Playing Dead : GW2

Let's get this straight from the start: this post has SPOILERS. If you haven't played Guild Wars 2's latest Living World episode, War Eternal, and you don't care to know what happens then LOOK AWAY NOW!

Never Satisfied: GW2

When I decided to throw a quick post together about Guild Wars 2's latest Living World update (Season Four, Chapter Six for those keeping score), I was going to do the usual thing of avoiding spoilers but when even the name of the new map gives most of the game away it hardly seems worthwhile worrying.

The map's called Dragonfall and Jeromai has some great widescreen shots of it. He's also very enthusiastic about what he's seeing. I'm... less so.

Yes, the art department has done its usual superb job. This is top notch scenery. It's also the same scenery.

It's a bit cavalier to complain about consistency, isn't it?. After all, I'd be just as likely to complain if the pieces didn't fit together, wouldn't I? And isn't one of GW2's strongest suits the way the worldmaking manages to avoid the pitfalls of so many MMORPGs by maintaining coherent and geologically believable transitions? 

That's not really what I mean, anyway. "Consistent" and "same" aren't synonyms. And the new map is beautiful. Stunning, even. I particularly love the verticality that brings back such good memories of Heart of Thorns.

I don't mind the kitchen sink approach that grandfathers in every previous movement system - bouncing mushrooms, lava tubes, whirlwinds, ley lines, updrafts, even those vines that turn you into Spiderman. Although, as I worked my way around the strikingly different subdivisions last night, I did get the distinct impression someone wanted to show off every tool in the box.

And I did enjoy myself. It was fun. It's good work and I appreciate it. I just didn't hear myself go "Wow!" I'm not sure I will, again, not until we go to somewhere truly new. And even then I suspect it will feel surprisingly familiar.

Wherever it is that we end up in Season Five or Expansion Three (if there is one) there'll be places that look as though they were designed by the world's most talented six-year old: sparkles and stars and twinkling lights as far as the eye can see. There will be the areas that look like the covers of prog rock albums from the 1970s, specifically the ones designed by Roger Dean and Rodney Matthews. 

There will be an immense reliance on deep hues that make every screenshot look like something from the Color Field playbook. The rest will be a mix of stuff that's on fire or dragged up out of the sea or frozen solid or baked dry, just like every other MMORPG only with seriously better production values and far more attention to detail than most. I'm finding it something of a challenge to get excited by any of that any more.

For all the technical skill on display, have any maps been added to GW2 over the last seven years that can stand comparison with the greatest cities of the core game, Divinity's Reach, The Black Citadel or Rata Sum? Does anywhere feel as timeless and true as the eternal autumn of fallen Ascalon?

I do love all the maps that came with Heart of Thorns but even I wouldn't claim they're as complex or complete as those that preceded them. A jungle is a jungle in the end, even if most of it does feel more like a forest.

There's no obvious solution to this problem, if it's even a "problem"that exists outside my head. Most MMORPGs end up being more of the same. We've seen the trouble it can cause when they try not to. Having one of the best art teams in the industry with a portfolio of immediately recognizeable signature styles is as likely to emphasize the issue as conceal it.

Oh well. There are plenty of worse problems to have.

Just ask the writers.

All Or Nothing - Post Mortem And Review: GW2

Following Jeremai's advice in the comments on my earlier post on Guild Wars 2's latest Living World episode, All or Nothing, I'm going to say a few things about what I saw there. If anyone hasn't played through the storyline yet but intends to, I'd look away now...

SPOILER BREAK - SPOILER BREAK - SPOILER BREAK  

Hope Is A Dangerous Thing : GW2

Yesterday, sometime around five in the evening, "All or Nothing", the fifth episode in Guild Wars 2's fourth season of The Living World, went live. At the time I was playing EverQuest II. Later, I stopped to have tea. Then Mrs Bhagpuss and I watched something on iPlayer.

It wasn't until around eight in the evening that I logged into GW2 to start the new chapter. By a quarter past eleven I'd finished it.

I was still thinking about it when I went to bed. I dreamed about it in the night. I woke up thinking about it this morning. Mostly about the way it ended.

There's not much I can say that isn't a spoiler. Nothing, really. I took plenty of screenshots, some of them excellent, but I can't use any of those either, especially not the best ones.

I guess I can talk about the new map, Thunderhead Peaks. I haven't really explored it yet, other than the parts that I needed to visit for the storyline. It's a very large, multi-layered area that sits above Desert Highlands. I think it's technically part of a region known as Deldrimor Front, which may or may not be part of The Shiverpeaks. It's a moot point. As yet it doesn't connect to anything else.

Visually, Thunderhead Peaks is stunning. I found it difficult to resist running off in all directions to poke around the ruins, caves, tombs, mines and mountains. As I was working through the storyline there, banners flashed across my screen, announcing various stages of what I took to be the meta event chain.

I declined to join in. Too busy. Too focused. Word on the meta isn't very positive, anyway, but I only found that out later. I'll reserve judgment until I've tried it for myself.

The other big ticket item in the update is a new Fractal along with a lot of tweaks to that game mode. I don't do Fractals so I have nothing to say on that. There's also a new Epic weapon, something else I have no interest in, a new mount mastery that sounds marginally useful at best and an "Upgradeable Weapon Set" about which I know absolutely nothing.

None of which matters in the least, not after that story episode. Which I really can't talk about.

I suppose I could comment on how very, very short it is. That's not really a spoiler. Even by the long-established standards the Living World, this is blink-and-you'll-miss-it short.

It took me barely three hours on a first run, when I had no idea what I was doing. Those three hours included at least thirty minutes of dithering and probably another ten or fifteen taking screenshots and generally gawking. Plus I spoke to every NPC that would talk back.

Added to that, I do the Living World on my heal-specced Druid, who wishes he had the DPS of a limp dish-rag. I'd estimate that a second run, on a character with decent DPS, knowing where to go and what to do, would take no more than a couple of hours.

And yet, I'm not complaining. One of the reasons All or Nothing is so short is that, finally and thankfully, almost all of the really pointless, timewasting filler has been removed. It's true that there is still a certain amount of repetition but the barefaced padding isn't quite as obvious as it used to be.

The big fights were... ok, I guess. They didn't last forever. I was able to use my normal class abilities. Nothing made me want to throw my monitor out of the window. It's an improvement. I'll take it.

The story, though. The story and the ending. That ending...

So, now what? We wait three months for Episode Six? Or was that the finale of Season Four? Do we go all the way to late Summer, early Autumn and a third expansion that hasn't been officially announced or even unofficially hinted at? Which might not even exist?

We're supposed to just carry on? As though nothing happened?

Anyway, I can't discuss it so I'm going to shut up. And you know what? By the time it's all common knowledge and fair game for analysis and dissection and speculation we'll all have moved on and it will be too late. No-one will want to know. So I'll never get to discuss it.

This is what I will say: it's the kind of thing that, the moment you've finished it, you want spend a whole evening talking about. Preferably in a bar, loudly, with hand gestures. And you know someone's going to cry and if someone else says the wrong thing then, friendships could end over it.

Where does that leave us? Well, that's what we'd talk about, isn't it? We'd have to. We couldn't not.

But we can't. So let's leave it at that.

Soft Kitty: GW2

No, I'm not going to talk about the story. Way too soon, although it's irritating the bejezus out of me, having to keep quiet.

Spoilers are a problem, though. Even with the story safely tucked away behind the velvet curtain of secrecy, it's still impossible to talk about the update as a whole - the new map (Jahai Bluffs) the personal instance (Sun's Refuge), or the upgradeable armor collection - without spoiling something.

Partly, that's because Guild Wars 2's A Star To Guide Us is far and away the most complex and complete update ArenaNet has given us for a very long time. In some ways it feels more like a mini-expansion than a regular episode of the Living Story.

I'll leave it to someone else (Jeromai, maybe) to look into the intricacies of the new Raid. I'm also not going to discuss the new Legendary weapon, except to say that someone in my larger guild had already finished it an hour after the update came out, or so I was told. Not sure if that's an endorsement or a criticism.

Have you ever looked at a tornado and thought "I bet I could ride that!" ?

Better I talk about things where I have at least a little personal experience. There's plenty going on that I am doing without casting my net over trivia I'll never touch, like Raids and Legendaries. A ridiculous amount, in fact. Just look at the Dulfy entry for the "Full House" achievement to get some idea of the scope.

Full House is a portmanteau Achievement for completing all the other Achievements - the upgrade paths and collections associated with the combined second home and nuclear fallout shelter, the aforementioned Sun's Refuge. At a certain point in the story you get gifted the keys to this underground bunker and it's then up to you to blow away the cobwebs (that's not a metaphor) and invite a few hundred of your closest friends and allies (most of whom you never met before) to come set up home there.

You do know there's a gaping great hole in the roof, right? And dragons can fly?

So far all I have managed to do is persuade a Djinn to move in with me (that always goes well...) and open a massive, steel vault door. Oh, and pay some random NPC five gold for no discernable benefit to me.

To get the Djinn in I had to complete a group event, something I did by accident, which is the best way to do anything in Tyria. I learned a little about Djinns in the process but not as much as I'd like. Djinns are an under-developed race and the wiki is certainly uninformative.

In this event there are two, with a rivalry going back centuries or maybe millennia. I turned up in the middle so I was a little lost on the plot but I found the dialog engaging and involving. Like much of this episode it was also a tad on the bleak side with an effective mood change towards the climax. Whoever's writing this stuff must have shares in Kleenex.

Grief affects people differently.

The event also raised more questions than it answered, pretty much the signature trope of GW2 for six years now. I've long ago given up expecting clear answeres to 90 per cent of anything. I quite like not knowing. It allows for a lot of speculation and pondering, which is a kind of player-generated content, in a way.

In this case, the unanswered question is how a Djinn came to be Branded by the Elder dragon Kralkatorrik. Djinns are supposed to be immune to that effect. It does suggest that, having acquired the powers of two other Elder dragons (I think that's right - he got something from both Zhaitan and Mordremoth, if I'm remembering the plot correctly), the crystal dragon is beginning to break the physical laws of his own universe.

The event ended successfully and I hung around for a while, partly becasuse I was curious and partly because someone said in map chat "if you haven't got the Djinn for your instance, go talk to him". This, incidentally, this right here, is why it's impossible to go back to single-player RPGs once you've experienced online games with other players. Or it is for me.

Waiter! Waiter! There's a hare in my soup!

As it turned out I didn't even need to speak to the Djinn. He spoke to me and I gladly accepted his offer to come join my not-so-merry little band of grim survivalists in our heavily fortified hole. Once installed, naturally, he had some projects he wanted my help completing. Don't they all?

One of the first things I did after I took possession of my firelit cavern was to go round and interview everyone with a symbol over their head. In other MMORPGs this would be called "getting the quests" but we famously don't have "quests" in GW2 because we're all humpty dumpties here.

Whatever we call them, there are a lot and they are all on the lengthy side. There are eight separate, substantial quests to upgrade the instance plus another enormous to-do list that comes attached to the new, upgradeable armor set.

Is it just me or are things getting a little HoT around here?

 
The good part is that, having scanned the walkthroughs, they all appear to be eminently doable. They mostly ressemble previous quests I've enjoyed such as the Cadalbolg, Roller Beetle or Griffon, rather than the interminable, gated grind of something like Mawdry or the new-style legendaries.

At first I couldn't find the armor quest. I could see the correct NPC but she wouldn't talk to me. Apparently you have to exit the instance and come back. When I returned later she was more communicative. And also extremely depressed. With very good reason.

Tell me who did it and I'll get 'em for you!

She'd learned that the shrines she'd built to commemorate her dead lover had been vandalized, because GW2 is nothing if not a barrel of laughs right now, as I might have mentioned. By chance I had already happened upon the vandal in the very act.

I'd had strong words with them but the game offered me no option to do what I wanted to do, which was to boot the bastard off the cliff where we were handily standing. It seemed odd at the time but now I understand why. I didn't have the right quest.

GW2, with its dynamic events and invisible, hot join grouping mechanics, does a better job than most MMORPGs of presenting an organic, living world but quests, whatever you call them, are quests. If you're not on the right step then it's not going to happen.

 
In stark contrast, opening the vault door had no pre-reqs. It required nothing more than five random drops. Runes, no less. I forget if we've had runes before in GW2 but we have them now and they fit in the slots just like you'd expect.

At first I thought they came out of the chests you get at the end of events so I went and did the New, New Shatterer several times. I call him the New, New Shatterer because we already have the New Shatterer, who replaced the Old Shatterer ages ago.

Dragon down!

The New New Shatterer is tough. Most of the attempts failed. He clearly needs an organized map or at least a good guild at the core of the zerg. We did get him once, though, which popped a bunch of achievements for me.

The runes, as it happens, don't drop in the big chest anyway. They're random drops off anything. I got my last one from a grawl. What grawl are doing on the map beats me but Jahai Bluffs has a bit of everything, from a gorgeous, pocket Heart of Thorns zone to a chunk of another planet that might possibly be Haight-Ashbury circa the Summer of Love.

The colors, man!

That last one also features both the update's most quoted line of dialog and its greatest tease. (The line comes in the story so I won't spoil it, although you'll be lucky to dodge hearing it several times in map chat as you explore Jahai, not to mention in the title of this post...). As for the tease, well, as I suggested last time, nothing is forever. I'm taking Scarlet's cameo here as a hint if not as a promise.

Something's not right here...

With the runes all slotted, the vault door swung open. I was hoping, somewhat prosaically, there'd be an actual bank inside but what I got was a lot more interesting, if less pragmatically useful. Behind the battleship steel doors lies a foliage-filled room, strongly reminding me of other enclaves of nature hidden in obscure corners of Tyria.

The walls are studded with plaques, some readable, others not. The place is evidently sacred to some god or other. My knowledge of the Tyrian pantheon is woefully incomplete but if this were Norrath it would certainly be a shrine dedicated to Tunare.

There's also a Splendid Chest at the back, just like you'd find at the top of a jumping puzzle and with just as underwhelming contents. Mrs Bhagpuss tells me the runes vanish after a while and the door closes again. I'm guessing this is something that resets daily so you can do it over and over.

Before I opened the door this had been a sealed, pitch-black room for hundreds of years. And yet it's filled with plants.

When the door first opened some NPC behind me expressed a concern that I might get trapped inside and suffocate. That didn't happen but it did remind me of the strange thing that did happen to me in a hole in one of the cliffs on the main map.

There's a very large unbound magic node in the cliffside cave. You can see it from miles away. Unbound magic is a currency so everyone heads straight towards any obvious conglomeration to grab it and stuff their pockets. When you grab that particular stash the entrance instantly seals with rock, leaving you trapped in a 10x10 room with no discernable exit. Just as well we have waypoints.

That apparently meaningless but oddly immersive incident is emblematic of the attention to detail lavished on the entire map. So far I feel I've barely scratched the surface of Jahai Bluffs, let alone the whole update. There's enough content here to keep me busy for a week or two if I were to go at it hard and a month or two if, as I most likely will, I just pick away at it when I'm in the mood.

In the words of Donna Summer, could it be magic?

There's not only a lot more here than usual that I could do, there's a lot more I'd like to do. Chances are I'll wander off and get distracted before I finish most of it (I still have plenty of unfinished content from Heart of Thorns...) but at least it's there to begin with. That's a huge improvement over what I've come to expect in the last year or so.

Is this really the best place you could find to hang your washing?

And that's quite enough praise for now. I'm off to look for more children's books to fill my bookcase. That's what I call an adventure!

Goodbye, Path of Fire. Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out.

I spent most of today playing Guild Wars 2, which isn't all that unusual. What was different from a run of the mill day off work was that I spent pretty much the whole time in the new content that came with yesterday's Living World update.

I think the last time that happened was probably Season Three, Episode Five, Flashpoint, the one that introduced us to Draconis Mons. I liked that map. I spent a good while completing it and generally goofing around there.

That was all the way back in May 2017 but most significantly it was before the release of the last expansion. The long and the short of it is that I don't much like anything about Path of Fire, and that very much includes the entirety of the Living World/Story Season associated with it. I don't like the look and feel, the mechanics, the plot, the characters and I very especially don't like the mounts.

Perhaps the best thing about LS4.4, A Star To Guide Us, is that it feels, if not like the end of an era, then at least like the beginning of the end. I'm more than ready.

I guess the real beginning of the end actually came in the last episode, when Palawa Joko, one of the most tedious, cliched, derivative villains I've ever had the misfortune to have to sit and listen to, died. Really died, as in gone for good, never coming back. In case anyone's in doubt or denial (and many seem to be) the permanence of his departure gets some heavy emphasis in the narrative this time around. 

Of course, as anyone who has ever read a comic or played a video game knows, no-one ever really dies. It's kind of a feature. What's more, in this very episode, the one in which several people, my own character among them, state with absolute certainty that Joko won't be coming back... well, I'd better not say any more.

Even so, I think we're free of the pest for a while. There's a distinct feeling of decks being cleared and pages being turned. The new map feels quite significantly different to all the others that came with the PoF expansion or the previous chapters of this Sesson. It may be connected geographically but it seems existentially separate.

As I was playing today, at one point I caught myself wondering whether this was the last episode in the Season. It can't be, of course. There would have been an announcement if it was.

Still, it's mid-September. They're going to have to go some to fit another one in between Halloween and Wintersday, although last year, if I remember correctly they did allow a Living World release to overlap the midwinter festival.

Whether we get Episode Five at the end of this year or the start of the next, either way I would bet on the next one being the climax of Season Four. I think it will set up the announcement for the third expansion, which will arrive sometime in Summer 2019. There will be no Living Story Season Five until after that beds in, so probably around October/November next year.

Or I guess they could wait another year. I don't think the finances will stand that, though. You can see from the financials each quarter how heavily they rely on the uptick from expansions.

I know there was a lot of brave talk in the first couple of years about never having any expansions ever but we saw how well that worked out for them. The game is on the expansion treadmill now and it won't be getting off until it follows the original Guild Wars into maintenance mode.

ArenaNet also once claimed they weren't going to make any more MMOs after GW2, the game they planned to operate and update indefinitely. It's been running for six years now and it probably has at least as long again to go, but some players are starting to get itchy feet. I've noticed an increasing number of in-game comments lately speculating on "Guild Wars 3".

There's even a thread about it on the forum - it was on the first page for a while but the flurry of posts following the update have pushed it on to page two. I wonder if the OP there is on to something when they say "...if ArenaNet does reach the point it can develop and maintain another MMO without having to send GW2 to the curb, I believe they should start up a new story entirely. Guild Wars was great, Guild Wars 2 is great...Guild Wars 3 would be too much."

Anyway, for now and the foreseeable, GW2 is what we have and as of this update it feels surprisingly fresh again. I am even more frustrated now than I was yesterday about not being able to discuss the story here. There's a lot to discuss. Maybe I'll get back to it when a few weeks have passed. Problem is, by then we'll all be on to something new and it won't seem as urgent.

One thing I will say is that the final instance is brutal, but in an entirely different way to usual. There's no awful, dragged-out boss fight. Instead there's a timed jump puzzle that has to be done on a mount. It's also currently very badly bugged, to the point of unplayability, which is traditional.

Nevertheless, I did manage to complete it, by means of a combination of workarounds, multiple deaths and brute force. Even though it was unfair and infuriating, I enjoyed it. I don't think I could honestly say that about any Episode finale since the Living Story moved to instanced content.

What's more, the penultimate instance is also brutal and unfair and I enjoyed that one too. For the first time in a very long time I am seriously considering taking a second character through the story for my own amusement and to see how it plays with a different class.

A Star To Guide Us isn't perfect, not by a wide margin, but it's a major improvement on what we've been used to over the past year and for that we can be thankful. If it's also laying down a marker for the future tenor and direction of the game, well, no-one will be happier about that than me.

Ice Cream For Crow : First Impressions of GW2's "A Star to Guide Us"

When I posted a sour, pessimistic reaction to the recent trailer for Guild Wars 2's next Living Story episode, I confess I was hoping to be proved wrong. Despite my supposed ennui, when patch day came I found myself anticipating the drop with something not dissimilar to excitement.

ArenaNet always update on Tuesdays, almost always at either 3pm, 5pm or 8pm U.K. time. Three o'clock passed without incident but at ten to five, just as Mrs Bhagpuss and I were on the jumping puzzle stage of the Legend Builder torch collection, the ten minute warning sounded.

By five past five I was patching and by a quarter past I was playing. I didn't stop until just now, around nine. I haven't been playing solidly all that time. There were various bag-clearings and natural breaks. I guess, though, that I've put in a solid three hours on the new chapter, working solely through the main narrative.

This minute, as I type, my druid, who always does the Living Story stuff, is tapping his foot impatiently in the new, upgradeable instance, Sun's Refuge. I took possession of it at the end of part three and that's the only spoiler I'm going to let slip.

I have a theory about spoilers: even saying you aren't going to give spoilers is a spoiler. If someone tells you there's a twist at the end (or in the middle) of a movie, that's a spoiler, even though they don't give you a single clue what the twist might be.

When it comes to the story in A Star to Guide Us there is literally nothing I can say that wouldn't be a spoiler. The meta-spoiler is that if I were to tell you the spoilers, boy! would they be spoilers! I exclaimed out loud once and sat back and goggled several times. There is a lot in this episode that I did not expect.

Probably most people who've been paying attention to the MMO news this year will remember that there was a sudden change of personnel in the GW2 story department back in July. Whether that had a material effect on this episode I have no way of knowing.

Certainly I imagine there won't have been any time to change the plot, which means this very welcome return to what I consider to be the real main storyline has probably been in the works for a good while. There may, however, have been an impact on the scripting. It feels that way.

In recent episodes I've gotten used to groaning or shaking my head at some of the sloppy dialog, in-jokes and all-round loose writing. This time, so far, there's been none of that. Everyone sounds like they're taking it seriously for once, which doesn't mean there's no humor and no jokes but that those there are seem to derive - fairly convincingly - from the characters and the situation. It's a relief.

As well as benefitting from significantly above par plot and dialog, gameplay is similarly improved. The first three chapters of this episode are blissfully free of either over-repetitive set pieces or inordinately long and/or complicated boss fights.

There's a modicum of repetition in Part One, A Shattered Nation, and moderately lengthy fights in both Part Two, Chaos Theory and Part Three, Legacy but none of it annoyed me. Most of it I enjoyed. It seemed to me that someone had actually listened to the complaints that fill the forums after every Living Story - the same complaints - and instead of dismissing them as usual, for once decided to do something about them.

There is still the final battle to come, of course. I have no idea what that will entail but there will inevitably be a Big Boss. I just hope the lessons continue to have been learned there, but even if they don't, the earlier stages represent an improvement and a hopeful sign for the future.

The new map, about which I was very sniffy before I'd seen it, is possibly the best new map since the last expansion (although I did quite like that one with the lost Charr tribe). Any fears about the innate ugliness of a Branded map turned out to be entirely misplaced.

Branding, for those who don't play GW2, is something the Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik does to landscapes and people that turns them purple. It's not pretty, or at least it hasn't been in the past. Only somehow, now it is.

Visually the new map, Jahai Bluffs, is spectacular. Unfortunately for ANet, that on its own isn't enough any more. Their art department is a victim of its own success. Work that would draw huge praise in other MMOs is both expected and taken for granted here, not least by me.

Also, because they tend to be rigorously authentic within their own design specifications, it's becoming increasingly difficult to raise any enthusiasm as we arrive on what must be the tenth or eleventh desert map in succession. Well, they found a way to change that up. Not saying any more. Spoilers.

So far so good, then. Indeed, so far so much better than expected. I have a free day tomorrow so I hope to finish the story, even if there is the expected attritional boss fight as a capper.And then I still won't be able to say anything about it for a while, which, based on what's happened so far, is going to be the most annoying part of the whole shebang.

Nice to be able to say that, for once.

The Faults In Our Stars : GW2

Guild Wars 2 has the honor of being the first MMORPG I have played where I actually groan when I hear there's going to be new content. Specifically, new Living World content.

There was a time when I looked forward to the story moving forward. As I've said all too often, we never knew how well off we were when we had Scarlet to entertain and infuriate us. Even in recent times there have been some moments. That trailer...

Mostly, though, things have become teeth-grindingly formulaic. It's been getting harder and harder to summon up any enthusiasm let alone excitement. Today I hit an all-time low. Flatlined.

There's a new trailer for Season 4 Episode 4, which goes by the name "A Star to Guide Us". It appears to have been designed to send us to sleep. I don't believe I have ever seen a promotional puff with less, um... puff.

Composed almost entirely of flashbacks, with one of those voice-over narrations directors like to use when they aren't confident anyone will know what's going on otherwise, the compilation of clips centers on the young dragon, Aurene.

Aurene is a cipher at the best of times and her character model gives her the unfortunate appearance of a badly-maintained carnival float. I have always struggled to take her seriously, although she did a pretty good job of changing that at the end of the last episode when she... but, no. Spoilers!

Yes, some people still haven't played through Episode 3. I know this to be a fact because one of them is Mrs Bhagpuss. She lost interest in the plot years ago and since she also detests the boss fights she tends to put off doing the instances until the last minute. In the case of Episode 3 the last minute has yet to arrive.

I did finish it. It wasn't as bad as some. I thought at the time, though, that I'd had about enough of riding on this roundabout. I no longer have much interest in even exploring the new maps, far less farming them. I think the last one I spent any significant time in was... no, it's gone.

Looking on the bright side, there seems to be remarkably little combat in the new trailer. Actually, none at all. I suppose it would be too much to hope for an entire non-combat Episode? That certainly would break the mould.

As for the rest of the update, it looks staggeringly uninteresting. There's aforementioned story and map, as per usual. Minus points for making the map Branded - the ugliest visual theme in the game. Then there's a raid. Never going to see that. Don't care. And a new Legendary weapon. Ditto. Oh, and let's not forget a Mastery for Mounts. Or rather, let's. I hate mounts.

So far so meh. There are two properly new things but I don't like the look of either of them. What's more, I don't trust them, either.

One is an "Upgradable Armor Set". As someone asks at the start of the forum thread on it, "What does this even mean?" I don't know but I'm guessing it's a) grinding and farming and b) wriggle room for ANet over the "no more gear tiers - ever!" promise. If you can't go high, go wide.

The other innovation also threatens to scratch an itch, which sounds fine until you remember that scratching just makes you sore and irritated. Sun's Refuge is an "upgradeable instance" modelled on the one in the Nightfall expansion for the original Guild Wars. I didn't like the concept then and I doubt I'm going to like it any better now. It's an annoying, cheap and deeply unsatisfying way to imply the game has housing without actually putting any housing in the game. Much like the existing "personal Instance". Only worse.

What with all this "upgrading", the recent revamp of the ArenaNet website and even the World Boss widget in the Gem Shop, I strongly suspect we are being softened up for something. Possibly an expansion announcement, possibly a new game in the franchise (a mobile game, undoubtedly), possibly some kind of app.

I could do without all of it. I'm reaching the stage with GW2 where I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't actively prefer "maintenance mode". After all, WvW has been in effective stasis for years now and I still play it pretty much every day. If anything, it's most likely going to be the major revamp that finally gets me to stop.

And I do my dailies every. single. day. without fail, even though they're the always the same and have been for years. Not just on one account but three! And I do World Bosses regularly even though most of them haven't varied in style or substance for longer than Scarlet's been dead.

GW2 has an infinitude of repeatable content already. Some of it competitive, some of it co-operative, some of it solo. Sometimes you have to  wonder if we really need any more. The same could be said of many MMORPGs.

In the end it's the illusion of change that we chase, anyway. About the only MMO that genuinely rips up the playbook every couple of years is World of Warcraft and the rumbles of discontent over that are growing ever louder. And someone may be listening, because isn't Battle for Azeroth the most "more of the same" expansion yet?

Of course, all ANet have to do is release a blisteringly good episode with a fantastically satisfying implementation of all those new ideas, a thrilling narrative, a stunning new map and some amazing gameplay and I'll have to come back next week and eat crow. (Not that I'd ever eat a crow. I love crows).

Here's hoping.

I'd Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You : GW2

Yesterday I guessed I was about halfway through the current GW2 Living Story episode, Long Live The Lich. I was wrong. Turns out I was more like two thirds of the way in. I finished it this afternoon.

It took me about another ninety minutes, give or take, meaning the whole thing - just the storyline that is - lasts something like three or four hours. Living Story chapters have been clocking in around that length pretty much since the beginning of Season Two, when they moved to the current, instanced format from the open world settings of Season One.

It's no secret that I'm very much in the camp that believes the first season was by far the best. It's not even nostalgia. I offer my many blog posts as evidence that I was invested and involved with the storyline and appreciative of the mechanics at the time they were in play.

Not that Season One didn't have its problems. It had many. Scarlet Briar, who I came to appreciate and even like as I learned more about her and her backstory, was a deeply divisive arch-villain. Even now there are those who spit when they hear her name mentioned.

Extreme Close-Up!

The narrative of the first few weeks and months seemed episodic to put it politely. The pacing could be funereal at times. The open world events frequently started out buggy and didn't always work properly until days after launch. Even when they were up and running smoothly they were open to widespread abuse by players, who swiftly discovered how they could be farmed for profit.

For all that, Season One had a dynamism, a fervor that has never been replicated. The knowledge that most of what arrived with each update would leave with the next, coupled with the much-maligned (not least by me) bi-weekly cadence, gave the whole game an urgency that seems hard to imagine now.

Moving to the current instanced system allowed ANet to monetize the Living World and also to ensure that no GW2 player need miss out on any aspect of the hard (and presumably expensive) work that went into creating it. Many, probably most, players appreciate being able to play the content at a time of their choosing.

One of the biggest complaints about the content of Season One (and again it's a complaint I made often myself) was the complete lack of any new overland maps. Other than the two, small non-combat instances that served as introductions for Rox and Braham, it wasn't until we began to receive Dry Top in instalments that the explorable land mass of the base game increased.

Some Random Fight!

All of that is the past, buried and forgotten. In 2018 our Living World arrives quarterly in tidy packages that always include the same things: a multi-part narrative that takes place mainly in instances, a set of achievements encouraging us to replay those instances, a new map, a new currency, a new vendor with something designed to be worth farming the new currency to buy.

It's indicative of the extremely formulaic, repetitive nature of this process that I now usually feel I've done with the latest Living World update somewhere between a day and a couple of weeks after it arrives. I no longer even bother to open the entire new map, far less complete all the events or spend weeks farming them. I believe I've made these observations in previous posts about other episodes of the Living World but what can you expect? They are all the same.

Part of the reason I'm rehashing history is that, having completed the narrative of the latest update, I find there's almost nothing I can say about it. That doesn't mean there's nothing I want to say about it. Ye gods, no! I have plenty to say. Anyone would, had they seen it. I just can't, because spoilers.

At this stage just about anything I might say would be a spoiler. I took a bunch of screenshots and I can't use most of those because they are all spoilerific too. About all I'm prepared to say about the story is... it's really going to annoy some people - but I'm not one of them.

Irony! Or maybe Sarcasm!

Of course, I long ago gave up expecting consistency or quality from ANet's writing team. That way madness lies. I'll settle for getting a good laugh, a jump scare or something that I wanted to happen. This time I got all three.

I can be a bit more descriptive about the mechanics. This is an area where I've been hyper-critical in the past. I detest ANet's innate belief that the only reason casual players don't love hardcore boss fights is that they aren't exposed to them often enough.

Even more than that I loathe the designers reliance on the Rule of Three (Boss does something weird at 75%, 50% and 25%) and the The Other Rule Of Three (introduce three new gimmicks separately then use all of them at once). Without these two old standbys the Annoying Boss Fights that last 20-30 minutes would last 5-10 minutes instead and I would be done with them that much faster. Who knows, at a quarter of the length I might even enjoy one, once in a while.

Sadly, this episode is not going to be remembered as The One Where Anet Broke The Habit Of A Lifetime. It is, however, one where the gimmicks are more straightforward, easier to grasp, easier to use and less idiotic than usual. Also, I don't think it's a spoiler to confirm that, yes, there is a final boss and yes, you do have to fight them, but it might be if I tell you that the fight in question is less annoying than most of its kind and takes up less of your valuable time than you probably expect.

Title Card!

Other than that, I would only say that the whole production reminded me of one of those Shakespeare plays where there are lots of battles that the audience gets to experience only through various Lords urgently discussing the action while peering into the wings. I'd also say that I've always held that even telling someone there's a surprise ending is a spoiler, no matter that you refrain from telling them what the surprise is.

So, did I enjoy it? Well, yes. I guess so. It was rubbish but so are lots of things I like. I didn't really get any deep emotions poked. Nor too many shallow ones, come to that. Then again, I finished The Banner Saga this week and my main emotional reaction was mild puzzlement. If I had to sum the ending of that one up, "Is that it?" would probably cover it. It might be me, is what I'm saying.

Next, I guess I should go see what's on the new map, do the Hearts, check the vendors and look at the Collection for the Roller Beetle Mount. Or I might just do my dailies and go play something else until September.

I'm not entirely sure that was the reaction ANet were looking for. It certainly wouldn't have happened in Season One.

This Joko Isn't Funny Any More : GW2

This afternoon, I finally got to play "Long Live the Lich", Episode Three, Season Four of GW2's Living World. Just shy of a full day after it supposedly launched. Along with almost everyone else, I couldn't get stuck into the (no doubt thrilling) storyline right away, due to major bugs.

They supposedly fixed the worst while I was sleeping although as I write there's still a caveat on the forums warning they haven't found, let alone stomped, all of them. Supposedly the disconnection issues that made me go play EQ2 instead had been fixed (it was those pesky Fractals) but the first three times I attempted to log in today - post-fix - the game was still giving me a network error.

Oddly - or perhaps not so oddly - I was able to log in my two accounts that don't have the Path of Fire expansion without any issues. I did my dailies on those. I also went round all ten chests for the repeatable Sunken Treasure Hunter achievement, the first time I've been able to open them for nearly a month.

Most of the new map doesn't look like this. The rest is boring old desert.

That's how long ANet took to fix that particular bug. There's a sixteen page thread on it on the forums. They also forgot to mention the bug fix in the update notes. If anyone's missing the glory days of SOE's MMOs of a decade and a half ago I strongly urge them to come play GW2. Every patch breaks something and no-one seems all that bothered about fixing most of it.

I'd been stashing the keys, which you could still get from the Kill Ten Krait Daily (it's not called that but that's what it is). I have about twenty on each account now. It took me an hour to go round all the maps using them up just on one account so I might have to pace myself. I'm only doing it because I want the breathing mask that covers your entire head with a huge bubble.

With that out of the way I tried logging in my Path of Fire account and miraculously it worked. That meant it was time for my Druid (One of my five Druids. One of my two Druids on that account. No, I don't know why, either...) to wake up.

GW2 does have pretty interstitials.

He's the Asuran who dresses like a toddler. Watching everyone trying to take him seriously as The Commander makes the dialogue of every Living Story episode seem like comedy even when it's supposed to be tragedy. I use him because when Druids were invented I specced and geared him for maximum healing and he can generally outheal most of the stupid gimmicks they put in LS instances so I don't have to bother learning how they work.

So far this time he hasn't needed to go full firehose with the healing stick. It's far too early to give any details even with a spoiler warning but I will say that up to where I've got so far, which is to the end of the story element of the new map, I'm guessing maybe half-way through the whole thing, it's a lot less annoying than most episodes.

Thus far all the fights have been easy. The first mini-boss didn't seem to have any dumb tricks. The inevitable instance where all your real skills are taken away and you have to use a whole load of new ones that the game tries to teach you in real time isn't infuriating or frustrating. It's actually - whisper it - fun. It's a long time since I've been able to say that.

Extremely minor spoiler: if you go under the deck on the ship after the fight ends you get to hear Joko being unpleasant. You might  want to avoid doing that.

The narrative so far is at least coherent and comprehensible. Original or surprising it very much is not
but you can't have everything. It also has the kind of tonal problems that could only really be solved by splitting the entire thing in two. And then preferably burning the part of the script that has all of Joko's lines in it.

I don't know how Palawa Joko was played in the original Guild Wars but here he seems to be channeling both Mad King Thorne and The Joker at the same time. At one point he sounds so indistinguishable from Mad King Thorne that I wondered if it was the same voice actor. Perhaps it is. It would explain a lot.

Personally, I don't find sadistic psychopaths amusing. When Alan Moore and Brian Bolland redefined and re-invented the character of The Joker in The Killing Joke they were making a point about how unfunny he was,  a point that seems to have been comprehensively lost over the ensuing decades.

I'd go for "Guilty but Insane"

GW2, perhaps more so than any MMORPG I've played, fails to harmonize its registers, leaving them to clash horrifically like some nightmare wind-chime made from sheet iron. It frequently interposes the sadistic with the twee in a manner that suggests, at best, a lack of professional judgment that would put most writers on the unemployment line and at worst a serious psychiatric disorder.

This tendency, always present, seems to be worsening. I'm not at all sure how much longer I'll be prepared to put up with it. I'm damned sure I'm not going to make excuses for it. I'm just hoping we finish Joko off for good and get back to Dragons. You know where you are with a dragon. (On fire, mostly).

My deep antipathy for Joko aside, I found plenty to enjoy in the first few encounters and instances. There's quite a lot of talking and some of it is amusing. I'm warming to Gorrick and Blish, who appeared full-born as Venus from the waves last episode. They seem to be bedding in nicely.

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

Gorrick has literally no empathy at all and precious few social skills but he doesn't come across as vicious, which makes his "Did he really say that?" moments more funny than disturbing. Blish, by comparison, is almost a tragic figure in some ways, even though he gets some good gag lines ("Can I have my arm back?"). Taimi's hitherto unsuspected relationship with him (with both of them, really) is more affecting and believable than it has any right to be, given our complete ignorance of their history and the way it was shoe-horned in out of nowhere.

Come off it! If you're a real Lady, I'm a real cat.

Lord Faren is on hand to play the narcissistic fop, an act he carries off so well that I suspect almost no-one believes it any more. The Lore sub-forum has been discussing not so much whether it's an act as what the act is supposed to be concealing.

I'd love to believe the writing team have and have always had deep plans for Faren but I don't. If he turns out to be something other than he seems it will be retcon. As seems to be the case with the sudden and positively mindblowing appearance this episode of a character who has been a mystery for the six full years of the  life of the game. That's it? Really??

I will probably have more to say about that in a while when spoilers are less of an issue. Suffice it to say, if and when we eventually discover the identity of the mysterious E, he'd better not be some fanboy with an autograph book and a selfie stick.

That's as much as I have to say for now. I'm anticipating the usual, tedious Boss fight to come along and spoil the party towards the end but so far, so good. I'm enjoying it. Joko always excepted.