There's a thread the size of Jupiter about it over at the official forums and the MMO blogosphere spontaneously combusted. Over at ArenaNet damage limitation protocols have been activated with limited success.
KTR has the skinny and more revelatory links.
In other news, as Potshot observes in a welcome return, Rift has a pending gearpocalypse of its own, something I noticed on accepting my very first quest in the New Continent.
The difference?
Rift players are getting what they expected and almost certainly wanted. GW2 players...aren't.
There's absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with making a solid, end-game focused, dungeon-oriented gear-grind vertical progression theme park MMO. Make a good one and that's fine. Just don't say you're making something totally different then morph into one five minutes after launch.
Of course it makes only the most notional difference to me since I rarely get to end-games in the first place and have no intention of even setting foot in the dungeons in question, far less grinding in them for gear to let me grind in them more. If this wasn't just a video game I might say it's the principle of the thing but it is so I won't because that would be fatuous.
We really shouldn't be surprised when this stuff happens. But then if we weren't, we'd all be SynCaine. Then where would we be?
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the Ascended vs Ascended thing.
ReplyDeleteIt's not as though English is a language short on adjectives, either...
DeleteYeah, the use of "ascended" in the GW2 context caught my eye over at KTR yesterday.
DeleteIs there a history behind the word in GW that might justify the usage?
That had slipped my mind, it being a while since I played GW1 but yes! It's actually a very significant factor in the original game.
DeleteI really should have remembered it because Ascension is the first major rite of passage in what's now known as "Guild Wars: Prphecies" and I, like many people, spent most of a weekend cursing and stomping about all those years ago as I tried to Ascend my first character. I remember having to go out for a walk at one point to calm down.
So in fact it's Trion that should have come up with a different descriptor!
I think the word ascended is as fair game as legendary is (which WoW had before GW I believe), so Rift can have it to. There's only so many good words for improved or awesome.
DeleteAlso, here's some clarification from ANet, https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451
on the Rift gear reset, which you and potshot and Wilhelm all noticed: I've yet to find any gear on either character I'm levelling in Storm Legion that's better than what I have at the moment. Several vendors have lvl 54 gear better, but that's not surprising.
ReplyDeleteWhat this indicates, to me at least, is how I view the majority of Rift players as being like me - regulars - even though logic tells me they're, umm, like the rest of you :p (no offence intended!). Previously, when I saw the odd under-geared player in Sanctum I thought 'oh look, a new person!', but I'm finding large numbers of people in the new continents with genuinely terrible gear.
It's always good to be reminded that the core of the audience is not the same as the general or wider audiences of any given game. I tend to remember that about *other* games, but it looks like I'd forgotten that about the game I'm currently playing.
The gear on my Rogue was top-end crafted when I stopped playing her - I had server discovery on some of it. Of course, I stopped playing my rogue regularly about four months after launch. My two other 50s are in much the same, one perhaps slightly better, the other slightly worse.
DeleteOf course, I haven't played (other than RiftLite) since around the end of last year and even by then I was well adrift of top-end Dungeon gear, leave alone Raid. Be interested to see if I can craft my way back into decent kit again.