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[GW2] This is not the Ferrari you thought it was

Reaching the month mark is a pretty good time (as good as any, really) to start throwing down real solid opinions. Opinions that at least had have some time to stew and cook properly in the crock pot of your head. Keen has given his, and I find myself in agreement with most of his points.

Thanks to Netflix I’ve been watching a lot of old episodes of Top Gear lately (as an aside, if you haven’t already do yourself a favor and watch their yearly specials where they go all over the world for shenanigans. It’s great TV). Jeremy Clarkson is a huge Ferrari fan and when you watch his road tests you can, right under the humor and his snark, hear the disappointment in his voice whenever the Ferrari he’s driving doesn’t feel up to par. You can see the letdown in his face. It’s personal for him; if the Ferrari doesn’t feel right, he just can’t connect to the car, and it has nothing to do with the car’s top speed, gadgetry or, Cthulhu forbid, fuel economy. It has everything to do with his feelings and expectations of what driving a Ferrari should be.

Which, naturally, somehow, brings us to Guild Wars 2. Somehow.

Continue reading [GW2] This is not the Ferrari you thought it was

[GW2] Cherry Tree

Trahearne is not the most beloved character in GW2, but Sieran is a strong competitor. For those of you who have not tried the Durmand Priory personal story arc, try the Durmand Priory personal story arc. Magister Sieran is your guide, and she is the happiest adventurer around. “Cherry!” (or sylvari cursing: “Thorns!”) We’re going into certain death: “It’ll be an adventure!”

Everyone gets the lesser version in the Pact story arc, Carys, who is enthusiastic about running in and whacking zombies with a big hammer. I tried this on a sylvari guardian, and it is indeed satisfying to whack zombies with a big hammer, so I can see why she is in such a good mood. Still, Sieran is the full version, the physical incarnation of joy and enthusiasm.

: Zubon

[GW2] Stories That Should Be Told

There are interesting views about stories stemming from open world PvE in Guild Wars 2. Tobold disavows using “themepark” to prefer the slightly broader rendition of the term “guided gameplay”. Guild Wars 2 is guided gameplay, but I’ve always felt it edge much closer to a “sandbox” form because it always wasn’t clear what I would get in each play session. I liken Guild Wars 2 with events and very cooperative multiplayer PvE to more of a zoo. Never know what the animals are going to do.

Jeromai has a Spink-stamped Quote of the Day regarding the stories that stem from Guild Wars 2. Spinks notes that Jeromai’s anecdotes might be more interesting than a lot of sandbox stories. That’s the thing. The best sandbox stories, sometimes spanning month’s of work and play, are among the best MMO stories, but they gloss over those hours and hours of scanning, waiting, or running “guided” content to pass the time. Continue reading [GW2] Stories That Should Be Told

Dear Bookah

I made my own little pilgrimage. My savant cave a small laboratory on the outskirts of Rata Sum. There, I met Zojja. We sparred intellects in the golem arena and tried to connect to one another. Although she knew I hadn’t come in search of any advice, she still spiralled in panic at the thought of Inquest being involved in any part of our progression through this province. Intelligence had made her amoral; like us, she had already passed beyond any conceivable boundary of feeling.

I quote directly: “A motley lot with little to recommend them. I have now spent three days in their company that is, I fear, enough for any asura that walks Tyria. Despite their tedious inclination to quote scripture, they seem to me the most mindless of all the inhabitants on the surface of this world. Indeed, in this case, the very gravity of that term – without mind – seems to find its very apex.” It appears to me that Drojjenny too found those who wandered the jungle to be adrift in a prison of the mind, or lack thereof. Did he include himself in that, I wonder?

[GW2] Queue

This is not unfair. We tried to put a guild WvW group together last night, but after an hour or two, only two of us had made it into Eternal Battlegrounds. Hey, weekend prime time, right? There is a problem when the game becomes unplayable only when people want to play it.

The PvE was still working just fine, though. Guilds war, just not with each other.

: Zubon

[GW] Cooking Without the Book

Ravious is worried about storage space due to intermediate ingredients, that he will have a vault full of soup stock and spice jars. I am more worried about final products. With experimentation from the vault available and a level 80, 400 skill cook who has been accumulating ingredients everywhere he can, visiting that discovery pane is an attractive nuisance that calls me to try tossing things together until I have millions of calories of desserts and finished soups. As a cook/artificer, I have enough food and potions to keep my character buffed continuously for days.

: Zubon

Cooking By the Book

[GW2] Crafting From the Hilt

Possibly the best quality of life improvement in Guild Wars 2 is being able to discover recipes with materials from the bank. Last night I made sure to run a play session of crafting, as cooking can take a long time, and it was great.

For artificing the main “hidden” recipes involve potion brewing. Each potion instills hatred and hardness in the character for a certain race, such as destroyers or Nightmare Court. With that crafting profession, and I would guess most of the others, crafting from the bank is a akin to Doodle God with bumper rails as I randomly clicked on material icons to see which ones would darken and which ones would remain lit. In my opinion this is the perfect difficulty for most crafting professions. It’s fun to combine, it’s not very difficult or time consuming, and not having certain materials is just difficult enough to keep some stuff hidden. Continue reading [GW2] Crafting From the Hilt

Dear Bookah

They were godfearing people those bookah. Those shrieking natives of the jungle. There was no love in the relationship. Drojjenny tells me that they had one scroll said to have been written by the druids that was passed around in strict rotation. It was stolen by a skritt, two years before this part of the jungle was abandoned altogether. In the interim, I wonder, did they assign their baseless theories to the falling water, marking the flora holding to the rock with a superimposed significance; that they could actually walk through these theories and inhabit its contradictions? Continue reading Dear Bookah

Torchlight 2 First Impressions

Like Orcs Must Die! 2, Torchlight 2 is more of the same, a bit improved, with multiplayer. I don’t know about you, but that is all I wanted from it. Where OMD2 went for “more difficult,” Torchlight 2 has gone for “more diverse.”

In Torchlight 2, you play a hero who makes monsters explode by clicking on them. Continue reading Torchlight 2 First Impressions

[GW2] No Noobs

Last weekend, I heard a group forming for a dungeon speed run. “No newbs!” Ah, less than a month in and we are there already.

Playing during the head start, the evening of August 27, I heard people in the map channel discussing “the incoming horde of noob players” at midnight. Look, I have expressed annoyance with explaining things to first-timers, but at the point where you are a morula scorning a zygote, and no one is even a blastocyst yet, you have gone too far.

: Zubon