We have added two new faces to the podcast, Insanity and Hitiro. Both theses guys are wonderful, and great additions to the overall team.

This episodes is weapons galore, and we look at that in every which way. Even in those ways you didn’t think possible.

Enjoy the show it is a little long this time, but engaging through out.

As always leave us comments, suggestions, or anything otherwise baby dolphins die.

We will promise on our lives that we will be more consistent hence forth. An episode will be out every two weeks, and we will hopefully get one up every week as well.

Hope you guys enjoy the episode. The links are below you listen to it now, or download it and listen later. We also have an rss feed incase you gusy want to subscribe.

Thanks

Erige

RSS:  http://thelonelyasura.bitnamiapp.com/wordpress/feed/

I appologise for the noise in the background, but seeing as it was a very big convention I couldn’t really help that. Also I appologise for the quality of the video, but it was a new camera I wasn’t too familiar with.

Thanks again to Chronicler Redthorn for filming and of course Colin Johanson for taking the time to answer the questions.

I hope you enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGfBYSg6cUI

WARNING! This is a really long post, skip to the end if you just want a summary.

A New Day Dawns

My day started at the comfortable time of 9:00 am and I had to go and catch the train up to Earl’s Court, London to attend the convention. When I go there, I immediately went to the ArenaNet Booth located in the back. I had three things on my mind: playing GW2, speaking to the developers and last but definitely not least, swag.

As I approached the stall, I noticed one of the famous workers, Martin Kerstein. For those of you who do not know who he is, he is the German Community for Guild Wars. I immediately knew what I had to do; I had to get this guys picture and autograph, the other stuff could wait. I was lucky because he wasn’t talking to anyone when I approached him.

We started talking about the obvious topic of the day… PONIES! Just kidding, we actually spoke about GW2 and that is when I had the idea to bust out the questions. I was going to video tape the discussion, but unfortunately in my eagerness I forgot. I did however; write down all of his answers. About 1/2 of the questions he could help me with and 1/2 of the questions he told me to ask Colin who was currently in an interview with the press. I was told I would have to wait at least 2hrs before he would appear, so I decided to do the sensible thing, play GW2 until then.

As I lined up for the demo, I ended up meeting 3 important people: Chronicler Redthorn (a blogger and my temporary camera guy), Daniel Frozenwind (a GW1 community events person), and Regina Buenaobra (if you don’t know who that is, well I am disappointed). We spoke about GW1 and upcoming changes (yes, there are going to be some interesting changes… soon).

Redthorn was the first to hop into game choosing to play as a Sylvari Guardian, while I was forced to record him on his camera while he played. Soon after, Daniel jumped into his demo, followed lastly by me. I chose to play a Charr Thief so as to experience the starting content.

Game play Experience 1: Charr Thief

To sum my experience up… EPIC! I enjoyed the whole 40 minutes and wanted more. I quickly rushed through the starter area because I had a plan in mind. I was going to visit the Great Northern Wall from GW1. After rushing through the initial area I was able to get to my destination in 20 minutes where I was (again) impressed. The amount of detail pushed into the content is truly amazing.

Swiftly moving on so I wasn’t wasting my beloved 20 remaining minutes I began to do the personal story line. I rushed events as soon as I got to them just so I could experience as much game play as possible. Although I am heavily interested in the lore, only having 40 minutes is something where you have to make a decision, lore or game play. I chose game play because I can experience the storyline whenever I like at a later date, but playing the game never gets old.

I did stop to do one other dynamic event. The event had me try and retrieve cannon balls from the Skirt. I am glad I took part in it. If you pick up a cannonball, your skill bar changes to have one skill, “Throw Cannonball”. Your character then throws the cannonball like a shot put and if it hits, it squishes the Skirt like a pancake. It had Redthorn and me laughing really hard.

After that event, I was tasked in attacking various other Charr, I believe it was the Flame Legion, but I was rushing again. The event was quickly won by me, without me breaking a sweat. Next I had to go and prove my worth to my own legion (I think, I was skipping dialogue for sake of that ever ticking down clock in the top left).

Finally I was tasked to go into an arena and fight for a promotion. This was… entertaining. First time I entered, I walked over to the arena which is a fenced off pit and began to look around trying to found out where I need to go. I quickly find the guy with the green star over his head. As I head over to him, I accidently the whole wall. For those of you not understanding what that means, I fell through the wall and into the pit, which I couldn’t get out of. I ended up rezoning to fix the problem.

On the second try, I managed to speak to the commander and I was teleported into the arena. Shortly after, four level four Charr came to rush me (at this stage I am level three). I quickly dispatched one of them, but I forgot about one of the most important aspects to the game, dodging. Redthorn kept telling me to “Dodge, Dodge!” as red numbers flew off of my character as his health depleted rapidly. Soon I learned the importance of stealth mode; it drops all agro and lets you run away before being attacked again. This time I attacked them 1vs1 and dispatched them all successfully. Without a moments break a Champion spawned and attacked me with his BIIIIIIIIIIIIIG sword. Again I had to get used to dodging and shadow stepping around to keep out of harm’s way. I had almost killed him with dreaded words appeared, “Fight to Survive!” I was too wrapped up in attacking I wasn’t paying attention I was still being hurt by bleeding. However, I managed to win the fight as my bar loomed dangerously close to empty.

I rallied, but my victory was short lived, out of a gate spawned a Giant Devourer. This foe was too strong for me. He had his claw swipe and a rock throw. Your only clue as to which it was going to use was a short animation which told you, “He is going to hurt you in a sec, you might want to dodge”. His attacks did +100 damage per hit and I was downed before dealing 25% of his health. Before I even got a downed skill off, a bolder flew at me and crushed me. The screen came up; I had a choice I could retry from checkpoint or leave the instance. Being stubborn I chose to try again and I quickly hopped back in facing the Devourer a second time. This time I learned to watch for certain signs and vanquished him without being downed. The final challenge was to face a high ranking officer to prove my worth. That fight was done so fast I can’t even describe it. I did get a choice after defeating him. I could kill him or let him live. Being nice I let him live… this time. Shortly after that I got the White Screen of Death, aka End of Demo. I was sad, but I knew I would be back.

Intermission

After the demo, Redthorn and I decided to hang and go look at the other games, but first we checked if Colin was back. Unfortunately he still wasn’t back after the 2hrs. We went around the rest of the Convention and played LoZ: Ocarina of Time 3D for a while. The 3D effect was interesting, but was eye straining and not useful at some circumstances. Would I buy? Probably not seeing as I’ve played the game before. After that we walked around the convention looking at the various games on offer such as Final Fantasy XIII-2 and the Indie Arcade.

As the lines were long for everything we decided it was best to grab a bite to eat. We took a short break at the cafe on the lower floor where I had a hotdog and Redthorn had packed food. It felt good to sit down after hours of standing. After our meal we went back to the LoZ booth and had a go at Skyward Sword. Redthorn quickly got stumped at the easiest of puzzles and I had to go and show him how it was done. It was quite fun and I might consider buying it when it comes out.

We then went over to the Mass Effect 3 booth to give that a try. While waiting in line I walked back to the ArenaNet booth to check if Colin Johanson was back from his interview, luckily he was. I quickly ran back to Red and we were on a mission. Talk to Colin before Colin was taken away. It was hard but our efforts were successful. We managed to get an interview with Colin, himself! Not missing a chance I gave my camera to Redthorn and told him to record the interview, he happily obliged. Unfortunately, my interview was cut short because he had to be taken for ANOTHER press interview.

After he left we returned to the Mass Effect booth and played the demo. My reaction was… Meh. It didn’t excite me at all and was slightly disappointed. It felt like an arcade shooter but you got to move your character behind the convenient walls. I won’t buy it. After our demo we looked at the time. We had 2hrs before the end of the day, so we agreed on one thing. We were going to play the GW2 demo again, before we did so, we did see Colin talking to other gamers and were about to ask him if we could continue the interview, but as we were coming close one of the NCsoft Staff said that he had an interview, once again. Oh well, we could spend time playing the fantastic demo.

Game Play Experience 2: Sylvari Elementalist

This time it was my turn to go first. Having experienced the low level content, I decided to hop on the high level side. I first of all got used to my new skill sets and even after the 40 minutes I still wasn’t used to it. I experimented with the various sets and found that Earth was good for close Range, Fire is close and long, Air was long and Water… well I needed more time to get used to that.

After killing some mobs of drake and ooze, I began to think, “What do I want to see?” Did I want to see Tequatl like everyone else or did I want to explore? I chose the latter and was not disappointed.

I looked at the map and planned my destination. I wanted to go somewhere not many people would have gone and there would likely be a treat in store. I began to hope to out of the way waypoints and ran around the edges trying to find interesting things. In the first location I found a ruined watchtower but not much else. My second location I found a waterfall. As I was about to choose a random destination for my third Redthorn asked, “Hey, what is that box over there?” pointing to the edge of the map in the bottom-right sector.

To put it simply, I am happy he spotted that. He had helped me find the treat. As I headed over to the box on the map I noticed a Golem! Thinking it was an NPC I clicked on it to see what it was called. It lit up in red and said “Golem V1.0″. Oh my goodness, we had found an evil GOLEM! I rushed forward and defeated the evil construction but then my brain twigged, “Where there are Golems, there are Asura.” I turned the screen around and at the location of the box was a hut with four Inquest Asura.

I believe my next words were along the lines of, “LEEROY JENKINS!” I rushed in and hit my tornado spell. I was able to take down 2 of the Asura before popping out of the form and I suddenly died in a massive explosion. I am still not sure what happened but there was an explosion then I was dead. I didn’t give up though and tried my assault again only to be defeated by over agro and then again, by the Golem agroing onto me while I was dealing with normal spawn.

Knowing as my time was dragging on I continued my exploration. I found a town that was overrun by Orrian and I tried to reclaim it by myself. Big mistake, there were far too many of them to take by myself, as they respawned as fast as I killed them. I didn’t die until I knew that my efforts would be useless unless I spent a good 20 minutes dealing with it, time I didn’t have. At this time Redthorn said that Tequatl was spawning if I wanted to join him. I said that I would, so before I travelled there I gave one last valiant effort in tornado form and took down a good number before dying.

I respawned close the Tequatl early enough to watch his intro scene which was, again, epic. My first instinct was to rush him up close. I quickly learned that when an enemy hits for 1000+ damage, that isn’t a good place to stand with a squishy. I quickly ran out of the way as he began to spawn giants that exploded. I died then. When I respawned I tried a different tactic, I jumped into the Hylek turret and attacked from afar. This was a good idea as the turret did 1000+ damage per hit and can help target ground mobs to alleviate stress.

After about 5 minutes of sitting in the back lines I rushed forward again, switching to water magic. I decided to try a support role with my allies. This was quickly shattered as aoe damage overpowered my mild healing skills. Again I died. When I respawned I had about 3minutes left on the demo, so I went back to sitting in the turret trying to take Tequatl down ASAP. I can say I failed. He had about 5% health when I got booted, much to my disappointment. I was however able to watch his defeat on Redthorn’s demo, which was good enough.

Redthorn had selected to play Sylvari Engineer and enjoyed it. He took a similar stance to me and decided to explore after Tequatl. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything ground breaking. We ran through a few caves and killed mobs and explored the beautiful landscape, but nothing as amazing as the Inquest Asura.

End of the Day

After the demo, we had about 50 minutes left of the day and one mission left. Complete our interview with Colin. We soon found him talking to another inquisitive gamer. While we waited, we managed to talk to Theo. Like all of the other ArenaNet staff, he was a really entertaining guy and we spoke for quite a while about random topics from GW2 to eating in London. Apparently they’ve been to Greggs bakery three times already.

After our discussion Colin finally was available to answer the five remaining questions. Before we did so, we thanked him for the tremendous work that ArenaNet has done for GW2 and we spoke briefly about our experience. When we spoke about our enjoyment of splatting Skirt with cannon balls to which he laughed. We did let him know about the bug that I encountered in the Charr arena. His reaction to that surprised me. He was really apologetic towards that one experience. I was actually quite happy to find the bug.

Finally we spoke about our Inquest experience. I asked him if any of the other players had spoke about fighting the Asura, to which he replied, “I don’t remember any of our players coming up to me and mentioning that event. I am pretty sure you are the first.” Even if it turns out I wasn’t the first, I still felt proud when I heard that. He went on to explain that the Asura there are part of a dynamic event where Sylvari are captured by the Nightmare Court from a nearby village and are delivered to the Asura.

After our brief discussion we began to record our last section of the interview, when one last interruption happened. Just as we were about to record the PA system boomed overhead announcing we had 25 minutes remaining. I swear, everything was playing against me from obtaining that interview. Luckily, there were no more interruptions and the rest of the recording went smoothly.

After the video we had to leave as they were closing the convention. Overall, Chronicler Redthorn and I had a brilliant time.

Summary of Game Play

Combat- Extremely face paced and keeps you on your toes at all times. It is really fun and really simple mechanics which can be used in such an advanced way.

Learning Curve – I found the playability really simple and easy to get into. The difficulty rose when I tried to do too much to fast without taking care for my lack of experience. With more time I am sure I would have found the content a lot easier but still challenging.

Graphics – Simply, Beautiful. I can’t say anymore, I really can’t.

Sound – I didn’t hear much from the music side seeing as I had one earphone off so I could talk to Redthorn, but the sounds really fit the game and the method of dynamic events calling out to you really immersed me.

Did I enjoy it? – Yes, I really enjoyed all 80 minutes of game play I had and wish I could have had more. The game will last me a long time and I can imagine the replay ability to be exceptional.

Will I buy it? – Of course, I will try to by the Collector’s Edition even.

Developers – The developers were awesome. They were extremely friendly and welcoming. Having such important people at an event was really special. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience from the developers.

Thanks for reading,

Nights

P.S. When speaking to Regina today, there were talks about her appearing on the podcast. I will not say anymore because that would spoil the fun. The interviews should be uploaded by next week after all of the editing that needs to be done.

I also apologise for British spellings.

Below are a list of changes made.

- Site template was changed

-You can now login with facebook, google, twitter, and wordpress. If want more social networks added let me know.

-Some pages were removed.

-New follow us widget. For gtalk if you have it installed it should call us.

-Social network stuff added at the end of everyone post.

-Podcast player moved to end of post, and also has a download and play in new window link.

We hope these changes help give our users a better experience.

We will be back to our weekend schedule on Monday. The download link for the episode is at the bottom of the post.

As mentioned in our previous post, we are making some changes to the podcast format. Hopefully all you will enjoy this new format more.

The application for applying to be a co-host is up, and under application tab up top. If you would like to be a guest on the podcast, shoot us an email or voice message.

The link to Tube Elephant’s YouTube channel so you can catch up on PAX or Gamescom.

http://www.youtube.com/user/tubeelephant

If you have any comments, suggestions, or have something to say, then leave a comment below. You can also send us an email, voice message, or join our forums.

We have not made all the tiny decisions, but big plans have all been drawn. Of course I wanted to share this with our fans as soon as possible. This re-evaluation was based on feedback, and self-evaluation of ourselves.

- The skit and podcast will be separated into two entirely different products. They will follow different timelines, and different release dates.

- The podcast will switch to a more conversation style.

- The skit will move to a more syndicated format.

- You do not have to register to comment now , however we would very much like you to register.

Well those are the major changes. We will of course keep all of you informed, if something else changes.

So join us for our next podcast, and skit.

Hopefully you guys will enjoy it.

Also check out our guest’s YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TubeElephant

EDIT: We have changed our policy. To comment you do not have to register, but we would really appreciate if you do register. Access to the forums still requires registration.