Month: October 2012

Funny moment in Guild Wars 2 but maybe you had to be there:

My son and I were hunting in a level 30ish area when we came upon a champion. It was a long fight and several others joined in during the battle to make it a success. I started to run off and look at my loot but he tells me to hold on as he wants to grab a souvenir. I turn around to look and here he comes running carrying a huge bomb! I just did not expect that. He then ran over and dropped it by a cute white bunny and next thing I know he had earned an achievement for master of overkill with over 10,000 damage. For the rest of the evening, he was looking for souvenirs. Even if it was a rake or a hoe, he just had to grab something on the way out of a battle. It became a running joke for us all night.

Like I said, you probably had to be there but it still makes me smile.

– Ethic

(This is my final post of the Double Down series following Part 1 and Part 2.)

While ArenaNet was shifting towards Guild Wars 2 production, they created a new rewards system based on re-using content. Obviously they were aware that any Live Team would not have the resources of a new zone, or the like, and so the Zaishen content was created bringing new life to old content. For Guild Wars 1, this was possibly the only option.

Guild Wars 2 is different because the studio is entirely focused on Guild Wars 2. There are resources for new zones, dungeons, etc., and new things are exciting and shiny. The biggest question is still whether to press onward or iterate on what is available. For instance, exploring the Henge of Denravi in Guild Wars 2 was huge, in my opinion. A lot of mystery still surrounds the druids of Guild Wars 1, and with the current conflict surrounding the Henge, I felt the actual content was a tad underwhelming. For me the area downplayed my memory instead of ramping it up, like it did with Sorrow’s Embrance. A team at ArenaNet could decide to push a lot more focus on this out-of-the-way area, but is that worth it? Continue reading [GW2] Sunk Costs (Double Down III)

I open those blue bottles filled with a rainbow assortment of dyes. The unidentified dyes are slowly coming down in price as more people are getting the colors they want, but the rarest dyes are still worth quite a bit. I open my bottles because it’s a fun gamble. It’s like earning a scratcher’s ticket. Sure, I could sell it off for a few silver, but where’s the fun in that. Plus, I like filling out my dyes.

Anyway, last night I open a Celestial Dye (whitest). Hey, here’s 3 gold! That’s quite a bit of money for me since I’ve been floating around 1-3 gold for awhile now. Continue reading [GW2] Lottery Win

The middle zones always seem to be the red-headed step child of MMO content. Is it a function of population distribution extremes? Is it that in the case of Guild Wars 2 there are so many leveling paths to take? Is it that veteran players simply have no reason to be there except for friendship or exploration points?

This is the hardest puzzler. Nothing is wrong, per se, any more than… yes, clearly, as in all MMOs, the middle zones have lighter population distributions. The content in the middle zones, with a few noticeable patches, does seem pretty solid, especially with regard to renown content. It hasn’t felt like a chore to get through the zones on my way to 100% exploration. It still feels different, and I wonder how or if ArenaNet is going to draw more attention to these zones.

Continue reading [GW2] Fair to Middling (Double Down II)

The jumping puzzles immediately appeal to metagaming instincts, like when the puzzle game gives you a fixed number of pieces so you know your solution will incorporate all of them. Once you realize you have found a jumping puzzle (whether one with an achievement or one that just leads to a chest), you start looking for the next perch. You stop thinking about the terrain as a game rather than a world, and you put on your designer’s hat to think of how you would design the next step.

“Hmm, there is an achievement named “Urmaug’s Secret. There is an NPC named Urmaug in Lion’s Arch. Let’s give that area a second look. Aha! Now how do I get up there…”

People in games and stories like to design games and puzzles for the heroes, and they are usually fair ones that they can solve. If I am protecting myself and my stuff, I am not playing fair with whoever is trying to kill me. Also, I am probably not going to design a home with one path through it, in which I must pass through every room in the house to reach my bedroom.

: Zubon

ArenaNet’s first hints at the big Guild Wars 2 celebration have dropped out. I hope we get a few more blog posts or interviews next week, but there’s a decent amount of information in the teaser. Things I found most interesting:

Permanent Features

As if simply having a rockin’ tale of Halloween told in “four acts” isn’t enough, ArenaNet appears to be adding permanent features to the game during the Shadow of the Mad King event. PvP players will be happy to know that paid tournaments are going to be added, which gives PvP players a sort of ante-prize pool system to fight over. ArenaNet is also adding new content across a variety of maps in the form of “new events, jumping puzzles, bosses, mini-dungeons, and achievements”. Continue reading [GW2] Halloween!

I want guesting to work.

I am on one of the high population servers, always at “high” or “full” when I check. I want to visit friends on other servers, but I am worried about being able to get back in any reasonable time frame. A guildmate claimed to have needed more than a week to get back to Isle of Janthir. I presume you can get anywhere during off-hours, but it would be nice if the advertised feature existed.

You can switch servers freely 1/day, which is great if you have friends on only a few servers and never want to go back and forth in the same day. I understand the WvW abuses that led to needing the limitation, but it would be nice if the advertised feature existed. Guesting would not have the WvW issue, and you need not be limited per day.

: Zubon