Preparation is Half the Battle

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

Took a page out of Sisters of Tyria and decided to draw this update.^_^
Basically this stemmed when I noticed I carried some interesting stuff in my pack in Guildwars 2.

 

Yep. Over 500.  It's how I can solo the smaller invasion events if I have favorable terrain nearby. Slightly surprised more people don't head over to Fireheart Rise and buy them. More surprising is that this doesn't happen as often as you'd think:

Where to Next?

My brothers and I recently finished Diablo 3 (finally) and of all the enemies it was Belial, the half-way mark boss, that caused us the most trouble. Everything else pretty much got curb-stomped, the titular main baddie included. So what's next outside of Guildwars 2 where all the heroes will ignore Scarlet's threat to Tyria to return to the wacky world of the Super Adventure Box (I know I will) and the slow progress of Neverwinter Online's Fury of the Feywild (it decided to let me log in again)?

I'm not that bad, honest!

Well, there are rumors that World of Warcraft may be going F2P - if that's true then the guild would probably check out Azeroth if given the chance. Funny reading angry subscription players posting on their forums "Well, if it goes F2P I'll stop giving them money!" Yeah. That's the point. Whether WoW actually makes the switch is another matter. Also was somewhat interested in trying Granado Espada out upon stumbling on some of its awesome music again but caught myself thinking do I really need another MMO (which I'd probably play solo) right now? Instead I am just hunting down all the tracks to listen to.

What else am I looking forward to then? The Thief reboot for sure (which looks a lot like Dishonored), and to a lesser extent the next game in the Witcher series. I didn't actually play the first two but I watched my brother go through them and it was cool. Lastly I was introduced to some D&D cosplaying silliness which I found to be rather entertaining and funny: The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Worth a look especially if you are or were a pen and paper RPG player. :)

The Fury and the Drama/Saga

Wanting to take a break from the zerg overload at the Guildwars 2 invasion events of Clockwork Chaos I decided to try patch up Mabinogi to see what Generation 18, aka as the Drama or the Saga depending on what region you ask, has to offer. For me, not a lot since the downloader wouldn't even begin downloading files. Bummer. Not really in the mood for a full reinstall of the game at the moment, which is what was needed to fix it previously, so that's going back on the shelf for now.

Meanwhile Neverwinter Online has released The Fury of the Feywild with an all new campaign system. This isn't as nice as they make it out to be as it basically forces you to grind longer through a zone to quite literally unlock each new area with keys. Don't expect to do it in one sitting either, the quests that give you the materials needed to get closer to each key can only be done once every 24 hours. These keys also need astral diamonds. Yerp, pay (or grind more) to progress.

The update also made my Foundry created module vanish! No searches seem to bring it back, and when I try to get into the Foundry itself it says "Foundry editing not allowed." What the heck. A quick check on the forums confirmed I'm not alone, and visitors from Star Trek Online (another Cryptic game) advised that each patch usually breaks their module stuff too - it's normal. The only thing you can do is constantly fix it to comply with the new stuff. Sorry, but that's not a system I care to use after all.

To top it off I can't log in now at all - it just does nothing after loading up the zone. As you might be able to tell I'm a little... upset with this turn of events. Just a tiny, tiny bit.

Like Adam Chaplin.

Invasion of the Everything

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

Guildwars 2 zones have come under attack by the forces of the seemingly too smart for her own good jester sylvari, Scarlet - who made her grand(er?) entrance during the closing ceremony of the Queen's Jubilee. She's far too interesting to be Trahearne's evil twin, so I'm now guessing she is the "Harley Quinn" to the Mad King's "Joker"... and I'm Batman! Well, no I guess I'm just one of the Gotham PD in that analogy because everyone is a hero and because I'm not rich. :P

Harley is way hotter than Scarlet though.

She's been a busy little plant though as not only does she have the tech and forces of the steam creatures, the sheeply stupid molten alliance and a small country of aetherblade pirates at her disposal - she also has twisted the watchwork knights in Divinity's Reach to her will turning them into... uh... Decepticons? From her barricaded position within the Crown Pavillion she sends them out in huge numbers via steam portals, and joins the forays herself just to remind everyone who is behind the attacks.

Really have to keep an eye on the clock if you want to participate in stopping these though (and to continue the story, you NEED to participate in at least SIX or have a buddy who already did that for you). A window of 10 minutes at the start of every hour is all you have to waypoint to the hot zone and once there expect to be way pointing around more to stop the gazillion foes warping in. Thank the gods Kiel won with her cheaper WP costs!

If you miss the entry window you will be sitting on your hands for 50 minutes, being left out and simply "waiting to have fun". GW2 likes introducing mechanics where you wait to have fun. They really are carefully going through that first manifesto and breaking every point they had. One of the achievements needs you to participate in 13 at the minimum (13 hours on the hour) but likely it will be more since you need to luck out and get 13 unique zones.

Fortunately the rewards are pretty good, better I think than the Crown Pavillion circuit but that may look more appealing after Kiel's WP reduction runs out after the next few weeks. I know I'll be participating as much as I can, that's for sure. Never had as much gold as now, yet I still don't have enough for a commander tag. I'm poor. :(

Mabi improving Guildwars 2

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

For some reason GW2 no longer lets me log on to their forum... I wonder why. Anyway, I feel that they can take a leaf out of Mabinogi on ways to improve the game. Recently they've been adding basic musical instruments into the game which is pretty good, unfortunately they are cash shop items though making them not as accessible to the general public and are a far cry from what you can achieve with the instruments in Mabi. Also I feel they missed out on a good opportunity with those balloon rides being instant teleporters as opposed to actual floating dirigibles that people can fly in, even if they were just "on tracks" to begin with.

Mounts of any sort would be a good addition actually, especially the flying kind. I imagine that would cheapen most jumping puzzles though. "Music and mounts are not needed," I hear you say. True, but they would add another factor to the game. One I think that would be positive, especially when you can do things like this.

They also should put more silly attires in their store, as well as let people fight in "town clothes". If the population of Mabi is anything to go by then at least half the players would prefer to be dressed in cat, cow, or penguin costumes while doing everything from lazily fishing at a stream to fighting giant dragons. Could be an untapped market there! They would also look incredibly cute. :3

Lastly the Living Story in GW2 updates every two weeks with temporary content to generally mixed reviews. Mabinogi also has temporary events  every two weeks that keeps the world "changing" but in addition adds story content in a more permanent fashion in the form of Generation quests. This may simply be possible on how they structured their game though. Sure, it means some NPCs can be seen or not seen based on where people are up to storywise which creates the odd occurence of player A interacting with something player B cannot see (and thrown into instances for story based combat) but on the whole it still works pretty well. If GW2 incorporates this it would certainly lessen the rushed feeling some people are getting at the very least.

Treasures of the Crown Pavillion

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

Been playing lots of GW2 lately due to this update mainly because of the amount of gold I'm getting zerging around the Crown Pavillion, and when there is no zerg - upstairs in the arena. I'm not the most efficient farmer but in comparison to my normal income in the game this its like I won the lottery. During my "balloon hunt" I secured Noxious Castrum in Fireheart Rise solo and decided to buy 500 units of deployable mortars as my reward and  have used up half so far in the Pavillion. Their mileage varies, some being destroyed quick or shooting (automatic) in useless directions but when placed properly they sure net me a lot of extra loot!

Other people have been bringing in ember pets or ogre whistles which also help them out (more so in the solo arenas) but the best I've seen is people intentionally TWO manning "solo" arenas. I think they queue up to fight the same guy then one of them runs faaaaar away which then teleports them in together to face one opponent. These two guys fought the Norn and the Dog as a pair and then went in together to face subject 7.

Wonder if they both get rewarded?

Of course it is very bad when two people unintentionally drop into the same arena with different matchups because it seems that both bosses spawn! I'm not talking about the crowd favourite gambit either. I'm talking about Liadri + Dead Eye Dunwell combo. So... just dodge the shadow falls, shades, sniper shot and avoid the mines all at the same time. Goes without saying the two fellas that went in didn't last that long. :P

I also was fortunate enough to get a Royal Pass during a zerg run. This little scroll (which expires over time unfortunately) acts as an instant teleport to the Royal Terrace that really does hold all the handy vendors (except black lion traders) in a tiny area. Crafting stations, bank, guild utilities, a mystic forge and most importantly an asura gate that lets you decide where to go via dialogue prompt. Basically it removes the need for Lion's Arch entirely, and I am still hoping they nuke that city and all its residents into the dirt - sooner rather than later. If you have no royal pass, then just hop to the borderlands -> shop -> drop to character select -> pick same guy to reappear where you last were (prior to borderlands) for a similar experience.

Next update is the Queen's Speech where the "villain" who many assume is Scarlet and whom I believe to be Trahearne's evil gender swapped twin from the steam dimension will no doubt cause a minor disturbance. I'll probably take a look but in the end the path of least resistance to lots of gold will always win out. I also suspect another armor tier will be coming in again due to the current abundance of mithril ore (literally cheaper than carrots at the moment). Lastly I'm still wondering why Liadri didn't just slay Zhaitan on her own and save us all the trouble? They sort of break their own lore by adding ridiculously powerful NPCs in the world like that. Or... she couldn't be bothered doing that but is ok fighting as a spectacle in the arena? Guess she's just an attention whore.

Disquiet Week

Been pretty silent on the blog this week (mainly for one reason below) so I thought I'd post about a few other games I've come across on my travels.

Ultima Forever
Being a big UO fan I was keeping my hopes up for this one, despite the changes to the realm and the simplification of the game. Now it is finally out and guess what? I can't play it. Yep, they decided to not release it for PC instead going for mobile devices. That's nice, except I don't play games on anything BUT PC. Guess I'm the minority now. Oh well - I suppose it was just not meant to be.

Age of Wushu
After my previous write up (featuring castration!) I decided to give the game the benefit of the doubt and downloaded it via a painfully slow link on their website. What's up with that? It's like they don't want people to play. Age of Conan was a bigger download but finished faster? Anyway the first few screens leave a truck load to be desired. Mabinogi has a better login screen, seriously (Mabinogi also recently got guns... and vespas! o_O). On to the game itself and the graphics and animations seem to be pretty good if you can get past all the people flying around (age of wire-fu). The skill system which is much like Mabi where you train them individually would probably work well too.

However I just couldn't get into it. Maybe because the screen is cluttered with names, clunky controls, or maybe because everything is so reading intensive - even skill names and stances are almost small sentences like "Swallow the Whale". It didn't help that latency is an issue as well. One of the tutorial quests is to learn blocking. Basically you tell an NPC you are ready and press right mouse to block. He punched me three times in the face before it registered that yes, I was -actually- blocking already. I'll try it out a bit more sometime to see if it improves but my first impressions aren't good.

Age of Conan
I've occasionally been posting about this and it seems I've run into the forseen lack of content (solo content anyway) to do at higher levels. Not really a bad thing since it IS an MMORPG after all, but being a loner on a free pvp world does make it a bit more challenging to do group content. They don't joke around about group content either. One of the early ones past Tortage is to defeat a Cock Handler (as in chickens and roosters you gutter minded people). He's only around the mid level 20's. I still can't beat him with my level 51, which is where I think I'll leave my "test"(?) character for now. Should be interesting to see if I get a free level 50 in a few months.

Card Hunter
Tobold has been championing this browser based, tactical game of nostalgia for awhile now. Sorry to say it's not really my cup of tea, but hey it works and it's free. Just don't expect XCOM quality stuff from it, nor any meaningful story to tie all your battles together.

Oh no. A 2 dimensional dragon.

Meanwhile, back at the Queen's Gauntlet in Guildwars 2... "DAMN YOU LIADRI!!!!!" >.<