Week #13 - Out of Content

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

Less GW2 this week as I finished off Dawn of War II: Retribution and the Walking Dead. Both of them were very cool but it is unlikely I'll play through them again as I feel it will be unrewarding to just be covering  the same content as before which is exactly the problem I'm having with GW2 - there's no real drive for me to do anything since I've already played through most of the story with one character, fully explored the map, and am not really interested in pvp, crafting or grinding dungeons. Also I'm in a timezone that doesn't suit their "one time events" which just further turns me off so we'll see if ArenaNet manages to hold my attention.

Did manage to finish off the last of the jumping puzzles in the game with Scavenger's Chasm being the damn long finale for them. Not real good rewards for going back to any of them but there are 8 chests all up that are pretty easy for a thief (6 if non rogue) to get to daily, not counting the ones in WvW. 3 at Lion's Arch, 1 at Straits of Dev (just swim around that forcefield), and 4 at Southsun Cove (2 per jump puzzle - the second in each is guarded).

Guildwise I went with DL, Yue and Thaldir on separate occasions to run Ascalon Catacoms story mode (again), and 2 exploration paths to fight the Howling King and Ghost Eater. It was pretty fun, but what would be MORE fun was if the entire dungeon was another "world" map that everyone could enter. Mandatory instanced stuff works ok for scripted story but there was nothing in the explorable paths they couldn't do with their already set Dynamic Event system. Anywho we also made a play for Zhaitan on the weekend, miraculously getting a full party only to find the dragon had wised up to our plans and bugged/froze the quest chain leading up to opening the gates to Arah which meant no finale for us.

Frustrated, I took it out on his minions instead who were also frozen in the quest chain, sending endless waves of their number at a particular Pact position only to be met by a small army of players (and one robot I think) farming them for high level supplies. Apparently it had been this way for a number of days now said one of the farmers, and not just on my server if the forums are to be believed. Beginning to doubt Arenanet's capabilites in general if they can't sort out something so trivial.

Week #7 - The Furthest Lands

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

Welcome to Orr!

 

After collecting a magic orb I pushed on to Fort Trinity this week, at the front lines on the Straits of Devastation where I begun my infiltration into Orr by slaying one of Zhaitan's Eyes. I found Orr to be a very fun place - no heart quests to do and almost exclusively Risen bastards all over the place. Even the wildlife is hostile! That didn't stop me from finishing off that region, followed by Malchor's Leap and the Cursed Shore though - stupid zombies cannot stop a single well-prepared thief.

With all the PVE zones now completed my next task lay in the Mists which was a tough ask given that my home server of Gunnar's Hold is pretty weak in that department, especially against this week's rivals of Baruch Bay and Kodash. Scouted what I could and then made use of the free server transfer to hop onto Kodash for a day. The Germans really know their warfare, and in a span of a few hours they had conquered not only the Eternal Battlegrounds, but all of the Borderland regions as well making my exploration completion very easy. In contrast though, their PVE zones were almost devoid of players. :P

Now that I have my 100% World Completion Account medal you'd think I would attack the main story next but no - I want those other pretty banners too, so I created my appropriately named "Bannermen", an iron legion Charr Warrior and a Sylvari Mesmer to fetch me the flags of the Vigil and Priory respectively. Only did the introductory mission of the Charr, fighting Duke Barradin with Rytlock (only level 2) before switching over to work on the Sylvari who I think will be more troublesome to level. They do have a good story line though, and broadens the depth of info a bit on Trahearne, a particular magic mirror and Caladbolg (to the expense of Caithe I think). Also had a really fun mission helping the Priory defend a fort against the Risen via use of remote controlled golems. That's got to be one of the most fun missions I've played so far. :)

Guildwise our weekly hunt was a bit quieter this time with only my brothers DL and Jim showing up. I took them to the Blazeridge Steppes to help level Jim up and once there we faced the Shatterer but this time with very few people. All our nice turrets got destroyed over the course of the battle which meant I was up close and personal to the dragon this time but he still had no chance. :D The Kami Katze and Thaldir both reached level 80 as well, but no new members this week - and low login rates. Even our allied guild RoF is going through a lull as one of their members switched over to earn us points since none of his own guild were on.