Catching Up

A couple of updates on previous posts today, just to tidy things up a little. I continue to grub around the peripheries of various games, ticking a few boxes here, indulging a whim there. It keeps me amused but it isn't creating a lot of fresh ideas for posts about gaming. 

This might well be the least gamey I've felt for a couple of decades. Most of my time seems to go either on playing with the dog or doing things around the house and garden. The weather is fairly good and it's nicer to be outdoors doing physical stuff than inside, going digital. It won't last. We'll get some rain soon enough and suddenly sitting in a chair staring at a screen will seem like a much more attractive option.

I've been plugging away dutifully at my Overseer Missions in EverQuest II and I've finally managed to acquire enough Celestial and Fabled quests to fill my ten-a-day quota. It's not quite that straightforward, since some of the Celestials take a little over a day to complete and some equally extraordinary length of time on cooldown but most days I only have to fill in a couple of slots with Legendary missions to make up the shortfall.

The slightly disappointing part, after all the effort I've put in, is that now I've been able to inspect the full loot table, including the Celestial Bonus Chests, there don't seem to be any Fabled weapons, armor or jewellery. There's only Legendary, which tops out at 295 Resolve. 

That's still very useful and upgrades much of what I had from questing but I'm sure there were Fabled items in the previous seasons and those were another five or ten points of resolve above the Legendary. 

Of course, it's all somewhat notional when I'm not actually doing any adventuring. I don't think I've swung a sword or cast a spell in EQII for the best part of a couple of months, even though I log in at least once every day, often two or three times. It does sometimes make me wonder why developers bother creating any old-school adventure content at all. I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer the games without it.

Okay, no I wouldn't, but it is interesting just how long a diet of log-in dailies and setting missions can hold not just my loyalty but also my attention these days. I think I burn out faster on actual adventure activities than I do on the background maintenance. It's no wonder things like World of Warcraft's Garrisons had such appeal for a certain demographic. I fear I might be part of it.

Partly, as must be obvious, the appeal for me comes from working out the mechanics and figuring out just how these things operate. I've mostly got the hang of the latest Overseer season now but I would still like to know just what effect, if any, levels have on the system. 

Overseer xp is painfully slow but I've inched my way to the mid-point of the five-level range. I can't say I've seen any difference. I'm guessing it's nothing more than a qualifying pre-requisite for the next season but even that's a guess. I've always been maxed on the season before so I don't have any direct knowledge of whether you have to hit the cap on the last season before you can do the next.

The other mmorpg I'm still notionally playing is Guild Wars 2, although there, for the first time since they were added not that long after launch, I have finally fallen off the Daily roundabout. There was a while when the puppy made it difficult to get the dailies done every day and somehow that seems to have broken the habit. I could easily find time to do them every day again now but often I just can't be bothered. 

Surprisingly, that doesn't mean I'm not playing at all. I logged in this afternoon to do some more of Living World Season One. I was hoping to find out if we ever get to see any more of the old Lion's Arch but I was also curious to revisit the introduction of Marjory Delaqua. (I'd completely forgotten, naturally, that we all got a doohickey at the conclusion of the original outing that lets you replay the whole thing any time you like.)

After I'd played through the Dead End chapter I was even more curious to compare my feelings today with what I thought about it the first time round, when we were first introduced to the concept of a 1940s film noir detective agency in a 21st century fantasy mmorpg. I had a vague recollection that I'd been a lot more impressed back in 2013 than I was with the rerun nine years later.

In fact, it turns out I barely mentioned. it. I reviewed the Dragon Bash event in full but consigned the story to a single paragraph, where I summed it up as "Good, on the whole". I was considerably more generous towards the Raymond Chandler pastiche back then than I would be if I was reviewing it now, saying it "worked surprisingly well".

This time around I found the writing unconvincing and the voice acting labored. Marjory has always sounded downbeat but on her debut she comes across as just bored. I think it's supposed to convey world-weary cynicism but it just made me feel she wasn't interested either in her work or life in general.

As for seeing more of LA, sadly that didn't happen. It's back to the main plaza, where they haven't even covered the body of the Charr representative, much less moved it to a more suitable resting place. I carried on with the storyline until I got to the part where you have to complete events in Bloodtide Coast to fill a progress bar, at which point I lost patience and gave up. 

For now, anyway. I don't hold much hope that I'll get to see any more of the old, pirate version of LA in the rest of this revamped episode but I'll probably carry on to the end all the same. It is a bit of a nostalgia trip, after all.

And finally, My Time At Sandrock. Bizarrely, there was a news item about the game at NME earlier today. I really wasn't expecting that. It suggests the series has something of a following, since the thrust of the piece is that Sandrock is already more popular than Portia, even in Early Access. 

As I type, MTAS stands at #83 on the Steam chart, one place above Cyberpunk 2077. Just over twelve thousand people are playing but the peak so far is not far off double that.

I've been playing too, but so far I've only notched up about three hours, mostly because it can be a bit of a struggle at times. Nothing to do with the gameplay, which is identical to Portia and a lot of fun. The main problem is loading and transitions. It can take several minutes to get into the game and a couple to move from one location to another within it; opening any window - inventory, map, options - takes thirty seconds or so.

At first I thought it might be yet another problem with my machine and it still might be but there's a note in the latest patch notes saying "Optimization is a high priority" so I 'm hoping it's them, not me.

As soon as I can play comfortably I'll be racking up those hours, I'm sure. At least, I will when it starts raining.

Try Anything Twice

Sometimes it pays to ignore your preconceptions, to give yourself the opportunity to be proved wrong. When ArenaNet posted their roadmap for the summer I was positively scathing about the planned revisiting of Living World Seasons Two and Three:

"I would literally rather spend my evenings cleaning my oven than ever do any of LS Seasons two or three again and as for achievements I never did most of those in the first place so that won't be happening. Once again, good luck to them as likes it. I'll pass, thanks."

Extra sarcasm points for a brave use of "literally" there. Brave it may have been. Correct it most certainly was not.

This afternoon I completed the first of the four Seasons of the Dragons meta-meta-achievements, comprising everything from the opening of Dry Top to the apocalyptic cut scenes that preceded the Heart of Thorns expansion. On original release that content spanned the six months between July 2014 to January 2015. The rerun took just one.

Finishing the first of the extremely asymetric meta-metas netted me an Ascended Weapon chest. Also a metric ton of lesser loot but we'll pass over that for now. The halfway mark requires another six metas. If I can stand it 'til then I'll get an unlock for a guaranteed precursor for an End of Dragons legendary.

I've made no secret over the years of my lack of interest in Guild Wars 2's legendary weapons. And the armor or accessories come to that. Even so, I am interested in the lesser-quality precursors reqired to craft them, if only because of how insanely low the drop rate has always been. 

In nine years, playing two or three accounts each, logging in virtually every single day, Mrs. Bhagpuss and I have seen exactly two pre-cursors drop. One each. I must have had hundreds of thousands of opportunities, maybe millions. Just one came good.

I'm not going to pretend there was any other reason I started doing these "Return to..." missions a month ago. I looked at the rewards and decided I wanted them. I was prepared to shift my fixed position in the name of greed. 

 

I'm happy enough with that decision. I wanted some stuff. I got some stuff. What I wasn't bargaining on was enjoying myself while I did it.

Let's be clear: the parts of Living Story I never liked have not changed a jot. Nor have they improved with age. The awful, poorly-designed, poorly-implemented boss fights are as clumsy, tedious and infuriating as they ever were. The clunky dialog hasn't magically found a spark. The plot holes haven't healed over. None of that has changed.

The saving grace of these repeat performances is that the bad points are much easier to ignore now. The big fights take a fraction of the time because most of the bugs have been fixed, because my characters are somewhat stronger than they were and most importantly because there are accurate, detailed walkthroughs for everything. The infelicities, inconsistencies and outright insanities in the story don't jar the way they did because I don't come to them with the hopes and expectations I once did.

 

With those objections removed, the chapters are better able to stand or fall on their merits. They also benefit strongly from being exposed on a weekly rather than a bimonthly schedule. It's something of a novelty for me to be able to remember what happened in the previous episode when I start a new one.

Conversely, back when these episodes were first released, I was much more invested in the story they were telling. I also didn't know what what was coming next. There is a bit of the "yeah, yeah, let's move it along folks" to my appreciation of the material these days.

That said, it has been unsettlingly nostalgic at times to see these familiar passages play out once again. I'm quite surprised at the things I remember and the things I don't but perhaps what surprises me more are the nuances I must have missed. 

 

I recall just about everything from Fort Salma, the big reception in Divinity's Reach, the trip to Durmand Priory. The Inquest's attack on Taimi is just as distressing even when you know it's coming. Hearing Zojja's voice makes me angry all over again when I think about what's going to happen to her, the way she'll be gaslit and forgotten. 

I learned new things, too. Much of the lengthy series of flashbacks showing Caithe and Faolin's early years struck me much more forcibly this time around. Retrospective foresight casts a weird set of shadows.

One of the really unexpected pleasures has been the interstitials. GW2 is moderately famous for the quality of its art team but most of that praise is directed at the environmental artists. It's very easy to forget how evocative some of the cut scenes and, especially, the loading screen art can be. If the game ever does get the player housing system it so obviously deserves, many of these illustrations would make wonderful wall art.

The Living Story missions only make up about half of the necessary achievements for the meta. The rest come from open-world activities in whichever new map was introduced with the chapter in question. That's almost been more fun than revisiting the story, having a reason to do some of the content I very much enjoyed when it was fresh.

 

Over the past three or four weeks I've completed the whole of the Dry Top meta several times and the Vinewrath meta in Silverwastes as well. I shouldn't really have needed the crutch of the current event to open any of this stuff up for me. ArenaNet are quite possibly the most successful of all the major mmorpg houses at keeping older content in play and you can find a map full of people doing these metas without too much trouble most days. 

The thing is, I never do that. There's a lot of older content in GW2 now and I tend to need a prod to revisit most of it, even though I almost always have a good time when I make the effort.

Overall, I have to say this whole "Return to..." event has far outstripped my expectations. It's even made me reconsider the role and function of structured, personal narrative in mmorpgs. I wonder sometimes if I really know what I want. I'm all but sure I don't always know what I need.

 

Whether this mellow mood will extend to the next set of returning Living Story chapters does definitely remain to be seen. These, after all, were the direct lead-in to Heart of Thorns, the expansion I really liked, and the story at that point was comparatively coherent and compelling. Season Three was the preamble to Path of Fire, the expansion I really didn't like, and if I remember anything about it at all it's not with much affection.

But that's almost the best reason to stay with the process. The rewards may have been why I started but now I'm getting an education. I'm learning new things about the game and about myself and that's a lot more than I expected to get out of something that, when it was announced, looked very much like filler. 

If I find I'm not enjoying it any more then I'll stop but for now I find I'm actually looking forward to each "new" weekly instalment. The next drop should take us to Bloodstone Fen. I spent a lot of time there, once, and I had some very complimentary things to say about it. 

It'll be nice to see the old place again.

Different Voices

This morning I played through the first two parts of Guild Wars 2's latest addition to the Icebrood Saga. Let's not get into the naming conventions of that again. 

I wanted to see the story segment with Braham. I was hoping it might be a separate option but the chapter begins with a (really quite interesting) conversation between Aurene and Jormag before segueing into the first of this update's suite of Dragon Response Missions.

I've been playing GW2 for a long, long time now. I've followed all of the main storylines. Sometimes I've been heavily invested, sometimes I could barely drag myself on. I was one of the minority who thoroughly enjoyed Scarlet's wars but I struggled through the mediocre fan service of the whole, interminable Palawa Joko farrago, including most of the core storyline of the Path of Fire expansion.

The thing is, after this much time with the cast, it all turns into the equivalent of a long-running soap opera or a sitcom that's heading into a tenth season. Hardly any of the characters make any sense if you think about the things they've done. None of the stories hold up to scrutiny. And none of that matters because you know them all so well. It's familiarity that carries you through the nonsense.

Which is why it's so famously difficult and risky to recast. 

It happens. Sometimes there's no choice. If an actor dies (or goes to jail or gets a better offer or leaves to raise a family...) it's either recast or write the character out and if it's a core character that might mean the end of the show.

It made for a sombre opening to a new season but it's one of the best episodes in the whole show.

 

Luke Perry, who played Fred Andrews, Archie's dad, in Riverdale, died suddenly between the end of the third season and the start of the fourth. The opening episode of the first season they shot without him is a long and very poignant eulogy. Fred was a significant character but also one the show could manage without. I don't imagine anyone thought even for a second of replacing him.

Online games with ongoing characters have some different choices to make. Obviously none of the images we see are going to change unless it's by intent. Their voices, though? Well that's a different matter altogether.

It's almost certainly easier to swap out an actor we only recognize by the sound of their voice than it is one we know by sight but "easier" isn't the same as "easy". I've lost track of how many of GW2's ever-expanding ensemble cast have changed voice actors over the last eight years. I do remember Rox's voice changing completely but other than that I'd have to look it up. 

I do know that my male Asura, with whom I do all the Living Story stuff and whose voice I hear more than anyone's, still sounds the same as he always did. It would be very weird if that changed but if the game lasts another eight years I imagine it might.

Not up to your usual standard, Canach.

I'm pretty certain I would have noticed that Canach's voice had changed even if I hadn't already heard about it. He's far and away one of the game's most distinctive presences, one of those characters that make a scene worth struggling through an annoying boss fight for. 

Of course, it might have been hard to be sure at first, given the increasingly irritating way that Living Story dialog plays out theese days, in the middle of a firefight. I get that it's meant to be the equivalent of action heroes swapping witty badinage between bullets but I find it all but impossible to listen to the quips and hit the targets at the same time. If it wasn't for the chatbox recording everything that's said so I can read it back afterwards I'd scarcely know who said what to whom most of the time.

Even so, I could tell Canach wasn't quite his usual, acerbic self. He seemed a little flat. Subdued. 

Turns out he's been replaced. His originator and long-standing voice actor, John DiMaggio, whose take on the character was accurately described by an ANet rep as "urbane and hilarious" has been replaced by Matthew Mercer. This change brings with it a number of problems.

I had no idea who Matt Mercer might be. Never heard of him. I found out by reading the forum thread on the topic that he's well-known from the Critical Role web series, something I've heard of many times but never watched. Not only that but he also voices the male norn player-character in Guild Wars 2.

Braham's the only male Norn I really pay any attention to.

 

I don't have any male norn characters so that's unlikely to be a problem for me but I can imagine it might be for someone who finds themselves listening to Matt Mercer having a conversation with Matt Mercer. I'm sure he varies the voice enough to make them distinct but from my years of listening to audio books I'd have to say you can always tell it's the same actor doing all the voices, no matter how well they're doing it.

Based on the forum reaction, the change hasn't gone down particularly well but that's only to be expected. Criticism of ArenaNet is muted because the reason given is "clash of scheduling", a polite way of saying they couldn't get John DiMaggio to do it any more. 

That puts them in the position of either having to recast or to let the character lie fallow. Or kill them off, of course, which is always a popular option in genre fiction. 

Canach isn't really a key figure in the plot so dropping him would be unproblematic from a practical point of view but he is very much a fan favorite so it would also be a poor commercial choice. The question is, would players rather have a bland Canach or no Canach at all? 

It's not a moot point. We already had the same thing happen to one fan favorite: Zojja. She was gravely injured at the end of the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, but so were half the cast. Everyone else got better. Even Eir made a brief comeback appearance and she was dead!

Zojja has never been seen again. I'm not a hundred per cent sure the reason has ever been confirmed but once again it's widely believed to be scheduling issues. Zojja was voiced by the very much in-demand Felicia Day, who almost certainly had more lucrative offers to take up. Plus she's just become a mother. That'll cut into your work schedule.

I can't remember what the original Rox sounded like but who could forget those eyes?

The continued absence of such a popular character with no in-game explanation is something of a running sore in GW2. Every time any rested character returns there's a flurry of "and what about Zojja?" threads on the forums. She's gone but very much not forgotten.

Recasting a significant character like Canach does indeed demand the question "and what about Zojja?". If an interpretation as definitive and accepted as DiMaggio's can be replaced, what's so unique about Day's short-tempered Asuran? The third comment on the thread titled "New Canach VA?" is the equally succinct "Zojja next?"

It would be nice to be able to say that's the only voice acting controversy in the new update but it very definitely is not. There's also the tricky question of how a Tengu should talk. 

I never liked the tengu. They're big, annoying birds with thick quasi-Russian accents and a bad attitude. I always found them both abrasive and borderline offensive. Imagine, then, how strange it was to be greeted in the first of the new Dragon Missions by a tengu voiced like an excitable American tween.

Or, as one commenter on the forum thread brusquely titled "Tengu Voice - Dislike"  put it "sounds like a skritt in disguise". That's all too accurate. When the character began speaking she was well out of my line of sight and I really did think it was a skritt I was hearing.

Other commenters compare her voice to various Asuran and Quaggan characters already in the game and the one thing all of those have in common is exceptional (some might say excessive) cuteness. This new tengu, Kilidris Sparrowhawk, is undeniably cute, something I don't believe any tengu has ever been.

Just die, already!

She also gets some very interesting dialog. When the insanely tedious sub-boss fight on the bridge is finally finished you get the option to ask her several questions and I would advise anyone interested in the politics and culture of Tyria to take that option. 

We already know that the tengu are going to feature in the third expansion and this would very much appear to be the beginning of some re-structuring and re-positioning to make that a more palatable option to those of us who can't stand the blasted birds.

How that's going to go down with their legion of fans is another matter. It does at least make me feel a little more optimistic about one aspect of the End of Dragons experience. Whenever the hell it arrives.Seriously, isn't it about time we got some indications of a timescale on that?

As for the rest of the storyline in the current update... it wasn't at all bad. Plenty to chew on. Maybe I'll get into it when I've finished the rest. 

That Braham, eh? He doesn't get any smarter, does he?

I'm Off Balance

The latest episode of Guild Wars 2's current Living World went live a couple of days ago.  It labors under an awkward portmanteau title that varies depending on where you see it. The full version runs to Icebrood Saga: Episode 5: Champions: Chapter 3: Balance. Chew on that for a while.

At this point you might normally expect a capsule review or some pithy comments about it. Sorry. I don't have anything. For the first time in probably the entire history of GW2's Living World project I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to play it yet. 

And that's not really ArenaNet's fault. As I've said consistently since it started, I've found the Icebrood Saga to be a distinct improvement over what we were getting before. In normal circumstances I'd have logged in my heal-spec druid, the one who gets to do all this stuff, pretty much as soon as the update landed.

The reason I haven't is, of course, Valheim. I'm still at the stage where I begrudge any time spent in other games. I know a recurring theme for years here has been how short the Living Story episodes are but it's all relative. It may only be three hours but that's three hours I could have been mining iron, chopping trees or sailing my longship into uncharted waters.  

I also wasn't super-hyped by the very weak trailer. That's long been another theme here; the extraordinarily variable quality of the promotional material ANet release before each of these chapters drop. This one is particularly lackluster. Here, take a look for yourself.

The worst thing about that trailer is how old it makes the game look. If there's one thing most people seem to agree on, even if GW2 is not a game they personally care to play, it's that ArenaNet has one of the better art departments in the genre. Guild Wars 2 is known for its good looks.

You wouldn't know it from that trailer, would you? It's a lot of not very convincingly animated characters engaging in stilted, cumbersome combat against a series of largely featureless backdrops. The colors are muted and muddy, the action is unconvincing and the impression I'm left with is of something discomfortingly close to a decade-old free to play import, one that probably didn't do well in the west and which few now remember.

Is that really how the way to promote a game that's still widely reckoned to be one of the larger, more successful Western mmorpgs? 

But then, I don't imagine it's intended to promote the game to anyone who isn't already playing it. Almost the entire trailer is taken up with listing the benefits to existing players, all of which could be summed up with the simple phrase "More of the same".

The one shot in the Balance trailer that actually looked interesting.

 

Massively OP's Guild Wars 2 correspondent, Colin Henry, (who, I only now realize, is also Chaosconstant of the Occasional Hero blog) sounds world-weary as he gives us his first impressions piece: "Another month, another round of Dragon Response Missions", he says, scarcely inspiring me to jump into the game to see what's happening for myself.

He goes on to clarify:

"If you have played the last couple of chapters, nothing in this release will blow your mind; everything here is the same old DRM formula. There is a pre-event with two different “click the things” objectives and one “defeat the things” objective that give everyone in the party buffs upon completions. After that, we must fight our way through some dragon minions and defeat a boss".  

I generally try not to let other people's opinions influence my behavior but that rang altogether too true to be ignored. Here's what I said about the last round of Dragon Response Missions, back in January:

"The format is different to what we've been used to but I suspect not to what we're going to have to get used to in the future. After years and years of muddling around with various combinations of open world and instanced content, none of which ever seemed to suit enough people for ArenaNet to stick with any of them, we've arrived at something called "Dragon Response Missions". 

Theese are repeatable, instanced sequences of events that can be done either solo or in groups of up to five players, either premades or put together by the game, as you prefer. They seem to tick more boxes than most of the previous content delivery systems while avoiding some of the most egregious pitfalls. They also bundle up into a relatively saleable package for the Gem Store so they would seem to have a better chance of sticking around than most of the gimmicks ANet have tried over the last eight and a half years."

And yes, it appears DRMs are here to stay, at least for now. Oh well. If ArenaNet can recycle ideas to pad out what passes for content in the game I guess I can do the same for the blog.

At this point an astute reader might be tempted to interject something along the lines of "Hold on a minute! Wasn't it just a few days ago you were praising Daybreak for adding "another by-the-numbers instance that follows the well-trodden path of many similar holiday quests before it", which you went on to emphasize was "absolutely fine", since you "don't come to EQ2 for cutting-edge innovation or out-of-the-box thinking." ?"

Yes, well, unlike the convoluted syntax of that last paragraph, I can't fault the logic. Guilty as charged. In my defence I refer you to my oft-cited favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the one about consistency and hobgoblins, something about which I've been remarkably consistent over the years. Ironically.

Wow! That really makes me want to see more!

 

And really there is no logical fallacy here. I'm quite pleased that ANet are sticking to their last, at last. Foolish inconsistency may be something to avoid but giving the customers what they want is a tried and tested maxim. It's about time they gave it a try.

I guess the question ought to be is it what the customers want? I pulled the trailer above from ArenaNet's official YouTube channel. It was posted two weeks ago and as of this moment it has 1240 views and four comments. One of those comments bluntly states "Stop producing single player content, nobody cares about the story... and even if, it has little to no replay value. Focus on wvw, spvp and challenging late game pve content. You know those game types where you have to work together... after all it is a mmo....". A second commenter agrees.

The other two comments all too predictably welcome the return of the irritating and incomprehensibly fan-favored avian race, the Tengu. Certain sections of the GW2 playerbase go into conniptions at the mere mention of these overgrown starlings and any suggestion the annoying worm-botherers might make some kind of a comeback, let alone become a playable race, has comment threads lighting up all over.

So, two votes against and just two for tengu, then? Maybe no-one really looks at YouTube any more. Just over a thousand views and four comments seems like not very much to me. I have videos on my YouTube channel with more views than that. Alright, I have one video. But the point stands.

Not if I see them first...

 It's probably safe to assume that anyone who actually cares saw the trailer on the official GW2 website and that pretty much no-one not already playing has seen it at all. It's very much a case of catering to the converted. It's not surprising the trailer has all the zest and sparkle of a contractual obligation.

Speaking of which, I think I've strung this out for about as long as I need to. I'll be back with more if and when I get around to playing through those Dragon Response Missions. Oh, and the story instance that barely even gets a mention in the trailer, the one where, bizarrely, we get to play as Braham but with the abilities of the class of whatever character we normally play. I wonder if that's contextualized in any way?

Guess I'll find out... eventually. Right now, though, I'm off to play a different surly-looking viking with bad posture and an unconvincing gait. 

In Valheim, that is. In case you couldn't guess.

I Run Missions

The latest instalment in Guild Wars 2's Icebrood Saga, which I previewed somewhat sarcastically just one week ago, dropped last night. It seems to be called either "Champions" or "Power" or "Primordus Rising" or very possibly "Icebrood Saga: Champions: Power: Primordus Rising". I admit I've lost track of the current naming convention.

Whatever it's called, it's alright. I'm not sure I'd go much further than that but I've played through the new story content and I didn't not enjoy it. It took the traditional two and a half hours, on the nose, only with more fighting and less standing around chatting than usual. 

The format is different to what we've been used to but I suspect not to what we're going to have to get used to in the future. After years and years of muddling around with various combinations of open world and instanced content, none of which ever seemed to suit enough people for ArenaNet to stick with any of them, we've arrived at something called "Dragon Response Missions". 

Theese are repeatable, instanced sequences of events that can be done either solo or in groups of up to five players, either premades or put together by the game, as you prefer. They seem to tick more boxes than most of the previous content delivery systems while avoiding some of the most egregious pitfalls. They also bundle up into a relatively saleable package for the Gem Store so they would seem to have a better chance of sticking around than most of the gimmicks ANet have tried over the last eight and a half years.

 

And I have to say, somewhat grudgingly, that they do work. I'd vastly prefer to have this content presented as it was in Season One, as time-limited events in open world maps, hanging around only as long as it takes for the next chapter to arrive but I accept that ship sailed long ago. A vociferous faction within the playerbase hates anything that's not forever and one-time content is uncommercial since it costs the same to produce as repeatable material but can't be repackaged and resold.

I was surprised at just how many DRMs (Dragon Response Missions. You'd already forgotten, hadn't you?) I had to do this time. Six of them. At least, I think it was six. Wait, no, I mean I know it was six as in that's how many I did. I'm just a little vague on whether maybe the first couple were ones I hadn't done from last chapter. I am finding it hard to keep all this stuff straight in my head these days.

Now I check the press release it does indeed look as though the first two missions I did, one down some cave and the other... no, it's no good, I already forgot where the other was and I only did it last night... aren't part of Power at all. The official four this time around seem to be the ones in Fields of Ruin, Thunderhead Peaks, Lake Doric, and Snowden Drifts.

That might explain why I noticed a significant jump in quality when I got to Ebonhawke. (That's the Fields of Ruin one for those who've never played GW2 and indeed for those that have but don't care to waste brain cells on Tyrian trivia like what city is in which map). The dialog and plot didn't change all that much but the mechanics of the fights became considerably more interesting, suggesting a different team might have had a hand in designing them.

 

This is the really surprising thing about the new chapter. The fights are genuinely enjoyable. It's been a while since I last thought that about a story instance. Sure, they have been getting much better but that's "better" on a scale that begins at "tedious" somewhere back in Season Two and floors out at "unbearable" in the middle of Season Four before slowly climbing back up to the dizzy heights of "tolerable" and even "okay"during the Icebrood Saga. 

Or something like that. Honestly, I've blanked a lot of it. Or tried to. Anyway, the instanced fights used to be something I dreaded and now they're not. In fact, on this latest evidence, they might even be something I could find myself looking forward to. I never thought I'd say that.

I'm not saying I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do and start repeating these missions over and over until the next set drops. Life is neither long enough nor dull enough for that to sound like a good option. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that I might do them again on another character, though. Maybe even more than one.  

It sounds like damning with the faintest of praise but it really isn't. These instances truck along. They don't waste a whole lot of time. Something's always happening but none of it takes too long. Well, okay, the bit with the dragon spears did drag on a little but I thik that had more to do with most of my pickup group spending more time lying down than standing up.

There was a quite a bit of that in the final instance in Snowden Drifts, too, although that group was a lot more capable. Just had too many glass cannons. I was very glad I was doing the missions on my heal-specced druid, the one I always use for story content. He's hard to down let alone kill, which came in handy for getting everyone else who can actually do more damage than a kitten on valium back up off the floor. It's not always all about the dps, even in GW2. Okay, admittedly it usually is...

I'm a little in two minds about how the new direction approaches narrative. Traditionally, the story part of the Living Story has been delivered in lengthy scenes where the player and any number of important NPCs stand around and tell each other the plot. At inordinate length. Sometimes the PC will be given something to do, like in that party we had back in Beetle Manor. Often they'll get to chip in now and again. Basically, though, it's sit back, relax, watch and listen.

With the missions it's more like trying to hold a conversation with three people while jogging through heavy traffic. Everyone's shouting over everyone else, there's a lot of background noise and you only have one ear on the conversation because you have to watch out for things that might kill you.

It's fortunate the entire dialog gets printed in the chat box because I would have missed whole chunks of plot without it. As it was, appreciating the subtle nuances of the voice actors (whom we're all very glad to see (or hear) back at work, I'm sure) took up most of my attention. Having everyone talking during the action sequences certainly works dramatically. I'm just not sure it works practically. Maybe I need to adjust my audio settings to prefer speech over the sounds of stuff being set on fire.

 

And there's a lot of stuff being set on fire. Either that or frozen solid. That's the theme - fire and ice. Believe it or not, I'd kind of missed the memo about Primordus being Tyria's official Elder FIRE Dragon. I'd always had him pegged as "Earth" or "Stone" for some reason. Possibly because he comes with attached dwarves and dwarves always suggest solidity and earthiness, not fiery armageddon.

I did know Jormag was the Ice dragon, of course. Can't really miss that. So it makes sense in a mythological way that they're twins. Twins who hate each other and want to kill each other. Or at least Jormag wants to kill Primordus. If Primordus has expressed an opinion I must have missed it. I don't think he's spoken yet.

As you can probably tell, this recent episode has re-onboarded me a little with the storyline. I do find the whole elder dragon thing quite intriguing. There were some pointed conversations on the nature of dragons between Ryland, Caithe, Braham and the Commander. Kas might have chipped in, too.

Oh yes, the gang's all here. Rytlock grunted a couple of times but he took a back seat for once since he was on Logan's home turf. Marjory and Taimi had cameos and even Gorrik showed his face although he didn't get any lines. Still, he's doing a lot better than Zoja. Seriously, recast her role already, don't just keep ghosting her. She's the greatest living Asuran! How would she not be there, telling everyone they were doing things all wrong?

Marjory's not much better off. Clearly no-one in the writers' room has clue one what to do with her, which is ironic seeing she's supposed to be a detective. Whatever happened to that, anyway? Taimi, once so over-exposed half the playerbase would cheerfully have drop-kicked her off Rata Sum, had one short scene, which she managed to steal by coming over as excitable as a dog in a sausage factory. For someone with just a few months to live (Remember that plotline? No, neither do the writers, apparently) she seemed remarkably chipper. 

Everyone seems remarkably chipper given the situation but then I guess we all know something about that these days. There's always some bleedover, isn't there?

All in all it was a creditable effort, I thought. I had fun.

I think there may have been a bunch of other non-story stuff in the update too but you'll have to wait for someone else to tell you all about that. Oh, wait, no-one else writes about this game any more, do they?

I guess that'll change when the expansion lands. For a couple of weeks, at least. And it'll take a full expansion to redirect attention this way because for sure the Living Story doesn't have much impact outside the installed base any more. 

Tough business.

We Appreciate Power /s

Believe it or not, when I sat down to write yesterday's post I had no thought or intention even to mention Louise Wener or Sleeper. The whole point of the opening paragraph was to set a scene wherein I came home, sat down in front of the computer screen, spotted a new video for the next chapter of Guild Wars 2's Icebrood Saga, watched it and wondered why I even bother.

Only what happened was that in just a few keystrokes I was away on a journey so much more interesting, which, after all, was kind of the point. The thing about that promotional video for Power... No, hang on, let's have it so we know what we're talking about...

 

So, yeah, the thing about is this: I don't have a clue what any of this stuff they're promoting is. 

I play GW2 every day. Really, every day. On two accounts. Yesterday I played on three. I probably rack up thirty to forty-five minutes even on days when all I do is dailies. Most days I play two or three hours. I've been playing since launch. Eight years. Nearly nine years if you count the beta weekends.

I've played all of the Living Story episodes at least far enough to know what's going on. I'm curious about that part. I'd like to see what's happening in Ebonhawke. I want to know what Jormag's up to and what Primordius is planning.  

Problem is, I know that's going to be less than one per cent of the update. A lot less. Vanishingly small, in fact. The narrative exists only as a framing device for activities I neither understand nor care about.

 

What are "Dragon Response Missions"? I'm guessing they're some kind of repeatable, instanced content. I think it's those things they've taken to embedding in the storyline, where you take some confusing option from a menu on a portal and run around not having much clue what's happening until stuff updates and you can leave. Yeah, it must be those.

Then there are the "Allied Factions". Say what, now? And that's Skritt, is it? Is this any different from back in the original personal story, when we all had to decide which NPC races got to join the Pact? Because I chose Skritt then. Aren't they already our allies? Did they defect or something?

Sorry, it's starting to sound as if I care and I really don't. I know this is just some new grind designed to give achievers things to do until the expansion arrives. There's no good reason to get sucked in to that.

Ok, how about "New Upgrades and Faction Rewards"? Upgrades to what, exactly? Gear? We don't have a gear ladder, do we? I thought that was the point. I made my Ascended armor years ago and it's as good now as it was then. Since I never change my build I don't need Legendary, because all it does is let you swap easily between the same power levels you have at Ascended. Is there some other grade I missed? (No, there isn't).

 

As for those faction rewards, I guess those are the things I looked at on a vendor last time and couldn't see any reason to buy. Only now there are more of them. Whoop-di-do.

Are there people out there doing all this stuff? Why? What are they doing it for? If they get these upgrades, what are they using them for? Is there content that requires them? Am I missing something? Like the game, maybe?

Here's what I do in GW2. World vs World and World Bosses. Holiday events. Three hours of Living World story every couple of months. Once in a great while some map completion or a fragment of personal story. Most of it content that was in the game when it started. Oh, and sometimes I do some Heart of Thorns stuff for fun. Because I like it. 

The great thing about GW2 is that, after eight and a half years, pretty much all of the original content is still populated, active, meaningful and even busy. Same with a lot of the stuff that's been added since. If you feel like doing Dragon's Stand, the two-hour long epic finale from the expansion before last, which hasn't been current endgame content for years, you can. There are squads doing it every day. You can find them in LFG. 

Only last night a guild was recruiting in open chat for people to come join them for Triple Trouble, content introduced in 2014. It takes organization, co-operation and a lot of people and it still gets done. Every day. 

Even in the minor leagues content persists. Two days ago I logged in to Metrica Province and got swept up in an organized attempt to beat back the invading hordes sent by Joko as part of his failed invasion.  Joko got eaten by Aurene the Magic Dragon long ago. He's not invading anywhere any more only no-one told his armies. The events go on and people still do them as though it mattered. 

I don't know any other mmorpg that's managed to keep so much content so relevant for so long. Almost everything that's ever been added is still being done and not just by the inevitable one or two oddballs. It's being done by groups and squads and teams and because of the way the game was originally conceived passers-by are being sucked in and they're doing it too.

And there you have the nub of it. All of that content is out in the open world, not locked away in instances. If the upcoming invasion of Ebonhawke happens in the real Ebonhawke I'll eat these words. But I'm betting it won't. It will be hived away in an instance as a "Dragon Response Mission", meaning it can be packaged and sold in the Gem store when this chapter of the Saga is replaced by the next.

Which is why I'll probably never see it again after I do it the one time required by the story. And why I really can't bring myself to care any more. Only, for all the same reasons I just gave, I'll still go on playing. I'll still keep logging in, every day.

So I don't imagine Anet care that I don't care. Why would they?

Tunnel Visions: GW2

Reviewing each episode of Guild Wars 2's Living Story as it appears has always been something of a tradition here at Inventory Full but I was thinking it might be time to bring that tradition to an end. Who even plays GW2 any more, anyway? I barely play it. These days even posts about EverQuest II seem to draw more interest.

I was certainly feeling that way after I'd played through the first few sections of the new story drop a few days ago. The overwhelming feeling of sameness was stultifying. The latest chapter of The Icebrood Saga, Shadow In The Ice, takes place in the same map as the previous one. A hitherto unrevealed part of that map, sure, but it soon transpires that one end of Bjora Marshes looks much the same as the other.

In some ways that's a good thing; I said some very complimentary things about ArenaNet's art department in my original assessment of the marshes and standards haven't slipped. Even so, as impressively as the team evoke the overpowering desolation of eternal winter, some of the impact inevitably dissipates with familiarity.

Seen one set of fallen arches, seen 'em all.

As I plodded through the narrative (and yes, there will be spoilers) that sense of déjà vu grew until I was seized by an overwhelming ennui. We've not only been here before, we've been here many times. So many times...

A subset of the regular cast bicker and kvetch about personal issues while trudging across a wilderness in pursuit of a distant quarry. A disembodied voice, laden with distortion, maintains a fractured and fractious dialog with the player character, while in the background looms an existential threat in the form of yet another a dragon.

In principle I don't have a problem with repetition. I certainly don't have any issues with thematic focus. If the core of the game's story is dragons and their metaphysical relationship to the continued existence of the world and everything in it then I'm down with that. Or I could be.

Only does it have to be so pedestrian? So lacking in urgency? So quotidian?

Now that's what I call an interstitial!

We have reached the stage in the narrative where slaying elder dragons is just what our characters do. Dragons and gods. Even characters we meet for the first time now take it as a given. "Oh, I know who you are. You're that guy who kills dragons".

Any story that makes dragon-killing into a day job is in trouble, even if we do kill the odd god on the side, when the dragon-killing goes slack. Still, it is what it is. And I can't complain, or I shouldn't. I was one of those who advocated getting back to the main plot all through that long and tedious digression with Palawa Joko, after all. If dragons it must be then let's get to it.

Except, of course, we don't. We don't get to killing dragons because in Tyria dragonslaying is always and inevitably preceded by a plethora of busy-work. Busy-work and talking. Which we call "preparation".

For the new Saga-shaped iteration of the Living Story, ANet have done away with Hearts once again. We had them in the base game, then they went away for years, then they came back. Some people liked that, some didn't. The current version seems like an attempt to please, or at least not annoy, both factions.

Yeah, yeah, I heard it all before.

There are no Hearts as such in Bjora Marshes, old part or new, but the storyline uses beats that are functionally indistinguishable. Before we can pursue the renegade Charr leader, Bangar, or mount an attack on elder dragon Jormag's champion, Drakkar, first we have to go do this and that, here and there, all around the new map.

Instead of completing tasks to fill a Heart we have to participate in Dynamic Events. Or, as some would far more accurately be called, Static Events, given they take place in a fixed location and have a visible on-screen timer telling you when to expect them. Participating fills a green bar in the top corner of the screen. Green bar, yellow Heart. Same difference.

I won't go over the details of what the events are or how they work save to say that they're simple to complete and only mildly irritating. I was consumed with a palpable sensation of box-ticking as I knocked them off, one after another. High adventure it was not.

Once again, I feel it would be churlish to complain. After all, I made it quite clear I'd had more than enough of the more "challenging" requirements of previous Living Story seasons. This approach is unarguably much closer to what I said I wanted. Maybe I've just seen it too many times, now. It's been more than seven years. Familiarity takes its toll on enthusiasm.

Pretty much what you'll be looking at for the next thirty minutes.

With the outdoor prep done it's off to the instances we go; a series of tunnels and caverns that conspire to be unremarkable and visually appealing at one and the same time. ANet's artists are very good at ice but ice can only hold your attention for so long.

Progress through the ice tunnels goes as you might expect. The Commander (as the player character is known, by dint of a military appointment that can surely only be honorific at this stage, since the last thing we ever do is command anyone to do anything - or, if we do, to have them actually do it), accompanied by Rytlock, Ceria and Braham, push on past various icebrood minions towards this episode's Big Bad.

Pacing here is decent. Waves of low-quality grunts attempt to swarm the team and are summarily dispatched. Stronger cannon-fodder follows and meets a similar fate. Finally a Champion appears for a fight that lasts a minute or two.


Real story spoilers next - look away if you might play.


I did wonder for a second if that was it but no. This is an episode with multiple endings. It's also almost an homage to endings we have loved (or loathed) from episodes in the past.

When you can switch the UI off and stand in melee range to screenshot the sub-boss's big attack...

There's a dragon whispering in the ears of the weak - and indeed of the strong - threatening to turn friend into foe. And succeeding. There's a dragon's champion visible only as a disembodied head poking through a wall. There's a segment where The Commander has to fight and defeat a vision of themselves.

Seriously, it's like a Greatest Hits compilation, although it's a lot better than that sounds. It's like a cover album of the greatest hits of a band you never much liked but done by a bunch of bands you like a lot more. And best of all they all only do one verse and a chorus then it's on to the next number.

It motors right on through, in other words. None of the dismal rule-of-three that made previous seasons such a misery. Best of all, even though the baddies still paint the floor with every kind of circle and splodge, even though they spew balls of light and columns of ice and bolts of lightning and blue fire, none of it really does much.

The dark blue one that looks like a slug is Jormag's Whisper. The skeletal head sticking out of the wall is Drakkar. Dead Drakkar. We just killed him. We just killed him. Bangar did not kill Drakkar. Let's get that straight right now!

You can dodge it if you find dodging exciting. I did for a while. Then I stopped and just stood there and it made precious little difference. I barely ever went under three-quarters health.

Some people will surely complain that this is insulting to their great gameplaying skills but I find it entirely appropriate for solo storyline instances in a casual MMORPG. It took them a long time but ANet finally seem to have realized who their core audience is, for the narrative at least.

If that was all there was to Shadow In The Ice I might not have bothered writing it up at all. I might have let this be the breakpoint that ended the tradition. But then something happened, right at the end, and it surprised me. The story took a turn I didn't expect.

Why, you devious little...

In the last few minutes, most of which comprises in-game conversation between NPCs and some rather well handled uses of the game engine, two or three things happened that caught my attention and re-engaged me with the narrative.

After a sequence of fights and a plethora of false endings and minor set pieces, Jormag's champion Drakkar is down, Jormag's Whisper (don't ask) is at death's door and everything looks set to resolve itself satisfactorily. And then, out of nowhere, Bangar and Rytlock's son, Ryland Steelcatcher, appear. The very two renegades we were chasing across the marshes. And between them they kill the Whisper, nearly kill The Commander and leg it out of the caves to take full credit for everything the good guys (that's us) have done!

I definitely did not see that coming. Neither did I foresee the coda, where my character wakes up in a refurbished Hall of Monuments, now re-purposed as Aurene's Lair. At least, I think that's where it was. It certainly looked like it. Didn't see my stuff there but still...

I like what you've done with the place, Aurene.

To cap it all off, Aurene then posits the idea that Jormag, whose insidious draconic blandishments The Commander has been exhorting his colleagues to be firm of spirit and resist throughout, may actually have a point of view worth listening to. Can you ever trust a dragon? Even Aurene?

According to celebrated data miner that_shaman, as reported by MassivelyOP, we may be in for "six more episodes with a two-month gap between each, leading to a year’s worth of content" . If it's all of a kind with this latest chapter I guess things could be worse. Eight weeks between drops would be just close enough to maintain momentum; the gameplay, while scarcely riveting, is demonstrably more to my taste than in previous seasons and I am at least mildly curious to find out what happens next.

I'll give ANet a pass on this one. And I guess I'll keep on doing the episode reviews. For a while longer, anyway.

Hope Is A Dangerous Thing: GW2

It's been a while since I had anything very nice to say about Guild Wars 2. The direction the game took with the second expansion, Path of Fire, steered it so far away from just about everything that I loved about Core and Heart of Thorns that, had it been a new MMORPG I was trying for the first time, I'd probably have given it a week or two then moved on to something more suited to my tastes.

There's a certain inertia that builds up over seven years, though, especially when your other half is still playing, albeit sporadically. I'm still plugging away, logging in most days, doing my dailies, hanging around for an hour or so if anything's happening in World vs World, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, is still reasonably lively most days, even in Tier 4.

I also try to at least look at anything new ArenaNet manage to get out. It's not like there's much of it. The last season of Living Story was moderately awful but blessedly short. The story wasn't terrible but it would be more satisfying to watch as a YouTube compilation than to play through. The maps that were added, while beautiful, had zero replayability for me. Most of them weren't even interesting enough to explore.

In August, when ANet rented a theater to promote the next stage of their Secret Master Plan to haul their fading flagship around and set it on a course for relevance and recovery, then hyped the reveal with a countdown timer, I was expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't disappointed.

The pathetic travesty of a re-launch sputtered out on the stage at PaxWest. Reddit and the official forums exploded. ANet became the butt of in-genre snark for a few days until the status quo ante was restored and everyone forgot about GW2 again.

After all that, it would be a gross understatement to say I wasn't expecting much from yesterday's Icebrood Saga Prequel, Bound by Blood. The screamingly inappropriate trailer, confusingly released simultaneously with the update, certainly wouldn't have changed my mind, had I watched it before I'd seen the new map for myself.

Ah, the new map. Grothmar Valley. Forget the story and the gameplay - this is what it's all about! And it's only right that I should give credit where credit's due. For the first time in what feels like years, I'm able to say something unequivocally positive about new content in GW2: I love the new map!

I have barely begun to explore it but already I feel about it much as Jeromai felt about the last one, the one that came with the final episode of LS4, a map that interested me so much I can't even remember what it was called. All of the LS4 maps blur into one for me. I visited most of them only once or twice, in the few days following the release, then never thought of them again.

Grothmar Valley is not that map. Last night I heaved myself reluctantly away from WoW Classic to check out the new content. Even given the appallingly botched build-up I was still keener to see it than anything from LS4 simply beacuase I knew it centered on Rytlock, my favorite character, and took place somewhere in the Charr homelands, my favorite setting.

The opening sequence offered more entetainment than I've been used to getting from these things. The dialog was solid. Rytlock sounded wonderfully world-weary and put-upon. He has history with several of the new Charr characters (well, they were new to me but I'm hardly a lorekeeper), history that was alluded to and hinted at rather than outright infodumped.

So far, so not too bad. The first new area was nicely done. It looked as though it could be some festival ground adjacent to The Black Citadel although a glance at the world map showed it to be deeper into the Charr homelands than we'd been before.

There were some speeches, one fight - an easy and enjoyable one - and that was the end of part one. Then that loading screen appeared. Loading between maps in GW2 is excruciatingly slow. Slower than EverQuest was at the turn of the millennium - on dial-up. I had plenty of time to look, slack-jawed, at the psychedelic finger-painting someone's talented, precocious child had apparently uploaded when no-one was looking.

Then I zoned in and found it was all true! Grothmar Valley uses the color palette I loved so much in the core game that I wrote an elegaic post about it way back in October 2012. That post was tellingly titled "This Land Is Our Land" and in it I laid my claim to a homeland I'd long longed for:  "Every step is filled with wonder. The high summer idyll of the pre-Searing has ripened into an eternal Autumn, the fall after The Fall. The colors burnish with copper and gold, red poppies flag against the sunburned grasslands, white clouds mass the bluing sky.".

I was still in love with Ascalon three and a half years later, when I posted the even more emotionally charged picture-post "Why We Fight". In these two posts it's all too easy to see why I can't give this game up and why I feel so betrayed by what's been lost.

Well, with Grothmar Valley I have hope that some of the wonder may just have bene lying dormant. With a return to Ascalon and it's hinterlands, a whole "saga" set there and in the Far Shiverpeaks, my second-favorite region, it's possible... just possible... I might find myself falling in love with GW2 all over again.

If nothing else, in Grothmar Valley I at least have a map I'm certain to explore to the full and to revisit many times. I don't care whehter it's productive or profitable or any of the things both developers and players have been laser-focused on in new maps for the last two or three years. I just care what it looks like and how it feels.

Discovering Grothmar Valley is like finding another room in your house that you didn't know was there. For the first time in a very, very long while I'll be opening access to this map on all three of my acounts. (To my great surprise and joy you only need core game purchase to flag Bound By Blood for the account).

Not, that is, that I'm going to play through the whole thing right away. Classic is still using most of my available gaming synapses. No, I just want Grothmar Valley safe and secure in my pocket, so I can take it out any time I like, look at it, polish it, lose myself in its golden glow.

Grothmar Valley represents hope. And I have it.