I played a bunch of Guild Wars this weekend as I am slowly working on my titles. 17 more Nightfall explorable areas to completely vanquish of mobs, and I will hit “I’m Very Important” from the maxed titles achievement track. This might come as a surprise to many of you who might think that I should be a “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” considering how big a fan of Guild Wars I am. But, I play Guild Wars for fun, and it is fun. When it’s not fun (and vanquishing is coming close to not), I stop playing the game or gameplay type within the game.
Although, like many of the casual hardcore club, I have kept my eyes on the prize of having a super-Saiyan Hall of Monuments simply because of the link between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. This goal has conflicted with more fun Guild Wars gameplay like the recent War in Kryta mini-campaign or the inefficient Fort Aspenwood PvP map. Other things like Eye of the North reputations have slowly been built up, my Sweet Tooth and Party Animal titles are about to break 2,000, and I’ve been hoarding diamonds for the hopeful market jump. With upcoming Hall of Monuments news, this might all change.
Continue reading ‘HoM-rizon’
I was really lucky, in a way, to have forgotten my license on a tequila run because of the bookstore right next to the ABC. As a karmic request to the universe for my lack of dinner margaritas I asked that if it could provide an early stocking of the first Guild Wars novel, Ghosts of Ascalon (for official release July 27). My hopes sank when I did not find it in the new sci-fi/fantasy section. I decided on my way out of the bookstore to pass all the Star Wars, Magic the Gathering, and Dungeons and Dragons novels. The amazing cover art of this book jumped right out at me on the top shelf of that section. With Ghosts of Ascalon in hand, the need for a watermelon margarita evaporated (I found out later the book did not have the same effect on my wife); I had a book to consume!
Ghosts of Ascalon is the first of three planned novels for the Guild Wars universe. The novels are meant to help tie the events between Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. Ghosts of Ascalon takes place approximately a year before Guild Wars 2. It follows the story of unlikely hero, Dougal Keane, a human with ties to the major human cities and the fallen, ghost-ridden Ascalon City, who leads a racially diverse group of adventurers to Ascalon City to retrieve a powerful artifact, the Claw of the Khan-Ur. The retrieval will ultimately set the tentative peace between the bitter enemies, the humans and charr, we will see in Guild Wars 2.
Continue reading ‘Ghosts of Ascalon Review’
The final-ish part of the War in Kryta chapter of Guild Wars Beyond dropped awhile go, but I didn’t have the time or sheer will to complete it until last night. The Battle for Lion’s Arch might be one of the most intense instances in Guild Wars. The road to this mini-mission (a quest with its own instance) can be long and frustrating, but the end result is very much worth it. Even the rewards along the way are pretty nice.
Continue reading ‘Guild Wars – Battle for Lion’s Arch’
The subject of this post is a part of a well-known joke, as much as one can call a bloody, mush of hamburger on the ground in the barest form of a beaten horse a joke. The joke goes that vacationers go to paradise and bring back as a small token of affection a gift to the chumps left behind in the form of a t-shirt emblazoned with “My parents / kids / ex-friends / I went to [paradise] and all I got was this t-shirt.” Transcending the joke, the t-shirt acts as an achievement notification to others. Clearly, someone went to the place on the t-shirt, and now the foreign object is being worn for all to see. MMOs have a similar article in the form of exclusive appearance items.
Continue reading ‘…Was This T-Shirt’
You can read an excerpt from the upcoming “Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon” book by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb here. Small excerpt of the excerpt here:
The sylvari set her chin and concentrated on a patch of the bones lining the left side of the passage. She swung her arms and fingers in a complex pattern and spoke words that made Dougal’s head ache slightly. A greenish glow formed in the wall of bones and coalesced around a human-sized set of remains.
As Dougal watched, the bones detached from the surrounding patch and assembled themselves into a coherent skeleton. The deep-green glow, rather than sinew and tendons, held it together. The right side of its skull had been bashed in, and its jaw was missing, as was the lower part of its right arm, which terminated in a pair of jagged breaks. It stood before them like a servant presenting itself to its betters.
- Ethic
There has been an interesting thread over at Guild Wars 2 Guru on whether we will be able to play as a dark-skinned norn in Guild Wars 2. The norn race in Guild Wars 1 were introduced in the Eye of the North expansion as being a race of giant humanoids living in the Far Shiverpeak mountains. They were based off a real world Norse-type mythology with a splash of Celtic tattoos. Now, in Guild Wars 2, which is 250 years later could there be non-light skinned norn? I am not talking about norns with rockin’ beach tans. I mean has their melanin caught up with the climates some may live in?
My unofficial answer: the shift-eyed asura already have ways to recombobulate DNA and shift for humans in the time of Guild Wars 1. No reason a fair-skinned norn would not want to hire the Anatomical Engineer’s services because he is sick of being sunburned. I know where I would get my inspiration for a black norn. But, this is all kind of shirking the big issue. Should character-based online games allow players of any skin color to replicate their skin (and hair!) color in game for any race (and by race we really mean species)?
Continue reading ‘The Black Norn’
The Dragon Festival is coming this holiday weekend in Guild Wars. Massively has a pretty comprehensive overview of the whole thing. I love that the re-occurring festival is actually a reenactment of the first one, where one of Abaddon’s generals, The Fury, tried to assassinate the Emperor during the Dragon Festival. Now they hire actors to recreate the quests, and use large pinwheels to recreate rifts from beyond. I have very little time to attend this year’s festivities, but you can bet I am going to get in my 25o Victory Tokens because this year’s mask is “is inspired by the great dragons of legend.” A Zhaitan mask would be pretty awesome.
With the aftershock of E3, there has not been much in the way of Guild Wars 2 news. There was a pretty cool article for lore nerds, like me, about the alphabets of Tyria, and how they will be a larger lore puzzle than in Guild Wars 1. I don’t know what we are getting this week, but we are promised an upcoming article on Guild Wars 2 extensive voice work. Going to be interesting to see what they have to say above and beyond their voice actor video based on the trailers.
Otherwise, Guild Wars has been at the top of my gaming charts. I have been happily assassinating the remnants of the mursaat race and various White Mantle allies in the War in Kryta updates. We seem to be getting close to a culmination, and I am very interested to see where they take the Guild Wars Beyond campaign. I am also coming extremely close to beating all the missions in the Prophecies campaign on Hard Mode. My goal is to hit 20 max titles by the time they announce the Halls of Monuments rewards for Guild Wars 2. Going to be a tough one on my end though.
–Ravious
were the stuff of legend
I am very used to a content explosion. The devs have been silent for months on an upcoming patch or expansion, and then CKZABOOM! we get new zones, quests, skills, etc., etc., etc. One shift I am really starting to notice is a more agile content presentation. With the current MMO direction in terms of business model, casual play, and, in my opinion, market saturation, perhaps a more frequent content drip is in order.
Surely the marketing people understand the gravitational pull of a content explosion. Everybody has already got World of Warcraft’s next expansion on the radar even if they don’t play. Even the MMO whipping boy du jour, Age of Conan, received a lot of positive attention from across the board with its latest expansion. Yet, I wonder now having a library of MMOs, where no sub is necessary, if such a content explosion is necessary or even the best option. To get subs back, a content explosion’s gravity might be necessary to overcome the activation energy required to pull out a credit card and resubscribe, but what if the player could simply log in.
Continue reading ‘Content Drip’
Our friends over at Massively, Shawn and Rubi, run yet another MMO podcast in their free time. Unlike Massively Speaking which has discussion across the MMO genre, GuildCast is dedicated to Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. I guested in Episode 3 where we cover quite a few topics in our short time (well it feels short when we three fanatics could have easily done a 5-hour episode). We discuss recent interviews, updates to the War in Kryta, and the first public demo of Guild Wars 2. Check it out!
–Ravious
were I as tedious as a king
The Guild Wars Beyond “campaign” set in the War in Kryta theatre has been continuously plugging along since the culmination of Guild Wars 5th Anniversary. A lot of it has been “cut scenes” and pings just inside what I consider core Guild Wars PvE gameplay, but that is starting to change. The War in Kryta has been maturing in to a full fledged slice of Guild Wars.
Continue reading ‘War in Explorables’
