In The Bleak Midwinter : GW2

It's round about twelve months since Heart of Thorns, the first and so far only expansion for Guild Wars 2. That landed with a dull thud last October. It seems much longer - so much longer indeed that I had to go check the wiki to make sure I wasn't missing a year.

Since then GW2 has undergone something of a revolution - or perhaps it's a reversion. The less-than-stellar performance of the franchise under Colin Johanson's direction led to his departure in March, after which came a period of retrenchment under Mike O'Brien.

Now, Mike O'Brien is, of course, no new broom brought in to sweep the stables clean. He's the President and Co-Founder of ArenaNet. He was there in the background the whole time Colin was skippering the ship as it yawed and pitched across the increasingly stormy post-launch seas.

His return to full, direct control was supposedly a temporary thing. When he stepped out of the shadows to take back the wheel Massively OP quoted him as saying he would "eventually be hiring someone else to fill the role" because "it takes a lot of work to run a company and [I'm] unable to do both jobs forever"

Forever is a long time but as we near the end of 2016 Mike O'Brien is still at the helm and no further mention has been made of anyone taking over. What this is doing for his personal circumstances only he can say but for the players his tenure in full charge appears to have been broadly welcomed and I'd guess the majority would be happy for him to continue as he has so far.

World vs World specialists may disagree. While the game mode has certainly enjoyed more attention in the last six months than the entire life of the game before that, it has arguably been more quantity than quality. We've had an avalanche of polls on what to do next, some involving serious, structural change, others offering utterly trivial options up for entirely unnecessary votes.

Despite the endless cavalcade of misery, doom and denial on the forums, there is some evidence that things are stabilizing. It's true fewer people visit The Mists than did so so before Heart of Thorns nearly drove a stake through WvW's heart and it's undeniable that Anet's current penchant for making direct amendments to the scores in order to get particular servers into the "correct" tiers has all but destroyed any vestige of "competition" from the Leagues. Nevertheless, you can find a good battle at almost any time of day on any server now and spirits in-game seem to be a lot heartier than you'd imagine from a  "dead game".

Since I neither play nor pay attention to GW2's would-be eSport offering, ranked and tournament sPvP, I'll refrain from commenting on how that leg of the tripod has fared under Mike O'Brien. When it comes to PvE, however, I think it would be fair to say a corner has been turned.

The basic tenets of the new (refurbished) leadership, at least when it came to PvE, seemed to revolve around returning the game to something closer to the original proposition, which was to be a more open, more inclusive kind of MMORPG. One which very much prioritized "play" over "work". Added to that there was to be more openness of communication, fewer promises and more delivery.

All of this has, by and large, been achieved. When unpopular decisions have been taken, like the postponement of development on Legendary Armor, explanations have been given rather than excuses. When targets have been given for new content, like the quarterly delivery schedule for Living Story 3, they have been met or exceeded. Perceived "grind", if it hasn't been removed, has at least been acknowledged and addressed.

Heart of Thorns was promised and got a difficulty pass. It may still seem like a step up for new players familiar only with Core Tyria but, as those of us with the scars from last October can attest, it's considerably more manageable than it was. I liked it from the start but I like it even more now it's been tuned for enjoyment.

What I do find intriguing is the extent to which the much vaunted difficulty ramp that HoT introduced and which Mike O'Brien all but apologized for, has been maintained in much of the new content introduced under his rule. While the storyline instances of LS3 so far have been distinctly more solo-friendly and less arduous than those of LS2, all of the new open world maps could give any original Heart of Thorns areas a run for their money.

From the snipers in Bloodstone Fen, able to pick players out of the air at extreme range, to the return of the infamous Pocket Raptors in Ember Bay, the difficulty setting has raised the bar from anything seen in central Tyria before. The latest addition, Bitterfrost Frontier, turns the difficulty dial another notch. In some ways it has to be the most unforgiving environment we've experienced yet.

It's not merely the extreme density of highly aggressive mobs although that would be difficulty enough. The ice flows swarm with Svanir and their corrupted beasts. It's literally impossible to travel just a few meters without being shot at by cultists or savaged by wolves. Even a supposedly peaceful activity like foraging berries turns into a fight to the death with almost every bush the home of spiders or yet more wolves. And as for the psychotic mushrooms...

Still, the things you can kill are the least of your worries when you come to Bitterfrost. The real enemy is the environment. In the way of all the maps ANet have designed since Dry Top, there's a permanent meta-event cycle that runs inexorably in the background. It's studded with Dynamic Events, many of which turn the immediate area around them into virtual war zones but the dominant feature is weather.

The small, mobile, unkillable ice storms, long familiar from the Frozen Maw event in the Norn starting map, Wayfarer Foothills, may encase you in ice but that's a minor inconvenience. The real challenge are the blackouts and whiteouts that reduce visibility to a glimmer. There seem to be few areas immune to a sudden "lights out!" but the worst of all has to be the supposedly balmy quaggan swimming hole, Dragon's Teeth Hot Springs.

When the Svanir attack and the quaggans moo and chunter in despair, as seems to happen about every ten or fifteen minutes on a schedule that would make Disney World proud, the entire canyon turns to night. Since the jumping puzzle is directly above that can be somewhat inconvenient. It took me forty minutes to get a vista there the other night and most of that was because my charr ranger couldn't see his  paw in front of his muzzle.

That's not the worst of it, though. Not nearly. There's one part of the map that is literally unexplorable without protective equipment. Aptly named The Bitter Cold, entering this isolated canyon means swift and inevitable death for anyone without the requisite cold resistance buff.

That buff can only be obtained by means of a Thaw Elixir. You can't buy it. You have to make it. You can't buy all the ingredients. You have to hunt for some of them. You can't even get the recipe without doing the storyline to a certain stage. Once you do manage to make the elixir it's immediately applied to that character and that character alone so all your characters have to do it individually. And it only lasts until reset so next day you have to do it all over again.

If that's not hardcore I don't know what is. So much for casual convenience!

In practice it's not really that much of an issue, although you might not think so to hear people complaining about it. There's not much of interest in The Bitter Cold if you aren't doing the storyline. There's one Point of Interest needed for map completion but you can get to it for the necessary update in the brief few seconds you have before the cold kills you. There's a Mastery Point that does need the buff but mastery points that require some kind of pre-req are hardly anything new.

Last night I did map completion in Bitterfrost on my semi-glass Berserker Tempest, probably the least robust of all my characters and certainly the one who had the most difficulty in the early days of Heart of Thorns. She only died once and that was on the aforementioned PoI of certain death. It was a lot of fun.

For my tastes the difficulty is fine although I do think the annoyance factor could be tuned somewhat. There might be too many mobs and the storms might be a little too frequent. What's interesting to observe is the extent to which the developers are innovating on "challenge. There seem to be new twists and tricks in each release. Mobs behave more aggressively or in unexpected ways. Most especially, approaches from previous areas are nested in new ones.

What this portends for the second expansion is uncertain. At one point I expected a definite row back from HoT's failed "up hill in the snow both ways" approach but now I'm not so sure. It looks as though a general upping of the challenge level for routine, open world PvE play is still part of the agenda even if it's not the headline feature it once was. And it does seem that lessons have been learned in how to make such an incline feel approachable rather than precipitous.

So, on balance I'm enjoying Chapter Three. The story, which I haven't discussed and probably won't examine in any detail, is the weakest episode of this volume so far. Nevertheless it has its moments. The new map is, for my tastes, the best of the three we've seen.

Here's looking forward to the next one sometime around the beginning of February. Steady as she goes, Captain O'Brien.

Postcards From Ember Bay : GW2

The second Episode of GW2's Living Story 3 hit the servers yesterday. As usual it's very hard to discuss it in any detail without dropping spoilers all over the place. Even the opening paragraph of the official Patch Notes came under fire on  the forums for spoilerizing the previous Episode, which, of course, many people who haven't bought Heart of Thorns already own but have yet to play.

I'm kind of wary about discussing the entire storyline myself. If you're even marginally invested in the plotline that's been meandering through GW2 for the life of the game (and which digs its roots increasingly deep into the lore and story of the original Guild Wars) there are quite a few *gasp* moments and a lot of laugh-out-louds. I enjoyed all of them and I wouldn't want to weaken their impact for anyone else with a few off-hand references.

Sticking to safer ground then, I am very pleased to report that Episode 2 is at least as good as Episode 1 and that they're both better than any episode of Living Story 2. The writing seems tighter, sharper, more focused and less mawkish than it sometimes became in LS2. There's still the odd spurt of self-indulgence but I found those quite forgivable.

The voice acting is especially noteworthy. I've been listening to a lot of MMO voice acting of late, particularly in DCUO and WoW and I have a whole post on the topic mulling over in the back of my mind. Let's just say for now that GW2 has the lead on either of those by some distance when it comes to intonation, expression, appropriate matching of voice and visuals and, most especially, in line reading.

Back in the summer I played through Episode 1 on my female Asura Elementalist. She's 85% Berserker specced which made for something of a white-knuckle ride through the fighty-fighty parts. Bearing that in mind, this time I went with my Charr Ranger.

I was somewhat apprehensive to hear him speak because the voice actor who did all the male player-character Charr voicework from launch to the end of LS2 wasn't available to do the new stuff. I don't generally like my characters being voiced, preferring the Silent Protagonist model of The Secret World, but I'd gotten very used to how my Charr Ranger, the first character I made after launch and my first Level 80, sounded.

Well, the new guy did a great job. At worst it sounds as though maybe my Charr had a bit of a heavy night of it - he's a bit gruffer and a bit deeper - but it's very comfortably the same character talking. Rytlock, of course, remains the star of any show he's in and Taimi is her usual amusing, insufferable, endearing self.

It was a great pleasure listening to all of them along with the other regular supporting cast and new faces but any more detail would be running into spoiler territory. The strange thing about spoilers is that even saying something doesn't happen or someone isn't present can be a spoiler in itself so best just not mention it.

Away from the main storyline there's the not-insignificant matter of a whole new explorable map. And it is a whole map! Not a quarter of a map, like the first installment of Dry Top, nor a bijou maplet like Bloodstone Fen. No, Ember Bay is a full-on, full-feature, full-size full new map in the tradition and scale of the maps that launched with the game.

I spent several hours last night exploring it and I haven't opened it all yet, let alone achieved map completion. It's primarily a volcanic zone (every MMO has to have at least one) but there's some biome diversity, with an extensive littoral and some green foliage areas. Travel is possible by land and air (and sea if you really want, although the undersea seems to be mostly undeveloped) but gliding is definitely favored.

There seems to be a ton of things to do in Ember Bay. Hearts (the original GW2 quest hub analog) make a somewhat controversial return. I really never thought we see them again and I was surprised by how nice it felt to have them back. I hope this means they'll be a part of the next expansion too.

There are umpteen dynamic events in the classical style and some chains that end with big ticket  fights. I did two of those that concluded with a huge Ancient Chest ground drop similar to what appears at the downing of a core Tyria World Boss and they did feel a lot more like that model than the Marionnette/Vinewraith open raid style we've been educated to expect.

Indeed, if anything, a return to basics appears to be the theme of this new map. It doesn't discard the innovations and directional shifts of the last couple of years but neither does it ignore the game's heritage and established successes. So far I like it a lot.

There's a fair variety of creatures to fight and interact with. Skritt and Asura feature strongly, which is always a bonus. There are Karka, which generally isn't.

It was very interesting fighting all the various kinds of creatures solo with the same character. The storyline (extremely mild spoiler coming up...) goes quite strong on the toughness and danger of the new creatures to be found in Ember Bay but I found those to be pretty straightforward. As usual it was the blasted Karka that posed a serious threat.

There was certainly no difficulty exploring and participating in the mayhem, not for a ranger at least. How my Elementalist will get on there remains to be seen. I was thinking of re-speccing her anyway...

On a first trip I'd say Ember Bay is a very welcome addition to the game and I hope it presages more opening of the existing map rather than the addition of previously unsuspected pockets. The story is rolling along nicely. I'm intrigued to find out what comes next.

All in all this does feel like a substantial update at last, one that compares not unfavorably with the kind of content drops other MMOs get every two or three months. If you add in the substantial changes to Fractals and a complete new sPvP map then there's really no arguing that this is a significant addition to the game.

Here's hoping for another just like it in November, where it would sit neatly between Halloween and Wintersday, giving us something to get stuck into for every month of the rest of the year. And how about some hard information on that second Expansion?

Managing Expectations : GW2

Yesterday Guild Wars 2 saw the long-awaited arrival of Living Story 3. The update became available around six in the evening, my time. I finished the whole thing just after midnight. Therein lies the conundrum ArenaNet have yet to unravel.

Of course, the Summer Quarterly update or whatever we're calling it now has a lot more going for it than just LS3. There's a new fractal and a lot of tweaks to that game mode. There's a revamped sPvP map. There are the usual slew of class nerfs and boosts, bug fixes and Quality of Life improvements.

On the last of those, why it's taken four freakin' years for ranger pet names to become persistent is beyond me. How was that not a) the original default or b) fixed in beta? ANet seem almost to make a feature of the incredible amount of time and effort it takes them to do things other MMO developers knock off without thinking as a matter of routine.

During the six hours I was playing (in reality nearer five thanks to a number of re-patches and server outages during which I wandered off and did other things) I took over eighty screenshots. Some of those were in anticipation of writing this post but most were in response to the usual excellent visuals. You can fault ANet on many things but the quality of their art department isn't one of them.

Speech-maker, ice sculptor, Commander of the Pact...is there no end to my talents?

What is a problem, however, is using most of those shots to illustrate this piece. There's a spoiler in just about every one. This happens every time. I'd love to discuss the nitpicking details of the plot with anyone who's got to the end but I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't.

It's a spoiler even to say that the update adds a new map but I'm going to go that far. It does. At first sight it seems like a small one, along the lines of the original, partial introduction of Dry Top, but on exploration it turns out to be much larger than it looks.

Bloodstone Fen rivals Verdant Brink for verticality, which makes the use of "Fen" in the map's name ironic at best. Has anyone at ANet ever seen a fen? Or looked the word up in a dictionary?

Faulty geographical nomenclature notwithstanding, Bloodstone Fen is a fine new map. Wait, let me qualify... Bloodstone Fen is a fine new map if you have all your gliding masteries and jumping mushrooms unlocked.

Updraft Central

It's very much a post-HoT map. You can go there at 80 but if you can't use updrafts, stealth while gliding, ride ley-lines and hop about via mushrooms I struggle to see how you could even survive let alone prosper.

If you do have all those, though, it's great! There's a ton of things to do. Dynamic Events, champion battles, collections, achievements, all the usual entertainment is there and in quantity. There are some new additions - for the first time you can fight while gliding - and some nice twists to old ones.

There also seems to be no overarching meta this time, which is refreshing. Instead the map has its own set of Dailies discrete from the regular ones. That suits me very well.

From what I've seen so far I give the new map four stars out of five. I'd give the storyline about the same. It would have been less if I hadn't just seen Mrs Bhagpuss finish the final boss fight with ease.

Without going into any spoilery detail I found the two boss fights that end the adventure as tedious and annoying as most of the ones in LS2 but it turns out that was mostly because I made the mistake of doing them on a berserker staff elementalist. When you don't have to dodge and heal for ninety per cent of the fight just to stay alive it seems things go a lot faster. Who knew?
 

That's how I shall always think of you from now on, Rytlock. Uncle Trombone.

The best part of the story this time around is definitely the humor. I laughed out loud on five separate occasions. The writing is snappy, the voice acting solid but the star by far is Rytlock, who gets all the best lines and delivers them superbly. Taimi is on good form too, particularly in her sparring with the odious Phlunt.

There's a lot of non-combat action, all of which is either amusing or emotionally engaging. It's always surprising to find out my character has skills of which I was previously unaware. I had no idea she could ice-sculpt like a professional artist, for example. There are also some puzzles simple enough that even I could manage them although I recommend failing at least once for another chuckle.

In a week or two I'll probably feel able to discuss the narrative developments, some of which are intriguing. GW1 veterans are, once again, very definitely the target audience. The final cliffhanger was a surprise to me.

Until then, let's go back to the conundrum to which I referred at the top of the post. It took me one evening to wrap up the entire narrative element of a quarterly update. Mike O'Brien hopes they might speed that up to bi-monthly. Whoop and if you will pardon the hyperbole de doo.

Can we say "ironic foreshadowing"?

It isn't that GW2 is actually being unreasonably parsimonious in its content right now. With the drip of WvW tweaks, the Current Events and the general QoL improvements that come in the usual two-weekly updates the game has been getting a fair amount of new stuff. This update includes several decent medium-term goals including new Masteries and an  Ascended Backpack to work towards.

If they didn't have a past history of hyperactive oversupply and a very unfortunate tendency to mismanage expectation they would have no more of a problem than most MMOs in keeping the audience from throwing cushions. But they do and despite all the pre-emptive damage limitation there is a clear belief  among many that LS3 will be pumping out enough content to keep everyone busy all the time.

So far they have tried continual development of narrative in the open world and very fast delivery of packaged content in instances and each time the main complaint has been "is that all there is"? Players are never satisfied. Players never will be satisfied. That's why you under-promise and over-deliver, because that way you stand a fighting chance of getting grudging approval.

So much subtext.

If you check the forums it's plain that quite a few people are still expecting LS3 to roll out a new episode every two weeks, while the ones who have been paying attention are now focused on "every two months", which was an aspiration, rather than "every three months", which is the commitment. Managing expectations is an art every bit as important to the success of a business as delivering content and it's an area that needs a lot of work.

That said, it's a more substantial, more entertaining, more satisfying update than I was expecting. I can't really see it as a great deal more than we got in, say, two LS2 episodes, making it about half the size we used to call "not enough" but it's not at all bad. It should keep me amused for a couple of weeks and here's hoping for more Current Events to keep the hoop spinning.

Overall I give Out of The Shadows a B+. Good but can do better.