This, That And The Other.

A bit of a grab-bag today, I'm afraid. I'm not really feeling it for long, involved treatises at the moment, which is probably just as well. Then again, I also haven't come up with any clever new ideas for short, pithy posts, so it's just going to be a little bit of what I've done and what I've read.

And mostly what I've done is get my Charr Engineer in Guild Wars 2 set up as a Mechanist, the new elite specialization for her class that comes with End of Dragons. I mentioned I was working on her in the post on planning but at the time about all I'd done was spend the points. That's the easy part.

Yesterday I got down to the detail. I went to Metabattle to look for a build. As I may have mentioned about a hundred times, I find making and changing builds every bit as compelling a piece of content as camping a two-hour spawn for a rare drop. Actually, not even that compelling. At least if the drop does finally drop there's a moment of euphoria before the grim realization of just how much time you wasted sets in.

My dislike of builds puts me in an odd position in regard to Metabattle and sites like it. In theory I kinda, sorta disapprove of them. They're somewhere in there with all the other forces that push mmorpg gameplay towards some kind of bland, cloned efficiency. It drives originality, whimsy and quirkiness to the perifery, whereas I'd like those sorts of behaviors to be right in the center.

On the other hand, they are really useful and they save a whole lot of time. When it's something I don't find fun to do the long-winded way, it's extremely easy to overlook the implications of taking a shortcut. 

In this particular instance I felt happier than usual about doing it because it's far too soon for any genuine "meta" to have coalesced. All we have so far are are suggestions. The build I followed, the Power Mechanist, is in the "Draft" section and so far just one person has voted on it. They did give it the full five stars, though.

I was drawn to it by the description: "Power Mechanist is a simple build that offers very high damage. It is exceptionally easy to play and is one of the best generalist options for open world farming currently."I especially like the part that says "exceptionally easy to play."

Naturally, I couldn't resist fiddling about with it. I didn't like the sound of the bomb kit much. I remember using that many years ago and finding it both exciting and unreliable. I stuck the speed signet in that slot instead and resolved to stick with my trusty rifle.

I did go with the suggestions for gear, more or less, which led me to a typically bitty, frustrating crafting session as I tried to remember which of my characters was the Leatherworker and then who had all the mats. Despite GW2's nominally excellent material storage, there's always something you need for Ascended gear that isn't where it's supposed to be.

In the end I opted for a mix of Ascended and Exotic gear, using some Ascended chests I had lying around, unopened, in the bank. They had the wrong stats, of course, so that meant making all the relevant items to throw into the Mystic Forge to change them to the stats I needed, namely Berserker (It's almost always Berserker for me, even now.)

After that I had to find which Guild's vault I'd used to store my runes and sigils and then of course it turned out I only had five Scholar runes so I had to buy a sixth on the Trading Post. Eventually I got it all done. It took me a couple of hours, including the most important part of all, coming up with an appropriate new look.

As the screenshots in the previous posts and this one show, the new look is radically different. As an Engineer, this character has always fancied herself something of a cool customer, clad in black leather and looking like she means business. As a Mechanist she's show-offy, stylish, even a little bit glam rock.

The gloves, which I think look great, come as a reward for becoming a Mechanist in the first place. All the rest are things I had unlocked in the wardrobe except for the rifle and shield, both of which come from the End of Dragons Saltspray set. I bought them on the TP for a few silver.

As you can see in one of the shots, but not, for some reason, in the one at the top of the post, which is from the login screen, I've given her orange, glowing eyes. I don't usually go for that look, which is very commonly seen in GW2, but the colors went perfectly and it seemed to fit the quasi-robotic theme.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with how she's turned out. Now I just have to learn how to play her.

New World

Following on from another recent post, I spent a couple of hours in New World today. The postponed patch has landed and as far as I can tell hasn't totally wrecked the game. Yet. 

I wanted to find one of the Easels for the new pictures you can put in your house but so far no luck. I was hoping they'd be marked on the map but if they are can't see them. I also didn't happen across any of the new random roadside encounters and the Level 40 Group Instance that was blocking me from continuing with the Main Story Quest is still in my journal. It hasn't been converted to a solo option. Boo!

On the plus side, the linked storage seems to be working. I completed a quest in Monarch's Bluff using some timber I pulled out of the storage in Weaver's Fen and it didn't cost me a coin. Even more positively, I had a great time running around Aeternum. I remembered very quickly why I enjoyed myself there so much for so long last year. 

I dinged 55, cleaning out some old quests and I feel moderately motivated to motor through to sixty. Fast travel and linked storage make the game feel considerably more like a regular mmorpg, something about which I have mixed feelings. I'm very glad I got to play before they changed it but as has always been the case for me, having had my chance to do it the slow way when everything was new and exciting, I'm more than happy to do it the fast way now it's familiar and routine.

A couple of other things of minor note to mention before I move on from New World. For some reason, all my Achievements had been reset. It was just a mouse-click to restore them at the game's prompt but I have no idea why it was necessary. Also there's a free bear-skin rug in the cash shop. I've claimed it but my rent hasn't been paid so I haven't placed it yet. Something to look forward to next time!

And finally, The Metaverse. Oh, god, not that again!

Don't worry. It's just a couple of links. I expect most people reading this would have already seen Andrew Ross's summary of the GDC 2022 panel entiteld “A Brave New (Virtual) World: Ethics and Governance of XR and the Metaverse” over at MassivelyOP. It's an interesting, if occasionally hard to follow, read. 

Less likely to have been spotted but even more interesting is this piece at The Atlantic by Ethan Zuckerman from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It's well worth reading not just because of the good sense Prof. Zuckerman talks about the Metaverse and what it can and can't be but also for a whole lot of historical detail about the kinds of proto-metaverse platforms that existed anything up to a quarter of a century ago.

It certainly wasn't news to me that we'd seen all of this before but it's very satisfying to see it laid out in chapter and verse with links to the evidence. This one, particularly, looks worth investigating further. It's the write-up of something called The Metaverse Roadmap Summit, which took place in 2006 and featured, among others, our good friend Raph Koster.

And finally, one more from The Atlantic. Dating back to late last year, this one goes under the provocative title "The Metaverse Is Bad." It's an extreme position, to be sure, but I suspect what the author really means is "Facebook's version of the Metaverse is bad" and no-one's going to argue with that.

No Plan Survives Contact With The Inner Me

Belghast's Damascene conversion to Guild Wars 2 has finally confirmed something I first began to suspect back when both he and I were playing New World and blogging about it: Belghast is the anti-Bhagpuss! I don't mean we're some kind of elemental forces that, should we ever meet, would react so explosively the fabric of space-time would be rent in twain, more like we approach the same games in diametrically opposite ways. It only goes to show how flexible the genre is and also how there's no right or wrong way to play an mmorpg.

Bel's post today is a great example of what I mean. He's been playing GW2 as a convert for just a few weeks and he's already talking about "the What Now problem". Granted, his point is that Guild Wars 2 always seems to have something new to do, but as I read his posts it's clear he's already done more in those few weeks than I managed in years.

Having things to do has rarely been an issue for me when I play. It took six or seven years of playing daily before I really began to run out of steam and then it had nothing to do with there not being anything left I hadn't already done. Even now, as we come up to the game's tenth anniversary, there's far more left in the game that I haven't done than there are things I have.

Let's see. What core game activities have I never done at all, not even once?

• Map Completion.
• Legendary Weapons.
• Legendary Armor.
• Skyscale Mount Collection.

And what have I barely touched in something like 12,000 hours? (8k on one account - haven't checked the others but they have to be at least half that - maybe more...)

• Personal Story on twenty of my twenty-one characters.
  
• Most of the Elite Specialist Weapons collections from Heart of Thorns.
• Most of the Elite Classes from Path of Fire.
• Almost all Fractals.
• More than half of the original Dungeons.
• The overwhelming majority of all collections of any kind.

And many, many more things I can't bring to mind because I've either completely forgotten about them or I never knew they existed in the first place.

Things I have done include

• Finished the personal story on one character, my original ranger. It took me about eight years but I got there in the end. Not that I particularly wanted to.
• Maxed all crafting classes, some of them twice (On different accounts.) even though most of them are next to useless.
• Ranked up over 2000 times in WvW. Currently I'm a Gold Major. That's almost exactly halfway up the ladder in terms of titles although only a quarter of the way in terms of experience required. Mrs Bhagpuss hit the same point sometime around 2015.
• Saved 17,000 gold, enough to buy nearly 60,000 Gems at current exchange rates. 60k Gems would cost over £600.
• Hoarded vast stores of materials across three accounts, enough to double my personal fortune if I sold them on the Trading Post.

And I've had nearly a decade of all-but-free entertainment. That's probably the most important thing.

At this point I could claim I never make plans or set goals in mmorpgs. Sometimes I do like to give that impression. I think it makes me sound cool, which is something only a deeply uncool person would ever think, let alone say out loud. And it's not even true, anyway.

What I really do is make plans all the time and then forget I've made them or lose interest in them before they get going or put them aside after I've started and never pick up from where I left off. I quite like having a plan but unless it's something I can complete in a session or two there's every chance I'll just abandon it in favor of something else long before I get to the end.

Guild Wars 2 is both good and bad in that regard. As Bel says, there's an incredible number of things you could be working on at any one time. You'd need to be pretty determined to tick every last box the game puts in front of you. 

On the other hand, many of the activities presented involve what seems to me to be a positively horrific level of commitment. For me, they can all-too-frequently feel, quite literally, too daunting even to start, let alone finish. 

Take the Skyscale mount, for example. I would quite like to have one of those. They're ugly and annoying but inarguably useful. I have thought about doing the collection a few times but when I read up what's required I lose the virtual will to live. 

Other collections I've not been able to bring myself to do, even though I'd quite like the end result, include Mawdrey, the craftable Ascended back item that also salvages bloodstone dust (Okay, technically Mawdrey II does that part but you get them as a twofer so it's a moot point.) and the WvW Legendary Armor. That one's so long I feel ill just thinking about it.

Sometimes it's not even the time and effort that puts me off. I have most of the necessary items for a few pieces of that Legendary Armor, for example, and almost everything for several Legendary Weapons. I just can't imagine using them if I had them so it seems like a waste to burn the very valuable materials making them.

Mostly, though, it is the time and effort. Even things I've already proved I can do and which I genuinely enjoyed at the time lose a lot of their appeal when I come to do them a second or third time. I had plans to do all the HoT Elite Spec Ascended weapons, for example, and I said on this blog that I was going to make all the variants of the Ascended weapon Caladbolg. 

For years I've also been planning to do the collection for Princess for the third time so I have one on all my accounts. So far I still haven't managed to make myself do it. I did three or four of the HoT weapons before I ran out of enthusiasm, which might be my best effort ever. I still own just the one Caladbolg. 

So, as you can see, it's not plans I lack, it's discipline. When I do finish a project it's usually something I've started on a whim. It's the surge of energy that comes from an ad hoc decision that carries me though. 

That's pretty much how I ended up with map completion on all the End of Dragons maps. I just got fired up with how much fun it was and didn't want to stop. Map completion is per character, though, and I can already tell it's not going to be anything like as much fun the second time so my Elementalist may end up being the only character with all the Cantha maps completely free of fog.

This afternoon, with no forethought whatsoever, I made my Engineer, who I never play, into a Mechanist. I can't even remember how it started but somehow I found myself running round Dragons End, Echovald Forest and New Kaineng City grabbing easy Hero Points to fill out the skill wheel. 

It took me a couple of hours. Now I have a Jade Mech and a whole load of skills I have no idea how to use. 

In the course of doing it, I discovered only my Ele can use zip lines and mana batteries, despite the Mastery for them being account-wide. When I found my Engineer couldn't zip up a tower, I went and looked some stuff up and now I realise there's a whole upgrade path for Jade Bots I never knew existed, including various modules and power cores you can craft, buy or find as drops. I'd just been using the one you get from the story without even realizing it was the basic, minimal version.

The benefits of upgrading look substantial so now I have a plan to get my Ele's Jade Bot fully upgraded and then maybe do the same for any other characters I play regularly. We'll see if it actually happens.

As Bel says, though, GW2 is a bit of a smorgasbord. I'm happy to pick away at whatever looks good just as the fancy takes me. The great thing about the game is that, while there's an awful lot you might want, there's very little you actually need. 

It's nice to have plans but it's a lot nicer knowing you don't have to do anything about them.

I'm Going To Need A Bigger Boat

Less than two weeks after the launch of Guild Wars 2's third expansion, End of Dragons, I find myself in the unexpected position of feeling as if I've almost finished it. Given that it took ArenaNet nearly four and a half years to produce and that they've only managed three expansions in a decade, that would present a serious problem for me as a regular player. If it was true.

It's not true, of course. As I said, it just feels that way. It's just that I seem to have done a lot by this stage, compared to what I remember from the first two expansions. So far, I've

• Finished the storyline.
• Got the 250 Hero Points required to open all the skills on the new Elementalist specialization, Catalyst.
• Completed map exploration on two of the four new maps, with the third almost finished.
• Gained enough Mastery Points to complete the full Mastery lines for the three that interest me, Fishing, Skiff Piloting and Jade Bots

For many GW2 players that would barely count as a scratch on the surface but for me it already completes most of the vague goals I had in mind when the expansion launched. I'm not really a "goals" kind of player but even I need some kind of loose framework to keep my whims and fancies in check.

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the promotional push for EoD. I didn't watch any of the livestreams or follow any of the discussions on the forums or Reddit. I didn't play most of the so-called "betas" which, as far as I could see, consisted mostly of running around the live game exploiting a bunch of half-tested new abilities in whatever way would annoy other players as much as possible. I did try out the new Elementalist weapon, hammer, for all of five minutes but that was it.

Running flat-out!

Coming in, about all I knew about the storyline was the title of the expansion itself, which I figured had to be some kind of clue. I also knew we were getting some kind of boats called skiffs and that there would be fishing, possibly from those self-same skiffs. 

Other than that there would be an indeterminate number of new maps, I was guessing four or five, and a whole bunch of stuff I didn't give a damn about, like new Legendary weapons, the stupid turtle thing and some hub zone you were expected to waste time building up until it was nearly as good as whatever hub zone you were already in the habit of using.

The whole thing seemed less than thrilling. I figured I'd pick away at it over a few months, slowly fill out the few bits that interested me, then maybe, if it was any good, go back a few times with other characters over the next few years until ANet ponied up either a fourth expansion or Guild Wars 3.

What I didn't expect was to find the story both interesting and accessible enough that I wanted to finish it in a series of big bites. Nor was I imagining the maps would be so enjoyable to explore I'd find myself so close to map completion just poking around that it seemed rude not to finish.

Does the attitude come with the spec?

If I had any plans at all for becoming a Catalyst they revolved around playing World vs World enough to get the 250 points I needed there, which is what Mrs. Bhagpuss is doing. There's a handy vendor who sells them for the Testimonies of Jade Heroics you can get out of skirmish chests, dozens of which I stack up in a normal week's play anyway.

As for the Masteries, I liked the sound of the skiff and fishing seemed like something I might enjoy (Although I think, if we're honest, we'd probably all have to admit that fishing in most mmorpgs is hardly thrilling.) The one I was probably most interested in was the Jade Bot Mastery, if only for the on-call updraft it was supposed to add to gliding.

Based on my previous experiences, I didn't expect the mastery points to be all that difficult to come by but to get enough for three full masteries would, I thought, take either some time or some effort or most probably both. I seem to remember taking quite a few weeks to get enough points for the ones I wanted in HoT and working quite hard at it, too.

In retrospect, HoT, my benchmark for Masteries, now looks like something of an outlier. To fully complete all five Heart of Thorns mastery tracks requires 142 Mastery points. Path of Fire only asks for about half of that. End of Dragons probably comes between the two but a lot closer to PoF than HoT.

Someone really likes the idea of hiding mastery points on ledges. I  must have found a dozen at least.

If I sound uncertain on that it's because one of my End of Dragons' Mastery tracks is still locked. I do not have access to the Stupid Turtle. That suits me fine because I don't want the idiotic creature. I would rather have a Mastery track that allowed me to hide the damn thing on my screen when anyone else was using it. That would be a Mastery worth having!

As of now, Turtle Blight isn't a big problem in GW2. The big controversy of the expansion is the way access to the two-seater eyesore is gated behind the Dragon's End meta, a massive event that until several recent nerfs almost no-one could finish. Now it's been bug-fixed and toned down and a lot of people still can't finish it. Even if they can, then they have to do a hard mode strike mission...

From an entirely selfish point of view, that should at least keep the number of turtles to a manageable level for a while longer. They will be a huge problem when everyone has them. I saw my very first siege turtle at The Maw last night. The player riding it parked it right on the Shaman and it was so big you couldn't see the boss at all.

From an objective point of view, though, the hoops players are being asked to jump through to get the thing are ludicrous, something that seems to be a theme of the expansion. I looked at the Collection for the Catalyst specialist weapon today and was stunned to find out it requires you to complete the storyline as a Catalyst. 

 And if it can be in a hidden room off a ledge, even better!

Since I just completed the storyline as an Elementalist, that means I'd have to do the entire storyline again, on the same character! And then, if I wanted to get the specialist weapon for the other eight classes, I'd have to do the bloody thing eight more times!

Unsurprisingly, there's a thread about that, too. I would be surprised if there aren't adjustments to both issues over time, although ANet can be both extremely stubborn and glacially slow, so it might not be this year.

Luckily for me, neither issue is crucial or even tangential to my enjoyment of the game at the moment. It does speak badly of the underlying design, though, with many players already suspecting shenanigans. Like Wilhelm, I tend to favor cock-up over conspiracy but I guess we shouldn't really be surprised. In a game known for its soul-destroying grinds, what are a few more?

My own grind, such as it is, looks set to focus on xp, at least in the immediate future. I may have the Mastery Points I need, thirty-two of them at time of writing, but I also need another seven full bars of EoD experience to spend them all. Filling xp bars is something I enjoy so that's not likely to be a problem and seven "levels" shouldn't take more than a few sessions.

All worth having, I think, if only for the exta 2,500 hit points each one adds to your skiff. I've been sunk by sea creatures three times already today.

The real problem is going to be what then? I have a couple of minor goals - getting my two rangers their new pets, for example - and I guess I might fill out the mastery for that hub zone just for convenience. 

After that there's the question of which, if any, of the other classes I care enough about to get the Hero Points for the Specializations. I hear the Engineer spec, the Mechanist, is good. In fact, what I hear is that it's so good it's due a massive nerf. I should probably get that before ANet sand it down and take off all the sharp edges. 

If I'm realistic, though, despite having all the classes, some of them multiple times (There are eleven characters on my EoD account.) I spend about 90% of my time playing my Ele and I'm more than happy with the Tempest build she uses already. I just finished all the EoD content I listed above in that spec so why would I want to change it?

I do sometimes play one or other of my two rangers, one in the base game Ranger configuration, the other as a Druid, so I'll probably try the new Untamed spec for one of them. In fact, as I check on it now it seems that's required to get the new pets so I guess I'll have no choice but to get it for both.

Yes, it's a PoF pet. I only got it yesterday, four years late. It took EoD to remind I'd never gotten round to it.

That probably just leaves the Necromancer, whose new spec is the Harbinger, which is, at least, a decent name. I did try to play as both a Reaper and a Scourge, the two previous specs, but I got bored of both after a while and went back to Core Necro. Chances are the same will happen this time.

Other than going round and round the maps grabbing the same Hero Points over and over (Actually a more appealing prospect for me than I'm making it sound.) there's also Fishing to consider. If I'm bothering to master the skill, shouldn't I use it as well?

Fishing's one of those things, though, isn't it? It turns up in pretty much ever mmorpg ever made, eventually. If it's not there at the start you can bet someone will get around to adding it later. 

I first encountered it in EverQuest, where it was a single key press and a random result, a limitation that didn't stop most of us enjoying it anyway. EQ fishing got fleshed out a lot more later, with bait and tackle boxes and hooks and all sorts but it never turned into the kind of mini-game players expect in their mmorpgs today.

Finally! A use for all these jetties and piers.

GW2's fishing looks to be aligned with the industry standard. Lots of fish of different kinds and qualities, different baits and lures you can use, a variety of difficulties in sundry locations. You can use the fish for recipes and every new species you catch goes into a collection. 

Catching the fish or losing it depends on your skill with one of those mini-games I mentioned. It's about as enjoyable as any of them. I spent an hour or so fishing in various seas and lakes across Tyria this afternoon. I was planning on writing a whole post about it but then I ended up writing this one instead. In my experience that's what always happens when I sit down to write a post about fishing in an mmorpg. If anyone really wants to know how it works, I recommend this guide.

It was enough fun that I can imagine carrying long enough on to fill out those collections. That should keep me busy for a while. I think I have enough mini-goals to keep me going and no doubt new ones will occur to me as I play.

I don't think it'll be like Heart of Thorns, where I played non-stop, taking character after character through the maps and the weapon specs, but it's not going to be one and done like Path of Fire either. I think End of Dragons is settling down to be a nice, cosy, middle of the road experience, which I suppose is what you might have expected from an expansion that listed Fishing and Messing Around In Boats as two of its key features.

Just so long as you weren't expecting an easy ride on that turtle, I think it's going to be fine.

Hearth, Home, Hammer - Talking Myself Into The Latest Updates For Valheim And Guild Wars 2

It's surprising sometimes how the prospect of new content for a game you're playing doesn't set your heart racing the way you'd expect. Or my heart. I should say mine, I guess. Maybe it does yours. I wouldn't know. Do feel free to share with group in the comments.

Several games I play regularly have major updates or expansions on the way and my level of interest and excitement seems to be swinging wildly and unpredictably between them. 

I found myself unaccountably enthused by EverQuest II's relatively slight pre-expansion event this week, spending a couple of hours doing some very basic repeatable quests and getting my Swashbuckler the first twenty levels of artisan crafting required to set her on the path to becoming a master jeweller.

I could have done that at any time but somehow the spurious connection to an upcoming expansion I'm keen to play made it seem more appealing than just running through the familiar, albeit excellent, introductory tradeskill questline. 

Why I'm quite so keen to see EQII's Visions of Vetrovia but distinctly meh on Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons is a good question. I'm glad I asked it.

On paper, I ought to be more fired up for EoD. It's only GW2's third expansion while VoV is EQII's eighteenth (!). ArenaNet only make an expansion when NCSoft bully them into it whereas Daybreak pop one out every December whether you want it or not, like an elderly aunt knitting yet another pair of seasonal socks.

It's not even as though I can claim what's coming in Visions of Vetrovia is more to my taste. I have no idea what's in it. I can guess. It's probably "more of the same", but that just about describes what's in End of Dragons, too. 

I guess you could argue that means I like what EQII does more than what GW2 does but I don't think that would stand up to close scrutiny. I play more GW2, after all. I certainly complain a lot more about it, too, but mostly that's because ANet is roughly ten times the size of Darkpaw and I think they need to be held to a different level of expectation - and execution - entirely.

Based on what the EQII team does manage to get out, year after year, I can only imagine what they could do if they had ANet's resources. Of course, bitter experience suggests that, beyond a certain point, the more money and people an mmorpg has to play with, the less-satisfying the end result. And the longer it is before we see it. Just look at World of Warcraft. Or Star Citizen.

Small teams don't always mean great updates, though. Of course they don't. Valheim's much-hyped Hearth and Home is out today. I'm patching it as I type this. It's been half a year and more in the making and once again I'm struggling to summon up much enthusiasm for it. 

Oh, wait! I've patched it already. It was 180mb. It took about ten seconds. I forgot just how tiny Valheim's footprint is. I would log in to see what's in it but everything I've read so far has had the effect of making me less keen to play than before. 

I'll run through a few of the highlights. My favorite weapon, the bow, is getting a nerf because it's deemed to be overpowered. Guys? Guys??  That's why it's my favorite. 

Blocking gets a lot of attention, which is either not going to affect me at all or annoy me a lot. I never block in Valheim, never having found the need to and I definitely won't be happy if it turns out they've made it so I have to start.

You can name animals you tame. I've never tamed an animal. I thought about it but even though I like pet classes in other games, the methodology in Valheim didn't seem very appealing. I don't think not being able to name my boars before I slaughtered them was really at the root of my lack of interest.

I won't go through all the changes line by line. I'll save my commentary for when I've experienced the new build in person. If I do. I haven't logged into Valheim since May and I don't feel the urge to log in coming on now.

Part of that is that Valheim very much feels like a winter game to me. I played 380 hours of viking make-believe from February through April but as soon as the spring came I stopped. I will go back but it's still too warm and sunny outside just now. 

When I do, I'll have to decide whether to carry on from where I left off or start over from scratch. Developers Iron Gate are keen we should all do the latter. I should be happy, what with my long history of starting over (and over) on new servers in various mmorpgs but Valheim isn't an mmorpg. 

 

Among other things, it's a building game and I spent at least half of those 380 hours setting up my various homes and the portal network between them. That was, to a large extent, the point of it all. To drop all that just to see some new stuff , much of which I don't even want (I categorically guarantee I will never make my viking vomit.) seems like a big ask.

I'll might compromise by moving my levelled-up character to a fresh world and creating a new character for the old one. They only have to live there, after all. They won't need to do anything much. We'll see. I've kind of talked my own enthusiasm up just by writing this post.

Going back to GW2, my interest in End of Dragons got a small boost today with the release of the latest new Elite Specialization (aka sub-class or, as I would have it, Class). I haven't paid much attention to the five announced so far because although I have all of the classes the only ones I ever play with any attention are Ranger and Elementalist. 

Ranger is still under wraps but the new Elementalist spec is called the Catalyst (Bleh!) and the new weapon is the hammer (Yay!). The reason I like the choice of the hammer for the weapon is simple: you can see a hammer. 

To my mind, one of the huge problems GW2 has, as a game with a quasi-progression model based almost entirely on appearance, particularly the appearance of weapons, is that almost all the weapons are too small or too close to the body to stand out. Daggers, symbols, torches, scepters, focuses (Or focii, which no-one says.), warhorns... they're all hard to see, in or out of combat. Even axes, swords and shortbows don't really show up well.

Only the really big two-handers seem to make an impression: staffs (Or staves, which, again, no-one ever says.), greatswords and longbows are the only three weapons I ever bother with for looks because they're the only ones I can make out on screen. Also shields, I suppose, but shields are a terrible choice for anything other than looks.

I am oddly excited about the prospect of my three Eles bouncing around waving giant hammers, especially the two Asuras. I have quite a few unclaimed weapon chests in the bank, where I already had the staff, greatsword and longbow from the set and couldn't see any point in the rest. I'm going to go in and claim all the hammers from those!

There's a "beta" for the next three Elite Specs, Elementalist, Warrior and Revenant, coming soon. I didn't bother with the last one but I'll give this one a look. 

There's also a much more significant beta, one that deserves to go without the sarcastic quotes, for the long, long, long awaited (or feared) Alliances revamp for World vs World. The official post on that is epic in length, packed with detail and very well-judged in tone, two out of three of which are almost unheard-of in the sporadic, patchy history of ANet's communication with the WvW playerbase. 

I was very skeptical about the whole thing and I still am but I was also very cynical, which now I might not be, or not as much, at least. I still think it will most likely be a chaotic shambles but I'm willing to give the people working on it the benefit of the doubt: I now believe it will be a well-meaning chaotic shambles.

As with Valheim, I won't speculate further until I've seen it in person. The test starts next Friday (Not tomorrow, the one after that. Okay, the 24th. Of September. 2021. Happy now?) and runs for a week. I will be playing and most likely posting about it.

Finally in this liturgy of ought-to-be exciting stuff for games I play or am on record as wanting to play, there's the much-delayed launch of Amazon's New World on the 28th. Right in the middle of that WvW beta test, although by then I should have seen enough to make my mind up. 

I was red-hot to play New World a year ago. Actually, two years ago, which is when I pre-ordered it (December 2019). I've gone off the boil a bit but I can feel the heat building again now we're getting close. 

It's good timing in a way because I've run out of steam with Bless Unleashed, almost entirely because of that boss fight I mentioned with the quick time events. I am one hundred per cent certain I can beat the boss but I am not at all sure I can do the quick time events simply because of lag issues. I've done several other Field Bosses recently with similar events and failed them because of latency. 

I am flat-out unwilling to go through the fifteen minutes of attrition to get the Boss's hit points to the point where the final quick time event kicks in only to have a lag spike leave me dead in the dust. If it wasn't an automatic one-shot kill on failure it would be annoying enough but to have to restart from scratch every time the connection wobbles is too much of a risk. So I've stopped playing. 

A rambling post to represent my wavering state of mind. At least there's plenty going on, even if much of it isn't exactly what I'd have chosen. And putting my thoughts down in writing has had the unexpected effect of raising my interest and enthusiasm for all the games I've mentioned.

That's the power of blogging for you! Well, for me.

Don't let's start all that again.

Black Cat Moan

I feel I ought to say something about the current "beta test" that's running in Guild Wars 2. I don't want to say anything about it. I don't have anything to say about it. I just feel I should.

I've been posting about GW2 since well before launch and I seem to have fallen into a pattern of reviewing, or at least commenting on, just about every update and event the game throws at me. If you maintain a gaming blog for long enough, this is a thing that happens. 

I absolutely did not start out intending to keep up a running commentary on certain mmorpgs like some kind of self-appointed sports announcer or game historian. I thought I'd post neat little vignettes about niche topics that interested or amused me, which is basically what I used to do when I wrote articles for comics fanzines in the 1980s.

The thing is, back then I only had to come up with a couple of topics each month at most. The zines I wrote for appeared at best bi-monthly or quarterly but schedules were flexible to be polite about it. Some months I was lucky if anyone was publishing anything at all. I certainly didn't have to come up with something fresh to write about every other day, week in, week out, year after year.

I couldn't have, then, even if anyone had asked me, which they didn't. Times change, though. As must have become obvious long since, I don't find it too much of a struggle, doing it now. I could probably give you five hundred words on why I have a twenty-year old box of fireworks in a 1950s kitchen cabinet in my front room. 

I mean, just read that sentence back. A sentence I pulled out of my ass thin air without preparation or forethought, by the way. Why fireworks? Why a quarter of a century? Why a kitchen cabinet? Why 1950s? Why the front room? 

It's all in there. This stuff writes itself. I don't claim it's worth reading when it's written but getting words on the page? That's easy.

And that's the kernel of the problem, if we're going to call it a problem. If you sit in front of a blank screen with no pre-conceived plan, the stuff that ends up on the page is going to be whatever's going on around you, what's in your mind, how you live, the things you do, the things you think about - the ambient, existential hum that surrounds us all. 

If you play games it's going to be those games. And once you get started, chronicling those games, it gets to be a habit, then a responsibility. It happens faster than you'd imagine.

Back up a minute. If that's how it works, how did fireworks get in here? Isn't that a bit of a weird, random call? Can't be any fireworks in my immediate environment at eleven on a Thursday morning, surely?

Well, it was like this. I wrote the first sentence of the third paragraph in this post and then I thought "I need an example to prove that's true or else I'm going to sound like I'm just making stuff up". Not that there's anything wrong with making stuff up but that's a different post.

I started thinking about that thing you do at school on a Wednesday afternoon, late in the term, where the teacher writes some bland phrase on the board and you're supposed to sit quietly for forty minutes writing something no-one's ever going to read. Classic burnout teaching.

It was often something like a "The life of a penny" or "My back yard". Not that anyone in my childhood would ever have said "yard" when they meant "garden". I'm not sure any of  this ever happened, now I see it in print. Maybe it's just in books and old children's TV shows. This is what I meant by making things up. 

Anyway, whether it did or it didn't we're there now.

The first thing I thought of was safety matches. I have no idea why. No, wait, yes I do. It was because I was thinking how boring a way to get kids to write it was and that made me think of other childhood hobbies that are infamously boring, which made me think of collecting cheese labels, a thing I often saw quoted as the definition of pointless obsession when I was growing up. 

Collecting cheese labels made me think of collecting matchbox labels which made me think of matches which made me think of "Which is better? Safety matches or regular matches?" as a topic, which is something I did once hear being discussed. 

I started to think about that but I bored myself before I even got going, which is presumably why my mind fluttered onto what you might do with the matches, safety or not, and that put the idea of fireworks into my mind.

"Fireworks" immediately made me remember I have a box of Black Cat fireworks in the white 1950s
kitchen cabinet with yellow trim that we have in the front room downstairs. I bought them back when the children were quite small, meaning to set them off in the back garden (never "yard") for Bonfire Night but on the day it was raining so we did something else.

The fireworks stayed in the cupboard and for a few years I kept meaning to use them but I never did, probably because we started going to organized displays instead of doing our own thing. Honestly, I don't remember. For whatever reason, the fireworks stayed there and after a time I started to think they might be so old they would be dangerous to use so they went on staying there.

Every year I wonder whether to get them out and give them a go but it always seems like more trouble than it's worth and anyway now I kind of like having them being so old and never used. Still with the shrink wrap intact. It makes them feel vintage. Can you even get Black Cat fireworks any more? 

Feeling vintage is why we have a kitchen cabinet in our front room, by the way. I was visiting my mother not that long before I bought those fireworks and she happened to mention how someone she knew was about to get rid of a 1950s kitchen cabinet, one of the ones that's six foot tall with glass doors and an enameled shelf that slides out. 

It sounded exactly like the one in our kitchen when I was growing up. Mrs Bhagpuss and I had not long moved into the house we're still living in now and we had plenty of space to fill. I asked my mother if she thought her friend would let me have the cabinet and she said she'd ask. A week later it was in our house.

Of course, it wouldn't fit in the kitchen. The kitchen has fitted units. There's no space for a six foot tall free standing cabinet. But the front room happened to have an alcove into which the cabinet fits perfectly and since it was a classic, retro design I thought it would look good there. Not that we ever use that room for anything but storage but still - front room, eh? A piece of furniture has to believe it's made it when it gets that spot, right?

All of which demonstrates two things:

1. I really can turnout 500 words about anything. Closer to 800 in this case.
   
2. I'd rather write about old furniture than GW2's latest Elite Specializations

Guild Wars 2 currently has, I think, twenty-seven "specs" for its nine official classes. Each class (or "Profession" as absolutely no-one but the devs ever call them) has the original Core version, each of which itself splits into far too many builds to count. 

Each of the two expansions then adds another Elite Specialization to every Core class. Most people think of those Elite Specs as though they were classes and the developers endorse that by referring to them and "balancing" them as if that's what they were. They should, because that's what they are.

Just as I seem to have locked myself into posting about every minor event in the game, so the devs have found themselves trapped in a recurring cycle of class escalation. Players expect new Elite Specs with every expansion, just as they expect new Legendary weapons. If ArenaNet attempted to foist an expansion on its core audience without both those things it would spell the end of the game.

Unfortunately, while the game can handle any number of spectacularly flashy weapons, since every last one of them has the exact same functionality, it cannot possibly cope with the ever-increasing number of classes, particularly given that, in order to be accepted by the people paying the bills, every new class needs to be demonstrably better - or at the very least different - to the ones we already have.

I am not the target market for any of this. I've been playing Guild Wars 2 as my main mmorpg for nine straight years now. I have three accounts and nineteen max level characters. I play every day. I do not own a Legendary weapon and nor do I want one. 

More cogently for this post, although I have characters of all the original eight classes, plus the ninth, Revenant (the only official new class, added with the first expansion, Heart of Thorns) I have only bothered to acquire fewer than half of the Elite Specs and of those I regularly play just one, the Tempest.

I know what I like. I tried a lot of variations and builds as I levelled in GW2 and fairly early on I settled for the Elementalist as my profession of choice. When Heart of Thorns arrived I tried out most of Elite Specs - Dragonhunter, Reaper, Scrapper, Chronomancer, Daredevil, Druid and Tempest - and did the Ascended Weapon quests (Please stop calling them quests!ANet) for several. 

It was fun. I like HoT and I like the weapon quests. I even played some of the specs for a bit - Reaper and Druid particularly. In the end, though, the only one that stuck was the Tempest. 

When Path of Fire arrived I was hoping for more of the same but I didn't get on with that expansion at all. I only tried three of the new elites - Firebrand and Scourge, because they were absolutely required in WvW at various times if you were playing a Guardian or a Necromancer and wanted people not to yell at you in zergs - and Weaver, the Elementalist elite.

I quite liked Weaver but it took a lot more effort and concentration to play than Tempest. Commanders continued to at least tolerate Tempests in WvW (and indeed Core Elementalists, too) so I dropped Weaver and carried on as I was. I like setting stuff on fire then running away, what can I tell you?

When End of Dragons, the third GW2 expansion arrives next year I'll try the new Elementalist Elite Spec. Can't tell you what it's called yet. It hasn't been announced. Who knows, maybe it will even be good enough to persuade me to replace Tempest with whatever it turns out to be.

I'll probably even give it a run when the beta process (aka promotional event) that features the Elementalist arrives. Might as well get myself vaccinated against disappointment early, I guess.

What I am not going to do, though, is make a whole series of temporary, disposable characters of classes I barely play just to see some Elite Specs I'll never use. Not out of any misplaced sense of obligation. Not even to get a post out of it, something I can manage perfectly well without even logging in  other than to get a screenshot of the blank slots. 

 Still, felt I should say something about it, if only out of duty and habit. So I have.

I Got Class

Telwyn put up a post about classes that started me thinking. It does seem like a given that more classes must be better, doesn't it? 

Without getting into the whole choice paralysis quagmire, when I look at a new game, the more classes there are, the more interested I'm likely to be. Conversely, when I see one of those generic Warrior/Mage/Thief/Healer set-ups, my inclination these days is to pass.

As a casual player (let's not start that discussion again...) there really aren't many downsides to a game having more classes than a community college. All I have to do is pick the ones I like and leave the rest. It's not like it's going to affect anything I'm going to be doing. A game would have to be very old school to insist on specific classes for solo leveling or at-cap solo content. 

Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Except it doesn't always seem to work that way. For example, I've taken all the core Guild Wars 2 classes up the eighty level ladder to the top and while it's true to say it's never been what you'd call difficult, boy, did it vary in how tedious or frustrating it felt.

I'm not alone in thinking that. You can hear people saying it most days in Queensdale, the starter map of choice for people with strong opinions. At nearly nine years old, GW2 still manages to attract an astonishing number of new players and they're not shy of introducing themselves and telling the world at large what they think of the game. 

Maybe it's the great community that ANet like to brag about that makes people feel comfortable about outing themselves as newbies and asking questions. Like the ever-popular "I'm new. What class should I play?".

Alright, the questions are usually more nuanced than that. And the players asking them aren't always exactly first-timers. Often it'll be more along these lines: "I'm thinking of starting a new character. I tried a Mesmer but I didn't really get on with it so now I'm thinking maybe a Guardian would be easier?" (Yes, a Guardian would be easier. The only thing easier than playing a Guardian would be hiring someone to play the game for you. Which, if you're playing a Guardian, you pretty much already did...).

Okay, okay. Cheap shot. My point is, even with just nine basic classes, plenty of people clearly feel overwhelmed.  

Except GW2 doesn't have nine classes, does it? It has nine classes multiplied by how many weapons each class can use because each weapon changes 100% of  the combat skills. (Yes, alright, 50% if you have two weapons and only change one. Don't be picky!)

I've been playing an Elementalist since 2013. Actually, since 2012, but at first I was moving from class to class like Tom Cruise on top of a train. Within a few months of GW2's launch I'd played all eight classes to the cap. It only took about two weeks for each of them. 

It took me a while to settle on a favorite but eventually I ended up mostly playing Eles on all three of my accounts. You might think that would mean I'd have a good idea by now how to play the class. I mean, 10,000 hours and all that, right? 

Nope. I can play a core staff elementalist and a staff Tempest and that's it. I have no more idea how to play an Ele wielding dagger and scepter than someone who'd never played the class at all. 

Exaggerating for effect there, obviously. There's a good deal of transferable knowledge in the traits and so on. But the spells? The rotation? The synergies? Not. A. Clue.

GW2 players and anyone paying attention will have noticed the word "Tempest" a couple of paragraphs back. That's another class. Wait, didn't he say there were only nine of them? Thanks for noticing and why, yes I did!

Tempest isn't a "class" nor yet a "profession" (We'll get to those. Be patient.). Tempest is an "Elite Specialization". Elite specs are what Anet use to make absolutely sure the game will never be balanced and most classes will be considered "broken" until the heat death of the universe.

When they were designing the first expansion and following some kind of precedent from the original Guild Wars, where collecting and combining skills to make different builds made up a huge part of the supposed charm, ANet thought it would go down well with the fans if they added a way to change your class without, y'know, actually changing your class.

Not that we have classes in GW2. Profession is the preferred term. (I said I'd get to it). And there are eight of them.

Sorry. Sorry! Nine. I meant nine. I forgot Revenants. I always forget Revenants and that's because I can't understand them. I have one. I levelled him to 80, no idea how. Never knew what he was doing. Never knew what I was doing, come to that. Didn't matter. Leveling in GW2 is that easy. They could put a thousand classes in there and it wouldn't make any difference. They could all face-roll to cap. Although as I said some of them would bore you into a coma doing it.

The Revenant, though, isn't a true core profession. It can't be. It isn't available in the core game. Not that the core game exists any more. And yet that core game set to remain the de facto default setting so long as it's all ANet's willing to give away for free. 

Come to think of it, you can't buy Heart of Thorns any more either, which is where the Revenant was introduced. If you want HoT now, you have to take it rolled up with Path of Fire, the second expansion, the one that doesn't include any new professions at all. Just nine more new elite specs.

Confused yet? Don't worry, so are the devs. Someone didn't think it through, did they? I guess when upper management were all chanting "We don't need expansions. We won't make expansions" it seemed safe enough. No more expansions means no more awkward additions to the roster and no more balancing nightmares. Well, no new balancing nightmares.

So they're making another expansion. And it has to have more classes - sorry, elite specs. Otherwise half the potential audience would walk away. And it doesn't matter what they're called, they're classes and with two expansions down we've got twenty-seven of them. 

When End of Dragons arrives we'll have thirty-six. We'll have to. People expect them. There'd be hell to pay if an expansion didn't come with more legendary weapons and a new elite spec for each of the professions.

New legendaries are safe. They don't affect gameplay at all. They just need to be flashier than the last lot. Elite specializations, though, those either have make the core class more powerful or allow it to do something it previously couldn't. If not, why would anyone be interested? 

That's what happened with every expansion to date (all two of them). The introduction of new classes brought sweeping changes to group composition in both competitive and co-operative play. For a while everyone wanted druids or weavers or firebrands or soulbeasts or scourges or whatever Metabattle told them they wanted. 

And for every new class that made flavor of the month, another lost their chair. (Maybe that's why ANet started selling actual chairs in the Gem store...). 

I focus on GW2 because I know it, because I play it and because I think it's a fairly extreme example of the problems that can come with adding new classes. 

At first sight ANet's task looks manageable. Just nine classes. That doesn't sound too bad. World of Warcraft has a dozen. EverQuest II has twenty-six. Only, as I think I've made clear, that's not really how it works.

If the third expansion follows precedent, GW2 will effectively have three dozen classes. Leaving aside the separate issue of who has access to what under the variety of various current, legacy and future combinations of expansion ownership and membership level, there's absolutely no evidence the developers on board have the capacity to balance the classes they already have so how they're going to manage with nine more on top is anyone's guess. Anyone's guess so long as that guess is "badly".

The worst part is that in order for the expansion to be as attractive as possible to the maximum number of players, the new classes will have to outperform the old ones for at least a few months before eventually being dialled back. Or players will have to believe they do. It's the same thing.

As anyone who's ever played an mmorpg and gotten themselves involved with the conversations around it will know, what players believe is going on and what is really going on have very little to do with each other. And it's not facts that matter. It's feelings.

More classes mean more people feeling their class is being ignored, more people calling for buffs to their favorites and nerfs for everyone else. It's not just just class envy, either. With the perception that one class is better than another comes the expectation that some classes are more worth playing than others. Even if someone enjoys their underperforming class there's peer pressure to drop it and swap to something more efficient. Or at least more fashionable.

I watched that happen in EverQuest when Beastlords were added. BLs weren't the best at anything much but they were great at lots of things. Having one in your group meant you could do without several other classes. I played a Beastlord then and even in friendly groups with people I knew well there was sometimes tension.

The bad feeling was such that a decade later, when it was announced the class was finally coming to EQII, the forums almost caught fire. Even today you can hear people complain about the very existence of Beastlords in the game.

If you play on your own, the way I play EverQuest II, that doesn't matter. I played a bruiser for years when aparently it was the most useless, broken, worthless class. I didn't even notice. Now I play a Berserker, which I learned recently is dangerously overpowered and ripe for a few hard swipes with the nerf bat. Didn't notice that, either.

But I can bet I'd be brought up to speed pretty fast if I ever decided to start grouping again. Players who talk to each other in mmorpgs tend to talk about which class is better quite a lot. It takes a strong personality to keep on playing the outliers when it feels like everyone's looking at you with either pity or contempt.

Of course, there's always the old saw about bringing the player not the class. That one works two ways. Sometimes it means design the game so any class can do the job and everyone can play anything they want. Sometimes it means if the player's good enough they can outperform most players even when they're playing at a disadvantage.

I don't mean any of this to suggest mmorpgs shouldn't have lots of classes. Not at all. It works for me. And even though the game isn't all about me, the flip of this coin is that nothing in mmorpgs is ever truly balanced. Balance itself is a myth. Yes, adding new classes always creates winners and losers but every balance patch does that anyway, if it does anything at all. With new classes you can just see it coming.

All I'm saying is that more classes isn't a universal good. It sounds like it would be but it's not. At best it's added complexity. At worst tt's a recipe for chaos, disruption and discontent.

And I'm fine with that. Just so long as they don't nerf Eles. 

Again.

This Is The Summer

Okay, then. Let's take a look at the Great Guild Wars 2 Summer of Fun! ArenaNet aren't calling it that, by the way. I am.

I might not even mean it ironically. I was quite impressed when I skim-read the program on the official web site. I'm curious to find out if it stands up to closer examination. 

One thing I noticed on the first read-through was that whoever put it together had eschewed chronology. Normally what you'd expect in something like this is linear progression through time. That's what a program of events traditionally requires. People don't just want to know what they're getting: they want to know the running order so they know when to line up and when to head for the bar.

If ANet had stuck to a strict timeline, though, they'd have had to open with 

May 11—Skills and Balance Update 

and no-one wants that.

Skills and balance updates somehow manage to be both predictable and controversial. At any given moment there's one bunch of yahoos wailing they need a full rebalance right now while another argues everything's just fine as it is so leave it the hell alone. Inbetween those poles you can find a lobby for every class and even every elite specialization in the game, all making their case for special treatment as all around the various camps trolls and troublemakers prowl, spreading the notion that various classes or abilites are gamebreakingly OP and ought to be nerfed into oblivion.

Whatever ANet says or indeed does about balance they know they can't win. Not hearts, not minds, not even arguments. Like some sisyphean ball of confusion, all they can hope to do is push it a little further up the slope than last time and hope that when it rolls back down it doesn't crush them on the way past.

So, although that little treat is the first course in this summer-long feast, it's been tucked away behind the big reveal. And the big reveal is... there's going to be a big reveal!  

 

July 27—Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons First Look

Believe it or not that genuinely is the most exciting prospect of the whole summer schedule. It fully justifies its place at the head of the program. I can't help feeling there's something just a little sad about it. The thing we're all the most thrilled to see is an announcement that there's going to be an announcement. Not even a date. Just what the new content is.

Don't care. Still excited. I'll be there on July 27 (probably not something any of us should be saying during the end times but you gotta stay positive). The stream's set to include "features, an introduction to the story, a new trailer video", all of which you'd expect, but also "elite specialization beta event information." 

I'm not all that interested in the beta event (or the elite specs) per se but I am interested to hear one's already being planned. Combined with the run of dates for this "Live summer", none of which extends into August, I'd guess we'll get the beta event(s) soon after the livestream, then some kind of anniversary celebration and the expansion will drop either at the end of August or in September.

If not, they're going to have to come up with a Fall Festival of Fun to follow this summer spectacular because we ain't getting another season of the Living Story, we know that much. No, End of Dragons late summer/early autumn. Mark your dance cards.

Of course, when I said the EoD reveal would be the most exciting prospect I was speaking objectively. From a personal point of view, as I made clear yesterday, the true highlight of the summer will be

 

July 13—The Twisted Marionette

I mentioned this to Mrs. Bhagpuss this morning, just after Yaks Bend's expiditionary forces had been unceremoniously dumped back on their own border following a failed assault on Dragonbrand's Air Keep. Her reply was "Oh, I liked the Marionette!", which stands in stark conrast to the kind of reply I usually get to conversational sallies of this kind, namely "What's that? I don't remember it". 

The Marionette fight was unforgettable, which is a lot more than I can say about every Living Story boss fight ever and just about every meta event since Heart of Thorns. Generic events have been the name of the game for so long now it's difficult to remember when ANet knew how to create fights that were actually interesting. Perhaps refurbishing this one will remind them how it's done.

Next comes something from the Quality of Life department. I didn't think ANet had one of those. It's certainly been underemployed these last nine years.

July 13 - The Legendary Armory

This doesn't interest me at all and for a very good reason. I have no legendaries. What's more, not only do I not plan to get any, I specifically plan never to get any. As in I have positive intentions to avoid getting any if at all possible. 

I'm not saying I wouldn't take a legendary if ANet decided to give them away but short of that I would rather not, thanks very much. Never saw the point of them and still don't now.

The thing is this: I really, really hate changing my spec. I like to decide on it once then play it forever. If forced, as has happened a couple of times, I will grudgingly and irritably make the necessary adjustments to fall into line with some new orthodoxy but having done so I will expect to get several more years out of the new set-up before something drives me to change it again. 

That attitude has served me admirably across many mmorpgs and I see absolutely no need to change my behavior. Consequently, the attraction of items that are no more powerful than those I already have but which allow me to change my spec on the fly is utterly lost on me. 

I'm sure the Legendary Armory is going to be a boon for some people. It's nice that they're going to get it. Just don't expect me to care.

And finally, before we get to the list of regular holidays and returning weekend specials, here's the fifth pullout package. It's an odd one:

 

Beginning May 25—Living World: Complete the Cycle

I had to read this several times and I'm still not certain I understand it. Here's what I think is going to happen:

• There will be a series of week-long windows devoted to specific Living Story episodes from Seasons 2 and 3.
• Anyone who doesn't have that particular episode can get it for free during the week it's up.
• The featured episodes will get new achievements.
• If you complete all of the new achievements you get "a voucher for a Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons precursor weapon". This would seem to bootstrap you past the first segment of the interminable crafting process for a single Legendary weapon when EoD drops but that's about all. 
• There's going to be "a new meta-achievement for all three playable Living World seasons and The Icebrood Saga". If you complete that you get a legendary amulet. Whoop-di-doo. 

All of the above (except the getting them for free part) persists indefinitely so you can work on these time-consuming (let's not say time-wasting) tasks at your leisure.

I would literally rather spend my evenings cleaning my oven than ever do any of LS Seasons two or three again and as for achievements I never did most of those in the first place so that won't be happening. Once again, good luck to them as likes it. I'll pass, thanks.

That just leaves us with what you could call the usual suspects, otherwise known as 

 

Ongoing Summer Events

For once, there are a lot of them. They switch on at a slightly better cadence than twice a month for the whole of the designated "summer" season, beginning with the ever-popular World vs. World Weeklong Bonus.

I say "popular" because it generally seems to be but there are plenty of dedicated WvW players who hate these weeks with a passion. They attract hordes of ignorant, unskilled PvE players into the borderlands, afking at the bank, asking inane questions and generally getting in everyone's way. They do have their advocates, though. 

The more positive voices always call for patience, pointing out  the opportunities these events offer for introducing wide-eyed newbies to the joys of WvW. Meanwhile roamers relish the plethora of easy kills and the chance to re-inforce every prejudice and preconception PvE players already have about wicked gankers. I just like the chance to push my rank higher. 

There are a couple of events like that and something similar for the sPvP crowd, who also get tournaments, something that's been denied to WvW for many years. Instead, in WvW we get the marmite "No Downstate" event (June 18), which always kicks up a ruckus on the forums as people take extreme positions, claiming either that they'll never play WvW so long as they actually die when someone kills them or that they wish downstate had never been invented and the event should made permanent. I just find it a fun diversion for a week, which, I think, is all it's meant to be.

 

In PvE there's some kind of "Fractal Rush" in which I don't intend to learn about let alone participate in and then there's Dragon Bash, the festival in Hoelbrak, which I do. I notice there's no mention of the Queen's Jubilee or the Crown Pavilion but on refelction those both take place in August, so outwith the remit. I'm sure they'll be along on schedule to tide us over until the expansion arrives.

In fact, with the anniversary also in August, that does seem to fill the calendar nicely until the beginning of September. It's all falling into place.

Eliot at Massively OP wrote an op-ed piece this week on maintenance mode in mmorpgs. I know this is actually a lull before a major expansion, which is hardly the same thing, but as a program it does feel remarkably similar to what you might think of as active maintenance. I have to say it suits me quite well.

I'd happily sign up for no more Living Story, ever, in exchange for bi-annual expansions with a program like this in the off-seasons. That sounds like a manageable and sustainable business model to me. Especially if the best of the older events, like the Marionette, could be spruced up and re-introduced. I could make a list of those.

Probably lucky I'm not in charge, isn't it?