Month: August 2013

In case you are not taking advantage of the “guild” part of Guild Wars 2, my guild is recruiting. We could use some new blood to rejuvenate the nightly events and fill out the guild missions on the weekends. Events are scheduled, so if you are just interested in guesting for them, that works.

The guild is Assured Mutual Destruction [ICBM] of Isle of Janthir. Rather than repeat the link, you can see our advertising copy there. You can apply online or in-game with a message to Leohan.

If you are not participating in a guild, you are missing pieces of the game. Some content is exclusive to guild missions, and I recommend guild commendations for acquiring ascended accessories. And let me level with you: with two more people consistently attending, we can start completing Guild Challenges, and with a dozen more even the hardest guild missions would become manageable.

: Zubon

My biggest fear when Guild Wars 2 was launching was not that it would flop. It is a different  MMO beast. ArenaNet has a clear vision of what kind of MMO they want it to be, and it is not much like World of Warcraft and its ilk. It is also a success. Over 3.5 million units have been sold, and that is not divulging their cash shop info, which they hint is very sustaining. (An expansion hitting retail or a Steam release would easily be on the cards if it wasn’t.)

No, my biggest fear was my own. What would become of my blogging? For months and months it had been about speculation and excitement. It had been about dreams and not reality. What would happen when that reality came? What kind of payment would I have for the piper? I was actually worried that some golden age was dimming with the release of Guild Wars 2.

Clearly, I had nothing to worry about. Continue reading [GW2] Year One

Guild Wars 2 has created a somewhat less tedious crafting system than the average MMO, but it still faces the standard problem that it is not very interesting. It is adequately useful, but given the time investment and payoff, the average player is better served using the auction house.
Continue reading Unrealized GW2 Dreams: Crafting

The reigning villain in Guild Wars 2 is Scarlet Briar, a cross between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy with killer robots tossed in. And in her Playhouse, she gets a giant hammer, in case you did not think she was enough like Harley Quinn. And they case one of the Harley Quinns to voice her. I am rather fond of the character, and Tara Strong can only make things better.

After the Queen’s Pavilion put everyone in a huge zerg, that approach fails consistently in Clockwork Chaos. Players need to spread out to complete more events. Players tend to congeal into large groups and farm champions. Large groups spawn multiple Aetherblade champions, and champions’ survivability scales up with participation, so portals that should take a few minutes to clear take much longer. Invasion events rarely see Scarlet if:

1. movement is difficult around the map (to get between portals)
2. the map uses a lot of Z-axis (harder to get between portals, false paths lead players astray, bugs with spawning the enemies at different heights and around water)
3. Aetherblades are the reinforcements in anything but the last wave (momentum stops as players farm Aetherblade champions).

I joked in chat that the last update was to remove champions. Two minutes later, patch notes said that champion spawns were being toned down. They still spawn enough to congeal zergs. Map chat gets fun and dramatic.

: Zubon

For gamers, scaling seems easy. You know when we just ask for features like “why can’t you just add this feature?” And the developer hears “why can’t you sleep under your desk so you can spend every waking hour coding and rewriting tools?” Scaling is one of those things.

It’s just not the tech required, but the actual design. How much scaling? What about players that suck, and equally what about players with perfect stats/builds? The amount of variables can be mind-boggling. Most importantly, where is that sweet scaling spot to keep things fun?

Scaling has been one of Guild Wars 2 jewels since launch, but I feel that at launch it was a gem not well cut. The amount of moving variables seemed to be smaller than what one would dream for scaling. In Orr, events would simply add more undead balloons to pop instead of actually making it harder for a zerg of farmers. My eyes would glaze over as 20 bandits per wave would attack a windmill in the level 2-3 human area.

Throughout their first year ArenaNet has been adding more ways to scale. The most obvious change is scaling upwards to veteran and champion status enemies. With this latest update though, I feel ArenaNet’s scaling jewel is now very well cut. Guild Wars 2 has achieved mastery in scaling their content. Continue reading [GW2] Mastery of Scaling

A whole zone upended on the hour, every hour. That is what the latest content patch in Guild Wars 2 brings in Clockwork Chaos. The mad genius Scarlet Briar is attacking Tyria, and at the beginning of the hour a zone becomes her violent playground. Any zone above level 25 except Orr (locked in time) and Southsun (locked in… karka?) is fair game for her madness.

Mechanically, it works like this. For 15 minutes there is calm in Tyria as many players are emptying their bags of loot from the last invasion. Right on the hourly dot, the Living World UI will say there’s a new invasion in a zone, let’s say Harathi Hinterlands. Interested players teleport to a random place in Harathi Hinterlands at that moment. Once there it will be apparent where the events are. There are 3 waves of twisted clockwork creatures and the latter 2 waves are supplemented by either a Molten Core invasion or an Aetherblade invasion, which also have to be dealt with. If all waves are defeated players can fight the boss, Scarlet. If the players can’t work down all the waves in 45 minutes, the meta-event still rewards players pretty well for progress made. Continue reading [GW2] Tick Tock Assault

The “collectibles” tab in the Guild Wars 2 bank seemed like a neat idea at launch, but it has become apparent that it is essential to the crafting design and that crafting as implemented would be completely untenable without the storage component. Alternately, one can take the lesson that storage problems are a feature, not a bug, and potentially see merits in competing designs.
Continue reading [GW2] Crafting Storage