Guild Wars 2 players can’t stop winning a group event they desperately want to lose

Guild Wars 2’s public events have always been a strength, in my book. Players scattered across maps flock together to defeat a boss or defend a fort, and endgame group events sometimes require a lot of coordination to nail. As cool as they are, they’ve long been a source of bickering (shoutout to the early days of the boss break bar being introduced) because inevitably, not everyone is on the same page.

Now Guild Wars 2 players are once again at war with each other over a public event, only this time it’s… because they just can’t manage to lose?

As spotted by MassivelyOP, Guild Wars 2 players are currently struggling to not defeat the Risen High Wizard in a particular event chain in a level 80 zone. I’ll spare you as much MMO lingo as I can: the long and short is that one of the newly-added legendary weapon skins requires a shopping list of items and achievements to unlock. One step requires killing a boss called the Risen High Wizard, with the in-game achievement hint being “Defeat the Risen High Wizard at the Promenade of the Gods.”

Trouble is, this chain of public events forks based on succeeding or failing at prior events, and players are only able to get credit for killing the Risen High Wizard on one of those paths. I used to play a hell of a lot of Guild Wars 2 and even my eyes are crossing looking at the player wiki trying to determine the right way to go about it.

In game, this produces a scene that I know even lapsed GW2 players will recognize: a chat full of players shouting one another down trying to corral strangers like cats. Big public events require coordination and charisma to keep everyone on task at the best of times—and needing to fail an event on purpose is definitely not my idea of the best time.

As players are pointing out on Reddit and on the GW2 forums, requiring them to intentionally head down the failure fork of an event chain—one that takes over an hour to restart, no less—is pretty sucky design. Some folks derailing the quest chain are probably just trying to complete the event as intended because they’re not hunting for that particular new achievement and, hey, that isn’t their fault either.

The good news is that during the time I’ve spent scoping out the in-game drama, ArenaNet has announced that it will be changing the requirements for the achievement “to require that you defeat the Risen High Wizard or successfully hold the Gates of Arah.” Players will have to make peace with one another for over a week though, because a fix for the situation is inbound on June 7.

In the meantime, please kindly let the bad wizard live if you see him. Map chat is begging you.