Kill Ten Rats

I’ve dropped a bit of extra money on Guild Wars 2 for character slots and bank slots. I haven’t really needed any of that yet, but I also felt like ArenaNet earned more support from me. I was having a grand ol’ time. When gems were much cheaper on the exchange, or when I had some extra gems left over, I bought mini packs from the gem store. I wanted to collect a complete set, which was one of my accomplished goals in Guild Wars 1. I set out to do so at the cost of having worse gear, worse crafting, etc. and only now do I finally understand the minipet collection game. In the spirit of a unique college friend, boy, do I feel salty. Continue reading [GW2] High-Sodium Minipet Packs

These are my tales and thoughts from the weekend of playing Guild Wars 2. Everything from the achiever drive to possibly new content to momentum in the end game is on the butcher’s block.

100%

My immediate goal is to get 100% world completion on a single character. I am a zone or so over halfway. Not only do I eventually (years) want to get a legendary, but since my main character has the most momentum, this is a great time to get that achievement completed.

Last night on my level 80, I completed the charr starter zone Plains of Ashford. Never did it feel like a waste of time to check off some achievement that the achiever portion of my brain told me I had to, or it would itch. I was getting materials for future crafting, which would help alts rocket up to higher levels. I was completing my daily, which netted me a mystic coin and a repair canister. Every dozen kills would net me an item around my level. Each event was giving me a silver and some change. Sure, this was not going to net me as much gold as running Orr for the same amount of time, but I was not making some copper per hour pittance either. Continue reading [GW2] Weekend Resonance

At Bio Break:

A lament I’ve often heard over the past few years from MMO vets of the early generation of titles is that people don’t talk to each other in game any more.  They say that with a sorrowful tone, recounting days when MMOs had such slow, gradual gameplay that they were often a colorful overlay for a chat window.  People talked more back then.  They bonded more.  Communities meant more.  Now?  Now it’s just a bunch of helter-skelter madmen running amok with no interest in any social connections.

Pardon me, but that’s a load of horse apples.

When I talked to a stranger in the open world in a conventional MMO, that was breaking the ice. When I talk to a stranger in Guild Wars 2, we have already communicated plenty through interacting gameplay. Further verbal communication just reinforces our prior non-verbal communication. A subtle difference that changes things in drastic ways.

–Ravious

Asuran Peacemaker forces are searching for a small medium at large.

: Zubon

It’s such an obvious joke that it must be somewhere in-game. I have not found it yet.

I think more and more players are beginning to find rhythm with Guild Wars 2. This means that launch concurrency is dropping, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact it’s quite good.

Last night I was in the Straits of Devastation with a friend that was helping me explore the zone. We picked up another player along the way who enjoyed hanging out with us along the southern and western skill points. With launch concurrency it would’ve been hot-pocket zergs at every skill point and event cluster. Instead it was a really challenging and fun zone.

We found a champion risen pirate. Champions are built for around five players to take down. We were three. It was an epic boss fight. The elementalist trying to support and take down adds. The engineer going through tons of kits trying to bat out flames, whether that was adds, player’s downed, or an uncontrolled champion. I kept as much pressure on the champion as I could with my condition-based necromancer, juggling between champion control and bleeds as best as I could while playing peek-a-boo around the corner. At the least moment when it was clearly going to be down to the wire a charr warrior leaps in and helps us pummel the boss to the ground. This could not have happened with a hot-pocket zerg where the champion risen pirate would become ashes in a few seconds. Continue reading [GW2] Quiet Places

I’ve been following The Guild Wars 2 Trading Post fan-blog, written by Markco, for awhile. The posts are not rocket science, but they are great ideas for entering the world of trade in Guild Wars 2. Anybody interested in toeing the markets, or those already swimming in the deep end, should take a look at this blog for some great thoughts and suggestions. While not all of his ideas “work” all the time (e.g., up-forging materials only works for gossamer, which costs more than 15 times the cost of the previous cloth tier, silk), he does try and emphasize using his ideas only as training wheels. Here’s some of the things I did over the weekend regarding the Trading Post.

Flipping Velocity

The easiest thing to do is find a market discrepancy and flip. I did this all weekend instead of letting gold sit in my pocket. I did this with dye, although sigils, rares, and exotics are all good markets. I watched for a comfortable buy at price, and made a dozen or so buy orders. Then when I would receive the items, I’d turn them around at the sell price I knew would sell in a reasonable amount of time. 85% of the sell price had to be above the buy price. I would say roughly keeping 10-15 buy/sell orders going at a time I made about a gold. Continue reading [GW2] Weekend Money

At launch (and these tallies generally go up), Guild Wars 2 has:

• coin for merchants
• gems for the cash shop
• karma for events
• influence for guilds
• glory for SPvP
• badges of honor for WvW
• 8 different dungeon token types

There is also supply in WvW, skill points become a sort of currency with a few vendors, and mystic coins could be considered a 9th token type. You also have an achievement point count. Some of these are inventory objects, others are just variables attached to your character/account.

Since I complained at length about the need for a LotRO barter wallet, which was implemented years later through the cash shop, I thought I would take stock as GW2 started. WoW and CoX were also noted for their problems with proliferating currency types. Let’s see how ArenaNet handles this.

: Zubon