I'm Off Balance

The latest episode of Guild Wars 2's current Living World went live a couple of days ago.  It labors under an awkward portmanteau title that varies depending on where you see it. The full version runs to Icebrood Saga: Episode 5: Champions: Chapter 3: Balance. Chew on that for a while.

At this point you might normally expect a capsule review or some pithy comments about it. Sorry. I don't have anything. For the first time in probably the entire history of GW2's Living World project I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to play it yet. 

And that's not really ArenaNet's fault. As I've said consistently since it started, I've found the Icebrood Saga to be a distinct improvement over what we were getting before. In normal circumstances I'd have logged in my heal-spec druid, the one who gets to do all this stuff, pretty much as soon as the update landed.

The reason I haven't is, of course, Valheim. I'm still at the stage where I begrudge any time spent in other games. I know a recurring theme for years here has been how short the Living Story episodes are but it's all relative. It may only be three hours but that's three hours I could have been mining iron, chopping trees or sailing my longship into uncharted waters.  

I also wasn't super-hyped by the very weak trailer. That's long been another theme here; the extraordinarily variable quality of the promotional material ANet release before each of these chapters drop. This one is particularly lackluster. Here, take a look for yourself.

The worst thing about that trailer is how old it makes the game look. If there's one thing most people seem to agree on, even if GW2 is not a game they personally care to play, it's that ArenaNet has one of the better art departments in the genre. Guild Wars 2 is known for its good looks.

You wouldn't know it from that trailer, would you? It's a lot of not very convincingly animated characters engaging in stilted, cumbersome combat against a series of largely featureless backdrops. The colors are muted and muddy, the action is unconvincing and the impression I'm left with is of something discomfortingly close to a decade-old free to play import, one that probably didn't do well in the west and which few now remember.

Is that really how the way to promote a game that's still widely reckoned to be one of the larger, more successful Western mmorpgs? 

But then, I don't imagine it's intended to promote the game to anyone who isn't already playing it. Almost the entire trailer is taken up with listing the benefits to existing players, all of which could be summed up with the simple phrase "More of the same".

The one shot in the Balance trailer that actually looked interesting.

 

Massively OP's Guild Wars 2 correspondent, Colin Henry, (who, I only now realize, is also Chaosconstant of the Occasional Hero blog) sounds world-weary as he gives us his first impressions piece: "Another month, another round of Dragon Response Missions", he says, scarcely inspiring me to jump into the game to see what's happening for myself.

He goes on to clarify:

"If you have played the last couple of chapters, nothing in this release will blow your mind; everything here is the same old DRM formula. There is a pre-event with two different “click the things” objectives and one “defeat the things” objective that give everyone in the party buffs upon completions. After that, we must fight our way through some dragon minions and defeat a boss".  

I generally try not to let other people's opinions influence my behavior but that rang altogether too true to be ignored. Here's what I said about the last round of Dragon Response Missions, back in January:

"The format is different to what we've been used to but I suspect not to what we're going to have to get used to in the future. After years and years of muddling around with various combinations of open world and instanced content, none of which ever seemed to suit enough people for ArenaNet to stick with any of them, we've arrived at something called "Dragon Response Missions". 

Theese are repeatable, instanced sequences of events that can be done either solo or in groups of up to five players, either premades or put together by the game, as you prefer. They seem to tick more boxes than most of the previous content delivery systems while avoiding some of the most egregious pitfalls. They also bundle up into a relatively saleable package for the Gem Store so they would seem to have a better chance of sticking around than most of the gimmicks ANet have tried over the last eight and a half years."

And yes, it appears DRMs are here to stay, at least for now. Oh well. If ArenaNet can recycle ideas to pad out what passes for content in the game I guess I can do the same for the blog.

At this point an astute reader might be tempted to interject something along the lines of "Hold on a minute! Wasn't it just a few days ago you were praising Daybreak for adding "another by-the-numbers instance that follows the well-trodden path of many similar holiday quests before it", which you went on to emphasize was "absolutely fine", since you "don't come to EQ2 for cutting-edge innovation or out-of-the-box thinking." ?"

Yes, well, unlike the convoluted syntax of that last paragraph, I can't fault the logic. Guilty as charged. In my defence I refer you to my oft-cited favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the one about consistency and hobgoblins, something about which I've been remarkably consistent over the years. Ironically.

Wow! That really makes me want to see more!

 

And really there is no logical fallacy here. I'm quite pleased that ANet are sticking to their last, at last. Foolish inconsistency may be something to avoid but giving the customers what they want is a tried and tested maxim. It's about time they gave it a try.

I guess the question ought to be is it what the customers want? I pulled the trailer above from ArenaNet's official YouTube channel. It was posted two weeks ago and as of this moment it has 1240 views and four comments. One of those comments bluntly states "Stop producing single player content, nobody cares about the story... and even if, it has little to no replay value. Focus on wvw, spvp and challenging late game pve content. You know those game types where you have to work together... after all it is a mmo....". A second commenter agrees.

The other two comments all too predictably welcome the return of the irritating and incomprehensibly fan-favored avian race, the Tengu. Certain sections of the GW2 playerbase go into conniptions at the mere mention of these overgrown starlings and any suggestion the annoying worm-botherers might make some kind of a comeback, let alone become a playable race, has comment threads lighting up all over.

So, two votes against and just two for tengu, then? Maybe no-one really looks at YouTube any more. Just over a thousand views and four comments seems like not very much to me. I have videos on my YouTube channel with more views than that. Alright, I have one video. But the point stands.

Not if I see them first...

 It's probably safe to assume that anyone who actually cares saw the trailer on the official GW2 website and that pretty much no-one not already playing has seen it at all. It's very much a case of catering to the converted. It's not surprising the trailer has all the zest and sparkle of a contractual obligation.

Speaking of which, I think I've strung this out for about as long as I need to. I'll be back with more if and when I get around to playing through those Dragon Response Missions. Oh, and the story instance that barely even gets a mention in the trailer, the one where, bizarrely, we get to play as Braham but with the abilities of the class of whatever character we normally play. I wonder if that's contextualized in any way?

Guess I'll find out... eventually. Right now, though, I'm off to play a different surly-looking viking with bad posture and an unconvincing gait. 

In Valheim, that is. In case you couldn't guess.

Truce

It's a bit of a tradition here at Inventory Full to write a review, of sorts, every time I finish a Living Story episode in Guild Wars 2. I've posted something after just about every Living Story/World/Saga update since the game began but I can't remember ever having less to say about one than I do about yesterday's "Champions: Truce".

No-one seems especially stoked this go round. Time was, when a new episode or chapter was looming, you'd hear people talk about it in game. There'd be multiple forum threads speculating on what might be about to happen and I'd read (and write) blog posts fueled by nothing more than the trailer and a heady sense of anticipation.

For a long while now it's been entirely possible to log in and play a full session without hearing even a passing mention of the latest update. It's true I don't hang out much in the metas but there was a time when people in the starting maps talked of little else on patch days and I'd hear commanders in World vs World complaining they couldn't defend a keep because everyone was off doing the Living Story. 

Those days are long gone. All you hear now, if you hear anything, is the odd derisive comment. As for the forums, gone are the multiple discussion threads that Gail Gray used to have to consolidate. Gone too are the official feedback threads that once ran for several pages and had to begin with an official request for posters to keep things brief.

Instead, when I went to the forum today to check if anyone else was having the same trouble with one of the events I was, I had to look twice before I found any threads at all. There's one called "What do you think of the new Living World: Champions? (Spoilers inside)". It has sixty-six comments and it's been viewed thirteen hundred times, which I guess isn't all that bad for an update that hasn't been live for twenty-four hours. Or it's not until you read it.

Not in my house!

 

If I had to summarize the opinion most commonly expressed in the thread in a single word, that word would be meh. Or maybe bleh. 

"About what I had expected. I figured that they had pulled their living world teams to work on the expansion so this was a low effort way to provide content until it releases."

"All in all, I'm actually surprised it's even more bare bones than expected... The only good thing is I can commit my time to other games now this isn't going to demand anything from me."

"I didn't expect much and at least it was not disappointing in that regard."

"It is as bad as we feared... Luckily Shadowlands is right around the corner".

"It's okay. It didn't blow me away and it didn't disappoint me."

"Good idea, bad execution, too tedious."

"...it's underwhelming, even with my expectations low."

Those are probably some of the more positive ones, too. There's a widespread assumption that anything we get between now and the launch of End of Dragons is going to be the work of a skeleton crew trying to cobble something together while ninety-nine per cent of the teams work on the third expansion. We can't expect much and not much is what we're going to get seems to be the general feeling.

There's also a fairly commonly expressed opinion on the forums that the Icebrood Saga has been generally poor in comparison to previous seasons. I'd take this with several buckets of salt because you could have heard a similar sentiment being expressed during every one of the five seasons to date. (It is five, isn't it? Hard to keep track since they keep changing the name).

What does puzzle me is what seems like a growing tendency to compare the Icebrood Saga to Living World Season One. I've read this a number of times, almost always couched as a criticism, but I'm not clear whether the supposed similarity is in the story or the gameplay. 

I can't say I can see much of a correlation in either. I wish I could. I liked Season One well enough at the time, as my contemporary commentary demonstrated, but if I'd known what we were going to get next I'd have positively raved. Scarlet's War seems like a golden age, now.

Is there something you'd like to tell us, Jormag?

 

Perhaps the two seasons do have something in common, even if I'd struggle to articulate exactly what it might be. If I was going to put the seasons in order of preference I'd have Season One at the top but the Icebrood Saga would come next, which does suggest they at least both pander to my personal tastes. 

Does that mean I like this episode, then? Champions? 

Eh, well... I guess... It was... okay. Y'know?

It was surprisingly good to have voice acting back. When we got the first silent episode, courtesy of the pandemic, I quite liked just reading the text but I found I was hearing the familiar actors' voices in my head anyway. The novelty wore off fast. 

I'm not sure I'll go back and replay the last two episodes just to hear the dialog out loud but I definitely will watch it on YouTube if someone edits it all together. A few years back you could have counted on someone doing that. Not so sure anyone's got the motivation any more.

The plot's quite interesting. Some people don't like the very idea that we might be about to team up with an elder dragon, specifically Jormag, but a lot more don't like the way it's being handled. The rationale behind it certainly is vague and confusing but I think that's deliberate. 

Jormag, as Braham points out, is the master of lies. I can't think of a non-binary term for that or I'd have used it. And Taimi, lest we forget, is living with a terminal diagnosis. If she's being less rational than usual... well, come to think of it, how rational is she, ever?

That's sarcasm, right? Just so we're clear.

 

I had more of an issue with the ease with which just about everyone accepted Ryland's assistance. Isn't he subject to some kind of war crime tribunal? Does being Jormag's Champion give him a pass on that? Yeah, well, I guess it does, at that.

The plain fact that I can sit here and discuss this (with myself) a few hours after playing through the episode suggests the story is working better than it has in the past. Sometimes I get to the end of a chapter and can't even remember how it started, let alone how it fits in with what came before. The Icebrood Saga, though, I feel I could write a coherent precis for, if I had to.

Other than the acting and the story, Champions doesn't have much going for it. There's some fairly desultory combat in the early sections and some exceptionally tedious and long-winded slog to get through at the end. Full disclosure, I haven't even done all of that yet.

The episode concludes with three missions using the not very popular "Private/Public" instance format. I tried to do the first solo, supposedly an option, and had to give up due to sheer boredom. There was no risk of me not being able to finish it - it was just going to take me about an hour to kill the boss and I couldn't bring myself to do it.

That, I should add for anyone who might have been reading the patch notes, was after they fixed the bug that made the mission bosses far slower to kill than they were meant to be. What they must have been like before, I don't care to imagine.

Second time around I took the "Public" option and completed the first of the three missions relatively painlessly in about fifteen or twenty minutes. It was still tedious but it was bearable. Put that on the poster!

You noticed?

 

There are two more missions to complete before the chapter can be considered finished and from what I've read they're functionally identical to the first. I'll get them done eventually but I can't say I'm keen. After that I imagine I'll never see them again, even they're supposed to be our repeatable content for the next couple of months.

I believe ArenaNet have done a better job than most of their competitors at keeping older content in play but I suspect we may be reaching a point where they're becoming the victims of their own success. GW2 has a staggering amount of repeatable content now, all of it with its own metas, currencies, dailies and achievements. It's almost self-defeating. If no old content ever goes out of date is that any different from if all of it did?

One thing you don't hear too much of is people complaining about being ripped off. The general feeling, as expressed in some of the forum comments, seems to be that this is about what you can expect for nothing, which is, after all, what we're paying:

"I'm... fine logging in every 2 months or so to check out the story progression"

"I am unsatisfied but on the other hand it was for free, so hey..."

"I've pretty much stuck with logging in on release days and then disappearing till the next. It's honestly more enjoyable that way".

I'm not sure that kind of lack of engagement is what any developer wants to hear but, honestly? It does kind of work for me, too. Sure, I'd love to be swept up and blown away by an mmorpg, the way I was by GW2 itself eight years ago. I just don't expect it any more. 

It's actually quite convenient to get occasional content drops that pique my interest for a day or two - maybe a week if it's really good - then for the game to go on the back burner again. It's not how this hobby used to be but then I'm not the person I was when I discovered it, either. I'm twenty years older for a start.

Maybe we don't get the games we want. Maybe we get the games we deserve. And I'm not sure how many of us have the capacity for engagement we had when the genre was new. Maybe meh is about all we can handle. I mean, when was the last time you heard anyone yell "Woot!" ?

You'd Have To Pay Me To Do That : GW2

ArenaNet's response to the howls of justified outrage/whines of selfish entitlement that followed the return of the heavily re-vamped Queen's Gauntlet was surprising. Rather than return the event to its old form (never on the cards), tinker with the mechanics (always a good bet) or tweak the difficulty (pretty much odds-on) they decided instead to refurbish the reward structure.

Here's the new version from the patch notes:

• The Crown Pavilion’s Boss Blitz event has had its rewards adjusted in the following ways:

• Bronze Tier
  • Increased the number of champion loot bags from 2 to 6.
  • Increased the number of Festival Tokens from 15-21 to 40.
• Silver Tier
  • Increased the number of champion loot bags from 4 to 8.
  • Increased the number of Festival Tokens from 30-36 to 60.
• Gold Tier
  • Increased the number of champion loot bags from 8 to 10.
  • Increased the number of Festival Tokens from 46-52 to 80.
  
  

Intriguingly, this change is listed under "Bug Fixes". Hard to imagine that the original version simply shipped with the wrong numbers attached but swiftly skating over that particular stretch of thin ice...

As long as I've played GW2 people have complained loud and long about the risk vs reward structure. When the game launched Veterans and Champions were just harder, not more rewarding. They had, as far as could be ascertained, the same loot tables as normal mobs. Mostly they dropped nothing. Consequently people didn't fight them if they could avoid it.

After a while and a lot of complaining on the forums Vets and Champs got a loot pass so they at least dropped a blue or green item every time. Whoop and indeed dee-doo. Still no-one killed them.

Time passed. Complaints continued. Eventually ANet threw up its collective hands. In came The Champ Revamp. In a seeming fit of passive-aggressive "Is that what you want? Cos that's what'll happen!" overnight Champions became freighted with loot - items, skill scrolls, crafting mats, coin... you name it, they had it. All across Tyria the Champ Trains chugged out of their forgotten branch-line stations onto the main lines where hordes of eager passengers were waiting to ride them to fortune, if not to fame or glory.


In update after update a very large segment of the playerbase has demonstrated that if there's easily accessible content that can be zerged down for a reward even slightly better than five copper pieces and an Unidentifiable Object, out they will turn, in numbers. In update after update ANet have demonstrated that much, most, of the content they create is amenable to being mobbed even if that wasn't the intention. We did The Southsun Stroll, Scarlet's Invasions of Convenience, Queen's Gauntlet Mark One, Edge of the Mists Never The Teams Shall Meet 24/7 Champ Farm and many more now forgotten.

Eventually ANet appeared to tire of the players endlessly innovative ways of turning finely-tuned content into the zergfest du jour. In came Tequatl, the Marionnette, Three-Headed Wurm, the Fall of Lion's Arch and now Boss Blitz, all sending out the message loud and clear - play the damn game the right way, not the lazy way. To which the general reply has been "make it worth our while and we will", the problem most players having with these events not being, on the whole that they are too hard but that they are too hard for the time and effort they take.

There does seem to be a fundamental disconnect between the GW2 players and developers on what constitutes a fair reward. Developers remain convinced, for example, that a handful of green quality Mastercrafted items provides a suitable and satisfying reward despite all evidence to the contrary.

The policy even extends beyond simple loot drops and event rewards. Look no further than the vendor just added to swap out surplus Blade Shards. To quote ArenaNet some weeks back when they trailed it thus:

"Please don’t delete them!

You can hold on to your extra blade shards, as the team will be adding something later which will allow you to convert the shards to something of value."

What was the something of value? A green item. The very same item, that is to say, which will either be sold to a vendor for a pittance or deconstructed for crafting mats and Essence of Luck, which builds Magic Find, which is desired because it increases the chances of getting better loot than Greens, which no one wants to get if they can avoid it.

Players do not, as a rule, enjoy getting poor quality items as a reward for a big fight. They'd rather have an item of reasonable quality or a fixed amount of currency with which they can buy one. Hell, they'd probably take a choice of nothing at all most times against a good chance of a much better item, so long as that item dropped at a frequency that felt fair.

In the absence of anything genuinely desirable being offered, however, many pragmatic players are willing to settle for a pile of intrinsically useless junk so long as it can be sold or converted into something useful and, most importantly, so long as the pile is big enough to make them feel they haven't completely wasted their time. The pile now on offer for running the Queen's Gauntlet has been weighed and found to be just about adequate. The sputtering, failing festival is, fitfully, back in business.

I did the Gauntlet three times last night. I had to Guest to change megaserver maps to find one that wasn't utterly shambolic. I lucked onto one filled with good-spirited, polite, pleasant, conversational players. First run was a shambles but instead of everyone leaving a big discussion began on how we could do better, commander tags were popped, people co-operated, we took another run at it and had five bosses down with two minutes to go on the Silver timer.

We failed that one and took Bronze but everyone was upbeat. Several people commented it was the closest they'd ever come to Silver. I hadn't planned on staying but it was such a pleasant environment I changed my mind and lined up for another try. After a shaky start we went into Silver Time two bosses down. With two minutes left we still had two bosses to go but unlike last time, when the Ogre was at full health and proved too much for the half-dozen players trying not to scale him, both were around 30%.

When the last boss went down there were three seconds left on the clock. It was exciting, satisfying and entertaining and I'd had enough and so had most everyone else. The commanders tagged down and people drifted off. I de-guested and went to the Borderlands, where I remained for the next four hours until bedtime.

It's not that I don't, won't or can't enjoy ANet's new direction, then, even though my personal preference remains very strongly skewed towards the open, inclusive, come-as-you-are approach that we were promised in the long run-up to launch. You may remember it as the paradigm shift in gameplay that would change MMOs forever. Well, they tried that and it came out very differently to how they expected so now we all have to revise our expectations.

That's okay. MMOs change. This one's changed a bit more and a bit faster than most but never mind, buckle up, let's get on with it. As the Marionnette and last night's QG run demonstrate, there is indeed fun to be had here if you're willing to adapt.

Except that if we're going to revamp the game to fit in structured content that requires organization, don't we also need to revamp the UI so that we can, y'know, organize? At the moment it feels like some kind of management bonding game where a bunch of people who only met ten minutes ago have to figure out a way to get across a river using a pile of planks and a yo-yo.

The current bad feeling around the game most likely isn't caused by players' lack of interest or willingness try new things. No, more likely it's the sense that we're being taken for mugs, treated like a resource not an asset. We shouldn't have to scratch and scrabble for fun in a game, especially one that likes to bill itself as open and inclusive.

Sort out the risk vs reward (and in GW2 "risk" really means "time spent"). Sort out the mechanics. Give us raid frames and instances and in-game voice chat. Design content that we want to play and give us the means to play it instead of having to play against it. Turn your game into the kind of game you said it was going to replace if you must, only at least do it well.

Maybe then the rage will subside and the whining will die down. Then again...

Unpacking The Feature Pack : GW2

The Big Reveal is over, the bags are all open, the cats all run free. Just ten more days to Magic Time, the Glorious Fifteenth, First Coming of The Feature Pack. Tyria will never be the same again.

Let's hope not, anyway. It would seem like an awful lot of fuss about nothing if, as I suspect might happen, the world just goes on turning in much the same old way. With game historians of the future in mind let's have a quick flip through the program and scribble down some notes while the orchestra's still tuning up.

Traits - A big change, for sure and, now I've had time to mull it around for a bit, one that I quite like, on paper at least. Hunting for traits in the wild sounds disturbingly like New Content, while being able to buy our way out of playing through parts of the game that we don't care for seems like a sound compromise. Being able to change trait builds free and on the fly is intriguing. Chances are I'll never remember to do it but so long as it remains "may" not "must" then I'll go along for the ride.

Runes and Sigils - Can't see any downside to this. A ridiculous amount of worthless runes and sigils rain down every day as I salvage the equally ridiculous downpour of worthless armor and weaponry. Probably three-quarters of them could vanish overnight and no-one would notice. Anything that streamlines the system has to be welcome although I don't see much in the blurb to suggest we'll see the back of all the +10% vs Dredge space-wasters and their pointless ilk.

Famous last words

Critical Damage - Nerf! Nerf! After a year of resisting the 'Zerker Meta I find I'm absolutely loving my Full Berserker Elementalist build, especially in WvW, where the supposed "Glass Cannon" factor rarely seems to come into play. Somehow, very few people seem to pay any attention to the Norn woman in dark blue lurking at the back even though she's raining continual fiery destruction on their heads and when the Commander yells "Push!" my main problem seems to be trying not to impersonate Sky Saxon. The number of times I've found myself behind the opposing zerg all on my own after two dodges and a Mist Form - and still they don't notice me, even as I pump fireballs into their backs!

I console myself with the thought that it's only supposed to be a 10% nerf and my DPS went up about 300% when I went berserk, so it shouldn't hurt too much. Of course, if a nerf doesn't feel like a nerf it probably won't shake the Meta up much either, assuming that was the intention.

Wardrobe  - Replace a cumbersome system with a slightly less cumbersome one, so net gain, I guess. I'd peg this as one of the many income-driving changes, where the secondary, if not the primary, function is to drive more traffic to the Gem Store. Since I very rarely change the looks of my characters once I've got them how I like them (hard enough to remember who I'm playing as it is without having them confuse me by looking different) I don't see this affecting me greatly one way or the other. For a change that's long been demanded, though, forum response has been more mixed than you might expect. I wouldn't be surprised to see more tweaks to this as the months wear on.

And put a sweater on, too!

Dyes - Changes things to the way most players probably thought the system should have worked from the get-go. I'll be in a tiny minority in preferring it the way it was but it's hardly a major issue - give up a small degree of character individualization and a self-created mini-game (who gets which dye) in favor of undoubted convenience. The really annoying (and entirely player-unfriendly) aspect is the removal of dropped dyes, another change blatantly intended to increase ANet's income stream, albeit with the rather happier side-effect of allowing crafters a rare opportunity to make a little silver on the back of it.

Social Play Improvements - I had to re-read this one just to remind myself what these "improvements" were. Meh. And that's over-egging it.

Account Bound Changes - At last! The long-trailed move to account-based ranks for WvW is finally (almost) here. Again, another anti-character move but that ship sailed so long ago and there were so many planks missing it must have sunk even faster than this metaphor. I'm just going to go with it from now on - The Account is the Prime Directive - All hail The Account. Now just give me my furshlugginer points already!

As for account-bound ascended gear, that does make it slightly more likely I might one day get around to getting some. Legendaries? I should coco.

Somehow the new champ bags didn't seem quite so exciting as the old ones...

Repairs and Champion Loot - I think I learned the expression "Indian Giver" from a Superboy comic in about 1966. I was never entirely sure what it meant. and by now it's probably one of those turns of phrase that can no longer be uttered in polite society but I'm pretty sure it applies to ANet here. How the removal of the minuscule cost of repairing your armor, somewhere around 8 silver if you turn up at the repair shop in your underwear at level 80, is supposed to compensate for what might be a heavy nerf to cash income from Champion bags, any one of which can theoretically provide enough silver to pay your repair costs for the whole day, beats me and everyone else.

Mystic Forge - ANet buried that in the same announcement but I've pulled it out. It seems to have passed almost unnoticed. Hardly surprising because there's precious little information there. It's more just putting us on notice that big changes to the money pit often unfondly referred to as the Mystic Toilet are on the way. Could be good, could be terrible, except that the Forge is so terrible already any change almost has to be good.

As opposed to all those other proverbially trustworthy genies?

PvP Stuff - Pass. Oh, wait, no...that's just what these changes are supposed to stop me doing, aren't they? This whole everyone-must-play-all-parts-of-the-game trope that ANet desperately hope might catch on. Nope, sorry. Not playing. Next.

Megaserver - The Big One. Literally. Didn't see this coming. Don't much want it, either. I thought I'd again be in a tiny minority not getting out the flags and bunting for this but although first reaction was predictably positive, the sprawling threads all over the forums suggest that, given time to consider the implications, quite a few players could see the holes in the Emperor's New Clothes (yes, I know...).

Can't have a Themepark without a Schedule

World Bosses - And this is why. Leaving aside the disorderly retreat from the moral high ground of a " living, breathing world" (whatever happened to Martin Kerstein, anyway?) plenty of people see the combination of ever-changing maps, no firm home ground and fixed daily boss timers as things that will reduce their fun and stop them doing things they enjoy. Where's the value in all those Infinite Harvesting Tools now all the nodes wriggle about like bait in a bucket? How are you going to run a World Meta Train if there aren't any worlds? How can a Commander gate into LA (or I guess now Gendarran Fields) and rally the PvE troops for a golem rush when half the people listening might come from the Other Side?


A million increasingly angry questions and so far precious little in the way of answers. Oh, and that "all waypoints are now contested" thing? Why didn't you just schedule that for it's own Reveal and call it "Huge New Gold Sink"?

Guilds and the Future - And out we go with a whimper. I don't like guilds and I don't much care what happens to them in any game just so long as I can go on ignoring them. Plenty of bad feeling about this one from small guild players who do care, though. At least WvW is "safe" ... for now.

When ANet came up with the idea of rolling a whole lot of structural changes into one big "Feature Pack" and plonking it down in the gaping content hole between the end of Living Story Season One and the start of Living Story Season Two, some dev I can't be bothered to look up and link made the cardinal error of likening it to the amount of content you'd expect from an expansion. Cue frenzied forum speculation on the Coming of the Tengu, Dragons, Housing, Mounts and the Moon on a Stick.

Happens to the best of us

The Official Wet (Safety) Blanket was deployed to dampen down ardor and enthusiasm and someone probably got a right ticking off but in essence the comparison wasn't unwarranted. The Feature Pack does contain about as much in the way of structural and systemic change as the average MMO expansion. It just comes unsweetened by any actual content.

I'm sanguine. I no longer feel emotionally connected to Guild Wars in all its forms the way I am to, say, the Everquest franchise (as it now appears officially to be known). It's become no more nor less than a rather amusing, entertaining game that I play, not a virtual world in which I imagine I am living. On that basis I'm willing to entertain any changes that might make it more amusing or entertaining. Whether these are those changes only time will tell.

Oh, and there's one more similarity between the Feature Pack and a real expansion. I bet lots of these changes won't work properly for a good while and we'll be patching well into May before things settle down. Fun times ahead!

Unintended Consequences : GW2

The wealth of activity the Queen's Jubilee brought to Tyria will all have vanished in a few weeks. The changes to the infrastructure that arrived alongside it will stay with us for the foreseeable future, landing with an impact that has far greater potential for change than a few hot air balloons dotted around the countryside.

The Living Story wrapper tends to obfuscate the normal patching process. Every two weeks we all cast the runes trying to decipher the rambling, incoherent narrative and chase madly after the shiny at the end of the Achievement rainbow.

Meanwhile the traditional tuning and tweaking that marks the progress of an MMO in full sail creaks and groans in the background. In other times, in other games, those are the changes that would be the hotly-debated talking points; here they can pass with barely a comment.

Two innovations slipped in by the back door this time, both greeted with quiet but apparently universal acceptance. Firstly, The Wallet pulls a number of items that were previously held as virtual physical icons out of storage and into a game-window. It's a common practice in MMOs seeking to avoid currency clutter. Secondly, all Champion mobs now leave a Steel Chest behind when they die. Each of these changes has wide-ranging implications for how the game will be played in the future, one very personal, the other very public.

Don't go in dungeons much, eh?

The Wallet raises issues that are mostly metaphysical. For the vast majority of players it will almost certainly be received as a universal good. Who doesn't want to have all their currencies neatly tabulated and stored in one place rather than spread out across the inventories and banks of half a dozen characters? Who doesn't want the vault space back?

Well, people who play their characters as individuals, perhaps? Players who don't see their characters as an amorphous mass of "Toons", mere ciphers of the hand behind the keyboard. Players who don't see why an Engineer who never lifted a flamethrower to defend his borderland should be able to claim a thousand Badges of Honor that were earned in hard battle by some Ranger the Engineer never even met.

It's hardly worth bothering about in GW2, of course. The base unit there is and always has been The Account. All this new refinement really does is shift the underlying structure towards a more coherent form. The game arrived with an ill-thought-out muddle of Account- and Character- based functions that already required a good deal of double-think to reconcile.

As a character-player of longstanding I regret the trend toward Account-based play now becoming widespread across the genre. It makes for lazy play on my part when, as I inevitably do, I take advantage of the indisputable convenience it brings. Under any system, however, character-play ultimately rests in the hands of the person guiding the characters. If I was really that interested I could still keep notes of who earned what to make sure no-one got a free ride.

Alternatively (and it's the lazy fix I choose to make) I can consider all my characters part of a team, create an organization for them in my head and play them accordingly. With two accounts I even have two separate teams, which allows for both co-operation and competition. And banter.

They also serve who only stand and wait at the bank

So The Wallet is assimilable into most existing playstyles. Any changes to gameplay that it brings to the individual player are invisible to others around him or her. Not so the Champion Chests.

This isn't the first time ArenaNet have fiddled with the reward mechanism for stronger creatures. At first Champions, the unnamed Nameds of Tyria, dropped nothing, or rather they had exactly the same chance at dropping exactly the same loot any other, weaker mob around them might drop. So no-one killed them if they could help it. A lot of extra work for no extra reward.

After a few months Champions received a pass that guaranteed they would always drop something. That prospect caused some excitement, which quickly dissipated when it was found that what they always dropped was a Blue item worth a few copper to a vendor or, if you were very lucky, a Green worth a silver or so. End result, Champions continued to be ignored.

Other designs are avaialble

Last week all that changed. Every Champion now drops a Steel Chest. The chest drop mechanic was itself added earlier this year, providing a visual indicator of the quality of loot as it hits the ground. A bag is Basic, Fine or Masterwork, a wooden chest Rare and a steel chest means you've found something Exotic or Ascended. Top of the shop, in other words.

In the case of Champions there's another wrinkle. Inside the chest is the drop the Champion used to have, if any, plus some kind of Exotic bag or pouch and inside that you'll find coin, skill points, crafting materials, weapons and armor, and if you're very, very lucky, a unique weapon skin. And that has become, overnight, quite literally a game-changer.

A few months ago a similar change was made to "World Bosses", the Dragons and other meta-events around Tyria. They began to give first a flurry of Rares and then another guaranteed Rare on top of that. For a while there was a frenzy, which then settled to a routine. All but the least-accessible "dragons" were dutifully farmed by medium-sixed zergs day and night.

I first observed the new emergent behavior that has replaced this tradition when I was crossing Frostgorge Sound in search of balloons. Map chat was alive with people calling "Drake", "Shark" and pinging waypoints. It transpires that within days, quite possibly hours, of the new loot changes a whole culture has sprung up. PvE "Commanders" sporting their 100g tags are leading zergs of greed-crazed adventurers on kill sprees through any high-level zone that sustains a large population of fast-respawning Champions.

Wait for meeeeeee

In the spirit of enquiry I joined zergs in Frostgorge and Cursed Shore last night. I learned a lot. For example, the Escort event near Anchorage Waypoint in Cursed Shore can be farmed for anything up to thirty or so Steel Chests in a ten minute run. When it ends there's just enough time to sell the loot and race around another half-dozen Champion spawns in the zone before returning for another go.

This event recycles constantly with an eight-minute refresh, provided you do it right. I forget whether we were supposed to Fail or Succeed, but get that the wrong way round and it's a two-hour wait. We were fortunate enough to have some Commanders guesting from another server where that had happened, or rather where the event had, as they bitterly described it, "been trolled" .

On the right target for once

Our guests were unimpressed with our zerg, which had mustered perhaps thirty or forty people. It was big enough to spawn the Champions required but too small to kill them efficiently. Apparently their own server is already in the habit of bringing three hundred workers to this particular farm. They were also critical of our rotation and our naming conventions, which again have apparently already been codified and set in statute on their home server in less than a week.

This is but the latest revolution in a repeating cycle in which ArenaNet introduces a change that is seen by a significant proportion of the playerbase as a quick and dirty route to loot. It began with the Fractals, which differed slightly in that the driver was loot you couldn't get anywhere else, then moved to the Dragons and now to Champions. Interspersed or layered on top are the limited duration hotspots like the Southsun riots and the current Crown Pavilion.

I'm the last person to say this kind of gameplay isn't fun and people certainly seemed to be having a good time, as was I with the best part of a bottle of red inside me, but I do have to wonder why it's only become fun now that there's a substantial material reward tagged on the end. After all, exactly the same gameplay was available two weeks ago but absolutely no-one was interested in doing it back then.

In 2010 Mike O'Brien, President of ArenaNet, published the GW2 Design Manifesto. In the opening paragraph he wrote "We believe that gamers want to try new things, new experiences, and that they’ll reward the companies who can bring them something new."

Or you could just let them run around smashing loot pinatas. That works too.