, not one element and then another. - Tanetris (talk) 07:27, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh, no, I understood it. You were worried that the dragon would feel more separated from the main logo and I replied that it shouldn't since the two elements are still connected via the line. I don't think further separation would look good, either. —Ventriloquist 10:02, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, that was addressed at Alex, as his suggestion seemed counter to the idea. I understood your meaning, Vent. - Tanetris (talk) 23:09, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

No Tanetris, I didn't read the above text for the most part, I just gave my opinion on what I thought about the logos given. I tried what I was thinking of File:User Chieftain Alex wiki logos comparison.jpg but I couldn't get it to be pleasing to the eye. GuildWars2 ends up too close to the OfficialWiki bit, and the HoT dragon looks odd without the full circle. -Chieftain Alex 00:21, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hey everyone, I was just discussing with our graphic designer a few design things related to a discussion I had with the French Wiki (more on that below) and we ended up with a few pieces of feedback about this new logo and other aspect of this wiki.

Re. the logo: the "dragon circle" should be kept whole, instead of being cut to put the text below. This will probably require the bottom part of be transparent under the text, but it should be there, otherwise this looks incomplete (giving the impression of a dragon that "jumps" rather than a circle). Let us know if you need help on that.

Re. the Main page: we realized that the traditional GW2 iconics were changed to have green in them to reflect the Heart of Thorns theme. This is merging two things that we usually don't put together. This is a topic that I've raised to our designers in the past and although we've not been able to tackle it we're hopeful that we will this year. If and when we do, I'll get back to the wiki team to share our thoughts.

Meanwhile, while talking to the French wiki, we ended up providing some feedback about their graphic design. This also means that I'm going to share some (high quality) Heart of Thorns assets with them and I'll be doing exactly the same with all wikis, so you can use them. I just need to find a way to share these big files :) Let me know if you have questions or comments! Thanks --Stephane Lo Presti talk 01:25, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The easiest place for us would be an updated asset kit page (maybe a new Heart of Thorns section?) I think at least one of our B'crats has been given the files, so if you want to distribute it another way I'm sure you can think of something.

If you want to provide some suitable images (i.e. not-recolored) for the wiki front page then we can update it if they're any good. -Chieftain Alex 02:09, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Honestly, the images aren't so huge that we can't just upload them straight to the wiki, so long as it's not a problem for them to be out in the wild. If I have permission to do so, I'll happily upload the ones I got myself.

While your designer's comment makes sense in the 'grand scheme' of things, honestly I think it works for a wiki logo for it to be incomplete, as a wiki (even the official wiki) need not precisely match Anet's exact branding. But then again, hey, I'm not a professional designer. Image:User Tanetris HoT logo pvw3.png. This is with the lower part at 70% opacity, which I think is about as strong as it can be before it starts interfering with the words. It gets a little lost in the background, particularly as it happens to be over the lighter part of the background, but not much I can do about that. - Tanetris (talk) 11:22, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I've still got the background source files I made up the last time, so I've darkened the wiki skin header file (the current logo looks way better on a darker background anyway) - but in my opinion we still need <70% opacity for the new logo to work alright (too much visual noise). (Not sure if it is my eyes, but the "GuildWars2" text looks grayer than the "Official Wiki" bit - brighten it?) Other than that, nice job on the logo Tanetris. -Chieftain Alex 14:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Tanetris here. The [[WIKI]] part gets tangled up with the lower part of the circle. Despite the opacity percentage, it's still white on white, which doesn't add much readability to something that will be noticed across the wiki. —Ventriloquist 16:00, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the "white on white" doesn't look too good. So I've sent Tanetris' new version of the logo to our designer to see if he has ideas on how to improve the situation, and this is what he thought could work (without breaking our branding guidelines too much):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2_French_Wiki_Corner_MockUp.jpg

After talking more to our graphic designer, we realized that there's something potentially very cool that could solve a lot of issues: what if we designed a GW2 logo specifically for the wiki? This would remove any branding problem when the color/brand identities of "Core GW2" and "Heart of Thorns" could collide (and when we have new extensions, even more collision). And of course it would solidify the wiki's identity for everyone to see! We don't want to overstep our implicit contract with the wiki community, so I'm first going to ask the people here what they think about the idea. Please let me know!

Back to my previous message above: we're still working on a Heart of Thorns asset kit and I'm not sure when it'll be available. But I do want to share some of the high-quality assets that our graphic designer shared with me. For reference the Braham/Marjory assets are related to the skin of the French wiki. Here are the links to the files I uploaded directly on the wiki (they're probably too big to be used as is on the wiki, as they'd slow down page loading?):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-HoT_Texture_Centered_Trans.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-HoT_Texture_Centered-White_Trans.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-HoT_Texture_Horizontal_Trans.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-HoT_Texture_Horizontal-White_Trans.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-HoT_Texture_Icon_Trans.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-HoT_Texture_Logotype.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Vine_brushes1.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Vine_brushes1_Large.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Vine_brushes2_Large.png

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:HoT_Braham_KeyArt_Final_HiRes.jpg

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:HoT_Marjory_KeyArt_Final_HiRes.jpg

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:HoT_Rytlock_KeyArt_Final_HiRes.jpg

--Stephane Lo Presti talk 20:32, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Is there any chance of a version of the NPC images on a transparent background? (Surely they keep layered versions?) I only ask because cutting the background off a white image doesn't produce good results. -81.158.150.247 21:29, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I have the PSDs so I'll create those for you :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Excellent. Are the dark backgrounds at the bottom of the NPC images fixed on the same layer as the NPC? -81.158.150.247 21:51, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey there. So unfortunately the PSD doesn't allow me to offer you a transparent background version, as things have been flattened. I can remove a bit of the bottom part of the vines but there's still quite a lot. Sorry about that :( --Stephane Lo Presti talk 23:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Heart of Thorns - Community participation

Just want to shout out how glad I am to see people actually being bold and creating articles with the xpac launch. Probably seasoned wiki editors will have a lot to go through once things calm down, but it's very exciting seeing folks contributing with all they can (some even learning the subtleties about "correct" editing). Yay for the community!! :D – Valento ^msg 13:42, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, GW2 does have a reputation for having a helpful community. :D

Personally I think it's the regulars who deserve appreciation; you've made the wiki what it is today! Khenmu 14:33, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I love it that users are getting bold and just creating the pages. Sure we will have to go though and edit/delete/move/redo some pages. However there are some seasoned editors that don't play the game anymore or don't have Heart of Thorns. Getting the information on there and documented allows those editors to do what they do best. I really appreciate the seasoned wiki editors they are of great help on having me become one. Anzenketh (talk) 18:55, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Deep down, Azen loathes the seasoned editors and their wicked methods and plots to overthrow them all.--Relyk ~ talk < 20:05, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm just going to say that this is an amazing time for the wiki and it's time to cement our relationship with both lapsed editors that are coming back and the new editors that joined this amazing community. As always, if you see something worth promoting, send it my way (via my talkpage) and I'll promote it on our social media whenever possible. Thanks and all hail Wiki! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:00, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Request to add gw2bltc.com to the infobox

Hi, I think my site will be very useful for the new & veteran player. Anyone who wants to make a legendary or any item, can use my site to see the materials needed to create it.

• Sunrise: https://www.gw2bltc.com/item/30703
• The Colossus: https://www.gw2bltc.com/item/29170
• Rare Veggie Pizza: https://www.gw2bltc.com/item/12464
• Recipe: Verata's Claymore: https://www.gw2bltc.com/item/67538

Features:

• Item information.
• Quick links (copy name, copy chat code and wiki).
• Current prices & listings (updated every minute).
• Crafting cost & shopping list ( + mystic forge recipes).
• Historical prices since 2012 (combined with gw2spidy.com, updated every 7m).
• And more...

Take your time to check it out!

Regards,

Thief.Jolu (talk) 06:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

I personally really like it, especially the crafting recipes and old price history which I was missing in GW2Shinies, and I'm definitely in favour of adding it to the infoboxes.

The question is if we're still fine with having 4 links like this because the list could eventually get quite unwieldy. To me it seems like 4 lines are on the edge of what I'd consider to be fine, but we might start considering if we want to remove some or, more preferably, link to them through some sort of icon for each website listed in a single line, probably something simple black and white to not draw too much attention in the infobox. The problem with that is that I have no idea what icons to choose when the sites' favicons aren't exactly ideal... 12:16, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

This section is rather quiet... I could go add it to the list right now but from experience I imagine that that would be the trigger for people to come here and criticise the decision. So, I give you another chance to come forth and say why you don't want to add it, otherwise I'll go ahead and do so in a couple of days. 17:26, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Now the site can sync your collection items and skins. It's very useful to see your progress. Thief.Jolu (talk) 17:16, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

This site is quite involved. On a whim I looked at the Wintersday Tree, and the layers of details is not left wanting. With the future update coming to scribing, will your website be able to update itself quickly via the API? (I'm asking this question for selfish reasons).

My hesitation for posting in this section earlier has a lot to do with how much expanding the community may want/tolerate in the infoboxes. I advocated to add gw2Shinies as three links is easy on the eyes and mind. People can discern between the options and pick their preferences. In fact, I purposefully pick and choose which link I use depending on what information I want to gather (Shinies for historical trends as I love the logarithmic scale used; TP for watching supply vs. price for a few high end items). When we start edging up more and more, are we going to go past the point of benefit for the community, and instead just leave an ugly list? (general question not directed at you, Thief.Jolu)

Finally, enjoyed seeing the use of "Acquisition" and "Used in". G R E E N E R 17:37, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

NPCs with multiple rankings

With HoT, some NPCs - such as Faolain, Blademaster Diarmid, and Stavemaster Aryn - appear in the game with multiple NPC ranks. For example, Faolain in TA is a champion, in S2 she is normal, and in HoT she is both normal (when placed for cinematics only) and legendary; Diarmid appears as both champion and legendary, as does Aryn (champion version being named simply "Stavemaster Aryn" in story instance while his legendary version is called "Legendary Stavemaster Aryn"). How should these NPCs be documented? Most common rank seen? Highest? Or create a new line in the infobox to hold multiple ranks? Konig 11:22, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Event page auto-generation tool

Hey all. The same insomnia that bought you the Maguuma jungle timer got funnelled into a quick-and-dirty tool for quickly generating Event page stubs based on information from the official API. http://jsfiddle.net/fffam/dxyhqca9/embedded/result. Auto determines the closest 'area' of the map for an event, fills in the template for you to copy-paste into the wiki with correct event ID, event type and interwiki links and gives you dropdowns for meta/prev/success/fail events. Code is a mess, but might be useful for anyone looking to fill in all the red-linked HoT event pages. -- Fam (talk) 19:19, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry for your insomnia Fam, but just wanted to let you know that this sounds like a really cool idea! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:49, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Hot damn! Just made Defeat the chak blitzer and her brood. I had to add in the lead <!-- to the Objectives section, but otherwise really nice. I know who to blame if I keep adding to my to-do list without taking things off of it. G R E E N E R 20:23, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

The API unfortunately only has the level/location information in it, so you still have to fill out a bunch of the text info by hand. I might change the template it populates to add more stubs? Still, helpful to get a quick start hopefully. -- Fam (talk) 20:46, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Picking the closest area is such a wanted feature for us along with picking the closest waypoint. You can also try passing the values to [[Form:Event infobox]] with Semantic Forms query parameters in a link. The forms still don't add whitespace to template parameters though :(--Relyk ~ talk < 14:07, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Category homages

I've a thing for homages/memorials to deceased players in-game like Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Wynthyst memorial, Hiralyn and Sanctum of Rall. So I'm thinking of a stand-alone (no infobox) category for these, so these special elements are easier to find. What do you guys think? And if you think it's a good idea, what category name do you propose? (I was thinking something along the lines of "Guild Wars 2 homages"). ~ Sanna 19:34, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Displaying account data from the GW2 API on the wiki

I had a thought recently: wouldn't it be nice if the wiki could pull in account-specific data from the GW2 API? I specifically wanted recipe unlocks (because figuring out if you have a recipe unlocked and on which chars is a pain), but it'd be useful for other info the API provides too.

So I spent a few insomnia-filled nights of my own and implemented it. You set an API key that's stored locally in your browser, and the end result looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/RwmC3f1.png or this: https://i.imgur.com/ICPIoLe.png. The source is available on User:Dagger/Widget drafts/API (together with some instructions for trying it out, although please do read the warning on that page). Currently it can display which characters have a recipe unlocked, how much of an item you have (and on which chars), and whether you have a given skin unlocked. Mini and dye unlocks are also implemented but require some infobox editing (which I'm going to hold off on doing because I may have already annoyed all our admins by jumping the gun a bit with some edits to some site-wide templates a few days ago).

So, a) do we want this on the wiki? I know I'm finding it pretty darn useful; and b) Stephane, are we okay to deploy this, load wise? The individual API queries are more expensive than the TP price queries we already do, but they only happen for users with an API key set and the responses are cached in the browser to avoid constant requerying. I have no way to estimate total load, but hopefully it shouldn't be too horrible.

If we do want it, I'll need some admin help to convert everything to widgets. I can write the pages myself, but I can't save anything to the widget namespace without widget namespace permissions. -- Dagger (talk) 20:25, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey Dagger, this looks absolutely amazing! I mean, it's a small bit of information but a great start to making the wiki that more relevant to people. It has tremendous potential and I don't think that it's likely to be an issue for either the wiki or the API. Related to your idea: do you think that you can use this to create some kind of "personal wiki portal" where you could list your characters, what they have/need, etc. --Stephane Lo Presti talk 19:31, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Great. Time to figure out who to bother about getting it deployed then.

I did think about an account display... the thing is, it's a fair bit harder to write than just inserting a few bits of info, and there are already sites like gw2efficiency.com that do a decent job of full account inspection, so if we're going to reinvent the wheel it should be because of something we can do better in our position as a/the wiki. The things I've written so far are useful because you can /wiki an item in-game and then the info's right there... but that doesn't really apply to characters. (Perhaps simply being able to view a quick list of your items/equipment right on the wiki rather than a third party site is worth it though.) -- Dagger (talk) 01:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Let me know how I can help, feel free to talk to me on the IRC channel or email me directly! About this personal page, I do not have a precise idea of what it could be but the fact that some part of it already exists is not a showstopper. Here's why: the wiki is accessed by a lot of people and if we can add a layer on top of it where players can find information that is directly relevant to them, we're enhancing their experience here and of the game. For example, could we link the article for the current personal story step (I'm not even sure the API exposes that info)? Or the article of the area/city where the character is? List their masteries? I know that this is not straightforward but just an idea that seemed to naturally expand the one you already implemented. Once you've been able to roll your current program into the wiki (it probably needs a bit of testing?), I'd like to promote it widely on our social networks. In any case I'm here to help :) --Stephane Lo Presti talk 01:16, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

This really looks quite good, well done. I’d like to have this kind of information visually separated in the infobox though to make it clear that this is personalized information and does not come directly from the wiki. That way nobody will be confused.

What I dislike most about these client-side solutions is that we need to hit the API all the time for everything. It’s what put me off the most about integrating things in the wiki. Of course storing this server-side on the wiki is also not an option (since that would require a rather complicated extension set up). This is just a crazy idea, but maybe we could talk to the maintainers of gw2efficiency and see if they can offer us some access to their data. So instead of having to set up an API key for the wiki, they could log into their gw2efficiency account and get information from there integrated here. Of course that’s maybe a bit more complicated to organize but it would allow us to reuse existing things in the community which probably makes it all a bit more attractive for everyone. poke | talk 20:37, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

That's why I'm caching API responses in HTML5 local storage (it takes about 100kb for the endpoints I've used).

Re: account/char inspection, I discovered the action=expandtemplates API yesterday. I wonder if we could do a thing where we fetch info from the GW2 API and pass it to a template for the wiki to render. That would let anybody edit the resulting page layout -- it's not very wiki-like to require admins to get involved just to do that. Obvious problems include needing to do extra HTTP requests and the CPU time needed to render the templates (but it'd only be done on the inspect page, and client-side caching is possible here too). -- Dagger (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

This is super cool, nicely done! From an API load perspective we're mostly ok w/ this. There's some concerns due to these being more expensive operations than the the TP prices and the caching difficulty on our side because of the amount of data/number of permutations. Assuming other concerns are handled when deploying would you please start out with a 12-hour cache time? We can lower that time as things look good and not-explodey. Also want to coordinate when it's launching to ensure we're around and available to watch load/troubleshoot in case things go pear-shaped. Pcavit (talk) 20:49, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Roger that. I note that since people have to manually configure an API key to get it to work, traffic should increase somewhat slower than with TP prices (which I assume went up like a cliff). -- Dagger (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)