Chanelling and Chronomancy : GW2, EQ2

Jeromai has an excellent post up on the forthcoming addition of The Chronomancer to GW2. It covers most of what we know and can extrapolate thus far about just what it is that a Chronomancer does. There's a LiveStream that probably does much the same only at inordinate length and with video and commentary by the developers. I found I had better things to do than watch that but then I didn't need to because I have Dulfy to do it for me. She provides a thorough precis , which I did manage to find time to read.

It's fairly clear what the Chronomancer's abilities will be but I'm still a little unclear on just what, exactly, a "chronomancer" is, in terms of the structure of the game. ANet describe it as an "Elite Specialization" but it's also variously referred to as a class or a sub-class.

It appears to require both the equipping of a shield, the new weapon-type available to Mesmers in the Heart of Thorns expansion, and the slotting of an Elite Specialization . Indeed, on a closer reading, it would seem that Mesmers will only be able to wield shields if they slot that Elite. There will be no shield-wielding, non-chronomancing Mesmers. Probably. I think...

Presumably the same restriction applies to all the other classes. If you want to use the new weapon you have to take on the mantle of the new class. Sub-class. Whatever.

Not giving up my domes and lasers. Nossir. No way.

For certain, every class in GW2 will be given an Elite Specialization by the expansion and each will gain access to a weapon whose subtleties it was hitherto unable to understand. You wouldn't think that grabbing something flat and holding it up between yourself and whatever happens to be attacking you would be that hard to figure out but I guess, given what the Mesmer proposes to do with the shield now she's finally picked one up, maybe something as mundane as blocking always seemed a little beneath her dignity.

Depending on how you look at it, Heart of Thorns will either double the number of classes in the game or merely remove some of the existing class restrictions on weapon-use. I'm struggling to think of another MMORPG I've played that's taken this approach. The only ones that come to mind are the Final Fantasy games with their "jobs". New examples of those are added periodically both within and outside of expansions but although the "one character can be everything" model there means that the new job adds on to the existing character, the player still has to level it up in the same way he did all the earlier jobs.

As with, oh, pretty much everything ANet does with GW2, I'm also really not sure whether I like the approach or not. In a game that's arguably one of the most "alt-friendly" of all MMOs I'd far rather have had just one or two full, new classes than eight "Elite Specializations" bolted onto the existing list. On the other hand it's certainly going to give us all something to play around with for quite a while.

Did someone mention lasers?

Playing around with builds is, for better or for worse, one of the staples of MMO gameplay. Waiting For Rez, one of the new crop of NBI bloggers, has an interesting piece up about the developing mechanics of Talent Trees and Skill Point Systems. Reading both that and Jeromai's thoughts led me to consider how unclear and malleable my own feelings are when it comes to adjusting to this kind of systemic change.

A very large part of the attraction of playing MMORPGs, for me, comes in learning and understanding the systems. It's a prime reason why I try out so many different ones. I have always enjoyed entertainment that doesn't explain itself too readily; I like stories that begin in media res, I like concepts and terminology whose meaning has to be deduced from context. In short, I like starting out completely at sea and having to find my own way to solid ground.

It's why I strongly dislike tutorials and it has a lot to do with why I much prefer the early and mid levels of most MMOs to the end game. Once I've worked out which lever pulls what string I quickly become disillusioned with having to keep pulling it over and over again until I can pull it perfectly. As if I ever could.

For that reason I tend to enjoy very much the first run through a talent or trait tree. Working out how to use the user interface, how to slot the skills, where to go to acquire them, that part I like. Subsequent trips through the same detail tend to lose their appeal. I do seem to end up doing it a lot. Too much.

This looks strangely familiar.

 
Some of that isn't the fault of game design, of course. It's the over-exposure to such systems that comes with playing so many characters. Perhaps if I was the kind of player who sticks to a Main and an Alt I'd not be here having this conversation with myself right now.

For good or ill, though, I am not much of a "Main and Alt" person. And then some! That's why last week, when Daybreak Games celebrated the arrival of their new and not entirely original logo, instead of buckling down and banging some levels on any of my many existing characters I found myself rolling a Channeler instead.

It's taken me a very long time to get around to doing it. The Channeler was the most recent new class added to EQ2's already impressive (or overblown if you prefer - the game currently has 26 classes) roster but that was with the Tears of Veeshan expansion back in late 2013.

Don't just stand there! Grab his tail!

I made a Beastlord at the first possible opportunity but it's taken this long to come to the Channeler because the concept of the class never really grabbed me. A leather-wearing priest class that heals by firing arrows and has a pet that can't be controlled? Say what?

It was a post by Kaozz in which she mentioned, just in passing, that her Channeler had dinged 100 that reminded me the class even existed. I'd forgotten all about it. Without fully considering what I was doing, next thing I knew I'd rolled the inevitable ratonga, set his starting city to New Halas and stepped out yet again into Norrath.

Channeler is a very odd class. I played to around level 10 without looking anything up and really had no clue what I was doing. There's a pet that looks like some kind of rock elemental. It's called a "Construct". It can't be killed or commanded (although maybe that will come later). For now it hangs around like a giant vanity pet doing... something... while my character draws a bow, excruciatingly slowly, and fires one arrow every ten or fifteen seconds like a ranger on heavy medication.

Oh! That's where they went...

The amount of information granted inside the game is minimal. I gathered as much as that it was a resource-management class similar to a Beastlord but by the low teens no access to the UI controls for those resources has arrived. I seem to remember, vaguely, that the Beastlord was much the same. A few levels in some familiar-looking skills popped onto my hotbars suggesting that, again like a Beastlord, the Channeler needs to hunt down creatures, beat them to within an inch of their life and then best them in a staring match.

But to what end? I had no idea so I tried to find out the best way - by doing it. Things didn't go well. Sometimes I killed the animal before the channeled skill completed. Sometimes the animal killed me. Sometimes the Construct killed the animal. I hadn't even realized the Construct was attacking until I read my combat log. I thought it was a defensive ward. Mostly, though, we all stood there locked in stalemate as the bear or wolf continually interrupted my channeling until I lost patience, dealt it a death blow and went off in a huff to look for another victim.
Finally I succeeded in getting the skill to complete. I successfully sucked the Essence from a rat. Best not think about that too closely. And then... I was completely stumped. I'd seen some messages pop up about new "abilities" and "customizations" for my Construct but I had no idea how to access them. I couldn't find any "essence" in my bags, there were no new skills on my hotbar. My Construct looked exactly the same as it spun there radiating smugness.

It was around that point that I cracked and went to the ever-reliable Zam, where I found the following:

"To access the Construct Window, first open the character window (C). After you've summoned your construct there will be a Construct tab, which is where you customize your construct's appearance."

Well, duh!

It's a learning curve and that's why it's fun. Even when you have to look things up. I'm not opposed to doing a bit of research, after all. That's all part of the process.

I am less convinced the class will be fun in and of itself and I feel much the same about GW2's upcoming "Elite Specializations". There's precious little chance I'll be abandoning my Berserker, or even my new Warlock, for the channeling life and I very much doubt I'll be giving up the simple life of the Longbow Ranger or Staff Elementalist for whatever over-complicated fussbudget frippery their new weapon types offer.

I will, however, be happy to enjoy the process of opening all the skills and traits and getting the hang of the systems involved in doing so -  before consigning them all to the "new-fangled nonsense" bin and going back to the tried and tested Old Ways. Because, much though I enjoy unraveling the mysteries and complexities of underlying systems and processes, when it comes to everyday combat I'd just as soon hit things with a stick.

Test Result Negative: GW2

The Level-A-Guardian Project came to an end some time ago. The original intention as detailed here was to start a new character and take her to the cap under the new conditions imposed by the Feature Pack. Back then there was a lot of concern that the changes to Traits would make leveling slower, harder, less entertaining and I wanted to find out for myself if those concerns were justified.

They aren't. Yep, it's that simple. Having leveled nine characters to 80 under the old system I can honestly say I noticed no difference whatsoever leveling the tenth under the new, or not, at least, in how much fun I had doing it. Leveling in GW2 was straightforward, simple and fun before and it still is. As I observed in an earlier post, The Trait Unlock mechanic remains sadly underdeveloped and peripheral but on the other hand you don't need traits at all to level up. At worst it's a botched opportunity to make Trait-hunting something to look forward to but in no way does it constitute a roadblock to fun or progress.

By the time my Guardian hit the sixties the project was more or less off the rails anyway. The lure of World Bosses and WvW pulled her from the true path of leveling by Hearts and Map Completion. After a brief flurry of excitement in the forties, when she realized she could wear and wield Rares, good housekeeping took over and any that dropped went onto the Trading Post to feed what I presume must be the min-max market. Given that each level in GW2 takes about an hour at the outside and you can change your entire armor set every five levels it can only be obsessive number-crunchers who find it worthwhile spending that kind of money but I'm happy to be the one taking their silver.

So my Guardian dinged 80 decked out in a motley collection of level 55-60 green quality drops and karma-vendor trinkets, in which she'd had not the slightest difficulty progressing smoothly and enjoyably. At this point a genuine first-time character might run into a speed-bump trying to scrabble up Exotics. I don't think you'd earn enough Karma for a full set at the Temples just by leveling up the regular way. You might get enough Badges from 80 levels of WvW although the life of an uplevel in the Borderlands can be trying.

To test that I'd either need to buy a third account or run a spreadsheet and enter every single Karma award and Badge earned on the specific character I was leveling up and, while I'm not saying that doesn't tempt me, unless I can find an institution willing to accept it as the basis for a Master's thesis I don't think I'll bother right now. It was thoroughly enjoyable instead to take her up to the vendors in the Yak's Bend Citadel and kit her out with a full set of Berserker armor and some more tanky accessories courtesy of the thousands of badges already earned by the rest of her team. Or I could have gone the Temple route and used some of my five million karma...

As for the Traits, I'd drifted so far from the original plan I'd forgotten about them to the extent that I'd only eve gotten around to spending the first couple of points, a situation which wasn't corrected until this weekend, by which time she'd been eighty for a couple of weeks or more. I finally got around to visiting the Trainer, buying the three or four Traits I needed and putting her into some kind of "build" that I got off the forums. It cost me about three gold and thirty or so Skill Points.

You can easily make three gold in a couple of hours doing World Bosses and I had over 80 skill points banked from leveling up alone, so again the barrier presented by the Trait Revamp is trivial. Yes, if you wanted to open all your Traits by adventuring it would take you weeks and to buy them all would cost scores of gold and heaps of skill points, but why would you need to do that? Even if you're the sort of person who likes to swap builds you'll probably never use the huge majority of traits. Just buy the ones you need when you need them.

My curiosity is satisfied. Neither the Trait Revamp nor the Megaserver turned out to be as disruptive or deleterious to a good, casual romp as had been bruited. Of the two the Megaserver remains the more problematic but that, too, has settled down into a background hum, easy to ignore. I see people I recognize often now so the sorting seems to have become more consistent at least. They still aren't the same people I saw regularly before the change but I can live with that. At least we can get Teq done on a regular basis in pick-up maps now, which is nice.

One thing the Project has made certain: there will be more characters. Leveling up is the most fun GW2 has to offer. I was in Wayfarer Foothills yesterday and one of the many new players (a half price sale will do that) asked if it got boring leveling up new characters after the first. Map chat resounded with a volley of variations on the theme "Like hell it does!". As one veteran player put it "Why do you think we're all here in a starting zone?".

Next up, Charr engineer or Asuran Mesmer for me I think. Mrs Bhagpuss has been leveling a Sylvari Thief because cultural armor. I sold a stack of ectos yesterday when the price was sky high so I can afford another character slot.

Before all that, though, comes Living Story Season Two. After watching the video (those explosions come from inside the ships) and listening to the soundbites all I can say is I told you so and so did Taimi, only unlike her I never trusted those Zephyrites.

Traits And Megaservers Reconsidered : GW2

What with The Tourney, Boss Blitz and Bazaar of the Four Winds, the project to find out what leveling up feels like now we have Megaservers and a new trait system fell somewhat into abeyance these last couple of weeks. Before that, my Charr Guardian cruised through Ascalon in short order, completing Plains of Ashford, Diessa Plateau, Filed of Ruin and Blazeridge Steppes before finally topping out in the upper fifties while finishing one of my favorite maps, Iron Marches.

All of that wouldn't have given nearly enough experience so there were some side trips to The Shiverpeaks, where she completed Wayfarer Foothills, Snowden Peaks and Lornar's Pass. More experience trickled in from a few forays into the Borderlands and the odd jolly to visit a World Boss here and there, now and then. Currently she's level 66 and trudging through Fireheart Rise, which, while it has grown on me a lot over the years, still wouldn't make any list I might compile of Places In Tyria You Must See Before You Die.

The whole project has been very instructive. It certainly hasn't turned out as I imagined it might, let alone how I feared. It's not really possible for an experienced player of an MMO to put himself, emotionally, psychologically or pragmatically, in the position of someone who just installed the game for the first time that day but even taking that into account it seems that the hefty changes brought by The Feature Pack have made leveling in GW2 no harder, slower or more tedious than it ever was.

On my travels I have once or twice, no more than that, heard people express the opinion that they were feeling the lack of Traits at lower levels. It's certainly not a topic of conversation that comes up often among the endless rehashing of builds and torrent of "how do I...?" questions that buzz around the ever-busy open chat channels of the Megaserver Maps. At no point so far have I felt either underpowered or restricted in options because of the paucity of trait points. Indeed, it was only as I was writing this and popped into the game to check how many traits my Guardian had that I realized I haven't even spent the last two she received.

Part of the reasoning for doling out Traits so slowly was supposedly to prevent new players from becoming confused and overwhelmed by choice. Even as someone who has never considered Choice to be a Universal Good I was skeptical about that argument. I very much doubt there would have been many players under the original system who threw up their hands in despair when faced with half a dozen options in half a dozen trait lines. That sort of thing tends to go with the territory when you play any kind of RPG, doesn't it?

Just because the old system probably wasn't broken doesn't mean it couldn't be improved, though, and somewhat to my surprise I think the new version is better, at least in some ways. It certainly makes me think much more carefully about which trait to choose and pay much more attention to what they all do than I used to, that's for sure. When you have to decide whether to spend money or do a specific task to open each individual trait it definitely focuses the mind and I've found the experience a lot more entertaining than I expected, in no way the frustrating time or money sink that people (including me) had speculated it might be.

There may be "nice grawl" but there's no such thing as "nice Flame Legion"

It's not all rainbows and roses, though. There are definitely ways it could be and needs to be tightened up. The main drawback remains the rate that traits are unlocked during normal gameplay. It barely happens at all. ANet seem to be aware of this. A recent patch made a good few changes to the detail, reducing over-reliance on Map Completion as a mechanic and increasing the emphasis on killing specific monsters or completing specific events.

It's a start but it doesn't go nearly far enough. After 66 levels, done almost entirely by completing level-appropriate content in the open world, my Guardian has unlocked precisely six traits out of a possible sixty-five (and she bought one of those at the Trainer). I don't think that a system that results in a character having around 90% of her traits still locked when she hits max level can be considered well-tuned.

This is the one I bought. Essential.

The other goal of the exercise was to see how the world felt under the jackboot of the Megaserver. There was a lot of strong feeling about this change when it happened and I was among those who felt strongly. Like most changes it turned out to be less of everything than expected - less of a boon for those that welcomed it and less of a curse for those that dreaded it.

Maps are consistently busier as was intended but maps that don't have a specific, popular mega-event are only busier by comparison to the wastelands they used to be. You certainly won't be trampled by the horde in Iron Marches or Fireheart Rise. Field of Ruin, remarkably, felt even quieter than I remembered it. My concern that the ambiance of the deep wilderness would be lost seems unfounded.

Whatever algorithm they're using to match players with friends/guilds/worlds has arguably improved slightly but my feeling is that there's still some inconsistency baked in that no one quite understands. There was quite an argument in Map chat over it yesterday with some people claiming it worked well for them while others expressed what has been my own experience, that it's at best hit or miss. I generally still have to right-click Mrs Bhagpuss's portrait to get to the same Megaserver Map about fifty percent of the time even when we are grouped. Given that the algorithm isn't managing reliably or consistently to place us together even though we are in the same Guild, on each other's Friends lists, share the same Home World and Language Group and are in the same frickin' Party...well it's not impressing me much.

The Great Jungle Wurm is under there somewhere. And so's my Guardian.

The effect on community has been interesting. I do still see a good few familiar Yak's Bend names around outside WvW and it has an interesting emotional resonance, rather like spotting someone you know in the crowd at a gig. I wonder how much that relies on me having known those names already from the pre-Megaserver days. Would a new player starting now ever even see anyone, outside their guild or WvW, often enough to build up that "know him by sight" kind of relationship? I suspect they might because there are now players from other servers that I vaguely recognize because they turn up at World Bosses at the same times I do.

Unlike the Trait revamp, about which very little now seems to be said, you can still hear people complaining about the Megaserver every day. There's often someone bemoaning its very existence in map chat, cursing its foibles and flaws or wishing for the return of at least one non-Megaserver Map (the consensus would probably be for Lion's Arch). Voices also speak strongly in defense, praising both the convenience and the liveliness it brings to events big and small. I would have expected people to have gotten used to it by now but it seems that it'll take a while longer before we forget how things used to be when we were all off in our own little worlds.

Overall I'd give the Trait Revamp 7/10 and Megaservers 5/10. Neither is as bad an idea as it first might have appeared but both could do with another pass or several with that famous ArenaNet polishing cloth.

Return To Ascalon : GW2

The Guardian is overpowered. There's no two ways about it. When GW2 began I read several accounts by those who'd taken the class as first choice and I was struck by how easy they made their experiences sound. It wasn't as though I was having a hard time with the Ranger but it seemed Guardians were having a softer ride still.

Despite those reports, as I leveled all the classes Guardian was the one I was least looking forward to. It's a paladin of sorts and paladin is a class I've always found worthy but dull. I left it to the end and when I finally got around to it I coupled it with the race I least wanted to play, that Elf-substitute, the Sylvari. That way I'd get two bitter pills down in one swallow.

As I played one up I can't say I warmed much to the Sylvari as a race. I'm fond enough of my single Sylvari character but I don't think I'll ever make another. The Guardian class, though, turned out to be an unexpected pleasure and now, with added Charr, it's gone beyond a pleasure to a joy. There's no ambiguity over how I want to spend my gaming time at the moment.

This is a crucial week in the Season for Yak's Bend, a match we have to win to stay in contention for a top three placing. Bodies on the ground matter, even indifferently skilled ones, and most evenings I manage a few hours in the Borderlands with the only two classes I can play in WvW with any facility - Ranger and Elementalist.

Duty done, the rest of every day's Charr Guardian day. After Diessa we moved on to Snowden Drifts, filled that out, taking her to 25, perfectly poised for Lornar's Pass, which nominally covers 25 to 40. The final point of interest lit up just after she'd dinged 33, by which time she was surrounded by level 39 and 40 mobs.

In common with other MMOs GW2 has a few ways of reminding you that you're running ahead of yourself. The distance at which aggressive creatures begin to pay attention to you increases substantially once they have more than a five level advantage and there's a level-based sliding scale for glancing blows, which reduce your damage by half. Playing a  Guardian solo it was hard to feel engaged with combat unless the creatures we were fighting towered four or five levels above me.

Even that was well inside my comfort zone. The point at which the "challenge" approximates what I remember as normal leveling play in older MMOs like EQ2 or LotRO comes at a very specific point: six levels above your character level. That's when the unmodified chance of Glancing Blows hits 50% and its what I would consider the sweet spot for enjoyable fights that require tactics, concentration and engagement.

It also appears to be the very highest level-differential at which whoever decided on the rules wanted or expected players to operate. Once you cross that six level gap your "chance" of landing a glancing blow becomes a 100% certainty, which isn't much fun and which, I think, we can safely take as a message from the developers that you've pushed your luck too far.

At this point I should make it clear that I'm very much not one of those people who demand "challenge" in everything or who irrevocably links risk with reward. Nor do I necessarily feel MMOs have become too easy to be entertaining. I agree with Wilhelm when he observes that  "the strongest force in the universe is laziness" and I'm generally more than happy to take the low road.

It's not, after all, as if I'm comparing the experience to, say, Everquest, now supposedly a dumbed-down, weak-beer parody of its former self, yet where, in 2014, playing the best solo class in the game, fully dressed in good, level appropriate gear, near-raid-buffed from MGBs and with a mercenary NPC providing heals, I still have to pay full attention to what I'm doing at all times when fighting mobs several levels below me because not to do so would mean a swift death and twenty minutes recovery time. I'm not comparing GW2 with that. That would be silly.


I'm merely observing that it's perhaps an odd quirk of design that places what feels like a natural, comfortable, easy-but-satisfying level of gameplay right at the very upper margin of the range of the feasible. Or perhaps, as I began by suggesting, it's just that Guardians are overpowered.

You might argue that, since GW2 gameplay is built around a core of loose alliances and informal non-grouped group play, content was never designed for or aimed at soloists; that  although for something like 80% of the time the game's been around, most leveling-by-map-exploration has, by necessity, been a solo activity, it's nothing more than an unintended accident of circumstance and one that the Megaserver is here to correct.

You might argue that if it wasn't for the glaringly obvious fact that almost without exception content in GW2 gets easier the more people there are to do it. Oh, granted, it often takes longer. It's always been fastest and most efficient to complete most group events with a handful of people rather than a zerg or a blob. But unless you equate time taken with difficulty rather than just with inefficiency, more people never make things harder.

Then again, perhaps it's down to the post Feature Pack retuning of sub-80 content that was carried out in recompense for the loss of character-power inflicted by the Great Trait Revamp. It's hard to remember, being so long since I last leveled a character, but it does seem easier this time even without those traits.

 

Speaking of Traits, at 30 I was finally able to open the window to see what lay in store. I was curious to see if the same "wait and see" approach would leave higher Traits locked away from view but no, once you hit 30 you can see them all. Of course see them is all you can do. I had one Trait point at 30 and at 33 I still have one Trait point. I get another at 36 and the third at 42. Hard to imagine why anyone thought this could ever be a good idea.

Even though you don't have the points to use them, there's nothing to stop you unlocking the Traits themselves, of course. You can now mouse over to see what they are and where you earn them. For example, I can see that to get the Adept level Trait "Master of Consecrations", which "Reduces recharge on consecration skills and increases their durations", I would need Map Completion for Frostgorge Sound, a level 80 map. Or I could pay 10 silver and two skill points to a trainer, which, if I didn't already have the resources required, might take, oh, five minutes rough and tumble on a map my own level. Hmm. Tough one. What would you do?

Scanning down the list it seems to me that as each trait point is acquired almost everyone will immediately go to their trainer and purchase the one they want right now, because even if someone was flat broke it would almost always be quicker and easier to earn the silver and the skill points than to do the forfeit. Indeed, given that many of the unlocks require map completion, you'd have earned everything you needed to pay the fee almost as soon as you started, so why carry on?

Meanwhile, in the background, as players naturally play through content, odd, random Traits will unlock themselves here and there. I already have "Inner Fire" unlocked, for example, because the requirement for it is Map Completion for Lornar's Pass. In three levels I'll even have the second point I need to open the first Major Trait slot and use it.

In operation, as I anticipated, it's not at all a bad system. It's easy to understand and it gives the player choice in how to access it but it seems extremely unlikely to form any kind of framework for providing self-generated, self-directed gameplay. Not only is the Trainer option clearly faster, easier and cheap but the points accrue so very slowly that there's no incentive whatsoever to go out and open Traits in the first place.

Not a disaster, then, but certainly a missed opportunity. Something easily pushed to the background as one pursues the unchallenging but highly enjoyable task of incrementing that number in the bottom-left corner of the screen. My Guardian is now in Fields of Ruin, feeling very overpowered indeed against the level 30 mobs but glad to be back in the warm Ascalon sunshine after days spent shivering in the snow.

Mind you, being overpowered in level-appropriate content didn't help much on the run through 40-50 zone Blazeridge Steppes. Even though she did make it through with nothing worse than singed whiskers there were some very tense ten hit point moments along the way. Thank Dwaya for Renewed Focus, that's all I can say...

Now Ebonhawke, my second-favorite city in the game, awaits. We've already herded farm animals and torn down posters. We even found the famous Pipe Organ and attempted a tune. It's an adventurer's life for sure. Overpowered she may be, or the content undertuned, whichever it is, but there's entertainment yet to be had and plenty of it. If current parameters hold, Map Completion of Ascalon should come somewhere around level 65. For a Charr that's all the incentive required.

Now We Are Six : GW2

All last weekend there was a special offer on additional character slots in GW2. I kept casting sideways glances at it. I checked the gold-to-gems conversion rate every hour or three. I uhmmed and ahhhed and slept on it and put off making a decision and then the offer went away.

Usually that's a strategy that works well for me. Gone, forgotten. Not this time. A couple of posts back, Isey asked in the comments whether GW2 would now be better from a new player's perspective and I wondered that as well. Syp stirred the pot by quoting an excellent analysis of the situation by Verene at Under A Pale Tree. Verene has a second, detailed post that really nails just how badly this aspect of the revisions to the leveling game would seem to have been handled.

Still, it's one thing to look at a new pair of shoes but the only way to know how well they fit is to put them on and walk around for a while, so yesterday I got my credit card out and gave ANet the first money they've had from me since I bought my second account a few weeks after launch. If it turns out that, as I expect, I absolutely despise the way they've re-arranged the traits then I guess it'll be the exact opposite of sending a message to that effect by Voting With Your Wallet but leaving that aside, so far I'd say it's money very well spent.

It's been months, months! since I leveled my last GW2 character and I really didn't realize just how very much I've missed it. This is the MMO that makes by far the best fist of holding my attention at max level and I thought I was quite content bimbling around with my gang of 80s, but it turns out I was wrong. The moment I finished knocking Duke Barridin's statue into rubble and stepped out onto the riveted metal plate floor at the entrance to Black Citadel it felt like I'd just bought an amazing, exciting, brand new game. To quote Commander Siegerazer, "This is what I live for!".

My plan to make a Charr Engineer fell through yet again due to operator error: I bought the new slot on the same account where my Asura Engineer lives. I already have two rangers on that account; two engineers would be enough evidence to get any doctor to sign section papers, so I made a Charr Guardian instead, on the grounds that I don't have any heavy armor classes on that account, plus my other Guardian is a Sylvari (that'd make a great bumper sticker).

Character creation remains completely unchanged since launch as far as I remember. I'd forgotten just how ugly you can make a Charr look - shattered horns, broken teeth, wrinkled, sagging, aged skin, patchy fur, milky blinded eyes... Not that I went that route, but it was nice to have the option  I'm betting you can't make a female Human or even a Norn that looks ancient, battered and weary the way you can a female Charr.


As I've often commented, for my tastes GW2 characters rarely improve in appearance from the look you can give them at character creation and the starting armor for a Heavy-wearing Charr, dyed a natural copper color, looks as good as just about anything in the game. Even the very first set of 40 copper vendor armor looks fantastic, as does the lowest crafted and dropped gear. I realize that those of us who prefer it have the option of transmuting the look via the wardrobe, but it makes for a poor motivator if eighty levels later you'd pay money to look like you'd were still level one.

The Tutorial's clearly not been converted to Megaserverdom because I was the only one there. It scales perfectly though and I was through in under five minutes and out onto Plains of Ashford. Before I'd even got my bearings some charr farmer was yelling that his cows had escaped so I grabbed a cattle prod to round them up and that was me off and running.

Plans of Ashford isn't on the Megaserver either but there were half a dozen young Charr roaming Gunbreach Hills and Lake Feritas. After an encounter with the Rampaging Skale which led to my Guardian making a tactical withdrawal ("regenerates health" - oh yes, so he does) I decided to run to the bank in Black Citadel to see if there was anything I might use (don't say the T word...) which brings me to the first major issue with the GW2 approach when it comes to starting a new character.

It is flat-out impossible not to twink a new character on an existing account. The best you can do is exercise will-power by not spending or allocating the resources you've been given automatically. Not taking advantage of all the goodies in the bank was easy enough - I'd long since thrown out everything under 80. I looked askance at the Experience Scrolls and Tomes of Knowledge stacked up in there. There were enough to bump my little Guardian instantly to Level 31, which would have let her get straight to the Traits but would miss the entire point of how long and hard the road might feel, getting there.

Those stayed where they were but when it comes to gold, crafting mats, Karma, World Ability Points, Laurels, Wardrobe Skins or just about anything else it's much harder for a fresh recruit to remain virtuous when she has unfettered access to everything the grizzled vets have earned.

If you were sufficiently determined (or demented) there are work-arounds for a cleanish start. You could put all your cash, items and mats in a personal guild bank and disband the new character from that guild, for example. You could keep count of how many WvW ranks your level-up had personally earned, make a note of how much mana she was granted from each Heart, do all the dailies only on that character and count the Laurels and so on. You'd last about two hours before you cracked, I reckon. Less if you actually wanted to play one of your other characters.

So, the new character experience of a player with an established account is by necessity going to be very unrepresentative of the experience a genuine new purchaser of the game will have, even discounting the inevitable inability of the vet to forget what he or she knows. I did seriously consider buying a third account for this experiment, which, short of deleting every character on an existing one, is the only way I can think of to get a genuine fresh start. It might still come to that - god knows it's tempting... but for now I am going to go the "new character on old account" route, report on that and do my best to imagine what it would feel like for a real new starter. 

On that note, whooooahhhhh! Black Citadel! I can't rationally explain why, but the moment I started up that ramp as a fresh level two recruit the entire city hit me as strongly all over again as it did back in beta. It's not like I haven't been there recently, either. I've passed through plenty of times on various characters just last week. I often bank and craft among the Charr. For some inexplicable reason, though, playing a new character made me see it entirely anew. The city is magnificent, the experience wonderful.

That's how I came to spend almost two hours on Black Citadel map completion, something that I can now attest is possibly the slowest possible way to get from level 2 to level 3. Worth every second though, even if I did have to watch a YouTube video for the final two POIs (and watch it four times before I got the final one). And that's with having completed BC on two previous characters, not to mention having done a guide on the Vistas!

Anyone who hasn't fallen in love with GW2 after Black Citadel map completion is probably too jaded to rise from their chaise-longue to sugar their absinthe. It's my favorite place in Tyria and one of my favorite imaginary places anywhere. I had to force myself not to take more screenshots. Not very successfully. Despite, as I said, having already done the full map twice I saw several areas I swear I have never seen before.

That done, I went to the Guardian Trainer to look at what lies ahead. There you can, in an extremely annoying and unintuitive way, browse every trait, Fine, Masterwork and Rare. These are called Adept, Master and Grandmaster in your character's Trait panel, which would risk confusing a new player if he could actually see it, a problem handily solved by having the Trait panel locked until level 30.

I literally shook my head in despair at this point. Not only are new players now intended to wait thirty levels before they can begin acquiring Traits (most of which, according to Verene's analysis, will be out of their reach in any practical sense for far longer than that) but they aren't even permitted to know what's coming. What in the name of the gods that don't exist do they think they are playing at?

Moreover, how, exactly, is a genuine new player going to have any idea that he even can gain Traits through doing content? The Trainer doesn't explain it. He just has all the traits listed as buyable books. The Trait panel, which does explain it, is locked. Surely a new player will visit his trainer out of curiosity (there are plenty of them, clearly flagged), see that Traits cost ten silver and two skill points at the low end and go thirty levels assuming that's the only way to get them.

Of course new players can go to the wiki or any number of outside sources to find out how it works, see what's in store, even play around with builds on trait builders, but what kind of substitute is that for seeing them in game on your actual character? No kind, that's what kind!

I'll save commenting in detail about the asinine choices ANet have made for the ways and means that the traits can be unlocked when those options are eventually revealed. Verene has already made those points anyway (although that's sure not going to stop me weighing in if changes haven't been made by the time I get that panel opened up). For now I'll just settle for saying that locking that Trait panel is idiotic and inexcusable.

To recover from that unpleasant surprise I headed out to Plains of Ashfield to wash away the bad taste with Flame Legion blood. In moments all thoughts of traits were forgotten. I had a rip-roaring time tearing through events and hearts while filling out my dailies without even trying. In under an hour I'd completed the north-west corner of the map, acquired several new weapons and upgrades, dinged five and had more fun than I've had in GW2 for about a year.

As I write this I'm impatient to get back in and carry on. I had to stop last night to go defend the Honor of the Yak which was being severely tarnished by assaults from FA and HoD but really what I wanted to do was carry on leveling, something I plan on spending as much of today doing as I can. Of course, even before the revamp Traits didn't appear until Level 10 so it's too early to see any practical impact from the change. I can say for certain, though, that no matter how hard devs may try to break it, leveling up remains the most fun you can have in an MMO. Any MMO.

Picking At The Threads : GW2

I'm just glad I have the week off work, that's all I can say. Although, come to think of it, that's hardly the most apposite turn of phrase, because there's quite a lot I could say about yesterday's Feature Pack Patch. The main problem would be knowing where to start. Or more likely when to stop...

Let's try and keep it short, unlike Anet, who opened nine dedicated comment threads in the hope of containing the howls of anguish from nerfed berserkers, crashed trains and other disgruntled customers. I'll stick with their categories.

Wardrobe

Some people were really stoked for this. I wasn't one of them. GW2 is one of those annoying MMOs where you step out of character creation looking, there or thereabouts, like a regular Joe or Jane, at least in the context of the imaginary world you're about to explore, only to find yourself descending the spiral staircase of surrealism until you end up in a Daliesque daze, dressed like the third runner-up in an Ace Frehley lookalike competition. The recent flurry of screenshots from TESO on various blogs serve as a disturbing reminder of just how garish and tasteless GW2 has become. Roll on WildStar so we can go back to feeling all sophisticated by comparison, like we did back in 2012.

Never mind the ethos, what about the implementation? Not bad. Slightly odd that you can only access the Wardrobe from the bank, but given it works the same way as the Crafting and Mini bank tabs that kind of makes sense. Also odd to hear the little zinggg! sound every time you salvage some eminently forgettable item, thereby adding an equally forgettable appearance to the invisible, intangible wardrobe, when all you meant to do was grab a scrap of Luck, but, hey, it's a nice little sound sample, don't mind hearing it twenty times a minute. And of course as the Wardrobe fills up you'll hear that sound sample less and less often. Probably going to miss it in a few days.


With the five free Transmutation Charges and the twenty or so I got from converting the old stones and crystals clogging up my bank I now have about five times more conversions in hand than I've used in total since the game began, so I think I'm set. It's neat that they're now a Currency, too. What with that and Wardrobing all the unused skins I was hoarding, even though I knew I'd never use them because if I did I would have to play blindfolded, I've regained a dozen or more bank slots. On balance I approve of the Wardrobe although probably not for the reasons I'm supposed to.

Well, that was hardly keeping it short. Must do better. On to

PvP Reward/Gear/Ranks/Maps

Don't PvP. Pass. Wow, that got things back on track!

World Boss Synchronization

Immediately after the patch last night I logged in, arriving in Wayfarer Foothills just as The Frozen Maw was starting. I helped send the Shaman packing, grabbed my rares and retreated to Krennak's Homestead to try and make sense of my new Traits. Ten minutes later Brogun started yammering on about the Grawl and the whole thing started up again. And ten minutes after that. And ten minutes after that...

When Brogun kept getting as far as destroying the Svanjir totem then declaring the threat over and stumping back across the snowfields to reward himself with a fine ale everyone on the map assumed the event had bugged. Not so. Oh no, that would be infinitely preferable to the truth. After the cycle had repeated several times I went to check the immense patch notes , which I'd been avoiding on the grounds that I wanted to get in and play sometime before the sun came up. Here's the relevant section:

"If the event to destroy the dragon totem has succeeded when the boss is not activated, Scholar Brogun will declare victory and return to Krennak’s homestead without fighting the shaman."

In other words, in order to make this whole fixed schedule work, ANet have chosen to have the pre-events run on a continual loop (in the case of The Maw literally once every ten minutes). It's like watching Groundhog Day on fast-forward. I have yet to go see for myself but apparently the same is true of Gamarien's stroll, the Karka Queen pres and for all I know every other series of events that could, potentially, result in the appearance of a chest-dropping Boss.

Even in a "virtual world" that already resembled nothing so much as a series of animatronic tableaux, this takes some beating. It's one of the most openly cynical revisions to content I think I have ever seen in an MMO. Pragmatic, yes, I'll give them that, and at least it works, unlike the changes to the Shadow Behemoth event, which were supposed to increase the difficulty in preparation for the upcoming Megaserver population focus, but which initially made the event very hard to complete with the unmegaservered map population we still have and then bugged out entirely, so the event is currently not completable at all.

The feedback thread on World Bosses is extremely critical. Indeed, all the threads I read were. The forums have a reputation for negativity but in this case almost all of the commentary is well-reasoned, coherent and seems justified. I won't re-hash all the valid points in detail, such as the effect fixed timers have on people with jobs and families or the prohibitive costs of the Guild Event option that might otherwise be used to restore some flexibility. They're all there on the thread if anyone's that interested. I'll just observe that I don't think you'd be taking too much of a punt if you bet on quite a few tweaks to some of these "Features" in the coming days and weeks.

Guild World Events/Megaservers/WvW

Bit of an odd bundle. There are four people in my guild and one of them doesn't play any more so we won't be starting any Events. Pass.

The whole Megaserver thing hasn't really made itself evident yet. Whichever maps are using it aren't ones I've been on, or if they are then the population of GW2 really has taken a nosedive. The only place I did see it working was when I passed through the PvP lobby on the way to Lion's Arch Vigil Keep (they really need to put a new sign on that Asuran Gate), where I saw a large number of people standing around, presumably trying to work out what the hell had happened to their Traits or whatever it is that PvP people use. I'll take a rain-check on commenting on the Megaserver functionality until I actually see some.

As for WvW, that was one unalloyed positive for me. I'd been saving all my drips, tastes, and thimbles just for this day. I even had a keg. Drinking them all was good fun, even if every rank chest was stuffed with nothing but greens (I got one Exotic between two accounts and about 25 ranks and that was a speargun...). Ended up Rank 204 (I think it was) on one account and 115 on the other. Now I just have to decide where to spend the points.

Sigils/Runes

ANet made two threads out of that but I've conflated it because I don't have anything to say, at least not yet. I was mostly already using full sets, not mix-and-match, and a cursory check suggests nothing much has changed. Browsing the Rune thread, the word that comes up most often seems to be "underwhelming", while the Sigil thread barely gets started at all and even when it does it mostly contains off-topic comments.  Confirms what I always suspected: no-one gives a damn about Sigils.

Traits

This is arguably the biggest Feature in the Pack. A full revamp of the Trait system, everything from the traits themselves to when and how you acquire them. Sitting on nine level 80s, all of whose traits have been grandfathered in, it doesn't seem terrible, just very confusing. I began this post by saying I was glad I have the week off work and this is why - it's going to take me a week to get all these traits sorted out.

The new interface is okay. Kind of a sideways move. I wouldn't call it an improvement but it's easy enough to follow. Being able to chop and change Traits infinitely, instantly, at no cost certainly removes all of the usual pressure these kinds of revamps bring, that of making a horrible mistake that will haunt you or cost you or both.  I found myself quite enjoying playing around with "builds", if you could dignify what I was coming up with such a description.

It's not really my thing, though, nor Mrs Bhagpuss's. We decided we'd just bang something in for now and wait til the theorycrafters come up with a new meta.Then we can ignore it and feel superior follow the herd.

Reading the forum thread, however, the most poignant and heartfelt comments came from new players, all of whom felt thoroughly shafted by the new system. This comment by Robert sums up the issues very well and looking at it from the outside it's hard to argue with his conclusion "If this is somehow supposed to make the game more enjoyable for new players, I fail to see how this is accomplished.. Sadly, for me, the opposite is true."

I'm very tempted to buy a new character slot, go try it for myself, see how "bad" it really is. It's too long since I leveled up and I never did get around to making that Charr Engineer I wanted. I suspect that the new, slower version of leveling, with its requirements to unlock traits by doing content might suit me rather well. I also think I'd be in a very, very small minority if that turned out to be the case and I fear this move could be commercial suicide when it comes to persuading new players to stick with the game.

The new Elite traits that my characters will have to unlock if they want to use them don't  look like being any kind of an issue. Two reasons: firstly, most of them look like they wouldn't warrant a slot anyway and secondly the price to buy them from the trainer is much, much cheaper than I was anticipating. I was guessing at 50g per unlock. I wouldn't have been surprised to see it pegged at the same as a Commander tag - 100g. When I got to the trainer it turned out to be 3g. Three! Oh, and 20 skill points. My ranger has nearly 500 of those, plus another 200 skill scrolls in the bank. Not seeing a problem there, other than it spikes the whole idea of going out to search for the things as a form of new content. Why the hell would anyone bother if they're only 3g a pop?

Profession Balance

Yada yada yada...

Every MMO does this all the time. Never worth getting worked up over. If you enjoyed something it got nerfed. If something was broken it didn't get fixed. A's still better than B, C's overpowered and D is gimped. Next time round move one place to the left. I treat class changes on a need-to-know basis. If something seems weird in play I'll investigate. Otherwise they  generally pass me by.

That's the gist of it although there's a lot more grain in the detail. There's the derailment of the Champion trains and the Contested Waypoint debate for a start, and dyes, but the change that got Mrs Bhagpuss the most irritated was one that's barely been mentioned anywhere: consolidation of Daily Achievements.

She took it as slap in the face for casual players, a demographic to which she somewhat confusingly aligns herself despite her thousands of achievement points, hundreds of WvW ranks and eight level 80s, half of them already kitted out in full Ascended. This pruning of dailies that limits choice and drops the old standby, Gathering, is more of a slap in the face of the hardcore than the casual, I'd say, since they're the ones chasing the Laurels, and whether it really will take longer to do the dailies now I'm not sure but, hardcore or casual, I can't say that I'm any more thrilled at being funneled into fewer areas to do them than Mrs Bhagpuss is.

Looking at the Feature Pack as a whole I'd say it's exactly what ANet claimed - an expansion-size patch with none of the content you'd find in an actual expansion.It's a bit like going to the cinema and having to  sit through all the commercials, trailers and safety warnings without ever seeing a movie.

I read the motivations behind the whole enterprise as a combination of three things:

• A desire to drive substantially more business through the Gem Store

• An attempt at avoiding the negative marketing hit that comes from server merges

• The perennial inability of MMO developers to leave anything well alone.

I imagine having to do a lot of the background work to re-tool the game for the Chinese market has something to do with it, too. Probably gave them ideas. Oh well, if nothing else it gives us all something to talk about other than why we aren't playing TESO.

Unpacking The Feature Pack : GW2

The Big Reveal is over, the bags are all open, the cats all run free. Just ten more days to Magic Time, the Glorious Fifteenth, First Coming of The Feature Pack. Tyria will never be the same again.

Let's hope not, anyway. It would seem like an awful lot of fuss about nothing if, as I suspect might happen, the world just goes on turning in much the same old way. With game historians of the future in mind let's have a quick flip through the program and scribble down some notes while the orchestra's still tuning up.

Traits - A big change, for sure and, now I've had time to mull it around for a bit, one that I quite like, on paper at least. Hunting for traits in the wild sounds disturbingly like New Content, while being able to buy our way out of playing through parts of the game that we don't care for seems like a sound compromise. Being able to change trait builds free and on the fly is intriguing. Chances are I'll never remember to do it but so long as it remains "may" not "must" then I'll go along for the ride.

Runes and Sigils - Can't see any downside to this. A ridiculous amount of worthless runes and sigils rain down every day as I salvage the equally ridiculous downpour of worthless armor and weaponry. Probably three-quarters of them could vanish overnight and no-one would notice. Anything that streamlines the system has to be welcome although I don't see much in the blurb to suggest we'll see the back of all the +10% vs Dredge space-wasters and their pointless ilk.

Famous last words

Critical Damage - Nerf! Nerf! After a year of resisting the 'Zerker Meta I find I'm absolutely loving my Full Berserker Elementalist build, especially in WvW, where the supposed "Glass Cannon" factor rarely seems to come into play. Somehow, very few people seem to pay any attention to the Norn woman in dark blue lurking at the back even though she's raining continual fiery destruction on their heads and when the Commander yells "Push!" my main problem seems to be trying not to impersonate Sky Saxon. The number of times I've found myself behind the opposing zerg all on my own after two dodges and a Mist Form - and still they don't notice me, even as I pump fireballs into their backs!

I console myself with the thought that it's only supposed to be a 10% nerf and my DPS went up about 300% when I went berserk, so it shouldn't hurt too much. Of course, if a nerf doesn't feel like a nerf it probably won't shake the Meta up much either, assuming that was the intention.

Wardrobe  - Replace a cumbersome system with a slightly less cumbersome one, so net gain, I guess. I'd peg this as one of the many income-driving changes, where the secondary, if not the primary, function is to drive more traffic to the Gem Store. Since I very rarely change the looks of my characters once I've got them how I like them (hard enough to remember who I'm playing as it is without having them confuse me by looking different) I don't see this affecting me greatly one way or the other. For a change that's long been demanded, though, forum response has been more mixed than you might expect. I wouldn't be surprised to see more tweaks to this as the months wear on.

And put a sweater on, too!

Dyes - Changes things to the way most players probably thought the system should have worked from the get-go. I'll be in a tiny minority in preferring it the way it was but it's hardly a major issue - give up a small degree of character individualization and a self-created mini-game (who gets which dye) in favor of undoubted convenience. The really annoying (and entirely player-unfriendly) aspect is the removal of dropped dyes, another change blatantly intended to increase ANet's income stream, albeit with the rather happier side-effect of allowing crafters a rare opportunity to make a little silver on the back of it.

Social Play Improvements - I had to re-read this one just to remind myself what these "improvements" were. Meh. And that's over-egging it.

Account Bound Changes - At last! The long-trailed move to account-based ranks for WvW is finally (almost) here. Again, another anti-character move but that ship sailed so long ago and there were so many planks missing it must have sunk even faster than this metaphor. I'm just going to go with it from now on - The Account is the Prime Directive - All hail The Account. Now just give me my furshlugginer points already!

As for account-bound ascended gear, that does make it slightly more likely I might one day get around to getting some. Legendaries? I should coco.

Somehow the new champ bags didn't seem quite so exciting as the old ones...

Repairs and Champion Loot - I think I learned the expression "Indian Giver" from a Superboy comic in about 1966. I was never entirely sure what it meant. and by now it's probably one of those turns of phrase that can no longer be uttered in polite society but I'm pretty sure it applies to ANet here. How the removal of the minuscule cost of repairing your armor, somewhere around 8 silver if you turn up at the repair shop in your underwear at level 80, is supposed to compensate for what might be a heavy nerf to cash income from Champion bags, any one of which can theoretically provide enough silver to pay your repair costs for the whole day, beats me and everyone else.

Mystic Forge - ANet buried that in the same announcement but I've pulled it out. It seems to have passed almost unnoticed. Hardly surprising because there's precious little information there. It's more just putting us on notice that big changes to the money pit often unfondly referred to as the Mystic Toilet are on the way. Could be good, could be terrible, except that the Forge is so terrible already any change almost has to be good.

As opposed to all those other proverbially trustworthy genies?

PvP Stuff - Pass. Oh, wait, no...that's just what these changes are supposed to stop me doing, aren't they? This whole everyone-must-play-all-parts-of-the-game trope that ANet desperately hope might catch on. Nope, sorry. Not playing. Next.

Megaserver - The Big One. Literally. Didn't see this coming. Don't much want it, either. I thought I'd again be in a tiny minority not getting out the flags and bunting for this but although first reaction was predictably positive, the sprawling threads all over the forums suggest that, given time to consider the implications, quite a few players could see the holes in the Emperor's New Clothes (yes, I know...).

Can't have a Themepark without a Schedule

World Bosses - And this is why. Leaving aside the disorderly retreat from the moral high ground of a " living, breathing world" (whatever happened to Martin Kerstein, anyway?) plenty of people see the combination of ever-changing maps, no firm home ground and fixed daily boss timers as things that will reduce their fun and stop them doing things they enjoy. Where's the value in all those Infinite Harvesting Tools now all the nodes wriggle about like bait in a bucket? How are you going to run a World Meta Train if there aren't any worlds? How can a Commander gate into LA (or I guess now Gendarran Fields) and rally the PvE troops for a golem rush when half the people listening might come from the Other Side?


A million increasingly angry questions and so far precious little in the way of answers. Oh, and that "all waypoints are now contested" thing? Why didn't you just schedule that for it's own Reveal and call it "Huge New Gold Sink"?

Guilds and the Future - And out we go with a whimper. I don't like guilds and I don't much care what happens to them in any game just so long as I can go on ignoring them. Plenty of bad feeling about this one from small guild players who do care, though. At least WvW is "safe" ... for now.

When ANet came up with the idea of rolling a whole lot of structural changes into one big "Feature Pack" and plonking it down in the gaping content hole between the end of Living Story Season One and the start of Living Story Season Two, some dev I can't be bothered to look up and link made the cardinal error of likening it to the amount of content you'd expect from an expansion. Cue frenzied forum speculation on the Coming of the Tengu, Dragons, Housing, Mounts and the Moon on a Stick.

Happens to the best of us

The Official Wet (Safety) Blanket was deployed to dampen down ardor and enthusiasm and someone probably got a right ticking off but in essence the comparison wasn't unwarranted. The Feature Pack does contain about as much in the way of structural and systemic change as the average MMO expansion. It just comes unsweetened by any actual content.

I'm sanguine. I no longer feel emotionally connected to Guild Wars in all its forms the way I am to, say, the Everquest franchise (as it now appears officially to be known). It's become no more nor less than a rather amusing, entertaining game that I play, not a virtual world in which I imagine I am living. On that basis I'm willing to entertain any changes that might make it more amusing or entertaining. Whether these are those changes only time will tell.

Oh, and there's one more similarity between the Feature Pack and a real expansion. I bet lots of these changes won't work properly for a good while and we'll be patching well into May before things settle down. Fun times ahead!