Distilled Willpower

[GW2] Consort-Ya-Self-Out

2013-05-18T17:14:00.003+01:00

So - are we supposed to sympathise in any way with the Consortium? I mean, the way the quests are set up in Southsun its as if we are: we have to protect the Consortium victims from Settlers just as much as we have to protect the Settlers from the Consortium. I also seem to spend a lot of my time as a makeshift riot policeman - wailing on angry settler rioters when I'd much rather be fighting by their side.

The consortium gave them a place to stay, but only if they agree never to leave and keep schtum about the rather crabby wildlife which is currently rampant on the isles. Sounds like a bit of a bum deal.

Plus, this guy gives you like 200% magic find. How can you not like him?

[GW2] Eagerly Awaiting Observation

2013-04-29T12:16:00.001+01:00

In my last few months of Guild Wars, having completed God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, pretty much the only reason I would log into the game would be to hit B and watch the monthly GvG championships. It was like a game-within-a-game, drastically different to the PvE game, infinitely complex and with it's own tropes, trends and memes, controversies, heroes and villains.

Watching the pros go about their business each month taught me how to do da PvPs: I never played GvG myself, but I used the skills I saw the top players using whenever I entered Random arenas, alliance battles or hero battles, and I think I was better for it.

I'm hoping that the introduction of observation mode in GW2 will allow me to absorb some of the new skills which have been incubating in the sPvP community since launch. I can imagine that there are countless nuances of the genre which just haven't made it out of the community which surrounds it simply because n00bs like myself haven't been able to hit B and stick our noses in to watch how it's done.

[GW2] Mega Boss Nerf

2013-03-19T08:37:00.000Z

If you've been playing Guild Wars 2 over the past few weeks you'll know the dramatic effect the recent changes to the world event chest drop tables have had on the community.

For a lot of people, the entire game has become about hopping from event to event, on multiple characters and across multiple servers (via guesting). Seeing as you now get at least a rare, if not several or an exotic or two from each chest (and then there's the rest of the loot from mobs, the event rewards and the other chest drops too) it is incredibly lucrative.

On the plus side this has pushed ectoplasm prices down to a more manageable level, on the down side these events are now completely gridlocked and lagging like a motherflipper.
ArenaNet's fix is to separate the guaranteed rare drop from the rest of the chest loot into a daily chest style reward which can only be gained once per account per day. You'll still get the event chest, it just will no longer guarantee you a rare item. ArenaNet are yet to confirm whether this event chest still has the chance of dropping rares - much like the event chest used to do.

What this means for the current situation is that it will effectively make hopping from server to server to maximise your reward across several characters less profitable, and not worth the effort without the incentive of a guaranteed rare item. This, in turn, should ease some of the lag and overflow problems players have been having.

I think this was a necessary change - something had to change anyway, and my idea was always just: "no chests for guests!" (it rhymes, so it must be good!) but this is a far more elegant solution to the problem - which is probably why they're the devs and I'm just a lowly serf. The situation couldn't stay as it was; players weren't playing the events across 8 characters and 3 servers for the fun of the event, they were doing it to grind out rare drops, and this is precisely the kind of gameplay ANet want to try to discourage. Noone wanted the loot tables changed back to the way they were before, noone wanted to start restricting guesting,

Yes, in the short term the prices of ectoplasm has skyrocketed again and precursor weapons have once again risen another notch out of reach, but there are other ways to bring the prices back down - and hopefully this will mean that instead of grinding Shatterer, Tequatl, Frostmaw and The Shadow Behemoth, players might start to spread out to the other world events like the Temples in Orr.

[GW2] Crest Economics

2013-03-08T12:48:00.004Z

At the moment I'm rocking all Explorer's armour. As a guardian, that means that my health is relatively low - ideally once I've managed to get my legendary weapon I will switch to using something a little more useful - probably Clerics (Power, Toughness, Healing Power), but I'm debating over what runes I should be rocking. Having looked through them I can see a number of attractive options for a healing-focused guardian such as myself:

The rune of the Guardian (with all 5 runes attached) would result in a total 165 Toughness, 50 Healing Power and 1 second of burning on my enemy when I block an attack. An interesting offer, but I'd lose a lot of the power which I have enjoyed even by using my Pirate's runes (which focus power and MF) and whilst I don't plan on focusing on DPS, it is nice to be able to contribute.

The rune of Mercy focuses on giving advantages to aiding downed players - but if I'm having to spend all my time resurrecting people, perhaps I'm not doing my job properly?

There's a number of healing power focused runes on the market, each of which result in a 165 healing power boost in total, with a number of minor effects (boon duration, gaining various boons when you're hit, summoning birds etc). On the face of it, these would look like the most attractive options, but again they don't really jump out at me - I can spam boons so fast that a longer duration isn't particularly attractive (except, perhaps for swiftness in WvW), similarly, with all the boons flying around, what use is one more when taking a hit? Finally, who wants to summon a pesky bird which will just stay in combat when you want to fall back etc? No, no thanks, I'll pass.

So, I've been looking at the severely under-utilised crests. All crests follow the same schema in terms of dealing out stat points (bar Magic Find): +20 for the main stat, +14 for two minor stats.

The stats break down as follows:

Magi - Healing, Precision, Vitality
Rabid - Condition, Precision, Toughness
Shaman - Vitality, Healing, Power
Soldier - Power, Toughness, Vitality
Traveler - Magic Find, Power, Precision

As a guardian, I'm not hugely interested in Condition damage, so I'll exclude Rabid straight away. I'll also eliminate Traveler as I'm moving away from Magic Find.

Having eliminated those, it becomes a toss up between Magi, Shaman and Soldier. I'll break down the stats below as if I had a crest on each piece of armour:

Magi x5: +100 Healing Power, +70 Precision, +70 Vitality
Shaman x5: +100 Vitality, +70 Healing Power, +70 Power
Soldiers x5: +100 Power, +70 Toughness, +70 Vitality

So, when you slot Crests over Runes you sacrifice +65 on your main stat and the various secondary effects, and instead you get the 2x +70 on the minor stats. Seeing as there aren't really any of the secondary effects which jump out of me - currently going for a crest set-up is looking quite attractive.

Does anyone actually use these things? They're a pittance on the trading post. Once I've finished my legendary weapon and bought T3 human cultural armour, I'll be completely skint and I'll probably only be able to afford the crests - which, looking at the stats above, might not be such a bad idea.

ps. Information liberally stolen from Tasha - who I'm sure won't mind...

[GW2] The Lazy Legendary Guide - Gift of Battle - Part 3

2013-03-06T11:55:00.001Z

I recently reached the milestone of 500 badges of honor - which I traded in for the Gift of Battle (which I subsequently traded in, along with my bloodstone shard, gift of exploration and 250 obsidian shards for my gift of mastery).

Now, I've done WvW on and off since the headstart, and it took me this long to generate 400 badges (through a combination of the jumping puzzles, map exploration and random drops from those enemies I actually managed to kill).

I managed to grind out my final 100 in just two days. Well, strictly speaking it took about an hour in total.

If anyone tells you that doing the jumping puzzles is the best way to get badges, they obviously haven't tried actual coordinated WvW. This lazy legendary guide will tell you the basics of what you should do to get involved in your server's coordinated WvW efforts, how you can be most effective, and ultimately how you could, effectively, gather all your badges within a week.

First - a disclaimer: this guide is being written perhaps only days before the March WvW update is introduced. This update is likely to change a lot of the dynamics of WvW, so some of the terminology or advice I give might need to change a little in light of the update. Hopefully, the fundamentals will still apply.

Unfortunately, this guide also assumes that you are on a server which is relatively WvW active. I don't mean they have to be hugely successful in terms of winning all their match-ups or being in the top tiers. But having a corpus of dedicated WvW players, hopefully one or two larger WvW focused guilds and a whole load of individual players who like to dash about and pwn face is pretty vital.

Aurora Glade is such a server. We've got a couple of larger WvW guilds and some well-known and confident commanders who don't mind the cat-herding exercise which WvW usually is. We don't win every match up (currently sitting at 11th in the league) but we always put up a good fight. If you want to contribute to your server, and gather badges at the same time, here's how you do it:

1) Find out how your WvW players communicate. If they do it just in the chat, that's fine, as long as it is effective. If they have voice communication, that's even better, Aurora Glade use Mumble - you don't even have to talk necessarily, just hop into the same channel as the commanding officer and follow his orders. That leads nicely onto point 2:

2) Follow your commander. I can't stress this enough, even if you have a terrible commander, if you are all communicating and moving with the same thing in mind, then you will be more effective than if you're running as an unruly mob or alone. Then again, if you have a good commander then you can be a lean-mean fighting machine, even with a relatively small and inexperienced fighting force - afterall, an army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep.

When I say "follow your commander" I don't just mean hang onto his boot straps, I mean when he says push, you push, when he says hold back, hold back. When he says stop fighting and waypoint back to garrison (even if you think you're winning) then you stop fighting and waypoint back to garrison.

3) Use a build which supports your teammates. A while back I was using a build which allowed me to move about the map quickly, but ultimately if I got caught out alone, I would usually die. Watching this video made me change my ways:

4) Bring speed boosts. Your commander will probably ask you to "stack on me" before they move anywhere, when he's ready to move he'll count down from 3 and on 3 he'll expect all your speed boosts to be popped. Swiftness stacks duration, so you can get 1 minute+ of swiftness with a good group. This makes moving about the map much easier.

5) Learn the lingo. "Right guys, we're going to shave this group" - move around the edge of the group taking out stragglers on the edges. "Push to [destination]" - move into the group and attack, keep moving through to the destination. "stack up on me" - move to your commanders location, this helps your commander get a sense of how many people are following, and standing close together helps hide your numbers from your enemies (think the Sand People walking in single file). Your server might even hold training sessions to get you used to following these kind of orders, if your server has a dedicated website - then the notifications will be up there.

Ultimately, if your commander does his job well and helps you take down a few large zergs (20+ players) then you should be able to gather 10-15 badges per zerg-kill. Considering you might take down any number of these groups over an hour period, you should be able to rack up 500 badges pretty easily, and without ever having to repeatedly do the Jumping Puzzle.

Click here to read The Lazy Legendary Guide - Part 1 - The Prep
Click here to read The Lazy Legendary Guide - Part 2 - Gift of Exploration

[GW2] The Guild Missions Situation

2013-02-27T14:45:00.002Z

Just to dispel any misconceptions:

If you choose to join a large guild, you do not have to leave your small guild.
If you choose to join a large guild, your small guild is not guaranteed to "die".
Not every large guild will insist you represent 100% of the time.
You can play with your small guild and represent the large guild when they do guild missions.
There are large guilds which will be absolutely fine with this.
The Guild Missions update was intended to be for large guilds.
There is plenty of content which small guilds can do well which large guilds cannot.
In every game there is content which can only be accessed when you meet certain conditions, that's why it's a game.
Any update which implements missions which scale with the size of the guild will not be coming soon.
I would be 100% behind such an update.

So, for now, perhaps entertain the idea of engaging with a larger guild - if only for the sole purpose of getting into guild missions until a solution is implemented. This doesn't HAVE to be something which splits the playerbase if you don't want it to be.

From September 2011:

"In the new game the guild system is like going to a bar. Walk through the door and there could be any number of people milling about. It's likely you've come here with a few friends and that's great, but you know that there will be people in and out of this bar all night. You might choose to visit a few bars over the course of the evening, maybe jump from group to group and socialise with a number of different people. One night you might choose to spend the whole evening in a chill out bar, drinking ice cold vodka from frozen shot glasses. The next you might flit from sports bar to nightclub to strip club - you saucy devil. It doesn't matter if you decide to leave a bar and go elsewhere, you can come back later just as easily if the shisha bar across the street turns out to be a little crappier than you thought it would be."

[GW2] The Lazy Legendary Guide - Part 2 - Gift of Exploration

2013-02-04T09:01:00.000Z

Your Gift of Exploration is, in my experience, the part of the legendary process which is most enjoyable. It involves exploring the world, doing all the heart quests, catching all the skill points, viewing all the vistas and uncovering all the waypoints and points of interest across the entire map. It is the one part of the legendary process which you will probably have completed about 50% by the time you're even considering starting going for a the much longer term legendary goal. It is also one of the only strictly plus-wealth parts of the legendary process (meaning you can't pay anyone in-game to do it for you, you can only make money doing it yourself).

Simply playing through the personal story will take you across the world, hitting loads of the above points as you go. You might be heading to your next story quest and happen across a dynamic event chain which drags you across the map, or you might detour slightly off path to grab a waypoint just in case things get a little hairy on the way. These things come naturally to the game, and that's why most people end up pretty much getting a whole chunk of this process done without even thinking about it.

If you haven't specifically focused on 100%-ing every zone you pass through, once you've completed your story line then you'll probably find you can jump back to one or two of your previous zones and just hit a couple of points before that zone will be completed (and you'll net yourself a pretty hefty exp, karma, gold and loot reward to go with it). However, even with this initial head start there will still be a significant part of the map requiring you to visit - my advice would be as follows:

Set yourself tasks to do - rather than entering a map and hoping to take it from 0-100% in an hour, instead go across the map doing odd jobs which will tick off a number of points in a zone, but not make it feel too much like a chore. For example: find your way to all the dungeon entrances. Look up an interesting jumping puzzle and make your way there. Unlock all the waypoints near the major meta events (such as the Claw of Jormag or The Shatterer).

This means that you aren't faced with a gigantic chunk of exploration to slog through when you step out of your personal story. Instead you're faced with ticking off the final few points in each of the zones, and collecting the oh-so-satisfying payday with each one.

To be honest, that is my only major piece of advice with regards to this part of the process - it is pretty straightforward. I do, however, have a couple of minor points:

1) As always, make your you're at least hitting your monthly achievements as you go. I can't really stress how important it is to hit as many daily and monthly achievements, with the karma jugs, mystic coins and laurels this will net you, believe me, you'll thank me further down the line.

2) Yes, WvW does count. Keep an eye on which colour your server is each week, and hop in to grab a couple of points. Hopefully, you will have a server which cycles through each colour regularly (allowing you to explore that part of the map relatively easily) - but sometimes you'll find you get stuck on a certain one or two colours (my server wasn't blue for a good couple of months, making it really hard to explore that part of the map unhindered) - so make sure you keep an eye out for opportunities to explore far-flung enemy territory when your server is on top.

3) The points of interest in dungeons don't count - for some reason. Neither do the new waypoints added to Orr as part of the January update.

4) Don't forget the Point of Interest in the Order of Whispers base "The Chantry of Secrets" in Bloodtide Coast. Unless you explicitly joined the Order as part of your personal story, you might not have had any reason to head into the hide-out, and there is a final point in there to hit.

Click here to read The Lazy Legendary Guide - Part 1 - The Prep

[GW2] Time for the Vocal Minority to Suck it Up

2013-02-01T18:31:00.001Z

I made the mistake of venturing onto the official forums earlier today. And BOYHOWDY the bloated sense of entitlement on those forums is absolutely astounding!
The current whipping boy is the new monthly/daily achievements. People who have never tried crafting are complaining that they have to craft (ten things - TEN FRAKKING THINGS! Christ, that is literally fifteen seconds work), people who don't do dungeons are complaining that they have to do dungeons ("The only aspect of this game I do not play is PvE dungeons. I have not stepped into a single one." - maybe you should?), people who don't like snozzberries are complaining they have to eat snozzberries.

The main argument seems to be "why is ANet forcing me to do things that I don't want to do?" which would be a valid argument, if that were the case. ANet is no more forcing you to do the monthly than it is forcing you to do WvW - but if you want Badges of Honour you're going to have to do WvW just like if you want to do the monthly you're going to have to do dungeons.

Isn't that what computer games are? Being set specific tasks for specific rewards? Isn't that the basis of every single game in the entire world?

"What? I've got to dribble up the pitch and put the ball in the net to score a goal? Why can't I get one by booting the ref in the arse and calling the opposing goalkeeper a sissy?!"
BECAUSE THAT'S THE GAME, idiot.

The Lazy Legendary Guide - Part 1 - The Prep

2013-01-29T09:00:00.002Z

There are plenty of guides out there for the quick and painful ways to get a legendary weapon. This guide is certainly not one of them. This is a guide for people who get bored if they do the same thing for more time than it takes to boil the kettle, this is the guide for people who don't like tagging along on the zerg-train as the crowd cycles through the same four events to gain karma, or doing the same dungeon path a billion times in a row. This the lazy-toon's guide to loafing to a Legendary.

This is more of a preliminary post - so I'm titling it "The Prep". This is the lazy guide, true, but we aren't going to make it more difficult for ourselves by being unprepared, so these are the things you'll need to know before you set out:

First off, learn the process - you need well over 2500 items in total to get a legendary, crafting mats, mystic forge items, gifts and other gubbins, keeping on top of it all is kinda tough, so make sure you don't get swamped. It might be worth making a spreadsheet or just a list you can mark off when you hit a target.

Some of the tasks you'll have to do are inherently plus-wealth (you can only GAIN money by doing them, there is no way to buy them) examples being the Gift of Exploration, the gathering of karma, badges of honour and doing your dungeon runs. There are also inherently minus-wealth tasks (you can only SPEND money doing it, there is no way to earn it) - examples being your 100 icy lodestones, and buying the recipes for your crafted gifts. Then there are those hybrid tasks which tread the line between: things like the precursor, where you have to make a choice between time (or randomness) vs money. If you don't want to spend ages farming for it, then it will cost you a bagload of money, but if you don't have the money to pay for it, then it's going to take you a long time farming. Other examples of hybrid events are getting your rare lodestones and crafting materials.

The ultimate point is: I would suggest starting your plus-wealth tasks and any hybrid tasks where you choose the timely/random option first, that way you should earn some of the money for the minus-wealth and costly hybrid tasks later down the line. So, by the time you've completed 100% exploration, gathered 500 badges of honour and gathered 1m karma - you'll probably have enough to buy some of your crafting materials and lodestones.

Leave the things which are never going to change in price till the very end - because you're never going to get sucker punched by the market. Icy lodestones are always (presumably) going to cost 1g each, but Charged lodestones might fluctuate in price (particularly atm with the new update!) so you might want to pick a few up whilst they're cheap, and farm for them when they're expensive (and perhaps tactically sell any you get as drops to buy back later at a lower price). Picking up your icy lodestones early might take vital funds away from picking up a bargain in the trading post somewhere down the line.

Gather as you go along. If you always make sure to pick up all your crafting materials whilst farming your karma, exploration and badges then you should have a nice stockpile to train your two lvl400 crafting professions, and a good start on gathering 250 of each of the T6 crafting materials you'll need for your gifts of Might and Magic. Plus it's decent experience to put towards your skill points (which are more of a limiting factor than you think, believe me!).

Salvage all level 75+ rares with a decent salvage kit in order to get Globs of Ectoplasm. Ectos have been steadily rising in price over the past few months, and though they might drop a little with this new update you're still going to need close to 500 for the whole process. So even if the rare you have found might sell on the TP for 30 silver, it is always worth salvaging it down with a mystic or superior salvage kit for a chance of netting 3 globs, a high level crafting material and whatever rare rune is on it.

Finally, my biggest tip is go at your own pace. If you find you're doing the same frustrating task for hours and it's driving you bonkers, then switch and do something else for a while. Most tasks feed into each other in some way (ie, you'll get karma, gold and experience whilst exploring. You'll get T6 crafting materials whilst dropping stuff into the Mystic Forge for clovers. You'll get rare drops to salvage for ectos whilst doing dungeons for tokens etc) so pretty much anything you do will contribute in some way to your getting your legendary.

[GW2] Obtaining your Token of Legend - The Scavenger Hunt

2013-01-13T14:54:00.000Z

ANet have let slip that the long-awaited precursor scavenger hunt is not expected any time soon. They're discussing how to approach it, but there isn't anyone actively working on getting it set up. I appreciate why they're taking their time with it - legendary weapons are one of the most hotly debated topics on GW2 forums, and the most hotly debated of all has to be the random number generator (RNG) controlled elements.

Getting hold of a precursor weapon is considered to the most time consuming/costly element of the entire Legendary process. Either you get exceedingly lu3cky, and the specific one you're looking for drops in one of the *counts* 3 (?) level 80 explorable areas, or you get equally lucky from a drop from a chest, or you get lucky by throwing 4 rare weapons into the Mystic Forge, or you stump up the several hundred gold to buy it from the Trading Post. It's not an ideal process.
It sure keeps them rare! But it doesn't feel very... legendary!

This is why the scavenger hunt has been suggested, if it can include legendary-status feats of prowess, then hopefully the path to a precursor can be made to feel like a worthy way. But, you can't make it too easy, otherwise it just devalues the whole process, and makes the ultimate product - the Legendary Weapon - feel all that less legendary.

So, my suggestions are as follows, I'm not sure if they will be considered legendary by others, but I think they're sufficiently non-grindy, skill and exploration based to warrant the receipt of a precursor weapon at the end.

My system would require the implementation of a character-by-character Achievement tracking system; simply by adding another bar under each achievement progress bar. The top bar would remain orange and would show the progress with the achievement for the entire account, below it would be a green bar tracking this specific character's progress with the achievement. You'll see why this would be necessary below (plus I think it would be kinda cool anyway).

In my system the ultimate aim to obtain four tokens - the idea being that each token is rewarded once you have proved that you present each of the character traits that it represents. The four tokens are:

Token of Agility
Token of Strength
Token of Bravery
Token of Wisdom

The tokens will be earned for the following:

Token of Agility - complete 40 Jumping Puzzles.
I've not set this to "complete all the jumping puzzles" because it's likely ANet will add more as time progresses. But this is one fewer than all the jumping puzzles, and it means that people don't have to rely on their server being good at WvW enough to allow them access to the EB puzzle. It also forces the player to go out and explore the world, see the most fantastic sights and to prove that they are worthy of the token.

Token of Strength - complete all the explorable paths on the all existing dungeons
This is no mean feat, each of the paths usually takes around an hour to complete and there are currently eight dungeons and at least three (five for Arah) paths for each one. So, even if you are able to do each path first time - that's over twenty-four hours worth of work. Again, I'm keen to avoid asking for people to repeat content over and over, but asking them to complete all the content is different.

Token of Bravery - obtain 25 of the "Bosses" Achievements
In general, I think this achievement line needs to be expanded. Currently it contains eight achievements, but you could add so much more - add in achievements for certain things done with Fractals bosses, dungeon bosses, and new meta-event bosses across the world. Not just "kill this dude" but interesting challenges like jumping into the bosses mouth, or throwing a rock at his ballsack or something. This would prove that they have the gall to stand up to the mightiest of foes.

Token of Wisdom - navigate your way to the center of the Temple of Ineffable Wisdom
I thought for a long-while about how to approach this final test. I wanted some way to trial the players knowledge of lore, Tyrian history and the world at large. The Temple (the name is just a reference to the Crab of Ineffable Wisdom - I couldn't think up a good name on the spot), would be a multi-level solo dungeon, accessible only once you've completed your personal story, and have gathered the other three tokens.
Within the temple you will be required to navigate past a number of gateways, puzzles and devious opponents. There will be a res-shrine at the start, but if you fail at any point throughout, you must start again.
The puzzles will be logic-based, requiring you to move blocks, carry objects and flick switches in order to complete the puzzle.
The opponents will require agility, timing and skill to kill. Not just hitting them with your sword, but using specific pick-up objects around the room, interacting with static objects or dodging at the right time.
The gateways will require you to answer questions about Tyrian history, current game events and lore. The questions will obviously be multiple choice, but they will have a strict time limit (so that you can't just minimise the client and google the answer). They will also be randomised, so you can't just memorise the sequence of answers beforehand.
At the end of the dungeon, the player will receive a Token of Wisdom (along with a dungeon chest, probably). Once you've received your token, you won't be able to reenter the temple again until you've earned another set of Tokens of Agility, Strength and Bravery (this is to stop people simply running the dungeon over and over for the end chest).

Then you take your four tokens and drop them in the Mystic Forge. And out drops a Token of Legend - which can be exchanged at a vendor for your precursor of choice.

Sincere Christmas Message ep3

2012-12-26T00:52:00.003Z

I've wrote a few of these now. And, regardless of the content of the preceding year - I always seem to return to the same message. I hope that I don't sound too pretentious with it, because the message is pretty much the same one you've probably heard from every single person you've met over the past few weeks.
It's been a big year for me, a happy one - but one of major change. I've now started down a road which I've had my eyes on for a while now, and have finally taken the chance to try to travel. I've gone from a 9 to 5 grind, to being a student again, working for myself and trying to find inspiration. I couldn't have done it without the love and support of those around me, especially my partner, so for that I am truly thankful.
So, here it is: whatever this year has been like for you; I hope your Christmas was Merry, and your New Year is happy.

Will
x

[GW2] Moving Forward from "When it's Ready"

2012-11-27T01:12:00.004Z

Before the release ANet's philosophy was always "When it's ready". They would never even show us content until they were absolutely sure that it was ready to ship, that's why we didn't see the sylvari for ages, and we learned about each of the professions with, usually, a few months in between each reveal.

But, during the recent AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread hosted by Chris Whiteside (Studio Design Director at ANet) Chris has admitted that:

"Personally i feel that aspects of the game ARE too grindy and we are working through these areas to correct our overall direction moving forward as well as taking some of our current progression systems and rewiring them for want of a better term for example different methods of acquisition related to the way different players like to play their content.

To be frank the ascended gear was designed to be earn able outside of the FotM and unfortunately we were unable to deploy this prior to the update. This (i hope) will not happen again"
(permalink)

What happened to "When it's ready"? If Ascended items were designed to be earned outside of the Fractals of the Mists then surely they should have been shipped to be earned outside of the Fractals of the Mists. Otherwise, you aren't going to please anyone: the horizontal progressioners will be angry you've gone back on your promise not to add a "gear grind", and the vertical progressioners will be disappointed that the progression is so flimsy and requires hours of grind over the same few instances.

Did ANet panic as the dreaded 3-month threshold loomed?

ps. Also, for the love of all that is holy - stop using the phrase "Moving forward": it absolutely smacks of business speak which I think you should always avoid when talking to plebs like us.

EDIT: Just going through the summary of last night on this page and came across this relevant piece of info:

Q: I am impressed you are participating in this for so long. I commend you.
Two questions: -If Ascended Gear and the Fractal of the Mist leveling system was not rolled out in the way you intended(being that theres only one way currently to obtain the gear, and the leveling system fragments the playerbase), why was it rolled out in the first place? I thought Arenanet was big on "When its ready", however this sounds like it was not ready but rushed out the door.
-Ive seen, and agree with, some posts concerning the aesthetic look of Medium gear compared to Light and ultimately Heavy(which looks the best hands down). Honestly, medium gear while leveling is terrible looking and there are only a small number of dungeon sets that you dont look like a pirate or something from MechWarrior. Are there plans to specifically overhaul the MEDIUM armor looks?

A: If you don't mind i will just answer the first question as the second is something that would be discussed at work. And thanks for taking the time to submit the questions.
So in regard to question 1: We had/have a plan to seed ascended through the game. It affects many many areas and systems and we wanted to essentially rewire aspects of reward progression. This is an ongoing priority. However this is a multi phase plan and during the creation of the FotM I wanted to roll out a subset of the plan to the community. The progression/reward system was not correctly deployed but the Dungeon was, at least in my opinion as i think the guys have done an amazing job. The reward system that was rolled out was also not 'as designed' due to some dependencies in other areas of the game. I made the decision to continue with the roll out and here we are today.
This is my responsibility, it was a bad call, but i have to say that whilst this could of been handled better i am still truly excited for what the future will bring and i wouldn't be doing this job if i didn't want to learn from extreme challenges and work with amazing people.
I very much appreciate the chance to connect with everyone not just in regard to this issue but the game as a whole. I am hoping to do this once a month with more team members and keep up more meaningful communication channels.
I hope this answers your question, going into anymore detail would take time away from answering other questions.

[GW2] Fractals as Mash-Ups in Play-Space

2012-11-22T11:11:00.002Z

The beauty of the Fractal of the Mists dungeons is that they allow ArenaNet to push out wacky and off-the-wall ideas which they might not necessarily be able to knit together into a full dungeon - but are nonetheless fun enough to work as a 20-30 minute instance. Fractals support ArenaNet's half-baked ideas (and ANet are the kings of half-baked ideas - hello "personality system") and give them leave to do... well, pretty much whatever they like.

The current Fractals are a mash-up of lore-based historical events, trendy pop-culture references and funky new mechanics. The Cliffside Fractal (also known as the Colossus Fractal) obviously came from someone saying: "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a dungeon with a gigantic living statue?" - this idea was probably slammed together with "I've got this idea for a mechanic with a powerful weapon which hurts you the longer you carry it." and mixed with a bit of Dr Manhattan from Watchmen. And out of this mash-up of crazy and interesting ideas pops a really fun little vignette (one of which I've yet to find a single detractor). Some Fractals might have been inspired by something as simple as a piece of concept art which never got realised in-game.

Also, because the Fractals occur "in the Mists" rather than in the tangible world of Tyria, they aren't truly bound by lore, space or by time. Sure, they're often significantly influenced by these factors - such as the "Urban Battlegrounds" Fractal which seems to take place during the Searing of Ascalon. But others seem to have little basis in anything we've seen before - such as the "Aquatic Ruins" or "Snowblind" Fractals. There is no need for ANet to justify where or when these events are happening, because they're occurring in a vacuum - a totally separate universe to the rest of the game world. The Mists is a true "play space"; unbound by many of the rules which ANet would have to abide by if they tried to play these stories out in the wider world.

So, they have the freedom to mess about, play and mix up just about anything they like. Imagine a Fractal which is a mash-up of Hogwarts (moving staircases, hidden doors behind paintings, ghosts on horseback riding through the halls*) and the historical event of the Foefire! Or festival themed Fractals such as a Dwayna vs Grenth battle for Wintersday (the withdrawal of the Gods from Tyria wouldn't matter in this instance, it's a Fractal, after all!)! Or, even, imagine they took the swimming animations and just stripped away the water and then stuck you in some ethereal limbo world or even accompanying Snaff through Kralkatorrik's mind.

I dunno, I'm just throwing these out there (though if any of these ideas appear in the next patch, I'll be expecting some sort of recompense). My point is that if they're going to use Fractals to let their imaginations run wild, then I think we can expect some pretty freaking awesome experiences in the future.

*this always confused me. You've got the Necrotic Horsemen from GW1, but I never saw a single horse in the entire game.

[GW2] It's a Karka/It's Karka-lackin'

2012-11-20T09:54:00.001Z

The Lost Shores release event has polarised... ok, not polarised - I'd say largely pissed off the community in a number of ways. I think people appreciated the concept, they liked the scenery and liked how the Karka were actually a challenge. But there were several elements of it's implementation that people felt were either inconvenient, frustrating or just downright wrong. I disagree with some peoples' gripes and agree with others.

The fact that it was a one-time event seems to be one of the biggest gripes. Before the game was released I stated that I actually like the idea of one-time events to create a feeling of epicness:

"Imagine instead a game where the developers accepted that if they were going to have a truly epic story, then it is going to have to have truly epic consequences and that means substantive changes to the landscape to reflect this. They would have to accept that with these changes to the world, player’s experiences would change and those who are tardy to the party are going to miss some elements."

That was my opinion then, and it is my opinion now. It sucks that the event was at an inconvenient time for some people - it really does, and I have sympathy for them - but if this was another event which was to be repeated a number of times throughout the day it would decrease its epicness: "I battled hard, and through sheer grit and determination I defeated the ancient karka and sent his heart burning into the depths of the earth! ...and then I did it again at 6, 9 and 12pm" .

Making the event one-time means you can give out meaningful loot - loot which reflects the 3 or so hours effort, countless deaths and respawns, consumables, repair cost etc. I liked that they gave out significant exotic weapons as a reward for our efforts - I played hard for that loot and I don't think a cosmetic hat would quite have cut it. If the event was to repeat every 3 hours, you simply wouldn't be able to give this kind of loot - we'd have to go back to the (admittedly nice) festival cosmetic items and such (and ANet really don't want to give this stuff out for free - they want to sell it on the gem store, and rightly so).

I've seen a few complaints that the players who were able to attend the event gained an advantage over those who weren't able to attend.
I can't see how this is the case; people who attended the event and played through to the end received their rightful reward, but ultimately these rewards were no better in terms of stats than anything which is available to every other player in the game. Exotic items of exactly the same stats are obtainable through numerous methods - karma, gold, drops, chests, tokens, crafting, trading post. You aren't going to face an opponent in WvW and get beaten because he was able kill the ancient karka and you weren't. Just as ANet said - a hardcore player should not be able to get significantly better gear than a casual one.
Further, people who received a legendary precursor were no more or less advantaged than someone who spent those 3-4 hours grinding dungeon explorable modes - they got lucky on a chest roll. Myself, I got a unique exotic pistol (Master Blaster - not a precursor, which I put on the TP but hasn't sold yet) and an exotic shield (which I'm now using). I don't feel like I should have got a precursor, that's just the luck of the roll. Ultimately, what people got out of that chest should have no impact upon how other players play their game, apart from bringing the price of the items to a more manageable level in the trading post (which, for those looking to pick up a precursor - could only be a good thing!).

Finally, we get to the gripes which I do agree with: the technical problems. There were those who played for 3 hours - got to the final chest, and then disconnected. Not cool man. Not. Cool. Thankfully, ANet are working on rewarding those players who missed out on their hard earned rewards:

It won't be an easy fix. It has to be handled delicately because you don't want to go rewarding those people who don't really deserve it (ie, at what point during the event do you say that the person has earned the right to access the chest? 5 minutes in? 1 hour in? etc - not easy). I think the fault for these problems has to fall equally on ANet and the player involved - if your connection/computer isn't quite up to scratch then yes, it is going to suffer in large events such as the other night's. But, equally, if ANet's login servers actually worked properly then those players might have been able to log in and claim their rewards on time. It's a difficult situation, and I think that ANet are good to try to address it, when they could have just said "tough cookie".

The only technical problem I encountered (other than continuously teleporting into the landscape and having to be portaled out (thanks Tasha and Elmo)) was the dreaded culling. We would be climbing the hive (for the first or second time) and suddenly great swathes of us would fall down dead - seemingly crushed by some invisible boulder. What had actually happened is that the game engine had prioritised loading the players around us, but not the gigantic veteran karka which had taken the chance to roll us up like marzipan on Wintersday. What this meant is that the event probably took about twice as long as it should because we were constantly having the respawn or spend half our time resurrecting our fellow players.
ANet are, apparently, working on a fix for this. It will be some major changes to the fundamentals of the game, so I can't see if being within the next couple of weeks - but hopefully it won't be too long.

ps. Oh, and I guess the "reinforcements" bit was a bit excessive.

[GW2] How the Fight with Zaitan SHOULD Have gone down

2012-11-15T11:24:00.000Z

This is a somewhat spoilery post if you haven't yet completed the campaign, you have been warned!

The way that the Elder Dragons were sold to us pre-release suggested that they were not typical "scaly-fire-breathy-big-toothy" dragons, but more embodiments of extreme hate, hunger, lust and greed. Whirling tumults of death and destruction whose very presence can send people mad, corrupt the souls of lesser beings and burn a river of pain onto the landscape.

These are the beings which roamed Tyria before even the human gods, before any of the current surface dwellers were even scratching glyphs into cave walls, even before Trahearne was hatching his scheme to recruit a young player to come and save the world so he can take credit. The Elder Dragons are primeval in the truest sense.

Similarly, anyone who has fought one of the Elder Dragons champions would surely attest to their power. The Claw of Jormag summons great waves of ice and pain, and springs shards out of the ground which impale unsuspecting players. It takes 40+ players and half of the pact army just to bring him to the ground. Have you seen the size of the laser we have to use to take down Tequila Sunri... I mean Tequatl the Sunless? The Shatterer - well, the less said about the Shatterer the better really (can we ramp up his difficulty plox ANet? Kay. Thanks).

Anyway, my point is that once you've fought your way through these dragon peons you'd be forgiven for quaking in your boots at the prospect of having to fight the big cheese! The big-cheese turns out to be more of a Baby-Bel. Less of a "whirling tumult of death and destruction" and more of a "spinning top of farts and disappointment".

The encounter with Zaitan is 15mins of work at best, most of it spent sitting on a mounted cannon and hitting 1 - hoping that you're actually doing some damage (this isn't really that clear). Zaitan clings to a mountainside and just takes it, like an abused triceratops plushie tied to the front of an articulated lorry. "Stop iiiitt, owweee, Stoooop iiit - guys!".

It just wasn't as epic as I thought it was going to be. He's an Elder Dragon for crying out loud - if it takes a whole army of us to take down one of his minions, we shouldn't be able to take him out with a flying boat and rag-tag group of adventurers (particularly if said adventurers keep throwing themselves off the flying boat just to see what happens - "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee splat").

I think ANet should have taken a leaf out of Squeenix's book in an attempt to make the battle more epic. The way they framed the antagonist "Sin" in Final Fantasy X was fantastic, you felt genuine dread thinking that you would soon be facing an enemy of such an epic scale, and that is because they approached the battle with delicacy. The stories are relatively similar - gigantic embodiment of evil emerges from the ether, begins destroying world, spawns "Sinspawn" minions, group of adventurers take to the skies to take him down (obviously FFX has extra layers: the origin of sin, the history etc - brilliant game, btw).

Sin is so fantastically epic that the players cannot face him head on, they would simply be annihilated - so you have to whittle him down - facing his eye, his fin, his arsehole etc. Before finally travelling inside Sin himself to destroy the essence inside. Now - I'm not saying that ANet should have followed this process exactly but they could certainly have learnt some lessons:

1) You cannot just plop the big-bad on a shelf and allow us to take pot-shots at him. This just cannot happen, this is the big-bad - he has to be so big and so bad that we cannot comprehend him. Yes, the twisting mass of snakes which Zaitan turned out to be was pretty cool, but he looked pretty small clinging to the mountainside like that. The cannons should have been Phase 1 of the battle - have us fire blindly into a cloud of dust which occasionally erupts with fire and lightning - with the odd snake's head or scaled tail whipping out to attack us. Tease us with the big reveal - don't just stick him out there for all to see.

2) He has to be a constant threat. Even in his weakened state, we should always feel like he might just be biding his time. I never once felt like he might win the battle. Give the poor guy some balls, for pities sake.

3) The killer always comes back for one last scare. Just when we think we've killed him, Zaitan should have leapt at the airship (possibly wrestling with the ship in a Gandalf vs Balrog style battle) and tore us to the ground. Then, emerging from the dust groggy and confused - he should have reared from the wreckage, weakened, but angrier than ever. This should have been the big reveal - rather than sticking him to a mountainside, have him rear up out of the ground and tower above us - forcing the player to crane their necks upwards to even get a look at his slavering muzzle.

4) If you're going to have us fight from an airship - at least keep the battle moving. We can both fly, there's lots of mountaintops to stop on - keep it active and interesting.

5) Finally, someone has to die. This is just a given. After the length of campaign which we endured, someone has to pop their clogs. That's how you scale the battle from 40+ people down to 5 and still maintain the epicness. As if you're saying this person made the "ultimate sacrifice" and that's why the battle was won. I think we all know who I mean here. Bloody leafy-freeloader.

[GW2] A Proposal to Increase Population of Home Cities

2012-11-12T09:12:00.000Z

Just as ArenaNet intended, Lion's Arch is the most populated city in the game. And rightly so - it has free transport (though currently convoluted - but hopefully that will change), all the amenities in easily accessible locations and access to the Mystic Forge, WvW/PvP areas, portals to all other cities and finally the jumping puzzles. It's a fantastic city.

However, as a result of LA's popularity - each of the racial home cities is relatively neglected. Even at peak times you'd struggle to find 10 people wandering around these superbly constructed metropolises. This is a shame, all that effort made by the designers really shouldn't be going to waste. We need to encourage a sense of ownership of each city for the equivalent race. So, here's a few rough thoughts about how ANet might encourage people to return home.

1) Add in certain inherent bonuses for races when they're in their home cities. Buffs such as increased crafting critical or increased chance to salvage armour successfully would really bring the people home. This is a tough one, because you don't want to intentionally split the community down racial lines and essentially force people to city-hop when they're doing tasks (ie, craft the armour in LA, hop to the Grove to salvage it for ectos). So, perhaps these could be on a cycle? During the day in the Grove sylvari huntsman have a higher chance to critical due to sunlight aiding in their tree-singing. Asuran artificers have a higher chance to critical during the hours of 9-5 in Rata Sum because of their fantastic work ethic. On Sundays in Hoelbrak norn cooks have a higher chance to critical because the weekend is for feasting! By making the bonuses relatively short-term it would mean that if people choose to craft in LA they wouldn't be significantly disadvantaged - but it would draw some of the crafting crowd to home cities.
Perhaps you could even do away with the racial element entirely, and just say "Huntsman in the Grove gain a crafting critical bonus during the day" to draw in the tourist crowd.

2) For the love of all that is holy - free.fricken.waypoints. The current process to get to Divinity's Reach is: "click crossed swords at top of screen - travel to the mists - run across the courtyard into the portal to LA - reach LA - waypoint to city portals - run through portal to Divinities Reach - arrive at destination". This is ridonkulous - just give us free travel to LA for everyone, and free travel to our home cities for the equivalent races.

3) Add in more city-based events. Currently the only thing which gives anyone a reason to travel to another home city is keg-brawl in Hoelbrak. Give us a Sunday market in Divinity's Reach selling cut-price "food-in-bulk". Give us bar-crawls in Hoelbrak on a Friday night, pit-fighting in the Black Citadel every Wednesday and Polymock in Rata Sum (get that portal working for crying out loud). Give people the chance to say "Hey, *insert guildmate name here* it's Saturday, we should go to the Grove and watch the Tree-singers!".

4) Improve the home instance. Currently the place is pretty pitiful - most people don't really know where theirs is, and if they do they might have been there only once or twice in 300 hours of playing (speaking for myself). Improving this feature could be the subject of an entire post in itself. But I've got a few quick suggestions:

A noticeboard showing your friends'/Guildmates' stats.
Buffs for visiting certain NPCs you encountered along your storyline. "Go and visit the orphanage you saved and get an hour long 5% speed boost (to get away from those snivelling little... *cough* bundles of joy)"
Weapon/Armour racks. What am I going to do with my Mystic Battlehammer once I (a long way off) get Sunrise? I want to display it!
Allow us to waypoint directly into our instance.

5) Jumping puzzles. I love these things, I do the ones in LA a few times a week compared to the ones in the wide world which I might do once or twice during my entire play time. Give us one or two JPs in each city and you'll draw the lazy jumper crowd at least once a day. Divinities Reach has some brilliant opportunities to add a rooftop-trotting puzzle, and Rata Sum is in dire need of a puzzle which could take us either under or above the city on floating cubes.

Those are just a few of the ways we could improve the home cities. I think even one or two would improve them immensely.

EDIT: Or you could just fill Lion's Arch with scaly monsters from the deep. That might encourage people to visit the other cities.

[GW2] I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles - Mordramoth: The Deep Sea Dragon?

2012-11-02T08:44:00.000Z

With The Lost Shore coming later this month, significant speculation has begun as to what the "monstrous" threat to Tyria might turn out to be. Seeing as the threat appears to be coming from the sea, the general theory is that we are going to see the emergence of the "Deep Sea Dragon" or, more affectionately: "Bubbles".

Bubbles is the only one of the elder dragons not to have been named in any way, we've seen Kralkatorrik burn the Dragonbrand across the land of Ascalon and he is assumed to be lurking somewhere in the far north of the land, Primordius has awoken his Destroyers and is tearing into the stone dwarves deep below the surface of Tyria, Jormag and his Sons of Svanir are terrorizing the Far Shiverpeaks, and of course Zaitan is eating dirt after getting a heavy dose of cannon fodder to the belly. Some of these antagonists have had cameos in the novels - most notably Kralkatorrik in Edge of Destiny.

But Bubbles has remained a relative mystery. We know that his awakening has forced the krait, largos and quaggan out of their deep-sea homes and into shallower waters around Tyria. However, one crafty Redditor has also been able to take a guess at his name:

Tracewyvernthe Wish Granter

[GW2] The Lost Shores

2012-11-01T23:26:00.000Z

We all knew there was something big coming in November. I don't think the anticipation has quite had the chance to peak - considering we're still riding the Halloween wave.
But now it's here:

THE LOST SHORES

The Lost Shores

November 2012

Something stirs in the Sea of Sorrows…

Unravel a mystery of monstrous proportions in The Lost Shores, a massive one-time world event that will change Tyria forever!

Oh my LORD!

The screenshots don't give too much away - a ship (possibly undead) lurking in the background, strange anemone and coral-like structures. It looks like a totally new zone! "Monstrous Proportions" suggests massive world-bosses on a dragon-scale (pun totally and utterly intended)! If this event will truly "change Tyria forever!" then I will be very happy!
Perhaps this could also coincide with the very eagerly anticipated third novel "Sea of Sorrows" by *sigh* Ree Soesbee (sorry B). So excited!

Also worth noting the "December 2012 - Coming soon!" part at the top - suggesting an equally exciting update will be dropping in December (though this could just (and I just the word "just quite wrongly here) be Wintersday).

[GW2] The Mouse Ran up the Clock

2012-10-28T00:28:00.001+01:00

I have to disagree with some of my lovely fellow bloggers out there about the latest piece of GW2 controversy - the Mad Kings Clock Tower. A jumping puzzle so devilishly difficult that the creator - Josh Foreman - has stated that he anticipated only 5% of players would be able to beat it.

I think if you're going to make a very difficult piece of content then it is perfectly reasonable if some people are not skilled enough to complete it. That is the very nature of difficult content - whether it's for a festival or not. The fact that people are able to legitimately complete it at all means that it isn't too difficult - ie, unbeatable. And I think some of the hate (particularly from those standing in the lobby waiting to try again) comes not from the failing in the design, but simply from it's high skill requirement.

I had a torrid time getting the puzzle done - and it took me well over 2 hours of constantly trying. But I had a heap of fun doing it. For once it was a jumping puzzle which truly challenged me, and not just making it to the end after a long-haul and a couple of deaths and thinking "Phew, that was tough!" but rather getting to the end and taking all my clothes off and dancing like a madman screaming "YES, I CAN SLEEP! FINALLY, I CAN SLEEP!". I have not encountered any other single piece of content in the game so far which has evoked that kind of reaction from me - not even defeating the mighty Zaitan (please, really?).

I didn't have any trouble with the camera or unclear edges. At least no more than with any of the other jumping puzzles. They were factors I knew I would have to take into account before I even started the puzzle. They are factors that anyone who has done any jumping puzzles before must have known they would have to take into account.

Click to enlarge

I will concede that it can be difficult when you've got some fattie norns and charr obscuring your view. But really that is only for the first 20 seconds of the puzzle and I can't help but feel the entire thing would lose some of it's appeal if it was the only JP in the game to force you to do it alone/with a party only. I liked the social element - waiting at the bottom to see who would come back, and who made it to the top, hurling abuse at the chubby norn up front - it was part of the whole madness of the experience.

Sometimes I over or under-jumped and went headfirst into the soup. Sometimes I got flustered because the vortex was on my tail and mistimed a leap. At the time I might have put that down to bad design, but really I know that they were the parameters of the puzzle - a difficult jumping puzzle with the added pressure of a timed element.

I know this won't be a popular opinion. But I can't help but feel that this puzzle is fiendishly difficult, and that is the main reason it is receiving such a large amount of bad press.

It is a puzzle which requires significant practice, a lot of patience and a sliver of luck - but once you get it, it is perfectly achievable and uniquely satisfying. Not every single piece of content should be easy enough for every player to complete straight off the bat. That would be bad game design.

[GW2] Something Wicked this way Comes - Halloween 2012

2012-10-14T23:13:00.000+01:00

A redditor put it quite rightly earlier today when they said "Oh, you're in for a treat - holiday events are ArenaNet's specialty", they couldn't be more right! Halloween, Wintersday (Christmas), the Dragon Festival, Chinese New Year, St Patrick's Day, Thanksgiving and Tasty Treat Weekend (Easter) all got the ANet treatment in Guild Wars 1. Halloween and Wintersday were particularly big events which affected every major city with decorations, events, games and countless holiday-themed quests to do. Almost all of the events also affected the world at large through special holiday drops such as candy canes and snowman summoners at Christm... sorry, Wintersday.

First on the agenda with ANet's latest baby is Halloween 2012 and historically, as good as Wintersday is, I think Halloween is most peoples' favourite Guild Wars festival. From the ghoulishly brilliant Halloween masks, to the Mad King's abysmal jokes (lord help you if you don't laugh) it's a great chance to take a weekend break away from the grind to partake in some light-hearted pagan ritual-ing.

ArenaNet have promised us a whole heap of freakily-fun stuff to keep us entertained for the whole week, including new jumping puzzles, quests and events (you can sort of see a fiendishly difficult jumping puzzle in the above image). I'm hoping we see the triumphant return of the Mad King (complete with terrible jokes), some tasty treats to munch on while adventuring, and a funky new outfit in which to prance about and be mischievous. I'm sure it won't disappoint.

22nd - 30th October. It's going to be wicked.

[GW2] Long Term Goals

2012-10-11T13:53:00.000+01:00

The subject of "End-Game" is a polarising one in the GW2 community at the moment. Part of the population seems to say that with only a handful of high-level zones and only so many times you can run the same eight dungeons before you start tearing your hair out, the GW2 end game is pathetically lacking. Another part is arguing that the sidekicking system turns the whole game into an end-game, potentially, and with the numerous paths available in each dungeon - you have far more than eight dungeons-worth of content available.

I try to stay out. I've only really just hit level 80 on my first character within the past week, and only just reached the final personal story mission (it is rather satisfying to see "Kill the Elder Dragon Zaitan" as my quest objective). I've never done explorable mode on any of the dungeons, and I don't have a single exotic item (except the spear I just got from exploring the whole of the Cursed Shore). So I'm not too worried about exhausting the end-game content quite yet.

However, in terms of long term goals, rather than "End-Game" content, for me, the Legendary Weapon saga seems to be the pinnacle of what I could hope to achieve in the coming years. Requiring vast amounts of wealth, karma, skill points, PvP killing and sheer dumb luck, the Legendary Weapons are exactly what I would hope they would be - reserved only for those who put the time and effort into achieving them.

Right now, I'm just looking at accumulating the wealth to craft myself a set of exotic armour (hit level400 armoursmithing last week). The insignias alone will require 30 large scales (roughly 1.5s each - 45s), 30 ectos (15s each - 4.5g), 30 Gossamer (1.5s each for scraps, x2 = 90s), so we're looking about... ALL of my money and that's without the Orichalcum, Gossamer Scraps and Gossamer Thread required to put together the actual armour components.
I've just hit 10g for the first time, so I'm going to look to accumulate the required coin by exploring and farming high leveled areas. Hoping that I can gather some of the above ingredients for myself while building up my capital and hope that the two streams meet somewhere in the middle.

So, end-game isn't really a worry for me at the moment. And anyway, I can't bring myself to enter Arah to complete the final mission alongside the newly reunited Destiny's Edge without first completing each of the story missions in the preceding dungeons (Still missing Sorrow's Furnace, Citadel of Flame, Honour of the Waves and Crucible of Eternity). In my eyes DE won't have properly reformed until I've FORCED them to do so.

"ALRIGHT NOW KISS!"

[GW2] It's Big, sure, But I've seen Bigger

2012-09-27T15:32:00.002+01:00

A few days ago my brother, in one of his typically off-the-cuff ways, said to me - "it's good, but there isn't as much to do as Guild Wars 1 is there?". I grunted, not necessarily in agreement, but not totally in disagreement either.

It's not a criticism of the game, as such, just an observation of where we stand right now. Guild Wars was a reasonably big game when prophecies came out - with the PvE campaign and numerous PvP formats to get to grips with (TA, HA, RA and GvG). Each year following the release the game was further expanded - Sorrow's Furnace, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North and the Guild Wars Beyond features added substantive content to an already jam-packed game. Hard mode effectively doubled the amount of PvE content available in one fell swoop and PvP has expanded to additional game modes such as AB and HB.

There isn't as much to do right now in Guild Wars 2 as there was at the end of Guild Wars 1. But Guild Wars 1 had the benefit of almost three quarters of a decade of updates, expansion and fine-tuning. If the new game starts off with even half of the current content that the original game has, then, after a year or two GW2 will end up being a game world of absolutely mind-boggling proportions.

ps. that last sentence was a bitch to write.

[GW2] Monetization

2012-09-20T09:07:00.001+01:00

Phew-ee honestly, I put my head down for a few hours and the internet explodes.

Last night a GW2 YouTuber posted to the official forums stating that his videos had been flagged for using copyrighted content. This means that the YouTuber has chosen to "monetize" his videos which, it seems, is against the GW2 terms of use and the video has subsequently been requested (by whomever) to be removed.

ANet's official response was:

"You cannot use the monetization system for YouTube or other services. In order words, you cannot make money from our products. YouTube will often note that someone has monetized copyright content, and they will summarily (and properly) close the videos or close the accounts of those involved. You don’t mention if you were using the monetization system, but if you were, you should close the video and re-upload without monetization, or you should disable monetization through the YouTube interface. Now, I should say that this policy may be adjusted in some ways, in the future. We will be sure to let people know if the policies change. But at the current time, that is what is stated in the Guild Wars 2 Content Terms of Use and that is what should be observed."

And so the internet exploded - "ANet are killing E-Sports, ANet are crippling the YouTube community etc". It was all very typically theatrical. Woes, blasphemy, oh the pain.

Thankfully, ever the voice of reason, WoodenPotatoes came out with this response:

Allaying most people's fears. The jist being - those YouTubers who monetize their videos (and are the ones who are affected by this policy) are not the ones who make a living from them, and those who do make a living from their videos are usually "partnered" and so are covered to post content such as GW2 and other copyrighted games.

I can't pretend I've known about NCSoft's (and it is NCSoft's) policy against copyright, I've just avoided monetizing the few videos I've put out simply because I know what a minefield it can be, but also because I would make a pittance (I barely hit 50 views on most of my vids). The whole monetizing system is fairly complicated anyway - any legal mumbo-jumbo is confusing to the lay man such as myself so it's entirely understandable that people, up until now, weren't aware of the rules. But I suppose the thing to remember is this:

NCSoft have sanctioned a large scale and very expensive MMO with a financial view to be funded by the original sales alone. This, therefore, is not likely to be a big earner. You can understand if they're going to be iffy about letting people make money off it left right and centre - however small that income may be.

ps. notice my use of Z in monetize. That's for my fans across the pond (*pat chest, point at the sky*) much love my brothers.

[GW2] Illogical Prices on the Trading Post

2012-09-16T20:13:00.001+01:00

I wonder if whether the problem with the Trading Post is that the automatic reaction when you go to sell an item is to hit "match lowest price" - regardless of what that price is. The obvious incentive is to sell quickly, but without compromising on price by listing lower than everyone else.

But if everyone does this the price of items will never change, and some items are vastly overpriced.
Looking at gw2tp, I can see that Copper Ore, even though it is the most "available" item (currently just under 1.2m units on the market, almost twice a many as the second place item - Iron) is also still priced at 20 coins (at the time of writing), this is over 3x the price of Iron.

I imagine the price difference is partly because Copper is one of the items in the most demand - but even with this in mind, with the sheer quantity available on the market - you think the price would be considerably lower.

Even if someone were to start undercutting the price of copper in an attempt to drive the price down, they'd have to have enough other players doing the same thing so that the new price "caught on" with the players hitting "match lowest price" before all the units were snapped up by people looking to buy the cheapest materials.

In practice, the situation is probably unchangeable; Copper will always be in high demand due to the number of people dabbling in the lower ranks of crafting where Copper is so prevalent in recipes. Whereas, the higher leveled materials will be still abundant on the market, but there will be far fewer people who can craft recipes using theses higher leveled materials.
So, you'll get the odd situation where the high level materials are going for dirt cheap, but the most basic materials are extortionate. This will make it a pain for people wanting to get into crafting from the start because you'll either have to pay through the nose for the mats or go out and gather them all for yourself. Compound this with the fact that people are selling their crafted items for LESS than the merchant price (when taking into account the listing cost) and investing my hard earned silver into crafting is looking less and less attractive.

Hopefully, in a couple of months we'll find that the market calms down and starts following some kind of logic (if you can't already tell, I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the whole "selling for effectively less than than the merchant price" thing).

[GW2] Early Impressions

2012-09-08T17:20:00.001+01:00

The title of this post is, obviously, a little misleading. We've been beta and stress testing this game for months, but I've certainly noticed that the whole game feels different when you know your accomplishments aren't going to be wiped out after Sunday evening. Nevertheless, I'm going to approach this like this is a whole new game.

As MMO launches go, it has been a mixed bag. I'm going to avoid the negatives so early in the post, (though, believe me, they are there) and instead focus on the positives (of which there are a great deal more).

The world is beautiful, there is no avoiding it. From the sweeping hillsides of Kryta, to the icy slopes of the Shiverpeaks, the whole world shines and screams quality. It is a fantastic world in which to play, and I love every second of exploration, combat and story. I haven't experienced any graphical glitches or even that much lag since launch which even more impressive considering some of the high-population fights in which I embroiled myself.

The combat is, as promised, very active. Even the simple addition of the dodge mechanic makes the whole experience of fighting an enemy much more dynamic and reactive. Add in the skill combos (where one player might lay down a fire wall, and another will shoot through it - imbuing their shots with flame) and ground-targeted healing and you discover that Guild Wars 2 combat is all about movement, positioning and watching your surroundings/target. You will know when a troll is about to unleash his power-attack, it's best to roll out the way!

The dynamic events work perfectly. Easy to follow and pick up, fun and challenging at the same time. I was in one of the mid-level zones earlier today, trying to wipe out a camp of Centaur. Each preliminary quest was nicely signposted, and the main quest NPCs always made their way back to a town in the center of the map before setting off for the next phase - so the whole story was easy to follow and pick up half-way.
One criticism I would have is that it isn't always clear what the impact on the world will be. Take the above quest, once we'd worked our way through all the prelim quests, it was time to assault the main base - by this time we'd gathered quite a crowd, so we swept through the Centaur camp in no time, and then wiped out their Chieftain. We got our quest reward, and... then sort of... wandered off. I couldn't see any noticeable change to the zone at all - no extra merchants, no reduced centaur activity, just a sort of petering out. I think, perhaps, the impact on the world should be listed under your quest rewards "1048 Karma, 2000 Exp, 91 coins - due to the ease in centaur activity, trade routes are now open - Marta the Ale-Hound will now sell her ale at a reduced price!". Just a suggestion.

I'm really enjoying my personal story, and I find that I'm doing the heart quests and dynamic events simply to level up and reach the required level to progress with my storyline. The characters are colourful and believable (particularly fond of the Order of Whisp... *Cough* I mean, Order, what Order?). I'm intruiged to see how my choices will impact upon my experience, I've already met the Knight I saw in my dream - but I haven't yet seen how my choices of "Cycle of Night" and "Act with knowledge, but act" affect it.

I do, however, have a couple of criticisms: where is my home instance? Do I even need to go there? I've never been compelled to go and have a look around. Ok, I'm being glib, I know I have one and I've seen it, but I wish it were a more prominent part of the story (it is my home, after all!).
I also don't think the personal story is the most inclusive element of the game. I know you can bring your friends along - but unless they are following the exact same storyline, they will not gain any benefit from tagging along and experiencing it with you, and so it makes it difficult to convince people to stop what they're doing and come along to give you a hand. It's not a huge issue for me - the quests are balanced to be completed alone and I quite enjoy the freedom of gallivanting about on my own - but it just doesn't seem to fit with ANet's ethos of inclusion.

I love crafting, and I´m sure I´ll love it even more if the trading post can stay open for more than half an hour. I like the discovery system, and I also quite enjoy going out and finding the recipes held by certain karma vendors - adds a certain element of discovery to the already discovery-heavy feature. I´ve so far invested mostly in leatherworking (simply for convenience, I thought at first, but I´ve far outlevelled my ability as a craftsman simply because you can´t level crafting all that quickly without unlimited access to the trading post.

Anyway, they´re early impressions. I´ve loved my time in the game, can´t wait to get home and play more!

Gotta dash, on my hols and theres 8 seconds of my time le

[edit - home now!]

...eft on this pay-per-minute computer.