Seventy-Five Not So Stressful Minutes With Nightingale

The most stressful part had nothing to do with the game. It was waiting for Beryl to bounce in, barking and begging to play, too. With her with her ball on a string, that is. She's bright for a dog and dexterous with her paws but she's not quite up to playing video games just yet.

The stress test began at six PM, local time. It was scheduled to end at nine, landing squarely in the slot normally reserved for canine recreation. I had to ask Mrs. Bhagpuss to keep Beryl entertained so I could get into the game at least long enough to take a few screenshots and see enough to write a post about it, obviously the most important part of the whole excercise, if not the whole point of being there at all.

In the event, I managed more than twice as long as I expected, a fifty minute session followed by another twenty-five minutes a little later. Neither was stressful at all, although I did get off to kind of a rough start, dead on a rock a couple of minutes after I began.

I'd climbed onto the rock to get away from a pack of wild pigs that chased me out of the forest onto the shoreline before I'd even had a chance to work out how to fight back. I had a torch in my hand, which turned out to be a ranged weapon. I threw it at them again and again but they didn't seem bothered. I didn't have "killed by a boar" on my Nightingale bingo card but that's what I got, anyway. Might as well have been playing WoW.

Backing up a bit, the notification, download and login processes all went swimmingly. The client, which comes in somewhere in the low sixty gigabyte range, took about half an hour or so to download and install. Developers Inflexion Games changed their minds at the last minute and let everyone in all at once instead of staggering access so the moment the Play button lit up, I was in.

They also extended the playtest from three hours to eight because it was going so well. Is going so well, I ought to say. It still has four hours to run as I type this.

Before the test began, Inflexion sent out a good deal of information about what to expect. Characters would start at the equivalent of ten hours old. No, you wouldn't begin as a newborn babe. That would be too weird, even for this game. You'd be given a character set up as if they'd already played for around ten hours.

That meant skipping the entire tutorial, which sounds fine in theory, especially when you consider the test was only supposed to last three hours. In practice, it meant I had absolutely no clue how to do anything once I got past character creation and even there I was flummoxed at times. I used to despise tutorials but of late I've started to see the merit in them. In media res is one thing but being dropped into the deep end to see if you can swim doesn't sem to have the same thrill it once did.

Speaking of character creation, I liked it. What I saw of it. Again, time pressure meant I rushed through the options faster than I would have liked. There seemed to be plenty of choice, lots of sliders, some bits that weren't finished yet and a few parts I plain could not understand. Also a lot of backstory that meant reading lengthy paragraphs of descriptive prose, something I'd normally welcome but in this instance, under pressure of time, reluctantly had to skim or skip.

Some parts I just didn't get at all. There's a whole section where you get to pick your ancestors, going back three generations on each side of the family tree. Then you get to decide which of them had the most influence on you. It might have come with an explanation but it was taking far too long so I picked a bunch of people at random, jiggled the pointer and left it at that.

There were some other options I don't remember seeing in other games. There's a surprising focus on teeth. You can have them metal or decaying or crooked. Why you'd want to is another question.

I left my teeth as they came, along with my eyebrows and my hairstyle. I added a tuch of blusher and a little glitter to my cheekbones, declined the offer of lipstick and off we went to the Fae Realm.

Or possibly the Abeyance Forest Realm. They may or may not be the same thing. It's a forest, whatever they call it, and the first person you meet there is Puck. Of course it is. I studied Shakespeare both at school and at University; no-one ever suggested I read A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not once. And yet here we are...

From the way they talked, I got the feeling Puck and my character had met before. In the missing Tutorial, probably. He gave me a bunch of advice or his voice actor did, none of which I really took on board. He also turned out to be the only NPC I met who could speak out loud. I ended up meeting several more characters with dialog but none of them were voiced.

There was a heap of stuff piled up behind Puck, including several chests stuffed with crafting materials. I was fully geared, kitted out in adventuring kit with gathering tools and more food than I could eat in a week. None of it helped much. If anything, the opposite. At times I felt I'd have been less confused with a rusty sword and a cloth tunic.

The only hint of what to do next was a single instruction - build a cairn and claim my estate. I died three times before I figured out how to place the cairn. After a lot of trial, error, luck and random button pressing I got it figured out, at which point I realised I was looking at two of them. The devs had handily put one down for me already. I just didn't recognize it for what it was.

Even after I had my cairn in ghost-form, I couldn't find the rocks to make it real. I ran around, died another time or two, found some rocks, put them in the cairn and completed my only task. Up popped Puck again to give me something else to do but I'd had enough of him so I went exploring. 

I died a couple more times before I learned you can just fight with the same tools you use to chop wood or mine ore. That does make sense. I mean, a pickaxe to the head is a pickaxe to the head, whatever it says on the handle.

Once I had that down, fights were surprisingly easy. I clubbed many wolves to death and had my revenge on the pesky pigs. I guessed I could skin and butcher them as you can in New World and I was right. The knife magically appeared in my hand at need and there I was with a bunch more stuff I didn't know what to do with.

I also battered a few zombie-like creatures that swarmed out of a strange, serpentine structure I went to investigate. Pro tip: anything that looks remotely interesting in Nightingale probably has something hiding inside that wants to rip your head off. It happened literally every time I went to look at anything.

It seems remarkably easy to get killed in Nightingale, even on the Easy setting, which is what I chose. It's not just the wildlife. It's the weather. This is, I'm pretty sure, the first game I've ever played where hail is a weather condition, not a greeting. What's more, it's the old "hailstones the size of golf-balls" as beloved by lazy sub-editors everywhere and they fricken' hurt!

There's falling damage, naturally, which kicks in when you jump off anything much higher than a footstool and I'm sure you can drown if you're dumb enough to go for a swim, which for once, quite surprisingly, I was not. By survival game standards it felt quite harsh but then I had no idea what I was doing. I bet if I'd been through a tutorial I would have had a much better time of it.

In the end, though, this was a stress test, not a play test and on that level, from my end at least, it performed admirably. I had no lag of any kind, no disconnections, no trouble getting in and out of the game. Everything felt very smooth. There are clearly parts of the game as yet unfinished but it seems fine for the first step into Early Access.

I could go further into what I liked and disliked about my brief introduction to the world of Nightingale but it hardly seems appropriate - or necessary. In a matter of weeks I'll be able to play for as long as I like. There'll be plenty of time to write about it in detail then.

And I will because I will most definitely be buying the game. I already intended to and what I saw in my hour and a quarter there more than met my expectations. I look forward to starting from the beginning and finding out what I was doing wrong.

For once, I'm even looking forward to the Tutorial.

Set Adrift On Memory Bliss: The Monsters&Memories Stress Test Is Well-Received By All

Over the weekend, Niche Worlds Cult, the developer of retro-classic mmorpg Monsters &Memories, ran a couple of stress tests to see how their servers, login processes and various mechanicals might stand up under pressure. The plan was to open the game to anyone who cared to download the client so they could wander around and try out such content as the project's pre-pre-alpha build had to offer. 

There were hefty advisories on the extremely undercooked nature of what was there to see and warnings not to expect too much but in the event it seemed like no-one who turned up had bothered to read them. 

Not that there were complaints - far from it. I heard very few in the ninety minutes or so I was there. No, it was more that everyone appeared to have decided to behave as if it was the launch of a new game - one they were really enjoying.

It was surreal, honestly. For a start it was really, really busy on the Saturday night, when I was able to play. I couldn't make the Friday time-slot due to being fast asleep but NWC had very sensibly and thoughtfully staggered the two events so as to make them available to a wider range of interested parties. On Saturday, the servers opened at 6PM my time and I was there, ready, with the client downloaded and patched.

It's like EQ and Vanguard had a (very inbred) baby...

There was only one server in the list so I hopped on that one and made a character. First signs were that the team might have been a tad... shall we say... ambitious? Character creation offered a choice of  a full dozen races - and eighteen classes. Of the races, only Gnome, Human and Ogre were available but all the classes were ready to play.

I thought I'd made a Gnome Elementalist but when I logged into the world it transpired I'd made a human instead. Whether that was a bug or my own ineptitude I can't say but either way it was a felicitous outcome. Gnomes, when I saw a few scuttling around, looked pretty weird and very small, a bit like hyperactive toddlers. I was happy to find myself playing a much better-looking human.

If you look really closely, you can see that Human is highlighted in green, something I did not notice at the time.

At this point you might be expecting an account of what I did during my hour and a half. It's coming - sort of. The thing is, I could easily sum up everything I did in a sentence: I ran around and took a lot of screenshots. That's it.

Okay, it's not absolutely all I did. I fiddled around with the settings and the UI a little because I just can't help myself. I also did the first quest hand in, of which more later. And I tried to fight one mob. Which killed me. Instantly. Oh, and I did a corpse recovery. Not sure why. I think I must have been swept up in the general enthusiasm. It was hard to avoid it.

Not everyone's as diligent about picking up their corpses as I am.

Since we're seven paragraphs in already I'll try belatedly not to bury the lede for once: Monsters&Memories isn't just an homage to mmorpgs of the EverQuest era - it's freakin' EverQuest Redux. Seriously, it's all but identical. Not just the ethos but the specific milieu. It's like an alternate-dimensional Norrath. And where it's not EQ Resurrected it's clearly Vanguard, which is very much the same thing.

Let's take a very specific example. One of the most universal experiences in original EQ was the note you handed in to your guildmaster. It just sits there in your inventory when you first log in, waiting for you to find it for yourself. When you do - and once you've figured out how to click on it to read - it it tells you go to go find a named NPC, the head of the guild for the class you've picked, so you can hand the note over to them. 

Nights are very, very dark. Humans do not have infravision. Or ultravision. Or a torch in my case.

For your effort, which usually takes a while because there's no map and no directional markers or even a punctuation point over anyone's head, you either get killed (If you accidentally auto-attack the person you're supposed to be giving the note to.) or you get a smudge of xp and a dirty vest. M&M follows this precedent precisely, apart from the vest. I got a belt instead.

But that wasn't all. I don't know what other classes get but as an Elementalist I also got a pinwheel and a box. I was supposed to wander around the city with the pinwheel until it started to spin, letting me know I was in the presence of a hungry Djinn. At this point I would light some incense and the Djinn would give me a pearl. 

It does look like the kind of place you might find a Djinn.

I had to do that three times to get pearls of water, wind and fire, which I would then put into the box, along with my pinwheel and my belt. Then I'd come back to the guildmaster and hand the whole lot over. To what end, I know not because I didn't do any of it.

Seriously - it's a stress test for a game that's not even in alpha yet! Why would I be doing quests? And yet everywhere people were doing just that. General chat was perpetually filled with the typical questions and demands of any busy starter area in a brand-new game. People were questing and levelling like it was going to matter!

And also like somewhere you wouldn't want to wear a padded jumpsuit.

You know what? Forget questing. They were forming groups! At Level 1. And doing dungeons. At Level 3! People were even flaunting their qualifications - "Elementalist Lvl 4 lfg. Have pet". Level frickin' four!? HOW??

In the ninety minutes I was able to play, which comprised a half hour when the server came up and an hour later in the evening, after I'd stopped to phone my mother and walk the dog (By which time the one available server had grown to three.) I made precisely no xp at all. Unless I got some for handing in that note. I might have. I didn't notice.

That water's looking pretty tempting around now.

For the longest time I couldn't even find anything to fight. Monsters&Memories has one the largest cities I have ever seen in an mmorpg. It's unfeasably gigantic. The main gates and the newbie grounds reminded me of Freeport but the rest is extraordinarily redolent both of Khal and Ahgram, the two middle-Eastern cities in Vanguard. It's hardly surprising. Vanguard always was the true sequel to EverQuest. Until now, apparently.

The city, whose name hasn't stuck in my mind, although I'm fairly sure it was mentioned, is extraordinarily well-realized for a game at this very early stage of development. It has all the necessary functions like banks and class guild halls but also statuary, boulevards and ambience. It also has guards you can ask for directions because of course it does. EQ had them...

I'd make a deposit - if I had even one copper piece.

Once again, I have to repeat that, for a game that's supposedly not even in a pre-alpha state yet, there's a surprising amount to do. I think the reason people were playing it like a game they'd just bought was mostly just because they could. There were quests and they worked. There was gear. There was progression. So what if none of it was going to stick around the moment the stress test ended? There was fun to be had so they were having it.

And those who'd knuckled down and got on with levelling were rewarded. On the Saturday when I played, the four-hour test was extended for a further four hours, for no other reason, I believe, than because people were having such a good time and saying so, enthusiastically and often. You can't buy a reaction like that but you sure can encouraage it when you get one.

The harbor's not nearly so inviting when you have to swim it in the dark - in your underwear.

There were devs in the channel chatting with players and they must have been ecstatic about how well it was all going. Not just the technical side, which seemed rock solid while I was playing - no lag, no disconnects - but the reception the game was getting from the crowd. They bloody loved it.

I loved it too but with an element of distance. It was wonderful to see such a faithful recreation of a thing I once worshipped, carried off with such success. I could feel the commitment to getting it right coming off the screen in waves. 

Speaking of harbors, this horseshoe-shape with a statue at each end is so Khal!

The thing is, though, I'm not sure it's what I want for myself any more. I'm not saying it's not. It might be. Certainly the mechanics and systems are exactly right for me - as far as they go. I love levelling every bit as much as I ever did, as evidenced by Mitsu, the EverQuest II character I've been turning into one of my most rounded tradeskillers in years these last few weeks. 

What I really don't think I want any more is the kind of exceptionally slow, ponderous and painful levelling that would be a necessary part of any faithful recreation of old EQ. My feeling is that those processes were accelerated for good reason. I know a lot of EQ vets think it's been all down hill since Kunark but I'm not one of them.

As they say in Qalia "Always pray for rain".

None of which will stop me for a moment from jumping into any open testing NWC offers for Monsters&Memories in future. What they've put in place already is a hugely impressive achievement and I'm fascinated to see where they take things from here. I'll be very happy to give them whatever help and support I can by playtesting or stress-testing and by recounting my experiences to whatever audience I may have.

If I'm ever going to put in the very significant number of hours necessary to do a new mmorpg justice, though, I fear it's going to have to be one with a lot more modern features than any genuine repro ought to offer. Like a decent map, for a start. And quest markers. And no corpse runs. 

"And on the surface of Norrath did Tunare create the Elves, creatures of limitless grace and beauty"

Yeah, I'm soft. But then, I'm also old. Life's too short to go get your corpse, especially when you respawn on the opposite side of the furshlugginer city. I had to run all the way round the outside walls and swim through the harbor to get back! And yes, I know it's very impressive that swimming is in and works already but it wasn't much of a comfort at the time.

And that's about all I have to say on the subject just now. For another view, Stingite at The Friendly Necromancer managed to get some time on days one and two. He got a lot farther than I did. 

But I bet he didn't take as many screenshots.

This Train Terminates Here

I woke up this morning to an interesting, if unexpected, email. A company by the name of Cognosphere had sent me an invitation to download a new "space fantasy RPG" called Honkai: Star Rail. It sounded very intriguing, being set, by some manner or means, on a kind of space-train, known as The Astral Express. I was keen to find out more.

The email came with all the necessary buttons to press for registering an account and downloading the game, so I began pressing them. At that point I wasn't quite sure who the developers were or what games they might already have made but it seemed like a safe assumption it  must have been something I'd at least tried, since they'd gotten hold of one of my email addresses from somewhere.

There was one big clue. Honkai: Star Rail is part of something called the HoYoverse. That didn't ring much of a bell with me, although I thought it might possibly have something to do with Genshin Impact.( It does. See Note #1 below.)

It didn't seem like something that mattered enough to go look into it before I downloaded the game, so I just got on with it. I'd gotten to the point where the tiny zipfile I'd downloaded had unlocked an installer and I'd picked a drive location from the advanced options, when the inevitable request to accept the Terms of Service popped.

Terms of Service and EULAs are really boring to read. They're long and full of legal jargon and most people just tick the box to say they've read and understood them without actually bothering to do either. Sometimes I do that, too, especially with new games from developers whose games I already play.

With new games from sources unfamiliar to me I tend to be cagier. I wouldn't claim to read every line of every paragraph but I always at least skim the whole thing and close-read, often several times, the specific sections relating to what I can and can't publish about the game, here on the blog. These days, if there's a strict NDA or draconian rules about screenshots or video, I decline to accept the terms and cross the game off my list.  

The TOS for Honkai: Star Rail is exceptionally clear and well-written. While it uses a lot of legal language, it does so in very good, plain English. None of these things are fun to read but this one makes getting through it about as painless as it could be. 

Several key prohibitions are highlighted in bold and prefaced with straightforward explanations and warnings about why users should pay particular attention to them. Where appropriate, long lists of examples are included. All in all, it's a very impressive example of the species.

As is altogether too common these days, it includes a section relating to use or reproduction of "materials" from the game, the list of examples of which include, among many other things, stories, storylines and visual images of various kinds. It's forbidden to reproduce, republish, display, transmit or perform several other communicative processes on any of these aspects of the game without first receiving express written consent.

That, I figured, would really put a crimp in my writing about the game here on the blog so I declined to sign the TOS or to register an account or download the game, to do any of which would have implied acceptance of the terms. It may seem a little over-cautious but you'll note I'm not even quoting verbatim from the TOS here, let alone reproducing images of it. Can't be too careful.

Still, I would like to play the game. It's not every day - or every decade - you get the opportunity to ride a space train. I could, of course, just download it, play it and keep quiet about it, but where's the sense in that? I don't play these games for fun, you know! Well, I do, but much of that fun comes from writing about them. 

As I said, the TOS is exemplary in its accessibility so it shouldn't be surprising that it concludes with an email address to which you can refer any questions you may have before accepting it. It did surprise me, all the same. It's something I'm not sure I've seen before.

Since they'd been so kind as to include a way to contact the legal department, I thought I might as well use it. After all, you don't get if you don't ask. Here's the email I sent. I'm pretty sure it's safe to reproduce, seeing as how it's all my own work:

"Hi,

Could you please confirm whether the prohibitions on copyrighted materials in this section extends to screenshots from the user's gameplay when published online in a personal blog for the purposes of illustrating either an account of the user's activities in game or in a review or commentary on the game? Similarly, does the prohibition apply to video of that nature posted in a user's social media channel for those purposes?

If these actions are so prohibited without express prior written consent, can you issue such consent to me for those purposes or advise me how and where to apply for such consent?

I'd like to try the game but I'm not interested in doing so if I can't also write about it and show screenshots on my blog.

Thanks in advance for your advice."

We'll see what that gets me, if anything. Until then, I guess I won't be playing the game. And even if I do, you won't be reading about it here.

By the most extreme of contrasts, yesterday I also signed up to test an in-development mmorpg, Monsters and Memories. Currently at a very early stage of development and being produced by a pretty small team, M&M is a rather cosy-looking entry into the somewhat crowded field of retro-repro Classic MMORPGs. 

I've had my eye on it for a while but it's been too early to mention anything much about the project beyond that it exists. The days of getting all excited over some concept art and a few promises are long gone for all of us, I imagine. 

This weekend, though, Niche Worlds Cult, the amusingly self-deprecatorily named company behind the game, is running an open stress test. All you have to do if you want to try it is sign up. So I did.

The process is very straightforward. Just give them an email address, confirm it and download the game. Even that's part of the test so you're helping out whether you actually get to log in or not. There are two fixed sessions, which could be extended if things go well, but the proposed schedule is

Friday, April 28th, 9pm-1am EDT -- (3am-7am CEST)

Saturday, April 29th, 1pm-5pm EDT -- (7pm-11pm CEST)

I'll be sound asleep for the first of those but the second sits nicely across Saturday early evening for me so there's a good chance I'll be able to give it a go. If I do, I'll be able to record anything that happens here, with screenshots, because when NWC say open testing they really mean open:

The test is purely a technical one with any gameplay possibilities being merely incidental:

PLEASE NOTE: By registering for, downloading, or logging into Monsters & Memories, you acknowledge your understanding that this is a technical "stress test" of an early development build and not a pre-alpha, alpha, beta, or any other form of test indicative of the game being in a ready-for-release state. 

Even so, should there be anything to report, I'll be able to do so freely and without reservation. In a helpful clarification that appears during the registration and download process but which I unfortunately didn't screenshot and now can't find, it's explained in very clear terms that testers are free to record and discuss their experiences on whatever social media suits them. 

NWCs position seems to be that all publicity is good publicity, an old saw that's very much lost its teeth in recent times. In the case of games seeking to draw attention in an extremely competitive marketplace, though, I can't help but agree. I wish EULAs and TOSs would include some provision for "personal use", allowing players to share their in-game activities through social media. It seems counterproductive to make it harder than it need be for word of mouth to do your marketing department's job for them.

Note #1 - Cognosphere is the new (As of a year ago.) publisher of Genshin Impact. I remembered the GI publisher as miHoYo, which is how I came to connect it with the HoYoverse in the first place. As the linked article explains, it's not a substantive change of ownership. Cognosphere is "a company owned by miHoYo, registered in Singapore as opposed to the Shanghai-based miHoYo." This seems to be a response to the Chinese government's increasingly strict regulation of China's video game industry. 

Note #2 - Whether the Cognosphere TOS is significantly more restrictive than the miHoYO version that would have been in place when I was posting about the game and using dozens of screenshots, I have no idea. I guess either it is or I didn't read the old one as attentively as I did the new. I can confirm, though, that the current Cognosphere TOS for Genshin Impact looks pretty much the same as the one for Honkai: Star Rail, so I guess I won't be blogging about Genshin Impact any more, either. Not that I was planning on it.

Note #3 - All images in this post are taken from Monsters & Memories. For obvious reasons.

So Sue Me! Another GW2 Post.

Yes, I know what I said. Didn't know there was going to be a stress test then, did I?

The Stress

I was able to log in at the appointed second. Literally. I had the radio on and as the last pip of the GMT time signal for 7pm sounded the game began to load. That's some impressive precision.

Yak's Bend is supposedly one of the busiest of the U.S. servers. I was playing there from the U.K. during an event meant to test the infrastructure. We'd been warned to expect connection issues and lag. In five and a half hours I had one single lag spike that lasted maybe five seconds. I'd say they passed.

Leveling Speed

I still think it's fast, compared at least to the old-school pace I can't shake as some kind of subconscious benchmark, but I'm no longer convinced it's too fast.

Look at me! I'm flying!

I was a shade under level 19 when I logged in at 7pm. When I logged out at half past midnight I'd just dinged 21. I did a good deal of stuff that had nothing much to do with gaining xp so each level took a couple of hours. If the level curve really is flat, that's 160 hours to max level.

Allow for general pottering and you're looking at a couple of months for someone not bent on burning through, even if they play every day. Mix in five intriguing races, each with its own extensive starting area, eight classes offering significant variations in playstyle, glissando content so it stays relevant at any level and long-term replayability doesn't look like much of a problem any more, even if the levels do tick through quickly.

Combat Difficulty - At Level

No, you go in and I'll stay outside and keep watch

Honestly, it was even easier than last time!

Mind that oil lamp!

After all the commentary and debate about how some people found GW2 solo combat different, difficult, unforgiving, challenging or plain not much fun, I thought I'd go out of my way to push the limits to see what I could get away with.

The biggest gap I managed was five levels. At 20th there were level 25 mobs I could kill. Not all of them, I had to look for soft targets. Grubs were good. Drop back a level to 24 and I could pretty much take my pick. Two at once was rarely a problem.

On anything from even-con to three levels above me there was never much doubt who'd win, even if I got adds. In one very satisfying battle I downed a stream of something like a dozen fast-spawning level 22 and 23 Skales, fighting them in twos and threes without respite for several minutes before they finally overwhelmed me with their endless respawns.

Combat Difficulty - Autotuned

Might need some tweaks.

I think we got Elementals again

When going back through areas ten levels below me, autotuned by the game to the right level, it didn't feel all that different to being mentored down in EQ2. Nothing offered anything like the same challenge it had when I'd met it coming up and I was very clearly much more powerful than at-level characters fighting alongside me. Level 12 mobs went down in a couple of shots. My pet ripped through everything, taking almost no damage at all.

I liked it, but then I like being overgeared for content. Heaven knows what it would be like if I was really level 80.

Stuff That Fights With Other Stuff 

Alert for it this time, I spotted plenty of mob-on-mob violence. All of it seemed to make welcome ecological sense, too.

Throw another prawn...

Skale do not share territory willingly with Tar Elementals.  Since Tar Elementals are an environmental disaster, filling freshwater lakes with black goo that sporadically erupts in gouts of flame and Skale look to be fish-eating amphibeous predators, driving them off would seem entirely rational, if you're a Skale. Or a Charr, come to that. We're cats. We like fish!

Ascalonian Separatists fight with black bears. I didn't see who started this one. Maybe the separatists were hunting, maybe the bears were being bears. Works either way.

Whimsy Alert!

Dredge are moles. Did you know that? I didn't. I do now because I found an event where you pick up a very large hammer and try to whack Dredge as they pop up out of the ground. Ring any bells?

I also found out where they live. Moldavia.

Anyway, I have my whimsy-proof craft-knitted cardigan and fluffy slippers ready so I'm not scared. Do your worst, ArenaNet! Roll on BWE2 and roll on launch!