Last weekend I dug away at a repeatable quest for Guild Wars Wintersday Redux, which ends this weekend with a finale for those having hat problems during Wintersday 2009. The quest is a fun one called Snowball Dominance, where the denizens of the Eye of the North go outside for a massive snowball fight. Players can bring one other person along. The quest can be a bit challenging for casual players that stroll in to the chaos, but with a few “exploits,” like waiting for the scrum to finish by standing outside of agro range on the left side then mopping up the remaining mobs, it becomes manageable.
Of course for farmers there is a different tactic. Take a necromancer Hero, and run it into the middle of the enemy group before they turn red. Pop Holiday Blues (AoE well degen), Snow Fort (temporary invincibility), and Snowcone (heal) to ball up the mobs. The mobs waste their good skills on the sacrifice, and players and the AI allies can easily take out the clumped up enemies. The rewards are very good for something that can be run in under 2 minutes. Continue reading ‘Happy State of Grind’
Answer this question right now, which is worse – gold farmers or cheaters? They might belong to the same coin of the disease that hurts our favorite MMOs, but they attack it from wholly different sides. The answer, for me, is not self-evident. Sure, if I were the Ultra Decision Maker with infinite resources I would press my magic button and both problems would be dealt with by my happy MIT graduate programmers. But, developers don’t live in that world. They live in a world where the target is always moving, always trying to outsmart, and there is never enough time to line up the scope for a perfect kill. So which is worse when you have the development time for one bullet?
Continue reading ‘A Lesser Evil’
Mondes Persistants was able to interview the Guild Wars Live Team, and there are some pretty interesting answers (HT: Fril Estelin @ Guild Wars Guru) . The most interesting answer to a pretty common question regarding future content additions / events was:
Yes, we have a lot of ideas on our minds, probably more than we will be able to implement. We love the game and always try to come up with new things we hope players will enjoy. Who knows, maybe players will bear witness to some of the cataclysmic events that transform Tyria prior to Guild Wars 2?
ArenaNet keeps mildly hinting at using Guild Wars as a platform to introduce some Guild Wars 2 lore, but that is an overly candid response to an easily shunted question. We know that skill balance is a top priority, but we haven’t heard anything about upcoming features or content. Hopefully after the dust from the skill balances clears, the Live Team can preview what else they are working on.
The second is that the popular Guild Wars fansite Guild Wars Guru was hacked, and the hacker was able to obtain some personal information. Read about it here, but the bottom line is to change your passwords to Guild Wars Guru and Guild Wars 2 Guru (and Auction Site). I would also watch any other sites / games where you combo your email, username, and/or current Guru password.
The third is I have to say with one of my last controversial posts on Guild Wars, I had the weirdest pingback ever. We are breaking grounds with the MMO genre people! (And go River Rats!)
–Ravious
remember two things
The holy trinity is well known. The DPS fight the mobs with damage. The Healer fights the damage from the mobs. And, the Tank fights the agro from the DPS and Healer. In World of Warcraft the formula is pretty well set for easy gameplay. Lord of the Rings gets a bit hazier with their use of hybrid classes, range tanking, and tank swapping, but for the most part it follows the doctrine of the holy trinity.
Guild Wars came very close to shirking the entire thing. Agro does not really exist like it does in World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. Each battle with PvE mobs is reminiscent of a PvP battle. Players have 8 bodies against the team of enemies to kill. Because PvE can feel so much like PvP (especially in comparison to the stark contrast of PvE/PvP in World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online), ArenaNet moved away from the holy trinity to a more enlightened trinity: the three lines.
Continue reading ‘Guild Wars Holy Trinity’
Yesterday afternoon I was in a pretty bad mood. I had destroyed a part of my main character in Lord of the Rings Online. It wasn’t until later that evening when I could apply a salve to my character’s gaping wound that I felt better. It wasn’t my fault, but the change needed to happen. I had to switch crafting professions.
Continue reading ‘Re-Emergence’
I am too tired to write commentary, so consider this a public service. If you have an NCSoft Master Account for Aion, City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage 1/2, etc. or you were dumb enough (like I was) to link your Guild Wars account(s) to the NCSoft Master Account (for silly things like another Storage Pane), then I suggest you read this thread.
The tl;dr version is that security holes existed in the NCSoft Master Account page, according to fans, that allowed people to randomly access other people’s accounts by merely signing in to their own accounts. Then you could do fun things like change game account passwords without needing old game account passwords or jot down personal information. The powers that be are working hard this weekend to fix or ameliorate security and information issues.
The most pertinent posts are: Continue reading ‘Happy Fun Security Issues’
ArenaNet generously decided to spread some holiday cheer to our little rat-killing corner of the internet, and they have given us two Costume keys to give away to you! To enter, it’s simple: spread some holiday cheer yourself by commenting (with a valid email so we can contact you) in this thread with a limerick. I’ll provide a madlib-like template below and a sample, but you can definitely make your own rhyme to enter.
The contest will end December 22, midnight EST, and then I’ll randomly choose two winners. Please let me know in your comment which costume you prefer.
The Grenth and Dwayna costumes allow players to dress their characters in style this season. These two costumes fit into new costume slots on your character portrait and can be worn over existing armor. They work like the festival hats we know and love, and can be made and worn for any character by a Costume Maker NPC once the costumes are unlocked for your account. Check out the nifty FAQ for more info.
Template
There once was a god [verb] [non-verb word].
Who [string of clever words with one that rhymes with the non-verb word].
In my new threads, I followed;
to go kill some Rot Wallows.
And [another string of clever words with the end rhyming with the non-verb word.
Sample
There once was a god giving away white clothes.
Who gave me a new costume and Cheetos.
In my new threads, I followed;
to go kill some Rot Wallows.
And she left me with orange hand prints on my clothes.
Good Luck!
EDIT: Congratulations to Yarrnath and Fraxis! Please check your inboxes and email me if you have a problem.
The annual Guild Wars Wintersday has arrived. We get the usual, awesome tidings of newly balanced PvP snowball fights (complete with hidden rocks and yellow snow), grentchs stealing gifts from the poor war-torn children of Tyria right in town, and fun PvE quests. This all leads up to the finale between Dwayna, goddess of good holiday cheer, and Grenth, who would destroy it to determine what hats we can wear in the coming year. And, we all know how important hats are.
Continue reading ‘A Guild Wars Wintersday Plus’
This week has been really “blah” all around. There have been some exciting things. Like a possible new boss battle in Guild Wars. The Volume 1, epic quests becoming soloable in Lord of the Rings Online. And of course, the Evil Empire’s RMT sale of drunk panda pets. It’s all great, I guess. I would probably care more if it had not rained the past two weekends.
Mostly I have been plugging away at Borderlands. I gave up on multiplayer. Yes, I have tried every suggestion (GameRanger, Hamachi, port opening, etc.), and 90% of the time the system refuses. What drives me absolutely batty is that 10% of the time it lets me co-op and nothing has changed! Until I see a fix from Gearbox, I am just going to assume I bought and am playing a singleplayer FPS. And, quite a good one at that.
Last night I decided to head off to bed after turning in a quest, and along the way I got a purple-named revolver that shoots AoE electrical bursts. I stayed up for another half an hour just roaming around the main zone looking for bandits to electrocute with magnum bullets.
–Ravious
she sure got the boogie
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. Continue reading ‘Run, Run Candy Corn Man’
