Category: Guild Wars 2

Player 1: It was nice of Scarlet to explain the entire Living World story in explicit detail just in case someone wasn’t paying attention for the last year or so. /sarcasm

Player 2: I had no idea what she was talking about at all.

For Isle of Janthir (NA Silver), this is one of the three weeks of Season One when we are not pitted against the Big Two of Fort Aspenwood or Stormbluff Isle. We are, however, again pitted against #3 (Yak’s Bend) and doing so with a population that has been beaten down by pre-season transfers and guaranteed losses.

All three of our relatively easy weeks pit us against North Shiverpeaks. This is potentially one of the more interesting competitions in NA Silver because we are unarguably the #8 and #9 servers in the league, but it remains an open question which is #9. Continue reading [GW2] Weekend WvW: Demoralized Populations

I have 4 achievements left to get for the first season of WvW before I get that shiny key of who-knows-what. So far it has been generally easy. Jumping puzzles, a mad karma train with Blackgate, and the usual killings have led to a lot of play and the achievements.

Now I’m onto 3 more easy ones that require a tad more focus to complete. I went about halfway through Ruins achievement just with “normal” play. Repairs too… got about halfway, but I admit I did focus a little when I saw a damaged gate or wall. Finally supply camps too got about halfway in normal Tier 1 play. I will probably finish all three before the week is out.

My final achievement is the one that worries me a bit. I basically have three options: 225 yaks, 225 sentry point captures, or 50 WvW ranks. Now I read and read on how I should be able to complete 50 WvW ranks in a mere weekend. Yet, here I am with most of the WvW season’s achievements under my belt, and I’ve only achieved 20 ranks. I just don’t seem to be getting them that fast, and to me it doesn’t feel like a “sure thing”. Continue reading [GW2] Grinding WvW

Logan Thackeray is one of the potential end boss fights in the Chamber of Nightmares mini-dungeon. This single factor may make this one of the most popular updates in GW2 history. In my guild, Logan’s popularity polls around that of Rurik, so the chance to kill him is celebrated.

Logan is, however, a decent opponent, rather than being completely useless, and I do not recall him whining at all. This makes it entirely too obvious that it is a hallucination.

: Zubon

Last night facing The Nightmares Within update was rough. At first I gleefully skipped in to the toxic tower with Mrs. Ravious, the inside of which is a mini-zone akin to the Queen’s Pavilion. I crossed the threshold from the safe area and “wham” I was dropped like a sack of flour. Now wait a minute, I’m a celestial/berserker well necro… I don’t die easily. Yet there I was facing floor.

Guild Wars 1 players of yore have been comparing the inside of dark tower in Kessex Hills to open world versions of the famed Underworld and Fissure of Woe instances. They are tough. There are loads of elite enemies with all sorts of condition hate. There are mines that can kill any ‘zerk in a single hit. There are twists and turns, and there’s an environmental poison to make sure players don’t hole up. It is a nightmare.

My knee jerk reaction was frustration. It felt like a zerg was necessary for playing the content. However, this puzzle of a zone was simply too complex for a zerg used to such challenges as Scarlet’s Invasions or the graveyard run of Queen’s Pavilion. Nope, there were dead bodies everywhere. Once in a while I would get lucky with a zerg that had enough force and self-awareness (rez’ing) to bash through easily. Still, it was a challenge. Continue reading [GW2] A Taste of the Poison Paradise

The interior of the Tower of Nightmares has periodic group events. These collect players into groups, which is necessary because trying to run through solo is nigh unto suicide.

There is a group event at the entrance. This groups up people like in the tutorial. The event ends, and a small zerg descends upon the maze. Halfway through, a champion awaits, and dispersed players unite to defeat it. Thus gathered, they proceed to the second section, now able to safely proceed as a group rather than dying in a thin line. And so on.

This is good design. It organically groups people without their even noticing it’s happening. It promotes and rewards doing the right thing to succeed.

: Zubon

We led a guild group through the tower a few times to help people unlock the travel points. I had a chant of “If you run ahead, you will die alone. Don’t stop to rez those people or you will die too.” We would built up a large enough group behind us to stop and rez the people who still charged ahead into the mass of death.

This is the Halloween unlimited harvesting tool in GW2. It is a jack-in-the-box clown with a scythe. I picked one up just after they became available and equipped it on the latest character I have been leveling. I didn’t think that one through. I don’t think I even watched a video of the animation.

A week later I had a nightmare involving a seven-foot-tall Joker with a scythe. Reading about New 52 Joker couldn’t have helped that.

Fast-forward to the latest Living World content, released while that scythe is for sale. Groups of 4-5 toxic seedling harvest nodes appear together. They tend to sprout up near the Living World events, so picture the 40-person zergs that swarm those the first night. 5 or 6 people in the event zerg have the jack-in-the-box. In less than a minute, thirty scythe clowns pop out of nowhere to harvest. Listen to that wheezing laugh again, and imagine dozens of them, slightly offset and overlapping, repeating the whole time.

Emergent behavior: creating quality Halloween creepiness.

: Zubon