Vote for Ellen Kiel!

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

Turns out this whole politics thing is just as dull in game as it is out of game, adding only three activities for people to do. Kiel offers Capture the Fla...Crystal (PvP) in Aspect Arena where you use pieces of a dead dragon to fight each other. Evon offers Southsun Survival/Battle Royale (PvP) which I find more fun - having to scrounge up supplies and food to out survive the other people both living and dead. People compare it a lot to Hunger Games, but I've never read it nor seen the movie so ... *shrug*. Lastly you can go fight aetherblade pirates for either. All the above come with ludicrous repetition (and paltry rewards) if you want achievements.

ANet even encourages people to nullify their own votes by being able to vote for both candidates to get those little AP points on either side which is silly if you ask me. I'm just dumping all my votes in Kiel's basket up at the zephyrite airship. Why? Because she's the "good" guy as far as I'm concerned.

I've even gone so far to offer some "art" incentives to help Kiel win but so far it doesn't look like it has picked up any traction. Oh well. I tried!

Well hello Lady Kasmeer!

Fortunately the heavy PvP content plus the rather useless rewards (backpieces and minis) aren't really necessary to get vote tickets. Also, given that I can get vote tickets by simply murdering large quantities of pixels in standard zones I can just go for my slayer achievements instead of having to sludge through the minigames. Turns out APs aren't really what I'm after at the moment (despite my last post) - I'm gunning for laurels (now on 25/100)! :P

Achievement Based Play

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

The new change in GW2 of rewarding achievements and more importantly, the new achievement interface has seen an increase in play time for me now. Suddenly I -want- those APs and Laurels because those ascended items have suddenly been put within my reach - and who doesn't want to better their character right? ANet is just going to keep adding item tiers and make the hamster wheel bigger and bigger I think. Anyway, more importantly is I suddenly have a goal again. The clever little change in the UI that displays what achievements I'm close to is a real driving force for me, even for the grindy ones. After doing the daily/monthly I look to that to see which one I can tick off the list. I alternate this with Neverwinter Online where the quest structure and story is pretty rigid, and wonder what I'll be doing there once I finish all the content... oh yeah, making foundry missions! Kinda slacked off on that due to XCOM.

Anywho back to Tyria where the council seat election looms and while I know who I'm voting for, the whole thing seems structured for grinders to have a larger say - given you need to kill stuff or do "x" to acquire vote tokens as opposed to one vote per account/character. Fair enough given that it is the 24/7 grinders who will be most affected by whatever change takes place. I'm not sure if it is better to hide or show the current vote count as the event goes on but either way, based on the forum noise it has already generated I think ANet are onto a winner release. Sounds very PvP-oriented this round though, and again with backpiece skins as rewards - Really? I think that's the only piece ANet enjoy changing. Anyway the little list will keep me busy - I think I'm shooting for 100 laurels all up and that's gonna take me awhile. :P