Archive for the ‘ Guild Wars 1 ’ Category

We Should Be Better Than This

When I was growing up, I had a ritual whenever I started a new game. I would unwrap and open the box and take out all the pieces and literature. I would read the manual. If I was unable to get into the box while my parents were driving home I’d read it at home while the game and whatever gaming platform sat there enticingly close to each other, staring at me. When I was done with the literature I would put it carefully back in the box and never touch it again.

Only then would I insert the game. After install (if required) and upon start-up I would sit through everything. Developer and publisher logos, starting cinematic, and idle animations were given prominence of place on my screen during my very first time with a game.

Once I had seen everything there was to be seen I would play the game proper, but this first time was still special. I would carefully engage in every tutorial and read all instructions given to me. This would last until it was time for me to turn the game off and go do something else, usually 1-2 hours. Upon entering the game again all previous reverence would be abandoned. Intros would be skipped, tutorials rushed through, and quest text skimmed.

In the same way that the journey is as much, if not more, important as the destination, the anticipation leading up to finally sinking your fingers into an experience is something to treasure.

We have all been feeling the strain of the long marketing campaign that ArenaNet has chosen to pursue. That does not, however, excuse the sloppy releases and disrespect for ArenaNet I have seen lately among the gaming press. I wanted to express my disgust and sadness with my peers for the debacle and mess they have made of, not only the PAX East demo, but of the new updates to Guild Wars Classic.

Perhaps ArenaNet had it coming to them because of the way the title for the Guardian profession was ‘leaked’. We know that bounds were overstepped and NDAs were broken when video of the demos were published. I’m sure the offending parties are being dealt with. But a press outfit breaking news early because ‘it’s already been leaked anyway’ is not only unprofessional, it’s disrespectful to other gaming sites that were capable of holding their tongues and respecting ArenaNet’s wishes.

Such acts not only undermine trust, they breed a new and insidious dynamic into an otherwise mature and respectful community. Will fan-sites now feel obligated to scramble for news releases in order to turn around and scream “FIRST!” as they vomit their information across the internet? Instead, will ArenaNet be forced to withhold information because we /can’t be trusted/?

It’s an ugly picture no matter which way you dice it, and to the sites who, through accident or malicious intent, betray what trust has been given you and tarnish the reputations of the rest of us I say: You ought to be ashamed.

Perhaps my ideals of mutual trust and responsibility are nothing but a pipe dream. Perhaps this mess actually /was/ orchestrated and isn’t really the garbage heap that it looks like.

I don’t know.

All I do know is I miss the pre-Gamescom release strategy, when new information came first from ArenaNet and only after did the fansites publish their interviews.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t even live yet and I’m already pining for ‘the good ol’ days’.

2011
03/03
CATEGORY
Guild Wars 1
GW2 Speculation
Srs Bznz
7 comments

The Most Awesomest Evening

You want to know what one of the most depressing things is?  During High School and early College I fancied myself quite the poet, and about my early College experience I wrote: Loneliness is laughter a room away.

It’s quite melodramatic, I know, but my point is there’s nothing quite like knowing other people (especially your friends) are having fun without you to make you feel like crap.  Over the past months a lot of people in Relics have been knocking out vanquishes and racking up points in their Monument Halls.  I’ve very much wanted to come, but our times don’t mesh (at all) and I can’t afford the drop in performance at work that would come with staying up ’till all hours of the night to tear Snake Dance a new rear-end.

My experience was much the same last night.
“Oh hey, we’re going to go do this awesome fun thing.”
me: “Hey cool!”
“Oh, but it’s late, so you can’t come with.”
me: “Boo hoo!”

So I wallowed around for a little while and then remembered that Jim, with The Notorious [PIG], made me a build for my Mesmer that combines everything I like.  I don’t actually like making builds, but if you give me one I’ll tweak and play with it an have a lot of fun.  It’s an Illusionary Weaponry build that brings a pet along for extra fun.  As luck would have it I had (or had easy access to) every skill I needed except for You Move Like A Dwarf.

So I was hanging out in the PIG vent, listening to the tumbleweeds, when Mom logged on.  Now, she’s not my mom, I don’t even know the person whose mom she is, but that’s what everybody in PIG calls her and her phonetic is something like “Don’t make me spank you”.  Pretty intimidating.

But she was nice and said hi and when I told her I was off to hunt the NornBear she was game to come along.

We started out pretty well, then I realized that my fancy pants new IW Pet build didn’t have a pet!  Outside the Eye of the North I cast around for a friendly warm body and saw only polar bears.  I didn’t want a stinky polar bear!  What animals are available in Eye of the North?  Eagles!  I wanted an eagle, nothing else would do.  So we set off for Gunnar’s Hold and I’m keeping a weather eye out for eagles, frequently minimizing Guild Wars accidentally by holding Alt to look for eagles while hitting Tab to target an enemy to attack.  D’oh.  Thankfully Mom was patient with me.

Eventually we find one.  I squeal in glee and run up and start charming it.  My companion pipes up in vent, “Would you like to kill it or should I?”  I’m sure my resultant pule of dismay sounded positively heart-wrenching.  Either way, the eagle was feather-dust, and I still had no pet.  There were apologies all around and promises to stay far back when next I found another feathery target friend.

It wasn’t until we left Gunnar’s Hold that I found another.  I flagged the heroes back,  Mom lurked behind, and I began to charm.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the range of Charm Animal is REALLY FARKING FAR.  Koss decided I needed rescuing and before I could fumble my clumsy cursor to tell him “No!” my second eagle was a red smear on the snow.

Fine, fine fine.  That one was my fault.  I should’ve had my heroes on passive or put them farther away.  Chapter read, lesson learned.  Our third eagle we found soon after entering into Drakar Lake.  I squealed (again) in delight and went to tame him, but then a Wild NornBear appeared!  It used Charging Spirit.  It’s Super Effective!

Wait, what?  We mopped up the NornBear, killed some meddling centaurs, then I flagged my heroes back at the entrance to the zone and Mom joined them.  Then I charmed my eagle just like that and it was all rather anticlimactic.  Over the course of journeying to Sifhalla, defending the place, hooking up with another PIG member, Fend, then hooking up with yet another, Dave, I hemmed and hawed over what to name the thing.

At first I tried Hitchcock.  Because what’s more awesome than a bird named after the father of The Birds?  However, Arenanet wasn’t amused and wouldn’t allow the name on account of dirty words, intended or not.  I settled on naming him David, after Roland of Gilead’s pet bird when he was just a gunslinger in training.  I’ve been reading The Dark Tower.  It was David or Blane, because he was such a pain to get.  Blane is a pain but you have to take the train…..

Funny story though!  Not five minutes after my (now level 7) eagle was christened David, someone (I think it was Fend) asked me if I’d rather have a Jingle Moa instead.  Would I?  WOULD I!  Heck yes I’d like a Jingle Moa!  Where do I dump this stupid eagle?

What can I say, it’s tough being my animal companion.

So I dumped the eagle in a cardboard box at the trainer behind the Eye of the North and picked up a Jingle Moa quick as you please.  He didn’t even try to bite me while I was charming him, how’s that for a match made in heaven?

I wanted to name him Snowball’s Chance, but that’s far more than twelve characters and Snow’s Chance didn’t have the same feeling of the ludicrous.  Ultimately it was one of the PIG folks who christened him (I feel terrible for being incapable of remembering who).  We called him White Meat.  Apparently there’s someone running around with a black moa named Dark Meat.  Seeing as I have a long history of pink pets named Floyd, I felt the name fit perfectly. (I’m sure I’ll eventually get over associating the name ‘white meat’ with Detta Walker’s fowl mouth)

It was about this time, I think, that we lost Mom, but we continued on anyway.  We ran Dave’s character (One of many, apparently in PIG they don’t call someone ‘hardcore’ anymore, they use the term ‘davecore’) up to Sifhalla, defended the town, and then went hunting for NornBear /steaks/.  It was during these escapades that they told me about a quick-as-you-please pet leveling guide on the PIG forums.  They told me it should only take 20-30 minutes.  Perfect!

So eventually they had enough for the night and I had a pet to level anyway, so we said our goodbyes and I trotted off to the PIG forums to find what I needed.  The guide involves bringing three heroes with specific skills.  One of them was Well of Power.  I didn’t have Well of Power, nor did I feel like romping off into the great beyond to capture it.  I know! I’ll buy it with Balthazar faction!

I only had 800 faction points.  @#*$!

I’m not sure what possessed me, thinking that PvP would be a quick and easy way to get some faction.  More often than not, it isn’t.  But Lyssa’s blessing was with me last night and luck walked at my side.  I hopped over to my monk, threw on my Random Arenas build and ran off to kick some ass.

Our first group was lucky.  There was myself, a monk, with another monk, a dervish, and something else.  I say something else because for some reason he was offended by having two monks in his /random/ party and left after we won our first game.  More’s the loss for him.

In our next battle an assassin joined us.  From then on we were unstoppable.

The other monk’s build was very similar to mine, but different enough that we complemented each other quite well.  The dervish and the assassin were wicked damage dealers, able even to take down the monks in the couple two-monk teams we found ourselves faced against.  Most battles were flawless victories, about half saw our opponents giving up immediately.  Some even cursed us.  That one I didn’t understand.  It’s a random group, we weren’t in the same guild, and we definitely weren’t trying to synch.  We just got lucky.  I didn’t let the cursing bother me, however.  After all, we were winning.

One game was particularly entertaining.  One person left off the bat, two we killed easily, and the last, a warrior with Sprint decided to go jogging.  He ran us around the map for the full time of the match.  It was ridiculous, but not infuriating.  My team took it pretty well and we laughed it off easily.

The groups we had the most troubles with featured mesmers, most often more than one.  The other monk and I began coordinating our casts of Spotless Mind and after a few instances of simultaneous pinging (which always made me laugh) we found our groove and powered through.

I’m sure we could have kept on winning all night, but Random Arena consecutive victories cap out at 25 and as soon as we won our 25th match there was much back-thumping and congratulations all around.  Once back in Balthy’s place I checked my Faction.  I had over 6,000, plenty enough to purchase Well of Power.

As my husband hustled me off to bed (I was 30 minutes past my bed-time) I shared a variation of a popular Chuck Norris joke on twitter:

Two monks, an assassin, and a dervish walk into Random Arenas….. There were no survivors.

2010
12/30
CATEGORY
Guild Wars 1
Stories
5 comments

Crazy Lady With A Knife

Chick is trying to kill me!

Now I have, in the past, made some bad choices in friends.  But those past slights, now dulled by the wash of time and seen through the lens of experience (no pun intended), don’t send me into quite the frothing fury that this little lady is capable of.

Long-time readers may remember that I can take a long ass time to do things.  I remember Hunter being taken aback when I whined at him for revealing War in Kryta spoilers two, maybe three months after the content was released.

This time, though, my slow progress through Hearts of the North isn’t due to my own gaming sloth.  I lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of that lithe little she-devil whose brain is too full of shadow-step dust to follow anything remotely resembling a proper command.

I am BAD at Rangers.  Just plain bad, terribly awfully bad.  I’m also bad at watching my health and energy when it’s not my job to heal or protect people.

The one thing I’m pretty good at, is keeping a called target.  Unfortunately, Crazy-Face Miku doesn’t follow targets.  She does call targets, but that just gives me five extra steps I have to follow to coordinate with her.

REALLY?! You're going to tag THAT?

Miku: I’m casting Promise of Death on White Mantle Enforcer.

Me: Am I targeting an Enforcer? No? Alt-click to show the enemy names.  Oops it was control.  Hold control to show the enemy names. There’s the Enforcer, click on it, oops I clicked the Abbot instead.  Tab-tab-tab, Missed it, wait, there’s two Enforcers.  I pick one, fire off Kerian’s Sniper Shot.  Nothing happens.  I either missed, took too long, or that wasn’t the Enforcer I was looking for.

Miku: I’m casting Promise of Death on Elder White Tiger.

Me: Wat?!  Why can’t you just follow my called target? That Champion is REZZING people.

Miku: Alas for I have died!

Me: Well crap, here they come, what’s my health look like?  Oooh man I’m down to 25% and Nature’s Blessing isn’t up yet.  I couldn’t put it on my quick-button key because it’ll be over-written when I’m gifted that new skill at the end of the mission.

Away from the dialogue for a second, that actually happened.  It was the farthest I had ever gotten and it popped up a new skill for me in position 7.  Problem was, I had moved the heal skill into position 7 because I have that slot bound to a mouse button for ease of use.  Did the new skill sit itself down in the now vacant slot 6? No, it used slot 7, and deleted my heal skill.

Needless to say that attempt at the mission failed.

Now, this post has been a whole lot of whining on my part.  I don’t want you to think that I hate these missions.  On the contrary, it’s nice to be able to run out by yourself and do something.  I have no problems with the format, just the implementation.  With a few small changes these missions could be made much less aggravating for Ranger-stupid folks like myself.

Called Targets:
If I call a target, Miku should pay attention.  She should focus on that target too.
Conversely, if Miku decides to take it into her head to disobey my orders (domestic dominance themes aside) I wish that she would at least put the handy little called target icon next to her name.  If she had that, then when she /does/ decide that Elder Tiger just needs to die (personally I think it’s an unrequited vendetta against myself), at least I’ll be able to click on one icon to switch my target, take out the damn tiger, and get back to business.

Skill Arrangement:
I honestly think this might be a legitimate coding bug.  I’m not very good at memorizing different builds so that, when panicked, I click on the proper buttons.  To combat this I set up all my characters in the same way.  I put the same types of skills in the same places.  Frequently-used attack skills are on 1-4, an occasional attack skill goes on button 5, but normally that one’s for energy management.  Constantly-on, or very rarely used skills go in position 8 and position 6 is normally used for high-energy, occasional skills, often used in conjunction with my energy management skill.  Position 7 is my sweet spot.  It’s for a utility skill that must be ready at a moment’s notice, but that may not get used very often. On my Monk it’s condition removal, on my Dervish it’s an interrupt, on my Mesmer it’s actually my energy skill because position 5 is reserved for a passive interrupt (as opposed to the active one in position 4).

So when presented with Thackeray’s build my first impulse was to re-arrange everything.  That got old fast, so I limited myself to moving skill 6 into slot 7 and spamming the crap out of my mouse button.  This worked pretty well until I was granted a new skill which over-wrote the damn thing!  Every other time in Guild Wars when you’re gifted a new skill it slots itself into the first empty spot, or if there aren’t any it pops up a replacement menu.

This doesn’t happen in Hearts of the North.  It’s a straight overwrite.  You’ve been warned.

If those two things were fixed I think these missions would be immensely less frustrating.  Most nights this week I’ve given the mission a go for 3-4 attempts before I became fed up and moved on to something else.  I’ve got half a mind to do a live twitter session once so everyone can see.  See how terrible I am at this and maybe, just maybe, be there when I finally succeed.

Because don’t get me wrong, I’ll beat this thing, it’s just… taking a while.

2010
12/13
CATEGORY
Guild Wars 1
6 comments

Protting, Good For The Laggards

I don’t heal anymore.  I just don’t.  I can do it if pressed, but it’s a job I’d much rather foist on an unsuspecting hero.  However, I still haven’t completely lost my lust for support (my antics as a carnage-crazed sword-wielding Mesmer maniac to the contrary).

And that’s where Protection comes in.

Protection and Healing go hand in hand.  As a Protection Monk, it’s my job to make the healer’s job easier.  In essence, I’m supporting the support.  I can’t even operate on my own.  In a pinch, a healer can run her energy dry by propping up the crumbling tower that is her teammates, but as Prot I have no recourse to recover my team from heavy damage.  I can soften the blows, mitigate the damage, even take pressure off the healer by strategic use of Heavan’s Delight and Divine Healing, but once that large hurt has happened, to one target, I’m not very useful.

Why, oh why, then, would I want to play like this?  One word: Lag, both biological and electrical.

My reaction times have never been my strongest feature.  When I used to heal I always felt frantic, like I was bailing a leaky boat and always trying to catch up.  Protection isn’t at all like that.  Let’s take a look at basic play styles.

Healing

Reactive.  You must watch your party’s health bars and refill them when they drop.  Sometimes you use delayed heals and heal over time skills to anticipate damage.  You need to make sure you stay well back because you squish easily and, as a result, it’s easy to be out-run by the front line.

Protection

Proactive.  You must watch your party’s health bars a little, mostly for conditions or hexes.  You must watch the mini-map for applying skills like Aegis and your weak group heals.  To ensure everyone benefits from area-of-effect protections, you must often be in the mid-line.  You are more vulnerable than an elementalist, but not so vulnerable as an assassin.  You also have protection skills to make yourself a little more difficult to squish.

It’s where my attention ends up being focused and my activity level that marks the greatest difference for me as a Protection Monk.  As a prot, I’m watching the mini-map far more often than actual health bars.  Three of my skills are area of effect, two are direct-target ports, one is condition removal (If you’re hexed you’re SoL with me), one is energy management, and one is Unyielding Aura.  That’s half my active skills being area of effect, three-fifths if you discount the condition removal (which has a decent heal attached which is, incidentally, the best way for me to prop up a fading melee by way of extra Divine Favor heals).

Because I’m so hyper-aware of where I am in relation to my whole group, I’m almost never left behind.  When we encounter monsters I’m immediately casting Glyph of Lesser Energy and leading straight into Aegis, followed by a Protective Spirit on whoever I think is going to be getting it in the face (Assassin) then it’s just a matter of rolling around protections, meting out condition removal, and topping up the group as a whole with Heavan’s Delight and Divine Healing.

Very little of what I do is time sensitive.  As long as I’m keeping up a steady rhythm, if I don’t get a protection out right this instant, my party isn’t going to instantly die.  As opposed to if I were healing and someone took a big hit I would then need to immediately heal them or they’ll be eating dust.  As a prot if I ever let it get to that point I’ve already lost.

Which is why protection is particularly good for when I’m lagging.  Even if everyone on screen is skipping about like epileptic humming birds, I can still sit myself down in the middle of everything and steadily toss out protections.  I can be useful without compromising my group, and it feels fantastic.

The other night I did a bunch of disparate runs with Hamstorm Nation [PIG]   .  They hooked me up with a baby black moa in record time, showered me with brotherhood cloths, and even hauled me through a dungeon.  I think it all took only 3 hours.  I got to do a little bit of smiting but, towards the end, I gravitated back to my familiar role of letting the Assassin die Protection.  Those folks are a blast.

2010
12/10
CATEGORY
Guild Wars 1
5 comments

Guns, Roses, And The Importance Of Oink

This little piggy was a hero.

The sun was setting and with chests heaving we wiped our brows. For two hours previous we had been hauling and carting, wiring and coordinating. We turned down the lights and a clutch of CRT monitors buzzed to life. We checked to make sure all connections were strong before we left to procure much-needed provisions for the marathon to come.

Once we returned from the supermarket with various and sundry gamer eats in hand, we then settled down for the eagerly-awaited Guild Wars Beta Weekend.

There were only four of us, but that was just as well. Our only connection to the internet was through a single, four-port router. One of us had his desk, one had the kitchen table (to share with the vittles), and two more of us made our homes on the coffee table. One to take the couch and the other (myself) to make her home on a cushion curled with a 2-liter of mountain dew.

The sun hand gone down, the servers had come up, and we waited with baited breaths, staring intently at the tiny lightning bolt in the corners of our screens while the Guild Wars Beta client loaded.

We were set loose upon the world of a pre-searing Tyria. Initially we were dismayed by such a small group size, but eventually someone found the PvP mission. I have no idea if the Ascalon Academy mission is still Player versus Player, but back then it was.

You also had to win.

It took more than one try, but eventually we made it through and experienced the searing. Where once we frolicked among lush and verdent hamlets, now we fought tooth and nail through lands blasted by the charr, paradise reduced to rubble.

You might imagine that we battled through blasted Ascalon and across the frozen Shiverpeaks as a team, taking advantage of the fact that we played within mere feet of each other, but you’d be wrong. The college we were attending somtimes kept strange hours. It wasn’t uncommon to have a six hour class on Saturdays, for example. Needless to say, we soon became separated.

My husband (then no more than a friend who was loaning his apartment) reached it first. After hours of the desolate blasted Ascalon, and hours of the frigid shiverpeaks (it was March in northern latitudes, more snow was not what we wanted to see), he gazed at lush and tropical Kryta. We saw (staring yearningly over his shoulder) beautiful white sandy beaches, verdant ferns and palm trees, and the sparkling blue ocean.

He had reached the Gates of Kryta, and there he stayed. The Gates was not the first mission that needed six people, but it was the first real challenge we had encountered. He was unable to complete it on his own so he came back and helped the rest of us through Ascalon and the Shiverpeaks.

When we finally reached the Gates of Kryta we broke into song. We had no knowledge of the Maguuma jungle. After Ascalon and the Shiverpeaks Kryta looked plenty lush to us!

We were dutifully impressed. The four of us set forth with a new friend we had made (A battery necromancer (Well of Power) named Virgo Moon who we eventually named our first cat after) and some other random soul. In those days you only brought along henchmen if you were looking for a death sentence, and heroes did not yet exist.

That was also when we discovered the glory of Oink. Those days he made his home in the middle of the road and was impossible to miss. I have it on good authority that now he hangs out by a small farmstead just off the beaten path.

We absolutely loved Oink. Not only was he utterly hilarious, he was impervious to damage. More than once our bacon was saved by this brave little pig. If you have never gone through the Gates of Kryta mission with Oink at your side I urge you to take him along. He is necessary for the bonus mission, but he is also a stalwart companion who is always willing to offer a cheerful “Oink!” when you need it most.

2010
08/02
CATEGORY
Guild Wars 1
4 comments
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