Ellen Kieled it! Time to celebrate with the Queen!

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

Kinda glad now that my previous post with "art" incentives was overlooked as Ellen Kiel has emerged the victor in the voting for the Captain's Council seat - thrashing the hopes and desires of all of Evon Gnashblade's supporters (and hopefully their wallets too). Story-wise, unless you were playing either an evil aligned, human hating, or charr loving (beastiality much?) character then you -should- have voted for Kiel. A surprising amount of people decided to vote for Evon without RP consideration. They just wanted the fractal he offered which now will have close to zero chance of coming to fruition thanks to their collective failure. ANet did a good job getting players involved in the election so it will be interesting to see if they can keep it up in the next arc: the Queen's Jubilee.

From what I've seen so far it looks pretty fun inside the Crown Pavillion - lots of things to fight and lots of loot for the taking. Ofcourse the aetherblade pirates are still being a nuisance but aside from the opening ceremony most of their antics are with content outside the city. Haven't explored those yet mainly due to the shineys dropping inside the new zone. Also the solo arena fights, which you can watch/be watched by other players are pretty interesting. I've beaten the first three rounds so far and am hoping to make it all the way to the end!

Definitely going to be a case of this though.

Week #6 - Falling from High Places

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

Played a bit more GW2 than usual this week and completed the flame legion stronghold of Fireheart Rise, along with Sparkfly Fen and its resident winged beast, Frostgorge Sound (didn't encounter the dragon here), the Dredgehaunt Cliffs and its very evil vistas (deaths +++), Timberline Falls and Mount Maelstrom which is home to a very impressive volcano - and very annoying destroyers allied with Inquest. I still wonder about those Mole-men Dredge sometimes. For "blind" critters they seem to have an unusual liking for rifles and very high, easy to fall off places.

Also continued the main story a bit, participating in the loss and subsequent recapture of Claw Island which involved slaying another death dragon - perhaps a twin to the one of Sparkfly Fen? Anywho, the Risen aren't so bad. I prefer them to the burning destroyers any day. In fact I think the Risen are the weakest/least annoying of the dragon slaves, or maybe a close second to the Branded. Certainly gives room for expansions though.

Also I still feel I'm getting promoted way too quick. From Initiate to Agent was just one task. Interesting to note that it was an Agent and not a Lightbringer who was assigned to protect Queen Jennah. Guess she's not that important? :P

The guild had our usual point-gathering session this time at Bloodtide Coast though we started a bit late due to disconnects. We also gained no new members this week and our count is on 19 members, though almost half are not on Gunnar's Hold and are not representing us. I'm wondering if it's time to kick them?

I reached level 80 this week somewhere during the Frostgorge Sound exploration, and DL reached it the following day. Most notable battle for me was falling into a troll infested canyon while looking for a vista, where it so happened another thief was already fighting the massive mob. Between the two of us, we killed ALL the hairy freaks including a veteran, and a champion troll. It was awesome. :)

And fails.

Week #1 - Where am I?

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

Arrived in Queensdale (Gunnar's Hold) with my standard rogue class and after the "tutorial" mission began exploring the countryside and unlocking my weapon skills on various hapless creatures. The graphics are pretty damn good, and I quite like the art style for the cutscenes with what I call "reserved animation". I also find the dynamic events to be really fun and a good innovation to mix things up while travelling through a zone, the highlights for me this week were helping the Norn in a full on assault on the Sons of Svarnir with my brothers and DL and I getting wiped out by Krait slavers in a particular village. Best of all I like how low-cut the Queen's dress is! ;P

Something like this!

My brothers (DL and Jim) also assisted me with my "story" missions a few days in, which involved rescuing Riot Alice and convincing her to stop working for evil bandits then stopping said evil bandits from poisoning a well at the cost of an idiot's life (sorry Quinn you had it coming) and finally killing the bandit boss. I do like the that we were given the "choice" of what to do though. Proceeded to then look for missing kids at the circus and passing clown college (very fun) to track down a crazy hypnosis inducing ringmaster. Later on I helped Jim infiltrate some mole men WMD construction plant via pretty funny costume wearing. As interesting as it is, the story mode didn't seem to yield as much xp as plain old exploration though so I left mine alone at that point to go wandering and get some easy exp's exploring the main cities.

The vista thing is a nice concept (which seems stolen from Assassin's Creed) but some jumping puzzles are just annoying - deadly annoying. Anyway, by the end of the week I had 100% completion on Divinity's Reach, Queensdale, Hoelbrak (barrel brawl was fun), the Grove, Rata Sum (mess to explore), Black Citadel (even messier), and the central hub of Lion's Arch where I completed the Ghost Pirate's cave too as a bonus. I know I'm probably still missing treasure chests in some of those areas but I can always go back for those. Finished up on Level 22, while fellow guildmate Rammy had already reached Level 80 (though he did start a few weeks earlier). Our guild also gained 1 new member.