Lost In The Mail : GW2

To begin with a digression, I was about to rummage in the cliche bag and come up with "much-heralded" as an opening to this brief run through the first phase of Guild Wars 2's "Lost Shores" event when it occurred to me what an inappropriate phrase that would have been. Much hyped, certainly, but heralded? I haven't heard a peep from my own personal Herald for weeks. Perhaps my singular lack of enthusiasm for any of his previous proposals has led him to seek employment elsewhere. Or maybe it's just because I never paid him.

There's something in the waterrrrrrrr!

His absence hasn't quietened the flapping of my letterbox, though. Far from it, and that's my main complaint about Lost Shores so far. But we're getting ahead of ourselves again. Let's recap.

It'll be nice when it's finished

At exactly 8pm last night a very brief cut-scene signaled the Karka invasion of Lion's Arch. Given the completely unexpected, surprise nature of this attack it was incredibly fortunate that several hundred heavily-armed adventures just happened to be holding an impromptu fireworks party around the Lion Statue plinth, where rebuilding work has just begun.

Kill the babies!

There ensued half an hour or so of the kind of chaos and mayhem that I thoroughly enjoy, although other opinions are available and were indeed volubly expressed in map chat at the time by some who might have been better-employed crabbing than carping, given that the invaders turned out to be crabs. Big crabs, I'll grant you, with very tough shells, but crabs all the same.

As huge MMO events go, it was nowhere as laggy as many I've attended. I was able to move, fight, communicate, loot and follow instructions reasonably well. It fell squarely within my tolerances for playability, although those are admittedly broad. I didn't get any Karka Samples until the Asura collecting them announced he had sufficient - in fact I was barrelling towards him with the two I'd managed to hack off some baby crabling a minute before when he decided to shut up shop. After that, of course, I got dozens.

Eventually the concerted forces of the Lionguard and sundry adventurers drove the Karkan horde back into the sea and the inquiry began. After a brief examination and dismissal of the new hand-ins at the Mystic Forge, which Mrs Bhagpuss rightly identified immediately as not much more than a new item-sink, we moved to the beach where the wreckage from the boat that sank in the opening cut-scene had washed up.

I love beachcombing, me

Confusion ensued over crowbars. The ones lying on the beach appeared not to work. The server briefly hiccuped a roll-back after which I found myself next to large chest filled with the things and I had soon had the top off a barrel. Incriminating evidence led me to the incredibly annoying Blingg. If I never hear the word "CITIZENS!" again it will be too soon, that's all I'm saying.

He soon cracked under our skilled interrogation and it was off on a merry chase around Caledon Forest and Kessex Hills. Karka were fought and defeated, clues were discovered and deciphered and around midnight after a fruitless search for Lionguard Tyrro we called it a night.

Come on! He can be hurt! I just did 12 points of damage!

As events go I enjoyed it. I didn't die once, I was largely able both to follow what was going on and to participate effectively and the Karka turned out to be surprisingly convincing invaders. There were bugs and glitches but I've seen much, much worse. So far I'd give it about seven out of ten.

The one thing I really didn't like derives, I think, from ArenaNet's stubborn insistence on reinventing a wheel that wasn't broken. What follows the invasion is by any rational analysis a questline. Only GW2, of course, doesn't do quests. Consequently, where other MMOs would have a nice, neat journal entry with stages that tick off tidily when completed, what we got was a series of bizarre notes in the mail and a lot of vague hints in the Event descriptions.

Here, I'll just write it in your journal. Oh, wait...

It's a half-assed, clumsy way to deliver content of this type. It works, but in the way that tying a piece of string between two baked-bean cans worked to talk to the kid next door fifty years ago. We have mobile phones now, maybe you noticed?

That cavil aside, I thought it all went off nicely. I certainly had a lot more fun doing just that first part than anything that was thrown at us for Halloween. Looking forward to phase two tonight.