1203 Days : GW2

Actually it's a lot more than that. That's just the one account. Factor in six accounts, between myself and Mrs Bhagpuss, four of them played almost since launch.

Mobs slaughtered must be into the millions. World Bosses killed? Well into four figures by now. Chests opened - well, who knows? Thousands upon thousands.

I got Breath of Jormag once. Sold it for 100 gold. Until tonight that was my best drop that I can remember. Technically, it still is.

Of late I've taken to throwing rares into the Mystic Forge in matched fours. Not so much because I want a Precursor. More for the amusement of playing a lottery. And because the drop rate for yellows has increased radically in the last few months. There's only so much satisfaction you can gain from salvaging ectos and selling the stacks.

There's the Mystic Forge daily too, of course. It popped today. I always like to do that one because it's quick and easy and it clears some space in the bank.

I did two accounts this morning before work. Threw in four yellow hammers and got a yellow Krait hammer back. Nice. New skin for one of the accounts. Might use that. Swapped accounts, threw in four yellow longbows and got a yellow longbow back. Basic model. Bleh.

This evening I logged in my primary account and went to The Mists. Took four pistols out of the bank and waypointed to the Forge. Dropped them in. Oh look, an exotic. Nice. Don't recognize it, either. A new skin, then. Looks like a good one, too.

I'd previewed it and noted the Berserker stats and thought about what it might sell for before I noticed the unfamiliar cyan text along the bottom of the tool tip: "This weapon is used to craft the legendary pistol Quip".

Stap me! I nearly fainted. Three years! Three years and I have never seen a Precursor for a legendary weapon, not in my own hand. Not one has ever dropped for me, or for Mrs Bhagpuss, not from all those mobs, not from all those chests, not from the Forge.

Well, now one has. What I'm going to do with it I haven't decided. I offered it to Mrs Bhagpuss if she wanted to use it to make Quip. Quip is apparently one of her favorite Legendary skins. She declined, saying "No, sell it". It sells for around 350 gold but I already have over 3000 gold banked and nothing to spend it on so that's not as attractive an option as it once was.

I don't think Mrs Bhagpuss is any keener on the fuss and bother of crafting a Legendary than I am. Also, nice though both the Precursor and the finished version look in the Preview window, in practice any weapon smaller than a staff or a greatsword disappears into the visual clutter of the game when equipped. It seems like such a waste of time and effort for such a trivial visual flourish.

So, for now, The Chaos Gun joins the ever-increasing pile of "things I keep because I like to look at them every now and again" that takes up most of my vault space. Maybe one day I'll sell it. Maybe one day I'll craft Quip. Maybe one day Mrs Bhagpuss will change her mind and relieve me of the responsibility of deciding.

At least now I can say I've seen a Precursor "drop". That's the main thing. How long 'til the next? Another three years?

Don't hold your breath.

Orange, Pink Or Purple? The Legendary Future Of Heart Of Thorns: GW2

One aspect of GW2 that has never interested me in the slightest is the acquisition of Legendary weapons. For the three years since launch they have had little practical appeal since their stats are identical to those of Ascended, the tier above Exotic, which was so controversially added to the game within a few months of launch.

GW2 was always touted as an MMO without a gear grind. It was suggested that all "endgame" content could be successfully and enjoyably completed in Exotics, the original, if short-lived, uppermost rung of the gear ladder. Legendary weapons merely offered a supposed visual and aesthetic advantage. They glowed with particle effects and also added a particle effect to the player's footsteps, but a player was no more powerful wielding one than he would be with an exotic.

The visual appeal was always lost on me. In my opinion,
most Legendaries look like they would be better employed as props for the late Liberace's stage act if not the accouterments of an especially demented children's entertainer. Timmy Mallet comes disturbingly to mind and just be thankful I decided against a YouTube link. Call me a traditionalist but I rather like weapons that look like weapons and bows that fire arrows not unicorns.

Legendary weapons do have one, minor practical advantage over the more easily obtained Ascended and the common Exotic in that you can change their stats. For a long time only Legendaries offered this option and, even now that it has become possible to re-forge Ascended items in the Mystic Forge, Legendary weapons retain an edge since only they can be re-modelled on the fly.

The occasions when you might have wanted to change the stats on your weapon, however, have always been few and far between. Most players pick a build and stick with it. A berserker does not change his meta. Tweak it, perhaps, but only when the change has been duly authorized by MetaBattle.

With the imminent arrival of Heart of Thorns, and particularly the raids that will follow close behind, the practical advantages of Legendary weapons may increase. There is some indication that players may be required to become more flexible. Sticking with the same build through thick and thin may not be the sound strategy it has proved for so long. Being able to swap the stats around on your big stick between raid bosses or even during the long open-world event chains could, theoretically, come to be considered optimal play.

Weapons are extremely important in GW2 but a weapon, Legendary or not, only occupies one slot. You can hardly change your entire build just by swapping the stats on one item. Which is where Legendary armor comes in. The announcement seems rather to have slipped in through the back door, tucked away in the last paragraph of a dev blog on Raids, but yes, the game is getting another tier of gear:

"...raids will introduce the very first ever set of legendary armor. This isn’t any ordinary armor set! Similarly to legendary weapons, you’ll be able to change the stats that the armor provides."

It may take a while but Full Legendary will become de rigeur for serious raiding guilds. Raid leaders will certainly require key roles to be able to swap seamlessly from one build to another, without leaving the instance, as and when circumstances and Bosses demand. There must also be the risk of Legendary Creep if devs choose to design (or revamp) some of the larger open world events to use the supposedly more advanced AI of HoT mobs in a way that assumes players are able to hot-swap builds.

All that's required to complete the transition would be the addition of a feature that's been demanded, almost half-heartedly, in the past but which is now beginning to appear essential: the ability to save traits and skills to a specific template. With that in place we could potentially see a de facto gear grind after all.

Or we could if the bar for raids hadn't been set so extremely high. So long as Legendary armor stays behind the skill wall of raiding, where, lest we forget, "Only the bravest of heroes will be able to collect and craft these legendary threads" then I'm guessing the bulk of the game, and the bulk of its players, will either have lug several sets of Ascended around with them in their bags or just do what I do and ignore the whole darn thing.

Legendary Hearts : GW2

ArenaNet's most recent Heart of Thorns infodump appears to have passed by largely unremarked. That's a shame because, contrary to all expectations, the treatise on the forthcoming changes to the way Legendary Weapons can be acquired is full of positives for the game as a whole.

"Legendaries", as they are commonly known, have always held little interest for me. They are almost universally ugly; overwrought, gaudy and garish. They have particle effects and other visual tricks that look utterly ridiculous, up to and including the infamous Bow That Fires Unicorns. To see anyone running around wielding these gimcrack fairground prizes inspires something closer to irritation than respect, as though some yahoo had just roared past in his SUV, flinging beer cans out the window.

Sunrise, one of the less-hideous
Legendaries

I felt the same about Epic weapons in Everquest, whose introduction I remember clearly. Those trophy weapons shared with GW2's Legendaries a long, arduous and largely disliked path to acquisition but they did at least have the considerable benefit of providing a very significant upgrade in power when you finally got your hands on one. Legendaries don't even do that. In keeping with GW2's ethos of avoiding power creep at all costs, when it comes to killing things, a Legendary is much the same as an Ascended weapon. It just looks flashier. Oh, and you can swap the stats around.

Given my lack of interest in the outcome, then, it's surprising how excited I was to read about the process. The new process, that is.

Currently, in order to obtain a Legendary you must first get your hands on a "Precursor". There's a separate and specific one of these for each Legendary and to say they are rare as hen's teeth is to do a disservice to galline dentistry.

Popular belief has it that these drop from certain significant encounters such as dragons but it's interesting to note that, as the wiki advises, they "can drop from any enemy, chest, or WvW loot bag". Can, but in my experience don't. In two and half years, on six accounts, over too many thousands of hours of gameplay to own up to, neither Mrs Bhagpuss nor I have seen a single precursor drop.

The more common way of obtaining them is by throwing Rare weapons into the Mystic Forge in bundles of four. The putative genie who serves out some obscure prison sentence therein can, although again usually does not, spit back a precursor. Finally, if all else fails, you can just buy the damn thing from the Trading Post, where they retail for hundreds or even thousands of gold pieces. If I ever get one you can bet that's where it's going.

Of course, just getting the precursor is only the beginning. After that comes one of GW2's

The Dreamer aka My Little Ponybow

increasingly common scavenger hunts. The shopping list of parts is ferocious but although before launch it also seemed like something only an insane person would consider, by now it's just another in-game chore and one among many at that.

From this exceedingly bitter lemon the HoT team appear to have come up with a way to make some rather sweet lemonade. There has been talk for years of "crafting " precursors and it was widely believed that recipes would be added in the expansion. Not so.

Instead, the new Mastery system, about which I have hitherto felt more than a little skeptical, has been pressed into service. What's more, Precursors themselves have been broken up into three distinct stages. Entire tri-partite tracks (what any other game would call Quests) have been created for each individual precursor.

Part one leads to "a nontradable exotic weapon with a distressed version of the existing precursor skin". Part two gets you "a recipe ... resulting in another nontradable exotic weapon with the existing precursor skin". Finally, for completing part three, the reward is "the recipe to craft the polished final iteration of the precursor". At which point you are ready to begin the same, original, demented process of crafting the Legendary itself.

Genius! For the grand addition of no new benefits whatsoever the game gets enough new content to last the average player years! There are twenty of these weapons and many, many players desire several for various characters or even, because in GW2 combat skills derive from weapon type, for the same character. And, of course, HoT adds a new weapon to each class, so even people who play just one character and have all the Legendaries that class can use have something new to keep them busy.

Crabstick, anyone?

Other than my objective admiration for the elegance of the solution, given that I have no interest in Legendaries for myself, why am I excited about this change? Well, it's the side effects; the fallout.

The hoops through which would-be precursor "crafters" will have to jump are spread far and wide across Tyria. Players will find themselves roaming the world "fighting fierce creatures around Tyria and acquiring a trophy to show for it" or traveling to obscure corners of far-flung maps to "barter for knowledge, seek out great minds and convince them to teach you their tricks". That alone should keep no small number of otherwise neglected maps busy with busywork but there's more.

Every map other than the starting areas is getting something called a "Map Bonus". That appears to be another jiggle chest that pops up "periodically" in the lower-right corner of the screen; this time when you're "completing events, jumping puzzles, and mini-dungeons". The little chest will usually contain crafting mats appropriate to the area, but there will be a cycle for these so that the same map might give bones one visit and venom sacs the next.

Yet again this is an absolute marvel of manipulative efficiency. It's not just re-using the older maps for a newer purpose, it's doubling the number of maps without adding any maps! Given the extreme interest a significant proportion of GW2 players express in getting their paws on precursors I anticipate an ongoing, if perhaps increasingly bad-tempered, relationship between the players of level 80 characters and the mid-level maps they thought they'd never have to visit again.

For someone like me, who spends a huge amount of time in those maps by choice and who was concerned that the arrival of HoT, with its gliders and verticality and new shiny newness, would kill them stone dead, it's a godsend. It's also very likely to be a money mine for anyone with no interest in making the end product for themselves.

This one I'd use.

There's more to it even than this. The whole enterprise  does seem, at least on paper, to have been remarkably well thought-through. The 1-15 maps are exempt from Map Bonuses, leaving some of my favorite places unchanged in their increasingly outlandish innocence. The new pre-cursor process also operates by account, meaning that if you want to dual-wield Legendary pistols (and you can bet someone does) you'll be back to the old method of getting the second, so Zamorros and the economy will be kept busy.

Finally, all of the above only applies to the old set of twenty Legendaries. The expansion is going to add a bunch more along with their pre-cursors and those will use a similar but separate system. Unlike the current Legendaries the new ones won't be tradeable so you'll have to just knuckle down and get on with it. No farming gold to buy your way to godhood. As someone who wishes that principle applied to, well, pretty much everything in MMOs, I'm very happy with that decision, especially since I won't be directly affected by it myself. It's always easier to have principles on someone else's behalf.

This was the first big reveal for Heart of Thorns that left me with a warm, positive feeling. I've come around to the idea of the Desert Borderlands following the similarly well-documented and explained  piece that followed the disconcerting and disheartening stage presentation so perhaps I should just wait for the full write-ups in future and ignore all the livestreams. I still can't say I'm actively looking forward to the core content itself, but at least the periphery is starting to show some appeal.

Who knows? Maybe I'll even get a pre-cursor this way. I must say the idea of a "distressed version of the existing precursor skin" sounds right up my street. If those look anything like as good as the corroded, barnacle-encrusted Orrian weapons, some of my favorite skins in the game, then I'm in!

Legendary or Leisurely? : GW2

In my first post on GW2 in the excitement of the first Beta Weekend I wrote "what I've seen is an excellent implementation of traditional, standard and familiar MMO tropes. Guild Wars 2 looks to be a really first-class AAA theme-park MMO. If that's what you want then you're going to be very happy".

In my defence I qualified that view: "Caveat being that any comments are based on just a few hours gameplay that have taken me only as far as level 6". Oh really? Well let's all just sit here at your feet in awe shall we, Master?

Anyway, how wrong I was. About the "happy" part, obviously.

Here we are a month and change into Live and there's much disturbance in the sphere. Talk of one month or three. All done and over already. Heading back home or on to the Next Big Thing. Maybe just giving up.

Mrs Bhagpuss pointed out something to me yesterday that I had not noticed. On the Character Select screen for Guild Wars 2, over there on the right-hand side, hang your Account Medals. Well, yes of course I'd noticed them. I just hadn't ever moused over them to see what they were for.

What are they for?
 
The top one is for Map Completion, which has nothing to do with how much of the world you have seen, only how many of those little markers on the maps you have made to light up. With a single character. Not the whole account. Mine's at 47%.

The three below are Badges marking initiation into the three Orders of the Pact. Running from left to right, Durmand Priory, Vigil and Order of Whispers. The orders are exclusive. Each character can join only one. I'm in Whispers.

The last row, running again from left to right, are PvP Rank, Realm Avenger and Legendary Treasures. Only my WvW has begun to darken.

What does this suggest? First of all it suggests I'm not very interested in Achievements or in goals set for me by other people. After more than a month of looking at that screen several times a day I hadn't even thought about what those symbols were for, let alone made the small hand-movement that would have let me find out.

More meaningfully to anyone who is not me, the presence of those particular badges of achievement and their specific requirements would seem to suggest a set of expectations. Perhaps they represent what the development team expected the normative player would want to achieve during the lifetime of the game; more likely a benchmark showing the most a player could aspire to; most worryingly, what the development team expected a player to achieve.

Whichever or whichever combination of those, clearly it can't be done with just one character and equally clearly at least one character must reach maximum level. As a player, no part of the game can be skipped. To fill those badges you must defend your realm, you must compete in team PvP, you must do at least some of your Personal Story on no fewer than three characters, you must explore the world.

Ah, but what about crafting? What about Dungeons? I can skip those, can't I? Well, no. Take a look at this list of what's required to complete a Legendary Weapon that I borrowed from Stargrace:

Each legendary weapon requires at least the following:

• Precursor weapon specific to the legendary
• 500 Dungeon Tokens specific to the legendary
• Two level 400 crafting professions specific to the legendary
• 200  Skill Points
• 525,000  Karma
• 120  Gold Coins
• 100% World Completion
• 500 Badges of Honor
• 250 Globs of Ectoplasm
• 250 Vicious Fangs
• 250 Vicious Claws
• 250 Vials of Powerful Blood
• 250 Elaborate Totems
• 250 Armored Scales
• 250 Ancient Bones
• 250 Piles of Crystalline Dust
• 250 Powerful Venom Sacs

In addition to the above, the player must also gamble the following materials to obtain Mystic Clovers. One success results in a single Mystic Clover and 77 clovers are needed. The chances of success are currently unknown, therefore depending on the final chances, the recipe could require anywhere from 77 to 1,000 attempts.

• 0.6 Skill Points
• 2100 Karma
• 1 Mystic Coin

 You'll notice somewhere in that frankly insane shopping list mention of 500 Dungeon Tokens and two craft skills at 400. Be thankful they didn't make you do all eight.

You want me to do what ?!

Which brings me back to the beginning. Why anyone would want to do all of this in one lifetime is a mystery to me, but it seems apparent that the people who spent five years building this world thought they were catering for people who would. Either that or they were just so full of themselves over all the marvelous work they'd done they absolutely did not want anyone to miss out on any least part of it.

GW2 is a weird game. In some ways it's the simplest, easiest, most casual knockabout fun; in others it's a truly demented grindfest of the most hardcore proportions. The bone of contention, one of the bones anyway, is in how this all divvies up. The traditional Western MMO grindcore, ready and willing to break raids over weeks then farm them for months to get gear good enough just in time to do it all over again come next expansion are taking predictably badly to being asked to put in similar effort for a flashy weapon skin.

It's not working for them but it's working for me. I don't want to "achieve" anything or"progress". I'm happy to be. Tyria's a great place to hang out and what's more it mellows. I'm enjoying GW2 more now than I was two weeks ago because I'm doing less. My goals are smaller, I'm pottering more and all is good.

One month, three months, five years, a lifetime. Come and go. Visit or stay. Your choice. Play the game. Don't let the game play you.