I played a bit of Guild Wars last night to finally ease myself in to the Halloween spirit after shaking the Borderlands dust off my mouse for a night. The servers are alive with Costume Brawl and mat farming, but there is a new addition to this year’s festivities. The Guild Wars Live Team created a quest chain depicting changes in the Underworld… where you play as a candy corn humanoid.
The Underworld is one of the elite PvE areas in Guild Wars, and it is farm city. The story behind the quest chain is that the imprisoned god, Dhuum, whose powers seem to be akin to Oblivion, is slowly breaking free from his prison because the farmers are causing so much death in the Underworld. Each death gives Dhuum more power. The Spirit Lord, Mad King Thorn, is trying to ally with the current god of death, Grenth, and the Underworld’s caretakers. It is up to players to take the role of an emissary of the Mad King and persuade the caretaker Reapers to act before it is too late.
The lore itself is rocking the lore forums pretty hard, but the gameplay is what I want to discuss. The Underworld elite area is a hard place to survive. Power creep has made the place easier than when Guild Wars had only one campaign, but it is still much harder than an average area. When players take the solo quest, posing as one of Mad King Thorn’s candy cane guards, they are given four skills to run through the Underworld. They are: (1) run faster, (2) AoE megasnare, (3) 10 second! knockdown, and (4) you all become allies for 15 seconds. That’s it. No heals and no damaging skills. Just a super-basic runners makeup with overpowered skills in an elite area.
It’s a fantastic type of “session play” that layered on content we already know and love (or hate, depending on your stance of Shadow Form). So far two quests in increasing difficulty have been released, and people are expecting one or two more.  Players can only play these special lead-in quests during the Halloween event, but the final culmination is rumored to change the Underworld forever.
–Ravious
up chocolate creek without a popsicle stick
That sounds fun. I’ll have to try it. Too bad they keep fun things like that as special events that go away.
Ooo that sounds tempting. One of my most enjoyable Guild wars experiences involved working out a build that allowed my mesmer character to tackle the Underworld with just two henchmen. It was never economically viable as the drops didn’t cover the entrance fee but it was very engrossing. Going back there as a turbo powered piece of confectionery sounds pretty good to me.
Glad that you told me, otherwise I would not have bothered to log in.
So the Underworld is really going to change… really? I thought they had no resources left for proper GW1 content, at least they said so some time ago.
I just did the quest. Take care not to die in the Bone Pits to Necro hexes. This is the only point where you could get into trouble.
The news rumored in the Quest are hinting at the end of Tyria. A prelude to GW2. Makes me sad somewhat! :(
They aren’t going to ‘end Tyria’ any time soon. They’ve said before that Guild Wars [1] will be supported for as long as people play it.
As for their resources, they have a live team of 4 or 5 people headed up by the great Linsey Murdock. It’s a small team, but they work damn hard.
I gotta get me some of that candy corn!
Also, cheers for bringing the underworld event to my attention. I’ll have to log in and check it out.
ArenaNet have done similar things in the past, but usually with PvP formats.
The Dragon Arena PvP format that gives you as little as three skills (filling the rest of your bar with ressurection signets) is definitely my favorite seasonal event. One is an instant kill projectile that can be strafe-dodged, one is a touch-range knockdown, one is a speed boost that can be cast on any ally. The amount of depth to the team-work and strategy in that gametype eclipses any other.
I haven’t tried the UW quest chain yet, but I certainly shall now. Thanks Rav!