Summer Forever: GW2

Unless I missed a memo, we still don't know who's in charge at ArenaNet. Let me re-phrase that: we know someone called John Taylor is "the (top) game director at ArenaNet" according to Massively OP, but we have no clue who he is or what his plans are, since he doesn't seem to want to talk to anyone.

ANet's P.R. department has been doing a pretty fair job of whipping up interest in the ageing game without his help. More importantly from a players' perspective, Guild Wars 2 has improved quite noticeably during his elusive tenure. I guess that's a lot better than making big promises and breaking them. Long may he keep his counsel.

Yesterday we got a suggestion of what the game can expect over the summer - or "Q3" as whoever designed the graphic unromantically chose to call it. That does smack a little of someone's draft being sent to press by mistake but maybe it's supposed to come across all businesslike.

There are five events for us to look forward to over the next three months. That should impress those who only, or mainly, play GW2. It's certainly an improvement on some previous Tyrian summers. It looks a little thin to me but as an EverQuest II player I'm probably spoiled. 

Sitting in judgment.

Icebrood Saga Episode 4.

Due towards the end of this month. I've heard mention of the twenty-fifth.

Based on the first three episodes (and the prelude) I'm cautiously optimistic. I confess I can't really see any substantive difference between the "Saga" format and the previous "Living World" or whatever we were calling it back then, but I can very definitely perceive a difference in quality.

All of the episodes so far have been enjoyable. The story, although it has its peculiarities, has almost made sense and the gameplay has been a major improvement. Whoever is calling the shots seems to have finally worked out who the core audience for the story-driven part of the game is and at least tried to tailor the difficulty accordingly.

If ANet ever decide to add real housing this Drizzlewood lighthouse would make a great Prestige home.

 The last episode added a new map that attempts to merge World vs World gameplay with PvE content and makes a pretty fair job of it. Unlike most of the new maps we saw in the previous season, most of which I never explored fully even once, I've been back to Drizzlewood Coast several times. Mrs Bhagpuss even gave the meta a few runs, which I don't think she's done in any new map for years.

This new episode is also coming to us in very good time. There'll be exactly two months between it and the last one. The upcoming, as yet unnamed episode, like the previous "No Quarter", will be text-only thanks to the continuing impact of the pandemic. I wonder if the absence of voice acting is responsible for the fast turnaround?

Festival of Four Winds.

Since their welcome, if unexpected, return from holiday limbo in 2018, the Zephyrite celebrations seem to be slipping deeper into the summer, year by year. This time around, the festival slides out of July altogether, not turning up until "the first half of August".

I loved this event the first time, back in 2014, when it appeared as a one-off episode of the Living Whatever.  When it encored four years later it came slightly reduced but also melded with another much-missed carnival, Queen Jennah's tournament in the Crown Pavilion. The combination feels like a somewhat random two-for-one offer in which the very different celebrations sit a little uncomfortably beside each other.

There's plenty of entertainment to be had all the same, with the endless fights in the Pavilion offering some good drop-in boss-bashing, provided you can grab onto the tails of a competent tag. After multiple rounds in the Hoelbrak Hologram arena during Dragon Bash these last couple of weeks I can't say the thought of fighting Jennah's champions fills me with excitement but maybe the "new rewards" we're promised will change that when August comes.

GW2's Eighth Anniversary

Has it been that long? Easily. It feels longer. I find it quite hard to remember a time when I didn't play Guild Wars 2. I've logged in just about every day since early access in 2012.

I'm looking forward to getting my present on the 25th. No doubt the contents will go in the bank with the previous seven years of freebies. I have seventeen characters on three accounts and they all have birthdays and they all get exactly the same gifts. There are only so many minis of Queen Jennah you can find a use for (the precise number being zero in my case).

New hat, new coat, new dyes.

Just this month, I started to think about opening some of the dozens, scores, of anniversary and other gift boxes that clog up the bank on my main account. I've bought all the vault expansions ANet are willing to sell me so the only choices left are to buy another character slot to make a bank mule (never works, I always end up playing them) or clearing some of the last eight years' worth to make space for more years to come.

I did open some dye boxes recently. I rarely bother because I change my characters' looks so rarely and anyway I have signature colors for everyone I play regularly. At least dyes are consumables so when you open them they disappear. The reason half the boxes in my banks are there in the first place is that I know if I open them what pops out will take up even more slots because it won't stack. It's Tyrian Catch 22.

New Mount Ability

Although the infographic pulls it out as a separate event, the text of the press release reveals the new mount ability is also one of the birthday treats. "One of your mounts is harboring an undiscovered talent" apparently, which I have to say sounds more like a threat than a promise.

Many open world events are now all but inaccessible to players without mounts. This one's barely manageble with them.

Unless one of the misbegotten beasts has learned to manoeuvre without wallowing like a tramp steamer in a Force Ten gale, I'm really not interested. Mounts are, at best, an annoyingly necessary evil but mostly a bloody nuisance. They frequently ruin what would otherwise be enjoyable aspects of the game, the current Hologram Stampedes being a case in point.

New Fractal

Last on the list, something else that doesn't interest me in the least: a new fractal. Fractals are a part of the game I've successfully managed to avoid so far and long may that continue. It's considerably more likely that I'll engage with new Strike Missions than with fractals, although I don't plan on making a habit of that, either.

I'll take a Strike Mission over a Fractal.

Still, it's a big game with lots of variety and fractals have their constituency. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'll be happy to have somewhere new to do whatever it is they do in there.

All in all it looks like a reasonable timetable for the summer months. I've had GW2 firmly on the back burner for quite a while now. I can't imagine a real flare-up of interest this side of the proposed third expansion and that won't be with us until after next summer, I'm sure, but for now this should keep things simmering away quite nicely.

Onwards And Upwards : GW2

In much the way a new year finds players making a flurry of resolutions, predictions and goals, so this is the time of year when road maps to the future begin to roll out of MMO developers offices. This week ArenaNet published some general notes towards both their Profession Balance Goals and their wider plans..

The former is easily dismissed. Every MMO I've ever played has trudged joylessly around Escher's eternal spiral of "balance" The more classes there are the wearier the trudge becomes. Developers and elite players find themselves locked in a desperate dance of nerfs and builds, each seeking to obviate the excesses of the other.

Patch notes increasingly resemble medieval disquisitions on the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Most players tune out entirely, while those who try to decipher the hieroglyphs find their eyes glazing over around the third bullet point.

Whatever the actual changes, once the emergency patches and server restarts required to fix the most egregious errors are done, we all settle back and wait for the grognards to codify the new meta, which we then religiously adopt (with amendments because we all know better). A few weeks later the developers shake the bag and pull out new tiles and the whole miserable process begins over again.

So, forget about that. The broader picture outlined in Colin Johanson's pretentiously titled (yes, I know, I can talk...) State of the Game Update is much more interesting, especially the part where he says

2016 will also be a turning point in the type of development we do for Guild Wars 2

Spin it how you will, this is an admission of defeat. Go back and read the mission statements on cadence and Living Story. Or just read this quote from Colin back in 2013:

Our goal is to make Guild Wars 2 the most frequently updated and best supported game experience you can find, and to that end, every two weeks there will be a release with brand new playable content and a mix of supporting features and updates across the entire game.

How did that work out for you then? Probably about as well as this:

Expansions are definitely something that we’ll potentially look at in the future," he explained. "We don’t have a timetable on it. We’re open to it, but I think our major focus as a studio is making the living world concept as strong as possibly can for the players that we’ve got.

All of which is why any road map that talks about content or changes further ahead than, say, a couple of months needs to be taken with an economy sized bag of salt.

We should at least be able to rely on the frontlisted changes coming in the first of the new Quarterly Updates. It's happening in two weeks, after all. Quarterly also sounds like a much more manageable cadence, doesn't it? Maybe it's one they'll be able to handle this time.

The big ticket announcement for Winter 2016 is Gliding In Central Tyria. We're calling it "Central Tyria" now, then? Not Core Tyria? Not Pact Tyria? Oh, wait, that's not the "big" part of the announcement, is it?

This is quite a surprise. When other MMOs have introduced free flight to older zones it's generally required a deal of background work and preparation. While many GW2 players probably hoped, even expected, this day would come, I imagine most thought they'd have a longer wait than a mere three months on from the launch of the first glider over Magus Falls.

Of course, gliding isn't flight. Gliders can only go downwards, unless there's a handy updraft nearby. Merely by declining to add those mysterious swirls of rising air developers can presumably avoid much of the heavy work required to reshape old zones for flight.

As someone pointed out in a conversation on Dulfy (or was it Reddit?) after Rubi Bayer's initial teaser, most jumping puzzles go up. To preserve the notional integrity of JPs and vistas all that's really needed is an updraft exclusion zone in the immediate area.

Somewhat to my surprise I really, really enjoy gliding in Heart of Thorns. I've spent more time than I like to admit simply gliding around Verdant Brink for the sheer, exhilarating fun of it, trying to see how high I can get. Much like flying in Vanguard, gliding in GW2 doesn't need much of a purpose beyond wheeeeeeeeee!

That's a plus, then. And if they add it to WvW as well, where the new maps seem to have been made specifically with gliding in mind, we could have a whole new game. Imagine dropping shells on keeps or zergs the way we bomb Mordremoth in the final battle for Dragon's Stand.

Next on Colin's tick list is a revamp of The Shatterer. For those not in the know, The Shatterer is the lieutenant of Elder Dragon Kralkatorrik. Shat's main claim to fame, apart from being the instigator of a thousand scatological puns, is his deep and abiding inability to turn his head to the right.

Every three hours or so a huge gang of players gathers on a small hillock just to the lee of his right shoulder. As he stands helplessly, roaring and rearing and breathing his crystalline breath directly ahead, the zerg indulges in fatuous, excrement-based banter as they batter away at his exposed flank. Then he dies and we take his stuff.

Presumably the plan is to re-tool the "fight" into something at least on a par with Jormag, which has two phases, takes about fifteen to twenty minutes, and at a bare minimum requires players to move about occasionally. More likely it will get an upgrade to match Tequaatl, for which a modicum of both organization and attention are required.

While it's been handy to have Shat as a punching bag all these years, even I wouldn't claim the event has ever been fun. I used to enjoy the original Tequaatl battle and even now I'd have it back in preference to the current version but I won't be sorry to see The Shatterer get a makeover.

Colin's batting two for two. Keep it up. What's next? Ah, Fractal of the Mist updates. Pass.

Okay, I do have one thing to say about that, but it comes from much later in the notes, towards the end, when Colin's moved away from the Winter Update to cover plans going through the year. At this point he confirms there will be some new fractals.

Given that fractals were first introduced, what, three years ago, and we've had the same nine ever since, you'd have to say it's about time. Oh, wait, there was that one we voted for at Kiel's election, wasn't there? Did that ever happen? I lost interest when Evon was robbed of his rightful victory.

Hmm. Looking at Colin's post I can see that if I carry on picking over it section by section this is going to overrun. By a lot. Let's skip all the WvW stuff, save to say that almost everyone I've seen or heard comment on it, who actually plays WvW regularly, thinks the upcoming changes are positive. That's a first!

The real changes for WvW, the ones that will effectively relaunch the entire game mode in a format barely recognizable, are still out there in the long grass somewhere. Until then everyone's just marking time.

What else is there? Oh yes, event credit for Healers and Support Builds. This is something that should have been an integral part of the game from launch. How is it even still a thing three and a half years on? File under "Better Late Than Never" and let's hope it actually works.

The remaining odds and ends - tweaks to squads, a new "Mist Champion" for the new sPvP map, some new key binding options - deserve a line or two in a patch note, not a paragraph each in a PR post. There is one intriguing little squib, though: The Eldvin Monastery Brew of the Month Club.

Apparently "Once a month, when visiting a major city, club members will receive a package in the mail containing that month’s finely crafted brew. After collecting all twelve brews, club members will receive a title, a brewer’s backpack skin, and a guild decoration in recognition of their devotion to the craft." So that's a Monthly Log In Reward, then, is it? See you in January 2017 with my backpack and a hangover!

All in all it's encouraging. A lot of it I'll believe when I see it, like Living Story 3 and the WvW re-envisioning but at least, on paper, it looks good. It's very nice to see the first acknowledgment that there will indeed be a second expansion, too, even if it is thrown away in a couple of passing remarks. I wonder where we'll go next?

Until then, let's enjoy the holidays. Next up: Lunar New Year. Dragonball!

I Didn't See That In The Patch Notes : GW2

It seems a very long time ago indeed since we were all voting early and often for Evon Gnashblade or Ellen Kiel. Well, as we all know, Kiel won and yesterday she finally got around to fulfilling that election promise, the one about looking into the Thaumonova Reactor disaster.

Things have been a tad busy on Yak's Bend this week and anyway it's fractals, so I haven't had a chance to investigate yet. Jeromai and Ravious have and they bring mixed reports. I think I might just read Dulfy and watch YouTube for this one.

My time continues to be spent almost exclusively in WvW. Hoping to get a full match report up at the weekend following this intense and thrilling week - that is if the pressure eases long enough as we enter the final round. In the meantime, something strange has been sighted in the Mists...

That wasn't here before. I'd have noticed.

Some kind of sneaky SBI trick, I'll be bound

Can't see anyone...let's just give it a poke...

"Ow" indeed.

All very mysterious. Apparently there was something similar in GW1 and it spawned monsters or treasure or some such. All this one does is knock you backwards and tell you off. Color me intrigued.

Room For One More Inside? : GW2

It's the last day of December and I have just over eight hours left to finish my Monthly. All I need are two Fractals.

Yes, I finally got my teeth gritted, my loins girded and stood in the Grand Plaza yelling "LFG Fractals 1!". 10 seconds later I had a group. I introduced myself.

"Hi! I've never done one of these before".

"Neither have I"

"Nor me!"

My first toe dipped in the GW2 Dungeon pool and I find myself splashing around with a full group of Fractal Virgins. Moreover, not only had no-one ever done a Fractal before, not one of us had more than the vaguest idea how they worked. No-one had even watched a YouTube video or read a guide. Perfect!

We muddled through. When we ran into something we didn't understand we talked to each other, offered suggestions and experimented. We worked out what we needed to do as we went along and while we died quite a lot, we got there in the end. No-one got angry or disheartened, no-one ragequit as we wiped yet again. No-one even mentioned that one of us was only level 40 and spent most of the time dead.

It took over two hours but in the end we completed all three fractals put in front of us. I now have one character qualified to run Level 2. Which she duly did a couple of nights later. This time the group was more experienced and if anything chattier and better-natured even than the first. Naturally, things didn't go as well.

The second group struggled through the first two fractals, could not finish the third and had to give up. That fractal was the same one the first group of complete novices got as their opener and they got through it, so experience clearly isn't everything. DPS is, at least for that one, and we didn't have it, especially not after someone bailed. We tried it once more with just the four of us but it was never going to happen. We agreed to call it a day and I returned to Lion's Arch still licensed only up to Level 2.

The fractal dungeons themselves are beautifully designed. Visually and aesthetically, like everything in GW2, they are true works of art. I would love to be able to stroll round them in my own time an appreciate them fully, without swarms of mobs trying to rip my head off. There seems to be some kind of thin, overarching narrative based on Asura Anthropology and each fractal has its own storyline as well. Hard to follow or appreciate either when you never stop fighting, jumping, running, dodging or falling.

I found the gameplay challenging, to use a popular euphemism. In plain English I found it annoying, irritating, fiddly, irksome and downright infuriating. Rarely did I find it fun. A lot of the concepts are great - running down a tunnel with a giant flaming boulder chasing you, smashing the chains binding a 500 foot high giant to a mountain, following mysterious footsteps through a blinding blizzard - great to watch in a movie, not so much fun to replicate through keyboard and mouse.


The best bits were when I could stop and look around - some of the scenery is breathtaking - and the fighting. I like fighting in MMOs. I like playing my character and using my character's abilities and at least I was mostly allowed to do that as I saw fit. We had some very fun fights. I would personally prefer none of the gimmicks and tricks, just the nice scenery with some tough things living in it who resent a bunch of adventurers coming in to take their stuff.

One more run this evening, even if it partially fails, should see my monthly completed. I'm quite glad to have had the spur to go take a look but I can't imagine running these things often, either for fun or profit. Just about anything else I've done in Tyria has been more entertaining. Well, not Orr, obviously. Or some of the Personal Story.

OK, fractals aren't that bad. I did quite enjoy them, in a masochistic kind of way. I certainly appreciate the way that doing them and the Tixx dungeons has bump-started my dormant PUG powers. Not only did my old LFG skills come flooding back but I even found I could still start, recruit and run a PUG. From a social perspective the whole experience was so much better than I'd come to expect from other MMOs of late that it really does put me in mind to do more just for the half-forgotten pleasure of meeting new people and sharing new experiences.

All the same, I didn't come to GW2 looking for dungeon-based pick-up-group gameplay. I still think it goes against the grain of the all-tag-on open world we were sold. Fractals may be a big improvement on the first iteration of dungeons but they are still isolated and isolating instances that remove players from the world. No matter how well it may be done that's not a direction in which I want to see the game go.

Let's hope that the promised addition of fractal gear to other parts of the world puts dungeons back in the special interest box and returns focus to the shared world outside.