What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love And Understanding? : GW2

Tuesday's patch brought a nice little extra to GW2. Apparently there was some kind of competition to design weapon skins and this week the winning entries were added to the game in the form of three new "collections".

I saw it in the update notes on Tuesday but it wasn't until last night that I got around to checking whether Dulfy had a guide yet. Of course she did. She's Dulfy, isn't she?

The whole thing begins in Lion's Arch,. The first time you zone in you receive an in-game mail asking you to help with some crazed Asura's experiments. This sort of thing happens a lot. Apparently killing a couple of dragons and a god or two puts you on speed-dial with every mad scientist in Rata Sum, which is to say the entire population.

First off you have to slap together some easy-to-find bits and bobs and throw them into the Mystic Toilet Forge, where Zamorros has nothing better to do than hammer them together and spit out the very thing you need - an Ectoplasm-Infused Vision Crystal.

Consuming this lets you see ghosts. Like that's hard. Something that stopped you seeing ghosts would be more like it, especially in Ascalon. Anyway, I did it, then off I went to Fields of Ruin, where I spoke to a ghost called Xeniph.

Because I'd needed to craft a Lesser Vision Crystal for the combine, and because to do that you need to be 500 skill in Leathercraft, Tailoring or Armorcrafting, I happened to be playing my Ranger. He's a max-level Weaponsmith and Leatherworker and also a Charr.

Fields of Ruin, for those who don't play GW2, or who do and don't care to clutter up their brian cells with the convoluted lore and history of Tyria, is a flashpoint for ongoing tension between Charr and Humans. Ebonhawke, the city there, is frequently beset by bomb-throwing human separatists who reject Queen Jennah's treaty with the Charr Empire.

The conversation between Xeniph, who presumably died during the Charr-Human war, and my Charr ranger referred quite particularly not just to the historical context but to the fact that the dead human was now talking to a live Charr. I was somewhat taken aback by the intimacy but it was effective in drawing me into the narrative, something it did more successfully than the Living Story has managed these last few chapters.

It was intriguing enough that I'm curious to see how different the conversations are from a human perspective. And then probably an Asura, just for a control. Lucky I have three accounts.

The collection itself didn't take very long. A lot of people were there doing it, including three people tagged up either as Commanders or Mentors. There were helpful instructions being called in map chat and a mesmer was porting to the only awkward location, a tower in the middle of the map's jumping puzzle.

The whole thing took me maybe 45 minutes You could probably do it in half that. The final reward is
an Exotic Longsword with selectable stats. It looked like all the current stat options were available, which makes it very worthwhile for any Level 80 class that uses LS and hasn't got an Ascended version already.

The skin itself is about par for the GW2 course. Ridiculously oversized, ornate to a fault and very glowy. It is a nice blue color, I'll give it that. I might use it on my Mesmer. It definitely looks more suited to a caster than a melee.

The other two weapons are a one-hand sword and a torch. I'll be getting those as well. These short collections are fun and the dialog for this one was interesting. The torch skin is quite peculiar, too. I might use it on a necro.

Once again the amuse-bouche proves more satisfying than the main course.

Playing It By Ear: GW2

Last weekend ANet threw open the gates to the Crystal Desert. Metaphorical gates only. Not, sadly, the actual, huge gates that stand so imposingly and implacably outside the city of  Ebonhawke.

Those massive gates were constructed on the orders of Queen Jennah to bar the route southwards through the desert to Elona, after Destiny's Edge's attempt to kill the Elder Dragon, Kralkatorrik, failed. A more egregious example of bolting the stable doors after the dragon has bolted is hard to imagine.

It takes some beating in the desperate face-saving stakes, too. Having wrecked a perfectly good plan that would have worked if she'd held her nerve, having gotten Snaff killed and half of Ascalon Branded, Jennah apparently thought a big public works project was all it would take to restore confidence in her judgment and authority.

Even as I write this, I find it quite astonishing how annoyed - almost angry - I get just thinking about it all, particularly Logan's desperately poor decision-making and Jennah's imperious arrogance.

Herein lies one of GW2's huge problems: the much-maligned story has huge emotional heft if - and only if - it has been experienced in media outside of the game. By the standards of genre literature (far less those of literature per se) the novel in which all this happens, Edge of Destiny, is little more than a classic potboiler. The prose style is professional in the way of competent work made for hire and it zips along like the shooting script for a movie. No claims could be made on its behalf beyond efficiency and purity of function but those are claims that far outstrip anything ever seen in the story within the game itself.

Nevertheless, I have a strong and lasting affinity to certain characters in the milieu, purely because I read that unexceptional novel. It's why I share Rytlock's deep distrust and suspicion of Logan. It's why I do not trust Jennah in any way, shape or form. It's why I feel Zojja's entirely justified bitterness and anger and it's why I have more faith and affection for Caith than anything she's ever been seen to have done in the Living Story could possibly support.

It goes on. Others, who played through Guild Wars Campaigns over the years (and no doubt read and absorbed a deal of out-of-game lore and story, too), have had little patience or sympathy with the raft of new characters introduced to supersede the familiar faces from that era. The emotional attachments they developed to the characters and lore that ANet, apparently intentionally, chose either to ignore or, worse, to trash in favor of an entirely new cast and direction remain far stronger than any bonds the new, in-game material has been able to forge .

It's taken years for even a grudging affection for one or two of those new actors to build. Possibly only Taimi has a real following, even now. Canach, maybe. The best the rest achieve is tolerance. Maybe some curiosity. Jory and Kas, for example, have one of those soap-opera relationships that make you feel guilty for wanting to know how it's going to turns out (badly, of course). You want to look away but you can't.

All of that keys in to why it is that I've wanted to go through those Ebonhawke gates ever since I first saw them, barred to me, five years ago. When we learned the Path of Fire lay in the same direction I thought we might start our journey there but it seems that's not to be. Instead, we're set to take yet another cut-scene trip on yet another unfeasibly buoyant airship.

All of this went through my mind as I sorted the screenshots from this week's Path of Fire beta. Yes, there's another one. You may have missed it. I nearly did, albeit intentionally. For this one no airships are involved, let alone any opening gates.

It all takes place in either PvP or WvW zones, where you can trial the new Elite weapon skills and specifications for each class. I wasn't going to bother with it at all until I read Jeromai's post, in which he tells us he's not "super keen" either, then goes on to write over two thousand detailed, insightful words about his experience. My interest very mildly piqued I thought I might as well at least take a quick glance...

The first surprise was the loading screen, shown at the top of this post. I'd completely forgotten that ANet recently revamped the entire PvP lobby. Instead of a long-familiar scrubby afterthought it's now as visually sumptuous as any other GW2 location, It has waypoints and POIs and everything. Make GW2 another one to add to Massively OP's list of MMOs obsessed with floating islands.

Distracted, I wandered about exploring for a while looking at the old new stuff before getting around to looking at the new new stuff. I am not going to say much about the PoF elites in any detail - Jeromai covered that already - but I am going to echo his tone, when he says

... the prospect of having to learn too many new tricks is a little scary and intimidating, and not a little depressing...

Yes, it's all a bit much, isn't it? I mean, I love the chaotic rush of a new MMO expansion, when all the old certainties get thrown into the air and come down in tatters and for a brief, breathless while no-one knows any better than anyone else, but there's always a hangover after that party..

That iconoclasm is the good part (the best of which I will miss this time round because the pot will be four days off the boil by the time I get a taste). The less-good comes with the construction of the New Certainties that have to last us for the next two years, or at least until some nervous dev pulls the nerf alarm.

At some point, probably a lot sooner than I'd like, there will be a new Meta for every class. In GW2, that's not merely a metaphor: there will actually be an official New Meta. It will be posted at MetaBattle and you will be asked by any number of authority figures (Guild Leaders, Raid Organizers, WvW Commanders) to go read it and apply it to your character.

Therafter, if you choose to ignore such advice, you will be "off meta" and can expect to be treated accordingly. If you want to get old-style groups - although probably the only place that happens nowadays is for Fractals, I guess - or if you want to raid or do ranked PvP or run with a "serious" WvW guild, there will be homework. And practice.

Fortunately, GW2 remains an extremely open, forgiving environment for mavericks, self-starters, bullheads and slackers. If you solo, you can forget the Meta - any Meta - entirely; it means absolutely nothing to you; carry on as you were, no-one cares. Also, if you play GW2 as originally intended, hot-joining Dynamic Events, being a good ant, very little will change there, either. In the Zerg no-one knows your name - or your build.

The anonymity of crowds doesn't just apply to PvE. In five years of increasingly obsessive WvW play I have never, ever, not one single time, been called out for having the wrong build, class, gear or playstyle. People say it happens but I've never seen it happen to anyone, let alone experienced it myself.

It's not that there's no drive for efficiency. Commanders frequently ask for people to swap to, say, Guardians or Eles because they don't have as many as they'd like. And people do swap, willingly. I've just never heard any Commander ask a specific individual to change when they didn't want to anyway.

Certainly no-one has ever whispered me to suggest I stop running around as an Engineer, firing my Flamethrower randomly in all directions (as I do on my third account sometimes) and swap instead to a class or build that might actually be useful. Or even, failing that, swap to a class I have at least the shadow of an inkling how to play.

Consequently, I'm not going to go as far as Jeromai and say I feel intimidated or depressed by the new elites but I did find myself feeling a little ennui as I tried to read through the new Elementalist line, The Weaver. There's such a lot there to take in. Really, such a lot. I'm not sure I remember signing up for extra tuition.

Recent discussion on GW2 in this part of the Blogosphere has circled around how much more complex an MMO it is than it first appears. You don't by any means have to know or understand anything more than the absolute basics; you can play the game enjoyably without knowing much at all about builds or synergies, but it's becoming ever more apparent that if you do know those things, the game gets quite a lot easier.

There's a nuance to this that we all seem to miss. Jeromai alerted me to it when he described playing an Elementalist or an Engineer in GW2 as being "like playing the piano".

When we argue about what "playing" MMOs means, as we often do, the discussion tends to focus on the balance or imbalance between the dual concepts of play as "fun" and as "game"; no-one ever seems to notice that "play" has that third meaning.

Playing almost any video game is directly analogous to playing a musical instrument. It only takes a few minutes to pick up the basics but countless hours to become a virtuoso. Just to achieve basic competence requires dedication and practice and if you want to play in a group - well, you'll need to rehearse together.

Raids in MMOs add the possibility of playing in an orchestra and require the same degree of discipline. GW2's huge, sprawling open map events are more forgiving. Like the Rockin' 1000, the zerg can carry a few passengers and if one or two are off the beat, well, who's ever going to know?.

At a glance, though, getting to grips with a new PoF Elite spec doesn't look so much like learning a new tune as picking up a new instrument entirely. I don't know that I'm up for that. I can knock out a few tunes on the old elementalist joanna but I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to take up the harpsichord just yet!

Which isn't to say it doesn't all look rather intriguing. In the detail of The Weaver I see a lot of Stability uptime as well as some 50% super-speed and a lot of auto-condi cleanse. As someone who specializes in being slippery and not getting caught, that has real potential I'm keen to explore.

Just not yet. I'm going to skip this beta. I'm interested, yes, but I'm in no hurry. I think I'll wait until the music starts - for real.

This Land Is Our Land: GW2

Way back in April when we picked Yak's Bend as our server for the first Guild Wars 2 beta weekend, we didn't just pull a name out of a hat. Yak's Bend is where the world begins to open out in the original game, the point at which, after days of desperate struggle, hard-fought every yard through Charr hordes that never stop coming, at last you find a moment to catch your breath.

See this bend? This bend is mine.

Two abiding memories from the first run through the original Guild Wars are my complete shock on the fall of Ascalon and my immense sense of relief on reaching Yak's Bend. I played GW1 from launch but buying it was a late and somewhat spontaneous decision. I'd read little about it and had no foreknowledge of the plot. I loved pre-Searing Ascalon from the moment I arrived there and had no idea it would be snatched away from me so soon.

Come Guild Wars 2, I was always going to play a Charr. From the moment I realized, years after wading hip-deep through Charr blood with Prince Rurik, they were cats not demons as I'd thought, I was forced to re-evaluate and from that moment on there was no choice. Still, I didn't imagine I'd get what I'd always wanted; Ascalon back.

The orange is nice but I preferred it how you had it before

There are people, crazy people, who stay in pre-Searing Ascalon until they're fully grown. These are the Iron Men and Women of Guild Wars, ennobled with a title: Legendary Defender of Ascalon. Here's what they went through to earn that name. When players unfamiliar with the elder game question the design ethos behind GW2's Legendary Weapons, behavior like this is a factor they may not have taken into account.

Read it and weep, human.

I tried it once. I got to level 12 before I came to my senses. Life is quite literally too short. I gave up any hope of living in the eternal summer of pre-searing Ascalon. How ironic, then, that the door to that lost past should be re-opened by the same Charr who slammed it shut in my face all those years ago.

Go North-East from Lion's Arch and there, between the Shiverpeak and Blazeridge mountain ranges lies Ascalon. From Black Citadel, the great Charr capital built on the ruins of the human city of Rin, east through the Plains of Ashford to Blazeridge Steppes and north across the Diessa Plateau through the Iron Marches to Fireheart Rise, the Charr hold it all.

Being a cow doesn't give you a pass on training

Um, over here?

Every step is filled with wonder. The high summer idyll of the pre-Searing has ripened into an eternal Autumn, the fall after The Fall. The colors burnish with copper and gold, red poppies flag against the sunburned grasslands, white clouds mass the bluing sky. Ascalon is a land patched by farms, ribboned with ruins, haunted by ghosts figurative and literal. Its lakes are blue and deep, its caves dark and beckoning. There's treasure everywhere.

Out of these golden lands rise the cobalt holdings of the Charr. With all the dwarves gone Charr engineering stands unchallenged (quiet now, that Asura at the back...). Rather than scars or blisters, these massive edifices fit the land like giant puffballs, muted bluetones melding into the umber, soft curves blending into rolling hills, jagged edges natural as thornbriar.

This beautiful country has its dangers. Ghosts and devourers rise from the ground, bandits and revolutionaries bar the paths, ogres and harpies cleave to their own wild ways and may the gods that don't exist have mercy if you cross them. The Dredge, the Grawl, the Skritt pursue their own oblique agendas. Still, these are lands that can be explored with pleasure, if with care.

You can laugh now but in fifty years they'll be listed

Some must fight so all can live, as they say, but maybe not right now. Unlike Orr and the south, across Ascalon there is time to stop and take a look around between battles, to lie down in the long grass once in a while and rest.

Even the dragon, The Shatterer, had the good sense to set the mark of his Lordship on these lands with a scar instead, like Zhaitan, of flinging all to chaos. The Brand runs livid in the purples of a bruise across the back of Ascalon, but the Branded, unlike the Risen, keep to their rut.

Could have sworn I heard an Asura...

At the southern limit of the Charr's influence, Ascalon's, maybe Tyria's, loveliest city waits. Ebonhawke, thick-walled fortress with its wide streets going down to grass feels old as its honey stone. Saved the brash assertion of Rata Sum or the wild imagining of Lion's Arch, Ebonhawke stands more solid, evokes more empathy than either.

Does no-one in Ebonhawke own a scythe?

To the far North autumn gives way to winter as it must. Despite thick fur, Charr are cats and do not like the cold. The Norn may have the snow and welcome. As for the Baelfire, let the Flame Legion skulk among the cinders there, planning their plans. Few would envy them. No, the Charr fought for the heart of Ascalon, and now they have it, revel in it and will hold it long.

Had Guild Wars 2 been only Ascalon and only Charr I would have been more than satisfied. I am more than satisfied.

Orr Is A Bore: GW2

Azuriel over at In An Age has been doing due diligence and taking another run at GW2. I think it's fair to say he's not enjoying it much more than he did the first time. Which is absolutely fine. Everyone doesn't have to like everything and what a dull world it would be if we were all the same, wouldn't it, my little one? Lawks-a-mussy!

Ahem...getting back to the point, Azuriel alludes to something mentioned by several people (I was one) in his comments section: "a lot of people are suggesting that the zones/enemies/storylines get dumber the farther South you go". Which puts a finger neatly on one of Guild Wars 2's real problems: Orr.

I vaguely remember reading about Orr before launch. How it was where all the promise of the Dynamic Event system would bear fruit, how it was GW2's equivalent of raiding, how it was going to be a step-change from the rest of the game, which was really only there to prepare you for Orr. Yadda yadda and indeed yadda.


There's a good discussion at GW2Guru which goes over most of what's wrong with Orr in some detail. The thread's called "I Hate Orr" but there are posters there who don't and make a fair case. Everyone, different, see above.

I don't hate Orr but I dislike it enough that I've been there just twice. I'd say that having three large maps at launch, which quite few people visit once or twice and cross off their list of "Places I'd Like To See Again" is a fundamental problem.

Issues that I have with Orr from just those couple of quick visits include:

• It's frickin' ugly, especially the lighting and color scheme.
• It's chock-full of the same mobs over and over and over again.
• Mob density is overcooked.
• There's far too much of it.

To sum up, it's laborious, unattractive and somewhat dull. It's not, as has been claimed, particularly hard or testing. I didn't find it significantly slower to open up than any other map, nor did I die any more often. It's just not very entertaining.

I didn't stay long enough to confirm whether the other big complaint is true, namely that for such a supposedly important area, nothing much that matters happens there. I also have sufficient concern for my blood-pressure not even to have attempted the underwater parts which by most accounts are truly awful.

Orr wasn't all bad. The undead chickens made me laugh out loud. The way the dead Zhaitan raised carry on their now meaningless lives is mildly affecting. I may even go back for another look, some day, although it's a long way to go just to laugh at a chicken. As an aspirational set of end-of-game zones, though? I don't think so.

Since I'm not there I can't estimate from experience how well-used Orr is. Is it busy down south? Let's hope not, because if and when we get new maps it's going to be a disappointment if ArenaNet attempt to emulate or even outdo Orr in "difficulty" and "challenge".

There's been no word that I've seen on what part of the map might open next, but my money's on Crystal Desert. In Ebonhawke the guards at the Southern Gate are already fielding questions from interested adventurers:

Let's just hope that when that gate does open there's something more interesting behind it than a barren wasteland filled with mindless husks.

Coming Next: How It Should Be Done or "North with the Charr!"

Ebonhawke, The Hard Way: GW2

Some people are diligently filling out their hearts, finding every point of interest, viewing every vista, making certain nothing's missed before they leave a map (which is what we must now learn to call what we've known as  zones for all of recorded history) and move on. I'm...not doing that.

Last night  in Gendarran Fields my ranger dinged 30. I opened the map to waypoint to somewhere and do something or other when I just happened to notice, way down in the bottom south-eastern corner, the faint white numbers "30-40". Must be an omen. All the other maps around my level are 25 - 35 but here's the Goldilocks zone. Hadn't I better go there right now and check it out?

It was a plan with but one flaw: there didn't appear to be any rational way to get there. So far, every map in Tyria has been contiguous with another of the level below it, allowing a logical, natural progression. This appears to be about the only place where that's not happening.

The map to the west is a non-map called Deldrimor Front, a place that exists in the world but not in the game. To the north-west it abuts the edge of Plains of Ashford, but there appears to be a solid mountain range between them. It seems the only possible access is from the north, through Blazeridge Steps, a map flagged 40-50.

Waypoint, meet Portal

I couldn't see enough detail, really any detail, on the in-game map with its fog-of-war and pastel crayon styling so I turned to the invaluable interactive map at Guild Wars 2 Cartographers. Using that I could see all the connections clearly. I waypointed to Duskrend Overlook, the most westerly waypoint in Plains of Ashford and lo and behold, right next to it is a portal to Blazeridge Steps. How I ever missed it when I opened the waypoint I can't begin to imagine.

As is the way in Tyria, another waypoint stands just across the border. Unfortunately, it's the only one between me and where I wanted to go. My first run got me about half-way before some sort of air-strike painted a red circle around me and sent me in one hit back to The Last Whiskey Bar. (That's the name of the waypoint, not some cheesy metaphor for death, by the way).

I dusted myself off for another run. This time I got 90% of the way, hugging the zone wall like the good old days in Kithicor. Unfortunately some devourers live on the far end of that wall and I dithered a moment too long before jinking to the left as I should have done.

At this point it should have been back to the bar. I was, as usual, lying in the dirt contemplating the map and thinking along these very lines when the now-familiar words appeared on my screen: "A noble soul is trying to revive you".

Room at the Inn?

Much is being made of the social nature of GW2, how the game systems encourage and re-enforce co-operative behavior. It's all true. This particular good samaritan not only revived me, he revived me again when I died again about 5 seconds later and a third time when I died ten seconds after that, trying to make the lip of the ridge where I could drop down out of the devourer nest I'd fallen into. Like The Lone Ranger he didn't wait to be thanked, just did good and was gone.

By the kindness of strangers I was able to stagger on without further fatality to reach the tunnel that took me from the deadly Blazeridge into the merely dangerous Fields of Ruin. Here the creatures only took three-quarters of my health and killed my faithful Wolf-Bear as I ran full-pelt for the signs of civilization I could see in the deep south.

And what civilization! Not only is Fields of Ruin indeed a perfect place for a ranger just turned thirty, it's the hinterland of a full-scale city. I was quite literally open-mouthed to find myself in the Stronghold of Ebonhawke, a fortified city of such size and detail as to dwarf the capital cities of most MMOs. It's almost as though ArenaNet are showing off.

Oh, and what should I find inside the Stronghold but an Asura Gate. And where does that Asura Gate lead? Divinity's Reach. So that 30-40 map does have a level-appropriate access route after all. But where's the fun in that?