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Flameseeker Chronicles: The long haul in Guild Wars 2
I hear a lot of Guild Wars 2 players talk about level 80. I hear, specifically, a lot of Guild Wars 2 doubters talking about level 80. Surely, surely, if the level cap could be hit in mere days (or for those of us well behind the vanguard, mere weeks), then the game must be content-light? Surely, surely, that would mean that the real game was "endgame"? Nope. Don't get me wrong; hitting the level cap is significant. It's cool. Your character strikes a pose (you know, the same one he has struck literally scores of times before at each and every level-up). Your character says a catch-phrase. You feel good. But in terms of actual gameplay, I can think of very little that is less significant.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Your Guild Wars 2 mileage will vary
There's been a good deal of talk, here in the early days, about the level and experience curve in Guild Wars 2. A great many people are tackling the game in a great many ways, which leads to a tremendous variety in folks' perception of the leveling curve. There are a few of ways that your experience gain might not match up to your desired or expected level. These ways mostly deal with feeling underleveled for storyline content and zone progression. As I said, everyone's moving through the game differently: Some folks made a point to run around major cities right of the bat to tuck a few safe levels under their belts, while others made a beeline for personal story content, and others still (and I count myself in this category) are stumbling this way and that through content with all the focus and willpower of a drunken goldfish.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's launch week in review
It's been quite the week in the world of Guild Wars 2. Launch, issues, near-daily server updates, fixes, and launch parties have likely kept the entire team high on adrenaline and low on sleep. If you're one of the folks in attendance at one of ArenaNet's launch parties, you likely saw a lot of very tired but very happy people. If you're not hounding the Guild Wars 2 Twitter account or subreddit, it's easy to miss a lot of communication, and even if you do, it's a lot to sort through. So what's been going on? A great deal.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Tips for your first outing in Guild Wars 2
Welcome to Tyria, adventurer! This is the long-awaited launch day for Guild Wars 2. If you pre-purchased or pre-ordered the game, you've had a while in the world already. If not, then put on your best adventuring cloak and be sure to grab a spare handkerchief! For those of you who haven't been following the game with the feverish eyes of a true fanatic, here are some things to keep in mind when you first strike out in Tyria.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The end of an era for Guild Wars
The countdown on Guild Wars 2's official site has ticked away to almost nothing. The Guild Wars 2 community is getting increasingly anxious, and at the same time, the Guild Wars community is getting increasingly sappy. Tapping into both of those sentiments, ArenaNet set up a celebration that started this last weekend and will run until August 30th. The celebration, called Wayfarer's Reverie, gives players a chance to celebrate their time spent in Guild Wars and rewards them, at the end, with a Tormented weapon, which, depending on their Hall of Monuments progress, could give them up to two points.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Waiting for Guild Wars 2
There are two weeks left until the official launch of Guild Wars 2. That's a little nutso because a significant portion of my (and a great deal many other folks') energy in last few years has been dedicated to anticipating the game. Seeing it live will be something of an adjustment. I keep wanting to talk about memories of development and standing in lines at PAX and meeting devs and other fans as a way of describing my involvement with this game up 'til this point. I sometimes feel that that's odd, saying that the most exciting part of following Guild Wars 2's development has been the people I've met rather than the game that we're all congregating around. ArenaNet seems to agree with my take on things, though, if global brand manager Chris Lye can be trusted. He says of ArenaNet, "We're not a video game company; we're a community building company. We just happen to have one of the coolest ways to build a community, which is through a video game." Be it trite or not, I find that that kind of statement aligns nicely with the reason I, someone who plays MMOs largely for the sense of shared experience, have enjoyed Guild Wars 2 and its community so much.
Flameseeker Chronicles Extra: A brief history of Guild Wars 2's Tyria, part two
Earlier this week we started looking at the history of everything leading up to Guild Wars 2 in what is probably a grave disservice to the lore writers at ArenaNet. When we left off, the Charr and humans were still bickering over Ascalon, players had just saved the world at the end of Prophecies, and there were still some 253 years left before the start of Guild Wars 2. Now it's time for the events from Eye of the North through Guild Wars Beyond and into the present day. This lore overview isn't even pretending to be all-encompassing, but it might help you understand what the dragon nonsense is about and what's going on with the world you're stepping into. Except where events had exceptional impact, we'll largely ignore what's going on in Cantha and Elona, or else we'd need two whole more posts. I hope it goes without saying that there are lore spoilers ahead, as well as Eye of the North, Guild Wars Beyond, and companion novel (Ghosts of Ascalon and Edge of Destiny) spoilers. You have been warned.
Flameseeker Chronicles: A brief history of Guild Wars 2's Tyria
I see a lot of questions about whether or not people who want to play Guild Wars 2 should jump into the original in the (increasingly diminishing) time left before launch. I don't think there's really a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. For those of you who are worried about missing a bunch of lore and history, however, I can do a little to help with an introduction to Tyria, its history, and the events leading up to Guild Wars 2. This won't be exhaustive (see the word brief in the title?), but it might help you understand what the dragon nonsense is about and what's going on with the world you're stepping into. Except where events had exceptional impact, this focuses mostly on what happened in the continent (not the entire world) of Tyria. I hope it goes without saying that there are lore spoilers ahead, as well as Guild Wars campaign spoilers.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 skill points, traits, and you!
There comes a time in every Guild Wars 2 adventurer's life when her progression begins to go through certain, well, changes. These changes begin when an adventurer reaches level 5, and they get even more pronounced when she hits level 11. It might feel confusing and embarrassing; suddenly, you've got red exclamation marks on your hero panel and a nearly uncontrollable urge to allocate your skill points. Your skill bar starts to fill out. It's OK. It's totally natural. You'll have questions. Where do utility skills come from? Which skills do you take, and in what order? What if you give your first point to the wrong trait line?
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's Legacy of the Foefire
This Guild Wars 2 beta was possibly more exciting for me than any of the previous ones. It was bigger in pretty much every sense -- more areas, more races, more PvP, more people. It was still rife with its fair share of technical issues, but those issues did not seem to really define the norm. And most importantly, it was the last one, which left each experience flavored with the subtle taste of anticipation. What did you get up to? I'd hope some of you who aren't quite as comfortable with structured PvP took this last opportunity to get in and give it a go while the scene is (theoretically) as open and easy to join as possible. If you did, you probably ran into the Legacy of the Foefire map. If you didn't, here's a bit about what you missed.
Flameseeker Chronicles: The game at the end of Guild Wars 2
Let's hear it for information! Last week ArenaNet developers Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson streamed a "TAD talk" (that apparently stands for The ArenaNet Developers, but I prefer to think it's something along the lines of Truthy And Designerrific or The Answer Dump) about endgame in Guild Wars 2. There was some pretty neat stuff. This, as a necessity, pretty much all relates to PvE. Sure, you could argue that PvP is endgame, as in it's something-to-when-you-are-level-80, but when you consider the way that PvP works in Guild Wars 2, it's actually something you do anytime you like. That might be all the time; that might be none of the time. So PvP and WvW will always be waiting there with open arms for you when you need to spice up your in-game life. They are constant. You don't fight your way up to level 80 and then think, "Gee, I'm competitive in PvP now!" That's part of ArenaNet's design philosophy. The team has a stated goal of not wanting to change the game drastically for endgame. If you're at the point in time that's marked "endgame," you've ostensibly enjoyed the game for the last 80 levels (otherwise, why on earth would you not quit?), so what ArenaNet doesn't want to do is suddenly give you something completely different to fill your days. That leaves some people feeling like there is no endgame because the endgame in Guild Wars 2 is strikingly similar to the rest of the game.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Bigger on the inside
I think that storytelling is where we see one of the most significant changes between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. It isn't that the original story sucked, necessarily; it's just that it was woefully single-dimensional and unchanging. Each Guild Wars campaign has slightly different starting quests for each profession, but you're eventually caught up by the current, and everyone goes whooshing along to the culmination. Factions spiced things up a little by allowing you to choose whether you wanted to befriend the Kurzicks or Luxons first (although there wasn't really any permanence to that choice, as you could still effectively follow both routes -- and had to, eventually, if you wanted to unlock the associated Protector and Guardian titles). Nightfall got a little more daring by making you choose between companions and ultimately story paths. Even better, you had to finish the campaign before you could undo the illusion of permanence. Guild Wars 2 is way beyond that.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Slow news week for Guild Wars 2
I've had it up to here, ArenaNet. We, your community, are dying for some real information. You can't keep putting out flimflam posts and expect us to be happy. We've given you our money, for goodness' sake, we deserve a -- Release date, you say? August 28th, you say? Well then.
Flameseeker Chronicles: What to do when zombies chew your face off
I've been having something of a Guild Wars renaissance of late. Part of it has to do with a few friends getting into the game again (mostly for Hall of Monuments reasons), and part of it has to do with having time to breathe, which means time to play Guild Wars. Mostly, I feel, it has to do with the sound of time's wingèd chariot hurrying near: I know that after Guild Wars 2 releases, the likelihood of going back to the home I've made in Guild Wars is pretty slim. Sure, it'll still be there, and diehards like me will still be logging in, but the stage will have a new star (if, in fact, it doesn't already), and that's kind of sad. So I'm taking what time I have to enjoy Guild Wars as thoroughly as possible. And that's how I found myself dashing madly through the Shards of Orr.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Nostalgia ain't what it used to be
Remember when the Pale Tree was just an odd little sapling? When "Kodan" was just the Dwarven Recruitment Officer in Gunnar's Hold? The original Guild Wars is riddled with memories for me. I may have spent only a paltry 2,500 hours in-game, but they've been superbly full hours. I had two big surges of nostalgia this past week: once when I was hip-deep in the Fissure of Woe and remembered how utterly awesome I'd felt the first time I got a Chaos Axe drop, and again as I ran through the hall of burning trees in the third level of the Cathedral of Flames and thought about the countless times I'd run through there on my Smite or 600 monk, buddied up with my best friend and dropping the Enchanted Weapons like flies. I can't wait to have that kind of nostalgia in Guild Wars 2.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Professions are like onions
We've previously talked about the fun results of interaction between Guild Wars 2's relatively simple elements. Emergent complexity is a driving force behind a lot of the depth in Guild Wars 2, as we examined in both the skill and dynamic event systems. This layered complexity also works to benefit professions: There are enough options and tools for fine-tuning your character that incredibly divergent uses of the same profession are possible. Professions have layers. The farther you progress with a given character, the more layers get added and the more you can do to specialize and fine-tune your style of play.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 PvP primer
Welcome to the PvP primer, the post with a small taste of everything you didn't think you wanted to know about PvP content in Guild Wars 2. Some folks regard Guild Wars 2 as a PvP-centric game with PvE content tacked on as an occasional diversion. If that's you, this post is probably full of stuff you already know. Think of this as crib notes for the uninitiated. Are you unsure how to find your way around WvW? Are you trying to find your way into a PvP match? This primer is for you. Last week we took a look at world vs. world (WvW), which pits three servers against each other in grand-scale, pitched battles. Now it's time to give some love to structured PvP (some folks are getting sPvP started as a term for that), which is all about quicker battles with fewer people on smaller maps.
Flameseeker Chronicles: WvW primer
Welcome to the PvP primer, the post with everything you didn't think you wanted to know about PvP content in Guild Wars 2. If you're one of the people saying that Guild Wars 2 is a PvP-centric game and you might do personal story for a break every now and again, this probably isn't going to be new information to you. Think of it as something of crib notes for the uninitiated. Tempted to get into PvP but not sure where to start? Unsure if WvW is your speed? Let's start at the very beginning: There are two main types of PvP in Guild Wars 2. There's world vs. world (WvW), which pits three servers against each other in grand-scale, pitched battles. The other type is structured PvP (sPvP is becoming popular as an abbreviation for that), which takes two different forms but involves smaller, quicker battles on special maps. This week, we'll be looking at WvW.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Touring the Snowden Drifts
I pretty much went all Norn for the stress test last week. Alone (like a true Norn), I ventured to the highest, loneliest peaks of Snowden Drifts, swam in the darkest ice caves, and faced the largest metric crap-ton of Sons of Svanir imaginable. As my Necromancer slid what felt like the nine hundredth Son off of her dagger blades, I took the time to look around soak up the view; there's nothing quite like rallying three times in a fight against a whole passel of renegade Norn to make a girl really appreciate the scenery. Say what you will (and this being the Internet, many folks do) about whether or not having to zone between maps is, like, the ultimate sign that the game isn't truly "massively multiplayer," but each and every map we've seen so far in Guild Wars 2 is packed to the brim with excitement.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Dynomatic
After the first mostly-open beta weekend event, reaction to the dynamic event system of Guild Wars 2 is mixed. Some people see it as the revolution of gameplay that was promised, others think it's a refreshing and solid system, and others feel that it falls short. All of those are fair, although it mightn't be hard to guess that I don't share all of those opinions. Some people expecting the dynamic event system to be the trumpet that would herald the arrival of the salvation of the MMO world were rather let down. There've been a couple of bits of confusion about the nature and scope of dynamic events, so let's look into them.
