User:000 00 00 00/Hall of Monuments

Now, the Hall of Monuments is something that I've generally liked, the idea of having something to display representations of a character's time in game with Guild Wars, and later with Guild Wars 2, is a device that I liked from the get go. This is something I generally mod into any game I play that I invest a large amount of time in, so to see Arenanet do such a thing pleased me greatly. Though, there are some misgivings myself and others have had; right back at the start we discovered, to our displeasure, that only certain weapons - Destroyer Weapons - could only be added to Valor, and only prestige armor could be added to Resilience which in itself limited a more personalised touch to the Hall. Options, are always good, and the option to have been able to display the actual sets our characters wear, or the weapons we wield, would have been better than the straight forward copy of the Hall everyone has, though the limitiation is understood now.

Though, I have hold critisim to the Hall, all-in-all this has been an device that Arenanet has used to a relatively good means, from my point of view at least. A definiate 7 out of 10, if I was to pull a number out of the air.

With the more personal touches to the Hall of Monuments being out of our reach, we now await information on what it will all actually mean. We have been told:

In the absence of information I have been filling my main character's Hall to as near complete as I feel comfortable with. I use the word 'complete' rather loosely as we have no idea what actually dictates a completed Hall. From my point of view on current information, and what I have noticed with the Hall, I am of the stance a Hall is completed when all the visible placements upon Devotion, Fellowship, Resilience and Valor are filled, and a player has achieved the beacon of light upon their Honor statue, not when the character/account has everything possible (all the minipets, all the armors etc). Though, we have Account Mode, we still aren't fully sure about how that shapes up in the grand scheme of things yet.

I am hoping that filling the visual spaces, and completing all the progresses of the Honor statue (from non-revealed to beacon) will be all that a player needs to do to maximise the rewards presented in Guild Wars 2. I would be highly critical of Arenanet if a completed Hall is everything: every title (or to GWAMM at least), all Fellowship placements, both complete sets of prestige weapons, every minipet etc and so on. Getting 20 minipets, 20 titles, 5 prestige armors, 11 prestige weapons, 5 hero armors or pets is a heck of a lot of work in itself but far more manageable than obtaining 'everything' for a Hall. I hold hope that Arenanet won't go down the "Get everything to get the max reward" path, because that's just over the top. I believe this because of the specifics of the Hall itself; there are only a certain number of placements per Monument, and only a certain number of progressions in respects to the Honor Monument's statue. Though, this is a loose stance on my part. The only one I could see getting more of a reward could be GWAMM, the Honor statue gets to it's completed state when you either get GWAMM or get I Have Many Leather Bound Books and have the visible placements on the surrounding Monuments completed. The latter is something my main, my dervish, has completed to and is the point where the Hall visually can't progress any further.

It is my opinion that information for the Hall comes sooner rather than later, even purely in terms for Guild Wars only; knowing that going passed a certain point (passed all visual progressions) with the Monuments can still occur but becames more of a personal choice, or if it's a 'get everything' for this Monuments/or just everything situation would be valuable to know. And how Account Mode works exactly, as Account Mode isn't truely so. I have the Beacon in my Dervish's Hall, but go into Account Mode on another character without it and this is not the case. There's specifics in place, Arenanet wouldn't (I hope) put them in without full knowledge of what the specifics and what it all meant in terms of completion. Knowing what the rewards would be, what the skins of the weapons or armor would be and the likes, would definately be something I'd perfer not revealed at all. Leaving that to the player's to actually discover for themselves in Guild Wars 2 would be better, I think.