Hearth, Home, Hammer - Talking Myself Into The Latest Updates For Valheim And Guild Wars 2

It's surprising sometimes how the prospect of new content for a game you're playing doesn't set your heart racing the way you'd expect. Or my heart. I should say mine, I guess. Maybe it does yours. I wouldn't know. Do feel free to share with group in the comments.

Several games I play regularly have major updates or expansions on the way and my level of interest and excitement seems to be swinging wildly and unpredictably between them. 

I found myself unaccountably enthused by EverQuest II's relatively slight pre-expansion event this week, spending a couple of hours doing some very basic repeatable quests and getting my Swashbuckler the first twenty levels of artisan crafting required to set her on the path to becoming a master jeweller.

I could have done that at any time but somehow the spurious connection to an upcoming expansion I'm keen to play made it seem more appealing than just running through the familiar, albeit excellent, introductory tradeskill questline. 

Why I'm quite so keen to see EQII's Visions of Vetrovia but distinctly meh on Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons is a good question. I'm glad I asked it.

On paper, I ought to be more fired up for EoD. It's only GW2's third expansion while VoV is EQII's eighteenth (!). ArenaNet only make an expansion when NCSoft bully them into it whereas Daybreak pop one out every December whether you want it or not, like an elderly aunt knitting yet another pair of seasonal socks.

It's not even as though I can claim what's coming in Visions of Vetrovia is more to my taste. I have no idea what's in it. I can guess. It's probably "more of the same", but that just about describes what's in End of Dragons, too. 

I guess you could argue that means I like what EQII does more than what GW2 does but I don't think that would stand up to close scrutiny. I play more GW2, after all. I certainly complain a lot more about it, too, but mostly that's because ANet is roughly ten times the size of Darkpaw and I think they need to be held to a different level of expectation - and execution - entirely.

Based on what the EQII team does manage to get out, year after year, I can only imagine what they could do if they had ANet's resources. Of course, bitter experience suggests that, beyond a certain point, the more money and people an mmorpg has to play with, the less-satisfying the end result. And the longer it is before we see it. Just look at World of Warcraft. Or Star Citizen.

Small teams don't always mean great updates, though. Of course they don't. Valheim's much-hyped Hearth and Home is out today. I'm patching it as I type this. It's been half a year and more in the making and once again I'm struggling to summon up much enthusiasm for it. 

Oh, wait! I've patched it already. It was 180mb. It took about ten seconds. I forgot just how tiny Valheim's footprint is. I would log in to see what's in it but everything I've read so far has had the effect of making me less keen to play than before. 

I'll run through a few of the highlights. My favorite weapon, the bow, is getting a nerf because it's deemed to be overpowered. Guys? Guys??  That's why it's my favorite. 

Blocking gets a lot of attention, which is either not going to affect me at all or annoy me a lot. I never block in Valheim, never having found the need to and I definitely won't be happy if it turns out they've made it so I have to start.

You can name animals you tame. I've never tamed an animal. I thought about it but even though I like pet classes in other games, the methodology in Valheim didn't seem very appealing. I don't think not being able to name my boars before I slaughtered them was really at the root of my lack of interest.

I won't go through all the changes line by line. I'll save my commentary for when I've experienced the new build in person. If I do. I haven't logged into Valheim since May and I don't feel the urge to log in coming on now.

Part of that is that Valheim very much feels like a winter game to me. I played 380 hours of viking make-believe from February through April but as soon as the spring came I stopped. I will go back but it's still too warm and sunny outside just now. 

When I do, I'll have to decide whether to carry on from where I left off or start over from scratch. Developers Iron Gate are keen we should all do the latter. I should be happy, what with my long history of starting over (and over) on new servers in various mmorpgs but Valheim isn't an mmorpg. 

 

Among other things, it's a building game and I spent at least half of those 380 hours setting up my various homes and the portal network between them. That was, to a large extent, the point of it all. To drop all that just to see some new stuff , much of which I don't even want (I categorically guarantee I will never make my viking vomit.) seems like a big ask.

I'll might compromise by moving my levelled-up character to a fresh world and creating a new character for the old one. They only have to live there, after all. They won't need to do anything much. We'll see. I've kind of talked my own enthusiasm up just by writing this post.

Going back to GW2, my interest in End of Dragons got a small boost today with the release of the latest new Elite Specialization (aka sub-class or, as I would have it, Class). I haven't paid much attention to the five announced so far because although I have all of the classes the only ones I ever play with any attention are Ranger and Elementalist. 

Ranger is still under wraps but the new Elementalist spec is called the Catalyst (Bleh!) and the new weapon is the hammer (Yay!). The reason I like the choice of the hammer for the weapon is simple: you can see a hammer. 

To my mind, one of the huge problems GW2 has, as a game with a quasi-progression model based almost entirely on appearance, particularly the appearance of weapons, is that almost all the weapons are too small or too close to the body to stand out. Daggers, symbols, torches, scepters, focuses (Or focii, which no-one says.), warhorns... they're all hard to see, in or out of combat. Even axes, swords and shortbows don't really show up well.

Only the really big two-handers seem to make an impression: staffs (Or staves, which, again, no-one ever says.), greatswords and longbows are the only three weapons I ever bother with for looks because they're the only ones I can make out on screen. Also shields, I suppose, but shields are a terrible choice for anything other than looks.

I am oddly excited about the prospect of my three Eles bouncing around waving giant hammers, especially the two Asuras. I have quite a few unclaimed weapon chests in the bank, where I already had the staff, greatsword and longbow from the set and couldn't see any point in the rest. I'm going to go in and claim all the hammers from those!

There's a "beta" for the next three Elite Specs, Elementalist, Warrior and Revenant, coming soon. I didn't bother with the last one but I'll give this one a look. 

There's also a much more significant beta, one that deserves to go without the sarcastic quotes, for the long, long, long awaited (or feared) Alliances revamp for World vs World. The official post on that is epic in length, packed with detail and very well-judged in tone, two out of three of which are almost unheard-of in the sporadic, patchy history of ANet's communication with the WvW playerbase. 

I was very skeptical about the whole thing and I still am but I was also very cynical, which now I might not be, or not as much, at least. I still think it will most likely be a chaotic shambles but I'm willing to give the people working on it the benefit of the doubt: I now believe it will be a well-meaning chaotic shambles.

As with Valheim, I won't speculate further until I've seen it in person. The test starts next Friday (Not tomorrow, the one after that. Okay, the 24th. Of September. 2021. Happy now?) and runs for a week. I will be playing and most likely posting about it.

Finally in this liturgy of ought-to-be exciting stuff for games I play or am on record as wanting to play, there's the much-delayed launch of Amazon's New World on the 28th. Right in the middle of that WvW beta test, although by then I should have seen enough to make my mind up. 

I was red-hot to play New World a year ago. Actually, two years ago, which is when I pre-ordered it (December 2019). I've gone off the boil a bit but I can feel the heat building again now we're getting close. 

It's good timing in a way because I've run out of steam with Bless Unleashed, almost entirely because of that boss fight I mentioned with the quick time events. I am one hundred per cent certain I can beat the boss but I am not at all sure I can do the quick time events simply because of lag issues. I've done several other Field Bosses recently with similar events and failed them because of latency. 

I am flat-out unwilling to go through the fifteen minutes of attrition to get the Boss's hit points to the point where the final quick time event kicks in only to have a lag spike leave me dead in the dust. If it wasn't an automatic one-shot kill on failure it would be annoying enough but to have to restart from scratch every time the connection wobbles is too much of a risk. So I've stopped playing. 

A rambling post to represent my wavering state of mind. At least there's plenty going on, even if much of it isn't exactly what I'd have chosen. And putting my thoughts down in writing has had the unexpected effect of raising my interest and enthusiasm for all the games I've mentioned.

That's the power of blogging for you! Well, for me.

Don't let's start all that again.

Black Cat Moan

I feel I ought to say something about the current "beta test" that's running in Guild Wars 2. I don't want to say anything about it. I don't have anything to say about it. I just feel I should.

I've been posting about GW2 since well before launch and I seem to have fallen into a pattern of reviewing, or at least commenting on, just about every update and event the game throws at me. If you maintain a gaming blog for long enough, this is a thing that happens. 

I absolutely did not start out intending to keep up a running commentary on certain mmorpgs like some kind of self-appointed sports announcer or game historian. I thought I'd post neat little vignettes about niche topics that interested or amused me, which is basically what I used to do when I wrote articles for comics fanzines in the 1980s.

The thing is, back then I only had to come up with a couple of topics each month at most. The zines I wrote for appeared at best bi-monthly or quarterly but schedules were flexible to be polite about it. Some months I was lucky if anyone was publishing anything at all. I certainly didn't have to come up with something fresh to write about every other day, week in, week out, year after year.

I couldn't have, then, even if anyone had asked me, which they didn't. Times change, though. As must have become obvious long since, I don't find it too much of a struggle, doing it now. I could probably give you five hundred words on why I have a twenty-year old box of fireworks in a 1950s kitchen cabinet in my front room. 

I mean, just read that sentence back. A sentence I pulled out of my ass thin air without preparation or forethought, by the way. Why fireworks? Why a quarter of a century? Why a kitchen cabinet? Why 1950s? Why the front room? 

It's all in there. This stuff writes itself. I don't claim it's worth reading when it's written but getting words on the page? That's easy.

And that's the kernel of the problem, if we're going to call it a problem. If you sit in front of a blank screen with no pre-conceived plan, the stuff that ends up on the page is going to be whatever's going on around you, what's in your mind, how you live, the things you do, the things you think about - the ambient, existential hum that surrounds us all. 

If you play games it's going to be those games. And once you get started, chronicling those games, it gets to be a habit, then a responsibility. It happens faster than you'd imagine.

Back up a minute. If that's how it works, how did fireworks get in here? Isn't that a bit of a weird, random call? Can't be any fireworks in my immediate environment at eleven on a Thursday morning, surely?

Well, it was like this. I wrote the first sentence of the third paragraph in this post and then I thought "I need an example to prove that's true or else I'm going to sound like I'm just making stuff up". Not that there's anything wrong with making stuff up but that's a different post.

I started thinking about that thing you do at school on a Wednesday afternoon, late in the term, where the teacher writes some bland phrase on the board and you're supposed to sit quietly for forty minutes writing something no-one's ever going to read. Classic burnout teaching.

It was often something like a "The life of a penny" or "My back yard". Not that anyone in my childhood would ever have said "yard" when they meant "garden". I'm not sure any of  this ever happened, now I see it in print. Maybe it's just in books and old children's TV shows. This is what I meant by making things up. 

Anyway, whether it did or it didn't we're there now.

The first thing I thought of was safety matches. I have no idea why. No, wait, yes I do. It was because I was thinking how boring a way to get kids to write it was and that made me think of other childhood hobbies that are infamously boring, which made me think of collecting cheese labels, a thing I often saw quoted as the definition of pointless obsession when I was growing up. 

Collecting cheese labels made me think of collecting matchbox labels which made me think of matches which made me think of "Which is better? Safety matches or regular matches?" as a topic, which is something I did once hear being discussed. 

I started to think about that but I bored myself before I even got going, which is presumably why my mind fluttered onto what you might do with the matches, safety or not, and that put the idea of fireworks into my mind.

"Fireworks" immediately made me remember I have a box of Black Cat fireworks in the white 1950s
kitchen cabinet with yellow trim that we have in the front room downstairs. I bought them back when the children were quite small, meaning to set them off in the back garden (never "yard") for Bonfire Night but on the day it was raining so we did something else.

The fireworks stayed in the cupboard and for a few years I kept meaning to use them but I never did, probably because we started going to organized displays instead of doing our own thing. Honestly, I don't remember. For whatever reason, the fireworks stayed there and after a time I started to think they might be so old they would be dangerous to use so they went on staying there.

Every year I wonder whether to get them out and give them a go but it always seems like more trouble than it's worth and anyway now I kind of like having them being so old and never used. Still with the shrink wrap intact. It makes them feel vintage. Can you even get Black Cat fireworks any more? 

Feeling vintage is why we have a kitchen cabinet in our front room, by the way. I was visiting my mother not that long before I bought those fireworks and she happened to mention how someone she knew was about to get rid of a 1950s kitchen cabinet, one of the ones that's six foot tall with glass doors and an enameled shelf that slides out. 

It sounded exactly like the one in our kitchen when I was growing up. Mrs Bhagpuss and I had not long moved into the house we're still living in now and we had plenty of space to fill. I asked my mother if she thought her friend would let me have the cabinet and she said she'd ask. A week later it was in our house.

Of course, it wouldn't fit in the kitchen. The kitchen has fitted units. There's no space for a six foot tall free standing cabinet. But the front room happened to have an alcove into which the cabinet fits perfectly and since it was a classic, retro design I thought it would look good there. Not that we ever use that room for anything but storage but still - front room, eh? A piece of furniture has to believe it's made it when it gets that spot, right?

All of which demonstrates two things:

1. I really can turnout 500 words about anything. Closer to 800 in this case.
   
2. I'd rather write about old furniture than GW2's latest Elite Specializations

Guild Wars 2 currently has, I think, twenty-seven "specs" for its nine official classes. Each class (or "Profession" as absolutely no-one but the devs ever call them) has the original Core version, each of which itself splits into far too many builds to count. 

Each of the two expansions then adds another Elite Specialization to every Core class. Most people think of those Elite Specs as though they were classes and the developers endorse that by referring to them and "balancing" them as if that's what they were. They should, because that's what they are.

Just as I seem to have locked myself into posting about every minor event in the game, so the devs have found themselves trapped in a recurring cycle of class escalation. Players expect new Elite Specs with every expansion, just as they expect new Legendary weapons. If ArenaNet attempted to foist an expansion on its core audience without both those things it would spell the end of the game.

Unfortunately, while the game can handle any number of spectacularly flashy weapons, since every last one of them has the exact same functionality, it cannot possibly cope with the ever-increasing number of classes, particularly given that, in order to be accepted by the people paying the bills, every new class needs to be demonstrably better - or at the very least different - to the ones we already have.

I am not the target market for any of this. I've been playing Guild Wars 2 as my main mmorpg for nine straight years now. I have three accounts and nineteen max level characters. I play every day. I do not own a Legendary weapon and nor do I want one. 

More cogently for this post, although I have characters of all the original eight classes, plus the ninth, Revenant (the only official new class, added with the first expansion, Heart of Thorns) I have only bothered to acquire fewer than half of the Elite Specs and of those I regularly play just one, the Tempest.

I know what I like. I tried a lot of variations and builds as I levelled in GW2 and fairly early on I settled for the Elementalist as my profession of choice. When Heart of Thorns arrived I tried out most of Elite Specs - Dragonhunter, Reaper, Scrapper, Chronomancer, Daredevil, Druid and Tempest - and did the Ascended Weapon quests (Please stop calling them quests!ANet) for several. 

It was fun. I like HoT and I like the weapon quests. I even played some of the specs for a bit - Reaper and Druid particularly. In the end, though, the only one that stuck was the Tempest. 

When Path of Fire arrived I was hoping for more of the same but I didn't get on with that expansion at all. I only tried three of the new elites - Firebrand and Scourge, because they were absolutely required in WvW at various times if you were playing a Guardian or a Necromancer and wanted people not to yell at you in zergs - and Weaver, the Elementalist elite.

I quite liked Weaver but it took a lot more effort and concentration to play than Tempest. Commanders continued to at least tolerate Tempests in WvW (and indeed Core Elementalists, too) so I dropped Weaver and carried on as I was. I like setting stuff on fire then running away, what can I tell you?

When End of Dragons, the third GW2 expansion arrives next year I'll try the new Elementalist Elite Spec. Can't tell you what it's called yet. It hasn't been announced. Who knows, maybe it will even be good enough to persuade me to replace Tempest with whatever it turns out to be.

I'll probably even give it a run when the beta process (aka promotional event) that features the Elementalist arrives. Might as well get myself vaccinated against disappointment early, I guess.

What I am not going to do, though, is make a whole series of temporary, disposable characters of classes I barely play just to see some Elite Specs I'll never use. Not out of any misplaced sense of obligation. Not even to get a post out of it, something I can manage perfectly well without even logging in  other than to get a screenshot of the blank slots. 

 Still, felt I should say something about it, if only out of duty and habit. So I have.

Too Much Information

The last couple of weeks felt like something of a fallow period for the blog but this morning I woke up with enough ideas for several posts. I considered doing one of those portmanteu pieces with bullet points for unrelated topics but then I thought why not do several short pieces and  pad my post count for the month give each of the topics room to breathe?

Yesterday saw two of the most pointlessly overinflated sets of patch notes I have ever refused to read. Guild Wars 2 dropped its long-threatened "Competetive Content Update", Call To Glory, while EverQuest II unlocked the gates for the delayed opening of the Echoes of Faydwer expansion on the prgression server Kaladim.

The GW2 update brings a number of things to the game, including the long, long promised Swiss Tournaments for PvP and a new Reward track giving a skin for the Warclaw mount in WvW. Mostly what it does, though, is attempt a combat reset for both player vs player modes by way of draconian nerfs across the board to all classes.

The plan is to slow everything down, bringing fights back to the supposedly manageable level of a few years ago before Elite specifications from two expansions turned power creep into power sprint and fights degenerated into a competition to see who could hit their one shot skill macro fastest.

I can't say I'd really noticed. I play a Staff Elementalist in World vs World on all three accounts. I play that combo whether it's in fashion (like it was when Meteor Shower was buffed to one-shot whole zergs) or out (almost all the rest of the time). I might occasionally tweak a skill here or change a rune there but mostly I'm playing the same build on all three characters that I was playing before Heart of Thorns.

Consequently, even though I have getting on for twenty Level 80s covering all eight classes I only bothered to read the section on Elementalists, and then only the skills I use. Just as well. It's an opening paragraph and twenty-five detail entries. All the other classes get the same, often more.

The gist is "all your attacks do a lot less damage". They could have left it at that as far as I'm concerned. I went and soloed a Tier 1 camp this morning to see how bad it was (it was too busy last night - I literally couldn't take a camp without three people arriving out of nowhere to "help").

It was noticeably slower and I did have to back off and heal but I was still able to run into the middle, fire off everything as soon as it came off cooldown and clear the lot, so I'm happy. I wouldn't fancy trying it on an upgraded camp but even those should be fine if I go back to the old ways (aka playing properly) and actually pull stuff .

There was one change to Elementalist I really liked. ANet have buffed the heck out of the summoned pets. They now last two minutes on a forty second cooldown, meaning you can have one up most of the time if you want. It almost turns GW2's Elementalist into EQ's Magician, which works for me.

Even though I personally don't feel any need to read the nit-picking detail of every change to every ability of every class I play I can at least see the logic of tabulating them all out for everyone to study. Something will matter to someone in every case, I'm sure.

The same surely cannot be said about the torrent of detail unleashed in EQII's patch notes yesterday. Here's a sample:

• Wind-Scoured Confessor's Bracelet: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 55, Primary Att increased by 6, Stamina increased by 6, Potency increased by 0.5, Crit Bonus increased by 0.2, Crit Chance increased by 0.5, DPS increased by 1.8, Offensive Skills increased by 3, Base Resists increased by 1.
• Wind-Scoured Stalker's Bracelet: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 55, Primary Att increased by 6, Stamina increased by 6, Potency increased by 0.5, Crit Bonus increased by 0.2, Crit Chance increased by 0.5, DPS increased by 1.8, Offensive Skills increased by 3, Base Resists increased by 1.
• Facet of the Silver Dragon: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 55, Primary Att increased by 7, Stamina increased by 7, Potency increased by 0.5, Crit Bonus increased by 0.2, Crit Chance increased by 0.5, DPS increased by 2, Hate increased by 1.9, Mitigation Increase increased by 0.9, Defensive Skills increased by 2, Base Resists increased by 1.
• Earring of the Silver Dragon: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 55, Primary Att increased by 7, Stamina increased by 7, Potency increased by 0.5, Crit Bonus increased by 0.2, Crit Chance increased by 0.5, Haste increased by 1.4, Offensive Skills increased by 2, Base Resists increased by 1.
• Earhoop of the Silver Dragon: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 55, Primary Att increased by 7, Stamina increased by 7, Potency increased by 0.5, Crit Bonus increased by 0.2, Crit Chance increased by 0.5, DPS increased by 2, Offensive Skills increased by 2, Base Resists increased by 1.
• Hoop of the Silver Dragon: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 55, Primary Att increased by 7, Stamina increased by 7, Potency increased by 0.5, Crit Bonus increased by 0.2, Crit Chance increased by 0.5, Haste increased by 1.4, Offensive Skills increased by 2, Base Resists increased by 1.
• Medallion of the Sky Warrior: Requires Echoes of Faydwer expansion, Equip level is now 60, Primary Att increased by 13, Stamina increased by 13, Potency increased by 1.3, Crit Bonus increased by 0.4, Crit Chance increased by 1, DPS increased by 3.8, Hate increased by 3.8, Block increased by 1, Defensive Skills increased by 6.

That is just a tiny fraction.  A tiny, tiny fraction. Seriously, it has to be seen to be disbelieved. It goes on and on and on like that for pages. It took me fifty seconds just to scroll through it at top speed using the mouse wheel! I am not exaggerating - I literally just timed it.

Who needs to know this stuff? I'm sure someone working at Darkpaw does but players? I mean, it's reassuring to know they've put that much effort into re-itemizing and balancing EoF for the Time Limited Expansion server.. I guess... but I would have taken their word for it. I didn't need to see every single change in full.

Imagine being the one who had to type all that out. Then imagine having to proofread it. I'm going to have nightmares.

I know, I know. I shouldn't complain. It's supposed to be vague patch notes we get all twisted about not over-detailed ones. But I like patch notes. I look forward to reading them. Getting something like that is like ordering a steak and the waiter bringing a whole live cow. Not that I'd do that, being a vegetarian. Alright, pescatarian, but that's such a made-up word.

It has at least made me consider playing on Kaladim again. I have a level thirtysomething I was playing there - a Dirge, I think she is -  and I'm very well aware that EoF is a major gear reset. I could do a couple of sessions with her, questing in Butcherblock, and probably replace everything she's wearing.

I'm not sure I want to, though. I take SynCaine's point on progression but sometimes it feels just a little bit too obvious to be enjoyable. Still, good to have the option and EoF was a decent expansion.

Also, if anyone was thinking of jumping onto Kaladim and making a character for a bit of prog server fun, now would be the best of times to do it. Faydwer comes with a complete new starting area, a new race and a full leveling path. There will be lots of people starting over, plenty of groups, a buzz in the air (literally, with all the bixies), all that good stuff.

I think I might just have talked myself into it...

What Time Do You Make it, Bero?

This is the clock Mrs Bhagpuss made me for my birthday.

On the left, in blue, is my Asura Elementalist. On the right, in pink, is Mrs Bhagpuss's Asura Elementalist. Fero and Bero for short (as if Asuras could be anything else).

The shape of the clock denotes their home city, Rata Sum, which is all angles. What the keys represent I'm not exactly sure...

There are also tiny lights that look like the stars around Rata Sum as it floats in space only lights are phenomenally difficult to photograph if you only have a digital camcorder that you don't really know how to use to take stills.

I hung the clock quite high on the wall directly behind my monitor where I can look up and see it. It looks fantastic. I tried to take a picture of it in situ but the result was... less than fantastic. I think I need a better camera. Or to learn how to use this one.

Anyway, terrible photos notwithstanding, it's an amazing present. All those hours at the crafting tables in Lion's Arch really paid off!

Playing It By Ear: GW2

Last weekend ANet threw open the gates to the Crystal Desert. Metaphorical gates only. Not, sadly, the actual, huge gates that stand so imposingly and implacably outside the city of  Ebonhawke.

Those massive gates were constructed on the orders of Queen Jennah to bar the route southwards through the desert to Elona, after Destiny's Edge's attempt to kill the Elder Dragon, Kralkatorrik, failed. A more egregious example of bolting the stable doors after the dragon has bolted is hard to imagine.

It takes some beating in the desperate face-saving stakes, too. Having wrecked a perfectly good plan that would have worked if she'd held her nerve, having gotten Snaff killed and half of Ascalon Branded, Jennah apparently thought a big public works project was all it would take to restore confidence in her judgment and authority.

Even as I write this, I find it quite astonishing how annoyed - almost angry - I get just thinking about it all, particularly Logan's desperately poor decision-making and Jennah's imperious arrogance.

Herein lies one of GW2's huge problems: the much-maligned story has huge emotional heft if - and only if - it has been experienced in media outside of the game. By the standards of genre literature (far less those of literature per se) the novel in which all this happens, Edge of Destiny, is little more than a classic potboiler. The prose style is professional in the way of competent work made for hire and it zips along like the shooting script for a movie. No claims could be made on its behalf beyond efficiency and purity of function but those are claims that far outstrip anything ever seen in the story within the game itself.

Nevertheless, I have a strong and lasting affinity to certain characters in the milieu, purely because I read that unexceptional novel. It's why I share Rytlock's deep distrust and suspicion of Logan. It's why I do not trust Jennah in any way, shape or form. It's why I feel Zojja's entirely justified bitterness and anger and it's why I have more faith and affection for Caith than anything she's ever been seen to have done in the Living Story could possibly support.

It goes on. Others, who played through Guild Wars Campaigns over the years (and no doubt read and absorbed a deal of out-of-game lore and story, too), have had little patience or sympathy with the raft of new characters introduced to supersede the familiar faces from that era. The emotional attachments they developed to the characters and lore that ANet, apparently intentionally, chose either to ignore or, worse, to trash in favor of an entirely new cast and direction remain far stronger than any bonds the new, in-game material has been able to forge .

It's taken years for even a grudging affection for one or two of those new actors to build. Possibly only Taimi has a real following, even now. Canach, maybe. The best the rest achieve is tolerance. Maybe some curiosity. Jory and Kas, for example, have one of those soap-opera relationships that make you feel guilty for wanting to know how it's going to turns out (badly, of course). You want to look away but you can't.

All of that keys in to why it is that I've wanted to go through those Ebonhawke gates ever since I first saw them, barred to me, five years ago. When we learned the Path of Fire lay in the same direction I thought we might start our journey there but it seems that's not to be. Instead, we're set to take yet another cut-scene trip on yet another unfeasibly buoyant airship.

All of this went through my mind as I sorted the screenshots from this week's Path of Fire beta. Yes, there's another one. You may have missed it. I nearly did, albeit intentionally. For this one no airships are involved, let alone any opening gates.

It all takes place in either PvP or WvW zones, where you can trial the new Elite weapon skills and specifications for each class. I wasn't going to bother with it at all until I read Jeromai's post, in which he tells us he's not "super keen" either, then goes on to write over two thousand detailed, insightful words about his experience. My interest very mildly piqued I thought I might as well at least take a quick glance...

The first surprise was the loading screen, shown at the top of this post. I'd completely forgotten that ANet recently revamped the entire PvP lobby. Instead of a long-familiar scrubby afterthought it's now as visually sumptuous as any other GW2 location, It has waypoints and POIs and everything. Make GW2 another one to add to Massively OP's list of MMOs obsessed with floating islands.

Distracted, I wandered about exploring for a while looking at the old new stuff before getting around to looking at the new new stuff. I am not going to say much about the PoF elites in any detail - Jeromai covered that already - but I am going to echo his tone, when he says

... the prospect of having to learn too many new tricks is a little scary and intimidating, and not a little depressing...

Yes, it's all a bit much, isn't it? I mean, I love the chaotic rush of a new MMO expansion, when all the old certainties get thrown into the air and come down in tatters and for a brief, breathless while no-one knows any better than anyone else, but there's always a hangover after that party..

That iconoclasm is the good part (the best of which I will miss this time round because the pot will be four days off the boil by the time I get a taste). The less-good comes with the construction of the New Certainties that have to last us for the next two years, or at least until some nervous dev pulls the nerf alarm.

At some point, probably a lot sooner than I'd like, there will be a new Meta for every class. In GW2, that's not merely a metaphor: there will actually be an official New Meta. It will be posted at MetaBattle and you will be asked by any number of authority figures (Guild Leaders, Raid Organizers, WvW Commanders) to go read it and apply it to your character.

Therafter, if you choose to ignore such advice, you will be "off meta" and can expect to be treated accordingly. If you want to get old-style groups - although probably the only place that happens nowadays is for Fractals, I guess - or if you want to raid or do ranked PvP or run with a "serious" WvW guild, there will be homework. And practice.

Fortunately, GW2 remains an extremely open, forgiving environment for mavericks, self-starters, bullheads and slackers. If you solo, you can forget the Meta - any Meta - entirely; it means absolutely nothing to you; carry on as you were, no-one cares. Also, if you play GW2 as originally intended, hot-joining Dynamic Events, being a good ant, very little will change there, either. In the Zerg no-one knows your name - or your build.

The anonymity of crowds doesn't just apply to PvE. In five years of increasingly obsessive WvW play I have never, ever, not one single time, been called out for having the wrong build, class, gear or playstyle. People say it happens but I've never seen it happen to anyone, let alone experienced it myself.

It's not that there's no drive for efficiency. Commanders frequently ask for people to swap to, say, Guardians or Eles because they don't have as many as they'd like. And people do swap, willingly. I've just never heard any Commander ask a specific individual to change when they didn't want to anyway.

Certainly no-one has ever whispered me to suggest I stop running around as an Engineer, firing my Flamethrower randomly in all directions (as I do on my third account sometimes) and swap instead to a class or build that might actually be useful. Or even, failing that, swap to a class I have at least the shadow of an inkling how to play.

Consequently, I'm not going to go as far as Jeromai and say I feel intimidated or depressed by the new elites but I did find myself feeling a little ennui as I tried to read through the new Elementalist line, The Weaver. There's such a lot there to take in. Really, such a lot. I'm not sure I remember signing up for extra tuition.

Recent discussion on GW2 in this part of the Blogosphere has circled around how much more complex an MMO it is than it first appears. You don't by any means have to know or understand anything more than the absolute basics; you can play the game enjoyably without knowing much at all about builds or synergies, but it's becoming ever more apparent that if you do know those things, the game gets quite a lot easier.

There's a nuance to this that we all seem to miss. Jeromai alerted me to it when he described playing an Elementalist or an Engineer in GW2 as being "like playing the piano".

When we argue about what "playing" MMOs means, as we often do, the discussion tends to focus on the balance or imbalance between the dual concepts of play as "fun" and as "game"; no-one ever seems to notice that "play" has that third meaning.

Playing almost any video game is directly analogous to playing a musical instrument. It only takes a few minutes to pick up the basics but countless hours to become a virtuoso. Just to achieve basic competence requires dedication and practice and if you want to play in a group - well, you'll need to rehearse together.

Raids in MMOs add the possibility of playing in an orchestra and require the same degree of discipline. GW2's huge, sprawling open map events are more forgiving. Like the Rockin' 1000, the zerg can carry a few passengers and if one or two are off the beat, well, who's ever going to know?.

At a glance, though, getting to grips with a new PoF Elite spec doesn't look so much like learning a new tune as picking up a new instrument entirely. I don't know that I'm up for that. I can knock out a few tunes on the old elementalist joanna but I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to take up the harpsichord just yet!

Which isn't to say it doesn't all look rather intriguing. In the detail of The Weaver I see a lot of Stability uptime as well as some 50% super-speed and a lot of auto-condi cleanse. As someone who specializes in being slippery and not getting caught, that has real potential I'm keen to explore.

Just not yet. I'm going to skip this beta. I'm interested, yes, but I'm in no hurry. I think I'll wait until the music starts - for real.

Soloing In Heart Of Thorns : GW2

It's been a week now. We're past First Impressions. The dust is beginning to settle on the New Game Shine. Things are falling into a shape they'll hold for a while. It's still too early to stand back and take the cool view but one thing seems clear: Heart of Thorns may well be the best solo experience I've had in an MMORPG since Vanguard.

This first week has, arguably, been a better solo experience than the base game at launch three years ago, strong contender though that was. That's mostly because GW2 was wildly popular when it first arrived and "soloing" meant trying to get a hit in alongside the other fifty new players in your new starting map of choice. Here the world seems much less crowded and not just because of the Megaserver bug that left some maps almost empty for the first few days.

There's still plenty of rolling bubble play, if that's what you want, as Endgame Viable accurately describes. I've done some and loved it. It's GW2's signature gameplay after all. In a week where I've played almost all the hours available to me, though, zerging and massive-scale events have been merely the amuse-bouche to a banquet of top quality solo play.

This, I recognize, is not an opinion universally acknowledged. As I mentioned once before, MassivelyOP's GW2 columnist Tina Lauro adjudged soloing in the expansion "exceptionally difficult", an assessment some commenters on this forum thread would consider wildly optimistic.

Adventure this way!

So, why the extreme difference of opinion? Well, as usual. it all comes down to a definition of terms. To me, "soloing" in MMORPGs means having complete freedom to do whatever I choose, while having that choice meaningfully progress my character. It means walking out of the city gate into adventure, alone, and returning, who knows how much later, still alone but stronger, wiser, battle-scarred and proud.

To others, it seems, "soloing" means being able to do all the things without anyone's help. That's not a definition I'm willing to embrace but I'll accept right now that, for those who do, Heart of Thorns is not ideal. Alone you won't complete many events and certainly not any full event chains. You can start all the Hero Challenges you want but you won't often finish one on your own. Everywhere as you go there will be many times you'll have to run rather than stand and fight.

Then there's the question of class. It can't be denied that some GW2 professions (and builds) are better at going it alone than others. My Berserker Staff Ele is out there trying to prove otherwise but she's not making a great case so far.

Don't laugh. Spiky doesn't like it when you laugh.

I knew that from beta though and as the drop date drew near I looked at my extensive team and made a specific choice of who would take point. A while ago, for my own amusement, I created and leveled an Asuran Ranger who, at 80, I specced and equipped for maximum healing and survival. He can barely shoot his way out of a paper bag but he can take a licking like Timex. Until last week his main role has been comedy relief but cometh the hour, cometh the cat hat. He's been a superlative choice and he's not even a druid yet.

After preparation add experience to the mix. I've been soloing a long time. I cut my solo teeth in EverQuest back at the turn of the century. Maybe it's first love syndrome but for me EQ, these days usually cited as the archetype of Group Required Gaming, has always represented the apogee of solo play in a massively multiple setting. Vanguard perhaps surpassed it but only by being EQ in fancier pants.

The transferable skills you learn, soloing in EQ, are manifold. Patience, foremost. Pacing. Observation. Attention to your surroundings. Forward planning. Concentration. How to kite. Most importantly of all you learn to fear death.

Dying in EverQuest, back then, hurt. A single death could wipe out all the progress you'd made in a full session. More. At worst it could cost you not just your level but your corpse and everything on it.

All those hours quad-kiting Ulthorks had to pay off sometime.

There are those who claim they want those days back but I'm not one of them. Compared to the "good" old days Heart of Thorns is cake but still, compared instead to much we've come to expect of late, it feels unforgiving. It's unbending, uncaring and harsh and at the same time refreshing, exhillarating, even thrilling. It's a precarious balance but I believe ANet nailed it.

That said, the decision to open with perhaps the most awkward and un-navigable of the maps to travel without the new movement skills could be called perverse. Verdant Brink is an entirely different proposition with several ranks of gliding, jumping mushrooms and Nuhoch Wallows (they provide instant cross-map teleports) unlocked but players come to it blind, with none of that.

As an introduction to the new paradigms it's intense, overwhelming, and it's not surprising many balked. The intent seems to have been that we'd work our way diligently through the Personal Storyline as though it was some kind of hyper-extended tutorial. That way we'd open all the relevant skills as and when we needed them but, well, best intentions and all.

The decision to lock story chapters behind Masteries was widely perceived as coercive, restrictive and downright frustrating, second only in unpopularity to locking the new Elite Specializations behind 400 Hero Points. We're all Commanders of the Pact, for Dwayna's sake! We don't need our hands held. Just let us have it all and have it now and we'll have at it.

Up or Down? Flip a coin.

Both of those mechanics have since been mildly nerfed but perhaps, as Pact Commanders, we should just have buttoned up and buckled down. There is a war on after all. In any event it was mostly moot for me. I haven't touched the Elite Specs yet. My trusty Exotics and familiar skills seem more than up to the new challenges and by the time my Personal Story reached the second map, Auric Basin, I'd opened waypoints all the way to Mordremoth's doorstep in Dragon's Stand.

Exploring is bittersweet sometimes. The storyline kept giving me reveals I'd already discovered. I knew the fate of Rata Novus days before it was explained to me in cut scenes and dialog. I could have told Taimi what we were walking into and saved us the trip. Still and all, I feel more connected to the narrative, not less, because I found my own path.

As well as the feasibility of travel and the viability of combat solo there's the matter of grind. Those who aren't enjoying HoT and even some who are put the need to grind xp for Masteries high among the negatives. It's a position for which I don't feel a great deal of empathy.

There is no agreed definition of "grind" in MMORPGs and there never will be. One person's content gate is another's content. What's hair-pulling frustration for him is a warm, relaxing bath for her.

That's per kill. And I don't even have everything running.

Familiarity is part of it. To many GW2 players these mechanics and processes are either something they've never encountered before or, worse, that they have and which they came to GW2 to escape. To me it's like meeting an old friend in an unexpected place.

In three years I've acquired a lot of "Boosters". Those little icons that pop out of chests and fill my banks, stacking up unused because until now I've had no call for them. Why would I need to boost my experience gain when xp already flows faster than I can find a use for it?

So I saved them for a rainy day and now it's monsoon season. Once again it's all so reminiscent of EQ or EQ2. Piling up the buffs, Birthday, Celebration, XP, food, utility, fireworks (yes, fireworks buff xp) then going hell-for-leather after anything that moves.

Just watch that xp fly. It's so satisfying. Exhausting after a couple of hours, sure, but in the way a really good workout is exhausting (not that I can remember what that feels like...). Grind? More like glow.

The expression "overgrown housecat" comes to mind.

Did I say going after anything that moves? That's not right. We're back to knowledge and observation again. Satisfying soloing rests on knowing your enemy, setting achievable goals and picking your targets. In a new environment that means experimenting and that's a big factor in the fun I've been having.

A lot of my time has been spent not just exploring for the sheer spectacle but for potential future profit. Each new creature needs to be tested to destruction - its or mine. That's how you learn that some Veterans are very much not like the others. Why Veteran jungle Spiders and Tigers are so pathetically weak I can't explain but they are. Take them three or four at a time. The xp tastes good.

Chakk, while deadly if you stand still and let them cover you with icky blue goo, are the kobold grunts of Tyria, rounded up and AE'd down. Motile mushrooms, on the other hand, are to be avoided at all times. There's no percentage in AEing an AEer, especially when they come in gangs with bombs.

Hop it, hat boy. It's necro time.

And so it goes. You pull, you fight, you assess. At need you retreat. The glider here is a lifesaver, literally. Every drop is a zone line. Fall, unfurl, escape, start over. And the upside of gliding down is often landing somewhere no-one's been for a while. Untouched mobs in GW2 accrue a bonus that builds and builds. With boosts, killing mobs no-one had disturbed for a good while, you can rake in more xp in one ten-second kill than you get for Gold contribution at the end of a ten minute event.

So, yes, this is solo heaven. For me, anyway. It can be for you. Pick the right class and build. Take your time preparing. Explore until you feel you know how the land lies. Learn your escape routes. Practice your tactics. When you feel ready go to your selected kill zone, pop those boosters and kill, kill, kill. It's a classic interpretation of the MMORPG solo experience and classics never go out of style.

Stand Well Back! Elementalist Coming Through! : GW2

"Not much chance of me going a hundred hours without making a new character somewhere"

Ah, how well I know me! As it happened it was less than a hundred minutes after I wrote the above that I found myself closing the character creation screen in GW2 for the twelfth time. The blank space in the line-up is filled. There's a new Asura in town.

I did think about other races. Charr, obviously; somehow, though, I have difficulty seeing the Charr as spellcasters. I think that has something to do with the Flame Legion and their seemingly infinite supply of "shamans"; most of whom actually seem to be elementalists stuck in Fire Attunement. I'd hate to get mistaken for one of them.

So, no Charr. Since the whole point of buying the new character slot was to get an Elementalist onto the nominated WvW account, Charr was out. Norn I also dismissed immediately. It's probably my least-favorite race to begin with and anyway the other Ele is a Norn. I'm substituting her not cloning her.

Don't think I picked the golem one before...

I considered Sylvari. I do have a mild desire to add a female Sylvari to the roster sometime. Mrs Bhagpuss has demonstrated, repeatedly, and with much variety, just how distinctive and elegant Sylvari can be made to appear, something you would never know from looking at the one example of the race on my roster, a stick-thin male Guardian whose dull green armor seems to grow on him like mouldy bark. It would be nice to have one distinguished-looking character among the gallery of clowns, nuns and ne'er-do-wells that stare out at me every time I log in.

The question is: is this really a good time to bring another Sylvari into the world? What with Scarlet's shenanigans, The Pale Tree in a coma, Caithe running off with the egg and that sociopath Canach curdling beside the least-trustworthy aristocrat in Tyria (a position for which there is much competition, let it be said...), well, the entire race has to be seen as suspect both from the perspective of players and Tyrians alike. After all, when your best option for a role model is Trahearne you know you're in trouble.

So no, not a good time for Sylvari. That leaves Human or Asura. The entire game has clearly been optimized around the human model so they have that going for them when it comes to looks but really, humans are quite dull. I play one in real life (not very well) so it's not much of a come-on to log in and play one in virtuality.

Lack of self-confidence is unknown in Asuran society.

All of which half-hearted option-pondering brought me back to exactly where I knew I'd end up: Asura. They're just so...uplifting. Your spirits rise as soon as you see one. Well, mine do. And there's really nothing to match the sight of half a dozen Asuras boiling off the waypoint  in answer to a map call to Bay, bouncing across the dock and into the water like so many snaggle-toothed superballs. If I'm going to be playing this fresh Elementalist in WvW I want to be a part of that.

The requisite nose-shortening and ear-pinning undertaken, Colleges chosen and projects selected (hoping this time I didn't yet again pick a combination that leads to the same "Personal Story " I got the last three times), it came time, finally, to step into Tyria. The intro/tutorial hasn't gotten any better over the years but it has at least gotten shorter or I've learned to skip. In a matter of minutes the little firebug was standing at the craft stations in Yak's Bend's Citadel going through the bank for xp scrolls.

I would like to level up a character through the new New Player Experience to see just how good, bad or indifferent it feels but  that's going to have to wait. This here is an Elementalist in in a hurry. Just show me the fast lane to 80.

In the bank were several Experience Scrolls, the ones that jump you straight to Level 20. She read one of those first. Then she found a stack of thirty Tomes of Knowledge, which give one level each. She read through the lot. Fast readers, Asura. That took her to level 50.

In theory that should have been that: "Level 50 in Less Than A Minute" but that would be too easy. No, first we have the aforementioned New Player Experience to contend with. Just because you skipped the actual leveling process don't think you get to skip the fifty level "How To" guide.

Every single level comes with a prize. There's a little diamond in the lower right corner of the screen to click and clicking it opens a big "Look What You Won! You Clever Old Thing You!" reward window. There's no avoiding it - you're going to be complimented and backslapped for doing absolutely nothing, over and over again.

It was fun. A bit like watching a home-movie on fast-forward or your life flashing before your eyes as you drown. One of those. Most of the stuff was either useless to begin with or instantly outgrown as the levels chugged on but towards the end there were some decent items. Anyone who's played GW2 will  recognize that a Rare quality Aquabreather is definitely not to be sniffed at!

Fortunately we began by grabbing several bags from the Guild Vault or there might have been an overflow crisis. Even so the available space filled up fast. In an annoying and entirely unnecessary precaution against inflation of the economy all the items are Soulbound, non-salvageable and unsellable so the finale of the "pulling things out of thin air" magic act was the serial destruction of everything she'd been gifted. It did make the whole exercise seem singularly pointless but then the alternative would be to suppress the rewards when you use a scroll and I'm certainly not advocating that. Free stuff is free stuff even when it's free stuff you immediately destroy..

Scraping around the bank we also found a stack of the new xp scraps that drop out of the latest daily chests. They give a couple of thousand or so xp each. I wonder if that scales? Next time I'll use them first just in case it doesn't. She got another two levels that way landing her at 52.

By now it must be apparent even to the casual observer that GW2 has chosen to take a singularly piecemeal and scattershot approach to giving players a leg-up to the end-game it famously doesn't have. Instead of the simple boost-to-90 or instant high level character of other MMOs we get a whole slew of in-game items that do the job in stages and require a deal of micromanagement.

They don't all stack with each other, either, even when they look identical and have the same names. It all smacks of a lack of both forethought and organization but I can't deny that it's more fun than just pressing a "take me to the top or as near as you're going" button. It has the benefit of tactility and that's something I value highly in my MMOs.

Once we'd had all the free levels we were going to get it was dress-up time. Gearing a new character on an established account is both cheap and easy these days. A full set of level 50 Rare armor, weapons and accessories from the WvW vendor certainly doesn't put much of a dent in six and a half million karma.  Runes and sigils from the TP run a few silver. I went with a set of Ogre Runes for the Zerker-friendly stats and the invaluable rock dog proc. I notice a lot of those rock dogs these days. Popular rune. Popular dog.

Lastly came the skills and traits. The leveling process left New Ele with over 50 skill points but that wasn't enough to take everything she wanted so she sped-read through thirty or forty of the four hundred or so skill scrolls piled up in the bank. The necessary trait unlocks cost just a few silver from the vendor.

You'd look smug too if you'd taken an enemy Garrison three times on your very first trip to The Mists.

The much-ballyhooed alternate options for opening traits up via gameplay make no more sense now than they ever have. Less. It's hard to imagine anyone actually heading out to "earn 100% Map Completion in Fireheart Rise" - a level 60-70 map - to open a blue adept trait useable at level 40 that costs 10 silver to open at the vendor, for example. Again these are mechanics that sometimes seem to have been designed by people who have not only never leveled up a character themselves but never even spoken to anyone who has.

In the end though I'm not sure if any of that matters. What does is that, for the hour or two I spent creating and preparing this new character I thoroughly enjoyed myself. There are a lot of ways to have fun in an MMO and doing things the long, slow, or hard way isn't the be-all and-all, much though I and others might bang on about it now and then. Sometimes it's fun to splurge.

If I'd had enough scrolls and tomes and scraps I would certainly have taken New Ele all the way to 80. As it is she's had all the bootstrapping the account and guild bank can offer. The next stage is to let her use up some of the many XP boosters we have lying around. Might even use a Guild Banner or two. And there's always the crafting option.

Level 80 here we come!