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[GW2] Black Lion PvP

I play the market in Guild Wars 2 in spurts. One of my goals is to get a permanent merchant contract eventually, which will set me back a cool 150-200 gold. In cash I have about 15% of what I need. So I’ve been dutifully playing the market every day trying to build that amount passively.

Compared to the so-called Black Lion barons, I am small potatoes. I would say at any given time I am only moving around 5 gold, though that amount is slowly building up. I would guess on that amount I make 30-50 silver per day. I am getting more comfortable with what I am doing as well as getting the feel of the market. I would be pretty happy making 1 gold per day off the market, and I think that is a reasonable goal. Continue reading [GW2] Black Lion PvP

[GW2] 2013 From the Clouds

Colin Johanson (whose name I can barely spell, and I apparently can’t stop talking about) released the much anticipated official blog post about plans for early 2013. The post is a whopping 2500+ words with some good information, some vague teasers, and focus on direction.  It’s still pretty high level, as ArenaNet really does not like talking about things that aren’t nailed, stapled, and Gorilla-glued to the floor. Still there is quite a bit of meat to discuss. Continue reading [GW2] 2013 From the Clouds

[GW2] Core Event Density

Game Director Colin Johanson recently stated that this year they are going to make their core game as strong as possible. He was specifically talking about bosses and creatures, but it made me wonder. Here was the game director saying that he wanted to refine the base. Colin could have just plugged all the wonderful new features and content. The big brass only have so many dev hours a day, and to send even a lone dev (the one that didn’t refill the coffee) at creatures that could be “working as intended” gives me pause. Perhaps I am too jaded from Guild Wars 1 as I expect what we got at launch to be it.

I love doing my daily achievement, but the one I always hate is sadly events. Hang on here, these are the hallmark of Guild Wars 2 PvE. I only need to do five events. Compared to 15 unique kills which is sometimes a puzzling pain or the grind of 60 kills this seems easy. Yet it seems like unless I am in a high event density area (Orr, dragon timers, or starting areas) it takes substantially longer to fill that bar than any other. Continue reading [GW2] Core Event Density

The Mayans Invaded and All I Got Was This Lousy Bug

I had a long post written as an intro to The Secret World, which I picked up as a gaming present for myself this past December (and because Amazon had it marked down to $15), but since that was covered already, I figured I’d write about the recent event TSW had. Considering the impact on the game, it’s well worth a post.

As you may be aware, assuming you have spoken to at least other upright mammal in the past month, the Mayan calendar recently finished a cycle. This cycle lasted nearly 6000 years. Of course, any logical person would point out that due to the many changes to both calendar and timekeeping methods over the years, pinning an exact date out on a 6000 year old calendar would be inaccurate, as well as pointing out that every other cycle on the Mayan calendar repeats, but why get in the way of a good panic? In any case, a rather poor movie and any number of disaster speculations have been made about the end of the world that was supposed to happen in December of 2012. If you’re still reading this, it didn’t happen. However, TSW is a game allegedly set in the shadows of our own world – almost a “what went wrong” version, if you will. If any game out currently had a perfect real-world setup for an in-game event, this is it. And the folks at Funcom knew it. Unfortunately, Casey was at the bat.
Continue reading The Mayans Invaded and All I Got Was This Lousy Bug

Guild Wars 2: Through A Child’s Eyes

When a Reddit poster detailed his 5 year old son’s guide on how to play Guild Wars 2, I knew I had to share the way my two daughters (3 and 6) play the game. These are two gamer girls in training, and I want to share their “correct” way of playing Guild Wars 2. Without further ado…

It’s coming right for us!

It is impossible not to kill the little grey bunnies. We’ve tried, but our instincts tell us they were put there to die. Mommy does not like us killing defenseless little bunnies. We tell her they go red and attack us. We still make sure that Mommy knows when Daddy kills the bunnies though, even if he pretends to say it’s for life force.

Continue reading Guild Wars 2: Through A Child’s Eyes

Managing Expectations

Hunter links to a developer interview:

These two months combined are basically an expansion’s worth of content for free.

and goes on to explain:

I think people are getting the wrong idea. It’s fine as long as people keep their expectations reasonable but we will not be getting an expansion worth of content

Commenters proclaim it dishonest to promise an expansion’s worth of content without delivering an expansion’s worth of content. Hunter explains that it is unreasonable to expect an expansion’s worth of content just because a developer said there would be an expansion’s worth of content.

I can’t disagree with either response. I just love this example because it encapsulates so much.

: Zubon

Heirs to Progress Quest

Progress Quest is the original 0-player MMORPG. It was designed in 2002 as a parody of the gameplay you know and love, with “fire and forget” convenience that went beyond auto-attack to auto-everything. Turn it on, create a character, and the game takes it from there. There is not gameplay as such, but it is a brilliant piece of work and strangely hypnotic.

As with most things, there is actually a genre of these by now. Kongregate has an idle game category. Epic Combo is notionally amusing, and Farm of Souls is more of an idle RTS game (with just peons). I’m tempted to fiddle with a few of these, but Kongregate is currently promoting Anti-Idle, which has enough little things going on at once to actually make it a game. It has its version of Progress Quest that you can play interactively instead of idling. It has a mini-FarmVille, a lousy Mario Kart, a collectible card game that doesn’t look very good but probably is not the worst on the site, a variety of mini-games, fishing, and some other things I have yet to sift through. It also has its own quests and achievements built in.

At worst, the gameplay is no worse than things you have paid to do (mine in EVE, farm almost anything). At best, well, it’s not a lot better than that anyway. When social media games were having their heyday, I found some of them interesting if I played 5 or 6 at once. The aggregate can involve interesting resource and attention allocation. Most of that seems built in here, plus your equivalent of offline skill training.

: Zubon

[GW2] The Final PoI

Like Elisabeth at Massively I am working towards a legendary, and my pace is going to match hers. I am just going to play, bank, and see what happens. Some of the portions of a legendary do require more focus, such as the Gift of Exploration. I am dreading the Gift of Zhaitan I will need, but for now the Gift of Exploration can be done mostly during the leveling process. Who wouldn’t want to complete each map, cries my completionist self.

I hate that I swapped to Blackgate. I wanted to stay in WvW Tier 2 because I felt I could learn a bit how the enemy operated, and for Exploration it needed to be done. To my defense I did not kill any Sanctum of Rall comrades during that time. However, Tarnished Coast chumps were fair game. My goal was only to snag the handful of points of interest (PoI) I needed in the Eternal Battlegrounds. Tier 2 is interesting because I feel Sanctum of Rall holds its own consistently in second place. I think Blackgate constantly wins because they do a better job beating up on Tarnished Coast. In other words, Blackgate wins because they capitalize offense far better than Sanctum of Rall does. Continue reading [GW2] The Final PoI

[TSW] First Impressions

The Secret World is my first MMO I bought intending to play the game as a “play to finish” MMO. Unlike even Wizard 101, which I did intend in the beginning to lightly play forever, The Secret World is the first MMO I’ve bought fully intending to be a tourist. And, I feel elated. The game might even be better, in my view, for it.

There are two parts to my impressions: content and systems. They are like twin serpents winding up a staff in The Secret World. Sometimes they intertwine perfectly. In other places they wreathe and gnash at one another. Either way I have found the game to be very entertaining. Buying The Secret World was totally worth it. Continue reading [TSW] First Impressions

[GW2] Jump in dee Line

Most players want to rock that monthly on time. With the New Year came January’s Monthly Achievements in Guild Wars 2. The evergreen monthly WvW player kills achievement remains evergreen, and the fractal completion has continued from last month. Monthly event participation has returned from the early days too. The new monthly achievement is Intrepid Explorer – find the locations of Tyria’s jumping puzzles.

Monthly achievements, in my mind, are one of the developer’s ways of herding players towards the better parts of Guild Wars 2. WvW kills has remained because WvW is a really good, active part of the MMO. The Fractals of the Mists dungeon is the best instanced group content in my mind. The monthly achievements have also heavily highlighted the holiday events where high concurrency is desired. Now the jumping puzzles, one of the heralded jewels of Guild Wars 2, get their turn in the monthly sun. Continue reading [GW2] Jump in dee Line