Back To The Old House : GW2, EQ2

No sooner do I think I've shaken myself lose from Guild Wars 2's seven-year deathgrip, then here I find myself, clutched tight in its merciless talons once again. I knew Dragon Bash would sucker me back in but I was determined to take control, limit my exposure, minimize the damage.

So much for that. I'd tried to convince myself I'd stick to my main account, concentrate on hitting that 25K AP target, complete the event achievements and be out of there but oh, no. GW2 was having none of it.

First it was the Dragon Bash dailies. So tempting. Then the regular dailies crept back in. It's two gold a day for those and two gold is a lot for doing not so very much.

Six gold is a lot more, of course. Those other two accounts nagged at me. Once I'd logged them in it seemed foolish not to do the holiday metas there, too. And when you're doing that, you might as well do the holiday dailies...

So now I'm doing eighteen dailies a day. It's just as well I'm not working.

I could be doing a lot more. GW2 is crazy for dailies. There are sixteen tabs in the Daily section of the Achievement panel: the main dailies, the current holiday, Fractals, the sunken treasure hunter one and a set each for every new map ever introduced by way of the Living World.

If you did all of them it would be somthing like eighty. There's almost certainly someone doing them right now. With my three accounts it would be two hundred and forty, although since I don't have Path of Fire on two accounts and no expansions on one and I'm not qualified to do Fractals above the basic on any of them it would come out a lot less.

The rewards for both the metas are absolutely hideous and will never be used by any character I play.
So naturally I have to have them.

Anyone who tried to do all the dailies on multiple accounts would need secure accomodation for their own protection. An intervention wouldn't be out of the question in my own case. Then again, the modern MMORPG operates almost entirely by a process of extreme repetition. I'm just compounding it by running three accounts.

The real reason I'm playing a lot more GW2 again is that Mrs Bhagpuss is also back. I thought she'd pretty much given up. She's been off the boil with the game since mounts were added. The harder ANet push them the less likely she is to log in and it had reached the point where she'd not played for over a month.

Would you trust one of these creatures? Seriously?

I thought the addition of the Warclaw to World vs World would be the final straw, WvW being the only part of the game mounts hadn't yet ruined. The big cats have indeed wrecked much of what was left of that game mode but if we're honest that wasn't much. The score has been meaningless for a very long time. and almost no-one I remember from a year ago still plays. Those who replaced them seem to play a different game altogether, one they make up as they go along.

But Dragon Bash is stronger than all, it seems. These last few days Mrs Bhagpuss has been seen in Hoelbrak on all her accounts, chipping away at the metas and generally goofing around.

Since there are a couple of mount-related achievements I drafted myself to do those for her, which is why I spent this morning racing round and round Hoelbrak on a beetle. One of the achievements asks you to complete fifteen laps, so that'll be forty-five in total. I've done about twenty so far.

The holographic dragon display is best seen from the rooftops.

Of course I'll have to do the same for my own accounts so that'll be a grand total of ninety laps, minimum. I like the roller beetle - it's the only mount I do like - but there are limits.

I'll let you in on a secret here. The bar for the Dragon Bash racing achievements is set very low indeed. You don't need a roller beetle. You can do all of them on the basic Raptor. Crucially, as far as the two achievements that count for the two metas are concerned, you don't need to use a mount at all. You can do those on foot. I did it this morning to prove it.

Mrs Bhagpuss could do them herself but it would take about an hour to do fifteen laps on foot so she'd rather I do them for her. And who can blame her? It's kind of embarassing, trudging through the ice and snow with beetles zipping by on all sides.

That's about a tenth of the mobs our tank scooped up. It only takes one to one-shot me.

As a result of all this festive activity, those other MMORPGs I've been so keen on lately seem to have dropped out of sight. I did manage to finish the penultimate stage of  EQ2's Chaos Descending Signature quest a couple of days ago, leaving just the finale to go. I read the walkthrough and it looks like a lot of boss fights so I'm saving it for when I have a whole afternoon free. So, any time, really.

While I was there I also tried one of the new Public Quests, the ones that have "best in slot" items as possible rewards. My Berserker joined a raid and said it was his first run. The group leader told him it was a simple tank&spank and to target through the MT. "If you get an uncurable curse, run under a waterfall. If there's a black cloud on it, run to another".

Best view of the fight I could get. You should see the close-ups - they look like Jackson Pollock on bad acid.

Clear enough. Unfortunately, no-one mentioned the MT was also the puller, so I followed him as he ran around gathering up every Epic X4 in the zone. Doing that, I got aggro somehow and died. Embarrassing, but no one mentioned it. I picked myself up and ran back and after that it all went swimmingly, appropriately enough, seeing we were in the Plane of Water.

I didn't get any BiS gear but I did get my first Ethereal currency of the summer. Whether I'll get enough to buy anything is another matter. I usually let the Summer Ethereal events pass well above my head but I do like PQs so this year might be different.

Dr. Arcana - quite possibly a homage to something. I wouldn't know.

As for the other MMORPGs I was so keen to play last week and last month - Star Wars: The Old Republic, Riders of Icarus, Secret World Legends et al,  they seem to be on the back burner for now. They'll be back, I'm sure, along with more.

For the time being, though, it's looking like Tyria in the lead, Norrath plodding along behind and the rest of the pack nowhere in sight. I'm not entirely happy about it but there we are. The mouse pointer wants what the mouse pointer wants, as they say.

I just go where it tells me.