There's Something In The Water! : GW2

Underwater content has never been popular in MMORPGs. I remember my first, terrifying trip to Kedge Keep in EverQuest as if it was...well, as if it was almost twenty years ago, which it was.

I do remember it, though. How could I forget?  All those disorienting angles and squirming perspectives; never being sure which way was up; the claustrophobia, the muffled underwater clangor, the ever-present threat of drowning, the nauseating prospect of failure and the inevitable, awful return trip to find my corpse

The undersea worlds of most MMOs weren't quite so unforgiving but still they were shunned. Developers tended to avoid them too, other than blocking out something wet and watery in the most perfunctory manner possible. It was quite a surprise when Guild Wars 2 launched with a goodly amount to see and do below the surface, any number of bodies of water, from inland lakes to the open seas, offering much the same opportunity and inducement to explore as their counterparts on dry land.

Not only were there plenty of Points of Interest and Hero Challenges (or whatever we called them back then) but the whole signature Dynamic Event system extended into the deep. There were even special underwater weapons, breathing masks and a whole set of unique underwater skills for every class.

All that effort and players still hated to get their feet wet. Map completion meant most had to duck their heads beneath the waves at least a few times but once that was out of the way not too many came back to take the plunge a second time.

After a while ANet seemed to give up on the whole idea. The entire lake that formed the centerpiece of the Alpine Borderlands maps in World vs World was summarily removed, along with the quaggans and their weather machine and when the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, arrived, the only water in the entire affair was confined to some tunnels deep under Rata Novus.

Most tellingly of all, the one new class introduced since launch didn't even get the standard choice of two underwater weapons. Revenants had to make do with nothing but a spear. Then again, Rytlock, who returned from The Mists to bring the secrets of the class to Tyria, is a charr. Maybe he just didn't want to get his fur wet.

ANet doubled down on the underwater content drought with the second expansion. Path of Fire, literally takes place in a desert (as do most of the many maps added with the Living Story). By now, new underwater content for GW2 seemed about as likely as playable Tengu - and about a million times less wanted.

Then this week, with no fanfare or warning other than a brief PR flurry, the game received a full revamp to all underwater skills. Revenants even acquired a second underwater weapon, the Trident.

Even the official website  admits, with what can only be described as severe understatment, that "We know [underwater combat] isn’t floating at the top of everyone’s request list". It's the change few wanted and even fewer were asking for. So why do it? And why now?

That's the 64 fathom question alright. Given ANet's long-established unwillingness to rush into anything - ever - let alone to commit resources to anything they don't see as essential to the long-term health of the game, it's all but impossible to imagine a major revamp of this kind being sanctioned just because the current version wasn't up to snuff aesthetically

After all, we've muddled along just fine with the original version for nearly six years. It was already arguably the best implementation of underwater combat anywhere in MMOs and still hardly anyone liked it, wanted it or used it.

There was certainly no indication of a valid reason for the changes in the update notes. Along with the complete rewriting of underwater combat, all we got was a series of Achievements that revolve around a single new Daily "quest". It's a nice addition and very welcome but it goes absolutely no distance at all towards justifying the expenditure of effort required in the revamp.

All of which leaves me to wonder what the future holds? A Living World map that's largely underwater? A new, underwater fractal? Even the two together would seem to be a couple of smallish dogs trying to wag a much larger tail.

Could they possibly be considering an underwater setting for the third expansion? Wouldn't that be commercial suicide? Then again, there is a sea dragon out there, somewhere. We mustn't forget Bubbles.

Whatever's behind the revamp, something's going on. I guess I'll just keep on doing my dailies until I find out what it is. I'm betting when I do I'll be wanting that +30 swim speed infusion. Might as well get working on it now.

Test Department: GW2

One of the supposed perks that comes with a pre-purchase of GW2's Heart of Thorns expansion is "access to all beta weekend events". Although that sounds mighty inclusive, ArenaNet has a very specific understanding of what counts as an event.

It doesn't, for example, include the testing of the new Desert Battlegrounds for World vs World, which is By Invitation Only. It also doesn't in any meaningful sense include testing of the Stronghold sPvP map, which, on occasion, has simply been dropped into the live game for all PvP players regardless of any preference they might have had to the contrary.

Similarly, while only pre-purchasers got to drive a Revenant in the recent weekend event, since testing took place on Live maps everyone got to test out what it felt like to fight alongside someone trying to come to grips with a max level class they'd never played before whether they liked it or not.

It's a very odd way to run a business. I can't imagine it going down too well if Microsoft had decided to activate various features of Windows 10 for all users of Windows 8.1 for a few days to see how they worked before switching them back off and fiddling about with them based on how many complaints they got. How would a football team like it if half way through a match a bunch of people charged onto the pitch wearing roller-skates and joined in? That was pretty much how it felt when the Revenants appeared in WvW.

I guess when you don't charge an entrance fee you can get away with these kinds of shenanigans. If I was a paying customer, by now I'd be starting to have some serious issues with the cavalier attitude to the service for which I was paying but since I'm not I guess I just have to put up with it.

First impressions can be misleading

As the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I have paid up front for the expansion, which means that at least next weekend I get to be the one running around on Live maps getting in everyone's way as I struggle to understand a whole load of new Elite skills rather than being the poor schmoe who has to stand back and watch. Go me! I guess.

Like Jeromai I'm fortunate (if that's the word) in that the first of who knows how many beta weekends falls on a long weekend off work. Should I wish to do so I'll be able to give the whole three days over to "testing" the limited content on offer. We'll see how it goes but I'm anticipating the novelty will wear off a lot sooner than that.

My interest and enthusiasm for HoT waxes and wanes depending on what aspect ANet has hyped most recently. Currently it's at a low ebb. The announcement on the proposed changes to Fractals seemed almost beyond parody. As I was reading it I kept hearing Nigel Tufnel's voice saying "These go to 11".

Then there's the threat promise to bring us "challenging group content". They've been at some pains to stress that we haven't seen any of this yet. It appears to be ANet code for "Raids". The reveal is probably what they have planned for the trailed live announcement of "the details of one of our Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns features" during next weekend's livestream from Gamescom. Can't say I'll be on the edge of my seat for that one.

Don't think much of the view.

They do seem to be mordantly committed to making things slower, more painful and more tedious. Sorry, sorry. Off message. Of course I mean more challenging, fun and involving. As they put it in the request for focused feedback after next week's test:

"Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles? 
Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding? 
Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters?
Warning—creatures will be more challenging than in the existing Guild Wars 2 world."

To which I would expect my answers to be

"Why would I want to? 
It already did, thanks.
At the risk of repeating myself, why would I want to? 
If this is something I'm supposed to enjoy, why do you feel the need to issue a warning about it?"

Oh well. As Jeromai, who has already seen and played the Verdant Brink content that will be available for testing next weekend puts it, "...it felt like more of the same. Which wasn’t -bad-, it was comfortable, familiar, a little bit grindy, but neither was it blow-your-socks-off-spectacular either. It felt like, okay, we’ve had Dry Top, we’ve had Silverwastes, and now Verdant Brink is the next continuation of that. Right. It’s (more or less) playable. I get where you’re going with this. I guess… it’s all right, it’s acceptable".

And this isn't much better.

That is very much what I expected and feared. I enjoyed Dry Top and Silverwastes for what they were, but what they are is levels in a video game. I'm not really very interested in that and it certainly doesn't offer much in the way of replayability beyond the specific rewards that have been attached to it. I'm much more interested in immersion in an imaginary world, something I found, and still find, in most of the games original maps.

It's going to be interesting to take a look at what our future holds but I'm not getting my hopes up. Three years after launch I still spend most of the time I'm not in WvW in The Shiverpeaks and Ascalon. After the expansion launches and I've worked my way through the storyline, which probably won't take long, that's almost certainly where I'll end up once more. Assuming I'm still playing at all, that is.

Indeed, from my perspective, perhaps the most important part of next weekend's beta and the best reason I have for giving it a fair trial is the chance to experience and evaluate the proposed incentives for continuing to play in "Old World" maps: the unfortunately-named Map Bonus Reward System. Call me idealistic but I thought the reward came from the pleasure, even joy, of being in that world. What do I know?

I very much hope that a week from now I'm back here, publicly eating both my hat and humble pie, and gosh-wowing about how great it all is and how wrong I was to be so cynical and downbeat. Place your bets now.

Here Comes The New Class... : GW2

We had no intention whatsoever of taking part in this weekend's Test Drive A Revenant event. After ANet caved in the face of people-power and bundled in a character slot we decided to pre-purchase Heart of Thorns on each of what I suppose we must now call our "main" accounts but as yet we'd done nothing about it.

I hadn't paid much, or indeed any, attention to this latest iteration of ArenaNet's singularly idiosyncratic take on how to run a beta but when Revenants began popping up like mushrooms on just about every Live map it became kind of hard to ignore.  (Hmm. Where did that image come from? Oh, wait, just look at the class icon).

 It did occur to me right away that we could just go to the web store, grab the digital download and join in, but I really don't like digital downloads all that much. They seem empty, somehow, and I'd been hoping to hold out until there was a box to go on my box shelf with all the other dust-collectors.

The prevalence of Revenants did at least spur me on to investigate the options. Naturally there is no genuine HoT-in-a-Box as yet. We'll probably at least need a release date before we'll see any of those. There is, however, a half-arsed compromise strangely appealing offer from Amazon - a mocked-up DVD case containing nothing but a leaflet with a pre-purchase registration code.

Well, it's a box. All I wanted was a box. We briefly discussed the idea of paying the extra delivery charge to have the codes before the test ended but again neither of us was that interested so we just went for free delivery even though it would take a week. I ordered two copies late on Friday night with an expected delivery window from next Thursday to Saturday and forgot about it.

They arrived an hour ago. Makes you wonder what, exactly, the point of paying the extra for fast delivery might be, doesn't it? Anyway, nice service. Would use again.

So, since the beta was still up I thought I'd at least take a look. Applying the codes was extremely quick and easy (/wave Squenix). Other than a confirmation window on the registration page the only evidence anything had happened was a tiny "Create(Beta)" button on the bottom right of the character select screen.

I clicked it and a Revenant appeared. Only one choice of race: human. Either gender. All the appearance options. Pick a blindfold. Choose a name. Done.

Other than the three blindfolds (none of which anyone other than roleplayers will ever wear again after they ding level three or, more realistically, finish clicking on their stack of Tomes) the beta neatly sidesteps all the story elements that I railed against so pointlessly and petulantly back at the start of the original beta more than three years ago.

I doubt it means ANet have had second thoughts. More likely no-one's written the Revenant Personal Story yet. Or they have and they want to keep it a secret for a while longer. Or forever. As Wooden Potatoes observes, it's going to be a pig to fit it into continuity.

Your new Revenant, sans past, sans future, appears, somewhat unhelpfully, in Lion's Arch. He or she comes with map completion on all waypoints, however, so it's a swift trip to wherever you care to go to test those skills. I went to Diessa Plateau because I like Diessa Plateau.

My exhaustive and extensive testing of the Revenant, her
Demon and Dwarf Legends, her Traits, Skills and all the rest took about five minutes. I killed several wurms, a couple of warthogs and a passing crow.

I used the hammer, which is what my Revenant woke up holding. It seemed satisfyingly bangy. There was a propensity for laying down massive markers on the ground that I was already very used to from the countless revenants at World Bosses and zerg jousts all weekend. I foresee the one that looks like twenty yards of good road being very popular at Claw of Jormag, Tequatl and everywhere else with too much fear.

From listening to map chat and scanning feedback on the forum, reaction ranges from unimpressed to hostile. I thought it seemed okay as a class, bearing in mind it's clearly only about half-finished and that half will be tweaked a lot before launch. Presenting a key element of the expansion in this unfinished state is offering up yet another hostage to fortune, of course, but by and large I'd say they got away with it.

My own main interest was playability. The official hype seems to want to paint the Revenant as some kind of complex, advanced class, which is not what I want out of GW2 at all. On the briefest of acquaintance I'm pleased to say the Revenant feels pretty much the same as the rest. It reminded me, structurally, of the Elementalist, with no weapon swapping and stances where the Ele has attunements. I can do that.

There's bound to be more to it than we've seen but it put my mind at rest. If I can muddle through 80 levels as an Engineer the Revenant should be well within my limited grasp. As for the traits and the rest of the fine print that can wait. Not much point trying to get to grips with it now when it might be a month before we get a second go. I'll have forgotten it all long before then.

So there we have it. The Revenant. It's a class. It's half-finished.  A lot of people aren't impressed. It'll do for me.

Next!

If It Looks Like A Tank And It Taunts Like A Tank... : GW2

Taunt (Status Effect)

“Involuntarily attack foes.”

In this expansion, we wanted to open up gameplay options using taunt. Taunt will be used to both reposition foes and change your foes’ targets.

Source: The stand-out paragraph lurking right near the end of the lengthy and otherwise largely mind-numbing PR squib for GW2's new Revenant class due to be introduced in the "when it's ready" expansion Heart of Thorns.

Predictable first reaction on official forum:

"Really? Taunt? What’s with you dev’s? Its not WoW, not L2, its game with unique experience, where we don’t need tank/healer/damage dealer trinity."

Predictable reaction to predictable reaction:

"It’s not like what you’re thinking."

Probably shouldn't have called it "Taunt" then.

Or opened the bidding with "The revenant is the ninth profession, added into Guild Wars 2 as a unique archetype not seen in other games" (Ibid).

I'll hang fire on any bold statements until, y'know, we actually see this amazing innovation in action in the promised demo at PAX East. Possibly even until I get to try it out for myself in beta. Or when HoT goes live if beta turns out to be a real beta that you have to apply for and be selected or something bizarrely old-school like that.

In the meantime let speculation run wild on the possible addition of some kind of Holy Trinity Lite structured group combat to GW2. Going to be a rough couple of years if we have to wait on the second expansion to get a real healing class. Just sayin'.