Winter Is Icumen In : GW2

Holiday events, dontcha just love 'em? Midwinter brings the biggest sackful. Can't think why that should be...

For years and years December has meant Frostfell, the Norrathian solstice celebration. If I've been through that wardrobe once I must have been through it a thousand times. One year I even had Christmas cards printed showing my ratonga bruiser under the tree in Frostfell Wonderland Village. Tunare only knows what my relatives made of that one.

Merry Christmas, Mum! I'm the one on the left.

In Rift the Fae take charge, as they seem to do for most holidays. I've only experienced one Fae Yule. Well, there's only been one Fae Yule until now. The second is upon us, as Potshot reports, and I hope at least to pop in for a visit. HRH Queen Elizabeth II could surely take a cue from those corgis. I'd love to see one her famously ill-tempered mutts antlered up for the Queen's Speech.

It's behind you!

This year, however, my celebratory egg-nog (yeeuuuurghhhhh!!!) shall be knocked back in one in Tyria. Wintersday approaches and here's the video to prove it. Looks rather good.

Other than that there's a huge dirigible in the shape of a golem, we don't know much about Wintersday yet. I never experienced it in GW1 so no clues there. One thing we do know, though, is there will be WvW changes. What's more, we know what they are.

The full skinny is here and Ravious goes through the list neatly at KTR but I have a santa hat full of comments of my own.

Advance notification of new builds

To be completely honest, I misunderstood this when I first read it and it was only Ravious's explanation that put me straight. It's a simple notification of forced relogging (what would be server down in any other MMO) only sufficiently ahead of time to allow some possible ameliorative action. Useful but not all that interesting.

Alt+F4 is no escape

"Significantly longer" my arse!

This is a non-issue to me but some people get so overheated about it that this fix amounts to emergency first-aid. For my money, if someone on one of the opposing teams chooses to F4 to desktop rather than be killed, that's an enemy knocked right out of WvW altogether for a few minutes. Stuff the loss of xp/loot/badges/bragging rights. That guy will take significantly longer getting back into the fight than if he'd just died and waypointed. In my opinion, people that wanted this weren't looking at the big picture, but there's no denying it was a hot-button issue for some.

No more insta-build walls & gates

They put this in to annoy Mrs Bhagpuss, who likes nothing better than to run behind an invading army that's just knocked down a gate and put said gate back up again trapping half the army inside and half out. It does look utterly ridiculous, though. I was fighting inside a keep a couple of days ago when the entire castle wall flipped up and down half a dozen times in a minute. On balance, a fix that was needed.

Breakout events

I'll see your "trusty Dolyak" and raise you 32 golems

The big one. This is a potential game-changer and I think we all knew it was coming. This is just the first of who knows how many "dynamic events" coming to WvW. Do we want a lot more NPC involvement in what is supposed to be a player vs player environment? Not sure. Not at all sure.

This particular example sounds nutty. On the forum thread someone has already pointed out that if the Dolyak Lord proves to be in the least effective at getting the losing team up off the floor, canny teams will simply leave one tower untaken so the event never happens. That's probably just one of many potential emergent properties of this entirely untried and untested mechanic. Could be very interesting.

That's what WvW is getting for Christmas. We get much, much more for Valentine's, apparently, with a major update being trailed for February. After all, nothing says peace and love like a good fight with your neighbor. Or something.