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Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's rogue's gallery remixes
Guild Wars 2's wicked snake people, the Krait, are nasty on their best of days, and ArenaNet is making them even nastier in the new Tower of Nightmares release. The titular tower has been built in secret in Viathan Lake under a force field, and its unveiling will cause massive changes in the area. The trailer shows us green skies filled with black seeds and sinister winds; at the top of the tower is a plant of some kind. I'm not used to describing plants as lurking or looming, but this one is definitely doing both. I'm excited for this release because it looks creepy, and regardless of how effective it ends up being, I almost always appreciate it when MMOs attempt to be scary. I like that the lore of GW2 doesn't always take itself too seriously, but when it goes dark, it can hit some disturbing notes. My misgivings about the patch lie in this being the third enemy mashup we've seen: Dredge and Flame Legion, Inquest and Aetherblades, and now Krait and what have to be some extremely persuasive snake charmers.
Flameseeker Chronicles: War stories in Guild Wars 2
I'm really big on the moments in games that turn into memories, whether that's in Guild Wars 2, your pen and paper variety of choice, or any other game. I mean, you probably remember a lot of your time in-game (unless you play a lot while really tired or otherwise impaired), but there's a difference between, say, recalling some of the quests you had to complete in order to fill a renown heart and recounting that seriously epic time that you and that other Guardian (whom you haven't seen since) totally took on that Champion Jungle Troll all on your own and stomped his face, man, even though you were both underleveled -- you just swapped to scepter/focus and kited him around while the other dude was whalin' on him with the great sword and it was just so cool. (We were really proud of ourselves, OK?) Similarly, there's a difference between walking up to an NPC-defended tower and laying siege to a player-defended one. Sure, you'll probably remember both of them, but one is going to make the sort of experience that sticks with you.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Life in the legions
Last week, Leif Chapelle, a content designer, took some time to update the ArenaNet blog with a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at personal story in Guild Wars 2. He sketched out the structure of how players' biography choices affect their storyline: "To experience every potential storyline being told from level one to 10, you'd need to play the game 30 times (five races times three initial storylines times two internal branches in each storyline)... We have 80 levels of progression for your character, and every 10 levels or so, you'll begin a new chapter in your story." To someone who has rolled a seemingly endless string of alts in virtually every game I've played and is extraordinarily trigger-happy when it comes to remaking characters, this shows a great deal of promise. I'm sure it's quite an angstilicious idea for people who want to savor ALL THE STORY, but I hope that such types might admit (however grudgingly) that too much story is a better option than too little.
