Tarisland: Round Two

I enjoyed the first closed beta for Tarisland. At the end of the test, I described the game as "bright, cheerful, well-made and fun" but "not original or profound or ground-breaking". I summed it up as "a mainstream MMORPG, aimed at the existing MMO audience" and I thought "it ought to meet most reasonable expectations".

I also mentioned that one one reason I was interested in Tarisland in the first place was as a potential replacement for the disgraced World of Warcraft. The irony of replacing a game I wasn't prepared to play because of the unacceptable moral standards of the company behind it with one tacitly sanctioned by an considerably more questionable government was not lost on me but you have to pick your battles.

The issue has been made moot by the long-delayed completion of Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard. Once again, I'm not going to pretend I believe the change of corporate masthead washes the company as white as the snows suggested by its name but I said I'd be willing to draw a line under the affair if the takeover happened and it has, so I will.

The fact is, I don't play any Blizzard games other than WoW and I play that only sporadically. It's not as though I was making any great personal sacrifice by leaving my account untouched these last couple of years. Still, as is often the case, the bare fact that I "couldn't" play has made me keener to revisit my old characters than I might otherwise have been, although I have to say that now my self-imposed time-out has ended, I haven't actually done anything about it.

As I write, BlizzCon is due to begin in a few hours, at which point we'll probably learn a couple of things that will be pertinent to when and if I resubscribe. Wilhelm gave his predictions yesterday and the two possibilities that interest me are Cataclysm Classic and the next Retail expansion.

I'm just familiar enough with WoW to find the changes made to Azeroth by Cataclysm intriguing but not upsetting. I've seen some of the revamped zones but by no means all of them and although I could obviously explore them in Retail, doing so in something closer to their original context is considerably more appealing.

looks like we get to summon Scooby Doo!

I'm also curious to see if Cataclysm-era WoW is a sweeter spot in terms of gameplay than the current version, which does seem somewhat overcooked. I know just about everyone who isn't married to 2004 seems to believe WoW hit its perfect stride during Wrath of the Lich King but that's when I first played and I thought it kind of fell between two stools at times; a little too easy to feel authentic but a little too awkward to feel cosy. 

I suspect the true sweet spot for me might be Mists of Pandaria but I'm happy to give Cataclysm the benefit of the doubt. Wilhelm predicts an early spring launch, which would suit me nicely. I guess by the time this posts we'll already know if he was right.

Surprisingly, when I got the email from the Tarisland Team this afternoon, telling me about the second Closed Beta Test, I was considerably more excited about the news than I was when the Microsoft deal went through. Tarisland may not be anything groundbreaking but it does have novelty value and I'm very curious to see how it's changed in response to the feedback and metrics from the first test.

I haven't been keeping close tabs on the details but I have seen several press releases, all of which give the impression that most of the alterations they've made have been designed to make the game easier. That seems a little surprising. It certainly didn't stike me as difficult but then I only saw the low end of the open world. I never even set foot in a dungeon.

Changes to PvE, described by the developers as "core gameplay", include making player characters stronger and dungeon bosses weaker. Raids and dungeons are getting some form of specialised loot and there will be selectable difficulty levels for both. There's also a dungeon-finder style "random matching system" intended to "help new players get familiar with the game more quickly and free those who would like to challenge elite dungeons repeatedly from concerns about teaming up."

Of more interest to me is the "Dark Invasion", a recurring open-world event that brings corruption to different parts of the map on a rolling three-day schedule. I'm not clear whether that's three game days or three actual days. I think it must be the latter. Or maybe, as in WoW, they're one and the same. I really ought to remember but I don't.

There are a whole set of separate quests and events that only happen in areas of the map that have been "invaded" and the whole thing reminds me of both Rift and the pre-expansion events in WoW that heralded the coming of Legion. If the Dark Invasion is anything close to either of those it ought to be a good time.

Separate to the invasions are World Bosses, described as "apex predators" and "highly territorial" which is probably as good a lore explanation of why these things stand around, ready to fight anyone who looks at them, as I've ever seen in an MMORPG. Sometimes the simple explanation is the best.

The CBT also brings some new, as yet unspecified, classes and some changes to existing ones. Rangers, who recently got a whole post to themselves on the official website, can look forward to a shake-up to pet taming, something which interests me since that was the class I played last time. Of course, we'll all be starting over from scratch again so maybe I'll play something else next go round.

Always assuming I get an invite, that is. Inclusion in the first beta test does not guarantee or even increase your chances of inclusion in the second. I've signed up again so fingers crossed. If nothing else, betas for big games always make for plenty of ideas for posts.

If anyone feels like joining in, here's the sign-up page and here's the FAQ. See you in beta. Maybe.

We All Love Our Pets: WoW Classic, EverQuest, GW2

SynCaine was singing the praises of WoW Classic's Hunter class the other day. He suggested it might represent "pet-class perfection" in the genre and I wouldn't disagree.

There are other contenders. Magicians in classic-era EverQuest had an equivalent range of options and requirements. They had to travel far and wide for some of their their pet spells, as well as having to craft most of the others (or else commission a crafter to do it for them).

Obtaining the essential focus items that empowered their pets was a far from easy task. Not to mention the perpetual buffing and keeping the pet supplied with appropriate weaponry and armor so they could function effectively.

Mages also had four very different "pets" to work with and you didn't always have access to the one you wanted at the level you'd reached. The line-up was the classic elemental quartet, Earth, Wind, Fire and Air. Don't ask me who played which instrument...

The Earth pet was a tarbaby tank that did next to no damage. The Air pet was often preferred as a tank at higher levels because of its ability to chain stun while evading attacks. It  also put out some decent damage.

Water I was never quite sure about. I  remember it as something of a jack-of-all-trades, possibly with the best dps output after Fire but able to take a lot more punishment. Despite playing several Mages over the years, occasionally to relatively advanced levels, I never really used my Water pets. 

The Fire pet, as you would expect, was all about the damage, which it dealt well and took badly. No Magician could reasonably expect to solo with a pet that had a caster's armor class and hit points, but Fire was often used, indeed generally preferred, in groups where the Mage's primary role was DPS.

Yes, that torch is right for your level. Stop questioning my decisions and don't wave those things at me. I am your master!

Elementals aren't very cuddly and neither do they easily develop a personality. I always thought of mine as tools more than entities in their own right. Hunters' pets, being animals or, as the game has it, "beasts", enjoy a considerable head start in the affection stakes.

That poses a problem for me. I tend to develop a peculiarly strong affection for my characters' starting pets in any MMORPG. In Guild Wars 2 each of my several rangers hung on to the pet they chose at character creation for far longer than made practical sense.

The question and answer session every character has to go through before being allowed to set foot in Tyria doesn't help. You're encouraged to build up an RP background for your character that includes picking best friends and favorite pets. The game then proceeds to forget about all that forever, leaving you wondering in the thirties just whatever did happen to that Charr who always had your back in the Warband or that childhood friend from whom you were once inseparable.

If you play a Ranger, your First Pet is always with you. Until you send them away. I always find it a notionally traumatic experience. I put it off for as long as possible but eventually you have to admit that pink Moa just isn't right for the job any more. It's time to send him to the farm.

The trauma is ameliorated by GW2's vast, user-friendly stable facility. You can have two pets active at any time, hot-swappable, and all the pets you've ever tamed remain permanently accessible as load-outs.

Best Friends Forever

Compare that to WoW Classic, where you get just three stable slots and can only have a single active pet available at any time. You want to tame new pets because part of being a Hunter is finding beasts with useful special abilities. But sacrifices have to be made. On a pre-Columbian scale.

You tame a beast and then, by hunting alongside them, transfer their abilities to you. That allows you to train your keeper pets to use those abilities in future. The beast that gave of its skills and knowledge is then duly discarded to make room so you can suck the next victim dry.

Or so the theory goes. I wouldn't know from experience because at level 39 my Hunter is still adventuring alongside his first and only pet, the Ice Claw Bear he tamed for his Level 10 Class quest.

Which was fine until the last couple of days. The bear (or Idiot Bear as I tend think of him, when he does the exact opposite of what I wanted him to do) has never been a stand-out tank. Compared to those EQ Magician superglue pets or the kind of bears favored by the infamous Bearbow Rangers in GW2, he's pretty hopeless at holding aggro.

Still, I've learned to work with him and most of the time he manages to keep the mob's attention well enough. Only not any more. I can't work out what changed but over the last couple of days, where I would previously have been able to send him in, give him four or five seconds to establish aggro, then DoT, stun, DD, DD, auto-attack until dead, throwing in a snare as necessary at the end if the mob turned and ran, suddenly I could barely DoT and Stun before the mob turned and ran - at me.

FFS, you idiot bear! What are you doing? You think you can taunt him by waving your backside at his kneecaps?

Towards the end of yesterday's silk-farming session at the vast and barely-visited Ogre camp outside the Ruins of Alterac, there were frequent occasions where I couldn't even send the pet and just auto-attack. A couple of arrows were all it took to infuriate an Ogre and send him bumbling my way, waving the barrel on a stick that passes for a Mace where he comes from.

Given that I was also training up Bow, using a weapon with barely two-thirds the DPS of my regular gun, I found this behavior perplexing. It wasn't a problem in that I was also training four different Melee weapons so I was happy enough to go toe to toe with the ogres, all of whom were two or three levels below me, but it seemed obvious something was wrong.

It became much more of a problem when I finished my farming and weapons training and moved on to Swamp of Sorrows, where my targets were at-level and above. I began to wonder if I'd missed some training for the bear (I hadn't) or whether there was some link between his original level when tamed (he was Level 8) and his usefulness thirty levels later.

I still don't know and since I'm avoiding out-of-game information sources I'm not sure how I can find out. Other, that is, than by the tried and trusted method of trial and error. I'm going to have to park the underperforming ursine in the stables and go and tamed an at-level bear. Then I'll need to bring him to Level Six loyalty and run some comparison experiments.

Maybe it's time I went solo. I mean really solo.

If that bear does as badly then I guess I'll have to go find some non-bear alternative tanks and try those. Boars might be good. Maybe Raptors, although they look more like DPS to me.

Playing a Hunter does indeed involve "many different mechanics" as SynCaine says. Some of them, like what each pet eats, what skills it possesses and what are its stats can be seen clearly enough in-game. As always with WoW Classic, though, I get the very strong feeling that a lot is going on under the hood.

And that's the charm of it. I find it much more entertaining to suspect something is going on yet not be sure exactly what it is, let alone how it's happening, than I do to have everything laid out before me in neatly tabulated columns. I understand not everyone feels that way but it works exceptionally well for me.

If I do prove to my own satisfaction that my first pet has outlived his usefulness it's going to be hard to consign him to history but I'll do it. With only three stable slots available I can't let sentiment stand in the way of productivity. I'm not running a rest home for cast-off companion animals here.

I guess I'd better get out there and tame something. Here, kitty, kitty!

Over, Under, Sideways, Down : GW2

Over the years, one of the regular criticisms I've heard about GW2 is how the very concept of "Map Completion" undermines any genuine sense of exploration. How can it be a game for true explorers, the argument goes, if every Point of Interest is marked on the map - literally?

The truth, of course, is that map completion isn't for Explorers at all - it's for Achievers. Those people who love ticking things off a list and getting a badge at the end to say they ticked them all.

If Explorers complete maps it's by default. Sheer nosiness leads them into every last crevice, cave and corner and if those little boxes tick themselves along the way. well that's how serendipity works. I came across an excellent example of this yesterday in Crystal Oasis.

I hadn't set out to explore anything. I was actually looking for one of the new ranger pets. For Path of Fire I've been trying to look up as little as possible out of game and although I've had my eyes open for them since day one, so far I have only spotted one of the Juveniles, the Jacaranda.

Then one day, while I was following the storyline on my Elementalist (something else I hadn't planned on doing but which just somehow happened while I was meaning to do something else) I caught sight of the Juvenile Sand Lion as I was running past. I made a mental note of where it was and a couple of days later, when I next logged my druid in, I took him over to get it.

Should have taken me a couple of minutes. Turned out to be more like three hours. First I got caught up in some events, then I saw a chest up a cliff in a cave, then I noticed the huge "haven't been killed in a while" bonuses on the mobs in the caves so I farmed them, then I began bunny-hopping up some nearby cliffs to see where they went...

An hour or so later, as I found myself flapping along on my griffin, I spotted something below me that looked hauntingly familiar. Swooping down, I landed on a rope and bamboo bridge that looked for all the world like something out of The Bazaar of the Four Winds, the long-lost, much-missed home of the Zephyrites.

At this point I got all excited. Was this where the remnants of the Zephyrite airship fleet ended up after the debacle in Dry Top? It's always been clear that not all the ships came down there but we've had no news of where they might have gone.

First I climbed to the very, very top of the bamboo structures, poking into every nook, using my griffin, my glider and my bunny to get as high as I could. I saw paper lanterns and familiar platforms. This had to be Zephyrite work.

Nothing I found explained how it might have come to be there so I descended again to see if there were clues at ground level. Which is where I discovered not only clues, but NPCs talking about the mysterious people who'd built these structures and how they'd left en masse in a flotilla of airships, never to be seen again. I also learned how the abandoned town had become a home for refugees fleeing the conflict in the South.

And finally, right at the bottom, beside the road, I found a Heart, one of the pieces of busy-work that GW2 uses as a quest substitute. Also one of the things required for Map Completion, marked on the map, pointed to by NPC Scouts and pinged to your attention by the UI whenever you get close.

What's more, I'd been in the town before: several times. With my both druid and my elementalist. What I had never done during any of those visits was what Telwyn so astutely recommends we should all do when we come to a place we've never been before: look up.

Thus it was that I came to discover the original home of the Zephyrites, before they took the winds in their unfeasible wooden craft. It was an evening of discovery, excitement and above all exploration. Yes, I left with a box ticked but the session was anything but a box-ticking exercise.

That's how GW2 works best for explorers: if you come at it sideways. Or from above. Or below. Any damn way but by following the map.

And then I went and got my pet!

Three more to find (I think). Might have them by Wintersday at this rate.

From A Distance : GW2

After yesterday's mammoth post and chunky comment section I'm going to attempt to keep this short. We'll see how that goes...

Jeromai has an excellent piece up about GW2's failings when it comes to introducing new or returning players to its particular mechanics. As I was reading it I had a small epiphany about just why I don't seem to experience the same difficulties others do when traveling through Heart of Thorns maps.

I posted a lengthy reply and came here feeling all clever and wise, only to read some of the comments that appeared overnight, after which I realized that my so-called epiphany was in fact a case of me not having been able to see some very obvious wood among a number of extremely large trees.

Here's the thing: I don't melee in GW2. Never have. Not on any character, not on any class.

It's not that I have anything against melee, aesthetically, conceptually, practically or any other adverb. I melee non-stop in EQ2, where I usually play a Berserker. I tanked for years on a Shadowknight in EverQuest and on both a Disciple and a Dread Knight in Vanguard.

Before I ever played GW2, though, I read a lot about it and all the talk of active combat and dodging worried me. I did a bit of research, asked a few questions and when the first beta weekend arrived I rolled a ranger.

Without me he's nothing!

That worked incredibly well. It removed all my apprehensions about GW2 at a stroke. I realized I would be able to play GW2 just like I played EQ or WoW or LotRO, if that's what I wanted, because GW2 had a class with a pet that tanks.

I wrote about it at the time, concluding with this advice: 

I would encourage anyone who found the whole action combat hype too daunting to make a Charr ranger next beta [and] let your pet tank pretty much anything you're likely to want to solo.

That advice still stands (the details I've cut out of the quote, about hunting drakes to craft your own armor and equipping Troll Unguent and Signet of the Wild...well, MMOs change over time). There's a reason why "Bearbow" rangers are looked down on and even laughed at - it's because playing one is choosing to play GW2 on Easy Mode.

I haven't played  a Bearbow ranger for almost five years. I rarely play a ranger at all these days, although Druid is my go-to class for story instances. The thing that carried over from that initial experience, the thing that has stayed with me ever since is this: if the mob can't get to you it can't hurt you.

In GW2 I play ranged. On every class. One of the big advantages of the way the game is set up is that every class can play ranged. Whether every class can also play melee I'm not sure. I haven't tried. They probably can, with the right build.

Jeromai astutely points out that prior to the arrival of Heart of Thorns, the GW2 dungeon meta was Berserker build, stack in a corner, melee cleave. I didn't do dungeons then (I was ahead of my time - now no-one does) so that particular meta passed me by. GW2 is a game very much prone to having "metas" and most of them pass me by so nothing unusual there.

Come here! Yellow stuff bad!

Consequently, when HoT intentionally and by design shattered that meta into a thousand pieces I barely noticed. I arrived in Verdant Brink ready to play the way I always play - stand well back, drop a lot of AEs at maximum range, be ready to get out of Denver at a millisecond's notice.

As I examine this playstyle choice I begin to see just why I find some of Jeromai's detailed accounts of what Mordrem and other mobs actually do to be so surprising. Vile Thrashers, apparently, leave acid trails. Leeching Thrashers heal up to full if you melee them. Who knew? Not me, that's for sure!

And why would I, since I never get close enough to any of them to find out? If I'm traveling I avoid everything I can avoid and use all my tricks to dodge anything I can't. I'm not going to stop and fight any of them. Why would I do that?

If I'm doing events then either I do them with others, in which case someone else can jolly well eat all those CCs, or I pick only the events I can complete comfortably at range. I don't really recall many - possibly any - events that I had to solo.

And yet, soloing is arguably what Heart of Thorns was made for. Certainly I argued that. I wrote about it at some length at the time, in a post wittily entitled "Soloing in Heart of Thorns". In it I suggested that

To me, "soloing" in MMORPGs means having complete freedom to do whatever I choose, while having that choice meaningfully progress my character. It means walking out of the city gate into adventure, alone, and returning, who knows how much later, still alone but stronger, wiser, battle-scarred and proud.

That's not everyone's definition but it's mine and I found HoT matched it perfectly. I summed it up thus:

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

 And that's exactly how I still feel about it. Only with this caveat: pick ranged.

If you love to melee, if you're never happy unless you 're getting all up in the mob's grill, maybe HoT isn't the best fit. MMOs generally don't come in one size fits all, though. You do need to adapt.

Stick to what you know.

That's where builds and all that jazz come in. Again, Jeromai has some pertinent observations and good advice. You really should have some kind of stun break loaded and these days a condition cleanse too.

Tyler comments 

 "I don't think I've ever even had a stun break equipped on any of my characters. There's nothing in the game that says you should, and in most MMOs such things are considered to only be relevant in PvP, so it never even occurred to me it might be necessary".

He's right. I never used to have one either. I do now but it has nothing to do with Heart of Thorns.

I hate changing builds and I hate changing spells/abilities. I like to set my characters in stone when they hit max level and by preference they would never change after that point until the game closes down. I might not like changing builds but sometimes I have to.

The last time was when the big Condi change happened. World vs World became almost literally unplayable without a condi cleanse and a stun breaker loaded so I put some in. If I didn't play WvW I wouldn't have bothered but it turns out that choice has also stood me in good stead for Heart of Thorns.

Never mess with those who carry round a fire hose.

In this, GW2 is like every other MMO: it changes, sometimes radically, over time. It also changes across different game modes, at different levels, on different classes and on different maps. What worked in Wayfarer Foothills might not work in Frostgorge and what worked there could falter in Verdant Brink. Tactics that work for a Guardian might not have the same happy outcome on a Necromancer.

So far, though, in five years, in the open world, at every level, on every class and every map, what's worked best for me is range. Range and perpetual motion. Put those together and you'll stay alive longer. Probably.

Somewhere down the line some smart ANet dev may decide ranged classes are having it far too much their own way. We may get an expansion that favors the good old axe to the face approach. If so, I'll have to deal with it. Until then I'll be the one at the back, throwing fireballs.

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?

Healing For Fun And Profit. Okay, Forget The Profit : GW2

Over the long years since the dawn of EverQuest I've played most of the standard MMO roles but my favorite and the one I feel most competent and confident in is Healer. One of the famous, or infamous, decisions ArenaNet made when designing GW2 was to do away entirely with the Holy Trinity. At the time I didn't have particularly strong feelings about it one way or another but the one thing I really didn't like was way it effectively removed the role of Healer from the game.

In GW2 everyone's her own healer and everyone else's patch healer at the same time. Healing is your job, my job, no-one's job. It works well enough and I've certainly become used to it but it's never been ideal.

Consequently I felt that one of the more welcome additions brought to the game by the Heart of Thorns expansion was the introduction of the closest thing GW2 has ever had to a dedicated healer - the Druid. Druid is the Elite Specialization for the Ranger class. Rangers might seem an odd choice for the healing role but, as Zubon pointed out way back when, the Ranger started out as a good match for the then-favored "main" healing class, a Staff Elementalist in Water attunement.

Don't turn your back on me Rytlock. I'm tougher than I look. What do you mean, "You'd have to be?"

I played both a Ranger and a Staff Ele and I tried for a while to fit into a support role as a healer but it was never very comfortable or satisfying. It works best in World vs World, where dropping water fields on command has always been an integral part of gameplay. It doesn't feel like proper healing , though, and the game itself didn't recognize any form of healing as worthy of credit so it took a very selfless player to commit to a full-time healing role. Few did.

With the coming of HoT all that changed. The Druid was designed primarily as a support class, with the bulk of that support coming in the form of healing. On top of that, the rules were changed so that healing players during combat gave the healer credit towards whatever rewards might be on offer. True, you do still have to do some nominal damage as well in order to be recognized but some of the healing skills come with damage built in so that's simple enough.

Amazing how the arrows don't go right through.

It's surprising, then, that it's taken me six months to get around to trying the Druid out. Mrs Bhagpuss, who has had a Druid up and running for a good while, has been telling me for weeks I ought to give it a go. And it's not like I wasn't ready. I completed the specialization back before Christmas, along with the ascended weapon quest collection for Yggdrasil, the druid staff. And yet I carried on playing as a ranger.

In fact,three rangers: one a Charr, my first GW2 character, another, on my third account, a Sylvari, and in-between those two there's my Asura. A year or so ago, on a whim, I re-specced and re-geared the Asuran Ranger for pure survivability. He's all toughness, vitality and, most especially, healing power. His passive and reactive regeneration is so high that in most PvE fights his health barely appears to drop at all.

That made him the ideal candidate. Over the weekend I tuned him still further in that direction, put a staff in his hands and sent him out to learn how to Druid. It was a happy experience.

In open world PvE he is virtually indestructible. Packs of mini-raptors, hordes of mordrem, whole temples of risen minions of Zhaitan throw themselves against his healing and bounce. It makes traveling a breeze.

Hi, King Adelbern! Look, he's waving!

In WvW he is both an irritant and a salve. In the zerg his heals throw clouds of green numbers as far as the eye can see. It feels like contribution. It feels satisfying.

Roaming, something I have rarely managed to bring off with anything even remotely comparable to success before, he is a total nuisance. He may not be able to kill other players  - the downside of the healing build is DPS like a wet dishcloth - but boy, can he hold a ring.

When he turns up, a simple camp capture for a couple of invaders turns into a long-drawn out war of attrition as he dodges and rolls and throws out heal after heal that not only keep him and his pet alive but revitalize all and any of the camp guards that are still standing.

The longer the fight goes on, the higher the chance another player on my side will turn up to assist, and once that happens the tide just turns. Having a heal generator on tap frees up whoever has found the fight to blaze away while, as everyone knows, you have to kill the healer first and that was already problematic when the healer was alone.

This guy seriously doesn't know when he's beaten.

So, I spent a good few hours over the last few days doing that. So much in MMO gaming - gaming in general - comes down to muscle memory and being able to act without thinking. I am nowhere near being "good" at playing a druid yet but I'm beginning to pass the point where I have to think about everything as it happens. When instinct can take over performance will improve.

Off the back of this positive experience I had the bright idea, late last night, to see how the Druid would go in a dungeon. In all the time I've played GW2 I've done just one of the original dungeons and that but a single time. That was the final Zhaitan fight at Arah on Story mode, way back in 2012.

I've done around a dozen fractals and all the temporary Living Story and holiday dungeons but the regular ones, never. I thought I'd start at the beginning so I went to the entrance of Ascalon Catacombs in Plains of Ashford, knocked on the door and went in. Alone.

Rytlock Brimstone wasn't impressed. He thought I needed to bring some help if I was coming with him to find Eir Stegalkin. Apparently a three foot tall Asura wearing a child's cat hat and waving something that looks like a sapling he just uprooted doesn't equate to a full warband in the eyes of a great soldier like Rytlock.

Twenty-six silver? You're kidding, right?

Well I sure proved him wrong. I wasn't expecting to get far. The last time I tried that dungeon solo I didn't get past the first room. This time I progressed and kept progressing. I had a walkthrough up but I didn't really need it. I only died once and that was the fault of the in-game instructions, which put up a huge message telling me I'd disarmed all the traps only for all the traps in the room to fire at once as soon as ran back the way I'd come.

Other than that, none of the fights even came close. I was never downed. Rytlock, Eir and her wolf, Garm, fell over many times but I quickly learned that if you just run back a few dozen yards they pop back up at full health as though nothing ever happened.

The dungeon was gorgeous, insofar as a decaying, ghost-ridden crypt can be. The mechanics weren't too annoying. Difficulty felt almost identical to Advaned Solo in EQ2. Rewards were poor but it was interesting to follow another part of the story, even though it's more like history by now.

Rytlock's stormed off in a huff. Again. Everyone feels bad. Even the pets.

It opens up the prospect of doing more dungeons solo and of duoing them with Mrs Bhagpuss, who has already expressed an interest in running Twilight Arbor for tokens to buy the Nightmare Court armor. Researching that I found the beautifully designed guides at GWDungeon.net, a resource I didn't even know existed. I anticipate making considerable use of all their hard work.

I am not a fan of running dungeons over and over. I have always thought it a poor mechanic and a wrong-headed direction for designers to take. I do like a good dungeon, though - solo, duo or full group. It would be good to see them all and what's more, if I've been through a dungeon at my own pace solo or duo I'll be much more likely to take a run with a group. Even if you don't know the ropes it's nice to at least feel you know where the ropes are.

It's also made me more interested to play around with the other Elite Specializations and also experiment with builds. Who knows, I might even make some effort to put a character into full Ascended.

If I do, it'll be the Druid.

Waking A Tiger: GW2, WoW

Over the past few years there's been a significant change in tone from both developers and players in regard to what we might call the innate difficulty setting of the MMORPG genre. For a long time the wind was squarely in the sails of players, like me, who prefer the game itself to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to tedious things like targeting and positioning. These days there's almost an obsession with bringing the modes and means of regular video games into the previously staid and stately world of MMORPG combat to make it more "challenging".

That's something I abhor pretty much without reservation. If I wanted to play those kind of video games I'd be playing them. I don't. That's why I started playing these ones instead.

I take a much more nuanced view on the current trend towards recovering what was supposedly lost in the long march towards mass market acceptance. Call it the heart or the soul of the thing, whatever it was there are plenty who believe it's not there any more. It's a situation whose underlying causes and present complaints are neatly articulated by Marc Jacobs in the third of his Foundational Principles.

While I have some sympathy with the movement, my general feeling is that I was there, I did pay my dues and I've earned my easy ride. I don't hanker after the days when it felt like it took you half a play-session to get to the place you were going to hunt or when getting six people to the same spot on the map meant four of them dying and two of them rage-quitting before anyone even saw each other.

Neither do I look back with nostalgia to Sunday afternoons spent sending tells to crafters in the hope of finding one who wasn't too busy doing a corpse run or sitting in a guild meeting or attending an in-game wedding to travel five zones to a city with a bank where the guards would tolerate both of us, all so he or she could make me a set of level 15 armor for which I'd hand over all the money I'd managed to scrape together since I last bankrupted myself for the level 10 set two weeks ago.

I could literally tell dozens of stories like that, mostly drawn from memories of things that happened while I was playing EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Vanguard and EverQuest 2. Marc and countless others would point to the mere fact that not only do I have all those stories but that I can still remember them in detail a decade and change later as offering the strongest evidence in support of their case. It's the argument that says it has to hurt a little if you're going to care.

It's true. The reason those experiences live with me still is because they were painful and in being so the memories associated with them were laid down in accordance with the mechanisms associated with strong emotional reactions. What's questionable, in my opinion, is whether that's a desirable outcome for an activity that is, essentially, artificial and meaningless.

It would be a lot harder for me to come up with an after-dinner speech's worth of anecdotes based on the last five years of playing MMOs. Not because I've played fewer hours or paid less attention but because many of the sharp edges and rough corners have been sanded down and smoothed out. I have fewer scars.

The memories of the elation at last-second wins in boss fights or the sense of satisfaction at the completion of  lengthy questlines don't seem to be laid down to last in the same way as the recollection of the anxious hours spent waiting to see if the guy who promised to build my sloop in Vanguard would ever log in again let alone the traumatic loss of my level six corpse down the hollow tree in Blackburrow (and no, I am not ever going to get over that, thanks for asking). It seems that, when it comes to what we might call regular MMO gameplay, no matter how intense the fight feels at the time, the underlying understanding that it can be repeated ad nauseam until the right result pops out undercuts the brain's sense that anything worth recording for posterity is going on. It probably gets the same priority as your daily commute.

Or perhaps it's the lack of agency that matters. The key part of almost every one of my "MMO war stories" is that I was doing something I'd decided to do, something that required me to make choices and decisions. Bonus memory points if some of those choices were dependent on the choices of others.

It's here that I believe we might find a way in to what was actually lost rather than what we imagine has been lost. In attempting to pave all the roads and open all the gates to allow the smoothest of journeys MMO developers also closed down every side-road and took over the steering wheel. Instead of being the drivers of our own destinies we have increasingly taken on the role of passengers.

When I finally got around to playing WoW  some five years after it began my first character was a Hunter. One of the things that most interested me about the class was the relatively complex and demanding process of finding, catching and taming pets, which I'd read about in some detail on one of the many websites devoted to all things Azeroth. Of course, by the time I got there, all that had been re-assessed and re-evaluated as arduous busywork. I forget what you did have to do to tame a pet but I know there was nothing about it worth remembering.

Three years ago in GW2 my first character was a ranger. I was, once again, looking forward to the process of acquiring pets. It turned out that to charm a pet in GW2 you have to stand next to a juvenile of the species and press a button on a window that pops up on screen automatically. That's it.

Well, the wheel turns. That process hasn't changed a jot in Heart of Thorns and yet gaining the new pets for the first of my rangers has been one of the highlights of the expansion. The pets, which are both powerful and visually appealing and hence very covetable, have been placed in comparatively awkward to reach locations, where you would be unlikely to run into them other than by sheer good luck. Moreover, a couple are soft-gated behind the completion of the Dragon Stand meta-event, which offers only a tight fifteen minute window on success before the whole map resets.

Running across the blighted landscape after Mordremoth's defeat, trying to avoid mordrem snipers and not fall down gaping holes filled with poison gas, while attempting to follow map directions from Reddit and instructions in party chat from Mrs Bhagpuss, who'd done it before, all in the hope of finding my Tiger before being unceremoniously booted back to the Pact base camp on a map reset that loomed ever-nearer, stands a good chance of becoming a story I'll still be telling years from now. If I'd failed to find the little striper that memory would come with a lifetime guarantee.

There's a passing fair chance I'll buy WoW's Legion expansion next year. I was already minded to give it a try but the odds improved markedly when I saw this. "Most Mechanical pets will be challenging to tame, requiring you to first locate them and then use your Hunter abilities in unusual ways" they say. Well, that's the kind of challenge I can appreciate. In fact you might say it's what I came here looking for in the first place.

The idea that MMOs need to return to the levels of social interdependence that were the norm before Blizzard overturned the tables makes my blood run cold. The numerous pragmatic changes that a succession of developers has brought to the genre seem to me to have made both for better games and better entertainment. Somehow, though, complexity, nuance and, most especially, agency got tangled up with awkwardness, frustration and inaccessibility. Somewhere along the way a few babies got thrown out with a lot of dirty bathwater.

It seems ridiculous but there's just an outside chance that Gnome Hunters could help, just a little, in bringing back a taste of what was lost. Some variety, some choice, some agency. And, yes, even some challenge. It's asking a lot from something so small but who could be  better placed to herald the return of over-engineered design than a gnome?

Soloing In Heart Of Thorns : GW2

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

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

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

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

Adventure this way!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Up or Down? Flip a coin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The expression "overgrown housecat" comes to mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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