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I’d love to buy GW2…

…but apparently I can’t.

– The “buy guildwars 2” page on the official site does not like me. Tried two different cards, says they are invalid. Tried through paypal, and “there was an error” (linked cards or transfer from my bank account – didn’t matter, same error).

– Tried through DLgamer (which I have never used, but it’s listed as a digital retailer). They did not like one of my cards, no idea why, but took the other. Success! Or… not. Got an email from them saying, and I quote… “It seems something has gone wrong during the payment and order has been cancelled”. Fantastic. Now I got a pending charge on my card for 55 bucks that should either clear, or post and be returned sometime next week.

– NC Soft’s page just redirects me to the Buy Guild Wars 2 page, so what’s the use.

– There are more retailers listed for digital download but you’ll excuse me if I don’t wanna expose myself to more “things going wrong” and end up with a bunch of charges that “should be credited” sometime in the future.

Why isn’t this on Steam again? It’s only the most anticipated launch of the year. I wanna play (or at least buy it, I don’t care about the headstart really), but I can’t.

Comedy and Bouncing

Guild Wars 2 worked beautifully at launch. I had a couple of disconnects, but the game seemed to run perfectly even with 40 people escorting an NPC.

Right now, servers are down and have been since I woke up. Either the marketing people are there and bored or they pre-scheduled something, because I just received an e-mail encouraging me to join the headstart, buy Guild Wars 2, and start playing now! Bad timing, there.

While you wait, this is Jumping Line, a platformer with no buttons.

: Zubon

Naming Names

I snagged all the names I wanted in my new MMO, which is of course the most important thing in life. My Guild Wars 2 stable is a tour through all the major MMOs of my gaming career, carrying forward names from Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and Lord of the Rings Online. I also kept the names I used in World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 1.

If you have played with me in any of those games, you probably know how to find me. If you are looking for me anew, you could look up Agrimony, Bookbag Pocketshoe, Empedocles, Frosta, Habibu Angela, Lilfa, Osmethne, or Zubon.

: Zubon

It felt appropriate to re-use my Engineer’s name from WAR, but my time there seems not to have been meaningful enough for me to remember it or write it down anywhere.

Designing Kickstarter Rewards

Eric asks how he should set up Kickstarter rewards to encourage early investment in his solo MMO project. I want to point out three examples with a few key points that seem to draw backers (and I like):

All of these Kickstarts received more than 1000% funding, and I would like to highlight a few things. Continue reading Designing Kickstarter Rewards

[GW2] Unicorn Costumes 2: Eye of the Horn

Since I have woefully wasted a ton of the Medals of Honor item in Guild Wars on the wrong weapons, I have been logging in dutifully each day to gather that one bounty quest that will get me back to buying the last two Oppressor weapons I need to hit 40 points in the Hall of Monuments. I can see small patterns of change in Guild Wars already beginning to form as the sequel launches in mere days. The market is fluctuating madly as people seem unsure how to price things anymore. How much would you sell your antique china for if a world-destroying asteroid is headed our way?

I had a costume run looking through all my character’s fashions the other day. I’ve only bought four of the costumes from the first Wintersday set and the first Halloween set. I love them, and I wish I had bought more. As I logged in to Lion’s Arch a female warrior was idling with the Agent of Balthazar helmet. My main character (a necromancer) has been wearing Demonic Horns for some time, and I thought it might be time for an upgrade. Yet, I held back because at this point in time I would rather use that money to buy some gems for Guild Wars 2. I wish I could have that costume helmet in Guild Wars 2. Continue reading [GW2] Unicorn Costumes 2: Eye of the Horn

[GW2] Because Sleep Is for Wimps in Lousy Time Zones

The Guild Wars 2 headstart begins Friday night … sometime. Servers go live at the strike of midnight, Pacific … or up to three hours earlier.

I don’t mind staying up until midnight or waking up at 3am so I can reserve my character names. I do object to needing to camp the login screen for those three hours.

If you’re a player committed to getting in first to grab that character name of your dreams you’ll want to be keeping an eye on things during that time period.

Can we get the name of the person who thought that was a good idea?

: Zubon

Update: servers actually went live exactly three hours early, at the stroke of 9pm PDT. And then I ended up staying up most of that time anyway, making characters and bouncing around the newbie zones.

[GW2] Guild Wars 2 Kung Fu

I am nearing overload like other blogger compatriots. Guild Wars 2 is haunting my dreams and is almost on every brain cycle throughout the day. Yet, I have no plan for the game. I am still undecided on my first character, although a small cut has been made. I have names though. Oh yes, my preciousss.

I was talking with a friend about our plans. He was rolling a sylvari elementalist, and another good buddy was going to be rolling a norn guardian. At the time a sylvari necromancer was my top choice for a character. Since then I’ve been trying out the engineer big time during stress tests to see if possibly it might be the fit. Oh, and I do love thieves so, but it was my main beta character. Do I re-tread that ground?

My poor friend was relegated to a much longer version of my woes, but eventually we got around to discussions on grouping up. It was easy to do so with waypoints, and unlocking other racial cities was doable in less than 15 minutes. We began to talk about when to actually explore those cities, and how we would share crafting responsibilities.

It all made sense on paper. Yet, it felt wrong. Why was I planning anything? Continue reading [GW2] Guild Wars 2 Kung Fu

Exception handling

To friends, acquaintances and IM stragglers: I take exception (a lot of exception, actually) to being told that if I don’t like The Secret World is because I “don’t get it” or just want “more of the same”.

Leaving personal tastes aside, it’s perfectly possible that the game just isn’t that good. I mean, you have to be open to that possibility. That much maligned Metacritic score in the 70s? To be honest, if I was still a reviewer and someone handed me TSW, since I would inevitably have to give it a final score, it wouldn’t be too far from that. I am not commenting on the issue of Metacritic financially affecting the game (or the company). That’s grain from another sack and I personally find it ridiculous and contemptible, yet a sign of our times. I’m just talking brass tacks. That’s what I would give it if I had to distill my appreciation into a number.

I do get it. It’s not a game that’s hard to get, no matter how much and how hard forum critters throw around game complications as a badge of pride. The much touted parts of the game which apparently require a superior intellect are… what… 2% of it? The rest is straight forward. You don’t need a Master’s Degree in Gameology to interpret the skill wheel, you just need to read. It’s up to you whether you embrace those who for whatever reason are struggling with it, or drive them away in a storm of elitism. Judging by recent performance, we can guess which one was the popular option. Achievement unlocked, I suppose. Kudos.

And “wanting more of the same”? No. I don’t want more of the same. And I applaud Funcom for designing something which at least attempts to stray off the beaten path, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But here’s the thing, and what seems to be ancient sumerian for some people: It’s not enough to just try something new, it also has to be good and engaging. If it’s not, then it’s a beautiful effort to try and shoot a different target that unfortunately missed the mark. I applaud the effort, but I’m not gonna lie and say it hit the target when I can see it didn’t (for me). I’m too old to be that political with these things. How you interpret this that I just wrote as “wanting more of the same” completely eludes me. Your reality distortion field clearly shows.

“The game isn’t that good, but support it anyway”? I’ll do that if a game costs $50, I only have $30 and they still let me buy it. I’ll meet them half way. I wanna be supported for trying too.

State of Sandbox PvE (and Zombies)

A bit ago when I was talking about sandbox as interactions, instead of sandbox as mechanics, with regard to the eternal MMO war between sandbox and themepark games, Telwyn had a really interesting comment. Basically Telwyn brought up the desire to have a sandbox PvE MMO that did not “devolve into open world PvP”. Bhagpuss also commented on that post, and I instantly thought of Everquest because of him. A sandbox PvE MMO without the huge PvP aspects (combat or economical) found in sandbox MMOs (like EVE Online) I felt could just revert to something like Everquest. Continue reading State of Sandbox PvE (and Zombies)