Happy Wintersday, Skritt-Kickers! : GW2

Wintersday is here again and, with the repairs to Lion's Arch progressing slowly (euphemism for "not happening"), the center of celebrations has shifted to Divinity's Reach. Jennah, Party Queen of Tyria, was never one to miss an opportunity to spend taxpayers' money on having a good time so I doubt Magnus, Kiel or whoever is supposedly in charge of the burned-out wreck that is L.A. needed to ask twice.

All the usual favorites are back for us to ignore enjoy - snowball fights, toys running amok, amateurs who couldn't carry a tune in a blanket giving it plenty on the handbells... Tixx is around somewhere with his airship doing something or other. And like that.

Apparently you can make one of these trees and put it in your Personal Instance
so its Wintersday all year long. I'll get right on that.

There are a few new wrinkles. That "amusing", autonomic, self-aware golem is back with his bucket. This time around he's trading under the name Ho-Ho-Tron which suggests he may be self-aware but he lacks any sense of self-awareness. Also I'm pretty sure he's scamming. As he herds his present-laden cow from one side of the giant hole to the other he makes some comment about doing his community service but didn't he already complete his sentence, at our expense, months ago?

I'd like to be able to claim I was the one posing the moral dilemma rather than making the Katy Perry joke but...

Authenticity aside, he's nothing if not a hard worker. Round and round he goes, surrounded by a jostling pack of players determined to grab for themselves any presents that fall off the cart. Are we any better than the demented skritt who burrow up through the flagstones to steal them? Don't ask me difficult questions when I've got my kicking boots on!

At least they seem to be feeding him well

The oddest addition has to be the new quest. Yes it is a quest. Well what is it then? It's not an event. It's not an achievement. You speak to a Grawl, he tells you to get him something, you go speak to someone who might have it and he wants something else so you go get him that. Then you go back to the Grawl and he comes up with the next thing he wants and so on. That. Is. A. Quest.

It's also ill-considered and incoherent. This Grawl has stolen some Wintersday "ornaments" from a bunch of orphans, ostensibly because he doesn't like the noise they make (I think he means the ornaments but maybe it's the orphans. He's a grawl. Who knows what he means?). All this happens in your personal instance.

Pity you can't say as much for the education.
Just look at that spelling!

Now, if you're a Human, there actually IS an orphanage in your personal instance (just go with it) so there's at least a basis for suspending disbelief. The Quest, however, has to work for all players, so this Grawl and his attendant, ornament-deprived Orphans (actually one orphan, presumably elected by the rest and delegated to speak on their behalf. And his "friend") are lurking in the Personal Instance allocated to each race in lieu of actual housing.

In the case of a Charr player, that means there's a Grawl hiding at the back of a section of The Black Citadel that's positively teeming with heavily-armed Legionaries, many of whom are off-duty and liquored up. With a human child. And a Charr cub, who gets no lines.

Best mob skill ever

How did they get there without being, at best, arrested and, more likely, spit-roasted and eaten or used for target practice? What about that cub? Is he an orphan too? Would it matter even if he was? Wouldn't he just be in a Farhar anyway? Can't ask him - he didn't get a speaking part in this little nativity play. And why in the name of the gods we Charr don't believe in are they hiding in MY house anyway? I don't even have a house! No, don't get me started...

So, things don't get off to the most credible of beginnings and it doesn't improve from there. The Grawl insists on giving clues in some of the most execrable doggerel I have ever read. Yesterday's clue did manage to point to the next part of the quest, handily situated right across the metal gangway from the instance, but today he was rambling on about a place made of flowers.

Hey, Vogons! Better up your game!

The Grove perhaps? No, luckily for me Mrs Bhagpuss already went there and tried that and was able to save me from wasting my time and my silver. In fact you just go to the same place in Black Citadel you went to yesterday. I just gave up trying to make it make sense. It carries on tomorrow (there's a day's wait between stages). Maybe all will become clear in due course. Or it won't. I'm betting on won't.

He followed me home and I'm going to keep him.

As well as new things to do there are lots of new things to get. The familiar wrapping of the presents hides a slew of interesting additions to the usual range of socks and snowflakes. Runes, sigils, tonics and finishers abound. There are already complaints about inventory space being compromised. There was even an inexplicable occurrence where I opened something (I didn't notice what - I was opening so many things just then) and received an item that auto-completed the entire new collection (which I hadn't even started). I got a Skritt mini. Result!. Oh yes - there's a new collection. Did I mention that?

All of this abundance and confusion arrived with the threatened promised revamp of the Daily and Monthly Achievement systems. I was going to do a whole post on that but honestly? I can't be bothered. There's a eleven page thread on the forums about it already, running roughly 50-50 Love It/Hate It. I don't feel either. I just feel meh.

Could you be more specific?

The people who really love it are the ones who were previously doing the dailies just to get the Laurels. Laurels now come automatically through the Monthly, for which you have to do quite literally nothing more than remember to log in. The people who hate it are the ones who enjoyed seeing the daily fill out in the background as they dd whatever they felt like doing. The first lot feel liberated; the second lot feel trapped.

The WvW seem much, much easier than the rest
but maybe that's just me

I'm one of those weirdos who does the dailies because I like doing the dailies. I did prefer the old ones, which offered a lot more choice, but I don't object to the new ones, which are extremely specific. I'll do them as long as I continue to find them amusing and then I'll stop. As for the rewards, I don't spend the sodding Laurels anyway - I have nearly two thousand of them stashed away across the two accounts. The rewards they've attached to each individual achievement are marginally more useful.

As a revamp I'll give it five. Out of ten. It was completely unnecessary from my point of view but I'm sure they have their reasons. Getting everyone to cluster in the same maps so it looks like there are more of us comes to mind...

It might have been better not to have introduced the new system at the exact same time as adding a second set of holiday dailies that do reward a Laurel, though. Not likely that was going to confuse things, was it? Also, the two days of Wintersday dailies we've had so far have been identical. Not sure if that's a co-incidence or whether we'll just get the same half-dozen for the entire season. If so, I think that could get a tad wearing.

I'm begging you, don't make me go to Queensdale any more.

We're asked to perm any five from six but since one's completing the insanely hard Wintersday Jumping Puzzle that's actually five from five as far as this household is concerned. Of the five I can do, the Snowball one is really annoying, albeit simple if Mrs Bhagpuss and I duo it, and the Bell Choir looked to be impossible until I bothered to read a walkthrough and actually pay attention. Now I can do it with my eyes closed although with my ears closed would be preferable.

The remaining three are trivial but I have to wonder along with Mrs Bhagpuss, who, upon being faced with the second, repeated set of tasks, asked "How is this meant to be fun?". I don't really have an answer for that. Fortunately there's still a lot of non-directed content left that is fun, like marching a dozen golems around Fort Aspenwood's borderland and taking all their keeps like we did this afternoon, so I'll just have to make do with that.

And we do have Wintesday in WvW too, you know. We decorate and everything.

Dungeon Day Alert: GW2, DCUO

Yesterday turned out to be Dungeon Day. I hadn't planned it that way but it didn't come quite out of the blue. A trip underground had been on the cards since February's Monthly added "Dungeon Participation" to the chore list.

Since launch, hordes of ill-tempered adventurers and dungeoneers have found themselves conscripted into the War in the Mists to get their 50 "Monthly WvW Player Kills", something I can usually knock off in a session or two of normal play. Turnabout is supposed to be fair play, so I didn't complain too much when the addition of Fractal dungeons to the game at the end of last year brought with it a requirement to do seven of the irritating hoop-jumpers, a demand I grudgingly complied with the first month it appeared and then said "never again".

I would have been quite content to ignore monthlies altogether had the Laurel system not been thrust upon us. I didn't really need the rewards we'd been getting before then. Every Jug of Karma I've ever received is still sitting undrunk in my bank, every Mystic Coin has gone unspent. Laurels, however, are  different matter. Until some other means of obtaining them appears, they come one at a time via a Daily drip-feed. The Monthly completed brings another ten. If you want to buy anything worth having, and there's quite a lot in that basket, you can't really afford to be picky about what you do to get them.

Golems. They look funny but no-one's laughing.

Looking on the not-really-very bright side, at least we're only being tasked with completing five dungeons. We had to knock out seven Fractals, although I ended up attempting at least twice that many before I finally got the damn thing done. Also, Dungeons are at least in some fashion integrated into the world, not something bolted on as an all-too-obvious makeshift patch when the good ship Progression sprang a leak. Against that, GW2 Dungeons have a very poor reputation both as examples of the form and as any kind of entertainment.

The only time I'd done one before was when I'd assisted Mrs Bhagpuss in the completion of her ranger's Personal Story. That was Arah, the level 80 dungeon. It went on a bit and a lot of it was watching cut-scenes, or at least that's how I remember it. This time I thought I'd start at the other end and do the start of the Story in Ascalonian Catacombs. If I took one of my level 80s and joined one of the PUGs that are almost always recruiting for it when I'm in Plains of Ashford it should be a doddle.

So it was, just a few minutes after logging in yesterday morning that my level 76 Thief entered The Crucible of Eternity, the penultimate dungeon, recommended level 78. I don't know why! Someone was LF1M for it while I was banking in Lion's Arch and I wasn't really awake yet. These things happen.

He is. I'm not.

It took a long time. A long, long time. Over two hours. I think three of the group already knew each other, one had done the dungeon before and I was the only one under 80. It was a pleasant group, as all PUGs I've had in GW2 have been, good-humoured and patient for the most part. Just as well since the first pull was a full group wipe.

It got better after that and we progressed to about half-way through the dungeon, set in a dizzying descent through an Asuran research facility known by the not very reassuring name of The Infinite Coil Reactor. As a Thief I didn't have much to do other than try to hurt stuff and not die. I used the Shortbow a lot. No-one complained.

We got hung up for a long while on some annoying Inquest gnomes Asuras with heavy golem back-up who blocked the stairs while firing incredibly annoying balls of light from their high-tech rifles that followed you no matter where you dodged. After many deaths and an extortionate repair bill we managed to split them up and whittle them down. After that it was plain, if very stately sailing.

The dungeon has a bit of a horror movie ending. Just 'cos you've killed the main villain don't think it's over, that's all I'm saying. Also, Bosses that have a "Kill Shot" ability that one-shots anyone are cheesy. Always have been, always will be. All in all it wasn't too bad. Far too long but that was probably because we weren't very organised. The story was about as engrossing as your average Saturday morning cartoon, there was an admirable absence of dance-steps to learn and I got a hat.

Guys! Wait for me! I was just knocked out!

Four more to do over the next two weeks, then. Not too terrible a prospect and I can't have had that bad a time because late last evening I was in another dungeon. Sort of. Super heroes don't really do dungeons. They do "Alerts". This one was on the Moon.

Yes, I seem to be playing DCUO again. Not sure why other than it's just a lot of fun. In short bursts. Why was I doing an Alert with a character I barely remember how to play within minutes of logging in? Furniture, that's why. I have a Base that needs decorating and since Ikea doesn't appear to have reached Metropolis yet it seems the only way to get a coffee table is to fly to the Moon and steal one. Oh wait, we're super-heroes. Confiscate one. That's probably what we're doing...

It's okay guys, If I don't know my way back by now...

In space no can hear you scream, which suits DCUO PUGs just fine because no-one ever speaks. Hardly surprising since DCUO has the worst chat interface ever seen in a major (or minor) MMO. Also just as well because all I would have heard would have been "Who's the idiot in the clown suit and why is he dead all the time?".

Luckily we had a level 30 slumming it in this (I think) level 18 recommended Alert. Other heroes came and went, a Green Lantern clone rolled "Need" on everything and then left half-way through. On the scorecard at the end he was flat bottom in everything so, nice run for him. I was second from last but at least I had the self-awareness to roll Greed, although only because no furniture dropped.

It's behind you!

By the final boss I was beginning to remember how the controls worked and what my abilities were. At least I made it through the last couple of fights alive. The whole thing took maybe twenty minutes and was fun all the time, even when I was being repeatedly pummeled to the ground.

You dancing? I'm asking.

Now that I come to think of it, perhaps the villains targeted me because I was dressed as a circus clown they were driven berserk with envy over my Valentines Day finest. When I logged in I had mail and in the mail were Valentine's presents which brought a flurry, even a blizzard of unearned "Achievements" and the most ill-considered "romantic" leisure-wear I have ever seen. Let's not mince words - it's a clown suit. Someone in the SOE art department doesn't have a date for Valentine's this year, I'm guessing.

So there you have it. What does it take to get me into a dungeon these days? Bribes, basically. But once I'm in there it's kinda fun. I guess that means I'll be going again.

In A Hole: GW2, Everquest

It's Dungeon Month in Guild Wars 2. Along with perennial "favorite" 50 WvW kills and three rows of question marks, sure to relate to That Which Must Not Be Missed , new to the Monthly Achievement shopping list for November comes "Dungeon Participation", which has us running five dungeons.

Or not, in my case. I can't be bothered, frankly. Not that not being bothered bothers me. One less thing to do this month? Great! What does bother me a bit is the general state of MMO dungeons these days.

Somewhere around the dawn of MMOs, or 1999 as we counted time back then, I played a game called Everquest. My understanding of what a "dungeon" is in a shared virtual world derives mostly from those formative years in Norrath.

A fish in a dress. Whatever next?

Within a few weeks of stepping out into Qeynos Hills I understood that the above-ground world was for everyone but the depths were for the brave or the foolhardy alone. Soloists, kiters, xp groups, most players clawing their painful way up the scree to Level 50 stayed outdoors, where they were looked on with amused contempt by the Dungeon Players passing by on their way to Lower Guk or Sol B.

At lower levels everyone gave it a go, of course. I spent some of the best sessions of my entire MMO life down the gnoll-hole in Blackburrow. Come Sol A or Castle Mistmoore, though and I was making my excuses. Dungeons were hard. Dungeons were dangerous. Dungeons were damn scary.

First you had to find people to go with, then you had to get there. That could take most of a session in itself, especially if several people died on the way, as they often did. Then you had to force your way in past the indignant residents, often "breaking" a room at a time by a process of careful pulling. Get more than you bargained for and you'd be back at your bind spot (which for a melee character might be on another continent). Remember how much trouble you just had? Now you get to do it all over again, only naked. Good luck with that!. 

Makes you wonder why anyone went in the first place. Well, duh! Treasure! Dungeons were where all the best loot was. And the best xp, provided you didn't lose it all with multiple deaths. Of course, to get that treasure you didn't just have to kill the monsters who had it. You had to get to it before anyone else. You didn't get a nice, cosy instance all to yourself, where you and your best buds could take your sweet time making plans and divvying up the loot. That came later.

Beneath the sands of Ro lies...more sand.

The first instances I saw were in EQ's sixth expansion Lost Dungeons of Norrath, which arrived in September 2003 bringing with it six months of the best MMO gameplay I ever had. Suddenly dungeons were for everyone. The entrances were (relatively) easy to get to, there was a huge critical mass of players just itching to help you explore them and best of all the mobs didn't respawn.

No respawning mobs meant no breaking and holding rooms. No longer did we need to fight to a spot where a known named spawned and camp him for three hours hoping he'd bring his "good drop". Now we were dungeon crawling! Scout the corridors, clear out the nests of evil and move on.

In essence this brought the whole thing back to where it presumably began. The non-respawning, group dungeon crawl is the staple of tabletop fantasy gaming from a decade or two earlier. For a while it was good. I learned more about dungeon tactics and etiquette in six months than I'd learned in the previous four years and so did most of the EQ population. You could see people becoming better players week by week. I also got a real taste for dungeoneering that I still savor today.

All too soon, sadly, as tends to happen to any successful innovation the whole experience began to be codified. One set of undesirable behaviors (camps, trains, corpse runs) was replaced by another (gear scores, speed runs, dungeon grinds). Pick-up groups, which had been the equivalent of joining a scratch game of soccer in the park, gained a reputation more akin to being locked in a holding cell full of drunks and muggers. Even at their best, dungeons became something to learn and perfect, not to explore in fear and wonder.

Where did everyone go?

There never really was a Golden Age, of course. Lower Guk was once so camped that I strolled down there at level six and filled my bags with valuable Fine Steel weapons that people couldn't even be bothered to loot. In a popular MMO the biggest challenge in an open dungeon was probably finding a spot that wasn't camped and in an unpopular one you were lucky to find anyone at all to help you even get past the guards at the entrance.

We must be right at the end of that cycle by now. Past the end. There must be another way to do Dungeons that isn't either of the above. A way that will seem new and fresh at least for a while, until, inevitably, relentless iteration polishes it to a soulless sheen. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there are no better ways to go down a hole in the ground and come up loaded with gold.

One thing's for sure, though: it'll take more than hanging a few jugs of Karma on the end of a stick to lure me back into that once-welcome darkness.