I Wish It Could Be Blaugust Every Day... Oh, Wait...

Well, we all knew it would come to this eventually. I'm astonished it took this long. Ten consecutive posts of arguable substance. I impress myself.

But now it's Saturday night and I'm tired so here it comes... the screenshot post.

These shots are all from GW2's unexpected and incredibly welcome holiday event, The Festival of the Four Winds. This is my necromancer, who does most of the holiday work. She's green all over courtesy of an extremely sought-after and expensive little doo-dad she got last Halloween.

Here she is, chatting to some nutcase who climbed the highest rock in Labyrinthine Cliffs for reasons he explains but which I've already forgotten. I remember it was something elegaic and mournful. Life is short, then you fall off a rock. Something like that?

I have taken a few other characters there. This is one of my rare humans. Mostly she lives in Lion's Arch and does the "Activity" dailies when they come around. Humans get all the best poses and their armor fits better than anyone else's. I ought to play more humans. Maybe.

There's a party beach in Labyrinthine Cliffs. It has a changing hut. If you go in the hut you can come out wearing a swimming costume. Sometimes there's music and all the sunbathers get up and dance. This is what we call "entertainment" in the 21st century.

I really love this map. I don't want it to go away. I don't want to have to wait a whole year to do this again. Holiday events are great but they should be all the time. That's your cue, Roy.

Winds Of Change : GW2

As promised, The Festival of the Four Winds begins today. The gantries and ropewalks, the silk banners and paper kites, the cries of the hawkers and vendors... how much have I missed all this?

All aboard The Skylark!

The weeks and months either side of the original Bazaar of the Four Winds were arguably GW2's creative peak. With everything that's happened since, it's been all too easy to forget.  Everything we complained about back then gleams like true riches right now. Spoiled. We were spoiled. And we cried like brats.

The colors, man...

The colors. So rich. Psychedelic. The depth and complexity of the structures. Overwhelming. This is possibly the finest map ANet's exemplary Art Department ever produced. Why was it lost for all those years?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No its... actually, what is that thing?

It's here now, at least. We have three weeks to savor it. I feel particularly blessed with three accounts, one with all expansions enabled, one with only Heart of Thorns, one with neither. 

Sitting in  chairs. All the cool kids are doing it.

It means I can enjoy the Labyrinthine Cliffs in three very different ways: as they were intended, using only the zephrite movement crystals; with the glorious freedom of the glider; in easy mode, mounted.

Mirror glass seas and mother of pearl skies. It's not about drugs, honest.

There's so much to do here. Griffin and Skimmer races, crystal collections, a meta. I've come away to write this too soon to have seen more than a glimpse and done more than a fraction.

"I was looking out the window and a witch flew by" : Source

I came by ship. Something so special about traveling by sea, even if the trip itself is reduced to nothing more than a postcard. Hot air balloons too, for the ride to The Crown Pavilion, but that's another tale entirely.

How did I get up here? Rabbits may have been involved.

It seems plenty of work has been done to bring the festival grounds up to date, to include everyone. Giant frogs from the deep Maguuma jungles wander the waterline. Charr from the recently-discovered Olmakhan tribes struggle to adjust as they wander the walkways, bartering with the merchants.

No-one over four metres tall allowed on upper decks for safety reasons.

 The whole place is a melting pot, roiling, chaotic and alive. It was like this all those years ago and now it is again. We have travelled so far but we have come home at last.

I smell a mystery. Or maybe there's dried fish in these barrels.

All but the Zephrites. I wonder if their story has ended or whether, exploring, more might be revealed. Let's go find out.

Top Of The World! : GW2

Gnashblade probably supplies the Ballot Boxes. Just sayin'

Achievements aside (and boy, what a worm-can that turned out to be) I really like the current episode of GW2's Living Story. Not that there seems to be all that much of a story to it. Is it my imagination or are the conversation and the cut-scene between Ellen Kiel and Magnus in the wrong order? She seems to be talking to him about what he's asked her to do before he asks her to do it. And what exactly is her job, anyway? Is she a soldier, a policewoman, a diplomat, a trade delegate or just some kind of Pirate Superwoman?

Next week we get to vote her onto the Lion's Arch Captain's Council so it's just as well she's added Ship's Captain to her already-impressive C.V. Magnus is going to have to haul back on the sarcasm when he uses her honorific or people might begin to suspect she's not a Captain at all. I'm voting Gnashblade, anyway. I hope we get campaign buttons.

Les Dawson! I thought I recognized you!

Labyrinthine Cliffs is an astonishing place, absolutely on a par with the original five cities in terms of detail, complexity and exploreworthiness (yes it's a word). At first I thought it was another island like Southsun but it seems to be the extreme south-western tip of the otherwise inaccessible Deldrimor Front peninsula. It had been mooted that, while the Zephyr Sanctum airship would certainly be departing at the end of this event, the landmass to which it was anchored, the Labyrinthine Cliffs map itself, might stay with us. No such luck, according to the Dulfyc Oracle.

Ironic foreshadowing, folk-club style

It seems almost immoral to create something this beautiful and just to throw it away, although I guess it's more "put it back in the cupboard" than "chuck it in the bin". No doubt the Bazaar will open again some day but then again maybe it won't so best make the most of it while it's here.

There's a lot more to do than lollygawp like a tourist and take a thousand photos, not that that isn't what I did for the first few hours. No, there are Sky Crystals to be parkoured, races to be run, unholy writ to be read backwards, shows to be seen, trades to be made, recipes to be scribed...the whole place is as filled with opportunity as, well as a Bazaar.

My personal favorite is the race. I'm fond of racing in MMOs. It seems a very organic, believable way to include non-combat activities without things getting excessively gamey. That's the theory; implementations vary. This is a good one.

It does have some oddities, such as the way you tend to start your first race entirely on your own with no other competitor in sight. The reason for that becomes clear when you pass your first checkpoint and realize you're running dead last in a race that started without you. Works quite well as an informal tutorial, I found.

There are a bunch of the dreaded Achievements for taking part including one for doing the whole thing 25 times. Suffice it to say I have already done that plus a few for luck. By the time the Zephyr Sanctum casts off my tally may well be nearer 50 than 25. I just like running it, what can I say?

It's certainly not that I'm any good at it, although as with anything practice does make a difference. Early on there seemed no chance whatever of getting the Achievement for coming in the top three, far less the one for winning outright but now I have both. Actually, I came first twice, only in one of those races I was the only person running. It was nice to have the box ticked but I'm very glad I really did win one race later on or I'd feel a bit of a cheat.

I'm no fan of jumping puzzles. I can do them if I have to but I tend to find them stressful not entertaining. I've read a few observations that the new Map is fundamentally one huge jumping puzzle, which didn't have me looking forward to it much. If it had turned out to be true I'd probably have had a very unfun time. It's not and I didn't.

It's alright for you. You've got wings!

The Bazaar of the Four Winds is a settlement that has made some left-field choices in its public transport policy. It reminds me of places I've visited where you ride funiculars and cable-cars to get from one part of the city to another. Apart from one brief segment (the second one) the entire map is navigable with no jumping skills at all (and with the help of a friendly Mesmer even that part can be circumvented). Once done and waypoints opened you're free to enjoy all the fun of the Bazaar at will.

A plan!

Unless, of course, you decide to collect Sky Crystals. I wasn't planning to do that. It's jumping and I don't like jumping, as I said. Well it isn't jumping. It's climbing and that's a cat of a wholly different color.

I love climbing in MMOs and have done since I first went buildering through Felwithe long, long ago. First I started picking up the Crystals I happened to spot as I explored, then I started actively searching for them and in that way half of Sunday disappeared. As I write I'm 33/40 on the Achievement. There are supposedly over fifty of the things but so far the harder part has been finding them not getting to them. I only know of two that I haven't tried for yet.

If I do a handstand
will all the gold fall out my pockets?

So far I have looked up absolutely nothing out of game, which brings me back to the discussion about Achievements. If there wasn't an Achievement for finding Sky Crystals I wouldn't know there were at least five I haven't found. I might stop looking for them having found 35 and think I'd found them all. Would that be bad? Or good? Does it make any difference at all? If I wanted to understand this sort of thing shouldn't I have studied Philosophy instead of English? Should I just stop over-thinking things and play?

Dunno. I just know I'm enjoying this update a lot more than the last one and quite possibly the most of any so far. I'm off to find those last few Crystals then trade some of my crafting overspill for recipes. Then I'm going to go see how this crystal charging thing works.